Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Cairo, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey

Syria and Iraq and the Arabs: the New Iranian-Turkish Regional Rivalry………….

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“President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls for dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition and urges the government to respect people’s rights. “We are of the opinion that that nations and governments should resolve their problems with each other (through dialogue),” Ahmadinejad tells Portugal’s Radiotelevisao Portuguesa when asked about Iran’s position toward uprisings in Syria. Ahmadinejad adds, “Governments and nations should respect rights and freedom.”……….” Mehr News Agency (Iran)

“Iran criticizes Turkey for agreeing to host NATO’s missile defense system, saying Iran does not expect Turkey as a neighbor and friendly country to adopt policies that would create tension in the region. “We expect our friendly countries and neighbors to show more vigilance and by considering the region’s security interests do not pave the way for policies that create tension that will definitely lead to ‘complicated consequences’,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast says. Turkey has recently agreed to host an early warning radar as part of NATO’s missile defense system which is allegedly aimed to counter missile threats by Iran. Mehmanparast says Iran believes the deployment radar system in Turkey will not serve “regional stability and security” even for the host country……….” Mehr News Agency

These two news items from Iran reflect newly reshuffled cards in the game of musical chairs in our region. There is no doubt now that the Iranians are bracing for change in Syria. Even if the protests in Syrian cities are crushed, regimes like the Ba’ath one in Syria are considered an anomaly now (as are other regimes, but that is for another post). Change is coming and not just in Syria, but whether it is ‘change you can believe in’ depends on your view and your politics.
The Iranians have looked at the players in Syria and probably decided to get ready for any eventuality. It is likely that they have decided to adopt their own Syrian faction: everyone else seems to have their own “Islamist” factions in Syria these days. Sect is not an issue when it comes to politics: the Iranian mullahs are not as ‘pure’ as the Wahhabi potentates in Saudi Arabia, or maybe they can’t afford to be that pure given the demographics of most countries in the region by sect. They may be getting ready to throw the secular Ba’ath regime under the bus, hoping for another “Hamas”. What favors this tack is that the mullahs also know that they have one important card in Syria no matter who comes to power in Damascus: the Golan Heights. The Likud or Kadima will never give up the Golan, which means any new Damascus regime will probably keep its Iranian (and hence its Lebanese) options open. The Iranians invented the game of chess and that is how they play the regional politics, yet they are not immune to the unrest.
Then there is Turkey, which had been sympathetic to the Iranian position on the nuclear issue. Until now. The Arab Spring has reshuffled the regional cards and created new opportunities, and it is not done yet. Silent and latent rivalries, dating back to the Persian-Ottoman struggle over Arab territories like Iraq, are warming up. This is exacerbated by the total paralysis of the Arab system and the inability of the Arab oligarchs to shape events in the region. Despite the billions spent on weapons and on international networking, the region’s fate is still determined by three non-Arab parties and the West. Egypt may regain its pre-Mubarak role as a major regional player, as “the” Arab player, but that depends on how things develop in Cairo. The Iranian-Turkish rivalry in Iraq is more commercial than political since the Iranians seem to have an overwhelming political and cultural and geographic advantage. The Iranian hand in Iraq has been strengthened by the loud disapproval of some Arab regimes of the new order in Iraq.
Syria is another matter: it is a smaller and poorer country. But Syria also has its own issue with Turkey: the small region of Alexandretta that the Syrians claim should be theirs.
When the dust settles on this new Arab Spring, and that may be a few years from now, what we shall see will most likely be quite different from what we now expect. This also includes developments inside Iran.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Culture, Mercenaries, UAE, Weapons deals, WTF

UAE: Politics, Devilish Violent Crimes, Generals and Potentates with Missiles……..

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The following were recent headlines of the “Courts” page of a daily newspaper in the United Arab Emirates:


  • “Man says devil made him molest girl”
  • “
    Boys accused of raping man”

  • “Fake officer kidnapped, raped woman, court told”

  • “Army clerk forged signature of Chief of Armed Forces, court told”

  • “Student claims cousin raped her”

  • “Former footballer appeals against conviction in Dh5.5m citizenship scam”  

  • “Man threatened to drink woman’s blood, court told. She says he was trying to force his way into her apartment”

  • “Woman charged with illicit sex says partner was husband”

These are all ‘exotic’ crimes by any standard I can think of. This is what happens when there are no real politics to keep them busy, as in the UAE. The next most exciting thing apparently is violent sex and murder and robbery. Which reminds me: there is even less politics in Saudi Arabia, and I wonder what their police reports are like.

