I Never MENA Hurt You; I Never MENA Make You Cry 2017 (Middle East, North Africa, and Other Geopolitical Hotspots)

2017 deserves a new MENA thread.

BREAKING: Israeli news channel (Channel 2) reporting that Trump will announce the move of US embassy to Jerusalem - @IsraelHatzolah

I didn't think he'd do it but if the last year has taught me anything it's that I shouldn't trust my gut when it comes to forecasting the future; especially when it comes to Trump-related things.

imho it's a great decision. I never understood why the US withheld moving the embassy to West Jerusalem. I suppose they were trying to appease Arab countries + orgs that find the idea intolerable however it sent a poor signal - as if West Jerusalem were actually negotiable. That Arab countries refused to accept West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel gave lie to the contention that they 'accepted' Israel, and that the US refused to move the embassy there challenged the notion that they were in Israel's pocket. Moving the embassy there doesn't prejudge the status of East Jerusalem (which imho should not be divided or become the capital of Palestine but I think it's reasonably open to other opinions) and the argument that because Israel said the city was undivided means that moving the embassy to WJ confirmed that assertion is self-evidently absurd. One can have the embassy in West Jerusalem and still believe East Jerusalem should be the capital of Palestine.

Anyway, should be an interesting year in the region. Presumably big developments re Syria, re ISIS, new Iranian elections coming up, not sure if status quo for gulf states or Yemen will change dramatically. Settlement construction in the WB set to speed up under new Presidency. Any other major issues coming to a head in 2017?

From prior thread:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/18/iraq-has-retaken-east-mosul-from-isis-says-army-general

2 days old news. Not yet on the internet is that ISIS is giving up because Trump said "radical Islamic terrorism" and said he would "eradicate them from the face of the earth"

― curmudgeon, Friday, January 20, 2017 10:04 AM

The Mosul offensive was designed to reduce the threat of ISIS and give the new president some breathing room, who, when the operation was planned, was assumed to be Clinton. Thanks, Obama.

Looking forward to discussing MENA et al with you guys here this new year. Think you covered the biggest events. It's odd having a new US president of whom we've no clue what he'll do in foreign affairs. I'm 'interested' to see how the power grabbing Erdogan will play his cards wrt Syria and minorities, and whether or not his brittle 'understanding' with Russia can survive the year. Syria is Putin's call, in the end.

Israel to build nearly 600 settlement homes in East Jerusalem

my extremely low confidence guess is that this year we see syria start to move from a civil war into an occupation/insurrection stage as russian draws down participation and assad begins to try and reconsolidate as much of his broken country that he can. always lots of speculation about whether russian/iranian patrons will force him to resign but after all of this i can't imagine him agreeing to that and despite what it might appear he has significant leverage - too much invested at this pt for his patrons to just abandon him. it might be more convenient to reconstitution/rebuilding if he stepped down but imo it's not a dealbreaker.

Xp to Aimless: that's rather harsh on the YPG, Peshmerga and Iraqi army. They staged the Mosul op because they didn't have a choice. It wasn't a US-plan,

(Or am I missing your sarcasm here?)

Think you are right about Syria, Mordy. Though lots depends on how Assad, assuming he will be in near full control again, will treat the 'Rebels' and anyone else who disagrees with him.

Retaking Mosul was always going to require massive air support, which was always going to require US participation and a ton of US money, so even though it was jointly planned and is jointly run, the US had more than enough leverage to steer the overall plan. The "thanks, Obama" was intended as sarcasm.

I don't get the sarcasm. Retaking Mosul is still a good thing?

What is happening with the Bibi scandal? Is he still in charge in 2018?

who knows. when i first saw it i thought he'd for sure be out & israeli justice hasn't shown any reticence about jailing a PM before for corruption but idk he's an extremely savvy politician. also if u aren't counting there are now two separate scandals. case 2000 is the newspaper coverage related one. case 1000 is a standard bribes for favors case.

Sputnik claims Russia wants to include the US in negotiations but Iran is protesting.

If so, Russia must be feeling pretty confident of their good standing with the US government rn.

Not really. It puts the US government in a very difficult position either way. Say yes and they 'legtimise' the talks and acknowledge they're playing second fiddle to Russia - only there because they allow them to be. Say no and they're cut out altogether. They would have done the same with Clinton, i'm pretty sure. Simply being in a position to be handing out the party invitations is the main goal.

Gotcha Aimless.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/20/middleeast/palmyra-isis-theater/

Damn, I thought Isis had already destroyed all of the ancient sites in Palmyra.

@haaretzcom
Israeli defense minister doesn't rule out occupying Gaza Strip in next conflict

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.767283

rumors Assad suffered a stroke?

if it happened, but wasn't fatal, then I doubt would change much in Syria any time soon. his policies would run along on simple inertia.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obamas-white-house-worked-for-months-on-a-plan-to-seize-raqqa-trumps-team-deemed-it-hopelessly-inadequate/2017/02/02/116310fa-e71a-11e6-80c2-30e57e57e05d_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_trumpsyria-320pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.76b81e4045b7

Trump's new plan better be better than the one they had in Yemen

Stephen Walt:

Or consider this. For the past 15 years or more, people like me have been consistently and at times powerfully critical of American neoconservatives. I still regard their views on U.S. grand strategy and U.S. Middle East policy as dangerous and wrong, and I believe they bear considerable responsibility for the continuing fiasco we are dealing with in the Middle East. If William Kristol, Eliot Cohen, or David Frum got close to wielding power again, I’d worry that their advice might be taken seriously and I’d do what I could to challenge their analysis and their prescriptions. But as of today we’re on the same side, because the threat that Trump, Bannon, and their incompetent cronies pose to our constitutional order and core political values overrides our continuing differences on other foreign-policy questions. The neocons may change their tune if Trump does decide to attack Iran — we’ll see — but for now their concerns are justified and their warnings should be heeded.

