Saudi and Iranian Horns Face Off Over Oil & Blood (Rev 6:6)

 Iran says is ready for ‘straight talks’ with Saudi Arabia

 

DUBAI Tue Jan 20, 2015 12:30pm EST

(Reuters) – Iran said on Tuesday it was ready for “straight talks” with Saudi Arabia over contentious issues that have kept the rival Gulf powers at loggerheads for more than three decades.

Relations between Tehran and Riyadh soured after Iran’s 1979 revolution brought to power Shi’ite clerics opposed to the conservative Sunni Muslim kingdom.

The two countries, struggling for regional influence and power, have backed opposite sides in the Syria and Yemen conflicts and argued over global oil prices.

An Iranian official said this week Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif delayed a visit to Saudi Arabia in protest against Riyadh’s refusal to cut crude output and help lift prices.

But Admiral Ali Shamkhani, a top security aide to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said his country “is now quite ready to for straight, clear and continuous talks spanning the whole range of mutual interests with Saudi Arabia.”

“In light of unprecedented human and financial losses caused by sectarian conflicts, (we) need to stop further bloodshed and wage an earnest fight against extremism and terrorism that has found expression in Daesh (Islamic State)”, Shamkhani told Iran’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, according to state news agency IRNA.

(Reporting by Mehrdad Balali; Editing by Dominic Evans)

China, US, and UK “Saving Face” At Vienna Nuclear Peace Conference

China Sends Official Posing As ‘Academic’ To Attend Vienna Nuclear Conference: Report

By Kukil Bora@KukilBora on December 09 2014 8:04 AM

 

A mushroom cloud rises with ships below during Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons test on Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands in this 1946 handout provided by the U.S. Library of Congress. Reuters

China sent a high-profile official posing as an “academic” to attend an international conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons in Vienna, despite declining earlier to participate in the meeting, a report said Tuesday.

While the United States and Britain participated in the Vienna conference, the other three officially recognized nuclear weapon countries — Russia, France and China — had shunned the event. However, an anonymous conference speaker told Sputnik that Beijing had sent an official to the event.

“China has sent somebody who is not officially here as a representative of China, but he is a very high level Chinese official who deals with nuclear weapons, and he is here as ‘academic’, but he is certainly here to listen on behalf of the Chinese government,” the source told Sputnik.

This is the first time that the U.S. and Britain are taking part in such a conference. Explaining its decision to be a part of the Vienna conference, the U.S. said last month that it had decided “there were real prospects for constructive engagement with conference participants”, but added that America will not involve itself in disarmament negotiations at the meeting, Reuters reported.

The conference, which is the third in a series that began last year, takes place amid growing concerns over a new “Cold War” between Russia and the West due to Moscow’s involvement in the Ukraine crisis.

Under the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the five recognized nuclear weapons countries agreed to work toward eliminating their atomic arsenals, while India, Israel and Pakistan, which also have nuclear weapons, have not signed the NPT, Reuters reported.