Iran, Space Monkeys and The Pixies

I wanted to try something a little different with this post.  Perhaps it is the result of a few years spent as a DJ, but a lot of times when I see a story in the news, a song will pop into my head, a song that is usually related to the story in some odd way.  That was the case when I read this report about Iran's nascent space program and their successful attempt to launch a monkey into space. The song this conjured up was, of course, The Pixies “Monkey Gone To Heaven”.  So the idea of this post is to talk a little about the story and then a little about the song.

Space, The Final Frontier

With news from and about Iran dominated by that country's nuclear research program, the story of their space launch came as a bit of a surprise.  But Iran has ambitions to become a space-faring nation in their own right.  In 2009, Iran launched their first home-built satellite into orbit.  The Iranian government has stated that their goal is to launch a man into space by 2019, using domestically designed and produced equipment.

By comparison, the mission announced this past Sunday was quite modest – a capsule carrying a single monkey as a passenger was carried aloft by a Pishgam (or “Pilgrim”) missile to an altitude of 75 miles before returning to Earth.  In a good sign for Iran's future astronauts, their monkey passenger apparently survived the flight unharmed.

Though modest in scope – both the US and Soviet Union were doing this sort of thing more than 50 years ago - this mission passed a couple of important milestones for Iran: they crossed the threshold of space (typically defined as any altitude above 62 miles) and managed the G-forces encountered in descent well enough for their primate passenger to survive.  Since man too is a primate, the monkey's survival is indication that Iran has solved some of the basic technological problems associated with returning a manned-capsule safely to Earth.

But there was likely a subtext for Iran's monkey mission.  A rocket that can carry a capsule into space is also capable of carrying a warhead thousands of miles to an enemy's territory.  The United States slipped into a full-blown panic in 1957 after the Soviet Union successfully orbited the Sputnik satellite – not only had US pride been hurt by being beaten into space by the “Reds”, but it was also a clear indication that the Soviet Union now possessed ICBMs capable of reaching the United States.  In this time of high tensions with the US and Israel, a similar message could be drawn from this weekend's Iranian journey into space.

 

Monkey Gone To Heaven

 

From the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, The Pixies would become one of the bands that defined the college radio/alternative sound, at least before the genre was largely consumed by the Grunge scene out of Seattle, though The Pixies would influence that genre as well. They were a band that specialized in the sound that Nirvana's Kurt Cobain would describe as “quiet, then loud”.  The Pixies were aided in this expression by the smooth lead vocals of singer Black Francis (later Frank Black), with backing vocals by guitarist Kim Deal. They layered lyrics that often trended towards the bizarre over music that could range from light and melodic to crashing walls of sound – sometimes within the same song.

“Monkey Gone To Heaven” is an apt expression of this songwriting formula.  From the album Doolittle, the track is an example of The Pixies at their highest point as a band.  The lyrics of “Monkey Gone To Heaven” go off on explorations of environmentalism, religion and man's relationship with the divine - a relationship that Francis seems to believe the divine will get the worst of.  Early on, the song talks about Neptune, Roman god of the seas, being “killed by 10 million pounds of sludge from New York and New Jersey” (and as someone who grew up in NJ, I can totally see that happening).  In this respect, the conceit of the “monkey gone to heaven” is an indication of man's diminishment of the divine through the elevation of a primate - and keep in mind that man too is a primate – to the realm of the gods.

You have to wonder what Iran's ayatollahs would make of that?

Is The US Dashing Israeli Hopes For A Strike Against Iran?

From the file of news that was overshadowed by the dueling Republican and Democratic political conventions is this nugget from Reuters about a US smackdown of Israel over their escalating rhetoric about a war with Iran (Reuters used the more diplomatic term 'chastised', but you get the idea).

Last week, while speaking to reporters in Great Britain, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, said that the United States did not want to be “complicit” in a preemptive  attack on Iran and starkly warned Israel that if they went it alone on the attack that they risked unraveling the international coalition that has levied heavy sanctions on Iran's crude oil industry and banking sector; sanctions that Pres. Ahmadinejad admitted earlier in the week were starting to causing real pain in Iran.

It was a bold statement, and one that has sent Israel scurrying back to square one in their efforts to start a war with Iran. The simple fact is that the Israeli Air Force does not have the ability to launch the type of sustained and targeted campaign of air strikes that would be necessary to knock out Iran's nuclear research program.  Or as one unnamed European diplomat was quoted as saying in the same Reuters article: “all this talk of war is bullshit. If they could do it, then they would have already done it long ago.”

For their part, the Israelis are now pushing for the establishment of a clear “red line”, an action by Iran that would guarantee a military response by the anti-Iran coalition (namely the United States). The Israelis are also ramping up their sabre-rattling against Iran's proxy group Hezbollah, threatening retaliation against Lebanon should Hezbollah launch attacks against Israel on Iran's behalf. For their part, the Obama administration is offering up a vague statement that diplomacy cannot go on “indefinitely” and that “military action” remains a possibility if Iran doesn't live up to their obligations.

Of course, it is very hard to imagine the US launching any kind of military action before the November elections, and if reelected, Obama is likely to feel much less pressure to placate the pro-Likud lobby within the United States, which puts into question the likelihood of military action against Iran in Obama's second term.  This does make you wonder if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might not attempt to interject himself into the US presidential race somehow. Netanyahu is a longtime personal friend of Republican Mitt Romney, so it is plausible to think he might try to play the double whammy of encouraging a US strike against Iran and boosting his friend's presidential chances by trying to make Obama look like he is both weak on Iran and putting Israel at risk by not launching military strikes now to stop the imminent threat of the Iranian nuclear program.

This strategy has some real risks attached though: for one, Netanyahu has been saying that Iran was on the verge of getting a bomb since the mid-90s, so his cries of danger have worn a little thin by now; the bigger issue though is that the American populace, mired in a slow economic recovery and weary from a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, might genuinely oppose calls for launching another military campaign in the Middle East, which would weaken, rather than strengthen, Netanyahu's efforts to get the USAF to knock out Iran's nuclear program for him.

If Netanyahu tries to go this route, it will likely be at the United Nations General Assembly set for later this month.

