John and Sergei in Paris: No Progress on Ukraine

Secretary of State John Kerry made a last-minute diversion on his flight home from the Mid-East Saturday night for an emergency meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov for crisis talks on Ukraine Sunday in Paris.  Judging from the after-meeting conference, he should have spared the trip. 

Russia remained set on their position that the annexation of Crimea was a fait accompli and brushed aside US demands that they pull back the tens of thousands of Russian troops massed along Ukraine's eastern border, saying the troops are merely participating in a routine military exercise and adding that Russia has “no plans” to invade Ukraine.  Kerry, meanwhile, turned down Russian demands that Ukraine adopt a “federal” form of government – where each of Ukraine's regions would be a de facto state, capable of making their own laws, collecting taxes and conducting foreign relations, while also maintaining broad autonomy for their ethnic minorities.  Kerry rejected the demand on the crazy notion that choosing Ukraine's form of government is a decision that the Ukrainians themselves should make.

The demand for a federalized form of government is emerging as the key to resolving the conflict from the Russian side.  Lavrov contended that a federal state was the only way that the rights and interests of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine could truly be protected.  Lavrov is continuing the idea pushed by the Putin government since the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych in February, that being a Russian living in Ukraine in 2014 is about the same as being a Jew living in Poland in 1940, while offering scant evidence to support the claim that the provisional government in Kiev is actually threatening the safety of Ukraine's Russian population.  This notion of an impending threat was the justification Russia used for its intervention in Crimea. 

The real reason behind Russia's push for the federalization of Ukraine though is to ensure that the country would be basically ungovernable from Kiev and to diminish Ukraine's prospects of having a prosperous future.  As explained in this earlier post, Putin's biggest fear over Ukraine is that the government that will take power after the upcoming elections in May will finally get their act together and put the country on the path to developing as a Western European-style market economy with an open and representative government.  To have a country so culturally tied to Russia successfully follow the post-Soviet path of development that has been seen in Poland and the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, would undercut the foundations of Putinism.  Russia, therefore, has a vested interest in making sure that Ukraine fails, the push for federalism is simply the latest attempt from Moscow to make this happen.  

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?

US Sources Question French Intervention Strategy In Mali

Sometimes the most interesting nugget in a story comes buried all the way at the end; that is the case here with this story on Reuters about France's sudden involvement in the slow-burning civil war in Mali. Near the end of the Reuters piece is this comment from the infamous “anonymous source”, identified by Reuters as a US military official, who asks: “I don't know what the French endgame is for this. What is their goal? It reminds me of our initial move into Afghanistan.”

Before we unpack that statement, a little background on the current situation in Mali. Until last year, Mali had been considered one of the more successful states in West Africa, though a state that still dealt with a long-simmering issue of civil unrest in the northern part of the country where separatists hoped to carve out their own homeland. In one of the great examples of the law of unintended consequences, this bid received a massive shot in the arm from the US/French/British-led campaign to support the rebels in Libya in their bid to oust Moammar Gadhafi. His overthrow meant the return of thousands of Tuareg mercenaries, formerly employed by Gadhafi, to their homelands in northern Mali, where they teamed up with al-Qadea-leaning militias and turned a minor bit of civil unrest into a full-blown civil war.

The Malian army, not happy with the way the war was being run, staged a coup, overthrowing Mali's president (The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald notes this is a double-irony for the West since the coup was led by a US-trained army captain). With no functioning military, the Tuareg/al-Qaeda alliance took control over half of the country before having their own setback when the Islamist militias turned on their Tuareg allies. 2012 ended with the situation in Mali an utter mess and Mali's neighbors pleading for assistance to prevent Mali from turning into a failed state haven for al-Qaeda-linked groups.

The US has been promoting a strategy built on the “Somali model”, at least the most recent version of foreign intervention in Somalia, which has been the most successful in the past 20 years. In practice, this means providing funding and logistical support to troops from neighboring African nations who will do the actual fighting. In Somalia this, has been a mix of primarily Ugandan, Kenyan, Ethiopian troops who have managed to largely defeat Somalia's homegrown Islamist militia, al-Shabaab, and restore some semblance of a functioning government to Somalia.

