Did Trump and Putin discuss Iran? From Pepe Escobar at strategic-culture.su:
In this incandescent juncture, what matters is off the record.
Let’s start with that phone call. The Kremlin readout is quite sober – but it does reveal a few nuggets. There is no comprehensive deal – yet – between Moscow and Washington. Far from it: we are just in the initial tentative stage of talking and talking about several interconnected dossiers.
President Putin gave absolutely nothing away. The agreed-upon pause on attacks on energy infrastructure – not energy and (italics mine) infrastructure – spells out as Putin imposing a stop on dangerous Ukrainian hits on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
That may be lost among all the Western hysteria; but there are two absolute conditions expressed by Moscow for anything in this riddle to start complying with objective reality – and not muddle along as a reality show narrative trainwreck:
1.“The settlement in Ukraine must take into account the unconditional need to eliminate the root causes of the crisis, Russia’s legitimate security interests.”
2.“The key condition for preventing the escalation of the conflict should be a complete cessation of foreign military aid and the provision of intelligence information to Kiev.”
US special envoy Witkoff is spinning that ceasefire “details” will be ironed out on Sunday in Saudi Arabia. No matter the amount of shrieking, Kiev will have to accept it.
Putin-Trump did not spend over 2 hours just talking hockey, hazy Black Sea navigation prospects and a quite limited energy infrastructure missile strike one-month pause.
