Middle East News 3

[coyote]

We can always hope. -- I really wonder what the hell they were thinking when they picked this loon for the papacy.

"Let's choose someone old and wrinkly, and if it turns out to be the wrong choice, chances are we won't have to cope with him for too long."

Of course it is always possible that the old and wrinkly guy is surprisingly healthy, and the younger guy dies 33 days later...

 

[Prime Junta]

Hey, Corwin -- I did some research, and you're wrong. Benedict IV isn't the Antichrist. John Paul II is. He's about to claw his way back out of his marble sepulcher, get himself re-elected Pope (or does he actually need re-election? I wonder what RCC canonical law says about undead primates?) and then start the Millennium. Read all 'bout it here: [ http://worldslastchance.com/article...ll-be-a-devil-impersonating-john-paul-ii.html ]

 

[Rithrandil]

The video for the presentation I went to on Iran is up, for those interested: http://www.cnponline.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/13209

 

[Pladio]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1085619.html

Very good read.
I'm still reading, but if anyone wants to offer their opinions or thoughts on it.

PJ, you're good at analysing stuff, so...

 

[Rithrandil]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1085619.html

Very good read.
I'm still reading, but if anyone wants to offer their opinions or thoughts on it.

PJ, you're good at analysing stuff, so...

Interesting. It's pretty much what I thought - that Israel could attack Iran, but even if they carried out the attack perfectly there's still not a great chance of it slowing/stopping the Iranian program and it would have blowback of epic proportions.

 

[Prime Junta]

Damn, it feels good to be vindicated. That's *exactly* what I've been saying all along, only backed up with hard data and detailed information. Go Cordesman!

In a nutshell:

(1) Israel is unlikely to be able to destroy or seriously damage the Iranian nuclear program through military means.
(2) The attempt will cause the excrement to hit the ventilator in the region big-time, and Israel would bear the brunt of it.
(3) In case diplomatic efforts to stop Iran from acquiring a nuke fail, Israel needs a strategy to deter and contain a nuclear-armed Iran.
(3b) A nuclear-armed Iran does not mean the end of the world, and it can be deterred exactly the same way that all current nuclear-armed countries are and have been deterred.

I would add that while the USA does have a much greater strike capability and therefore has somewhat better (but by no means good!) odds of seriously damaging the Iranian program, everything else applies as well to a scenario of an American strike.

IOW: our best chance of stopping Iran from going nuclear is to (1) work for a comprehensive peace deal in the region, and (2) figure out how to make and use the best possible economic and diplomatic sticks and carrots. If it ever does come down to military action, it means we have already failed.

 

[Benedict]

Wasn't Obama supposed to be meeting netanyahu on Monday? Did anything interesting happen then or was it just business as usual.

If anyone did read something interesting about it then hook a brother up please

 

[Pladio]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090518/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_election

It's quite interesting too. About Iran's election and Khamanei's statements...

This struck as particularly important as it would stand against PJ's proposed plan. If I understand it correctly.

"(Don't vote for) those who would provoke the greed of the enemies of the Iranian nation and be used by them to create divisions within the nation and take people away from their religion, principles and their revolutionary values."

IIRC, PJ's tactic was to take Iran in and out of isolationism. Make them have things to lose and so on...
If Khamanei can stop Iran from electing a pro-West (Obama) leader then this wouldn't work.

 

[Prime Junta]

Khamene'i holds the real power anyway, whoever wins the elections -- he's one of the reasons Khatami's reforms never got all that much traction. The big problem is to win him over. That's very much of an uncertain prospect -- but then so is bringing Netanyahu round to supporting a two-state solution, and there seems to be some movement on that front.

Khamene'i is old and intensely suspicious, and he's been burned several times. If he can be brought around at all, it'll take more than a few months of happy talk. However, I don't think it's an impossible prospect, and there's little downside to trying.

 

[dteowner]

Perhaps he could have an accident? Maybe while he's visiting a probable nuclear weapon development site?

Bah! You guys won't let me have any fun.

 

[Prime Junta]

In case anyone was getting optimistic about Palestine/Israel, Stratfor is here to deliver a nice dose of cold water. Here's his take on Netanyahu's visit to DC:

So the peace process will continue, no one will expect anything from it, the Palestinians will remain isolated and wars regularly will break out. The only advantage of this situation from the U.S. point of view it is that it is preferable to all other available realities.