That was the plan, at least for Mali as well, until last week when the French began spearheading their own much more direct intervention, which started with airstrikes against Islamist positions, most notably surrounding the city of Gao. There are now also reports of French special forces troops on the ground in Mali. Why France decided to launch their Mali mission is a topic that is actively being discussed, though it could likely be because the force of 2,000-3,000 peacekeepers from a collection of West African nations would not have been ready to deploy for several months, perhaps not until September, and perhaps not even then.

And that brings us back to our unnamed US military source.  He/she goes on to add: “Air strikes are fine. But pretty soon you run out of easy targets. Then what do you do? What do you do when they [the  militias] head up into the mountains?”  Sadly, since he/she is anonymous, it is impossible to know if they asked these same important questions when the US went stumbling into Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps they are offering up these comments as a sort of advice, hard-won knowledge from the foibles of those two US interventions. But it is hard not to read these comments as being both hypocritical and condescending given the past decade of US foreign involvement, our continued questionable presence in Afghanistan and the calls by the DC warhawks, particularly those of the neoconservative stripe, for a US campaign against Iran, yet another military mission that is unlikely to achieve its tactical goal – elimination of Iran's nuclear program – while possessing a high likelihood of spurring a whole chain of unexpected and unintended consequences.

The “Somali model” idea pushed by the United States sounds good on paper, the problem is that while Somalia had several neighbors with large populations – Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia – to supply troops, the would-be ECOWAS force for Mali is being drawn from a collection of fairly small states like Ghana and Sierra Leone, not countries known for having large and robust armies. Nigeria is the one large neighbor that is pledging troops, but Nigeria is also dealing with their own separatist movement (MEND – the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) and their own Islamist uprising (Boko Harum), so it is hard to understand why the Nigerians would then suddenly have such better luck when operating in Mali when they have struggled so much against these two groups at home. The proposed Malian peacekeeping force is also made up of only 2,000-3,000 soldiers; by contrast, the Ugandans alone contributed up to 16,000 troops to the ANISOM mission in Somalia. 

Our unnamed source is asking some good and important questions, but they are questions that highlight the problem with the international community since 9/11: there is now a far greater motivation to intervene in troubled nations (especially when supposed “al-Qaeda” forces are involved) and to intervene right away!  But these proposed interventions are launched without clear military objectives in mind, and more importantly, without a plan for the “day after” the initial military campaign is launched, or in other words, without an exit strategy.  The United States has spent 12 years trying to find a way out of Afghanistan, you have to wonder if France will now find that it was very easy to get into Mali, but that it will be very hard to get out.

Red Dawn Redux: A Shaky Parable For Our Times

The Guardian has taken a first look at the trailer for the remake of the 1980's-vintage action flick Red Dawn, and it raises a few questions much deeper than you'd expect from a movie this vapid.

Just in case you're not up on your late Cold War cinema, the original Red Dawn was the story of a bunch of high school pals in rural Colorado turned guerrilla fighters after the Soviet Union, with an assist from Cuba, decided for some reason to invade the United States in 1985.  The 2012 remake pretty much sticks to the original script, swapping rural Washington state for Colorado and China for the now-defunct Soviet Union in the role of the antagonist.

Or maybe it is North Korea? As I wrote when the Red Dawn remake first went into production, the film's creative team pulled back from the logical substitution of China for the Soviet Union – possibly fearing a political backlash, a loss of Chinese distribution rights, or both – and instead substituted North Korea as the resident bad guys. Though the producers seem to have later decided that the idea North Korea, a nation of 25 million that struggles just to feed its own citizens, could stage a large-scale invasion of the United States stretches credibility too far even for a Hollywood action film (though Hollywood also recently decided that a movie version of Manimal is somehow credible), so now, according to The Guardian, the antagonists are from a “unidentified Asian” country.

