Monthly Archives: January 2012

Economics, Iran, Iraq, Israel, NATO, Sanctions, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Blockades from Cuba to Iraq to Iran, Netanyahu as King of NATO and the Confederacy ……………

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“But will an oil embargo work? Not as far as oil analyst Paul Stevens of London-based Chatham House is concerned. “If you look at history, oil embargoes have never, ever worked and never, ever been effective…so it’s not going to work,” he said. “It’s just going to cause a great deal of disruption.” Stevens says EU countries that depend on Iranian oil can find new suppliers – like the Gulf states. But Iran may also find new buyers for its oil in Asia. Iranian officials have downplayed the impact of Western measures – including new U.S. sanctions that could reduce Iran’s ability to sell oil and other exports. But Tehran also has threatened to close the critically important Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf………… For his part, Stevens of Chatham House doubts Iran will go through with its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz – in part because it relies on the waterway for its own oil exports. But he believes the deepening standoff between Tehran and Washington, in particular, is creating a dangerously unstable situation. “By trying to limit Iran’s oil exports, it [Washington] is essentially escalating the situation into what could very rapidly become a crisis,“………”

Every time Mr. Netanyahu threatens to wage his own war, Western powers (mainly the Obama administration) panic and tighten their sanctions, really a blockade, against Iran. It is Mr. Netanyahu, a supreme hustler if there ever was one, who calls the shots for the West over many things Middle Eastern, from Palestine to Iran. He exercises his veto power over the two branches of the American government. He has a direct route (hotline) to the leadership of the Congress, which is willing to kiss his posterior in a way he would never dream the Israeli Knesset ever would. He would never get a standing ovation in the original Knesset in Jerusalem. He is fawned upon so much by the American right (and some on the left) it is a wonder he doesn’t immigrate back to the USA and run for office in Georgia or Alabama or Tara.

Boycotts and sanctions rarely work, they never worked against Cuba (been over fifty years) or Iraq (led to an invasion). They do hurt the people. The Cuban boycott caused economic hardships, and the misery it caused only pushed many thousands of Cubans to leave their homeland and cross to Miami. It gave many U.S. administrations the alibi to blame Cuban misery completely on the Castro regime (the Castro regime was partly responsible for erecting inflexible out-dated Soviet-style institutions and stifling dissent). The Cuban boycott has no justification anymore. It has been sustained for decades only by one political pressure group in the United States and can be summarized by a seven-letter word: FLORIDA.
 
The Iranian boycott is even tougher than the Cuban one, it is nearly a blockade by all Western powers that could lead to a war. Yet it is also unlikely to work against Iran: the theocratic regime in Tehran is as confident of being on the right, as committed to not buckle in the face of foreign threats, as Castro was for so many decades. They are as ideologically stubborn, albeit at a stiff economic cost to their people. Besides, they have something the communist Castro has never had since at least July of 1956: they believe divinity (G-O-D) is with them, although I am not sure about h-i-s-t-o-r-y.

Then there are the petroleum and the gas fields. They possibly have the world’s second largest petroleum reserves and possibly the world’s largest gas reserves. Meaning they feel they can outwit and out-wait the West and its blockade. Besides, the way the petroleum markets work makes it hard to distinguish Iranian or Angolan petroleum: there will always be demand for Iranian crude and gas, probably at discounted prices. Both have been mainly sellers’ markets for some time, as countries try to secure sources of supply.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Politics, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, United Nations International Organizations, US Foreign Policy

Lebanon’s Unwelcome Visitors: Ki-Moon, a Phony UN Bureaucrat, a Familiar Messenger of Evil…………..

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“The head of Hezbollah’s Shura Council Sheikh Mohammad Yazbek said over the weekend that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who is scheduled to arrive in Lebanon Friday, is not welcome.“The visit of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to Beirut is not welcome, neither is the phony [U.N. Special Envoy Terje Roed] Larsen or the messenger of evil [Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs] Jeffrey Feltman,” Yazbek was quoted by local media as saying. Yazbeck accused Larsen, who is tasked with overseeing the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, of being biased toward Israel. UNSCR 1559 was adopted in 2004 and calls for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah. The latter has defended its arms as the only means to fend off Israeli aggression…………”

Hezbollah
and Jeffrey Feltman are old pals, they go way back to the good old days when Mr. Feltman was US ambassador to Beirut. The Lebanese opposition at the time claimed he was the true leader of the March 14 right-wing movement. They nearly claim that he led the March 14 and the old Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir and the Saudi ambassador in daily prayers for an Israeli victory in the summer war of 2006. They also strongly suspect that many Arab oligarchs joined that prayer, via teleconferencing or Skype. I fully agree with this last assessment: the princes were doing their rain dance, in vain, for a right outcome that war.