It takes a danger of considerable magnitude to get realists and neoconservatives to agree on anything, but we agree on Trump. And you can add to that unlikely coalition the traditional left, the largely apolitical civil service, the heads of a growing number of major corporations, and many dedicated foreign-policy professionals Trump might have won over but didn’t even bother to try.

Assad appears to be still alive, and he has allegedly had executed 13,000 opponents who were detained in jails in recent years

the Amnesty International report says the magnitude and severity of abuse has "increased drastically" since 2011. Citing the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, the report says "at least 17,723 people were killed in government custody between March 2011 and December 2015, an average of 300 deaths each month." The victims — political dissidents, journalists, doctors and aid workers — were perceived opponents of the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

On the basis of its own investigation, Amnesty International estimates that between September 2011 and December 2015, between 5,000 and 13,000 people were executed without legitimate trials at Saydnaya.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/06/513804240/amnesty-international-reports-organized-murder-of-detainees-in-syrian-prison

But will he agree to a trade deal with the UK and has Theresa May offered him a state visit yet?

Mass murder was always going to be the result of an Assad victory.

I was listening to a v grisly + depressing report on this earlier, people are often notified of their death penalty within minutes of the hanging - which is sometimes taking up to 15 minutes to kill them, often executioners are having to pull their legs to finish off the job. I think I'd rather take a bullet than go through such an horrific death as that.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-turkey-idUSKBN15N02J

The Turkish sources said Pompeo would discuss both the YPG and steps against the network of U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey accuses of orchestrating last July's coup attempt. Gulen denies any involvement.

Turkey has been frustrated by what it considers to be Washington's reluctance to hand over Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999.

"As you know, we have two fundamental issues with the U.S. administration inherited from Obama’s period. One is the support given to YPG and the other is the (Gulen) problem," Kalin said.

"Our president spoke about these openly and clearly. Trump was informed on these and, without going into too much detail, he said let’s ask our teams to work on this and let’s give the necessary instructions."

freezing out the Kurds

Wouldn't be the first time the Kurds were encouraged to shed blood at the behest of the USA and then left hanging out to dry when backing up our words with actions became inconvenient.

I'm thinking the US military has different ideas on this, then the US politicians in the White House and CIA have on this. That's why the latter dropped the Obama plan mentioned upthread

ugh the whole Gulen thing is so 1984 it makes me sick.

erdogan is a fool if he really wants to get his hands on gulen. dude is obviously so much more valuable as a distant scapegoat than he could ever be in custody

Targeting the Gulenist movement would continue even if Gulen himself was in jail. Öcalan is in prison.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/liberman-offers-gaza-seaport-airport-40000-jobs-asks-for-disarmament-hostages-soldiers-bodies/

he must only be offering this bc he knows hamas will never agree to disarmament

this is still insane btw just making the offer is kinda boggling my mind.

...thanks trump?

AN AIRPORT.

if i were hamas - and assume i'm 100% committed to staying armed - i'd accept, disarm, and then just BRING IN ALL THE WEAPONS I WANTED THROUGH MY BRAND NEW AIRPORT.

I am sure that Hamas views itself as the legitimate government of Gaza and it should be obvious to any neutral party that they have very solid factual grounds for this view. Legitimate governments everywhere are 100% committed to arming themselves. If I were Hamas, I would need a hell of a lot more than an airport to pursue disarmament. I'd need a very detailed and comprehensive peace deal with Israel.

So not gonna happen.

and it should be obvious to any neutral party that they have very solid factual grounds for this view

lol tell me aimless when was the last time they held elections

terrible suicide bombing in pakistan today
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/16/asia/pakistan-shrine-bombing/index.html

Mordy, the factual basis for thinking Hamas is a legitimate government rests on the fact that they do in fact attempt to administer to the civil needs of the population and provide a stable and predictable set of services in return for the taxes it levies. Elections are not the only measure of legitimacy, and given the ease and frequency with which they are manipulated, should not be the most salient measure.

If you want to apply liberal political ideals to the notion of legitimacy, the number of nations admissible to the UN would take a pretty drastic hit.

You're glossing over a lot like the fact that they run a totalitarian dictatorship within Gaza and engage in numerous crimes against their citizens including torture, religious enforcement, etc, not to mention the war crimes they commit - firing at Israeli civilian targets is not even the worst of it since now there's the Iron Dome, but it seems clear to me that there's firm evidence that they do use hospitals, schools, children, civilian apartment buildings, etc as shields against counter strikes on missile sites. Which is to say that they are legitimate as much as any theologic authoritarian gov that has led its people into poverty and misery can be. More important I think is that they see themselves as the military vanguard against Israel and it would deconstruct their entire identity to disarm (not to mention would injure their legitimacy among even more radical splinter groups in Gaza like Islamic Jihad and ISIS-offshoots and would likely lead to their demise either through a coup or a people's revolution).

as any theologic authoritarian gov that has led its people into poverty and misery can be

I'll freely grant they are theologic and authoritarian. iirc, the poverty and misery predate their creation, let alone their assuming the government of gaza.

it would deconstruct their entire identity to disarm

you agree with me, then: so not gonna happen.

lead to their demise either through a coup or a people's revolution

it seems internally contradictory to me to imply they do not represent a legitimate government because they have not held elections recently, yet think that their most central policy is so popular with the governed that changing it would lead to their overthrow by the general population. that's kind of a weird compartmentalization.