Tanzania Facing Blowback From US-Iran Sanctions Spat

The East African nation of Tanzania has wound up in the middle of the sanctions fight between the United States and Iran.

The reason is Tanzania's decision to allow at least ten Iranian-owned oil tankers to re-register themselves in Tanzania; the ships, according to Bloomberg, are owned by Iran's NITC corporation but will fly Tanzania's flag and will, for all legal purposes be Tanzanian.  The move would allow the tankers to effectively skirt the sanctions regime imposed by the US and European Union on Iran over that country's nuclear research program.  While most of the focus on the sanctions has been on their embargo against Iran's oil exports, another piece of the sanctions also bans the issuing of insurance for Iranian ships carrying cargoes of Iranian oil.  Since a tanker's cargo can be worth millions, or tens of millions, of dollars and the liability involved in an accident that leads to an oil spill can exceed even those figures, companies aren't willing to run the risk of sending out uninsured oil cargoes.  Flagging these tankers as Tanzanian though could help Iran to skirt the insurance ban.

As expected, the US isn't happy about this move, and officials are already saying that the re-registering could harm US-Tanzanian relations.  Howard Berman, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs issued this warning: “If Tanzania were to allow Iranian vessels to remain under Tanzanian registry, we in the Congress would have no choice but to consider whether to continue the range of bilateral U.S. programs with Tanzania.”  That would likely include $571 million worth of US financial aid and investment earmarked for Tanzania in 2013.

For their part, the Tanzanian government is saying very little.  Most requests for comment from Bloomberg went unanswered, though one official did say that the stories were inaccurate since the tankers in question were previously registered in Cyprus and Malta, which while apparently true does not mean that they were not also owned by NITC.

So the US seems to be involved in another diplomatic game of chicken over the Iranian sanctions.  If the US government can't successfully pressure Tanzania into dropping their registration of the Iranian  tankers then the decision has to be made over whether or not to levy sanctions against Tanzania, including cutting off more than a half-billion dollars worth of foreign aid.  But if the US decides to go that route, it will hard to see the decision as anything but hypocritical.  Recently the US granted an “exemption” to the sanctions to China – Iran's biggest oil customer.  China had been openly defying the US over the sanctions, arguing that they didn't need to abide by them since the sanctions were not authorized by the United Nations, the only body, China argued, that had the ability to levy such wide-ranging sanctions in the first place.  But rather than engage in a diplomatic fight and possible trade war with China, the US quietly exempted them from the sanctions.

Should the US punish Tanzania for their actions, the clear message sent will be that the United States is more than willing to play the role of the world's policeman, so long as you're too weak to do anything about it.    

India, US Set To Square Off On Iran Sanctions

The next move in the ongoing geopolitical chess match between the United States and Iran is set to take place this Wednesday when US officials will try once again to get their Indian counterparts onboard with the “crippling” sanctions regime championed by the US.

India's continuing purchase of Iranian crude oil remains a major impediment to the “crippling” part of those sanctions.  By cutting Iran off from the global crude oil markets, the United States is hoping to put enough pressure on Iran to get them to give up their nuclear research program (folks in Washington also really, really hope that the sanctions will lead to the unlikely event of the Iranians overthrowing their government due to the negative impact a lack of oil sales will have on their economy).  While the European Union is phasing in a ban on Iranian oil, plenty of Iranian crude is flowing to China and India; making the sanctions painful, but survivable, at least in the short-to-medium term.

Even the optimists in Washington will admit they can apply little leverage to get China to abandon their Iranian oil purchases, but they hope that India could be swayed.  So far India has maintained that they need to continue to buy Iranian oil since many Indian refineries are configured to process specific types of crude that come out of Iran and that there aren't substitute volumes readily available on the global market.  India has also questioned the validity of the US sanctions since they are not backed by the United Nations.

According to the Indian publication Business Today, Wednesday's meeting is likely to focus on the US suggesting that American shale gas could be a substitute for Iranian crude oil.  This is interesting for a couple of reasons: first we're talking about replacing oil with natural gas, which would mean a massive restructuring of India's energy mix – a drastic shift away from crude oil products to natural gas (using natural gas as a vehicle fuel for example, instead of gasoline); and since the US currently lacks a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export infrastructure, it would be a number of years, at least, before large volumes of US shale gas could be heading to India in a best-case scenario.  How India would get by in the meanwhile without Iranian crude oil imports is an open question.

If accurate, the Business Today report points at American officials desperate to get their Indian allies onside with the Iranian sanctions regime.  According to the sanctions passed by the US Congress, the United States could levy penalties against any country trading with Iran in violation of our sanctions, and while it is hard to imagine the United States fracturing diplomatic relations with India with such an action, it is also clear that as long as India (and China) keep importing Iranian oil, it is highly unlikely that the sanctions will have the desired effect.

Stay tuned for Wednesday's meeting.

Iran, US, Others Try One More Time To Avoid War

A meeting is set for tomorrow in Baghdad that could determine the future of the US-led sanctions regime and whether or not there will be another war in the Mid-East this summer, this time over Iran's nuclear program.

The rhetoric out of the region seems to have cooled off a bit in recent weeks – unless, of course, you're Benjamin Netanyahu, who continues to beat the wardrums.  The most likely reason, as explained here, is that all of the parties involved realize that they can't afford a war or a disruption in global oil supplies: not Iran, not the United States and certainly not Europe.  But Iran and Europe can't risk seeing the sanctions regime continue either, the United States, which doesn't import Iranian oil, is largely immune from the impact of the sanctions we've slapped on Iran and are expecting the rest of the world to abide by.

Of course the European economies most vulnerable to the lack of Iranian oil are the European economies in the worst trouble; including Greece and Italy.  Both are suppose to halt imports from Iran on July 1 as per the European side of the sanctions regime, but Italy is owed billions of dollars worth of Iranian oil as payment for infrastructure projects completed by Italian companies, while Greece also has favorable deals with Iran to buy oil, if they need to replace this oil, it will likely be at a higher cost from other sources.  And if Greece drops out/is kicked out of the Euro as some are speculating they will be, they will have to negotiate new oil deals in the midst of a full-blown economic crisis.