Lebanese-American relations have been in a sort of twilight zone for some years. For years U.S. secretary of state Clinton reportedly has not met with her Lebanese counterparts, the successive foreign ministers, even when she visited Lebanon. The foreign minister has been from the Hezbollah bloc. This has led to an interesting diplomatic dance by Hillary Clinton to meet some Lebanese leaders but not their foreign minister, nor their most important leader (you know who that is, don’t you?).

I suppose
 this Lebanese opposition to the visits by these foreign dignitaries and international bureaucrats is somewhat fair. After all Hassan Nasrallah is probably not welcome in Washington (DC), and I don’t just mean at the AIPAC or its offshoot Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I doubt that Mr. Nasrallah is welcome at the UN either. Besides, all these gentlemen no doubt wish that the current Lebanese government would just vanish and be replaced with the pliable Saudi regime of Saad Hariri and his sidekick Fouad Saniora. They no doubt also wish that Hassan Nasrallah would also vanish, but then where would he go? Dearborn?
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Terrorism

Anti-American Iraqi “Shi’a Taliban”, Pro-American Afghan Taliban, Godfather & Chinese Food………..

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“Tom Hagen:
Some of the other families won’t sit still for an all out war.
Sonny:
Then you tell them to hand over Sollozzo!
Tom Hagen:
Your father wouldn’t want to hear this, Sonny. This is business not personal.
Sonny:
They shoot my father and it’s business, my ass!
Tom Hagen:
Even shooting your father was business not personal, Sonny!….…“ The Godfather

“An anti-American Shia militia in Iraq backed by Iran that once killed US soldiers has agreed to give up its weapons and join the political process in a move likely to fuel US paranoia about growing Iranian influence in the country. The group, the Asaib Ahl al-Haq, which split from the Mehdi Army militia of the nationalist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, carried out some well-organised attacks on US troops at the height of the tit-for-tat covert conflict between Iran and the US in Iraq in 2007. They were also responsible for kidnapping the British IT consultant, Peter Moore, from the Justice Ministry in Baghdad. They later killed four of his bodyguards whom they now say tried to escape. The group says it wishes to run in local and parliamentary elections and is willing to hand over its weapons………”

This business of identifying a militia as ‘anti-American’ is a favorite way for much of U.S. media to identify some of these armed foreign groups. Apparently this title is reserved for certain Iraqis, including Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the largest single party in the Iraqi parliament. These people opposed American presence in Iraq during the occupation, so they were anti-American at the time. But the American forces are out of Iraq now, so they can’t be anti-American. This is not to downplay the very violent nature of this particular group or its possible Iranian connections.

The al-Anbar terrorists were never called anti-American, although they caused more killings and damage than anyone else (meaning Iraqis). No doubt if the Chinese had occupied Iraq these people would be anti-Chinese. That wouldn’t mean they hate Chinese food (they probably do). Who knows, once the Iranians overplay their hand, in the future maybe Iranian media will start identifying some Iraqi groups as anti-Iranian (there already are several). People don’t like lengthy foreign interference in their internal politics, be that American or Iranian interference. It is all business, nothing personal, as Tom Hagen told Sonny in The Godfather.

There is no doubt that the Afghan Taliban, and their Pakistani cousins, have killed many many more Americans than this violent small Iraqi group.
Yet there is also no doubt that the Obama administration is willing and maybe eager to negotiate with them and practically hand them half the power in Afghanistan, (half for now, the rest probably later).
Cheers
mhg


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Arabian Peninsula, Britain, Saudi Arabia

Eternal Political Triangle: the Arab King, the Gipper, and Iron-Pants Maggie…..