Maybe I spoke poorly because I think you misunderstood me. Hamas is not popular afaict in Gaza. However they have many weapons which can be useful for staying in control. Without those weapons they will leave themselves open to a coup or a people's revolution that they might otherwise be able to fend off through their [pseudo]-monopoly on armed resistance. With regard to these splinter groups, I think a combination of Hamas' militant superiority and at least some tolerance of Hamas' level of antagonism keeps them in check. But only just barely - they are constantly threatening Hamas (normally by firing weapons at Israel and daring the IDF to strike back at Hamas as punishment) and pushing for even more militant strategies. So I think Hamas is not popular, and that if they were put in a weaker position there are both other militant groups as well as the general populace who would be interested in pushing them out. In terms of their identity, I see this more as an existential issue relating primarily to their self-conception. Is this a clearer explanation? I see no compartmentalization at all in this diagnosis.

However they have many weapons which can be useful for staying in control.

Since you seem to be saying this in the context of a discussion of why hamas won't even begin to consider disarming itself in return for a big airport (which is what both of us are saying, but from different perspectives), I can only read "weapons" in that context as referring to literal armaments, since those would be the only weapons they would be divesting themselves of, not the apparatus of governance.

I do not imagine any government anywhere on earth would agree to disarming to the extent they could no longer police their population, or prevent an armed "splinter" from overthrowing them, nor disarming to the point where they would be defenseless against an invasion by their larger, more powerful neighbor, without a comprehensive, detailed and internationally enforced peace treaty with that neighbor. An airport is a piddling bribe and a dismally stupid offer.

We got into this little tussle because you lolled at the idea that hamas was a legitimate government and by extension lolled at my posting that included that statement. You seem to have stopped lolling. You want to sign an armistice?

Yeah, I wasn't trying to be cruel - I just thought it was a somewhat funny way of putting things since from my perspective their need for weapons comes directly from their essential illegitimacy. Maybe I'm revealing a tad naiveté but of course as a Western I like to believe that my government's legitimacy comes from the people and from the consent granted by the ruled. Hamas, like many dictatorships, rules through might and oppression. When you wrote that no legitimate government would give up their weapons my mind immediately went to the legitimacy of representative governments in maintaining weaponry in order to protect their citizenship. Even with a comprehensive peace with Israel (something that ending the blockade would suggest at least an opening towards) Hamas cannot afford to disarm, and it has nothing to do with their neighbors. In the end I was just quibbling and I'm sorry if you were annoyed.

If Hamas did have a sincere interest in ending the blockade perhaps they could make a counter offer to disarm their rocket arsenals and other weapons clearly intended for waging war against Israel, but get to keep their more conventional arms that they need to suppress internal dissent. I suspect they will not, though, for the first reason I gave. Their entire raison d'etre is refusing to compromise with Israel. (On a least overt level I believe this existential reason is responsible for much of the conflict between Israel and Palestinian nationalism but that's a huge conversation I'm not really interested in getting into atm.)

Remember Aleppo. Curious about what's happening there lately I googled and just found this--

Less than 20 hours after water supply was fully restored in the eastern Aleppo countryside, ISIS shut it down once more after a month-long outage in the Al-Khafseh area.

This region represents an area which has seen the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) capture over a dozen villages from ISIS in the past month; effectively, the water shutdown can be seen as a infrastructural way for the Islamic State to retaliate.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/islamic-state-cuts-off-water-supply-aleppo/

http://www.timesofisrael.com/praising-trump-saudi-fm-urges-progress-toward-israeli-arab-peace/

The Saudis have obviously figured out that flattery is essential when approaching trump.

The U.S. military commander in Iraq has said he believes

U.S.-backed forces will retake both of IS's urban bastions - Mosul and Raqqa in neighboring Syria - within the next six months, which would end the jihadists' ambitions to territorial rule three years after they declared a "caliphate".

...

"This is the grim choice for children in western Mosul right now: bombs, crossfire and hunger if they stay – or execution and snipers if they try to run," the Save the Children humanitarian agency said in a statement. It added that children comprise about half the population in the city's western sector.

Up to 400,000 civilians could be displaced by the offensive, with western Mosul suffering food and fuel shortages and markets closed, according to the United Nations.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-mosul-idUSKBN1601VT

http://www.defensenews.com/articles/new-houthi-weapon-emerges-a-drone-boat

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The Houthi boat that attacked and hit a Saudi frigate Jan. 30 in the Red Sea, reported earlier as a suicide boat, was instead carried out by an unmanned, remote-controlled craft filled with explosives, the US Navy’s top officer in the Mideast said.

“Our assessment is that it was an unmanned, remote-controlled boat of some kind,” Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, commander of the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet and head of US Naval Forces Central Command, told Defense News in an interview here Saturday.

The attack on the frigate Al Madinah appears to be the first confirmed use of the weapon which, Donegan said, represents a wider threat than that posed by suicide boats and shows foreign interests are aiding the Houthis.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/20/rockets-fired-into-southern-israel-from-egypts-sinai

Isis being driven up north, this seems a 'logical' attack from their side. I don't believe ISIS can do any real damage in Israel, luckily, but I do wonder if stuff like this will get Bibi (even) more on board with Trumps supposed plans to "fight ISIS" more? Stingy for Israel to get involved with ISIS imho.

