War

Following numerous violations of last summer's landmark comprehensive nuclear agreement, as Iran repeatedly test fired ballistic missile rockets in direct contravention of the treaty terms, a curious tangent emerged last week when a senior Iranian military commander claimed that U.S. officials had been "appeasing" the Iranian regime, and quietly encouraging the Islamic Republic to keep its illicit ballistic missile tests a secret so as not to raise concerns in the region, according to Persian language comments.

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

Russia is preparing for war against the West.

Putin is being urged to do so because the U.S. and NATO have been preparing for war themselves.

Syria and Ukraine have just been warm ups. The real thing could be around the corner, and other proxy flashpoints are ready to line up.

Earlier today, a veteran White House correspondent laid out his version of how Obama "gets away with it" in a news cycle when everyone's attention should be glued to the economic failures of the lame duck president. One thing he forgot to mention, however, was the use of such conventional "rally around the flag" tactics as taking out a key symbolic nemesis of the US to drum up patriotic fervor.

ISIS security forces and senior leaders are seizing civilian identity documents from residents in Raqqa to use for leaving the besieged de-facto Islamic State capital and Syria.

Despite  growing tensions between the West and Moscow, American M1A2 Abrams tanks have been deployed in Georgia within miles of the Russian border. Russian troops controlled the region up until 2001. NBC News reports: The symbolic deployment of the Army’s largest weapon system to this former Soviet republic was part of Exercise Noble Partner which has involved hundreds of American, British and Georgian troops and runs through Thursday. Designed to bring the Georgian military closer to NATO, the drill comes at a time of growing tension between the Western alliance and the Kremlin.