“”We believe that Khamenei allowed Rohani to be elected in order to become Iran’s ‘pretty face‘”. Also sprach Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. That may be so. On the other hand, that evokes the expected inevitable comparison. Which is that: what is even more certain is that most people in the Middle East believe that Benyamin Netanyahu is Israel’s ‘ugly face’. Has been for several years (there might be a few secret exceptions to this opinion among some princes and potentates in recent months). Amend that: most people around the world including many in official Washington believe that Netanyahu is Israel’s ugly face. With the exception of his fans and groupies in both parties in both houses of the U.S. Congress.
“U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, are also all warily watching the unfolding agreement in Geneva. The U.S. has forged close alliances with these countries over the past three decades in an effort to create a bulwark against Iran in the Middle East. Washington has showered billions of dollars of sophisticated weapons on the Gulf nations and stationed key U.S. naval and air assets there. Bahrain, Qatar, and the U.A.E. have also developed successful financial and trade centers in the Gulf, fueled, in part, by Iran’s isolation from international economy. A detente between Washington and Iran could significantly shake up Washington’s security calculations in the Mideast and challenge these countries’ long-term interests, according to regional diplomats. This, in part, explains these Gulf Arab states’ strong pushback against the Obama administration’s diplomacy………………….”
Strong pushback against the Obama administration’s “diplomacy”. Which means some of these Gulf princes in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and the lesser potentates in Bahrain were hoping for the alternative to diplomacy. And what is the alternative to diplomacy but war? These absolute tribal oligarchs are getting bold: they must feel entitled to American wars in support of their sectarian agenda. They, and their Wahhabi and Salafi allies, were counting on yet another American war, this time against the mullahs. A war they are incapable of waging themselves, even with the most expensive most-advanced weapons that money and commissions and bribes can buy. Their secret last white hope used to be hitched to the warlike bluster and bluff of Netanyahu, but by now they probably realize that without an American commitment to war it is just that: bluff and bluster.
“Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. have also strongly criticized the U.S. backing away from expected military strikes in August against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Arab diplomats believed such strikes could have helped topple Mr. Assad, Iran’s closest ally in the region. Instead, the U.S. and Russia forged a deal with the Syrian government to dismantle its chemical-weapons program, which the Saudis and Emiratis now fear is providing Mr. Assad with new legitimacy………………”
Oh boy. The democratically-elected princes and potentates of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi worry about the legitimacy of Bashar Al-Assad.
FYI: most Arab leaders are illegitimate. I probably mean that only in political terms of governing. After all, when were the last elections, free or otherwise, held in Saudi Arabia and a few other places?
“As soon as the Obama administration reaches an anticipated deal with Iran over its nuclear program, it will face a new challenge that threatens to strangle the accord in its crib: the inevitable attempts on Capitol Hill to impose new economic sanctions on Tehran. Expectations are high in Washington that John Kerry, the secretary of state, will announce a limited, short-term deal with Iran, following his unexpected arrival in Geneva on Friday to participate in negotiations. Yet the White House was quick to say that it is resolved to “protecting the broader architecture of the sanctions program,” as deputy press secretary Josh Earnest put it on Friday………….”
So the White House is “resolved to protecting the broader architecture of the sanctions program,” That was probably said to placate both houses of the Knesset in Washington. So what will any deal be about then? I have an idea, a solution of two parts: (1) the White House will seek to protect the broader architecture of the sanctions program, and (2) the Iranians will seek to protect the broader architecture of their nuclear program. Cheers
mhg
“Saudi Arabia is preparing to spend millions of dollars to arm and train thousands of Syrian militiamen in a new opposition force dubbed ‘Army of Islam’ to fight the national military, The Guardian daily reported Thursday. Citing Syrian, Arab and western sources, the UK newspaper said the intensifying Saudi effort is focused on Jaysh al-Islam (the Army of Islam or JAI), created in late September by a union of 43 Syrian groups. According the article, the JAI will be trained with Pakistani help, and estimates of its likely strength range from 5,000 to more than 50,000. But diplomats and experts warned on Thursday that there are serious doubts about its prospects as well as fears of “blowback” by extremists returning from Syria…………”
The Saudis also demanded that all “other” countries, like Iran and Russia, stop meddling in Syrian affairs. The idea is for this new Wahhabi army to recreate the glory days of Afghanistan, starting with the 1980s. Financed by Saudi princes and Emirati potentates, armed by the Western powers, trained by Pakistan’s ruling military generals of the ISI. Does this remind you of anything, perhaps a Wahhabi blast from the past that created the Taliban and Al-Qaeda?
