He may be militarily blocking their attempts to conquer all of Syria and crucify Bashar al-Assad on the nearest lamppost, but it would appear that the Islamic State does have its uses for the Russian dictator:
Criminal gangs with Russian links are operating a thriving black market in nuclear materials in eastern Europe, often with the explicit intent of connecting sellers to Middle Eastern extremist groups including the Islamic State.
Authorities working with the FBI have interrupted four attempts by gangs to sell radioactive material in Moldova. The latest known case came in February, when a smuggler offered enough radioactive cesium to contaminate several city blocks, specifically seeking an Islamic State buyer.
The Associated Press investigative report can be found here.
Of course, this begs the question of how many attempts by the Russian mafia to sell radioactive material, or even off-the-shelf, turnkey nuclear warheads, to ISIS and/or al Qaeda, et al weren't interrupted. We've documented here repeatedly that the Islamic State already has sufficient raw materials for several radiological "dirty bombs," and may already be smuggling nuclear warheads into the United States. This would constitute expanding ISIS's roster of nuclear suppliers, and more than considerably at that.
This is not to say that Czar Vlad is conducting these transactions personally, although at this point I don't think he believes he'd have anything to fear from the U.S. if he invited "Caliph" al-Baghdadi to Moscow to publicly present him with the gift of a regiment of the Russian strategic rocket forces, complete with advisors and technicians to do all the "red button"-pushing for him. But then, with the ready availability of the Russian mafia with which he's done quite a bit of mutually beneficial business over the years, he doesn't have to. Even turning a blind eye to the latter's trafficking in nuclear materials serves his purpose of overloading America's strategic threat "plate" and keeping us out of his way as he rebuilds the old Soviet Union and entrenches his Middle East sphere of influence at the same time. And otherwise occupying us is something that he doesn't even have to worry about until 2017 at the earliest anyway.
But like any good chess player, Putin is planning several steps ahead for every contingency, while Barack Obama would still be trying to get his head around mumbledypeg, if he had any interest in even that.
At any rate, when Chicago gets "dusted" or Manhattan goes up in atomic flames, we'll have one more name to put on the gratitude list. But "Barack Hussein Obama" will still be right at the top of it.
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