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Islamic State – ISIS Now Looking at an Alliance with Russia
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On October 5, 2014 @ 10:13 am In The Point | 25 Comments
The Islamic State needs options. It’s been picking fights with everyone, including its backers Qatar and Turkey. It dragged Obama into a war that he didn’t want only to realize that American air power may not be destroying it, but it is closing off some options for it.
(This is a lesson that countless Islamic terrorist groups keep painfully relearning without ever learning, whether it’s when taking on the US, Russia or Israel.)
One of its wackier ideas seems to be an alliance with Russia.
The report said that the manifesto, which Western security officials have deemed authentic, proposed offering Moscow access to an IS-held gas field in Iraq in exchange for “Iran and its nuclear program.”
Russia, a close ally of the Islamic Republic, built and helps operate the nuclear power plant at Bushehr in Iran. It is also already in possession of the largest proven gas reserves in the world.
The proposal also reportedly stated that in order to gain access to the gas field, located in Anbar province, the Kremlin would have to start backing the Sunni Gulf states against Shiite Iran and another Kremlin ally: the embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The plus side is that if Russia were to back such a move, it would potentially end US influence over the Sunni Gulf states which would be quickly overrun by ISIS if given half a chance forcing the US to either begin a prolonged Iraq x 10 war or give up.
Not that this is ever going to happen.
For one thing even Russia isn’t crazy enough to hand nukes over to ISIS. It thinks that Iran’s nuclear weapons are more of a threat to the West than to it. It just hasn’t thought too deeply about the problem with the “more” part. However ISIS has plenty of Chechens on board.
And it is a long term threat to Russia.
Trading Iran and Syria, a sure and decent bet, respectively, for a gamble on ISIS would be very much a long shot bet on the Islamic State being able to not only hold, but expand dramatically. Otherwise IS is basically trading Iraq and Syria to Russia, which it already has via Iran.
But this shows that ISIS is brainstorming possibilities, albeit ridiculous ones, and is more flexible than it has been given credit for.
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