From the Iranian side, the sanctions are having an effect on their economy, with food and fuel prices soaring, though the bite is reported to be not as bad as Western authorities expected (there was some foolish hope in the West that the pain caused by the sanctions would inspire the Iranians to rise up and overthrow their government. Good luck with that...).  The Iranian government has stepped in and is offering subsidies to perhaps 60% of the population to help defray costs.  Of course this isn't a sustainable policy for the long run, but so far it seems to be working.  Meanwhile two of Iran's biggest oil customers, China and India, are balking at joining in the US-led sanctions regime.  Oil exports from Iran to China actually increased in April, reversing a decline in March.  Technically, both China and India could face punitive action from the US for not joining in on the sanctions party, but let's see if the US has the nerve to slap sanctions on them.

Of course it's also hard to see how the US and Iran back away from the crisis they have created.  Iran may offer some level of inspection of their nuclear sites, but it is unlikely to satisfy the US, which has demanded a full stop to their nuclear program; from the American side, agreeing to anything less than the full compliance we demanded of Iran will be pounced on by President Obama's Republican opponent in November election as a sign of “weakness” (never mind that it may be the most practical/rational thing to do), so that's unlikely to happen.  And then there's Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu has made a career of stoking fears of an Iranian nuke; it is hard to imagine just what Bibi would accept short of a military raid against Iran, which the US Republicans will expect the Obama regime to fully support...

Navigating out of this quagmire created by political posturing and stubbornness will require some deft political maneuvering and probably more finesse than we can expect from the Baghdad meeting. 

Iran, The War, and Everything

Since it is now the Persian New Year (Happy Nowruz), it seemed like a good time to run the infographic below that illustrates how foreign powers nibbled away at the territory of Iran during the 19^th and 20^th centuries, which might just explain why the Iranians are rather particular about being ordered around by the international community.

 Meanwhile, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has come to the same conclusion that I did several months ago – that any attack on Iran's nuclear sites will only drive Iran towards building a nuclear bomb, rather than dissuading them from it.  “I am almost certain that such a decision will surely be taken after (any) strikes on Iran,”  Lavrov said Tuesday on Moscow's Kommersant FM radio, where he also claimed that the CIA and other American officials have admitted to not having any hard evidence of any political decisions on the part of Iran's leadership to actually authorize a nuclear weapons program.  Lavrov also repeated assessments made by military analysts in the West that have concluded airstrikes against Iranian facilities could slow any research program, but would not destroy it as the Israelis did with Iraq's nuclear program, which was effectively ended by an Israeli airstrike in 1981.

But energy industry analysts are becoming more convinced that a conflict with Iran is in fact imminent, based in part on an executive order signed on Friday by President Obama that, among other things, orders executive departments and agencies responsible for plans and programs relating to national defense to “be prepared, in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology for national defense requirements.”  Get that? Analysts say that the order effectively would, in a time of national emergency, give the President effective control over the country's natural resources.  And the only national emergency the analysts see on the horizon is a potential conflict with Iran.  The White House tried to downplay the impact of the executive order on Monday, saying that it was similar to executive orders signed by several other presidents in the past and should not be taken as a sign of an impending war.

The New York Times meanwhile, is reporting that the Iranian conflict could prove to be quite costly for America.  A leaked war game scenario carried out by the Pentagon earlier in the month projected up to 200 American casualties after a US warship was attacked by Iranian forces in retaliation for Israeli airstrikes against their nuclear research facilities.  This attack then draws the United States into a large-scale conflict with Iran.  Pentagon officials stressed that this was one of a number of possible outcomes, but admitted that an Israeli attack would spark off a series of reactions that were both “unpredictable and uncontrollable”.

My prediction is that if the Israelis launch their oft-threatened airstrike, it will be before our November presidential elections.  The clock keeps ticking...

Electile Dysfunction

The outcome of Sunday's presidential election in Russia was never really in doubt, it was a given that, despite the rash of street protests against him that have marked the past few months, Vladimir Putin would once again be the President of Russia.  The only real open questions were what would be his margin of victory and would the vote be fair.

It seems like the answers to those questions are “too much” and “no”.  According to reports this morning, Putin received roughly 65% of the votes cast – the ballot-counting is not yet complete, but this is being taken as the official margin of victory.  If this 65% figure holds, then Putin wildly outperformed the pre-election polls, which at one point had him in the mid-40s, before moving back above the 50% threshold (where he'd avoid the need for a second-round run-off vote) in the weeks just before the election.  This plays into the story coming from Russian groups like GOLOS and election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who are both talking about widespread reports of “carousel voting” - where one group of “voters” are transported from polling station to polling station, casting votes for Putin at each.  OSCE also slammed the Russian election for not being open to opposition parties beyond the small Kremlin-approved group allowed on the ballot.

The reply out of the Kremlin was predictable; the claims of voter fraud were dismissed as fabrications as they always are.  For his part, Putin talked of the “great victory” he had won for Russia against some vaguely defined opposition force, though the implication was that foreign powers were trying to install some sort of puppet government to control Russia.  It's worth noting here that Putin has repeatedly tried to dismiss the large-scale public protests sparked by Russia's last rigged election this past December as being orchestrated by shadowy “foreign powers”.

Meanwhile, Iran also held elections last Friday for their parliament.  By this morning, the votes had largely been counted and were showing a big victory for the faction controlled by Ayatollah Khamenei over the faction controlled by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  It is now widely expected that Khamenei will use his expanded base of power to try to effectively sideline the populist Ahmadinejad, or perhaps to simply amend Iran's constitution to eliminate the position of president entirely and get rid of the troublesome Ahmadinejad all-together.

Of course, the Iranian election has its flaws as well.  Opposition parties were largely absent from the ballot, making the vote really a choice between the hardliners and the even-more-hardline hardliners.  It was the widespread belief that there had been voter fraud in Iran's last parliamentary elections in 2009 that sparked the “Green Movement”, which for a brief period of time, looked like it might lead to large-scale reform in Iran.  Not wanting a possible repeat, most opposition/reformist parties were simply banned from the ballot in advance of last Friday's vote.  Opposition groups then called for a boycott of the vote, which set the stage for a Khamenei vs. Ahmadinejad battle at the ballot box.

