>>>>I, too, don’t see Iran as a big threat; Iran is a serious regional power and a strong national idea built on becoming one pole in a multipolar world. That is not something we cannot live with, even more so since they have a republican form of government rather than dictatorial one.<<<<
Exactly!
>>>The Russians have been fighting these vermin a lot longer than most nations
And they are giving up. That is real news here: not Ahmadinejad’s “culture of expectation” but that prominent Orthodox figures close to the ruling apparatus in Russia would contemplate how “in the final battle, Muslims and Christians are on the same side of the barricades”.<<<
I don’t think Russians are giving up and Iran is not that much about Islam too.
Islam is a showcase ideology for them but the reality Iran is more a fascist state, just like Russia. Islam is simply providing enough reasoning to be hard on their opponents. Both Iran and Russia unhappy with liberal influence and global bankster oligarchy in the first place. Both see expansionist jihad and China as a threat.
It won’t be incorrect to say that there is a popular dissent in Iran against Islam even as a showcase ideology. Imams who are too anal in their hate preaching are getting kicked by girls wearing European style clothes on a regular basis.
Russians are covertly backing secularism there as well.
What Russia is giving up is its identity as an Orthodox country of ethnic Russians. This is being gradually displaced with a multicultural mix of Slav and Asian stock where the energy, brutality, and firmness of belief of the Muslims overcomes the Russian culture weakened to the point of collapse by 70 years of artificial selection and state atheism.
I don't know about Iran, -- although the fact they they just elected themselves a new leader, howbeit in a similar to the previous one mold, shows that at least one aspect of fascism is absent: a preference for a strong leader who hardly needs further elections.
In case of Russia, Putin is set to rule for another decade or so, while his persona is nowadays subject of humiliating cartoons more than of admiration. But fascism for Russia would be an improvement: the cornerstone of fascism is a clearly set national goal favoring the "home nation", and that is lacking completely. In Putin's Russia nationalists are put in jail. How is that "fascism"?
I would describe Putin's political system as a clique of former KGB operatives who know enough to reject communist ideology, don't know enough about capitalism, admire their ugly creation, the USSR, as an empire they once built, and now seek to rebuild it by throwing religiosity and Soviet-style "internationalism" in the mix with stratospheric, 3rd-world-level corruption.