Crossfire War – TEHRAN WATCH – Eurasia Theatre: Tehran – Ankara – Belgrade/Vienna – Brussels – Warsaw; Iran’s Five Week Maneuvers Move to W. Azerbaijan Province – Turkish Border – Reinforcements for Serbia
Night Watch: PASVEH – Iran’s five week military maneuvers, codenamed Zarbat-e Zolfaghar, have now moved to West Azerbaijan province along Turkey’s border. They are also being waged in 16 other provinces around the country and are due to conclude during the third week of September. According to the Operations Commander in the provincial city of Pasveh, General Mohsen Nabipour, the units are demonstrating a number of capabilities in the mountainous, uneven terrain. [IRNA]
I am not surprised the General was not more specific. The geography of West Azerbaijan is probably similar to the terrain of Yugoslavia. In January both Belgrade – Tehran announced the signing of a security agreement. It is an extension of formal relations they had established in 1992 as Tehran did with every capital in the former Yugoslavia. When they estabished relations with Zagreb, Croatia, near Austria that same year, Tehran stated that Croatia was their entry into Central Europe. Since then Germany has sent to Poland Leopard tanks, the U. S. sent F-16s to Poland’s Air Force and Russia has been helping Poland upgrade her Soviet era aircraft. There is some foresight being shown somewhere.
Because someone will have to hold the line somewhere and in Europe the most likely capital to do so is Warsaw. Fortunately they did not over commit themselves in Iraq and a Polish Lieutenant-General I saw a couple of years ago on C-Span looked like he knew war. Washington-London, the lost alliance, have their excuses already, we are busy elsewhere saving Iraq, and Berlin may have to commit a lot of forces to help Moscow in the Caucasus-Caspian region. Brussels lost its mind and put itself and NATO completely out of position when it helped to lead the enormous step backwards in recognizing the division of Yugoslavia, which has created the Balkan, Southeast Europe front, Tehran’s avenue of invasion. Brussels will be a mass of centralized high command confusion and conflicting orders as European nations desperately make their own military response as best they’re able to.
Fortunately Warsaw may be one of the capitals in the West that acknowledge that the division of Yugoslavia was indeed an awful mistake, that improves their state of readiness and ability to respond. A couple of years ago Iran recognized the strategic importance of Poland and the crucial role it will play, by sending their then Defense Minister Rear Admiral Ali Shamkani to Warsaw. Probably to get a glimpse of Poland’s new equipment.
Iran’s Wargames News Headquarters said that 12 divisions, 120,000 units, are practicing rapid reaction operations that feature simultaneously dispatching the units to different regions. I suspect that either later in September or by early October, when the maneuvers are over, Tehran will announce their reasons to join Pakistan in its next war with India. Simultaneously fighting could have broken out in the former Yugoslavia, started by Serbia, in response to negotiations over Kosovo going against them. Belgrade could also be striking back at new attacks by Albanian groups. Those attacks have long been ignored by UN representatives in the immediate area. Tehran could have their agents in those groups start the fighting and then state their military support for Belgrade, to end Vienna’s inqusitiveness on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
www.crossfirewar.com
