Some speculation is weaving through the airwaves that once its US-imposed sanctions are lifted in several months, Iran will shift its existing allegiance with Russia and instead double-cross the Great Russian Bear by doing gas and oil export deals that directly undercut Russia, especially Gazprom's Turkish Stream gas pipeline aimed at the southern EU states. Were that to occur, perhaps at the same time a Pentagon and CIA backed rearming of the Ukrainian army and supply of massive heavy artillery to launch a far more effective military assault on the eastern Ukraine self-proclaimed republics, the Washington calculation would be a devastating blow to Putin and Russia's economic stability. No matter what dreams may be floating around the Pentagon however, for many reasons an Iranian double-cross is highly unlikely.

Consequences

First it's useful to ask the hypothetical question were Iran to visibly and massively double-cross Russia, what would be the consequences for Teheran? No doubt one or another Iranian politician or businessman has fantasized about the vast riches that will come from the USA and EU once the de facto 36 year state of war with America and Washington's severe economic sanctions are lifted. Business delegations from several European countries have already been in Teheran talking turkey, that is to say potential huge investment in rebuilding Iran's rundown oil sector and other potential projects.

Moscow and Beijing have common economic development targets, a shared view on the history of World War II and a joint responsibility for ensuring global stability, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a written interview with the Russian state news agency TASS and China's Xinhua news agency.

President Putin will visit China on September 2-3 to take part in events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II and to discuss bilateral cooperation with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

According to the president's aide, Yuri Ushakov, about 30 bilateral documents are scheduled to be signed in Beijing during the president's official visit.

Police in the Ukrainian capital will deploy armored vehicles to patrol the center of the city following Monday's violent riots, an adviser to the interior minister said Tuesday.

According to Ivan Varchenko, downtown Kiev will be patrolled by KaAZ and Cougar vehicles, reinforced police units and 2,200 soldiers from the National Guard and volunteer battalions.

Violent clashes between police and protesters on Monday outside the Ukrainian parliament, Verkhovna Rada, killed at least three and injured over 140 people, mostly policemen and National Guard soldiers.

The European Union will soon make a U-turn in its approach to Russia, according to the president of the Greek-Eurasian Business Council.

The European Union will soon review its sanctions policy toward Russia and shift its focus to cooperation, president of the Greek-Eurasian Business Council and Greece's former Deputy Foreign Minister Spyros Kouvelis told Sputnik.

"The EU will gradually start reviewing its position towards the sanctions... I believe it is not a thing that will last for a very long time," Kouvelis said.

"The time of the crisis would necessitate the opposite, i.e. the development of collaboration," he added.

He stressed that cooperation with Russia had been made more complicated because of the sanctions, but expressed certainty that it is always possible to find ways of working together, even under such conditions.

A nuclear strike against Afghanistan was on the table in Washington in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, a senior German diplomat told Spiegel magazine.

Michael Steiner, the current German ambassador to India, served as foreign and security policy aide to then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

"The papers were written," he said, confirming that the nuclear option was under consideration. "They had really played through all possibilities."

There was a concern in Berlin that the Americans were so shocked by the attacks, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives, that they would overreact, Steiner told the magazine.

He added that he objected to Schroder's plan to express "unconditional support" for the United States, saying no nation should get carte blanche from Germany. The chancellor overturned his objections, Steiner said.

The 9/11 attacks were a turning point for the post-Cold War world, sending the United States on a global war against Islamic terrorism. The invasion of Afghanistan and the ousting of the Taliban from power was the most direct consequence of the attack. It was globally welcomed as a just move, unlike Washington's later war with Iraq, in which several European allies of the US, including Germany, refused to take part.

Editorial introduction

Lev Alburt will celebrate his 70th birthday in August. His life was divided in two: the first half passed in the Soviet Union, the second is going on in the USA. In his first homeland, the Odessian GM achieved many successes: he was 3-time Ukrainian Champion, a winner and a prize-winner of numerous international competitions, a repeated participant of the USSR Championship finals which were by then the strongest tournaments in the world. In 1979, Alburt, as the saying went, "chose freedom", deciding not to come back from abroad. He has settled down in New York city and has been living there from then on.

As Alburt moved to the USA, he became one of the top American Grandmasters, winning the U.S. Championship three times and representing this country many times at the Olympiads. He is still into chess, being not only a successful coach but also a prolific writer. He is the author of many chess books on various topics, which are being sold in prestigious American and European book shops and could occupy nearly a bookshelf if taken together.