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I read something recently that reminded me of an old story from the Gulf region. During the 1980s the late King Fahd was ruling Saudi Arabia, and Margaret Thatcher was “ruling” great Britain. The Saudi king had not yet given himself, usurped, the new title of “Servant of the Two Holy Shrines”. That title used to belong to the Hashemites until the al-Saud invaded Hijaz and evicted them north (sort of like the Jewish tribes of Khayber) in the 20th century. They probably did that with the connivance of the British, who were the supreme power in the Middle East. I recall there were stories around the Gulf that the king had a crush on the Iron Lady, that he went so far as to compose verses in admiration of her, comparing Thatcher’s red cheeks to apples (supposedly his words). Or maybe it was just lust since these princes are probably not raised like normal people. Maggie, of course had her heart filled with two: Ronald Reagan (she never called him Gipper or Gipp) and Dennis Thatcher (probably called him hey you), possibly not necessarily in that order.

I used to have my doubts about that story, although not many things surprise me about some of these potentates. I still doubt it, not that it matters. Now wtf kind of masochist, even an absolute king, would have wanted to be hand-bagged by old “iron-pants” Maggie?
Cheers
mhg


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GCC, Gulf states, Iran, Middle East Nuclear, Persian-American Gulf, Saudi Arabia

Iran Tries to Reassure the Neighborhood…….

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“Head of Iran Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) says the Islamic Republic is capable of exporting services related to nuclear energy to other countries……. The IAEO chief said that Iran can now produce heavy water (deuterium oxide), which is very useful for medical applications. Abbasi added that with the recently unveiled third-generation centrifuges, which perform much faster than the previous models and can considerably accelerate the enrichment process, the country can enrich uranium at level of20 percent……………” Press TV

“Iran’s Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari has expressed the country’s willingness to engage in joint military maneuvers with regional countries……. He noted that the 10-day Velayat 90 naval exercise was planned as a response to enemy threats and sanctions. Iran’s Navy launched the Velayat 90 on December 24, 2011, which covered an area stretching from east of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden…..…”

I don’t think the Iranians will have many takers this year. In the past they had some limited Qatari and Omani participation during military exercises. Qatar, which hosts the CentCom Gulf HQ, has been wary of Saudi Arabia since the late 1990s, when it thwarted a Saudi plot to overthrow the current Emir. Omanis are wary of the Salafi Wahhabis who look down on their Islamic faith which is unorthodox.
These are days of heightened sectarian tensions. The Saudi Wahhabi campaign of sowing divisiveness in the Gulf region has succeeded. Admittedly the Iranians may have lent a hand with some of their heavy-handed approaches. But there is no doubt that the all-out Saudi campaign of sectarian baiting, after Iraq and the Arab Spring, has succeeded in dividing Shi’as and Sunnis more than at any other time in many centuries. That was the goal: to divide the Arabs by sect. When even ignoramus Tea Party politicians from Texas and Georgia start talking about Sunnis and Shia’s, you know that it has succeeded.
Cheers
mhg


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Corruption, GCC, religious police, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Saudi High: Spelling Hypocrisy in Arabic (and in Latin)………….

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“Statements by a Saudi preacher, Mohamed al-Areefi, about the consumption of alcohol and drugs by international students and his calls that they be subjected to tests at the airport upon returning home stirred much controversy, especially among academics, who rejected what they regarded as a sweeping statement with no scientific basis…….. 
“With all due respect to Areefi, there are no accurate statistics that prove what he is saying,” he told Al Arabiya.
Oud added that Areefi, who posted his statements on his Facebook page and Twitter account, is a man of religion, but he cannot issue judgments on matters related to statistics and medical tests.
“He is not supposed to interfere in drug tests and propose that they be done in airports, since this is not only a medical issue, but also one related to security measures.”…….”

This prominent Saudi cleric has proposed that Saudi students be tested for alcohol and drugs upon return, when they land at the airport. The premise is that they consume alcohol and smoke pot while in the West (especially just before flying home?). And I had thought most Saudi students are supposed to get drunk, nay get high, by listening to garbled speeches by the king and senior al-Saud princes. Some of them may get high listening to Wahhabi clerics.
The cleric declined to suggest the same tests for the Saudi princes who fly in and out of the country a lot, at public expense. They are the most likely consumers of banned substances outside the kingdom and inside the kingdom (very likely within the holy cities of Mecca and Madinah). I mean alcohol in Mecca and Madinah  could be deemed almost as bad as pedophilia inside a church. Wooops, your graces, sorry about that.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Culture and Sports, GCC, Gulf states, Persian-American Gulf, Qatar, Saudi Arabia

Qataris and Saudis: is it a New Misyar Marriage? a Sober FIFA……..

