Category Archives: NATO

AIPAC, Iran, Middle East Nuclear, NATO, War on Iran

An Iranian Nuclear Message to the Wrong Ears……………..

    

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“Work hard in your mind       
So you can come alive

You beter prove to the man      
You’re as strong as him

Cause in the eyes of god        
You’re both children to him

Da da doo doo                  
Everybody come alive

Everybody live alive           
Everybody love alive

Everybody hear my message………………” Jimi Hendrix

“Forty-five years ago, the United States sold my country a research reactor as well as weapons-grade uranium as its fuel. Not long afterward, America agreed to help Iran set up the full nuclear fuel cycle along with atomic power plants. The U.S. argument was that nuclear power would provide for the growing needs of our economy and free our remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals. That rationale has not changed. Still, after the Islamic Revolution in our country in 1979, all understandings with the United States in the nuclear field unraveled. Washington even cut off fuel deliveries to the very facility it supplied. To secure fuel from other sources, Iran was forced to modify the reactor to run on uranium enriched to around 20 percent. The Tehran Research Reactor still operates, supplying isotopes used in the medical treatment of 800,000 of my fellow Iranians every year. But getting to this point was not easy……….We have never failed when faced with no option but to provide for our own needs. All relationships — whether between parents and children, spouses or even nation-states — are based on trust. The example of the Tehran Research Reactor vividly illustrates the key issue between Iran and the United States: lack of trust………..”

Dr. Salehi is probably addressing the American people and not the government. Otherwise he would be better off addressing the government of Israel which is holding the peace of the Middle East hostage over the alleged Iranian nuclear bomb. The Israelis get a lot of help in that from the Saudi princes. Salehi should forward a copy of his editorial to the AIPAC.
Cheers
mhg


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9/11, Arab Revolutions, Iran, Iraq, NATO, Syria, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Asinine Views of Evil: What the West Thinks, What Muslims Think………

    

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“Of course, it’s difficult to ascertain the views of Iranians. State censorship is tight, and foreign journalists are rarely allowed into the country. Nevertheless, it is possible to make contact with some Iranians. And when you speak with them, you learn something quite surprising: Even if they oppose Ahmadinejad, their radical president, most of these Iranians still view their country as the victim in the current circumstances. They also view the West as an enemy and fail to consider or acknowledge that there are massive differences between hawks in Israel and doves within the Obama administration. “After 9/11, George W. Bush systematically portrayed Iran as the bogeyman. That’s happening again now. I have seen no indication that we are building a nuclear bomb,” says one professor in Tehran…………..”

The problem with many in the West is that they often try to think for others, often assuming anyone who is against a repressive regime automatically agrees with the West on all issues.
Take Iran and the nuclear issue: most Iranians support their country’s nuclear program even as many of them are opposed to the regime. Many of the Syrian “rebels” are probably more militant than the Assad regime about the occupied Golan Heights (John McCain and Joe Lieberman have somehow missed that one). Many, but not all, of these Syrians certainly are Islamic fundamentalists who have no use for Western values, although they’d love Western weapons and Western troops to help against their dictator.
After 9/11, George W Bush and the neoconservatives could not exactly put the blame where it belonged, on the one country that provided the ideology, the fatwas, the volunteers, and the money for the terrorist attacks. The Bushes and the Cheneys could not offend their pals the petroleum princes in Riyadh. They focused on softer targets like Iraq and Iran. Hence the nonsense about “Axis of Evil” (so far the most asinine catch phrase of the first decade of the new century) that excluded the Salafi swamp. The West blockaded Iran; the West liberated Iraq soon after it ‘liberated’ Afghanistan, before the West went on to liberate Libya last year and is thinking of liberating Syria later this year.
Many idiotic neoconservatives, other sanctimonious Republicans, and a few Democrats seeking reelection are now pondering ways to liberate Iran.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Israel, Muslims, NATO, Persian-American Gulf, Racism, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Kipling on My Gulf: Native Rights, White Man Rights, Muslim Rights, NATO Rights…………

   

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 “Take up the White Man’s burden
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
Take up the White Man’s burden
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror……..” Rudyard Kipling (White Man’s Burden)

When Israelis threaten Iran with a preemptive attack, unprovoked, the West takes it for granted: oh well, boys will be boys, as long as they are white boys. Western media like CNN immediately spin it as self-defense.

When Iran “threatens” to defend herself, the West acts shocked, calling for more sanctions, choking off the economy, leaving “all options” on the table until after the 2012 elections (after the American November elections not after the Iranian March elections; definitely not after the Saudi elections for that would be just after hell freezes over which would be no time for a war).