If Bibi dedicates resources to fighting ISIS I don't think it'll be bc of rockets from Sinai but because he thinks it'll curry favor with either Trump, Saudis or both.

Yeah, that's what I am thinking. Even Bibi would not act on this threat without an outspoken, full support of Israel's allies imho. Hitching the wagon to allies seems the best option for Israel, instead of reacting solo.

koplow on how the republican congress is more hawkish on PA aid than the Israeli ministry of defense, AIPAC, and the IDF:
http://www.matzavblog.com/2017/03/perplexing-problem-propping-pa/

The US religious right enjoys the position of being ultra-hawkish about wars they wish to be fought, by others, somewhere far from their own homes.

also there are american zionist orgs that are more hawkish than aipac and the idf, like the ZOA which supports the taylor force act.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mounting-claims-of-civilian-deaths-after-us-targetsal-qaeda-in-syria/2017/03/17/350d5838-0ae9-11e7-8884-96e6a6713f4b_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_syria-920a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.a02e803c7f2b

trump administration wants to give the cia back its droning powers (currently only with DOJ) so we can expect more of this and less accountability in the future

Frankly, the inability to ensure that there was more legal oversight over drone warfare in undeclared wars was one of my biggest objections to Obama administration foreign policy.

I think its possibly morally acceptable for the US to make drone strikes against persons that don't present an immanent threat to US territory (and really, no one in the target countries really does), but the extension of presidential powers to wage undeclared war doesn't make a whole lot of sense outside of the context of strategic/nuclear threats, and *immanent* threats. Its just a recipe for long-term blowback.

I think it was a huge mistake to not to encourage some legislative restrictions on this in 2012-, considering our electorate is only 4 for 6 in picking non-demented commanders-in-chief over the past 36 years.

Meanwhile, Israel went on an excursion into Syria in search of Hezbollah from Lebanon

Syria fired missiles at Israeli warplanes on a mission to destroy a weapons convoy destined for the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah prompting it to deploy its missile defense system, Israeli officials said Friday, in a rare military exchange between the two hostile neighbors. ...

"Our policy is very consistent. When we identify attempts to transfer advanced weapons to the Hezbollah, and we have the intelligence and the operational capability, we act to prevent that. That is what was and that is what will be," Netanyahu said.

Hezbollah is fighting alongside President Bashar Assad in the brutal Syrian civil war. The Iran-backed group is sworn to Israel's destruction and fought a month-long war with the Jewish state in 2006.

The firing of missiles from Syria toward Israeli aircraft is rare, though Israeli military officials reported a shoulder-fired missile attack a few months ago.

Israeli Channel 10 TV reported that Israel deployed its Arrow defense system for the first time against a real threat and hit an incoming missile, intercepting it before it exploded in Israel.

...

The pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, which has good sources within the militant group, dismissed reports by other Arab media outlets that a Hezbollah commander, Badee Hamiyeh, was killed in one of the airstrikes. It said Hamiyeh was killed Thursday in the southern Syrian region of Quneitra, near the Israeli-held Golan Heights.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-syria-israel-airstrikes-20170317-story.html

If you want to help with creation of an online Arabic dictionary app that references formal written Arabic and geographic dialectshttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/675665171/mobile-apps-for-the-living-arabic-project/description

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/675665171/mobile-apps-for-the-living-arabic-project/description

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has warned Syria that Israel will destroy its air defense system if Syria fires an anti-aircraft missile at Israeli aircraft again.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/19/middleeast/israel-syria-air-defenses-liberman/

Well good luck with that. If it was that easy, it would probably have been done.

done by whom? FSA or ISIS? i don't doubt israel could do it but the considerations would obviously be what kind of reaction it would invite from hezbollah, iran, or even russia.

Wasn't the whole reason the US wouldn't do a no-fly zone that the cost of destroying the Syrian air defense system was too high? Obama didn't hold back out of care for the Syrians.

Maintaining ongoing control of air space seems a bit more ambitious to me than bombing air facilities once.

Well, yes, but one bombing raid wouldn't 'destroy' it's air defence system.

I seem to recall there were ongoing negotiations with the Russians as to where they and US air would operate. The situation is vastly more complicated than Iraq, Bosnia, and Libya.

Both ruling Kurdistan (KRG) parties KDP and PUK have agreed today to hold the referendum for independence this year.

Now they've been saying this for years and years, but it seems it's really going to happen this time. An overwhelming pro-independence vote is to be expected. It will be interesting to see how Baghdad, but especially Erdogan will respond to this.

they won't like it. seems like tillerson's pow-wow with erdogan has the kurds believing the usa will risk much erdogan unhappiness to keep the kurds fighting isis.

Baghdad is at least willing to play ball and negotiate. And Barzani, KRG's president is on relative good terms with Erdo (which leads to Kurds from Syria and Iran criticizing him a lot). He has to, in a way, but they'll have some leverage. Baghdad knows independence is on the cards. I don't think the Kurds see the US as a strong reliable partner any more, they've been disappointed too much in the past. But the fighting Isis argument is a strong one no one can deny tbh.