[ http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/2009...ce=GWeekly&utm_campaign=none&utm_medium=email ]

 

[dteowner]

That's a heck of a wet blanket. Seems to make quite a few assumptions (albeit logical ones) about the motivations of quite a few players, though. Perhaps some of those positions have been built in previous articles?

The level of gloom and cynicism feels very comfy to me, I must admit.

 

[Prime Junta]

The guy who writes those things always makes for interesting reading. I'd say he's right about 90% of the time, and mistaken about 10% of the time -- but the kicker is that he tends to be mistaken about the really humongous stuff. For example, he got most things right for 2008 -- but entirely missed the financial crisis; he was denying it had ever happened until November or so.

The thing you need to know is that he looks at things through a very strict theoretical framework and a very narrow perspective. Namely, geopolitics. His assumptions are that the room for maneuver that an actor on the world stage has is determined by geography, demographics, and relatively permanent economic factors, and that each actor pursues its self-interest in a coldly calculating, rational way. In a way, he treats world politics like (new) classical economists treat the economy. That approach works great most of the time, but it's fundamentally an equilibrium model -- it doesn't allow for stupidity, idealism, rigid ideologies, sudden shifts in public sentiment, charismatic leaders, nor unintended consequences. It also tends to lead to the (usually pretty accurate) method of predicting that whatever is happening today will continue to happen tomorrow.

IOW, his method would have worked great to predict how, say, decolonization panned out -- but it wouldn't have had room for a Hitler, a Khomeini, nor a Mahatma Gandhi.

So I'm not quite as relentlessly pessimistic as he is. Especially with the Middle East, the only constant is change; it tends to spring things at you without a lot of warning.

He's IMO also missing one slow, major shift: namely, the effect of the rise of Iran on Arab-Israeli relations. The Palestinian conflict with an ineffective but noisy peace process has served the Arab regimes well (it's very handy to be able to blame everything and anything on the Zionists and the Americans). However, lately things have changed in a way that the conflict is making the Iranians look good, and the Arab regimes look ineffective, weak, and corrupt -- and they're getting very concerned about Iran. IOW, the conflict no longer has the value for them that it used to have, and it's strengthening Iran. So I think there may be a genuine will to do something about it now that there wasn't before.

The main cause for his pessimism is a reality that few people seem ready to acknowledge, though: the economic dependency of the Palestinian territories on Israel. That does make independence somewhat fictional, and it makes the practical arrangements of any two-state solution extremely complicated. However, symbols are powerful, and the trappings of a state, even one that's an effective economic colony of Israel, might do a great deal to defuse tensions in the area -- especially if it's part of a comprehensive, regional peace deal.

So while I'm highly pessimistic about the prospects for peace too, I'm not quite as pessimistic as the author. He thinks it's impossible; I merely think it's unlikely.

 

[Prime Junta]

Another data point about the Iran nuke issue: there was an interesting interview of Mohammed el-Baradei, the IAEA head honcho, in Salon. (And you can't fault the interviewer for being too sympathetic towards him, or Iran, as you'll find out if you read it.)

[ http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/05/20/elbaradei/index1.html ]

That interview contained a bit of a bombshell. El-Baradei says that they were very close to an agreement on freezing the Iranian nuclear program on two occasions around 2005. The first attempt would have frozen the number of Iranian centrifuges at 36. The second, at 360. Both of these are far too few for a weapons program, although useful for research.

Both occasions came to nothing because the USA refused to even negotiate on that basis. Instead, their precondition for talks was zero centrifuges. *Precondition,* mind, not objective.

From where I'm at, this represents stupidity on a criminal scale -- the US had at least a decent chance at stopping the Iranian program or slowing it down by an order of magnitude (yes, any accord would have required them to submit to a much more intrusive inspection regime), but it... threw it away. If Iran does eventually develop a nuke, and if el-Baradei's account holds up, I this would be the single greatest foreign policy mistake the Bush presidency made -- which is something that hardly seems possible, given the hash they made of everything else.

 

[coyote]

Another data point about the Iran nuke issue: there was an interesting interview of Mohammed el-Baradei, the IAEA head honcho, in Salon. (And you can't fault the interviewer for being too sympathetic towards him, or Iran, as you'll find out if you read it.)