Western (and Saudi media) continue to call the Iranian presence in our region a “threat”. Iranian warships in their own neighborhood in the Gulf are called a danger, while “foreign” Western warships from ten thousand kilometers away, practically clogging the Gulf, are not a “danger”. Now, where else can the Iranian navy go? After all it is the “Persian” Gulf according to the UN resolutions (okay, Persian-American Gulf now). It is jointly “owned” solely by Iranians and Arabs and by nobody else. Yet Israeli and Western leaders and assorted political climbers continue to threaten to bomb Iran for just ‘being there’, or for looking sideways at Netantyahu.
Such threats are considered a right, an entitlement of the “white” man, something God-given. Even Ban-Ki Moon (Mooney) agrees with that, although not in so many words. Moony does want to be re-elected for another term and he knows the history of Butrus Ghali (Egypt) and Kofi Annan (Ghana).
Even the Wahhabi Salafis agree on that last point, the one of going to war against Iran for looking sideways at Benjamin Netabyahu. They also agree with Rick Santorum and the other GOP clowns about the necessity of another war in the Gulf. As long as they don’t have to fight it (with three or four wives, one has no time for war). They pray for it to some Salafi God of their own, as their royal princes pray for rain, even as they curse the Gods of their “heathen” benefactors whom they want to wage war “on their behalf”.

Who would have thunk life would get so complicated in our region in just a few years.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, NATO, Syria

America Getting Ready to Liberate Syria from Itself: about Iraq and Libya and Maysaloon…….

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“As the violence in Syria spirals out of control, top officials in President Barack Obama’s administration are quietly preparing options for how to assist the Syrian opposition, including gaming out the unlikely option of setting up a no-fly zone in Syria and preparing for another major diplomatic initiative. Critics on Capitol Hill accuse the Obama administration of being slow to react to the quickening deterioration of the security situation in Syria, where more than 5,000 people have died, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. Many lawmakers say the White House is once again “leading from behind,” while the Turks, the French, and the Arab League — which sent an observer mission to Syria this week — pursue more aggressive strategies for pressuring the Assad regime. But U.S. officials insist that they are moving cautiously to avoid destabilizing Syria further…………..”


What is it about Arab opposition groups that they always beg for the West, their former colonial masters, to come back and rescue them from their own local dictators? This is becoming an unfortunate Arab phenomenon. Don’t they remember what happened with the Ottoman Turks and the British and the French? When the Hashemite rulers of Hijaz (original custodians of Mecca and Madinah and Jeddah) sought British help and got more than they bargained for? Do they remember the French and Faisal and Maysaloon?
First some Iraqi groups encouraged Western intervention against their repressive Ba’athist rulers. Then the Libyans did the same against Qaddafi. Now the Syrian ‘opposition’ groups want foreign intervention to liberate them.
Why do other peoples make their own revolution and these Arab “revolutionaries” insist on the easy way: Western forces and warplanes? Why can’t they do as the Tunisians and Egyptian did? Some of the same people who taunted the Iraqis for being “liberated” by Americans and British forces are now begging for American and British and French forces to kill their compatriots and liberate them. Even the Arab Saudi League is now seeking foreign intervention (in Syria but not in Bahrain).
Do you know why the peoples of Bahrain, Yemen, and Qatif don’t ask for foreign intervention against their repressive rulers? Do you know why the democracy-loving West is not offering or contemplating intervening in these countries (at least not on the side of the people)?
Cheers
mhg


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Anti-Semitism, Europe, France, Muslims, NATO, Turkey, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Texas Governor Talking Turkey: Muslims and Terrorism and NATO and Republican Turkeys and Old Hickory…….

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“Well, obviously when you have a country (Turkey) that is being ruled by, what
many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that
type of activity against their own citizens, then yes. Not only is it
time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to
be in NATO, but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their
foreign aid, to go to zero with it.And you go to zero with
foreign aid for all of those countries. And it doesn’t make any
difference who they are. You go to zero with that foreign aid and then
you have the conversation about, do they have America’s best interest in
mind?………..”

That was Texas governor Rick Perry talking Turkey, addressing a hall apparently full of cheering turkeys. Turks would be surprised to hear that their government is Islamic terrorist.
I wrote here once that the Hitler comparison should be banned by a United Nations resolution, and I was half serious. Now I expect Rick Santorum (and fellow right-wingers at AIPAC) to pick up the slack now and call Turkish prime minister Erdogan a new Hitler, thus joining Nasser and Saddam Hussein and Ahmadinejad in the pantheon.
Funny how Hitler was an Austro-German beer-drinking European from a Catholic background, yet Arab and Muslim leaders have the privilege of being exclusively compared to Hitler in the West. Someone like Andrew Jackson (Old Hickory himself) might object, feeling left out, his Trail of (Indian) Tears demeaned. Many Southern (post-Reconstruction) leaders, governors and “famous” U.S. senators, might feel left out as well. With Hitler’s charred remains still warm in Moscow, the French government of newly American-liberated France massacred thousands of Muslim Algerians who wanted either full equality with the white settlers on their land or independence. Europe of the EU is now full of new little leaders that might be carelessly called would be Hitlers, some of them partners in government (Netherlands and that very same Austria). They also aim their fear-mongering and venom toward people that are mostly Semitic. Again.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, France, Iran, NATO, Persian-American Gulf, Syria, US Foreign Policy

BHL d’Arabie: the Liberation of Syria and the Gulf………

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Speaking of the liberation of Syria, whatever happened to Bernard-Henri Lévy? The French pop-philosopher and liberator of Libya has not yet landed in Latakia to rally the opposition against the al-Assad regime. Actually Tartus would be a better spot for him than Latakia. He might be waiting for the opposition to establish their own ‘beachhead’, their own Tripoli (Libyan Tripoli not the Lebanese Salafi-Muslim-Brother Tripoli). Then he can sweep ashore, a la Douglas MacArthur. BHL d’Arabie, Lévy of Arabia!
Or maybe he has a more ambitious target in mind, maybe he is waiting or an opportunity to sweep the shores of the Persian-American (not yet French) Gulf. The liberation of Iran from the mullahs may be his next ambition: to bring down the theocracy and raise the flag or freedom, modernism, Wahhabism, and international oil companies. To drive the last Western nails, figuratively speaking, in the coffins of Mossadegh (nationalizer of oil) and Ayatollah Khomeini. For that goal, he can count on a small army of our Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood cheerleaders (only cheerleading, no fighting, not even puffy pompoms).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab League, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, NATO, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, US Foreign Policy

Shaikh of Qatar and the Liberation of Syria: about a Piss-Up in a Brewery….………..

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Media report that the Emir of Qatar has called for an Arab force to intervene in Syria. Arab forces do not have a good history of intervention in other Arab states, unless they are led by a Western general (or colonel or major). Remember, Europeans (T.E. Lawrence and others higher above him) actually led the “temporary” liberation of Jerusalem and Damascus in WWI. Commanders of regular Arab armies, like Arab leaders in general, can’t organize the proverbial-American ‘piss-up in a brewery’ as far as war is concerned. What they can organize is repression of their peoples, and occasionally of other Arab peoples (as the Saudi princes are doing in Bahrain). If Desert Storm were Arab-led (as some Saudi regime journalists occasionally try to claim), Iraqi Ba’athist forces would still be sitting in Khafji, and most likely beyond.

No, an Arab force in Syria would have as much success as the Arab League observers have had. Not only will both the Syrian regime and the ‘opposition’ run rings around them: it would also be a bloody fiasco. As one example: the Saudi military, armed with the best American weapons that petro-money can buy, could not subdue a small group of Yemeni clans (the Huthis) armed with primitive guns just a couple of years ago. They had to leave in defeat. Imagine what the well-armed Syrians can do to these same forces, led by the same inept princes.

I suspect that some of the Arab oligarchs of the Gulf look toward an eventual Western intervention and “liberation” of Syria. Just as the West liberated Iraq and Libya. That is probably their goal, something they have in common with many leaders of the fractured Syrian ‘opposition’. The people who excoriated the West for ‘liberating’ Iraq, after helping it ‘liberate’ Iraq, now want more of the same. Assuming they will end up in control, a tough thing.
Cheers
mhg


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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, Arab Revolutions, Libya, NATO

New Liberated Libya Receives Absolute Wanted Dictator of Sudan, about Bernard-Henri Lévy…….…

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“Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir met with top Libyan officials in the capital, Tripoli, on Saturday during his first visit to the country since rebels armed with Sudanese help ousted Moammar Gadhafi last year. The visit could herald closer ties between the two nations after years of deteriorating relations under Gadhafi. Sudan had accused Gadhafi of supporting rebels fighting the Sudanese government in the western Darfur region, and al-Bashir openly supported Libyan rebels in the 2011 uprising, giving them weapons and money. Following lunch with al-Bashir at an upscale Tripoli hotel, Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib said he considered the Sudanese leader among Libya’s friends. Some, however, pointed out the irony of a government founded by rebels who overthrew one autocrat warmly welcoming another……….”

Okay, the former late evil dictator Qaddafi was supporting the Darfur rebels against the regime in Khartoum. Now his NATO-liberated successors are feting the very same Khartoum regime.
French pop-philosopher and occasional thinker Bernard–Henri Lévy is given credit, or is taking credit, for the liberation of Libya by the West. The Liberation of Libya by the West was much easier than the liberation of Iraq by the West. He has practically promised that the New Libya will be kosher (speaking democratically). Yet one of the first leaders the new regime in Tripoli receives is a dictator wanted by the Interpol. Maybe Omar al-Bashir has made his own peace with the “international community”, aka the West, because we read nothing about trying to bring him to justice. But what is the price?

Al-Bashir, in power for over 25 years, has offered to help Libya create a new army out of the various militias.…. Oy vey, as they never say in Riyadh or Doha (not unless they convert from Wahhabism to something else).
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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