Near the end of The Guardian's demolishing of the Red Dawn trailer, writer Stuart Heritage raises a good point: the original Red Dawn was released in the mid-1980s, at a time when the United States was offering moral and material support to the mujahadeen of Afghanistan as they tried to repel the mighty Red Army of the Soviet Union.  The original Red Dawn offered up a kinship to be drawn then between our plucky band of Colorado high schoolers and the scruffy Afghanis, who each took to the hills to fight the foreigners who invaded their lands.

Fast forward 27 years though and America's perception of Afghan insurgents has morphed from the heroic mujahadeen into the dastardly Taliban jihadi; the foreigners they fight are no longer the evil Soviets, but rather good red-blooded American boys and girls in uniform.  So while the new Red Dawn is still making the same visceral appeal to the audience to identify with the tragically over-matched band of fighters who want only to free their homeland from an invading foreign military force, the underlying role of the United States in the world has flipped – rather than supporting the insurgents on the sly as we did in the 1980s, we have become the invading heavies in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  In reality, Red Dawn is now asking us to emotionally identify with the very people fighting against American troops today. (If the producers of Red Dawn wanted to keep the emotional and subtextual consistency of the original, then instead of fighting, the high school kids in RD:Redux would join a local reconstruction team headed up by a government official from the unnamed Asian nation that might be North Korea).

It does beg the question of what exactly the producers of the Red Dawn remake were thinking in dredging up this largely forgotten bit of 80s pop culture? Why ask an American audience to identify with a band of local insurgents fighting against a vastly superior military power, when at that very same moment American troops are being attacked a half a world away by bands of local insurgents fighting against a vastly superior military power, which, in this case, just happens to be the United States.

Or maybe I am giving the Red Dawn producers too much credit for being able to make these intellectual connections in the first place. After all, their choice to play the All-American lead in this film was Chris Hemsworth, a British actor best known for playing a Norse god. 

CNN Charged With Censorship Over Mid-East Documentary

Last week media critic Glenn Greenwald of the UK's Guardian newspaper/website published a pair of hard-hitting articles aimed directly at CNN that received surprisingly little coverage in the United States given the severity of their charges, namely that CNN is engaging in acts of censorship to protect the patronage paid to them by foreign governments.

Greenwald's charges center around a documentary made last year about the democratic uprisings in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain called “iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring”.  The documentary, which Greenwald describes as “unflinching”, centered on pro-democracy activists in the tiny kingdom and was highly critical of the heavy-handed government response, which ultimately put down the democratic uprising.  The Bahraini regime was criticized internationally for their methods, which included the mass arrests of protesters (including doctors who were attempting to help injured demonstrators) and the use of deadly force against unarmed and peaceful protesters.  The CNN documentary crew themselves were even detained at gunpoint by pro-regime forces intent on disrupting their attempts at telling the story of the pro-democracy activists.

“iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring” would go on to garner critical praise along with a number of journalism awards. Yet despite this praise, CNN's domestic network would air the documentary only once, while CNN's international broadcasting arm, CNNi, the outlet for which “iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring” was originally produced, would not air the documentary at all.  The lead journalist on “iRevolution”, Amber Lyon, complained to CNN's upper management about the network's refusal to air the documentary.  Despite being groomed by CNN to become one of their star on-air personalities, Lyon was laid off by CNN earlier this spring after her complaints about CNN's internal censorship became public.

CNN, of course, has denied any attempt at censorship, noting that they have aired many stories about the uprising in Bahrain (just not “iRevolution” apparently).  But it is here, and in a companion piece, that Greenwald lays out his most serious charge against CNN – that CNN has entered into a number of paid partnerships with governments around the world and that CNN is allowing these partnerships to color their reporting from and about these countries.

The CNN “partnerships” with the governments of countries like Kazakhstan, Georgia and Bahrain has led to the production of a series of quasi-journalistic fluff pieces: reports that are meant to look like genuine CNN reporting – using CNN journalists/personalities - but that in reality are public relations spots that allow the “partner” countries to put their best foot forward, with no contrasting viewpoints offered by CNN's stable of journalists. For example, a series of paid reports aired under the “Eye on Lebanon” banner were touted by Lebanon's Tourism Minister not for their journalistic merit, but rather as a way “to market Lebanon as a tourism destination.”   

