Category Archives: Iran

Arab World: Ottomans and Persians, Turks and Iranians………….

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Once friends, Turkey and Iran are finding that their reactions to the Arab Spring revolutions are driving them apart and renewing an old regional rivalry. One sign of the deepening divide was obvious from the attendee list for an international conference on Afghanistan security that opened today in Istanbul. Every primary player is here: 14 regional nations, with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan in attendance, as well as more than a dozen other countries, including the United States. But Iran had planned to send just its low-ranking deputy foreign minister, despite its long border with Afghanistan and claims of being a regional superpower. While Iran relented at the last minute and sent Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, the diplomatic tension indicates how the people-power uprisings have helped transform the Turkey-Iran friendship into an escalating rivalry. So far, analysts say, Turkey appears the winner in pushing for secular, democratic outcomes …………..

It almost looks like that old rivalry that was fought on territory extending from the Caspian Sea to Mesopotamia. Eventually the Turks ended up with what is now Iraq as well as the rest of the Arab East (it was mainly Iraq they fought over and kept winning and losing to each other).
There is no doubt that the Arab uprisings have enhanced the Turkish role in the Middle East. The Arab uprisings have also sharpened the contrast between the Turkish model and the Iranian one. Many more Arabs now look toward Turkey, a NATO member, as an example. Perhaps it is the comparison between the elected Turkish leaders and their own thuggish Arab dictators and absolute tribal kings. It is also partly the contrast between Turkish leaders and the inarticulate Iranian clergy who come across as repressive (mainly because they are repressive). The Turks have also benefited from moving away from their “former” Israeli friends in recent months. Either way the Turks have benefited from the Arab uprisings, for now.
The Iranians are on the defensive mainly because their system of government is not nearly as free and democratic as the Turkish one. They have also suffered partly as a result of a furious Saudi sectarian media campaign that has continued since the Iraqi elections of 2005. The Saudi dynasty rules Arab airwaves, or most of them. That Saudi campaign has not only been aimed at the Iranian regime: more ominously it has also targeted Arab Shi’as and poisoned relationships within many societies on the Persian-American Gulf.

Cheers
mhg


Israeli Red Herring? Gearing up for a New Futile War? Trapping Uncle Sam………..

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Israelis are almost evenly split on whether Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, with 41 percent supporting such a strike and 39 percent opposed, a new Haaretz-Dialog poll has found. The remaining 20 percent said they were undecided…………The poll follows a spate of media reports in recent days about efforts by Netanyahu and Barak to muster a majority for such a strike in the forum of eight senior ministers. These reports coincided with several major military tests and drills………

Israel conducts a rare ballistic missile test; the Israel Air Force reports a successful exercise in Sardinia, far from home; Iran’s chief of staff says the “likelihood is low” of an Israeli attack, but threatens that his country would respond forcefully. British sources tell The Guardian of preparations for an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites coordinated with the United States; Britain’s chief of staff makes a secret visit to Israel………. Haarez

A disagreement within the government over whether to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities has sparked a political catfight between two members of the “octet” forum of eight senior ministers: Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Associates of Ya’alon charge that Barak is behind the recent spate of media reports about the octet’s deliberations on Iran, while Barak’s associates charge that Ya’alon’s judgment is becoming unbalanced…………..Haaretz

Ain’t that sweet: Israelis are split on whether or not to attack Iran, a country that has never attacked them. Sitting on occupied Palestinian territory in “Judea and Samaria”, annexing territory against international law, and debating whether to attack a country that is a thousand miles (and a few yards) away. One that has never attacked them or anyone else in a few hundred years. Or maybe it is a red herring related to the expanding settlements and UNESCO and diversions.
Not only that: the cabinet is openly discussing if and when and how to launch a futile attack on Iran. If the Iranians were to publicly discuss if and when and how to attack Israeli installations, the UN would expel them and the West would attack them, armed with a UN resolution. Meanwhile the West is filling my Gulf with warships carrying more soldiers than there are people in….. Abu Dhabi.

Cheers
mhg



m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

America Abroad: Leaving Iraq, Hunkering Down in the Gulf…….