It is too early yet to tell what impact the result of last Friday's vote might have on the ongoing standoff between Iran and the US/Israel over Iran's nuclear program, nor can we tell yet what will be the fallout from the apparently fixed elections in Russia, two factors that should make the next few weeks very interesting.   

So Why Can't Iran Have The Bomb?

Let's cut to the chase on the whole mess surrounding Iran.  It is looking like a conflict in the Persian Gulf this spring/summer is becoming more of a possibility; the “crippling sanctions” the United States is trying to impose on Iran are leaky enough not to be “crippling”.  India, China and Turkey are all balking at joining in on the isolation, which means that Iran is unlikely to just give up on their nuclear research program.  That kicks the ball back into the court of the US/Israel, both of whom have insisted that Iran not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, and leaves US and Israeli leaders with two options: back down or follow through on their threats of military action.

 
The spectre of Iran with a nuclear weapon is driving the march to war, but what does Iran having a nuclear weapon really mean?  So far there are several arguments as to why this is such a terrible idea that war would be necessary to prevent it, but taking a look at each argument shows that they are all fairly weak.  Here they are, in no particular order:

A nuclear Iran is a threat to the United States.  Not really.  Consider that if Iran were to tomorrow announce that they had successfully built a nuclear bomb, the US arsenal would outmatch theirs by a factor of about 3,000-1.  Even if Iran would decide to use this weapon and could deliver it to the United States (a big if), it would be a devastating attack, but not one that would destroy the country, not even close.  Of course it would ensure a retaliatory strike that would destroy Iran.  No country is suicidal, therefore this is not a real threat.

Iran might give the bomb to terrorists!  It is an idea that makes for a great spy thriller, but one that makes no sense in real life.  Do we really think Iran would spend billions of dollars, decades of research and turn themselves into a “rogue state” (at least according to the US) in pursuit of a nuclear bomb, only to give it to a terrorist?  It makes no sense.  Besides, if you want to worry about terrorists getting a bomb, then worry about them stealing one from Pakistan, where nuclear security is particularly weak, or buying one outright from North Korea.

The nuclear dominoes will fall.  Saudi Arabia has said publicly that if Iran gets the bomb, they may be compelled to embark on their own nuclear weapons program.  Of course the Saudis say a lot of things and in the past have threatened to start working on a bomb in response to Israel's nuclear arsenal, but never have.  And even if the Saudis do start work on their own bomb, who will that be a threat to besides Iran?

A nuclear Iran is a threat to Israel.  We're at least getting to the semi-plausible reasons here.  Israel is a much smaller country that the United States, so a much smaller nuclear strike could be devastating to them.  But the Israelis are keenly aware of this and will have prepared a second-strike capability (the ability to retaliate if hit without warning).  Israel's nuclear arsenal is somewhere between 200-400 weapons, meaning that they could likely hurt Iran a lot worse than Iran could hurt them, which makes an Iranian first strike highly unlikely.

That leaves us with something I'll call the Yom Kippur Scenario.  In 1973 Israel fought its last great war when a coalition of Arab states launched a surprise attack during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.  Part of the Arab motivation was revenge for the solid defeat they had suffered in 1967 during the Six-Day War.  The Yom Kippur War started badly for the Israelis, for awhile it seemed as though the Arab forces might be victorious, before Israel rallied and pushed the Arabs back crossing into both Egypt and Syria in the process.

Israel has never forgotten this lesson.  The Israeli nuclear arsenal is to ensure that such a scenario does not again occur.  Basically, if there were to be a repeat of the Yom Kippur War, and if this time Israel were about to be defeated by a coalition of Arab states, they could use their nuclear arsenal to devastate the lands of their attackers, giving the Arabs a true Pyrrhic Victory.  Israel has made this intention clear to their Arab neighbors, and it is an effective deterrent - so long as no one else in the neighborhood has their own nuclear arsenal.  Iranian bombs, and the ability to deliver them, changes this equation, and robs Israel of this deterrent.

Of course a second Yom Kippur War is highly unlikely.  Israel has had calm, if not cordial, relationships with their neighbors for 40 years now.  The Israeli military is by far the most powerful and most capable in the region, since the militaries of most of their neighbors are designed to suppress domestic unrest rather than to campaign beyond their borders.  Yet this is the real motivation for the current standoff with Iran: to prevent a challenge to Israel's military hegemony in the region.

But is this justification for a conflict that will cause upheaval across the region and be a severe blow to an already shaky global economy?  That is the question that we should be discussing. 

You Can't Be Syria-ous

The big international affairs news of the weekend was the veto in the United Nations Security Council by Russia and China of proposed sanctions against the regime of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, who is continuing a bloody, months-long crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators protesting against his brutal regime.  US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice was utterly beside herself following the vote, telling China, but more directly Russia, that they would now be responsible for the continuing deaths among Syrian civilians.

On the face of it, you wonder how anyone could vote against a resolution meant to try to prevent a dictator from murdering his own citizens.  From a practical level, part of Russia's rationale for vetoing the UNSC resolution was simply driven by recognition of the deep, long-standing ties between their country and a loyal client state.  It has been mentioned in media reports that Syria is a major buyer of Russian military exports; but Syria also hosts one of the few remaining foreign ports-of-call for the Russian Navy at the Mediterranean port of Tartus, without Syria, Russia would largely be shut out of the Middle East, a region in which the old Soviet Union enjoyed a fair level of influence.  It's possible that any follow-on regime to Assad's might be willing to continue this historic relationship, but that is a risk that Russia does not want to take.

But the Russian/Chinese veto of the Syrian resolution was more than just a comment on UN policy towards Syria, it was also a symbolic line in the sand draw for the US-led “Western” community of nations that they were not going to be allowed to pick and choose which regimes stayed in power, at least as long as China and Russia had a say in the matter.  Russia has been openly skeptical about last year's intervention in Libya, saying that the stated humanitarian mission was a cover story for the real goal of ousting a long-standing irritant to the West, Moammar Gadhafi.  And when you look at the uneven way that the humanitarian military operation was conducted – with the US/NATO coalition overlooking rebel atrocities committed against pro-Gadhafi towns for example - there is something to this notion.  Taking a look at the recent actions promoted by the United States, you can see a similar narrative shaping up against Iran (at least from the Russian/Chinese point-of-view), where the United States is pushing the global community to adopt a harsh sanctions regime targeting Iran's oil industry, meant to cripple the country economically by denying them revenue from their main export commodity.

