Re: Poor "Jim Pennino" :-)

Iranian and Russian biology scientists formally began sharing research results. This is a part of a series of recent agreements that Pezeshkiyan signed with Russian authorities a couple of weeks back.
Read this one, "bioweapons" :)
Iran in fact has a long history of research in bioweapons. It began early in the 1970s. I saw part of the invasive changes that came to the large building in Tehran University that housed physics and math departments in the lowest 3 stories of it, and biology and biophysics departments in the 4th.
The change was so large that physics department got thrown out of the building :) We moved to a three story new building by the atomic reactor a few kilometers north of Tehran University campus. Math stayed where it was, and all the spaces after physics left were immediately taken over by biology and got packed, literally packed with equipment. The scene was something to see! Oil was bringing in a lot of money and an adequate portion of it was being spent in various university research works. But mainly such research that had military benefits to them, managed to absorb the first waves of it.
Shah didn't have nukes yet, and Israel had them, then when India began making them Shah chose bioweapons production until Iran also would make nukes. And that's when Carter destroyed the plan.
Anyway, bioweapons are as effective as nukes, and yet are thousands of times cheaper to develop and make. Faster too. And they don't destroy the infrastructure either. And they don't make sound :)
When Covid hit Tehran, within just 4 months a variety of vaccines for it were developed in Tehran (about 10 different ones by different institutions). They were all tested and the best one was adopted for mass production. Such "battle-readiness" in total absence of any news of the coming Covid, was pretty impressing.
I once posted a brief description of each of those vaccines here, and how the best of them proved to be just the type of product that has Iranians' signature all over it: cheap, fast to make, and quite effective. The only shortcoming of it was that it wouldn't prevent you from falling into the death clutches of Covid, but every patient who developed it survived! The vaccinated people's recovery rate from Covid was 100%. Nobody who got it died, but many, many contracted Covid and spent a few weeks of hell, and then fully recovered.
As I expected, Iran has offered both India and Pakestan to help resolve the sudden animosity that developed between them. No telling how, but the offer was made today in fact.
The useless negotiation is also tomorrow in Omman. Both conceptual and technical teams of both sides will be present, so if one didn't succeed, they save breath and cancel the meeting.
We'll see.