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/03/white-house-meeting-with-egypts-tyrant-highlights-key-trump-effect-unmasking-u-s-policy/

Greenwald take on the longstanding US support of Egypt and Bahrain, and how now its just more out in the open as Sisi is at the White House today I think

pretty otm i can't disagree w/ anything he writes there

i do wonder how long we're going to have to wait into the new administration tho before glenn just frames his critiques as being against the administration as opposed to using trump to make a point about how bad the democrats are

Can we poll this question with him and Morbs?

Ha ha. I think one option has to be "Greenwald will always just use T administration as a foil to make a point about how bad the Democratic party is"

There are ten thousand journalists pointing out why Trump is bad, I think the world can cope with a handful pointing out that Trump is bad and the Democrats should be substantially better on major issues than they have been.

Ya soglasen, comrade.

Of course we can cope. That's what the poll is for.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/05/un-security-council-holds-emergency-meeting-syria-chemical-attack/

Russia has threatened to veto any resolution by the UN security council on a suspected chemical attack in Syria which is feared to have killed dozens of civilians, including children, claiming it is based on "false information."

Meanwhile

"No one — not even President Obama, as far as I could tell — was satisfied with the Obama administration’s approach to the conflict in Syria," Andrew Exum, who was an Obama appointee at the Pentagon, writes for The Atlantic. "But if you assembled all of the Obama administration’s critics in one room, they would not agree on an obvious alternative. The problem is wicked enough to confound easy solutions, and each policy alternative had strategic and moral deficiencies."

45's tweet versus-

After Syria attack, US Ambassador to UN Nikki Haley asks, "How many more children have to die before Russia cares?"

Has Trump really changed his mind re Syria?

fwiw i think the conspiracy theorizing is asinine but i'm not convinced assad ordered this strike. it really doesn't make much sense considering the course of the war so far and how it almost demands a response from trump. nb that doesn't mean that it was a false flag. it could've been ordered by someone lower down in the hierarchy of command. i've seen some ppl speculating that it could've been an airstrike hitting a chemical storage site and releasing the material (nb nb nb i have no idea how plausible this scenario is).

That is the speculation Russia initially put forward but it's apparently thought that most nerve agents would combust if hit by a direct strike.

the Russian explanation looks like serious ass-covering, shifting blame to the *rebels* since it was their warehouse full of chemical weapons etc.

I don't find it v plausible but what do I know.

All I know is that an order from Assad to drop chemicals at this point would be completely illogical and would gain him no advantages in his attempt to regain control of Syria and only jeopardize his hold on power which, for the first time in years, looks like it might be reestablished.

so this happened:
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Jpost-Exclusive-Moscow-surprisingly-says-west-Jerusalem-is-Israels-capital-486336

MOSCOW SURPRISINGLY SAYS WEST JERUSALEM IS ISRAEL'S CAPITAL
BYHERB KEINON APRIL 6, 2017 17:36
No other country in the world recognizes any part of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Makes me wonder what was the secret part of the deal and what, if anything, does this recognition do to benefit the USA or its policies regarding the Mideast?

The mainstream speculation is that he did it to guarantee Russia a place (/the place/?) at the table for upcoming Israel/Palestine negotiations. Who knows what he has agreed to w/ Bibi behind closed doors - they've been meeting a lot recently. It seems like Israel was not prepared for the announcement (they haven't commented yet). Maybe he wants to divert attention from Syria? Maybe he is buying Israeli cooperation/coordination on Syria/ISIS/something else?

Vis-a-vis the US I can't think of how it would actively benefit them. If anything it removes one of the bargaining chips they've kept on the table to use against Israel and if there's no concerted blowback from Arab nations it'll discredit American intelligence who claimed it was too dangerous to do. I think it'll make it more likely that the US moves the embassy but v hard to predict Trump. Maybe Putin was just pissed about the bombing (but he seems a bit too clever to be making major geopolitical decisions out of anger).

All I know is that an order from Assad to drop chemicals at this point would be completely illogical and would gain him no advantages in his attempt to regain control of Syria and only jeopardize his hold on power which, for the first time in years, looks like it might be reestablished.

He's been dropping chemicals and God knows what else for years now, and getting away with it, what makes now any different?

[citation needed?]

The JPost article won't load for me so it might make it clear there but the statement positions West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in a future context in which East Jerusalem becomes the capital of an independent Palestinian state - which seems different to unilaterally doing so - as Trump was hinting at doing. Xps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack

SV: "While officials in Jerusalem interpreted this to mean that recognition of west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will only come once east Jerusalem becomes the capital of a Palestinian state, The Jerusalem Post has learned that Moscow intends this recognition to go into effect immediately."

xp I wouldn't consider that "dropping chemicals... for years now" nor "getting away with it." it was a major event that almost led to direct US intervention that was only staved off bc they agreed to give all their chemical weapons to the Russians.

they agreed to give all their chemical weapons to the Russians.

Yes, that's worked out well, hasn't it?

I don't know how it has worked out. Have there been continual attacks before this week? It has been quiet enough on that front that Kerry called the agreement a success. Is it totally clear what happened this week? Not to me.

Heard a onetime Obama admin guy asserting that Assad gave up "most" of the chemical weapons in that deal, and thus it was still a success. He doubled down on that phrasing when asked a follow-up about how Assad was supposed to have given up all, and then proceeded to say that the Russians must be mad at Assad for having done this now.

Ahmadinejad has submitted his name for the presidential elections.

