Category Archives: Middle East

Illusions of Hard Power: Trump as Father of Iran’s Nuclear Bomb?…..

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Events during the past two decades have shown the limitations of Western military power in shifting the trajectory of history in the Middle East and the regions around it. Yet it apparently takes time to understand that lesson. Then it takes time to develop a consensus on that understanding and to act on it.

Much of today’s news headlines are dominated by the same topics of a quarter century ago. War or new war or threat of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Persian Gulf. Now Syria and Lebanon  can be added to the mix. Looking back at the old headline, some are almost the same these days: 

Last Days of the Taliban, 2001. Read a cover of Time Magazine in 2001. It was a reasonable conclusion at the time. The abhorrent Taliban had lost power and were on the run. Al Qaeda was pushed toward the Pakistani border, then across the border into the bosom of its barely-deniable allies.

Mission Accomplished in Iraq, 2003 (I believed that at the time).

Yemen and Sana’a will fall to Saudi bombings in two weeks, 2015. Yemen did not fall, and it looks like the war has turned decisively against the Saudi (alliance). They are suing for an easy peace, except that there is no easy peace for the loser of a conflict. There never is. Especially if the loser is the original aggressor.

For decades the mantra has been that Iran and her ruling ayatollahs will collapse under the tough sanctions backed by the vocal threats of “all options are on the table” under Clinton, Bush, Obama. Except that “all options” were not really on the table, nor are they now. That was just political cover.

Then along came Trump, willing to rent out US foreign policy for billions of petrodollars. Trump’s maximum pressure failed, and its major byproduct was that Iran’s nuclear program is now the closest it has been to a bomb capability. Certainly sufficient enriched uranium is all that stands between them and a nuclear device now. Trump can be called the Father of the Iranian Nuclear Bomb, if it comes to that. And how do you denuclearize the scientific and military nuclear knowledge and the skills Iranians have acquired? Now Biden has inherited Trump’s failed maximum pressure siege. Some are advising him to adopt it as his own, and he seems reluctant to give it up.

Lebanon, historically dominated by a quasi-feudal elite still trying to cling to vestiges of power. Allied to Western powers and a few ruling Arab potentates. Now under financial/economic siege from the West and some Persian Gulf rulers focused on forcing political change in favor of the same elites. Expected to fall to war at some point like the rest did?

And that beat goes on.

Cheers

M Haider Ghuloum

Netanyahu and Biden and the Symbiotic Relationship…..

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The media, in the US and Israel, and in the Middle East have been speculating about the cold ties between Joe Biden and Israeli PM Netanyahu. Speculation about when Joe will call Bibi. The Israeli PM is known for famously and deliberately disrespecting Democratic American officials, even before Trump. From Obama to Hillary Clinton to John Kerry. He delayed his traditional congratulatory message to Biden longer than any other world leader, then accompanied it with a message praising Donald Trump. Unusual. He knew that would not affect the overall Israeli stand in the USA. And he is right.

Fact is, Israeli-American ties have deepened over the decades, and on the American side they transcend party affiliation. It is different for the ruling Likud. It has deep symbiotic ties with the US Republican Party, rooted in a shared right-wing ideology and boosted by the American Evangelicals concentrated in the deeply Red States. To some extent one Party is is almost an extension, a branch of the other. Bibi Netanyahu is probably more influential in the GOP than any Bush ever was or can be. A friend of a friend of a friend once told me that “Bibi may be able to win a Republican primary against almost any GOP candidate whose name is not Trump“. Maybe he didn’t really believe that. Maybe.

So, this cooling of the relationship is just a partisan thing. Netanyahu can still be PM four years from now. He will no doubt root for the Republican candidate, whoever he is.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

American Elections: The Middle East Awaits the Verdict…

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With the American elections closing in, the Middle East, not just the political classes of it, are holding their breath. The stakes for almost all countries of the region are enormous.

On the Persian Gulf, the most anxious are several of the ruling oligarchies, especially in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. These ruling families were for Trump as early as 2016. At least one of these regimes has had ties with people who have been associates of Donald Trump. While Trump’s claim that he would extricate the US from Middle East wars disappointed them, his strong promise to renege on the UN-sponsored Iran Nuclear Deal resonated with them. There was hope among the leaders and the palace elites that the promise meant Trump will wage another war in the Persian Gulf on their behalf.

