Category Archives: Iran

Iran, Israel, Media, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Washington Post Editors Join the Lobby to Derail a Nuclear Deal………

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“AS THE Obama administration pushes to complete a nuclear accord with Iran, numerous members of Congress, former secretaries of state and officials of allied governments are expressing concern about the contours of the emerging deal. Though we have long supported negotiations with Iran as well as the interim agreement the United States and its allies struck with Tehran, we share several of those concerns and believe they deserve more debate now — before negotiators present the world with a fait accompli…………….”
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Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Elections, Humor, Iran, Israel, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Politics

Fourth ‘I’ of American Politics: Season of the Yarmulke, no Lederhosen for Christie…….

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Election season is nearing in America, and all the birds are flying to warmer climates. Everybody from governors to senators to bored former politicians. They all suddenly get religious, get the urge to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (no not that one, the other one, the original Holy Land where it all started). For some reason they all insist on wearing a yarmulke and be photographed in it. I am not sure what the point is: everybody knows they are wearing it as a photo-op, even the confused voters know that. Can you imagine one of them in Lederhosen while visiting Germany or Austria? Yikes…..

I wonder if there is a photo of Chris Christie with a yarmulke. Okay, I just found one (no, I could not find one of him in Lederhosen, not him….. Gott Sei Dank):

ChristieIsrael
What do you think he is thinking of? God? Yahweh? Allah? Adelson?

Or Marco Rubio. Or, ridiculously, Rick Perry of Texas. Or the single regulation schwartze who seems to be running for the Republican nomination. Actually I found photos of most leaders of the last quarter century in yarmulke. None of JFK or Ike or……… sorry, faux pas alert, never mind. I even found one of a youngish Fidel Castro in yarmulke, although it might be a fake, since he never ran for office in the USA.

Hillary Clinton does not have to do it. She is a woman: a lady’s prerogative. Maybe  a babushka headscarf would be more appropriate, or a drindl. But she is more of a babushka type nowadays than a drindl type anyway.

Anyway, they used to make three pilgrimages in the old days. To the three “I“s of American politics: Israel, Italy, Ireland. Now increasingly there seems to be one “I” they focus on. By necessity, in conjunction with that one “I”, they also all threaten to pay special unwelcome attention to that other fourth big “I” in the room: Iran.
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Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Anti-Semitism, Iran, Latin America, Terrorism

Is Cristina Fernández Being Framed? from Debt Default to Charges of Terrorism……….

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“The draft of an arrest warrant for Argentine President Cristina Fernández was found at the home of a prosecutor who was investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing the lead investigator. Prosecutor Alberto Nisman had drafted a warrant that accused Fernández of trying to shield Iranian officials from responsibility in the bombing, according to the report. Nisman died on Jan. 18, a day before he was due to appear in Congress over his claims that Fernandez conspired to derail his investigation……………”

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was not anywhere near office or politics in the 1990s. We are talking 21 years ago, which makes one wonder why no progress in the case over that time, across all these previous administrations in La Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires? Why now?
Cristina Fernández has ruffled some mighty international feathers lately. She has had issues with powerful international bankers, and powerful governments that serve them, over Argentina’s debt (the Argentine bond-holders didn’t do so badly, after all). She is accused by her foes and some U.S. media of conspiring with Iran to cover up a 1994 terrorist incident. She also removed the top leaders of the domestic intelligence service, SI, last December.

Or, worse, she is being insinuated into a conspiracy behind the death of Alberto Nisman. Mr. Nisman was Jewish and the attack was on a Jewish Center, which evokes memories of buried old Argentine Anti-semitism and Adolph Eichmann and no doubt other Nazis who managed to obtain or purchase sanctuary after World War II. Oddly, the draft warrant also mentions the arrest of a co-conspirator: Foreign Minister Hector Timerman who is also Jewish and former human rights activist (like his famous father Jacobo was).

One suspicious thing: reports say they found the ‘draft’ arrest warrant in his trash bin. Imagine: what kind of an assassin would leave such document (accidentally on purpose) in a trash bin, or drop one in a trash bin! The first place police investigators would look. Only someone who wants it to be seen and read would do that. Something is not kosher here, not even halal, and forgive the deliberate pun.

The plot thickens. Or better yet: the plots thicken……..
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Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Caliphate, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Syria

Iranian Boots Now Officially ‘On the Ground’ in Iraq and Syria……..

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“Iran’s Supreme Leader has permitted a limited group of Iranian youth to fight along with “Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese brothers,” according to Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammed Ali Jafari. Jafari, while addressing a ceremony in Tehran last Friday, mentioned discussions he had with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, saying that “despite the number of youth who are permitted to join the fighting (outside Iran), no one else should leave the country” for resistance abroad, the Iranian Mashregh news agency reported……………”

Everybody has known for some time that there are Iranian advisers, and maybe some combatants, serving in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State and other armed groups. We have all seen ‘leaked’ photos of the enigmatic Brig. Suleimani in Iraq. Everybody has also known that there are Arab, American, and European fighters and advisers on both sides in Iraq and Syria. Some of the latter are official with the regulation boots, others who are mainly on the Jihadi side are free-lancers. This new report about Ayatollah Khamenei makes things ‘official’ now. Especially in view of the potential casualties which are impossible to hide in a Muslim society where a death and its rites are a very public matter.