As for that army clerk who forged a general’s signature: I hope he has no access to all those fancy missiles the Abu Dhabi has been buying from around the world. The UAE is the second largest importer of weapons in the whole wide world and aims to be the first largest importer of weapons in the whole wide world. The import-deprived Iranian IRGC generals probably drool every time they read about all these advanced Western goodies landing in the warehouses of Abu Dhabi (I assume the mullahs also drool, just like all clergy including the Catholics). Now we don’t want some dipshit army clerk to start a missile war across the Gulf, do we? Only dipshit generals and potentates should be able to start a missile war.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, Britain, Corruption, Libya

In Libya: “New” Labor and the Fog of Deceit, about Ahmadinejad…..

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“The startling extent to which Labour misled the world over the controversial release of the Lockerbie bomber is exposed today in top-secret documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday. In public, senior Ministers from the last Labour Government and the Scottish First Minister have repeatedly insisted that terminally ill Abdelbaset Al Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds in a decision taken by Scottish Ministers alone. But the confidential papers show that Westminster buckled under pressure from Colonel Gaddafi, who threatened to ignite a ‘holy war’ if Megrahi died in his Scottish cell. And despite repeated denials, the Labour Government worked frantically behind the scenes to appease Gaddafi’s ‘unpredictable nature’. As recently as last month, a spokesman for Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond was insisting: ‘The decision was taken on the basis of Scots law and was not influenced by economic, political or diplomatic factors.’ Equally damaging, the documents also suggest that as well as sharing intelligence-gathering techniques, Britain gave Libya hundreds of suggested questions for Islamic militants detained in Libya in 2004. This will inevitably cause widespread dismay because of the regime’s systematic use of >torture during interrogation………..”

Now why can’t the Iranians use the same system of blackmail to get their way? They have more oil and a hell of a lot more natural gas. They say Tony Blair “helped” Qaddafi’s son get a PhD from the London School of Economics. Hell, Tony Blair may even help Mahmoud Ahmadinejad get a second PhD, this time in “statecraft” instead of Science. Or better yet: a PhD on how to behave after leaving office.
(The Libyan NTC is doing the right thing in refusing hypocritical demands of some Western, mainly American, politicians that al-Megrahi be send back to Britain. A deal is a deal: you guys shook on it).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, Britain, Corruption, Libya

Qaddafi and his Friends, the Rendition of Tony Blair…….

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“Many of the papers demonstrate the warmth of the relationship between Britain and Libya and, in particular, the extraordinarily close links between the Blair Government and the Gaddafi regime…
• Tony Blair helped Colonel Gaddafi’s playboy son Saif with his ‘dodgy’ PhD thesis while he was Prime Minister.
• British Special Forces were offered to train the Khamis Brigade, Gaddafi’s most vicious military unit.
• MI6 was apparently willing to trace phone numbers for Libyan intelligence.
• Gordon Brown wrote warmly to Gaddafi in 2007 expressing the hope that the dictator would be able to meet Prince Andrew when he visited Tripoli.
• Britain’s intelligence services forged close links with Gaddafi’s brutal security units.
Megrahi was released two years ago and transferred back to Libya. ………”

They ought to rendition Tony Blair somewhere, perhaps to Cheney’s spread in Wyoming(?) or the Halliburton compound in the UAE, where he can be water-boarded into telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help him Gordon Brown. Speaking of the PhD of Sais al-Islam Qaddafi, many Western leaders deserve PhDs in deceit.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Politics, Iraq

Iraqi Politics: Strange Leadership, Passing the Buck Iraqiya Style………

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“Iraqiya Slate said that it has submitted to the Presidency names of its nominees for the post of Defence Minister. Iraqiya’s spokeswoman, Maysoun al-Damaluji told NINA on Thursday, Sep. 1, “Iraqiya Slated submitted to the Presidency the names of 9-10 nominees for the post of Defence Minister to put an end to the argument and put an end to the issue. But she did not announce the names and whether they are new or include previous nominees. She pointed out that all the names mentioned by the media are not true, they reflect their opinion…….”

The Iraqiya bloc (of Allawi and former Ba’athists) submitted TEN names as candidates for Defense Minister. Imagine being asked for “a” and candidate and submitting TEN! What a fucked-up system of leadership decision-making is that? This only means the al-Iraqiya bloc could not decide who to nominate: they handed the problem up to the prime minister. If they can’t decide whom to nominate, how did they expect to rule Iraq?
(Iraqi politics are odd, odder than even the Republican Tea Party politics in America).
Cheers
mhg


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Culture, Iran, Muslims, Religion, Saudi Arabia

Silly Iranians, a Politicized End of Ramadan, and the Age of Aquarius……….