It's not surprising then to note that CNN has a long-standing partnership arrangement with Bahrain though the Bahrain Economic Development Board, the governmental agency responsible for promoting Bahrain to the world. CNN has included Bahrain in their “Eye on...” country series, among other paid-for network programming. It is not surprising then that CNN has been reluctant to air a documentary that is so critical of the Bahrani royal family.

There is an inherent tension between advertising and journalism, with the open question always being if the news organization will shy away from coverage that could reflect negatively on their sponsors.  But what Greenwald describes at CNN is something different, the countries in question aren't merely buying commercial spots on CNN, they are, in effect, directly paying for positive coverage of their countries. Worse still, the shelving of “iRevolution” and the subsequent dismissal of Amber Lyon is troubling evidence that CNN is willing to let these sponsorships affect their journalistic judgment beyond the paid-for beauty spots.  It is a troubling accusation to make against what has long been one of the most-trusted names in modern journalism, and is a sign of how far CNN has fallen from their own glory days.

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.

Are US-Israeli Relations Changing?

Two recent statements by US officials have me wondering if we are seeing a subtle shift in US-Israeli relations. One is that for the first time, acts of violence by Israeli “settlers” against Palestinian residents of the West Bank have been described by the State Department as “terrorist incidents”; the second is a statement made by the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro who said that an official Israeli investigation into the death of American activist Rachel Corrie in 2003 was not “thorough, credible and transparent.”

Corrie was only 23 when she was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer as she and others tried to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. The action prompted international outrage and became a rallying point for those protesting the Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli government promised a full investigation into the incident (a “thorough, credible and transparent” investigation, which Amb. Shapiro referenced in his statement).  But last week, Israel closed the formal investigation, concluding it was an accident, but also chiding the now-dead Corrie for inserting herself into a war zone.

Turning back to the terrorist declaration against the Israeli settlers, the State Department took the move after recent attacks by groups of young settlers against Palestinians, including attacks on mosques, beatings and one particularly brutal incident: the firebombing of a Palestinian taxi that left six people injured, including two four-year old twins.  The State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism for 2011 included: “Attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents, property and places of worship in the West Bank.” According to the United Nations, which monitors conditions in the West Bank and Gaza, attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians have increased by almost 150% between 2009 and the end of 2011.

It is important to note that the State Department isn't going out on much of a limb here. The Israeli media and government have been growing increasingly concerned about the actions of extremist settlers, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the fire-bomb attack of the taxi and other government officials have used the word terrorism when referring to some of the actions taken by a subset of extremist Israeli settlers (though the Israeli government supports the expansion of more “mainstream” Israeli settlements in the West Bank).

But given how reluctant the US typically is to criticize the actions of Israel, it is then quite noteworthy that officials with the US government would, in the space of a week, use the word “terrorism” when referring to the actions of Israeli settlers and would condemn an official report by the Israeli government. Could it be the sign of a subtle shift in US-Israeli relations? Only time will tell.

Are America's Right Wing Crackpots Harming US Foreign Policy?

In case you missed this story from last weekend, during the latest stop in her whirlwind tour of the world (that so far has taken her to 102 countries) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's motorcade was met in Egypt by a wild mob of protesters who threw shoes and tomatoes at her car while shouting that the US needed to stop its support of the Muslim Brotherhood, the political party of Egypt's new president Mohamed Morsi, along with chants of “Monica!, Monica!” 

As one of the most popular members of the Obama Administration, Secretary Clinton usually doesn't elicit such angry receptions during her state visits, and given that Egypt has long been an American ally, the reception was quite startling.  So what was the motivation behind it?  Apparently elements of America's own Right Wing lunatic fringe.

It seems that Egyptian conspiracy theorists have eagerly bought into some ridiculous claims currently making the rounds of the Far Right fringe that the US government has been infiltrated by radical Islamists.  Ground Zero for these claims is Sec. Clinton herself, who according to the theory, has somehow been brainwashed by her deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, who happens to be a Muslim, and therefore a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Muslim infiltration of the US government has been so successful, according to the theory, that the US has gone on to rig Egypt's election in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who we are now funding to the tune of $1.5 billion.

This crackpot theory was apparently started by Frank Gaffney, who went from serving in the Reagan administration to peddling McCarthy-style conspiracy theories about evil Muslims lurking in under the beds of Mr. and Mrs. America on internet-radio programs.  Gaffney's delusional ramblings were eagerly picked up and echoed by such Far Right luminaries as Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and blogger Lucianne Goldberg, which explains the “Monica!” chants at least.  The details of this ring of lunacy have been mapped out by both the New York Times and TheRachel Maddow Show.

Of course in America we know better – at least those of us with an IQ higher than room temperature - than to take any of these idiotic ramblings seriously.  We know that these purveyors of nonsense are merely tossing out rhetorical red meat to folks like members of the Tea Party, who think that anyone not as white, Christian and conservative as they are is obviously some kind of foreign agent bent on destroying America.  We know that in this country anyone with a computer and a few dollars can stake out their own corner of cyberspace and fill it with whatever material they want, no matter how ridiculous, so the caveat that “I saw it on the Internet” is something of a joke about the reader's naiveté.

Unfortunately this model doesn't hold true in other countries, especially countries where an autocracy tightly controlled access to the media for decades.  So in a place like Egypt, being on the internet does confer some sense of legitimacy, as does the ability of someone like Frank Gaffney to be able to say they once worked for the President.  It gives his comments a certain weight, even if they sound like they ramblings of a lunatic and are easily debunked.  For example, “Muslim Brotherhood” agent Huma Abedin is also married to former Rep. Anthony Weiner, himself a Jew – hardly the action of a loyal MB member (I know Frank, it is all part of her amazingly clever cover story...).  The US rigging of the recent Egyptian Presidential election similarly makes no sense: if the US was going to rig the election then they most likely would have rigged it in favor of the SCAF-backed candidate Ahmed Shafiq, so that the US might more easily continue its decades-long friendly relationship with the Egyptian military (which is also the true recipient of the $1.5 billion in aid the Right Wingnuts say the US is providing Egypt).  Let's remember the United States' anemic early response to the Egyptian revolution – in part this was driven by a desire to keep our long-time ally Hosni Mubarak in power; it was also driven by the very real fear that if the Mubarak government fell, it's most likely successor would be dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, since they were the only opposition party in Egypt with any level of organization.  Rather than wanting a Muslim Brotherhood take-over of Egypt, the United States feared it.

Dealing with idiotic comments is part of the price we pay for the freedom of expression guaranteed to us by the First Amendment.  Most Americans are savvy enough to either ignore comments like those being peddled by this collection of fringe characters or just roll their eyes at their inherent silliness.  Unfortunately folks in places like Egypt don't realize that these statements are the stuff of nonsense, they don't realize that to many Americans, Michele Bachmann is a joke. And, sadly, that means that their craziness is actually harming the United States abroad.

Is It Finally The End For Assad in Syria?

After dealing with a persistent rebellion in his country for over a year, the wheels seem to finally be coming off the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  Reports during the past day have indicate that several of Syria's ambassadors have defected and that a flotilla of foreign peacekeeping troops are en route to his country; another TV news report from a few days earlier alleged that troops loyal to Assad control only Syria's major cities (most of them, at least), the roads running through the countryside are basically no-go zones for Assad loyalists.

 So after more than a year of fighting and after Western-led efforts at stopping the violence proved to be largely fruitless, what's changed?  The nexus seems to be the defection of a member of Assad's inner circle, Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass.  The bonds of power between the Tlass and Assad families go back decades in Syria.  Tlass' father, Mustafa, was a former defense minister who helped to usher Bashar Assad's father Hafez into power; Manaf Tlass has long been a loyal member of Bashar Assad's ruling cabal.

