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The fight with Iran is growing
The Fight With Iran Is Growing | Quick Take | GZERO Media

The fight with Iran is growing

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take to kick off your week. And we see over the weekend, strikes, drone strikes, explosive drone strikes against Iran, the city of Isfahan, and in particular a major military facility responsible for the production of drones and ballistic missiles. Oh, my.

Of course, Iran is under lots of pressure these days. And not a lot of people are happy with what's happening in that country, not inside the country, with months now of major demonstrations that have only been met with repression from the Iranian government, from its theocracy, from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. We're also seeing that the Iranians are through nuclear breakout capability. They have more than enough, a highly enriched uranium at 60% level, which has no civilian use or purpose. It's only for a military program in a deep, under a mountain at this facility in Fordo, which you can't... The Israelis, for example, don't have the military capacity to strike it or destroy it, a problem, of course, as you think about Iran increasingly becoming a nuclear state.

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What We’re Watching: Iran-Russia lovefest, East Jerusalem tensions, Kim Jong Un acting up

Iran and Russia heart each other. The presidents of Iran and Russia have little in common personally, but they share many geopolitical interests, including in Afghanistan and Syria. They also have a common resolve in countering "the West.” These issues are all on the agenda as Vladimir Putin and Ebrahim Raisi held their first in-person meeting in Moscow. Raisi is a hardline cleric who leads a theocracy with nuclear ambitions. Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, is a wily autocrat who enjoys provoking America and Europe, and has ambitions to return to the glory days of the territorially expansive Soviet Union — as seen with the Kremlin's recent provocations on the Ukrainian border. With the Iran nuclear talks on life support and Joe Biden already bracing for Russian troops crossing into Ukraine, Tehran and Moscow now have even more reasons to scheme and cooperate. Indeed, Moscow and Tehran have increasingly been cooperating on energy and security issues (Iran might be buying Russian military technology) as their respective relations with the West deteriorate.

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