Category Archives: Iran

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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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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cyber war, Espionage, Iran, Israel, Muslims, Racism, Saudi Arabia

Israel and the West: only Arab and Muslim Hacking is Terrorism, Ours is Kosher………

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“Israel said on Saturday that it will respond to cyber-attacks in the same way it responds to violent “terrorist” acts, by striking back with force against hackers who threaten the Jewish state. The message from Deputy Foreign Minister Dany Ayalon came after a self-defined “Saudi hacker” from a cabal known as “group-xp” published details of more than 6,000 Israeli credit cards online. “It is necessary to send a message to everyone who attacks or tries to attack Israel, including in cyberspace,” Ayalon said in quotes published widely in Israeli media. Hackers stand warned, he said, “that they are putting themselves in danger and that they will not benefit from any immunity against reprisal actions from Israel.” Cyber-attacks amount to “terrorism that must be treated as such. In cyberspace, we have active capacities and we can hit those who try to hit us.” Ayalon also applauded the United States for declaring that “all attacks in their cyberspace will be considered as a declaration of war and they will react as if it had been a missile attack………..”

The great and very useful term of “chutzpah” must have been created for a situation like this. No wonder the Iranian officials always talk about arrogance and arrogant powers. I have thought they were being repetitive and self-righteous and boring. Now, I am see that the West and the Israelis are as repetitive and self-righteous and boring (almost more boring over the past year or two).
Western powers and Israel have been sending viruses and worms and hacking into computer systems all over the world in recent years, especially Iran. Just look up Stuxnet and Duqu and others. Western and Israeli media publicly brag about their hacking and worming prowess against other nations and their ability to disrupt industry and communications. Yet when they receive some of their own medicine, as some Saudis recently hacked into Israeli systems and published secret data, they threaten war. All I can say for now, very succinctly, is: WTF?
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Iran, Lebanon, NATO, Persian-American Gulf, Syria, US Foreign Policy

Turkey and Iran and the West: Containment from the Gulf to the Mediterranean…………..

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“Iran and Turkey said Thursday they planned to double their trade volume despite having political differences on Syria and a NATO radar shield on Turkish soil. “Our annual trade volume currently stands at 15 billion dollars but we hope to double it in the near future,” Iranian Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi said in a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu in Tehran. Despite the plan to increase trade, the two sides did not seem to have settled political differences, especially on the situation in Syria. ……….”
 
“Middle East powerhouse Turkey on Wednesday warned against a sectarian cold war in the region and said rising Sunni-Shiite tensions would be “suicide” for the whole region. “Let me openly say that there are some willing to start a regional Cold War,” Foreign Minster Ahmet Davutoglu told state-run Anatolian news agency before heading to Shiite Iran. “We are determined to prevent a regional Cold War. Sectarian regional tensions would be suicide for the whole region,” Davutoglu said, adding such effects would last for decades. “Turkey is against all polarisations, in the political sense of Iran-Arab tension or in the sense of forming an apparent axis. This will be one of the crucial messages that I will take to Tehran.”…….. Davutoglu is expected to hold talks in Tehran later on Wednesday on Iran’s nuclear programme and developments in neighbouring Iraq and Syria………..”

Davutoglu, with the talk of “Sunni-Shiite tensions”, seems to be jabbing the Saudis and their allies who have been stoking sectarian hatred for a few years now, especially along the Gulf. For a while there was talk, mostly in some Arab oligarchy media, of an Iranian-Turkish-Qatari-Syrian alliance. The Turkish role was exaggerated: after all Turkey is an old NATO member and a longtime friend of Israel. The Qatari role was also exaggerated: Qatar shares a huge offshore gas field with Iran and is also wary of Saudi attempts at hegemony over the GCC states. A Saudi-sponsored coup attempt against the Emir was thwarted in the late 1990s, with several high Saudi security officials arrested and jailed in Doha (they were released last year). Saudi media and the Wahhabi faux-liberal media on the Gulf were full of condemnation of a mythical Qatari-Iranian-Syrian-Iraqi-Hezbollah axis. It was supposed to be an “axis of evil” as opposed to the “axis of goodness and democracy” of Saudi Arabia-Bahrain-UAE-Taliban-Mubarak-Wahhabi shaikhs.
Now the Turks and Iranians are on opposite sides in Syria. Now the Saudis and the Turks and the Qataris are on the same side in Syria (almost on the same side: the Salafis and Wahhabiized Muslim Brothers of Syria are not exactly what the Turks like). The Turks are now seen by some Arabs as a counterweight to Iran, a NATO and a Muslim counterweight in Syria. There may be some complications: the Syrians and the Arabs have always claimed that the Turkish region of Iskandaruna (Alexandretta) is part of Syria and that it is occupied territory, just like the West Bank. That is another issue to ponder as the Turks and some Arabs get close enough to each other to start disliking each other again (all that stuff about familiarity breeding contempt). The West probably sees a two–pronged approach to contain Iran:

(1) The Persian-American Gulf to be “defended” by the Western forces, mainly the US Navy, that are clogging it now. Of course Iran has not attacked anyone in the Gulf yet, nor does it have any intention of attacking anyone “first”, Saudi and Salafi propaganda and fear-mongering by the Bahrain satraps notwithstanding.
(2) The Eastern Mediterranean to be “defended” by NATO, with the Turks as the main player. Lebanon is probably considered, wisely, very iffy: a majority of the people want no Western military forces, certainly no Israeli forces or outside Arab forces either. Lebanon was tackled with Western “intelligence” operations and Saudi money (a lot of Saudi money for such a small country). So far it has failed: Saudi princes are not exactly lovable, charismatic, or principled creatures. They can never buy love with money (not that kind of love), nobody can. This is not to say that the Iranian mullahs, or other Arab leaders, are very lovable either. Many are barely more lovable than Netanyahu or Lieberman (Avigdor not Joe).
 
Breaking Syria away from its Iranian alliance is the main prerequisite for success in the Eastern Mediterranean now. The pro-Saudi Syrian opposition (the Salafis, Muslim Brothers, some former military officers, even others, now seem to want Western (NATO) intervention against the regime. They want to be liberated by the West just as Iraq was liberated in 2003 and Libya was liberated in 2011.
After that, the Saudi camp hopes their Israeli allies will be able to soften Hezbollah and Lebanon.
More on this later……
Cheers
mhg


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Cinema, Culture, Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE

Creativity in a Theocracy: One Iranian Film on its Way to the Oscars………….

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“Yet since his film’s premiere early this year, Asghar Farhadi has found success inside and outside his home country with “A Separation,” the film resonating with audiences who read it alternately as a deeply felt domestic drama and a finely crafted sociopolitical allegory. When the film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, it walked away with the Golden Bear, the festival’s top prize, as well as awards recognizing the film’s lead actor and actress. The film, which opens in Los Angeles on Dec. 30, has gone on to be one of the most universally celebrated of the year. It was recently still running a rare 100% rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on more than two dozen reviews. It was a box office hit within Iran and was chosen to represent the country as its submission for the Academy Award for best foreign language film………..”
 
I find it interesting that under the repressive theocracy Iranian films have thrived. Arguably the best films in the Middle East over the past three decades have been produced in Iran, with many of them winning international prizes. I have always thought that is because film-makers, like all artists and authors, need to get more creative and more subtle in their messages under less open regimes. (North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and the Taliban would be exceptions to this rule).


The Iranians may have some competition at the Oscars. My unreliable source tells me fhe Saudi government is working on a film about the life and times of their Mufti Shaikh al Al Al Shaikh. Meanwhile the al-Nahayan rulers of the UAE plan new film about their late father Zayed Bin Sultan al-Nahayan. The film may star Sean Connery or Abe Vigoda (assuming he is alive): one of them will play Zayed, the other his brother Shakhboot whom he overthrew and made to disappear along with his sons. None of the films will cover the loves and marriages of the two worthies.
Cheers
mhg


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Horn of Africa, Iran, Persian-American Gulf, US Foreign Policy

Iranian Faces and Egg: USS John Stennis, the Muslim Arab Pirates, about Hormuz……….

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“Iran on Saturday welcomed the rescue of 13 Iranian sailors by a U.S. Navy ship, calling it a “humanitarian act……….. The sailors were on a fishing boat that had been hijacked by pirates in the Arabian Sea, near the Strait of Hormuz. According to the Navy, a helicopter from the destroyer USS Kidd spotted a suspect pirate boat alongside the Iranian vessel on Thursday. The destroyer is part of the USS John Stennis Strike Group, which moved into the Arabian Sea from the Persian Gulf last week………..”

Somebody in Iran have egg on their faces today.
So the Iranian IRGC commanders and a couple of ayatollahs made a lot of the departure of the USS John Stennis from the Persian-American Gulf last week. Some of them warned the US navy ship not to return to the Gulf, or else.
Sure enough, the USS John Stennis Strike Group was not about to return anytime soon. Nobody knew it was on a divine mission for these same ayatollahs. It was destined to save a lot of Iranian sailors and fishermen from Somali pirates, from fellow Muslims (and full-fledged member of the Arab League although the Arab depots seem not to care about how many Somalis are killed or starve every year).
Apparently the Somali pirates have now expanded their theater of operations beyond the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden. They are now at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, threatening the petroleum waterway.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Persian-American Gulf, War on Iran

