Pawns in the Game: A Brief History of America and the Kurds
February 5, 2018
By Ted Snider
"The Kurds find themselves caught in the middle of a power struggle between the U.S., Russia, Turkey, Iran and Syria — a familiar situation that follows decades of geopolitical strife in their region, explains Ted Snider."
An interesting sniplet:
"But by 1975, the U.S. backed Kurdish uprising was in trouble. The U.S. eventually came to the conclusion that the Kurds could only be saved by an Iranian military intervention. The Shah was providing much more money than the Americans, but he was not willing to commit his armed forces. He refused and, instead, began negotiating a border settlement with Saddam Hussein. The Shah received territory in exchange for ending support for the Kurds. According to investigative journalist Robert Fisk, it was Kissinger—one of the guarantors of the promise to support the Kurds–who hammered out this agreement between the Shah and Saddam and, so, abandoned the Kurds."
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/05/pawns-in-the-game-a-brief-history-of-america-and-the-kurds/
Something to keep in mind:
" In September 1975, Hussein traveled to Paris, where Chirac personally gave him a tour of a French nuclear plant. During that visit, Chirac said, "Iraq is in the process of beginning a coherent nuclear program and France wants to associate herself with that effort in the field of reactors." France sold two reactors to Iraq, with the agreement signed during Hussein's visit. The Iraqis purchased a 70-megawatt reactor, along with six charges of 26 points of uranium enriched to 93 percent — in other words, enough weapons-grade uranium to produce three to four nuclear devices. "
https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/chirac-hussein-connection
Oh nope,
I am not very impressed by the efforts of Rosatom to repeat Chirac's mistakes from the 1970s.
"The plant, the cost of which Erdogan put at $22 billion, will have a capacity of 4,800 megawatts, generating 16% of Turkey’s total power production. Under the build-operate-transfer model employed in the deal, Russia’s state-run nuclear energy giant Rosatom assumed all the investment financing, while Turkey guaranteed to buy all the electricity the plant would produce. Rosatom assumed also the training of the nuclear and physics engineers and the more than 200 other qualified personnel to be employed at the plant."
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/08/turkey-russia-nuclear-plant-special-status.html
Vaffanculo Enrico Fermi
Big up:
