Category Archives: US Foreign Policy

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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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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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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Human Right, Israel, Middle East, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Amnesty & NDAA, AIPAC-USA and the Middle East………….

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“Despite expressing serious reservations, the Obama administration has paved the way for legislation that will authorize indefinite detention. The bill places enormous power in the hands of future Presidents, and the only answer the President has is to say “trust me.” “Once any government has the authority to hold people indefinitely, the risk is that it can be almost impossible to rein such power in. President Obama has failed to take the one action – a veto – that would have blocked the dangerous provisions in the NDAA. In so doing, he has allowed human rights to be further undermined and given Al Qaeda a propaganda victory.”……… Amnesty International

He said, “Trust me”: famous last words? . Yet will he be in power a year and two weeks from now? Or will it be the Likudniks and Salafis of the Republican Party?
Mr. Obama is increasingly offering the people who supported him a ‘sort of’ Hobson’s Choice: accept this thing as it is or just live with it as it is. The Obama administrations is more like the Kadima of Ariel Sharon and Tzipi Livni as compared to the Likud of Netanyahu and Yisrael Beitenu of Lieberman (Avigdor not Joe). It has to show that it is as “tough” as the hardliners by bowing and buckling to the hardliners, which makes it seem not so tough after all.
For the Middle East it is like the difference between the frying pan and the fire since both American parties have contracted out (the term du jour is outsourced) their Middle East foreign policy to Netanyahu, Lieberman, and the Israeli Likud coalition. The next U.S. president may be the first ever to nominate a political lobbying organization for secretary of state: AIPAC.
Cheers
mhg


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Corruption, GCC, Muslims, religious police, Salafi, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Congress, US Foreign Policy

ANHRI: Saudi Religious Police Celebrate New Year’s, Santa Claus at Large…….

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“ANHRI condemns the ongoing severe deterioration of freedoms in Saudi Arabia, as well as the arbitrary detentions of citizens and expatriates. Most recently, the Saudi Morality Police detained an expatriate in Riyadh in the New Year’s Eve as he was walking on a street holding balloons on which it was written “happy new year 2012″. It is forbidden to celebrate this holiday in Saudi Arabia, and thus the Morality Police arrested him and handed him over to the competent authorities for investigation. The balloons have been seized. Severe restraints are imposed on freedoms in Saudi Arabia, as international organizations say that the authorities continue to detain dozens of people without a charge or trial. Torture and other forms of ill-treatment while in custody are widespread. Non-Muslims are still not allowed to practice their rituals publicly. Shiites are continuously suffering from discrimination. Expatriate workers and their families are deprived of their most basic rights. “Saudi Arabia is on top of the list of countries hostile to freedoms which use repression in the name of religion. The policy Saudi Arabia pursues is nothing but a desperate apparatus that will not work out, the same way it did not with other despotic regimes in the Arab world when the winds of change and freedom crossed over them. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia apparently has not learned the lesson” said ANHRI……………”

You’d think New Year’s or Christmas are Shi’a (Shiite) religious holidays, the way the Wahhabi Salafi religious police crack down on them. Yet these are the main holidays of the allies of the Saudi princes, the ones with whom they share such cherished (at least by me if not by the current U.S. Congress) American values as freedom and justice and equality. I suspect if
Prince Whatishisface were not a Wahhabi Muslim, he’d be given a standing
ovation in the U.S. Congress for sharing American values. I mean after a
hustler and serial bull-shitter like Bibi Netanyahu was granted the
honor last year, who is left?
That is not all: the baboons have also regularly raided private homes where “the wrong” people celebrate these occasions privately. “Wrong people” means people of little or no means and influence in the Kingdom without Magic (you can get beheaded for having anything to do with magic or maybe even Disney). Yet the religious cops of the Commission for the Propagation of Vice (affectionately called the Haia by the princes) turn a blind eye to “not-so-private” parties by the potentates where alcohol flows like water does outside the Arabian Peninsula, where alcohol is not the only thing flowing freely.
In December, the country’s top Muslim cleric and mufti Shaikh Abdel-Aziz bin Abdullah Al Al Shaikh, aka Al, fatwad that all celebrations of the New Year, birthdays and marriage anniversary are un-Islamic (aka un-Wahhabi). He did not, however, fatwa against observing the King.s anniversary.
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Finance, Terrorism, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

What Terrorism: Waffen-SS, USA?………..

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“Fargo treasures its placid lifestyle, seldom pierced by the mayhem and violence common in other urban communities. North Dakota’s largest city has averaged fewer than two homicides a year since 2005, and there’s not been a single international terrorism prosecution in the last decade. But that hasn’t stopped authorities in Fargo and its surrounding county from going on an $8 million buying spree to arm police officers with the sort of gear once reserved only for soldiers fighting foreign wars. Every city squad car is equipped today with a military-style assault rifle, and officers can don Kevlar helmets able to withstand incoming fire from battlefield-grade ammunition. And for that epic confrontation—if it ever occurs—officers can now summon a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. For now, though, the menacing truck is used mostly for training and appearances at the annual city picnic, where it’s been parked near the children’s bounce house. “Most people are so fascinated by it, because nothing happens here,” says Carol Archbold, a Fargo resident and criminal justice professor at North Dakota State University. “There’s no terrorism here.”………………”

I don’t think they are all worried about some Texan used car dealer of Iranian origin coming to town with the mexican drug cartel in tow, hellbent on blowing up a Saudi minion in Fargo, ND (I loved that film). Do you?

It is all about the money, honey. A lot of money is being spent on expensive weapons that are not, will not, be needed in most townships. Weapons manufacturers, and their lobbyists, and some lawmakers, are doing quite well, thank you very much. Meanwhile American police forces are going around playing the Waffen-SS, practically raiding the equivalent of shoplifters with assault weapons.
National security my eyes.
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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Arab Counterrevoltion, GCC, Gulf states, Salafi, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy

Funny GCC Confederation : a Salafi Fifth Column, Princes Playing Saddam……..

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“King Abdullah said on Monday the security of Saudi Arabia and its Arab neighbors was being targeted, in an apparent reference to regional rival Iran, and he called for Gulf Arab states to close ranks in a “single entity.” “No doubt you all know that we are targeted in our safety and security. That is why we have to take responsibility,” he said, addressing the opening session of a meeting of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in the Saudi capital Riyadh………… A Saudi official confirmed to Reuters that the idea of moving the six-nation GCC towards a sort of confederacy had been discussed given its concerns about the regional situation, but only informally, and said that it was an idea for the future. “It is possible,” said Jamal Khashoggi, a former Saudi newspaper editor with strong connections to the royal family. “Each country has a different system and it would require political will,” he added, suggesting that a possible model was the United Arab Emirates, a GCC member and confederacy where seven sheikhdoms maintain their own internal political systems but have a joint foreign and economic policy……….”

Saudi fifth columnists in some of the Gulf media, especially the Salafis and some of the local Ikhwan, have been calling for a confederation of the GCC for some time. They mean a Saudi takeover of the smaller Gulf states. Something Saddam wanted to do even before 1990. The parts of the Arabian Peninsula that old King Ibn Saud could not conquer in the last century for fear of the British are now being tempted by his weaker corrupt sons; tempted with fear of some “Iranian threat”. The Saudis already have Bahrain in their grasp. As soon as the Saudi king’s usually garbled speech came out, the Salafi fifth column in my hometown were out supporting it in statements.
It will not work, of course. Other rulers don’t want to give up their power to the fellow kelptocrats of the al-Saud princes (the al-Khalifa of Bahrain may be the only exception). The peoples of the other countries certainly don’t want to be ruled by these decrepit regressive princes or their Wahhabi palace shaikhs. With the exception of the Salafis who often act as Saudi agents and some of the local Ikhwan Muslim Brothers.
Ain’t gonna happen. The Kingdom without Magic is not exactly France or Germany or Holland. Its neighbors realize, silently, that its rulers are probably more dangerous than the Iranian mullahs are supposed to be.
Cheers
mhg


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Ali Khamenei, Iran, OPEC, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

A Saudi Iranian Kiss? No Frenching Fundamentalists there………

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“Oil policy was often divorced from the wider politics of the region, analysts said, with one observing that “the Iranians have been trying very hard to please the Saudis right now”. Iran appears eager not to further antagonise Saudi Arabia at a time when Tehran is coming under increasing international pressure over its nuclear programme. Tehran’s main concern appears to be to discourage Riyadh from facilitating an expected European oil embargo by promising to make up for lost production. The Islamic republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, earlier this week sent Heydar Moslehi, the intelligence chief, to Saudi Arabia for a rare meeting with its interior minister, Prince Nayef……..”

They can kiss all they want, the Iranians and the Saudis, but it will never develop into a deep tongue-twisting body-tingling French kiss. Not of the kind they have with their respective allies. Not of the kind George W. Bush used to have with King Abdullah.
Cheers
mhg


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