Apart from that, Albert has devoted a lot of his time to fighting Soviet communism. He spent his first-earned US money on a trip to Washington D.C. for the Sakharov Hearings. Whenever he got a chance, he provided his chess colleagues coming to the West with anti-Soviet literature. He participated in different rallies and forums, knew Bukowski and Amalrik, was in correspondence with Solzhenitsyn. He was also a member of organizations that made no secret of their intentions to change the Soviet regime.

Dramatic acceleration of events in his former country the USSR, resulting in its collapse, was quite unexpected for Alburt as well as for many others. These days, 25 years after that sharp turn of history, Lev Alburt is still interested in the world political situation. The fate of his former country still worries him, as well as, of course, the fate of his new homeland. We are presenting the Grand Master's point of view on the matters still very important to him.

It has been verified by a source who claims she was there that then-CIA Director William Casey did in fact say the controversial and often-disputed line "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false," reportedly in 1981.

Despite Casey being under investigation by Congress for being involved in a major disinformation plot involving the overthrow of Libya's Qaddafi in 1981, and despite Casey arguing on the record that the CIA should have a legal right to spread disinformation via the mainstream news that same year, this quote continues to be argued by people who weren't there and apparently cannot believe a CIA Director would ever say such a thing.

But spreading disinfo is precisely what the CIA would — and did — do.

This 1975 clip of testimony given during a House Intelligence Committee hearing has the agency admitting on record that the CIA creates and uses disinformation against the American people.

Increasingly difficult to cover-up or spin, it is becoming apparent even in Western media coverage that the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS) is not sustaining its fighting capacity from within Iraq or Syria, but rather through supply lines that lead to and from adjacent nations. These nations include Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and most obviously, NATO-member Turkey.

It was in Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW)'s report, "'IS' supply channels through Turkey," that hundreds of trucks destined for ISIS held territory were videotaped waiting at Oncupinar, Turkey to cross over into Syria with apparently no oversight by the Turkish government. Later, TIME magazine would admit ISIS' dependence on the Syrian town of Tal Abyad, just across the border from Turkey, for supplies and the significance of its loss to Kurdish fighters in sustaining their fighting capacity both at the border and beyond.

Though Saudi Arabia has ostensibly allowed women to vote in the kingdom's municipal elections in December, so far only 16 women in the country have been registered to vote, according to local media.

The small number of women registering may be due to a lack of awareness about the elections in general, said Shaha Muhammad Asiri, chairperson of the women's election circuit in Al-Darb province, as cited by Saudi Gazette.

The 16 registered female voters come from three areas: Farasan Island, al-Darb, and Dhamad in the Jazan region.

Asiri added that only five female voters have been registered in recent days in her district. From 1,263 polling stations across the country, 424 will be for female voters.

According to Bassma Al Seyofi, co-founder of Baladi Initiative, a grassroots women's political empowerment movement, a dearth of information for women on how to register and vote may be a factor.

"Many of these places are unknown and the addresses are confusing - people do not know what district they are in, let alone the school. There is a lack of awareness, and this has been a major obstacle," she said.

One more problem is that female voters, no matter how old they are, have to be escorted by a male guardian.

This is a parable about the new geopolitical new normal.

The parable stars someone who closely interacts with selected Masters of the Universe. Through his business deals, he has no doubt about having identified the way the current high-stakes geopolitical game is being played. That even led him to pen a letter to the People's Bank of China (PBOC) in Beijing conveying his apprehension.

Our man in the parable claims access to privileged information confirming what just happened with Chinese stocks involved market manipulation by Wall Street and selected hedge funds to severely disrupt the Russia-China strategic partnership — and consequently destroy the attempt at organizing the Eurasian landmass into a coherent economic union.

He refers of course to the interpenetration of the Chinese-led New Silk Roads, or "One Belt, One Road", as they are known in China, and the Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union.

In his letter to the PBOC, he reminded them of what they already know; how China's GDP has grown six fold from 2000 to 2015. And how "One Belt, One Road" could yield a three-to-six fold GDP increase over the next 15 years. His clincher: this is what the United States seeks to disrupt, indirectly.

He reminded the PBOC how Washington/Wall Street crashed the oil price and the ruble through selected traders and the cooperation of the Persian Gulf petromonarchies, which pumped surplus production capacity on the market, thus crashing the oil price. And how this process placed enormous pressure on Moscow.

And yet now there is a major negotiation going on between Moscow and the House of Saud aiming for a compromise on Syria. An eventual success would imply a geopolitical shift of the Persian Gulf petromonarchies towards Moscow and Beijing away from Washington.

The new Eurasian emporium would then have direct access to nearly half the world's oil supply in Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East.