How Iran Closed the Strait of Hormuz…………

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“By a media trick, Tehran proved its claim that closing the Strait of Hormuz is as “easy as drinking water,” debkafile reports. First thing Saturday morning, Saturday, Dec. 31, Iran’s state agencies “reported” long-range and other missiles had been test-fired as part of its ongoing naval drill around the Strait of Hormuz. Ahead of the test, Tehran closed its territorial waters. For five hours Saturday, not a single warship, merchant vessel or oil tanker ventured into the 30-mile wide Hormuz strait, waiting to hear from Tehran’ that the test was over. Instead, around 0900 local time, a senior Iranian navy commander Mahmoud Moussavi informed Iran’s English language Press TV that no missiles had been fired after all. “The exercise of launching missiles will be carried out in the coming days,” he said. For five hours therefore, world shipping obeyed Tehran’s warning and gave the narrow waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, a wide berth. They stayed out of range of a test which, debkafile’s military sources report, aimed to demonstrate for the first time that Shahab-3 ballistic missiles which have a range of 1,600 kilometers and other missiles, such as the Nasr1cruise marine missile, are capable of reaching Hormuz from central Iran……..….”

If true, this was done by stealth, sort of. It was actually done by consent. I wouldn’t advice doing it by force, for the reaction may be different, will surely be different. The USS John Stennis is somewhere in the Indian Ocean, serving the Afghanistan operations. It is not staying away because of the Iranian warnings. As long as the Iranians understand this fact, understand the firepower we are talking about, there is no need for concern.

Cheers
mhg


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9/11, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, Middle East, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Funny US Anti-Terror Policy: Today the Taliban, Tomorrow Hezbollah and Hamas?…………..

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“After 10 months of secret dialogue with Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents, senior U.S. officials say the talks have reached a critical juncture and they will soon know whether a breakthrough is possible, leading to peace talks whose ultimate goal is to end the Afghan war. As part of the accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy, Reuters has learned, the United States is considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay military prison into Afghan government custody. It has asked representatives of the Taliban to match that confidence-building measure with some of their own. Those could include a denunciation of international terrorism and a public willingness to enter formal political talks with the government headed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. The officials acknowledged that the Afghanistan diplomacy, which has reached a delicate stage in recent weeks, remains a long shot. Among the complications: U.S. troops are drawing down and will be mostly gone by the end of 2014, potentially reducing the incentive for the Taliban to negotiate. ………”

Interesting: the Taliban hosted al-Qaeda and were part of the September 11 attacks that killed thousands of Americans and disrupted the economy and politics of the country. They have been at war with the United States for years and they support terrorism in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and in other places. They have been responsible for many more American dearth.
Hezbollah and Hamas have never tried any terror attacks inside the United States. Their attacks were almost always confined to the Lebanese Israeli Palestinian theater, with possibly one or two reported minor exceptions that were not against the United States. They both represent either a majority or a plurality of the people in their respective countries. Hamas won a clear majority of Palestinian votes the last time they had elections, despite the nonsense Secretary Clinton talks about the PLO being a “legitimate government”.
Yet the United States is ‘negotiating’ with the even more fundamentalist Salafi Taliban, the partner in September 11 attacks. Not a single Republican or Democrat politician objects to that. Not even the right-wing. Yet any hint of an approach to Hezbollah or Hamas would cause a twin earthquake and volcano in the country. You wanna know why? It is one word, a six-letter word “Israel”. Or maybe it is a four-letter word: “Iran”.
Cheers
mhg


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CIA, Espionage, Iran, War on Iran

Iranian American Tit for Tat Continues………….

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“Iran’s state TV broadcast video of a young man Sunday it claimed was a CIA spy who sought to infiltrate Iran’s secret services. The TV identified the man, apparently in his late 20s, as Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, an American-Iranian who received special training and served at U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading to Iran for his alleged intelligence mission. “Their (US intelligence) plan was to initially burn some valuable information, to give it free so that (Iran’s) Intelligence Ministry would see the good things and then would contact me,” said in a part of the confession that was broadcast. The voice of an unnamed announcer on the video said U.S. intelligence was certain that Iran’s secret services would not ignore the data. Therefore, they provided a mix of correct and false information to mislead Iran’s intelligence but tempt it at the same time..……..”

Whether this young man was truly a CIA agent or just a feint to confuse the Iranians or just an innocent visitor to his homeland, he is now part of an ongoing Iranian-American war. It is a war that is intensifying and getting weirder by the day. It may culminate in the whole field of GOP candidates storming the Iranian border, along with Netanyahu.
Now if Messrs Gingrich and Romney and Santorum take my advice and take a hike along the Iraq-Iran border…..
Cheers
mhg


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