Officially the wars in Syria and Iraq are now part of a multi-layered wider war: a sectarian war within a regional war within a global war. Which they have been for some years now, but unofficially. Now which box should be opened first? Which layer should be peeled first to reach the heart of the matter and solve it?

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Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Al-Qaeda, Caliphate, Iran, Iraq, Sectarian

Iraqi Alibi: One American Sectarian View of the ISIS Rampage……..

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“The Hezbollah-ization of Iraq’s military and security forces has been overseen by the IRGC-QF, another U.S.-designated terrorist entity, which is headed by Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, a man personally sanctioned by the Treasury Department for his role in propping up Bashar al Assad’s mass murderous regime in Syria. In Iraq and Syria the enemy of our enemy is not our friend, he is our enemy, too………. Another one of Suleimani’s major proxies, the Badr Corps, is headed by Hadi al-Amiri, who happens to be Iraq’s former minister of transport, in which capacity he was accused by the U.S. government of helping to fly Iranian weapons and personnel into Syria……………….”

The title of this article reads like a concocted alibi for expected failure against ISIS in Iraq. And we’ve all had the apparently mistaken belief that ISIS sprang from Al-Qaeda which sprang from Saudi money and Wahhabi ideology and volunteers! Now we have beens set straight: the Iranian mullahs are behind ISIS. Disguised as Wahhabi Jihadis.

Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t dabble much in Muslim sectarianism, otherwise I would have suspected him of being behind this article. The best of Saudi royal media couldn’t have written anything more sectarian than this piece. It almost reads as if written by a Hariri pro-Saudi (Lebanon’s March 14) journalist for NOW Lebanon, or by some American neoconservative hawk from one of their many well-funded think tanks. Making the case for yet another Western war in our region (hence the netanyahu angle)………..

This is not to deny some of the basic facts in the article. The Iraqi militias are nasty ombres. The Iranian are active and scheming in Iraq, as is almost everybody else that I can think of outside Monaco. I am not sure about the Hezbollah angle: this sounds like a “Lebanese” partisan insertion. Don’t they say that “all is fair in war and love“? Everybody seems to believe that, even if they profess not to.

But then the Iranians, and some others in the neighborhood, have been stung from Iraq in the past, invaded and attacked with WMD. The Western powers, some of whom supplied the WMD or its ingredients to the Baathists, did not seem to object to either at the time………..
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Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Iran, Israel, U.S. Congress, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Senate

Iranians Worry about Pro-Likud U.S. Senate, Seek a More Active Europe……….

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“The European Union (EU) can play more active role in the negotiations between Iran and the world powers over Iran’s nuclear issue, Press TV reported on Tuesday quoting Iran’s foreign minister as saying. In a meeting with his Portugese counterpart Rui Machete in Tehran on Monday, Mohammad-Javad Zarif hailed what he termed as “positive” the European countries’ current approach to oppose the imposition of any new sanctions against Tehran and trying out diplomacy………….”

The Iranians are apparently just trying to get some help from Europe. They can see that the U.S. Knesset Congress/Senate is trying to create the conditions for failed negotiations. They see that the legislators are setting the U.S. up for being dragged into an Israeli war against another Muslim country. They know that the Europeans, like almost everybody else outside the USA,  are skeptic about Netanyahu and the Israeli stance. They are trying to get the Europeans to be a bit more forceful on this issue.

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Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Iran, Israel, U.S. Politics, U.S. Senate

Senator Menendez Goes to War……..

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“Obama further said that imposing new sanctions would lead international observers to blame the United States, not Iran, if the nuclear talks collapsed before the July 1 deadline. At one point, Sen. Menendez interrupted the US president, saying he took “personal offense” by the notion that Congress was under pressure from donors and lobbyists and was making a move for short-term political gains………..”

He said: “under pressure from donors and lobbyists and was making a move for short-term political gains.” Mr. Obama must have touched a sore spot for Senator Menendez to get so angry. Which might fit in with some points in my last post.

Indignation by a politician is often fake. And not just indignation by a senator from the sometimes great and occasionally clean state of New Jersey. A state that is not always up for sale to the highest bidder. Not always, since its current governor doesn’t look like a highest bidder; not until he starts to run for higher office.