Banner day for Iran lunatics:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/opinion/why-is-trump-fighting-isis-in-syria.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

This is a time for Trump to be Trump — utterly cynical and unpredictable. ISIS right now is the biggest threat to Iran, Hezbollah, Russia and pro-Shiite Iranian militias — because ISIS is a Sunni terrorist group that plays as dirty as Iran and Russia.

Trump should want to defeat ISIS in Iraq. But in Syria? Not for free, not now. In Syria, Trump should let ISIS be Assad’s, Iran’s, Hezbollah’s and Russia’s headache — the same way we encouraged the mujahedeen fighters to bleed Russia in Afghanistan.

That worked out grand last time, didn't it?

Oh, a Thomas L. Friedman column.

no surprise--Krauthammer is excited about one-off strike in Syria, others not so

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/middleeast/why-the-syrian-chemical-weapons-problem-is-so-hard-to-solve.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FSyria&action=click&contentCollection=world®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=collection

didn't link to Krauthamer's column

So Erdogan had unlimited funds, controls the media, silenced opposition, intimidated voters, and still only manages a 51vs49% win in the referendum. Embarrassing.

tbf after almost a century ppl are probably pretty attached to democracy

Shame half of the ppl voted democracy in the bin then.

if u were wondering what the US gov thought about all this
https://twitter.com/CNNTURK_ENG/status/854059951106424836

BREAKING Presidential sources: US President Trump calls Turkish President Erdoğan to congratulate him on #Turkeyreferendum result.

Ugh, though not surprised.

same old, same old

Syria's military said Israel struck a military installation southwest of Damascus International Airport before dawn Thursday, setting off a series of explosions and raising tensions further between the two neighbors.

Apparently seeking to interrupt weapons transfers to the Hezbollah group in Lebanon, Israel has struck inside Syria with increasing frequency in recent weeks, making the war-torn country a proxy theater for Israel's wider war with Iran.

http://time.com/4758928/israel-syria-strikes-iran/

There was this recently as well-

American officials expressed indignation at the Turkish bombing, which killed as many as 20 Kurdish fighters in Syria and, according to the U.S. military, five Kurdish peshmerga troops in a coordinated attack across the border in northern Iraq. According to the Turkish government, both attacks targeted members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which both Ankara and Washington consider a terrorist group.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/04/26/pentagon-expands-rebuke-of-turkey-over-iraq-syria-strikes/

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas will drop its longstanding call for Israel's destruction as well as its association with the Muslim Brotherhood, in a policy document to be issued on Monday, Gulf Arab sources said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinians-hamas-document-idUSKBN17X1N8

(raises eyebrows)

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas will drop its longstanding call for Israel's destruction as well as its association with the Muslim Brotherhood, in a policy document to be issued on Monday, Gulf Arab sources said.

But the document, to be announced later on Monday, will still reject Israel's right to exist and back "armed struggle" against it, the Gulf Arab sources told Reuters.

obviously i'm missing some finer distinction here

But the document, to be announced later on Monday, will still reject Israel's right to exist and back "armed struggle" against it, the Gulf Arab sources told Reuters.

oh, the first point is more of an obstacle than the second. armed struggle is contingent and negotiable, while a right to exist is absolute.

'We don't think it should not exist, we just don't think it should not not exist...'

I wonder, also, if there's some nuance to the Arabic that we're not getting.

it sounds to me like they want to have their cake (the appearance of reasonableness and moderation) and eat it too (still get to pursue same policies without making any real conciliatory gestures)

It seems pretty unambiguous: "But, he said, "unlike Fatah, Hamas does not accept Israel's right to exist on the rest of the land. Hamas's constant position is not to cede any of our historical rights and not to recognize the (Israeli) occupation.""

I kinda thought they were getting weapons from Hezbollah/Syria/Iran, though, or am I completely messing things up?

Well, Hamas is Sunni, Hezbollah is Shia. Why the fuck didn't I fact-check that before I posted... Sorry.

Iran has funded Hamas recently, especially as they've become alienated from the Sunni world (esp in light of Muslim Brotherhood losing their position in Egypt - there seemed like a brief moment that Hamas was going to be able to renew their historical funding from Egypt), but it's unclear to me how extensive that funding is. You'd think it would be less successful than their funding of Hezbollah since it's easier to pass weapons through Syria than through the Sinai but idk exactly what those numbers are. Hezbollah wouldn't fund Hamas directly bc they're both client states.

Also there was a period recently when the Iran funding had dried up - after Hamas had criticized Assad and taken the side of the rebels - but I think that has since been mended.

U.S. to arm Kurds
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/us/politics/trump-kurds-syria-army.html

trump is good now

stopped clock etc

presumably he's just more malleable than bho & ppl have wanted this for a while

It is the first sensible thing he has done since in office (but yeah, stopped clock etc)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-accuses-syria-of-mass-executions-and-burning-bodies/2017/05/15/b7b66c86-3986-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html

I'm sure 45 also told the Russian ambassador to get Syria to stop doing that. I wonder what he'll say in his meeting with Erdogan today.

#Erdogan’s guards fight with #Kurdish protesters in front of Turkish Embassy in Washington DC pic.twitter.com/w3Q0BLzJUK

— Turkey Observed (@TurkeyObserved) May 17, 2017

Erdogans henchmen were having some good old fun again this morning kicking Kurdish protestors. In DC.