They clearly overestimated his appetite for a new war in the region. He wanted their oil money, but he did not want to fight for them.

After the 2016 election they invested heavily in the Trump presidency. The Arab regimes promised Trump what they knew he, as a businessman of questionable acumen, could not resist. The media (all controlled) received orders to heap praise on him. Huge armies of social media accounts (called Electronic flies in the region) were dedicated to the praise of the new president, in both Arabic and English. English hashtags were circulated which indicated strong regime support for Trump. Hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons purchases were promised, with photos of Trump looking like a traveling salesman showing weapons on sale to the embarrassed Prince MBS.


When Trump and his clan made their first visit to Riyadh and he waged a war of words against Iran across the Gulf, the princes thought he was on the right track. They though war was coming, that Trump will hand them the keys to the Persian Gulf.

The Iranians have managed to withstand (somehow) Mike Pompeo’s economic war of “Maximum Pressure” that was supposed to bring them to their knees. They shifted gear to a long-term game of chess strategy that neither Pompeo nor Trump have understood. Waiting out their first term in office and expecting the return to sanity and normalcy to Washington in January 2021.

The Israelis, and not the just the Likud rulers, have strongly supported Trump for obvious reasons. He gave them all that they wanted. Even when Biden wins, Israel has nothing to fear. The Nuclear Deal will return, but many Israeli intelligence and military officials already realize that it was not as bad a deal as “some” of their political leaders claimed as they manipulated American political opinion. Besides, US-Israeli ties transcend partisan politics.

If the elections turn out as I believe they will, there will be sounds of dirges on one side of the Persian Gulf. Iranians, now set to elect a hardline president next year (thanks to Trump’s undeclared economic war), will be glad but not overly impressed. They have seen this film before.

Cheers

M. h. Ghuloum

Iran Disinformation, FDD Lobbyists, and Mars the God of Everlasting Muslim Wars……

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“On Friday, the State Department suspended its funding for a mysterious website and Twitter account, IranDisInfo.org and @IranDisInfo, after the project attacked human rights workers, journalists and academics, many of whom are based inside the U.S. But the role of the U.S. government in financing IranDisInfo’s criticisms of Human Rights Watch and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a group that has been outspoken in warning about the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive military posture towards Iran, appears to have been in collaboration with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. FDD pushes for military confrontation with Iran…..”

FDD > (Foundation for Defense of Democracies) is anything but…
It is practically an unregistered extremist lobby for Mars, the God of Everlasting War on Muslim Countries. Especially Muslim countries ruled by regimes that are not friendly to Saudi rulers, other Persian Gulf despots, the Likud, and traditional American warmongers……
Its biggest donor is the de facto leader of the Republican Party Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas gambling casino mogul, who once reportedly (or was it allegedly) called for dropping the “bomb” on Iran. Its board includes many former disgruntled right-wing officials with extremists views, the kind Donald Trump normally would call “losers”.
Ditto its list of advisers and writers, some of them veterans of the Levant’s right wing political and civil wars….


Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

The Questionable Wisdom of Friedman: From Beirut to MBS, and Beyond Saddam………

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“I never thought I’d live long enough to write this sentence: The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia. Yes, you read that right. Though I came here at the start of Saudi winter, I found the country going through its own Arab Spring, Saudi style. Unlike the other Arab Springs — all of which emerged bottom up and failed miserably, except in Tunisia — this one is led from the top down by the country’s 32-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman……. only a fool would not root for it.To better understand it I flew to Riyadh to interview the crown prince, known as “M.B.S.,”………..”