“In the wake of a forensics report claiming that Yasser Arafat was killed by radioactive material, the Palestinian committee investigating his death accused Israel on Friday of poisoning the Palestinian leader. Speaking at a news conference in Ramallah about the findings of Swiss and Russian experts who conducted tests on Arafat’s remains after exhuming his body last November, Tawfik Tirawi, head of the Palestinian committee, said reports from both groups confirmed that Arafat did not die of old age, illness or natural causes, but that he was poisoned……………”
By the time he died, Yasser Arafat was not a threat to Israel, if he ever was much of a threat. Before his death he was not a threat to anyone except some other Palestinian leaders. Does anybody outside Ramallah believe this new charge? Okay, does anybody outside Ramallah and the Arab League bureaucracy believe this? You would be surprised. It is a good thing they did not point the finger to his widow. Come to think of it………
“”A deal with Iran would be like discovering your partner of many years is cheating on you with someone he or she claims they hate,” said a senior Arab official from a U.S. ally in the region..………..” Now, why do I think the idiotic foreign minister of Bahrain, Al-Khalifa, is the most likely potentate to have made that stupid comment? Of course, we have no shortage of other idiotic potentates in the region……..
“Now it is mainly rebel-held Syria that is a no-go zone for outside reporters. War correspondents can generally weather violence. But it is another matter if you have a high chance of being snatched at gunpoint by rebel groups that are supposed to protect you. One jihadist internet site has urged fighters to nab all journalists, whom they sometimes accuse of being spies; foreign aid workers are also being targeted. At least 16 foreign and 60 local journalists are currently missing, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF in French), a Paris-based lobby. Many more cases go unpublicised, sometimes at the request of victims’ families. (RSF also notes that at least 25 professional journalists and 70 “citizen” ones have so far been killed in the conflict.) The regime has taken advantage of this. It has become more generous with visas for Western journalists, favouring those sympathetic to its claims to be resisting foreign meddling………..”
“Nine Lebanese hostages freed after being held by Syrian rebels for more than a year arrived to a tumultuous welcome in Beirut late Saturday, capping a complex deal that also resulted in the release of two Turkish pilots kidnapped in Lebanon and the reported freeing of scores of prisoners from Syrian jails. About an hour after the nine ex-hostages were mobbed by relatives and other well-wishers at a VIP lounge at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport, images on Turkish television showed an aircraft carrying the two Turkish Airlines pilots arriving at Istanbul Ataturk Airport. The Lebanese had been flown from Istanbul to Beirut, while the Turks were whisked off by jet in the opposite direction, from Beirut to Istanbul…………….”
So the Syrian rebel sectarian militias kidnapped a bunch of Lebanese Shi’s pilgrims in Syria, called them Hezbollah fighters, and held them hostage. Some of the Syrian rebels factions have become better at kidnapping than at fighting. So some Lebanese Shi’a clans went straight to the source, they kidnapped a couple of innocent Turkish pilots, on the assumption that Turkey is allied to the Syrian rebels and has leverage over them. This turns out to have been the correct, if cruel and illegal, thing to do to get the desired result. One kidnapping, one crime, does not justify another, but apparently it does in the Eastern Mediterranean. Cheers
mhg
“During the Dust Bowl years of the ’30s, Jackson reminded, the monoculture crops died but the polyculture prairie, with its diverse ecosystem, survived. What is going on in the Arab world today, I argued, is a relentless push, also funded by fossil fuels, for more monocultures. It’s Al Qaeda trying to “purify” the Arabian Peninsula. It’s Shiites and Sunnis, each funded by oil money, trying to purge the other in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon…………. The same is true of the Republican Party in America today. Tea Party conservatives funded by the Koch brothers and other fossil-fuel donors are trying to wipe out whatever is left of the Republican Party’s polyculture and turn it into a monoculture. When Senate Republicans last week first offered their compromise proposal to end the shutdown………….. It’s striking how much the Tea Party wing of the G.O.P. has adopted the tactics of the P.O.G. — “Party of God” — better known as Hezbollah. For years, Lebanese Shiites were represented by the mainstream Amal party. But in the 1980s, a more radical Shiite militia emerged from the war with Israel: Hezbollah. Under the leadership of Hassan Nasrallah………………”
Clearly Thomas Friedman is still pissed that his 2009 post-election prognostication for Lebanon proved quite wrong (as I predicted at the time). His obsession with Hezbollah continues. His love affair with the Saudi faction in Lebanon, as represented by the Hariri March 14 and NowLebanon, continues. He does overlook the growing Salafi al-Qaeda threat in Lebanon, helped along and financed and armed by March 14 and its Saudi paymasters. But this is breathtaking, this mix of Dust Bowl history with Hezbollah and the Tea Party and the Koch Brothers. Now if Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas and other Godly places) were a bit fatter, just a bit fatter, with a shaggy beard and a turban, and had a Lebanese accent…………. BTW: whatever happened to the wise Arab taxi driver that advises Friedman on Middle East affairs? Where is Abed (or Abdu) in all this? Cheers
mhg