Land of the Free to Kick Some Kurds in the Head

I read that this is not the first time they've done that.

kinda awesome news from iran today

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/05/strikes-kill-106-civilians-mayadeen-170526132541011.html

Al Jazeera's Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington DC, said the latest air strikes may relate to the so-called 'December Directive' - a memo sent by former US President Barack Obama changing the command structure enabling commanders on the ground to bypass the Pentagon and order air strikes, while also easing the restrictions on when they could fire. US President Donald Trump has maintained this directive.

"They used to have to have 'near certainty' that no civilians would be killed - it's a much looser rule now," she said.

"And that's why you're seeing many human rights groups coming out and saying that those changes need to go back to how they were before the 'December Directive'."

US military admits killing more than 100 civilians in Mosul air strike

The latest strike came as the UN urged all countries bombing ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, in Syria to better distinguish between civilian and military targets.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/gunmen-kill-23-christians-in-central-egypt/2017/05/26/3d2693dc-41fc-11e7-adba-394ee67a7582_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_egypt-635a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.66f4e99bb70d

Christians have been generally supportive of Sissi’s military-backed government, but have become increasingly critical of the inability of the country’s security forces to protect their places of worship.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/31/sensitive-uk-terror-funding-inquiry-findings-may-never-be-published-saudi-arabia

whats the fucking point of 'fighting' terrorism when you can't even level with your own people about the causes of it?

What a different world had Britain supported the sherif of Mecca Hussein bin Ali (and then his son Faisal) as suzerain of Arabia in the early 20s, rather than Ibn Saud. Wahabism would be a minor sect in Najd (rather than exported globally), Arabia would have been ruled by a moderate with deep ties to Britain (T.E. Laurence fought with Faisal), and Iraq would have gotten leadership with local roots (Faisal was installed in the midst of the post-Ottoman sectarian conflict there). One of those great "what ifs" of the 20th century.

This is pretty big:

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN18W0DQ

KSA, UAE and Egypt are cutting ties with Qatar, accusing it of promoting terrorism among other things.

The Qatari news agency apparently broadcast claims that the ruling family support Iran and Israel - which seems to have been the catalyst for this. Qatar says they were hacked.

Lots of speculation that Qatar will aim to get back into their good books by shutting al Jazeera - which wasn't the network hacked but has apparently annoyed Saudi in the past.

It's been a long time coming. Qatar supported Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Islamists in Libya (UAE supports former Tripoli elites), and permits open funding for Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly al-Nusra) by wealthy individuals, though that accusation is a bit rich, considering sheikh al-Ajmi is based in Kuwait and draws from Kuwaiti and Saudi individuals, too.

From what I've read, it seems unlikely Qatar has supported ISIS or Sh'ia militants in eastern Arabia.

FT has a good summary on the proximate cause.

https://www.ft.com/content/dd033082-49e9-11e7-a3f4-c742b9791d43

CNN: US suspects Russian hackers planted fake news behind Qatar crisis

Intelligence gathered by the US security agencies indicates that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion first reported by the Qatari government two weeks ago, US officials say.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/middleeast/adnan-khashoggi-dead-saudi-arms-trader.html?smid=tw-share

"In his later years, Mr. Khashoggi lived well but in much-reduced circumstances. He flew on commercial jets, fended off creditors and dismissed his bodyguard, a Korean martial arts expert known as Mr. Kill."

“What did I do wrong? Nothing,” he said toward the end of his life. “I behaved unethically, for ethical reasons.”

same

converse. I behave ethically, but in regretable cases for non-ethical reasons. The first time I became a vegetarian it was to get into a vegetarian's pants, etc.

Saif Gaddafi has just been released from prison!

http://news.sky.com/story/gaddafis-son-saif-al-islam-is-released-from-prison-in-libya-10911577

A thoughtful read, I felt:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/05/the-arab-world-has-never-recovered-from-the-loss-of-1967/

learned a lot from that. I liked this piece about how Israel never recovered from the victory: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/04/i-fought-for-a-better-israel-than-this-215222

As an addendum, I don't think the western view of the Arab world has ever recovered from the Yom Kippur War in 73. Them catching Israel unaware, then failing to win anyway, then punishing the west for their own failure through the oil embargo. I don't mean to say anti-arab racism is due to that, but geopolitically, I don't they've been treated seriously since.

Pinch of salt etc but Islamic State leader Baghdadi 'may have been killed by Russia'.

The MOD statement is less definitive in Russian than in English. It says they are still checking, while the Sputnik report suggests it has been checked.

Syria also claims they killed him last week fwiw so at least one of them is wrong.

any next manager odds yet? I heard Sherwood hasn't ruled himself out.

The US has just released a statement confirming it shot down a Syrian MiG in Syrian airspace - the first time this has ever been done, iirc. The Americans say it was attacking pro-US rebels, the Syrians seem to be claiming it was taking part in an operation to recapture a town from ISIS.

Syrian MiGs should trail banners identifying whether they are attacking ISIS, Syrian civilians, US-friendly Kurds or someone else. They could be color coded for easy deciphering by pilots of US fighter jets.

Also of interest: because of the Tehran attacks, Iran's RG supposedly launched into an attack on IS in Syria. link. If the Tehran attack leads to Iran entering the fight against ISIS proper, that's an interesting development, though for now I'd say it's just hardmanning, "the response the people demand", and doubt they will keep it up. But if Iran would choose to do so, to keep fighting IS, in Syria, it would probably make it harder on TrumpUSA to denounce them. They'd be on the same side in this.