The prominent gullible American fool said: “only a fool would not root for it”

 

“‘Our Hands Can Reach You’: Khashoggi Case Shakes Saudi Dissidents Abroad…… A Saudi women’s rights activist was driving in the United Arab Emirates when she was pulled over by security officers, thrown on a plane to Saudi Arabia and jailed…….. In Canada, when a Saudi student refused to stop making YouTube videos criticizing the kingdom’s rulers, two of his brothers back home were imprisoned…….. So when a prominent Saudi critic, Jamal Khashoggi, disappeared after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last week, it hardly surprised Saudi dissidents living abroad — until Turkish officials said they believed he had been killed……”

Well, I know the same fool who has been rooting for various Middle East despots and movements, always to be proven wrong at the end. His problem is that he always listens to ‘insiders’, be they in Cairo or Riyadh or Abu Dhabi. That is, when he is not gleaning wisdom from his Arab airport taxi drivers (invariably named Abed, Abduh, Abbadi, Abdul, Abu Lama’a etc…..)

As I have often opined: the West often seems blind to one fact about the Middle East region, Saddam Hussein is always with us. One Saddam is dead, now long live the new Saddam……fully supported and armed by the West, just as the old one .

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

This Week: Ashoura and Hezbollah Missiles, Trump to Raid the UN, F Troop to Man a Fort Trump in Poland……

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“On Thursday, Nasrallah claimed Israeli strikes in Syria to prevent Hizbollah from acquiring precise missiles were ineffective.”I tell (Israel) no matter what it did to cut the route, it is over. It has already been achieved,” he said, adding that Hizbollah “now possesses precision missiles and non-precision and weapons capabilities.” Nasrallah was speaking during a traditional televised speech at the end of Ashoura, a top religious holy day for Shia Muslims that lasts for 10 days. He told supporters to be confident and Israelis to be concerned of Hizbollah’s capabilities. Nasrallah said the balance of power in the region has changed…..”
Normally Nasrallah, whatever you think of him, is not known as a boaster, not much anyway (unlike you know who). Even the Israelis especially know that and now seem to plan and act/react accordingly.

But I am not sure about his claim that “the balance of power in the region had changed“. I am not completely sold on this one. Although it is probably true that in the war of July 2006 Hezbollah had a few thousand limited-range missiles, and now they are reported to have close to 150,000 longer-range precision missiles. In spite of occasional bombing (and other) attempts to stop the flow. Besides, they are very likely to have developed their own domestic know-how over the years.

Jerusalem Post headlined what it called Breaking News! “Trump to hold meeting with Netanyahu, other leaders at UN General Assembly“…
To which I tweeted: Breaking! Shocker Indeed: Amazing development! Trump and Netanyahu! Trump to meet his chief cheerleader at UN General Assembly!

Poland‘s slick President Duda suggested in Washington a permanent American base in his country be named Fort Trump. To be manned by a force called F Troop. I almost expected him to turn to his host and call him “The Duke”.
I commented that this President Duda sure knows how to kiss it!

Middle East/Arab social media are making fun of the Russian reaction to the Ilyushin shootdown near Latakia, in which Israeli warplanes hid behind the Russian Ilyushin to bomb a Syrian airbase. Many Russian military personnel died. They recall that Arab governments always threatened the same “severe reaction” to Israeli violations, which usually meant: they won’t do nada. Although a few claimed that Netanyahu’s freedom to bomb wherever he wants in Syria in support of the Islamist groups may be nearing an end after this.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Middle East Roundup: From China to Iran, Iraq, West Bank Exile, and Suggestive Saudi Potato Chips…….

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Round-up of recent Middle East news and some comments:

In Iraq, it looks like Muqtada Al Sadr has abandoned his near-alliance with caretaker PM Haidar Al Abadi. He has now called for Abadi to resign.
My comment? If it holds up, that will seal the fate of the incompetent PM. Alliance with Muqtada was Abadi’s only route to remaining in power, after he threw his Iranian and PMU allies under the bus to appease Donald Trump.

Israeli and other media report Israel has banned teenage Palestinian protester Ahed al-Tamimi of the Occupied West Bank from traveling abroad.
My comment? That’s freedom for you, in the “only democracy” in the Middle East. But it’s done all over the Middle East, banning travel of dissidents From Tehran to Riyadh to Cairo and Algeria and beyond. It is a form of internal exile, to be locked up within the borders. Probably better than a prison or a dungeon. Unless you can escape into external exile before it is too late.

