Alemania, Reino Unido y Francia, dispuestos a negociar con Irán sobre su programa nuclear

Alemania, Francia y el Reino Unido se han ofrecido a mantener conversaciones con Irán sobre su programa nuclear, según ha anunciado el ministro alemán de Exteriores, Johann Wadephul, en un esfuerzo por desescalar la situación tras dos jornadas de ataques cruzados entre Israel e Irán.

Wadephul, de visita por Oriente Próximo, ha afirmado que intenta contribuir a una desescalada del conflicto, señalando que Irán había dejado pasar oportunidades de diálogo. “Creo que aún es posible”, ha dicho Wadephul a la televisión alemana. “Alemania, con Francia y el Reino Unido, están dispuestos, estamos ofreciendo a Irán negociaciones inmediatas sobre el programa nuclear. Espero que acepten”, ha dicho.

“Es un requisito para alcanzar la pacificación de la región que Irán deje de suponer un peligro para el estado de Israel o para Europa”, ha añadido.

Israel y sus aliados occidentales temen que el programa nuclear iraní tenga como objetivo la consecución del arma nuclear, aunque Irán siempre lo ha negado. Tras años de tiras y aflojas y sanciones, el expresidente de EE UU Barack Obama logró un acuerdo por el que Irán aceptaba someter su programa a la inspección de la ONU, pero en 2017, Donald Trump, en su primer mandato, rompió el acuerdo. Ahora trata de firmar otro. Este domingo, delegaciones de Irán y de EE UU tenían prevista una reunión, la sexta, para negociar un nuevo acuerdo, pero fue suspendida el sábado ante los ataques israelíes, ya que Teherán considera que no se habrían producido sin la luz verde de EE UU.

Wadephul cree que solo se podrá lograr un acuerdo si todas las partes ejercen presión tanto sobre Irán como sobre Israel. “Hay una expectativa compartida de que en la próxima semana se pueda hacer un intento [de presión] sobre ambas partes para interrumpir la espiral de violencia”, ha afirmado.

Preguntado sobre una posible caída del régimen de Teherán, ha afirmado que no cree que el objetivo de Israel sea deponer el Gobierno iraní. 

Finalmente, Wadephul ha considerado inaceptable la situación humanitaria en Gaza, con la población al bode de la hambruna por el bloqueo israelí. “El hambre, la muerte, el sufrimiento de la gente de Gaza debe terminar”, ha defendido, al tiempo que ha reclamado a Hamás la liberación de los rehenes israelíes que aún mantiene en su poder.

The guide provided by the City Council has summoned visitors to the shadow of the gate of a walled enclosure. It crowns O Castro Hill, one of the largest urban parks in Vigo, Spain. But before entering the fortress that, for centuries, served to defend the strategic square from foreign sieges, the historian asks the tourists to dare to leave the coolness of the entrance for a moment. By doing so, they can observe two cannons that are heating up in the spring sun.

“Look at the coat of arms they bear,” she points out. “Do you know where it’s from? [Well], we’re investigating the history of these pieces of artillery. We Vigo residents have seen them all our lives… and it turns out that they’re not from here. They bear the double-headed eagle of the Russian Empire!”

One of the biggest scams in the history of the Spanish monarchy ended up littering the coast, from Cartagena to Ferrol, with arms that were cast in Russia for Tsar Alexander I. The Vigo cannons — mounted on rickety British gun carriages, now without wheels (and awaiting restoration) — are aimed directly at a fountain in a roundabout… and at the people sipping vermouth on the terrace of the O Castro Café.

According to the calculations of a scholar on the subject — naval officer Diego Quevedo Carmona, who has authored a dozen books (the latest of which is available in the Naval Museum of Cartagena) — 630 of these artillery pieces arrived in Spain, but they were never put to proper use.

While at least 18 of them decorate military arsenals, naval museums, public gardens, or places of interest in the cities of Vigo, Cádiz, Ferrol, or Cartagena, many were possibly “reused as material” to reinforce the foundations of Navy buildings (under which cannons have indeed been found). Others were also supposedly recycled as bollards, or used as mooring points on the docks of southeastern Spain. Among the bollards, the researcher from Cartagena (a passionate tracker of historical artifacts and a writer specializing in biographies of Spanish naval officers) has counted up to “15 partially-buried cannons.” But the part protruding from the cement — used to tie mooring ropes — isn’t enough to verify whether the two-headed Tsarist eagle still appears on these old weapons.