[ http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/05/20/elbaradei/index1.html ]

That interview contained a bit of a bombshell. El-Baradei says that they were very close to an agreement on freezing the Iranian nuclear program on two occasions around 2005. The first attempt would have frozen the number of Iranian centrifuges at 36. The second, at 360. Both of these are far too few for a weapons program, although useful for research.

Both occasions came to nothing because the USA refused to even negotiate on that basis. Instead, their precondition for talks was zero centrifuges. *Precondition,* mind, not objective.

From where I'm at, this represents stupidity on a criminal scale -- the US had at least a decent chance at stopping the Iranian program or slowing it down by an order of magnitude (yes, any accord would have required them to submit to a much more intrusive inspection regime), but it... threw it away. If Iran does eventually develop a nuke, and if el-Baradei's account holds up, I this would be the single greatest foreign policy mistake the Bush presidency made -- which is something that hardly seems possible, given the hash they made of everything else.

Thank you, a very interesting read. Just as a side remark, the suspension of all uranium enrichment as a precondition of talks was confirmed by Ambassador Nicholas Burns in the presentation Rithrandil went to:

The video for the presentation I went to on Iran is up, for those interested: http://www.cnponline.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/13209

Also, I think the chances of el-Baradei bending the truth on this are exceedingly slim: in my opinion, he is one of the most respectable people around, even if he does not receive the credit he deserves.

Barack Obama has turned U.S. policy around by 180 degrees. For instance, he announced plans to double the IAEA budget in the next four years. The Europeans, including Germany, want to freeze the budget, which I find alarming.

Well, that was one nice thing about Bush Jr.: we Europeans loved to feel superior. Hell, even a little child could recognise his utter incompetence and stupidity, when US voters apparently could not. He made every other politician stand out as a genius in comparison. Now, it seems that the US are actually clevering up! And the Europeans just muddle on. (Sorry for the rant.)

 

[V7]

here's an alternative view on Iran;
http://www.newsweek.com/id/199147

 

[coyote]

@V7: one point that is possibly overrated is Ayatollah Khomeini's statement that nuclear weapons are "un-Islamic". Of course they are! Killing innocents is "un-Islamic". Sacrificing children to clear minefields is "un-Islamic". Religion is a means to justify the regime and control the state, but Iranian politics is, and will be, motivated by much more pragmatic and worldly goals and ambitions. I think the rest of the article nails this down, though.

 

[V7]

... but Iranian politics is, and will be, motivated by much more pragmatic and worldly goals and ambitions.

Which is pretty much what I've argued elsewhere on this forum, just thought I'd post an article that didn't start and end with 'they're going to destroy the world because they're crazy'.

 

[Prime Junta]

@V7: one point that is possibly overrated is Ayatollah Khomeini's statement that nuclear weapons are "un-Islamic". Of course they are! Killing innocents is "un-Islamic". Sacrificing children to clear minefields is "un-Islamic". Religion is a means to justify the regime and control the state, but Iranian politics is, and will be, motivated by much more pragmatic and worldly goals and ambitions. I think the rest of the article nails this down, though.

Overrated, underrated, I don't know -- but it is significant. Khamene'i has used his religious authority to issue fatwas that declare nuclear weapons un-Islamic. If Iran does develop a nuke, he's going to have to make a U-turn on that, which will not be without cost. He didn't have to issue those fatwas -- he could simply have stated that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear bomb and left it at that.

 

[Prime Junta]

Well, that was one nice thing about Bush Jr.: we Europeans loved to feel superior. Hell, even a little child could recognise his utter incompetence and stupidity, when US voters apparently could not. He made every other politician stand out as a genius in comparison. Now, it seems that the US are actually clevering up! And the Europeans just muddle on. (Sorry for the rant.)

Given a choice between a smart Europe and a stupid USA or vice versa, I'll take vice versa. A stupid Europe just doesn't have the capability to cause mayhem at the scale of a stupid USA. I'll be quite happy to set aside my feeling of superiority on that score for a few years, until you 'murricans elect another stupid administration.

Of course, I'd rather have a smart Europe as well, but with the kind of politicians we have, I don't think that's too bloody likely. The best we can hope for is "not apocalyptically stupid," so we'll have to make do with that.