Saw an article in Foreign Policy to the effect that: China’s Continent-Spanning Trains Are Running Half-Empty. Beijing’s funding dozens of new rail routes as part of its global ambitions — and losing money on every one. So what’s the long game?
My comment? That is China. Meanwhile, back in the USA, Mr. Trump’s Infrastructure non-plan is still just hot air, unexplained and likely misunderstood by Trump, opposed by a small-minded miserly short-sighted Congress.

Reports that the US administration has warned Syria not to attack the Jihadists holed up in Idlib. Some US sources even claimed the Syrian regime is preparing to use chemical weapons against the rebels in the region. Idlib is the last major outpost of the Al Qaeda-led Salafist terrorists in Syria.
My comment? Who would have thunk it! That a day would come when the USA (Trump Admin) is allied to an Al Qaeda Salafist branch in Syria.
September 11, 2001 forgotten, buried in Wahhabi oil money. And how do they know the Syrian regime will use WMD? Did the Jihadis tell them, directly or through Israeli or Arab sources?

A piece sponsored by the Atlantic Council suggested that “Iran and the US Should Use the UN to Reopen a Channel for Dialogue”.
My comment? To start with: Trump has just reneged on the UN-adopted JCPOA Nuclear Deal. As a rule, US Iran policy (and Middle East policy) should be formulated in the United States, in Washington DC, as it was in the past, not in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem (or Las Vegas or Evangelical-LalaLand). And it should not be based on the whims and purchasing power of a few Persian Gulf absolute princes and potentates with money to burn.

The Washington Post reports from the Democratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that a man was detained in Saudi Arabia for eating potato chips with a woman — and then posting the video.
My comment? Sharing a bag of potato chips with a woman in Saudi Arabia can be very suggestive. Especially if her whole face is completely covered with a burqa/niqab, which makes it even more suggestive, even if nobody can tell who she/he/it is.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Dhahran Summit of the Incompetent and the Impotent and General Sisi’s Plastic Missiles……..

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Arab leaders started their annual summit yesterday. This year it is in Dhahran (Zahran), Saudi Arabia, right on the Persian Gulf, right over the oil fields. Right across the waterway from Iran and the scowling ayatollahs. One can imagine that you can see the mountains of Iran if you squint hard enough, if you can see through all the Western naval warships clogging my Gulf.
These Western warships that are there presumably to deter an alleged Iranian attack that will never materialize, that has not materialized in over two centuries.

So far in my lifetime (and in my father’s and my grandfather’s lifetime), the only aggression in my Gulf has been committed by one Arab country against another, in one case by one Arab country against Iran:

Kuwait was invaded from what is now called Saudi Arabia at least twice, last time in the 1920s.
Kuwait was often threatened and then actually invaded and occupied by Baathist Iraq in 1990. Only the USA and Western allies liberated it, with some token Arab forces.

Yemen was invaded at least twice from Saudi Arabia. Large chunks of its territory were annexed, Israeli-style, by the Saudis during the last century.

Yemen has been, still is, the target of daily bombing and genocide by Saudi Arabia with active British-American help for the past three years.

Bahrain has been the beneficiary of a joint Saudi-UAE expeditionary force that helps the ruling family crush a popular uprising and the popular calls for reform.

Qatar was the target of a Saudi-instigated coup in the 1990s. It failed and several high Saudi intelligence officials were jailed in Doha for years. Now Qatar is again the target of a Cuba-style economic and total blockade from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Bahrain and Qatar have had their territorial disputes and clashes for decades.

Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, starting a war that lasted eight year. That losing war bankrupted Iraq and was the beginning of the end of the Baath regime of Saddam Hussein.
And there is more….

This Dhahran summit was weakly-attended: several Arab leaders sent second or third or even fourth rate representatives. The Emir of Qatar was smart enough to stay home; he probably did not want to be taken hostage by the fellow Arab princes of Riyadh. He remembers what happened to Lebanon’s Saad Hariri last year. Algeria, Oman, Morocco, even the UAE downgraded their delegates.

Bashar Al Assad would not stoop to attend the summit even if he were invited. There was no mention of the GCC crisis, of the Arab blockade of Qatar, of the Western attack on Syria.