The reason why there are so many Russian cannons in Spain is because of an extremely bad deal that Ferdinand VII made with Alexander I, at a time when the Spanish Crown urgently needed ships to hold on to the colonial domains that were slipping away from its grasp.

“Spain had lost a large fleet of warships in the Battle of Trafalgar (1805),” the retired military officer recalls. “Building a ship took a very long time,” hence it was decided to buy them “secondhand” in order to protect Spain’s “overseas possessions.” King Ferdinand VII sought advice from his advisors and decided to initially acquire eight ships from the tsar. The agreement was signed on August 11, 1817, for 68 million reales.

The pine ships from the Baltic, under the command of Rear Admiral Anton Vasilevich Von Moller, began their voyage from Tallinn (the current capital of Estonia) in October of 1817, but didn’t arrive in Cádiz until February 21 of the following year. Over the course of four months, the crew had required long stops to make “multiple” repairs.

Upon arriving in Spain, the Russian part of the scam was uncovered: the ships were almost all in very poor condition, with moth-eaten masts and decks. “They’re known as the ‘Black Ships,’” the O Castro guide tells the tourists. That was a characteristic color of their hulls, but they had also been covered “in tar to stay afloat.” They were cracked, with leaks appearing everywhere. After inspection at the port, most of them were deemed unsalvageable. Only the ironwork could be used.

Ferdinand VII complained to Alexander I. The tsar admitted to the disaster. In compensation, Quevedo notes, he gave away three more frigates, which arrived from Russia in October of 1818. Amid the fiasco, several officials — who had nothing to do with the disastrous business deal promoted by shadowy advisors — were dismissed. Some of the units, Quevedo recounts, “were left in a heap from the first day” in the Bay of Cádiz, considered to be useless and impossible to recover. Each ship was armed with between 36 and 76 cannons.

Two of these vessels later managed to cross the ocean, but bad luck befell them as well: the one renamed Reina Isabel (after Queen Isabella I of Castile) was captured in Chile by the independence fighters, while the Viva was sunk in Havana. The one renamed Alejandro I took on water while crossing the Atlantic and had to return to Spain. The timbers of the Russian ships withstood the cold of the Baltic, but were unsuitable for long voyages through warmer waters. The fleet sold to Spain by Russia was “a real wreck,” the Cartagena researcher concludes.

The resounding botched job also had much to do with the corruption that was rampant within the House of Bourbon, connected in its dealings with the Russian ambassador to Spain. As a fairly informed tourist mentions during the visit to O Castro, it was eventually revealed that money was lost in the payment for the ships. It supposedly vanished among the corridors and curtains of the palace, pocketed by some advisors.

Russia ultimately received little more than half of what was stipulated in the contract and unsuccessfully claimed the rest of the payment for a decade. The purchase transaction had been negotiated by close confidants of the monarch behind the backs of the minister of state and those responsible for the Navy and the Treasury.

Most of the so-called “Black Ships” — with their poor, moth-eaten pine wood — were scrapped between 1821 and 1823. Only a few supplies and the artillery, which now eternally points toward the horizon from ports and gardens, were reusable. Some of these cannons were mounted on Spanish ships named Guerrero, Constitución, Soberano, or Héroe, but they remained forever tattooed at the top of their gun barrels with the two-headed Russian imperial eagle. It wears three crowns, while the creature is draped with a scepter, an orb and a shield that depicts Saint George slaying a dragon.

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An ordinary house in an ordinary village near the Pokrovsk front in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine has become a center for adapting drones for combat. It’s impossible to guess from the outside what’s going on within its walls. Facilities of this type are springing up like mushrooms to supply the growing needs of the Ukrainian army, especially the five units specialized in unmanned aerial weapons that make up a defensive line hundreds of kilometers long, once again seeking to act as a bulwark against the Russian offensive.

The project was presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in February. “Some days we deliver up to 100 [drones], although the normal number is around 20,” explains Flint (a nom de guerre), 46, a member of the 68th Brigade, surrounded by tools, blades, motors, cables, cardboard boxes, 3D printers, and all kinds of junk. It’s a controlled chaos amid the furniture in the various rooms, leaving barely enough space to move.