That someone as well-connected as Tlass would decide to jump ship is a stunning vote of no-confidence for the Assad regime, and one that many other seem to have taken note of.  Syria's ambassador to Iraq defected on Wednesday, seeking asylum in that country and calling on Syria's military to revolt againts Assad; this morning the BBC made an as-yet unconfirmed report that Syria's ambassador to Belarus has also defected.  Meanwhile, Russia has sent a flotilla of navy ships, including one destroyer and three amphibious landing craft from their Black Sea fleet to Tartus, Syria, where Russia maintains a naval facility.  The flotilla is said to be transporting a detachment of weapons and Russian marines.

Russia raised eyebrows a few weeks ago when they first discussed sending ships and weapons to Tartus.  Western diplomats feared that Russia might be trying to intervene on behalf of their old ally Assad, though the Russian government issued assurances that any military action would only to be to protect the Russian naval facility and Russian personnel in Tartus.  That Russia is now making such a show of force with their Tartus flotilla is a pretty clear indication that they expect there is a high chance for widespread unrest in Tartus in the near future.  And widespread unrest in Tartus would likely be the result of the chaos expected to follow in the wake of Assad's removal from power.

Since Russia has much closer ties to the current Syrian government than do any Western nations, it is not a unreasonable supposition to assume they have a clearer picture of what's happening on the ground in Syria than do officials in Washington or London.  Therefore the movement of Russian marines into the region, along with the defections of Tlass and several Syrian ambassadors are all indications of a regime on the edge of collapse.

How will that collapse occur?  It is highly unlikely that the rag-tag Syrian opposition will be able to launch a major assault on Damascus.  Keep in mind that in Libya, the Libyan rebels were only able to execute their drive on Tripoli after the US/NATO “humanitarian” mission began acting as the rebel's de facto air force; the walls of Gadhafi's Tripoli compound were breached by laser-guided bombs dropped from Coalition aircraft.  The Syrian rebels do not have this assistance.  Bashar's end then will likely come from an uprising within his own inner circle; either through loyalists who have grown tired of waging war against their own people, or through loyalists who see the tide turning against them and hope to curry some favor with the rebel leaders by delivering up to them the symbol of their oppression, or by removing Assad from power, permanently, themselves.  

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.    

African Nations Calling For Intervention in Mali

In case you were wondering where the world's next armed conflict will be, the West African nation of Mali is looking like a good candidate. 

Members of ECOWAS, the Economic Community Of West African States, is building support for a resolution they will present to the United Nations Security Council requesting an armed force be deployed to the northern part of Mali to combat a growing Islamist movement that ECOWAS says could destabilize the entire region.

Map of Mali

“It is not just a threat for the region, but the world,” said President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger and the man leading the charge on ECOWAS' appeal to the UN.  Issoufou called Mali a potential “West African Afghanistan”, alleging that terror groups from Afghanistan and Pakistan are recuriting among young Islamic militiamen in northern Mali, adding that: “it is an international threat that needs an international response so this is why we have decided to take this to the Security Council.”

Mali, once held up as a model of stability in Africa, has suffered a bizarre and sudden collapse in recent months.  Mali's problems were kicked off in March when a group of army officers overthrew the government of democratically-elected President Amadou Toumani Toure over, what the army guys thought, was Toure's mishandling of an ongoing uprising by Tuareg tribesmen in the north of the country.  The Tuaregs were once the favored mercinaries of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.  When the Gadhafi regime fell, thousands of well-trained, well-armed Tuaregs flooded back into their native Mali and began causing trouble.  The coup plotters claimed that Pres. Toure was not giving them the material and support they needed to effectively fight the Tuaregs.

But it quickly became clear that the coup plotters had no grand plan for governing and Mali fell into chaos, which, ironically, allowed the Tuaregs to launch a major offensive and seize half of Mali.  A power-sharing agreement ended the coup crisis, but the problems with the newly empowered Tuaregs remains; now they are pushing for the creation of an Islamic state carved out of northern Mali.