That regime scheme is likely doomed to fail, in large part thanks to the Chinese – the largest buyer of Iranian oil exports – who are refusing to go along with the embargo.  Part of the Chinese rationale, and also the reason cited by countries like India and Turkey, is that the Iranian sanctions lack the blessing of the United Nations.  Saturday's vote makes it clear that such a blessing, either for more strict sanctions or ultimately military action against Iran, won't be coming thanks to the Russians and the Chinese.  Both countries are concerned about American influence in their backyards – for Russia, the former Soviet Republics and Satellites in Eastern Europe and Central Asia; for the Chinese in the Pacific Rim and, again, Central Asia – changing the regime in Iran would be a real feather in the foreign policy cap of Pres. Barack Obama, a move he could parlay into gains in the Russian/Chinese spheres of influence.  Russia and China therefore have a vested interest in making sure that such an event doesn't happen in Iran, Saturday's UN vote was just a small reminder of where things stand in this larger struggle.

Iranophobia!

Be afraid, be very afraid...

That was the message coming from Capitol Hill on Tuesday following a meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee (an oxymoron of a name if there ever was one), where US intelligence chief Gen. James Clapper (ret.) was grilled on the current standoff with Iran over that country's supposed nuclear weapons program.

According to Clapper, there is no credible intelligence of Iranian plans to stage terror attacks within the United States, yet the takeaway from the Committee meeting was that Iran has plans to stage terror attacks within the United States.  The one item offered as proof of Iranian subterfuge within the United States was last year's comically bad alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington DC.  If you recall, this was the plot that used an Iranian-American used car dealer with a sketchy past to hire a hitman from Mexico's Zetas drug cartel to blow up a DC restaurant where the Saudi ambassador was dining.  The plot was discounted by most experts as not being an official Iranian operation simply because it sounded like the plot of a bad spy movie and because the Iranian intelligence agencies pride themselves on being a professional and efficient organization.

Still, that didn't stop the Senate Intelligence Committee from buying into in on Tuesday.  They presented the specter - based on no credible information - of a network of Iranian sleeper cells waiting in America, ready to launch terror attacks if the US followed through on threats of military action against Iran's nuclear research sites.  The threat of retaliatory terror attacks was then used as evidence in favor of military action against Iran. 

And at this point my head really starts to spin at the circular logic being employed by our esteemed Senators.  To quote the great Yogi Berra, this is really starting to seem like deja vu all over again.  It all recalls the tortured logic that led up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  Then we were told we had to act because of the threat of a “mushroom cloud” erupting over an American city.  Even though there was no evidence that Iraq had a nuclear program (and after the war we learned definitively that they did not), the Iraqis could not prove that they did not have a nuclear program, which to our leaders at the time was proof enough of a threat.  Once again we are tying ourselves up in logical knots as we rush headlong to what would be our third war in the region in just over a decade.  Considering that we've arguably gone 0-2 in regional conflicts, you'd think we wouldn't be in such a hurry.

Iran Plays The Oil Card

Speaking of Iran (see the previous post), they may be turning the tables on the whole US-proposed, European-backed sanctions regime.  The United States is championing an idea to strangle the Iranian economy by banning the sale of Iranian oil globally, with the hope being that the loss of their main revenue stream will convince the Iranians to give up their nuclear research program and perhaps as a bonus bring down the Iranian government.  For the United States, the sanctions are no big deal since the US basically imports no oil from Iran, for the Europeans though it is a different matter – Europe accounts for roughly a quarter of Iran's oil export sales.  Because Europe gets so much oil from Iran, the European version of the sanctions have a six-month phase-in period to allow European countries to find  alternative supplies of oil.

But the Iranians are going them one better by discussing their own boycott of oil sales to Europe, meaning that shipments to Europe could stop immediately.  To make matters worse for the European Union, some of the countries that are the most dependent on Iranian oil are also the European economies in the worst shape, namely Greece and Italy.  The six-month phase-in was designed to put as little stress as possible on their economies, but if Iran halts shipments immediately, both countries will need to replace the volumes of missing Iranian crude on the more volatile, and more expensive, spot crude oil market, or face the prospect of massive fuel shortages; two conditions that could push their already teetering economies over the edge.

So far Iran has held off on making their embargo official, the Iranian parliament was suppose to debate the embargo bill last Sunday, but postponed action.  Other Iranian officials though are saying that the European sanctions are not a question of if, but rather when.  And in another blow to the US-led efforts, both China and India have publicly stated that they will be happy to buy up any excess Iranian crude leftover from the embargoed European sanctions.  Both countries will likely force Iran to sell them crude oil at a discount, but vast sums of money will continue to flow into Iran, severely undermining the whole point of the US-led sanction regime.

Your Next War

In my latest piece over at The Mantle, I take a look at the ever more likely possibility of a conflict between the US and Iran (and maybe some others). Check out Stumbling Towards War: Iran Edition at The Mantle.

Recapping The Republicans Foreign Policy Faceoff

The Republican presidential candidates had a debate on Saturday dedicated exclusively to foreign policy. The fact that there even was a debate may come as some surprise to you since the event seemed to slip rather unnoticed into the political discourse – note to Republicans: this is the downside in having two or three debates a week, after awhile they just become part of the pop culture background noise of our media-soaked society.  I have to admit, after being initially interested in seeing what the field had to say, I forgot the debate was on and only caught a portion of it.  Foreign Policy, though, did a good job of recapping the night here and here, and NationalJournal.com ran the candidates' statements through their fact-checker (surprise, some were less than truthful/accurate).