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“The Jeddah Astronomy Society’s mistake in sighting of the new moon in Saudi Arabia has angered the many Muslim nations who followed suit and pronounced Tuesday as Eid al-Fitr wrongly.
The society had said that people actually saw the planet Saturn and not the crescent moon that marks the beginning of the Islamic month of Shawwal. Hatem Auda, director of the National Institute for Astronomical and Geophysical Research, had said that astronomical calculations by scientists of the institute noted that the first day of the Eid was Wednesday, August 31, making Tuesday, August 30 the last day of Ramadan for the Hijri year of 1432. Various news agencies such as Al-Arabiya and Aljazeera have also reported that the planet Saturn has been mistaken for the Hilal (crescent moon), and this means that what was announced as the first day of Eid al-Fitr was supposed to be a day of fasting, rather than celebrations…………Thus, those Muslim nations who have followed the Saudi suit as usual and celebrated the last Tuesday as Eid al-Fitr are now angry with the Saudis as Eid al-Fitr is the biggest eve for the worldwide Muslim community………..” Fars News Agency

All this talk of the moon, Saturn, Jovian planets, Terrestrial planets, and the Age of Aquarius is meaningless to most people. I think the Iranians are being silly here, nearly childish. They are politicizing the end of Ramadan and beginning of Eid al-Fitr. I don’t know if the Saudis made a mistake or not, but I can tell an Iranian attempt to score political points. The mullahs ought to lighten up.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia

Petro- Elections of Pakistan and Elsewhere……..

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“KARACHI: ISI asked Saudi Arabia not to fund Nawaz Sharif for his election campaign, a secret cable of 2008 revealed. According to WikiLeaks, National Security Adviser Tariq Aziz told Asif Zardari that after being elected as a prime minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi could challenge his authority, as Zardari was considering Qureshi as a PPP candidate for prime minister. Aziz told US Ambassador Anne Patterson on February 15 that Saudi Arabia has provided heavy funds to Nawaz Sharif for his election campaign in order to defeat Pakistan Peoples’ Party. In the same meeting, he also told Patterson that ISI requested Saudi Ambassador to stop funding Nawaz Sharif. ………..” Pakistan is a huge country, population wise. The Saudis must have spent multiple what they spent (and still do) in Lebanon and Iraq and other places for election and coup campaigns. Reports indicate they outspent the Iranians, actually swamped them, in terms of spending in the last Lebanese elections (they did get to control the parliament, briefly). I bet they will have to spend much more in Egypt in the coming elections. Then there is Libya, whenever it ever gets to elections (NTC promises to hold them in 2013), and Syria if it ever gets to having elections. Of course there is still Saudi Arabia (aka Arabian Peninsula): if they ever decide to hold opsn elections, sometime on the other side of doomsday……
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions

German Cows Catch Arab Spring Fever, May Return Favor……….

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“German animal rights activists captured a runaway dairy cow named Yvonne on Friday, three months after her escape from the farm where she was to be slaughtered captured nationwide attention. The bovine had become a media star, with helicopters and infrared used in a search across the southern state of Bavaria after she bolted in front of a police car. Authorities from Muehldorf, the town near the farm where she broke through an electric fence, had deemed Yvonne a security risk after her encounter with the squad car and had given hunters permission to gun her down. Activists from the Gut Aiderbichl animal sanctuary had tried to lure Yvonne from a forest where she was holed up with a variety of enticements — including one of her calves at one point and a breeding bull named Ernst. Capturing the cow was not easy………….”

I am sure glad the German cow’s break for freedom did not precede the Arab uprisings. Otherwise, it would be said that our region is finally learning to revolt against repression, from a cow, albeit a German cow. The uprisings in most Arab states preceded the Cow’s insurrection: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, even a mini-uprising in Oman. That leaves one large Arab state, among others, that has had no uprising there. Which can only mean one of two: either they are content with the way things are or, some misguided heretics may argue, it takes more than one German cow to teach them.
Cheers
mhg


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Iraq, US Foreign Policy, WTF

Ayad Allawi: How the U.S. Can Help me Again? Harold Stassen of Iraq………..

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“As the Arab Spring drives change across our region, bringing the hope of democracy and reform to millions of Arabs, less attention is being paid to the plight of Iraq and its people. We were the first to transition from dictatorship to democracy, but the outcome in Iraq remains uncertain. Our transition could be a positive agent for progress, and against the forces of extremism, or a dangerous precedent that bodes ill for the region and the international community. Debate rages in Baghdad and Washington around conditions for a U.S. troop extension beyond the end of this year. While such an extension may be necessary, that alone will not address the fundamental problems festering in Iraq. Those issues present a growing risk to Middle East stability and the world community. The original U.S. troop “surge” was meant to create the atmosphere for national political reconciliation and the rebuilding of Iraq’s institutions and infrastructure. But those have yet to happen. ……..”
He closes his piece with this: “Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister of Iraq, leads the largest political bloc in Iraq’s Parliament……” If this was true, why isn’t he the prime minister?
 