The senator has been pushing for a new American war in the Middle East for some time now. Not directly, but he tries to do enough to derail the current negotiations and pushes for Netanyahu to decide American policy on war and peace. Which would please rich donors in and out of his state. And maybe make people forget about his ‘recent’ past. 
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Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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AIPAC, Iran, nuclear Iran, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Politics

An Iranian View of an Unsavory Las Vegas Tycoon………

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“Nearly one-third of anti-Iran pressure group United Against Nuclear Iran’s 2013 budget came from the country’s foremost Republican megadonor, a man who invested a reported $98 million to defeat Barack Obama in the 2012 election, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. Adelson routed his $500,000 donation to UANI through his family foundation, according to tax documents. Over the past six months, a number of unanswered questions have swirled around UANI. The Justice Department continues to shield information about the group’s internal workings from coming to light; the group hasn’t accounted for a mysterious funder who stands to profit from a confrontation with Iran…………”

Apparently the Iranians also believe that Sheldon Adelson is at it again: that he is funding a mysterious new anti-Iranian group. A major Iranian news site writes about the American right-wing moneybag Sheldon Adelson.

The conservative Las Vegas gambling tycoon and part-owner of many Republican Party politicians once fully owned Newt Gingrich during his hopeless attempt to start running for the party nomination in 2012. The site reports that Adelson is the largest contributor to the GOP and spent 98 million of his own money to defeat Barack Obama in 2012 (it was probably pure politics, not related to race).
Mr. Adelson, who reportedly has very close connections to the Israeli right-wing parties had publicly proposed once in 2013 that Mr. Obama should launch a nuclear attack on Iran. The Iranians remember that he was kind enough to specify a nuclear attack on “sparsely populated” areas of Iran.
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Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Cyber Security, cyber war, Cyber Wars, Internet, Iran, North Korea, U.S. Foreign Policy, Uncategorized, USA

From Stuxnet to Sony: CyberWar Chickens Coming Home to Roost?……….

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Have Yourself a Merry Little——-> Kenny G. Holiday 

There is a lot of media and official noise about the hacking of Sony documents. There are also threats of more damage to the company for producing a film spoof of Kim Jon Un of North Korea. There are claims that North Korea is responsible, being upset about the film. Maybe they didn’t get the famous haircut quite right in the film, or maybe it is the inevitable stupidity and silly thrust of the film.
Now there is much talk of the ‘terrible’ act of hacking and terrorism and how to respond. But wait: is hacking another country such a terrible act? A terrorist act? Weren’t the same media clinking glasses over the various cyber attacks on another country’s institutions only recently? Weren’t congressmen and women and senators going publicly orgasmic over the series of cyber attacks on official Iranian websites? Reportedly, strongly and deliberately and proudly disclosed by the usual unnamed sources to be the joint work of Israeli and American experts.

I commented several times in my postings on this cyber aggression, from Stuxnet to Duque to Flame and other malware, allegedly targeting the Iranian nuclear program and possibly other infrastructure. I even opined that “Live by Cyber war, Die by Cyber War“. I even wrote something about “cyber chickens coming home to roost“. And apparently they are starting now. This alleged North Korean attack and other allegedly Iranian cyber attacks in the past year. I have also written that cyber battles and cyber wars are equalizers: they are relatively cheap and any nation can excel in waging them.
Cyber counterattacks can be understandable, for they are done in retaliation for other cyber attacks. It happens. What irks me is the fact that American theatres have caved in to blackmail and fear and decided not to show the stupid film, The Interview. As has Sony now in deciding to “withdraw” the film, which makes one wonder what more information did the hackers get their hands on.

That reaction is an even more serious development: it means other hackers will be able to blackmail publishers, film-makers, and other cultural parties. Thus curtailing the right of free expression. Thus imposing a piece of the ‘political ambience’ of North Korea or wherever the hell they are located into the United States and other countries.

Cyber Wars as Great Equalizers: Tit for Tat?………

Cyber Jingoism: CyberSecurity, Cyber Wars, and the New Cyber Powers………

Cyber Wars: Malware, Mahdi, and Hail Mary in Iran and Israel……

Israel and the West: only Arab and Muslim Hacking is Terrorism, Ours is Kosher……
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Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Blockade of Iran, Caliphate, Iran, Weapons deals

Western Weapons Sanctions: Unintended Long-Term Consequences………

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“It is a tribute to Iranian ingenuity that Iran has been able to keep the planes flying, given US sanctions in place since 1979. The Iranians have done so by a combination of smuggling – using shadow companies to buy parts – and cannibalising parts from civil aircraft. They have also engaged in reverse engineering, though this seldom produces a perfect match, resulting in weaker parts. Justin Bronk, a research analyst in the military science programme at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said of the plane spotted over Iraq: “This is the equivalent of a late Vietnam-era F-4 Phantom D or E variants. We do not know which one.” Bronk, who specialises in combat air power, added: “It is extremely impressive that the Iranians have kept this airworthiness given the ban on spare parts. The Iranian aerospace industry is one of the best in the world in keeping old aircraft airworthy.”…………”

For some reason they can’t seem to get more modern warplanes from their Chinese and Russian allies. Or maybe the mullahs are just as attached to old American jets as the Shah was to new ones.

In any case, they have managed to improvise and build up their technical skills and weapons industries. Necessity is truly the mother of invention, and a fount of new research, technical skill, and knowledge. If and when the American-European blockade is lifted, they will probably find themselves with a robust domestic weapons and space industry that can only be rivaled by the Israelis.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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