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The New York Times newspaper reports the United States is
negotiating with Kuwait to allow American combat troops to be based in
the Persian Gulf area after completing the announced withdrawal from
Iraq by the end of this year. The Times says the United States is also considering sending more warships through international waters in the region. The size of the potential standby force has not been determined.
There was no immediate confirmation of the Times report, which was based on interviews with unnamed military officials and diplomats.
U.S. military plans in the region have been under discussion for months, but the Times said the talks became more urgent when President Barack Obama announced that the last American troops would leave Iraq by the end of December……….

Several of the GCC states will no doubt be happy to host more U.S. forces. Kuwait especially was traumatized by the Iraqi invasion under the Ba’athist regime and feels more secure with American forces nearby.
Yet it is not clear why the huge new buildup in the Persian-American Gulf. It is highly unlikely, with American and other Western fleets congesting the Gulf, that any “foreign” forces will invade. The only candidate, Iran, has never invaded its neighbors in modern times, but was invaded by Iraq (1980) and by the Soviet-British forces during World War II. Saudi Arabia invaded Bahrain last March by invitation from its ruling elites.
 
What many Arabs, outside the pro-Saudi Wahhabi GCC faux-liberals of my Gulf and their Salafi allies, speculate is that the West is preparing a military attack against Iran. The pro-Saudi Wahhabi faux-liberals of my Gulf and their Salafi allies hope fervently that this is true, that the West plans to start yet another war in our region. If the mullahs refuse to come to war, then by golly the West shall bring the war to the mullahs.


Cheers
mhg



m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

A Tea Party in Iran During Ramadan: Religious Repression and Waning Piety………

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Even in the heart of the Islamic republic, fully observant Muslims may not be in the majority. Iran’s police chief estimates that as many as half of Tehran’s citizens eschewed fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, the most recent of which ended in late August, the Iranian media reported Monday. Speaking to journalists at the International Press Fair in Tehran, Brig. Gen. Esmael Ahmadi-Moghaddam said that 20% to 50% of the capital’s population failed to fast during the holy period of contemplation and prayer. Should law enforcement intervene? Not a good idea, said Iran’s top cop. “Police would interfere only when it happens in the public,” he was quoted as saying. Police officers, he said, cannot compensate for society’s failure to imbue proper Muslim practices in much of the population……………

I imagine many people, especially young Iranian people, may have been turned off Islamic piety by so many clerics running their lives. It can easily happen when ruled by dogmatic repressive clergy who take away many freedoms: young people (probably wrongly) tend to equate the repression with Islam. Of course that is as wrong as equating some unique American version of “Christianity” with the Republican (Tea) Party or equating Judaism with the Israeli social Salafis and the Likudniks.
Maybe what they need in Iran is a dedicated intrusive religious police, something like the Saudi Commission for the Propagation of Vice. Then they can crash into people’s homes to catch them eating and drinking, and possibly fornicating, during Ramadan.

Cheers
mhg



m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

Ahamadinejad Opines on the Buried Secrets of Qaddafi and NATO………..

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Al-Quds al-Arabi from London quotes Iranian president Ahmadinejad that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was killed in order to keep many secrets he could have exposed, secret. He said among the secrets were the amounts of money Qaddafi paid to European leaders especially for their election campaigns. He also said the Western powers seek to appoint their own ‘friends’ in power inn Libya.
Now, I am not usually a believer in conspiracies, and I am not sure I buy the idea that NATO somehow got the GCC and other Arabs to ask it for intervention. But when I saw Qaddafi wounded but quite alive and then I saw him dead, I suspected something. Qaddafi, like every leader, carries many secrets. Some of them are secrets about Western leaders. I would have loved to hear of the role of the British government, British businesses, and American banks and Tony Blair, in the release of al-Migrahi (Clinton now claims she wants him re-arrested). His take on the “non raunchy” photos of Condi Rice would have been interesting. I would also be interested in what he had to say about some leaders of the National Transitional Council (NTC). Many of them were his minions. Mustafa AbdulJalil was his minister of “justice”. Some of them are as responsible for the excesses of the regime as Qaddafi’s sons were.

It would have been a positive point for the “new” Libya if he had been tried, with lawyers, just as Saddam was tried for three years. Before being hanged. Then maybe some of these hypocritical Arab media would have slammed his executioners, just as they did the executioners of Saddam.
Cheers
mhg



m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

Irony of Smug Western Arrogance: Iranian Navy a Danger to the “Persian” Gulf………………….

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While much of the world’s attention focuses on Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran has made considerable progress on another security front in recent years — steadily increasing the reach and lethality of its naval forces. The goal by 2025, if all goes as the country has planned, is to have a navy that can deploy anywhere within a strategic triangle from the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea to the Strait of Malacca. Should such plans materialize — and Iran is making steady progress — Tehran would redraw the strategic calculus of an already volatile region. The Persian Gulf is home to some of the world’s most valuable supply lines, routes that are vital to the global energy supply. In the last few years, Iran has invested heavily in a domestic defense industry that now has the ability to produce large-scale warships, submarines, and missiles. Since the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, Iran has largely pursued a strategy of deterrence……………”

The title of this piece in Foreign Affairs is an example of true Western smug arrogance: “Iran’s Navy Threatens the Security of the Persian Gulf”. Something is not kosher about this analysis. The Iranian navy in the “Persian” Gulf, in its own backyard, is considered a danger to peace. Foreign Western navies cluttering my Gulf, thousands of miles (or kilometers) from their home territory, are considered normal, elements to stability. Yet all the major wars of our region in the past four decades were either started or instigated by the West and its regional allies. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) was started by Saddam’s invasion of his neighbor, and encouraged by the West and some Arab potentates on the Persian-American Gulf. The Persian Gulf War (1990-91) was started by Saddam of Iraq, armed to the teeth by the West and his Arab allies (his former Arab allies and suppliers whom he turned against). The invasion of Iraq (2003) was engineered by Saddam’s former Western allies and supported by his former Arab allies.
If the Iranian navy is a danger to the Persian Gulf, is the U.S. navy a danger to the Gulf of Mexico? Is the French navy a danger to the Mediterranean?

I hate to repeat the mantra of the Iranian theocrats, but this type of “analysis” reeks of Western arrogance, of  a smug sense of entitlement to enter others’ backyards and own them.
Cheers
mhg



m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

Irony of Smug Western Arrogance: Iranian Navy a Danger to the “Persian” Gulf………………….

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While much of the world’s attention focuses on Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran has made considerable progress on another security front in recent years — steadily increasing the reach and lethality of its naval forces. The goal by 2025, if all goes as the country has planned, is to have a navy that can deploy anywhere within a strategic triangle from the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea to the Strait of Malacca. Should such plans materialize — and Iran is making steady progress — Tehran would redraw the strategic calculus of an already volatile region. The Persian Gulf is home to some of the world’s most valuable supply lines, routes that are vital to the global energy supply. In the last few years, Iran has invested heavily in a domestic defense industry that now has the ability to produce large-scale warships, submarines, and missiles. Since the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, Iran has largely pursued a strategy of deterrence……………”

The title of this piece in Foreign Affairs is an example of true Western smug arrogance: “Iran’s Navy Threatens the Security of the Persian Gulf”. Something is not kosher about this analysis. The Iranian navy in the “Persian” Gulf, in its own backyard, is considered a danger to peace. Foreign Western navies cluttering my Gulf, thousands of miles (or kilometers) from their home territory, are considered normal, elements to stability. Yet all the major wars of our region in the past four decades were either started or instigated by the West and its regional allies. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) was started by Saddam’s invasion of his neighbor, and encouraged by the West and some Arab potentates on the Persian-American Gulf. The Persian Gulf War (1990-91) was started by Saddam of Iraq, armed to the teeth by the West and his Arab allies (his former Arab allies and suppliers whom he turned against). The invasion of Iraq (2003) was engineered by Saddam’s former Western allies and supported by his former Arab allies.
If the Iranian navy is a danger to the Persian Gulf, is the U.S. navy a danger to the Gulf of Mexico? Is the French navy a danger to the Mediterranean?

I hate to repeat the mantra of the Iranian theocrats, but this type of “analysis” reeks of Western arrogance, of  a smug sense of entitlement to enter others’ backyards and own them
Cheers
mhg



m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

Starry-Eyed Maureen Dowd of Wry Absolute Arabia: PR and “Keeping America Safe” …………

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I asked if he thought he was targeted because of his tough position on Iran, underscored in a 2008 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks quoting him reiterating that King Abdullah wanted the United States to “cut off the head of the snake.” “You should ask the perpetrators, not me,” he said wryly. “We do what we have to do, and we can’t let issues like this deter us.”……… Some worry that America spends too much time hoping Iran will become more reasonable when, in reality, it’s trying to get nuclear weapons so it can become less reasonable. News of the plot, denounced by the kingdom as “sinful and abhorrent,” has made Saudi Arabia more sympathetic in an enemy-of-my-enemy sort of way…………Maureen Dowd (allegedly in the New York Times)

Not one of her best columns; Maureen Dowd is too starry-eyed here toward an absolute tribal monarchy where sorcerers and witches and Asian housemaids are beheaded almost every week. Not her usual witty style, it reads more like something from Liz Cheney’s “Keep America Safe”, but almost a wittier style. Not that Liz Cheney ever seems starry-eyed about anything (not even about the dangers of building more mosques). This also reads suspiciously more like something another lobbyist or Public Relations person would write, as part of a PR campaign.
He was targeted because of his tough position on Iran” yet he was reiterating that King Abdullah wanted the United States to…….. So whose position is it that was the “tough” one, urging war: his or the absolute king’s (and the thousands of princes who loot the Arabian Peninsula each and every day)?

(At least now we learn from Dowd that the ambassador does not frequent Georgetown fast food joints like Cafe Milano as Peter Bergen had claimed. Bergen also dined with Bin Laden once, but most likely outside Georgetown).
Cheers
mhg



m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

New Twist on a Newt Gingrich Trek to Colonial Mesopotamia: the Romney Factor………

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Republicans, and Ed Koch and Joe Lieberman, are pissed that Obama is pulling out of Iraq. None of them is pissed that the Iraqis want the Americans out: they are pissed that the Americans are doing what the Iraqis want. In the old days this was called “colonialism”, when a Western guest force, usually uninvited, overstayed their welcome. The Americans had to fight several years with help from NATO the French (Lafayette and all that) to achieve what the Native Americans (aka Indian tribes) never did: get rid of the British colonial power.
Now the Republicans are all opining that the United States should stay in Iraq. The great veteran of financial and downsizing wars, Mitt Romney, and that other veteran of office wars (and other office affairs) Newt Gingrich are up in arms. As are other GOP candidates.

Now I had suggested here earlier that Mr. Gingrich should head to Mesopotamia, along the border with Persia, with a view to spending some quality time as guest of the mullahs in Iran. I thought that would shore up his foreign policy credentials, if not his credibility. I am amending my earlier suggestion now. I am suggesting now that it is a good idea if Mr. Gingrich would take Mr. Romney along on his trek. To make it easier, they can each take along their hairdressers, sort of like the old colonial masters used to take along their hairdressers, butlers, cooks, shoe-shiners, etc. Mr. McCain also tempted me by showing ire at Mr. Obama for obeying the Iraqi people’s wish that US troops leave their country, but since he is not a candidate, I shall not make any suggestions.
Some Arabs, especially some potentates on my Gulf, are also pissed at the U.S. withdrawal, mainly because the American occupation was like a stick they could use against the Iraqis. Now they don’t have that stick to discredit the Iraqi elections. I would suggest that Gingrich also take a couple of the ‘princes’ along on his trip.

Cheers
mhg



m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

Clinton, Ahmadinejad, al-Migrahi, More Hypocrisy…….

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I watched Hillary Clinton with Amanpour on ABC. She was asked about al-Migrahi, of the Lockerbie bombing, now that Qaddafi, the recent friend of the West has been killed and mutilated by the new rulers of Libya. She said the al-Migrahi should be returned, that “We want him back“as well. Yet the U.S. and British and possibly other governments were in on the deal to release him. After all, not only British petroleum interests were involved, but also American business interests. Tony Blair was an adviser to JP Morgan which wanted a deal to invest for the Qaddafi regime. Then there was the “settlement” for a lot of Libyan money. Now Mrs Clinton has a sudden case of selective amnesia, she who shook hands with that regime. Regardless of the merits of the case against al-Migrahi, how can a person agree to a deal then renege on it?

I also watched Fareed Zakaria (CNN) with Ahmadinejad in Tehran (well, switched between that and an NFL game). He asked the Iranian president about political prisoners in Iran. He practically denied that there are political prisoners in Iran, but was not convincing (very hard to convince people of something when they know one is lying, no?). That is almost as bad a lie as saying there are no political prisoners in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain.
Cheers
mhg



m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com