I did see enough of the evening's festivities to form a few opinions.  The first is disappointment – along with seeming to think this was still 1981 and peppering their comments with references to the “free world”, at least half the field never seemed to rise above the standard political posturing one would expect from their various campaigns.  Mitt Romney insisted that Iran would not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon during his presidency, even though the nuclear genie is largely out of the bottle by this point with Iran; it is probably safe to say that Iran has gained enough knowledge to construct a working nuclear bomb and that nothing short of a full-scale invasion/occupation could stop Iran from getting such a device if they really wanted it.  Candidates insisted that the US needs to stand solidly with Israel, and about half the field also believed that the technique of waterboarding did not qualify as torture, though their statements on this point – particularly Herman Cain's - came off as the phony swagger of a schoolyard tough guy who had never actually taken a punch. 

For me, two candidates stood out.  One was Ron Paul who, frankly, for the first time came off to me as a reasonable candidate with realistic positions and not a past-his-prime political hack with an odd fetish for the Federal Reserve.  The other was former governor, former ambassador Jon Huntsman.  Unlike most of the others, Huntsman not only said that he considered waterboarding torture, but then gave a thoughtful discourse on how engaging in practices like waterboarding diminished the United States in the eyes of people around the world who look to the US for inspiration and as a beacon of democracy and freedom.  While I watched, Huntsman also gave an insightful answer into US-Chinese relations, while subtly pointing out Romney's fundamental lack of understanding on how either the World Trade Organization and global currency markets work (kind of bad for a candidate who touts his experience as a businessman as one of his major qualifications for the presidency).

 
Huntsman looked like a man ready to be Commander-in-Chief, while the others simply repeated talking points and threw rhetorical red meat to their base constituencies.  That Huntsman is languishing in the low single digits in the polls perhaps says all that needs to be said about the sad state of this nominating process...  

Iran And The Bomb

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is set to release a report that supposedly will show that Iran is much farther along in their pursuit of an atomic weapon than previously believed. Add to that the noticeable increase in anti-Iranian rhetoric in the op-ed pages, rumors of a mock Israeli attack on a NATO base as part of training for a long-range bombing mission and last month's botched (and highly suspicious) assassination attempt by Iranian agents against the Saudi ambassador in Washington DC and you can see that the war drums are clearly starting to beat for Iran.

For their part, the official Iranian line is that they have no active nuclear weapons program. According to details from the IAEA report, this may be technically true. The “smoking gun” in the IAEA report is a claim that Iran has designed and perhaps tested an explosive (though non-nuclear) triggering device necessary for an atomic weapon to work. It seems then, while not actually trying to build a bomb per se, the Iranians are trying to design and build all the parts so that if at a point in the future they wanted a nuke, they could quickly pull one together.

You have to ask though, why wouldn't Iran try to build their own nuclear bomb? Let's look at some of the major foreign policy actions of the new millennium: the United States assembled a coalition in 2003 to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein, while this year a US/NATO coalition used a proxy force of Libyan rebels to depose (and ultimately murder) Moammar Gadhafi. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-il continues to rule North Korea despite defying numerous sanctions from the United Nations and “international community” and after launching several outright military attacks against his South Korean neighbors; yet no one seriously talks about putting together a coalition to oust the Kim regime. What's the biggest difference between Kim, Hussein and Gadhafi? Kim has nukes, while the other two did not.

It's become clear that the best way to keep the international community out of your business is to set off a test nuclear device or two. Now look at Iran. They are almost completely surrounded by neighbors who host either large numbers of US troops, major American military installations or both: Afghanistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iraq (though that one, at least, will change by year's end). And the Iranians remember, even if Americans do not, that the United States overthrew their democratically-chosen government in 1953 and reinstalled the Shah, whose brutal regime the US then helped to keep in power for the next 26 years. So, if your country is nearly surrounded by armed forces from the country who once overthrew your leader to install a regime more friendly to their interests – why wouldn't you take every step imaginable to protect yourself, including trying to make, or at least gain the knowledge to make, a nuclear weapon, when that device has proven to be the one thing that will stop this foreign power from meddling in your internal affairs?

Something to think about as the war drums beat.

America's Next Top Villain

Any way you slice it, this has been a bad year for those George W. Bush would have called “evildoers”. A Libyan mob executed Moammar Gadhafi after a US/NATO-led air campaign allowed rebel forces to drive him from power; Anwar al-Awlaki, al-Qaeda's heir apparent, was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen; and Public Enemy #1, Osama bin Laden was dispatched by the US Navy's SEAL Team Six in May. Of course it seems these days that the United States isn't happy unless we have some uber-villain to rail against, so as a service to you, our reading public, AWV will handicap the race to be America's Next Top Villain. Now let's meet the contenders:

Kim Jong-il, North Korea; Odds: 6-1
Megalomaniacal bad guy Kim Jong-il already seems like he stepped out of a James Bond flick, which is fitting since the Dear Leader is known to be a huge movie buff. On the surface, Kim has all the prerequisites for supervillainy: a highly militarized state, a thriving cult of personality, a penchant for making grandiose threats; but Kim is also near 70 and reportedly in poor health – and no one wants a supervillain who just up and dies on you. Plus North Korea is currently on one of its swings towards engagement with the world, Kim himself was recently in Russia trying to drum up trade between the two nations and negotiating a possible natural gas pipeline route. And then there's the nuclear weapons issue, Kim has shown that nothing keeps the United States out of your well-coifed hair like having a nuclear arsenal (a lesson Gadhafi failed to grasp). But North Korea is known for wild swings in foreign affairs. Kim is also attempting to groom his youngest son, Kim Jong-un for leadership, and nothing screams legitimate leader like drumming up a little military conflict with your neighbors, so Kim the Elder will retain his spot on the possible Top Villain list.

Bashar al-Assad, Syria; Odds: 5-1
Given the Libyan blueprint, casting al-Assad of Syria as the Next Top Villain makes a lot of sense. Just like Gadhafi in Libya, al-Assad has overseen a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters within his country, and, just like Libya, the opposition has used social media to implore the international community to come to their aid. So far though these calls have fallen on deaf ears; there has been no outcry for a Syrian no-fly zone or to provide aid to their rebel movement. Why is a good question: it could be because Syria has close ties to Iran (as well as some ties to Russia), or because they lack Libya's vast oil reserves, or because al-Assad just doesn't have the track record for international mischief of a Moammar Gadhafi. Heady with the success from the Libyan mission, it is possible the international community may rally 'round the “Free Syria” idea, though not terribly likely so al-Assad stays on the list at 5-1.


Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran; Odds: 5-3
On paper, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems like a shoe-in for the Next Top Villain post. Hawks in Israel and the US have been clamoring for military action against him for years: Israel fearing an Iranian nuclear bomb, the US angry over growing Iranian influence in Iraq, but the thought of the US engaging in another regional war in the MENA/Islamic world has thrown some cold water on the military action idea (and that was before Libya), as has Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program (see North Korea). Some experts believe that Ahmadinejad may be losing his grip on power in Iran anyway, the comically-bad plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US is taken by some as sign of a split within the Iranian leadership. Ultimately power in Iran is known to be in the hands of Ayatollah Khamenei, which works against Ahmadinejad since a rule of thumb is that the Top Villain actually has to be the guy in charge. Still, given his record as an anti-West, anti-Israel irritant and the desire in some quarters for military action against Iran, Ahmadinejad has to remain the odds-on favorite for the Next Top Villain spot.


Joseph Kony, Lord's Resistance Army; Odds: 50-1
As the leader of a brutal, nihilistic cult, Joseph Kony seems tailor-made for the role of Top Villain. His Lord's Resistance Army -which earned its reputation for brutality by maiming innocent civilians and raiding isolated villages, killing all the adults while enslaving all of the children - is an easy group to despise (unless, of course, you're Rush Limbaugh). But the LRA has never shown itself to be a threat anywhere but in the hinterlands of Central Africa, and Kony himself has shown a remarkable ability to blend into the African jungle and avoid capture for two long decades now. President Obama recently showed his willingness to take on the LRA by dispatching 100 US Special Forces troops to aid Uganda in Kony's capture. But a Top Villain has to at least seem to pose a direct threat to the United States and also has to be someone that we can be reasonably sure that we can eventually take out. No president wants another decade-long game of hide-and-seek like we had with bin Laden; two factors that make Kony a real longshot for next Top Villain.

Vladimir Putin, Russia; Odds: 8-1
We'll go retro for our last pick. Since declaring that he would once again run for president, Vladimir Putin is being cast as a sort of Soviet-era Leader for Life for the new millennium. Republican presidential candidates are using Putin's announcement as a chance to blast the Obama administration for its “failed reset” of relations with Russia. Add to that Putin's own budding cult of personality (complete with bikini-clad female supporters and a comic casting him as a superhero) and his penchant for photo-op stunts like swimming in Siberian rivers or finding planted Grecian urns while diving in the Aegean Sea, and you have the theatrical makings of a true Top Villain. While a direct military conflict between the US and Russia is unthinkable, the two sides have shown that they can keep a Cold War humming along for decades, and a non-war “war” could be just the thing for American military forces depleted by a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and under growing budget constraints. The reality of the situation though is that the US and Russia need each other more as allies than as adversaries, so a return to the Cold War now is unlikely. Odds of Putin becoming next Top Villain depend on whether Obama (10-1) or the Republicans (6-1) win the 2012 election; we'll split the difference and put Vlad in at 8-1.

Of course there are always the dark horse candidates: Hugo Chavez is famous for his anti-American tirades; Republicans trying to appeal to Cuban-American voters in 2012 could always push the Castro brothers to the top of America's hit list; Afghanistan's erratic Hamid Karzai could always go rogue on us, so the race for America's Next Top Villain remains open. We'll check back in a few months and see where things stand.

The Week That Was

Not surprisingly, the news last week was dominated by coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden, with the odd report from Libya thrown in for good measure, but a lot of other things happened around the world, some of them with serious implications for global affairs. Foreign Policy did a nice job of recapping the week that was in this roundup. Among the highlights: an assassination attept against Turkey's Prime Minister; the beginning of trials in Egypt against former officials from the Mubarak regime, along with the suggestion that former President Hosni Mubarak could face the death penalty if he is found to have ordered security forces to fire on pro-democracy demonstrators; and signs of a power struggle within Iran's government, complete with charges of witchcraft.

You can say a lot of things about the world, but you can't say it's a boring place.

The Real Price Of Oil...

There's an incredibly thought-provoking piece out now from Time.com's military-focused blog Battleland on United States policy in the Persian Gulf. It talks about an analysis put together last year by Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Princeton University, who, after an exhaustive study, calculated the cost of the United States' military presence in the Gulf from 1975-2010 - a cost he puts at a whopping $8 trillion. Yes, that's trillion with a “T”. According to those calculations, the United States now spends as much each year ensuring that the oil from the Persian Gulf keeps flowing as it did in fighting the Cold War. And to make matters worse, Stern argues that it is not money well spent.

US policy towards the Gulf boils down to this: Thanks to the bottleneck created by the Straits of Hormuz, a military force could conceivably block the narrow shipping channels, cutting off the supply of oil and sending the world into an oil-fueled economic shock; therefore we must maintain a robust presence in the region to ensure that this does not happen (the US Navy's Fifth Fleet is currently based in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain). Stern thinks this is nonsense. While it is conceivably possible that the Straits of Hormuz could be blocked by strategically sinking a few very large ships, the states of the Persian Gulf are too reliant on oil exports to ever do this, and countries outside of the Gulf (like China) are too dependent on oil imports ever to do it either.

History shows that Stern is probably right. Iran and Iraq spent eight years in the 1980s engaged in a brutal war with each other that featured, among other things, ballistic missile strikes on each others cities, the use of chemical weapons and suicide attacks carried out by children on the Iranian side. Yet neither the Iranians or Iraqis ever seriously tried to shut down the Straits of Hormuz, and oil prices were not only largely stable during the period of the war, they were also at near historic lows. If the Straits weren't shut down during that conflict, it is hard to imagine when they ever would be.