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“Qatar, the wealthy Persian Gulf state that will host the 2022 World Cup and shot to prominence last year as a bankroller of the Arab Spring, is experiencing a small counterrevolution at home.
In recent weeks the government has suspended alcohol sales on the Pearl-Qatar, a man-made island close to the capital, Doha, that is popular with expatriates and boasts a string of international chain restaurants. An outdoor weekly party on the Pearl with loud music and free-flowing alcohol has also been closed down. The moves represent a small but significant challenge to one aspect of Qatar’s ambitions for the emirate, which also has drawn global attention by winning the staging rights to soccer’s World Cup and for funding and supporting the revolution in Libya. Some say the tiny Middle Eastern country must overcome huge cultural and social hurdles before it is able to successfully stage soccer’s marquee event in 10 years. Part of the vision is to turn Doha into a leading cultural, financial and sporting center to rival neighboring Dubai……………”

It is not
clear if this small move is part of this new return by the al-Thani to their
Wahhabi roots. Over the past few weeks the Qatari royals have
accelerated their new common-law marriage to the Saudi royals and their
Wahhabi clergy. This could be just a temporary part-time purely-for-sex “misyar”
marriage that many Saudis are so fond of. The Qataris have also named the
main state mosque in Doha after Mohammed Bin Abdulwahhab, the founder of
the Wahhabi faith and an early ally of the al-Saud. The Qatari
potentates have opined publicly and effusively on the “virtues” of Wahhabi
teachings and returning to them. Maybe it is just that the Qataris feel squeezed between the two regional theocracies: Iran and Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis are much closer and hence much more menacing.
But ruler of Qatar is probably not ready yet to unilaterally declare himself the “Servant of the Doha Wahhabi Mosque”.

Some European soccer (football) fans will complain that alcohol may not be available for the FIFA world cup games. In fact some Saudis and Kuwaitis will probably be even more disappointed about that than Europeans. On the bright side: the Qataris may be able to keep out the beer-sodden British hooligans who call themselves fans. Anything that can keep these fuckheads away from any sports tournament is a good and healthy move.

(For my new readers: Shaikh Mohammad Bin Abdulwahhab of Nejd must not be confused with the late Egyptian singer and musician and film star Mohammed Abdel Wahhab, who was not a Wahhabi nor a Salafi).


Cheers
mhg


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Hezbollah, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia

Hariri’s Future Feels the Pinch: the Saudi Patrons Getting Stingy? What about Hezbollah?…………

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“The long anticipated cutbacks in the Future Movement and its institutions have reportedly begun with a third of the party’s employees in the process of being laid off. Next in line are the movement’s media outlets. This current round of layoffs, which includes allegedly high severance pay, is believed to have affected 35 percent of Future Movement office employees, most of whom earned low salaries, such as service workers, janitors, mail carriers, and drivers. While a good portion of office employees were being let go, the big earners remained behind their desks and TV screens without paying much attention to what was happening near them. As a matter of fact, one of those big earners views these layoffs in a positive light, saying, “Most of those people have no place in the Future Movement. They were hired to end their complaints and that of their families who happen to support the Future Movement.” In the corridors of the Future building on Spears Street in Beirut, a number of employees say that media coordinator Ayman Jezzini took it upon himself to inform tens of employees of the decision to let them go…………”

The Hariri right-wing political bloc, also called the Mach 14, depends not only on the Hariri family fortune. It has also has depended on very generous funds from the Saudi ruling clan. Lebanese analysts have noted that in 2009 the Saudis went all out to defeat the opposition to March 14 in the elections. They managed to buy enough votes to get them a majority of parliamentary seats even though the opposition Hezbollah block got a majority (54%) of the popular vote. Thomas Friedman almost called it a “divine victory” although I wrote here at the time the equivalent of “not so fast, look at the popular vote, stupid”.
By the same measure, Hezbollah’s financial fortunes also depend on Iranian aid. Hezbollah does have a huge source of Lebanese emigrants who also send money to their villages and families and possibly to Hezbollah ‘charities’ (the U.S. government and the United Arab Emirates have been tightening the screws on many of these). There have been reports over the past few months of the Saudis putting the squeeze on Hariri, even as regards his personal fortune a lot of which is tied in Saudi Arabia (Mr. Hariri is a Saudi citizen). There have also been Saudi media reports that the Iranians are also cutting back their aid to their Lebanese friends.
It is hard times for everyone, even in Middle East oil producers, even with crude prices so high.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Israel, Muslims, Sanctions, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Panetta the Wild Political Animal: repeating Iraq in Iran?………..

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“Panetta calls for further economic pressure on Iran. The US Defence secretary believes Iran is laying the groundwork for making nuclear weapons but is not yet building a bomb. Leon Panetta called for continued diplomatic and economic pressure to persuade Tehran not to take that step. As he has done previously, Mr Panetta cautioned against a unilateral strike by Israel against Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying the action could trigger Iranian retaliation against US forces in the region. “We have common cause here” with Israel, he said.
…………”

“We have common cause here“: it is more than a common cause. In fact U.S. Middle East foreign policy as regards the eastern Mediterranean and Iran is widely perceived in the region to be made by Israel, through the supremacy of its lobbyists in the U.S. Congress. The Obama administration has been relegated to rubber stamping it.


Leon Panetta is a political animal if he is anything: after all, he was White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton. You can’t get more political than that. He is talking as a politico here, not as US Secretary of Defense or a statesman. The sanctions against Iran are becoming nearly as tight as a blockade. The financial sector is sanctioned by the US Knesset Congress. The petroleum sector is about to be blocked by the US government and Western Europe. What might eventually be left un-blocked are food and medicine. In other words another Iraq blockade imposed solely by the West. We all know what the next step was in Iraq.
Fear and the desperate need for votes next November. That explain Penetta’s call for “further economic pressure on Iran“. We’ve come a long way from Mr. Obama’s 2009 speech to Muslims and Arabs in Cairo.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Iraq, Middle East, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

American Politics: Yellow Rose of Texas to the Borders of Mesopotamia and Persia……….

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Yellow Rose of Texas

“There’s a yellow rose in Texas that I am gonna see
Nobody else could miss her, not half as much as me
She cried so when I left her, it like to broke my heart
And if I ever find her we never more will part
She’s the sweetest little rosebud that Texas ever knew
Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew
You may talk about your Clementine and sing of Rosa Lee
But the Yellow Rose of Texas is the only girl for me

Where the Rio Grande is flowin’, and starry skies are bright
She walks along the river in the quiets of her night
I know that she remembers when we parted long ago
I promised to return and not to leave her so
She’s the sweetest little rosebud that Texas ever knew
Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew
You may talk about your Clementine and sing of Rosa Lee
But the Yellow Rose of Texas is the only girl for me………” (Mitch Miller version)

Watched bits of the weekend Republican debate-acles in New Hampshire. Texas governor Rick (Boots on the Ground) Perry, who apparently has a lot missing upstairs, is promising to return to Iraq. The governor will now join John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and a gaggle of Republican saboteur-senators in re-invading Iraq. (The proper conservative way to say it is Eyeraq: Iraq sounds suspiciously foreign and liberal and even wishy-washy European).
They want to re-invade Eyeraq in order to keep Eyeran, the evil enemy du jour, out. So these senators and the governor will set up camp in al-Anbar or Diyali or Baghdad and try to proselytize, convert the former Ba’athists and current Shi’as to the joys of free unfettered unregulated unaccountable jungle markets of the sort that gave us the crash of 2008 and the ongoing lousy economy. Each will give their own version, be it the outlier convert right-wing Catholicism (Gingrich), outlier-er weird twilight-zone Catholicism (Santorum), Baptism (Boots-on-the-Ground Perry), WTF hybrid Christianity (John McCain), and the violent settler version of Judaism (Lieberman).
I wish them the worst of luck in staying at their new outpost in Eyeraq. I would also continue to urge them to make tat pilgrimage to the Eyeraq-Eyeran border, dip a few toes on the other side of the border, tease the scowling mullahs to make a grab. The ayatollahs may wish to powwow, have speaks, parley, chew the fat, shoot the breeze, with them on regional issues. In the warm privacy of the notorious Evin in the heart of Tehran.

(Something about Texas is not kosher, has bothered me in recent years. How come one of the biggest richest states with great universities and many good people, a state that elected Lyndon Johnson, now elects such a fuckhead as governor? Oh, and Texas has produced some of the greatest folk songs).
Cheers
mhg


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