Drones are delivered to this residence from both the government and private entities. They arrive as civilian-use devices and leave ready to attack Russian positions. These are not high-tech weapons, but rather high-need for immediate consumption. The use of this type of low-cost unmanned aircraft has skyrocketed. The vast majority are small FPV (First Person View) kamikaze drones. They are launched at the enemy and detonate with no possibility of return or reuse.

Up to a dozen people toil in this workshop-house, which continues to grow due to the needs imposed by the conflict. Basically, they adapt the control system, as well as the video and radio signals of the drones. It’s a half-hour task for each of the basic models, says Vadim, 41, who previously worked in a computer components office in Khmelnytskyi. Although most are kamikazes, in some cases a clamp is installed on the bottom that can support up to one and a half kilos of weight. Typically, this clamp is used to transport an explosive device that is dropped from the air onto the designated target before returning the drone to base. In other cases, they are used to send medicine, water, food, ammunition, or batteries to places inaccessible by land.

In any case, the workshop also handles larger drones that can reach greater distances and carry more weight, as demonstrated by Serhii, 31, from the Zytomyr region. With these, explains this former employee of a medical equipment company, they are able to strike in areas beyond Russian positions, up to 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) away, and damage larger targets, such as logistics facilities.

The improvements being implemented are constantly evolving, and the changes are becoming obsolete due to the ongoing competition between Russians and Ukrainians in the drone battle, say the workers who operate them. On the frontlines, the objective of the military on both sides is to intercept and jam the video and radio signals of enemy aircraft. “This competition is a constant race, like a game of cat and mouse,” summarizes Flint, a native of the western region of Lviv who was a graphic designer before joining the army. The soldier recalls that when the workshop opened last year, the drones practically went straight to the front, fresh out of the packaging, with hardly any improvements.

They’re aware that they’re up against a state machine like Moscow’s, with far greater resources at all levels, emphasizes Serhii, who came to the workshop after first being a drone pilot. “We try to find our own solutions to the problems and needs posed by modern warfare and thus try to facilitate the work of the infantry and save lives with drones,” adds Flint.

“Rambo, in his films, wanted to win the war alone. Here, it’s better for everyone to do it together. Drones alone aren’t going to achieve it,” explains Darham, 33, who was an infantryman a few months ago and is now a member of the specialized Achilles drone unit (one of the five that make up the defensive line). From his position on the Kupiansk front (Kharkiv region), he acknowledges that the current arms race has become cheaper with drones, which are used both for defense and attack. He estimates that one of the commonly used kamikazes, with its battery and bomb, costs around €500 (around $575). “With six or seven of those, we can destroy a tank. How much does a tank cost?”

Leonid, 30, originally from the Rivne region, was precisely one of those frontline infantrymen before ending up in the drone units, first as a pilot, and now as a member of the workshop. He proudly shows a video of one of the operations he has participated in. The footage shows the drone flying toward several pipes where a Russian soldier is hiding. The pilot, with great precision, manages to insert the device into the pipe and blow it up, along with the soldier.

That mission was carried out with one of the new drones that have revolutionized the front because they use a fiber-optic cable up to 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) long, wound on a reel. Therefore, they don’t require radio control, making their detection and interception very difficult. Here too, the competition between Russians and Ukrainians is fierce. This model also has a much sharper front-facing video camera image, making the drones easier to control while flying. On the downside, they present navigation problems due to the cable, which can become entangled in trees, power lines, or any other obstacle it encounters.

Red, a 29-year-old drone pilot, shows a piece of the thin fiber-optic thread, similar to fishing line. This member of the Achilles unit manipulates and bends it to demonstrate that it breaks easily and that the Ukrainians still need to improve their production quality. For now, in his position near the front, virtually all the drones they use are radio-controlled.

Meanwhile, in the rear, his colleagues in charge of handling the drones are constantly researching new tools to improve their effectiveness against the Russians. “This is safer than the front,” Vadim says, as he raises his head to the welder he’s working with next to a lamp. But who knows if they won’t soon have to close down the post and move to another location? Along the surrounding roads, excavators are digging trenches, erecting barriers with hundreds of dragon’s teeth (concrete obstacles), and forming earthen walls to hinder a possible advance by Russian troops.

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