This is too much for ECOWAS, which claims that the only way to stop the Tuaregs and their Islamist supporters now would be through an international military force.  ECOWAS hopes that the bulk of the support for any UNSC-mandated mission will come from the United States and France.  French President Francois Hollande has stated that France would be ready to support such a mission if it receives the Security Council's blessing.  No word from the US about their possible support for the ECOWAS proposal.

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.

Cuba's Oil Hopes Coming Up Dry

The announcement last year of a potentially vast oil reserve off the coast of Cuba looked like a game-changer for the impoverished island nation, but Cuba's hopes suffered another blow last week as a test well came up dry.  Now Spanish oil firm Repsol said it is likely that they will withdraw from the hunt for Cuban oil, potentially giving up their stake in an reserve that could contain 20 billion barrels of oil.

But finding such a reserve in deep ocean waters can be a formidable challenge.  Repsol spent an estimated $100 million drilling their test well.  While dry wells are a common occurrence in oil prospecting, Repsol has apparently decided the likelihood of hitting oil with a future well did not justify a further expense.  This leaves Indonesia's Petronas as the only company actively prospecting for oil off the coast of Cuba; the results from their test well are expected in July.

Cuba had high hopes for the oil deposits identified in their coastal waters.  Oil taken from the offshore deposits could make Cuba energy independent, with enough then left over to transform Cuba into an oil exporting nation.  Oil exports would give the Cuban government of Raul Castro an effective tool in fighting the embargo levied against Cuba for the past half-century by the United States, as well as providing a large source of revenue for Cuba's state-run economy.  But with the global hunt for oil having success in locations around the world (with many of those places being in Africa) and techniques like hydrofracking making known, but previously not exploited, reserves profitable, there seems to be less incentive for international oil companies to hunt of elusive deposits of crude off the coast of Cuba.  At the same time, Cuba's domestic petroleum industry does not have the resources or expertise to drill in the deepwater themselves, leaving the Cuban government's oil plans on the edge of failure.

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. 

Obama's Not-So-Excellent Latin American Adventure

By now you've probably heard about the Secret Service prostitution scandal that has totally overshadowed President Obama's trip to participate in the Summit of the Americas, a gathering of the nations of Latin America – plus the United States and Canada, this past weekend in Cartagena, Colombia.  After reading this report from Reuters, maybe the Secret Service distraction isn't a bad thing.

While the White House is touting the signing of a free-trade agreement between the United States and Colombia as an accomplishment from the Summit, most of the focus seems to be falling on the United States increasingly diminishing role in Latin American affairs, quite a step back for the US, which since the time of the Monroe Doctrine has considered Latin America to be our backyard.  But that attitude may be part of the reason for the split.  Latin American governments are finding the United States to be increasingly more arrogant and demanding in its bilateral dealings with them, and indications are that they are growing tired of the long-standing status quo.

The most visible sign of this split is the public rebuke suffered by the US and Canada over Cuba.  The two nations pushed a motion to bar inviting Cuba to future Summits unless Cuba engaged in massive political reforms. None of the Summit's other 32 participants signed on to the resolution.  The nations of Latin America meanwhile are charting a course that isn't dependent on the United States.  China is pouring money into investments in a host of Latin American nations, while Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has been promoting the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), as a US-free alternative to existing regional bodies like the Organization of American States.

Critics will likely be quick to blame the failure of the United States at the Summit on Pres. Obama, but as one State Dept. official noted to Reuters, many of the wedge issues between the US and Latin America have been brewing for decades.  And a number of Latin American leaders said that they truly appreciated President Obama's attendance at the Summit and his apparent interest in the discussions and decision-making process, even if they disagree with the official positions of the United States.  And a major driver of the US-Latin American split is the growing economic clout of a number of nations in the region, particularly Brazil, which is a member of the BRICS group of the world's top-performing emerging economies.  Brazil's statue will be boosted by their deepwater oil reserves, which could net the country vast amounts of money from crude oil exports, and Brazil's hosting of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics.

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...

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.