With the always doomed to failure Iran nuclear talks about to be scuttled by the U.S. Congress, those seeking to open a new era of trade with the Iranians are lining up to do business. Despite the entrenched resistance in Washington to any deal that stops short of destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities – with the bill footed in blood and treasure by American taxpayers – the Ruskies are closing in on trading with the mullahs to provide S-300 anti-missile systems. As if the reviled Russian leader Vladimir Putin could be any more hated by the powers that be, the bare-chested one has reportedly signed off on a deal to lift the ban on such sales.

According to Reuters, in the story “Russia opens way to missile deliveries to Iran, starts oil-for-goods swap”:

Russia paved the way on Monday for missile system deliveries to Iran and started an oil-for-goods swap, signaling that Moscow may have a head-start in the race to benefit from an eventual lifting of sanctions on Tehran.

The moves come after world powers, including Russia, reached an interim deal with Iran this month on curbing its nuclear program.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin signed a decree ending a self-imposed ban on delivering the S-300 anti-missile rocket system to Iran, removing a major irritant between the two after Moscow canceled a corresponding contract in 2010 under pressure from the West.

A senior government official said separately that Russia has started supplying grain, equipment and construction materials to Iran in exchange for crude oil under a barter deal.

Sources told Reuters more than a year ago that a deal worth up to $20 billion was being discussed and would involve Russia buying up to 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil a day.

Officials from the two countries have issued contradictory statements since then on whether a deal has been signed, but Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Monday one was already being implemented.

“I wanted to draw your attention to the rolling out of the oil-for-goods deal, which is on a very significant scale,” Ryabkov told a briefing with members of the upper house of parliament on the talks with Iran.

“In exchange for Iranian crude oil supplies, we are delivering certain products. This is not banned or limited under the current sanctions regime.”

The frantic hyperbole has already begun in earnest with conservative website Breitbart declaring that the “Countdown to Israel Attack” has been set into motion but it would be more accurate to call it what it really is: the countdown to World War III. The Obama regime, fresh off of it’s premature victory lap over the interim agreement has denounced Russia’s move but really doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on considering that it presides over billions of dollars in arms sales to more ‘friendly’ dictatorships such as the one in Saudi Arabia.

The Iranian nuclear deal has always been dead on arrival and the exhaustive negotiations have only gone on this long because Obama’s buffoon of a Secretary of State John Kerry – whose face resembles a cross between the New England Patriots’ logo and one of the living trees from the Lord of the Rings – wants to snag his own Nobel Peace Prize. The Iran negotiations, like everything else that Kerry has touched are turning to shit but such things tend to happen when your ace negotiator is a flip-flopping Massachusetts liberal with a chronic case of diarrhea of the mouth who married into big money.

Opponents of any deal with Iran are one step closer to sinking it after Moscow’s brazen act and with the 2016 election campaign now starting to really get revved up with Hillary’s official declaration, there will be no more negotiations lest anyone get called out for being a pussy.  The only real winners will be the arms industry profiteers in both Washington and Moscow who are literally set to make a killing.