Mr. Allawi is ‘hinting’ that if he were PM, the SOFA would be extended, perhaps strengthened, even as he says it is not the ‘main’ issue. Mr. Allawi is inviting the West, especially the USA, to intervene even more deeply in Iraqi politics again. He is inviting the West to intervene in Iraq for his benefit. He even talks of the Arab Spring, even as his “Arabian” patrons are busy with their counter-revolution against the Arab Spring. Spoken like a true self-serving Ba’athist, if only a former Ba’athist.
Mr. Allawi should just go away, spend more of his time visiting his patrons, flying between Abu Dhabi, Manama, Riyadh, Amman, Damascus, and Cairo (sorry, scratch Damascus and Cairo). He is becoming the Harold Stassen (look him up) of Iraqi politics.
(This is definitely not an endorsement of the current Iraqi government or parliament. It is barely less corrupt than most Arab potentates. That corruption also includes Allawi’s political allies in Iraq).
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Arab Politics, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Syria

Al Qaeda in Lebanon: Who Killed Hariri? Who Really Knows? Who Really Cares?…………

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“In focusing entirely on the alleged links between four Hezbollah activists and the 2005 bombing that killed Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the indictment issued by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon earlier this month has continued the practice of the U.N investigation before it of refusing to acknowledge the much stronger evidence that an Al-Qaeda cell was responsible for the assassination. Several members of an Al-Qaeda cell confessed in 2006 to having carried out the crime, but later recanted their confessions, claiming they were tortured. However, the transcript of one of the interrogations, which was published by a Beirut newspaper in 2007, shows that the testimony was being provided without coercion and that it suggested that Al-Qaeda had indeed ordered the assassination. But the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) was determined to pin the crime either on Syria or its Lebanese ally Hezbollah and refused to pursue the Al-Qaeda angle…………”

An interesting angle introduced about the Hariri assassination. This adds yet more “parties of interest” to the whole tedious boring saga. Let’s see what we have now:


  • Originally Syria was accused and convicted in (some) media of the assassination in 2005. That created pressure on the Syrian regime to evacuate its forces from Lebanon (they had overstayed their welcome anyway). For some time the Syrian angle was the one pushed by the March 14 right-wing Lebanese bloc and by the Saudi and Israeli and Western media. Hariri allies went all over Western media swearing that the Syrians were behind the assassinations.
  •  
  • In 2006 the war between Israel and Lebanon (actually Hezbollah) erupted. The Israelis, who usually trounce regular Arab armies easily, were humiliated for the second time in six years by an Arab guerrilla army.

  • The West started to cozy up to the Assad regime in Syria in recent years (before the Arab Spring and Summer). The Saudi King visited Damascus and he and Assad flew together into Beirut.  They looked almost sweet together.

  • Lo and behold, suddenly news leaked that in fact it was not Syria that was being suspected, not anymore. It was Hezbollah or more accurately some Hezbollah officials who were suspected of the assassination of Hariri. Some reports in Middle East right-wing media even threw in the names of Iranian leaders like Khamenei and others as possible suspects.

  • Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah hinted, nay strongly suggested, that the Israelis may have been behind the assassination. He noted that Israel stood to gain the most from it (getting the Syrians out of Lebanon, dividing the Lebanese, dividing the Arabs to the extent that some regimes supported Israel in the war of 2006).

  • Now al-Qaeda is being introduced as yet another suspect.

  • Most Lebanese seem to have lost faith in the Hariri tribunal and think, probably quite rightly, that it is being used as a political tool. Now where would they get this idea?

  • Most Arabs, those who care at all, look at the tribunal through the prism of their own political (and sectarian) inclinations. These are the Arabs of the East, of the Asian side: Lebanon, Syria, and the Gulf GCC states. These are the Arab regions were sectarian passions are strong.

  • The other Arabs (Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, North Africa, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti) don’t give a rat’s ass about the whole Hariri STL thing.

  • Who killed Hariri and so many others who were nearby in 2005? I haven’t the foggiest idea. But I do suspect one thing: the STL tribunal may not know anymore than I do. Possibly only the killers know.
  • (No, Hugo Chavez had nothing to do with it).

Cheers
mhg


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Multidisciplinary: Middle East, North Africa, Gulf, GCC, World, Cosmos…..