The Saudi king declared that the Dhahran Summit will be called the Jerusalem Summit (presumably to celebrate his new friend Trump’s move of the US embassy).

In recent decades, Arab summits have been impotent gatherings of incompetent leaders. In the shadow of the huge American and British armadas and military bases, the Saudi king talked against “foreign” interference in Arab affairs. As if the NATO military forces and bases dotting my Gulf region were purely Arab forces.

In my lifetime, I have never seen the Arab world in such disarray and weakness, largely controlled by outside powers: be they American, Iranian, Israeli, or Turkish. This was probably the worst summit of them all, and the most hypocritical.

Its incompetence was summarized by Egyptian dictator Generalissimo Al Sisi, who raged against what he called “plastic” missiles being fired from Yemen in retaliation for constant Saudi bombing. I believe Al Sisi meant “ballistic” missiles. But he was onto something, inadvertently. The huge Arab armies, very expensively armed by the West to face a non-existing enemy across the Persian Gulf, are almost like “plastic” missiles. They are useless without Western help, guidance, and management. And very likely they also need imported personnel to operate them…

Cheers (if you can)
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

 

Tweets on GroupThink: Alleged Syrian Chemical Red Lines and the Push for a ‘Trump’ Quagmire……….

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It is not clear what happened in Douma, Syria yesterday. US media and many politicians are accepting the rebel Islamist narrative that the regime used chemical weapons in Douma, just as the regime was about to take control of Douma anyway (without use of chemicals). I don’t know what happened, but I carry a bag of salt over my shoulder. Some of my (modified) tweets about the recent alleged chemical attacks in Syria:

Sen. Graham (former desk-bound lawyer for USAF- US Air Force): “he’s going to look weak in the eyes of Russia and Iran
He sure knows how to rile up the dotard…..
But Graham also has never seen a Middle East war he didn’t like….

I: He can punish Syria by having USAF carpet-bomb Damascus with millions of his inaugural photos…….

Hey, @realDonaldTrump, this is still valid —-> Donald Trump in Syria: Not Beau Geste, not Dien Bien Phu, not Khe Sanh, not Desert Storm……. 

US main media is urging “an attack” against Syria…
Saudi Arabian princes urging a war against Iran….
Israeli Likud urging war against Iran….
John Bolton acting as a Fifth Column for all of the above….

UN Security Council to meet today about Syrian chemical attack. Will not discus Israeli “illegal” air attack on Syria. Will not discuss US supported genocide in Yemen.

Russians claim they are in Douma now, see no chemical weapons effects. Call it a fabrication.

Most US GroupThink media are afraid to question all allegations….

All this obsession with “Red Lines“….. All this macho crap….
Democrats whining about Trump “abandoning” Syria ……

No mention of Obama….
Yet when when the quagmire materializes, they will scream a “Trump Quagmire!”

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

War Planner Bolton Misses a Red Wedding, Bin Salman’s World Conquest, Khamenei the Conqueror…….

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This looks deceptively like a slow news weekend, outside of Germany and the Gaza killings. But this can be deceptive; there are other bits of news in the Middle East: 

Wars in Syria and Yemen grind on…..

Saudi Crown Prince MBS, officially called New Hunk in Town by female anchor women of his own media, is on the tail-end of his Tour of World Conquest. He wants to accomplish it before the old Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei takes over the world. The prince has been told by expensive lobbyists in Washington that the Hitler analogy is always popular, hence this silly breathless headline in the Atlantic. The Prince has already secured the allegiance of Britain and the USA (including media icons like Norah O’Donnell and the Empress Oprah). He also already owns much of the eastern half of the Arab world outside Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Qatar.

The eldest sons of Donald Trump (Eric and Donald Jr), attended the wedding of some Real Estate tycoon in the United Arab Emirates. The wedding of some son of a DAMAC Properties Dubai oligarch.

John Bolton (not related to the Red Wedding characters) declined the Dubai wedding because, they say, he’s busy planning a couple of new Muslim wars in the Middle East.
Young Barron declined that he had better things to do (he does)……
But the weekend is just starting….

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum