Russia and Iran signing joint anti drug program

The Russian Federal Drug Control Service and the Iranian Interior Ministry have signed a bilateral convention on the joint anti-drug battle on the Caspian Sea.

“The economic cooperation between Russia and Iran is developing, which intensifies the traffic flow between the two countries with 1,500 ships travelling between our countries”, Viktor Ivanov, head of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service informed the journalists after the signing of the Russian-Iranian protocol. “Not only businessmen profit by that but also drug dealers”, Mr Ivanov added.

“Our former steps taken particularly in the water basin of the Caspian Sea have shown that they are effective and so we decided to include it in the protocol on the cooperation on the frontiers”, said Ivanov.

According to Ivanov, Russia and Iran had also signed a joint program for the period between 2012 and 2014. The main task of this joint program was to prevent drug trafficking on the Russian and on the Iranian territory.
As the Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar had previously said at the negotiations with Viktor Ivanov, the escalation of the situation that is remarkable in Syria, in Iraq and in Iran, is contributing to the increase of drug trafficking within the region. At the same time Afghanistan remained the greatest producer of opiates, among them heroin, in the world.

Ivanov underlined at the press conference that the USA are to pull out their troops from Afghanistan in 2014. Ivanov had previously explained that drug trafficking could not be eliminated by consolidating the boundary between Tadzhikistan and Afghanistan alone; he pointed out to the necessity of beginning to completely eliminate the drug production. According to his own statement Afghanistan was producing double the amount of heroin than the entire world production ten years ago. •

^{http://de.rian.ru/politics/20120124/262533882.html
(Translation Current Concerns)}

Russia strictly rejects any military action against Iran

Russian Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces is expecting war on Iran in summer
An attack on Iran might begin this summer according to the judgment of Nikolay Makarov, Russian Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces. It might only be a matter of time before the verbal grenades between Iran and the West got real, Makarov said according to “Russia Today” (RT).

However, the Russian General Staff was closely watching the situation and was not ruling out the possibility of a coordinated attack on Iran. “Iran is a sore spot,” Makarov said. “I think a decision will be made by the summer.”

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had expressed earlier that an attack on Iran might be imminent. “Washington Post” columnist David Ignatius wrote that Panetta believed “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June”. Within this period of time Iran could enter a ‘zone of immunity’ to commence building a nuclear bomb.

Russia is adamantly opposed to any military action against Iran. Nevertheless Moscow has supported UN Security Council sanctions against Tehran in an effort to force the Islamic Republic to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

^{Source: Austria Presseagentur APA of 14 February 2012
(Translation Current Concerns)}