Yet much of current US foreign policy is built around just this scenario. Stern argues that this leaves the US overfocused on the Middle East while ignoring strategic threats in other parts of the world – say from China. I absolutely agree with him, especially since this is a point I've been arguing here for some time now. Consider for a moment that by the middle of this decade the United States will likely get as much oil from Africa as from the Persian Gulf, yet our investment/interest in Africa pales in comparison to our focus on the Mid-East. Unfortunately for as compelling as Stern's arguments are, they're not likely to change the minds of many decision-makers in Washington; his report originally came out in April 2010, a full year ago, to little public notice.

Get Your War On: Venezuela Edition

You would think that with the United States already bogged down in two unwinnable military engagements (Iraq and Afghanistan) the punditocracy wouldn't be advocating for a third, yet the sabre-rattling towards Iran, and occasionally North Korea, would indicate that two conflicts just aren't enough for some people. Now you can add Venezuela to that list, which as Rizwan Ladha alleges in the Huffington Post, is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program in partnership with that other nuclear bogeyman, Iran.

Ladha's post is heavy on the rhetoric, light on facts and is largely a rehash of an earlier column written by Roger Noriega, whose own motives in raising allegations against Venezuela must be carefully scrutinized given Noriega's association with the Neoconservative movement and his long history in battling Leftist governments in Latin America (Noriega was an Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs under President George W. Bush and is currently a fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute). Among the flaws in Ladha's article are his misidentifying Venezuela as a Southern Hemisphere nation (it's north of the equator) and his implication that the southern half of the globe has always been a nuclear-free zone – South Africa developed their own nuclear weapons, which they gave up at the end of the country's Apartheid regime. Ladha's biggest flaw though is failing to offer up any truly compelling evidence that Venezuela and Iran are collaborating on building nukes. Iran insists that their nuclear program is designed for the peaceful generation of electrical power only; while the world may have its doubts on the Iranian claims, there's no definitive proof to refute them. So right now it's a stretch to say that Iran is developing nukes, it's an even bigger stretch to say that Iran has reached such an advanced level of expertise that they are in a position to help another country establish a nuclear weapons program of their own.

Ladha ends his piece by saying that even if Venezuela is trying to build a nuclear bomb, there's really nothing we can do about it. While this may be correct, talking about a leader like Hugo Chavez – widely regarded in the United States as someone who is both erratic and staunchly anti-American – getting a nuclear bomb is something political leaders in the US aren't going to stand for, recall how the most-effective bit of agitprop used by the Bush administration to build the dubious case for war with Iraq were the claims that Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing his own nuclear weapons program. You can't just raise the spectre of the nuclear genie in the hands of one of America's “enemies” and then tell people to live with it, something I suspect that deep down Ladha and Noriega know all too well.

Americans OK With Fading US Influence

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs is out with their survey of American perceptions of the United States' role in the world, Global Views 2010.  The takeaway from they survey is that a majority of Americans think the United States role in global affairs is diminishing, but surprisingly they're ok with that.  Only a quarter of Americans think that the US plays a larger role as the leader of the world than the country did ten years ago; while nine out of ten Americans think it is more important to focus on fixing domestic problems than for America to try to solve problems abroad.  More than two-thirds of Americans also thought the rise of aspiring global powers like Turkey and Brazil was a good thing since essentially it would mean that there would be other countries to help in dealing with global crises.

What's really interesting about these results is that they seem to fly in the face of the dominant thought among American politicians – namely that Americans expect the United States to play the role of the “sole superpower” and the world's policeman - the country that guarantees law and order around the world. As a result, much of our foreign policy today is based around this idea, along with fear on the part of our political leaders of doing anything that would take America away from this role in the eyes of the American public.  For example, at the core of arguments about why the United States must remain engaged in Afghanistan is this belief that if the US were to end the mission there before achieving “victory” (whatever that means) it would mean a loss of global prestige that the American people wouldn't stand for.

Yet the Global Views 2010 survey indicates that Americans would stand for a diminished leadership role for the United States on the world stage, in fact many would seem to prefer it if it then meant that we would be able to concentrate on resolving pressing domestic issues.

Other interesting results from the survey were a decided lack of support for a military strike by the United States against Iran to try to stop their nuclear research program (only 18% were in favor), along with a widespread belief that an American military strike would result in terrorist attacks against US interests in retaliation.  A majority also believed that if Israel launched an airstrike against Iran the United States should not engage in military action against Iran in support of Israel.

Beating The War Drums

A few quick thoughts on Iran. Just a casual look around the blogoshpere turns up an awful lot of pieces dealing with the idea of Iran - either warning of the growing Iranian “nuclear threat”, advocating military action to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon, or in fewer instances, warning against the consequences of attacking Iran. Perhaps it’s laziness on the part of the punditocracy, since a rehash of the case for/against war with Iran kind of writes itself at this point; but it does seem like there’s a growing expectation that there will be some military action against Iran soon (something I humbly note that I predicted back in June).

Unfortunately for the pro-action crowd, their arguments are pretty weak. Take this recent piece in the Weekly Standard, which makes the case that the US has to take military action against Iran to protect the world’s oil supply, since if there was an outbreak of hostilities, it would negatively impact the world’s supply of oil (feel free to scratch your head over that bit of logic). The pro-action crowd also maintains that Iran’s nuclear capabilities can quickly be eliminated through a series of air strikes that will have no negative reprocussions. And if you believe that, I have some lovely beachfront property along the Straits of Hormuz to sell you.

Sadly, we’ve seen this movie before. Military action in Afghanistan was suppose to quickly decapitate al-Qaeda and eliminate the country as a terrorist safe-haven. Our soldiers in Iraq would, supposedly, be greeted as liberators, met with candies and flowers and Iraq’s oil revenues would pay for the whole invasion to boot. We all know how well those two scenarios played out. But sadly as Arnaud de Borchgrave reports in today’s Washington Times, those lessons of history seem to have been lost on the crop of neoconservatives still rattling around Washington DC; he quotes Reuel Marc Gerecht who says that Iran’s response to military action will be “minimal” and that an attack will “rock the system” in the region - basically shoveling the same stupid line the neocons pushed seven years ago about Iraq.

If we indeed are set on military action against Iran then, let’s hope our leaders do a much better job planning for the day after the attack as they do for when the bombs fall.