Why do you think IS attacked Tehran? Iran funds the Kata'ib Hezbollah ("Hezbollah Brigades") and Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq ("League of the Righteous") that are fighting against IS in both Iraq and Syria.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/16/white-house-officials-push-for-widening-war-in-syria-over-pentagon-objections/

Russia Threatens to Target U.S. Warplanes Over Syria

Trump's really taken the Saudi line, hook and sinker. Wasn't so long ago that his dank supporters were arguing that HRC was the one hellbent on WW3.

Yeah, i think that was evident in the bungling of the Qatar situation as well.

Test

Extraordinary statement from Tillerson calling KSA and other out on Qatar.

.@statedeptspox Nauert provides a readout of Secretary Tillerson's engagement on #Qatar, regional situation pic.twitter.com/vo2FJ86BZg

— Department of State (@StateDept) June 20, 2017

A number of Exxon-Mobil's biggest investments over the past decade have been in Qatar's LNG plants.

KSA has told Qatar to shut al-Jazeera, sever all diplomatic ties with Iran and close their military base in Turkey.

Will be worth watching Tillerson's reaction.

The full, bonkers, list of demands here:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/23/close-al-jazeera-saudi-arabia-issues-qatar-with-13-demands-to-end-blockade

Internal decision-making was presumably held up by the change in KSA's power structure but they're now in a position to try to turn the screw.

The long, impossible to meet list of demands certainly worked out when Austro-Hungary tried it.

I'm not sure what would qualify as a crisis in Syria, but this seems like a volatile situation: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40413563 Hopefully it will be enough to warn Assad off and that will be it.

Contra thread title:

AP: In Yemen's secret prisons, UAE tortures and US interrogates

Hundreds of men swept up in the hunt for al-Qaida militants have disappeared into a secret network of prisons in southern Yemen where abuse is routine and torture extreme — including the “grill,” in which the victim is tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Senior American defense officials acknowledged Wednesday that U.S. forces have been involved in interrogations of detainees in Yemen but denied any participation in or knowledge of human rights abuses. Interrogating detainees who have been abused could violate international law, which prohibits complicity in torture.

Israel approves construction of 800 new homes in east Jerusalem, where Palestinians hoped to establish capital. https://t.co/c4kwukiYN4

— The Associated Press (@AP) July 5, 2017

There was this as well: Israel seizes solar panels donated to Palestinians by Dutch government. Israel doesn't give a single fuck.

whoa

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/uae-hacked-qatari-government-sites-sparking-regional-upheaval-according-to-us-intelligence-officials/2017/07/16/00c46e54-698f-11e7-8eb5-cbccc2e7bfbf_story.html?tid=a_breakingnews&hpid=hp_no-name_no-name%3Apage%2Fbreaking-news-bar

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-ends-covert-cia-program-to-arm-anti-assad-rebels-in-syria-a-move-sought-by-moscow/2017/07/19/b6821a62-6beb-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html?utm_term=.930728bc537f

Sky News Arabia to broadcast documentary 'Qatar...The Road to Manhattan' on Wednesday https://t.co/PjicnWFzy6 pic.twitter.com/MHPZV6e98L

— Gulf News (@gulf_news) July 24, 2017

Seems legit.

This whole Qatar thing has been pulled off quite ineptly, hasn't it?

something to keep an eye on

Abbas ordered heads of Tanzim Fatah to lead demonstrations on Friday.Tanzim was key to escalation in 2nd intifiada

— avi issacharoff (@issacharoff) July 26, 2017

Didn't expect to see Israel back down on the metal detectors at the Temple Mount.

A surprise to me too.

The UAE, in the meantime, realizing that depriving its sports-crazed citizens of televised international soccer games was a dangerous step too far, quietly decided to allow BeIN, the Aljazeera-owned worldwide sports channel, an exemption from the general embargo on the parent company.

http://time.com/4872857/saudi-arabia-qatar-patrick-theros/

Once again the whole world conspires against Kurdistan. Hey thanks guys for defeating IS but we want to protect Iraq's "unity"... It's sickening.

Iran wants in on the action too, testing a ballistic missile

big day today in the middle east

The Kurdish ref went as planned:

- Huge Yes vote
- Erdogan threatening the Kurds with all kinds of awful stuff, starving them being the worst
- It did lead to unprecedented crowds of Iranian Kurds on the streets, celebrating, too (in places like Mahabad etc)
- Israel continues to stand with the Kurds (with, again, a threatening Erdogan spouting nonsense at Israel)

#Breaking: Overwhelming majority, 92.73%, vote 'yes' for independence - electoral body releases preliminary results in #KurdistanReferendum pic.twitter.com/r1pq2vitq6

— Rudaw English (@RudawEnglish) September 27, 2017

Baghdad has pledged to close Kurdish airspace at 6pm on Friday and Turkey says it is considering whether to shut its frontier with Kurdistan and impose a trade ban.

Massoud Barzani, the de facto president of the region’s Kurds, had hoped to transition strong support for the poll into political leverage that could eventually help negotiate independence from Iraq. His moves have been met with increasing hostility, raising the prospect of isolation, and blockade.

Some Iraqi leaders have warned of military action, particularly over the fate of Kirkuk.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/27/over-92-of-iraqs-kurds-vote-for-independence

Women soon can drive in Saudi Arabia. Progress...

of course still can't marry, divorce, travel, open a bank account, or get a job without first getting permission from a male guardian or go outside without wearing an abaya...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/three-u-s-soldiers-killed-niger-suspected-ambush-n807821

Three U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers were killed and two were wounded in Niger on Wednesday, in an ambush by suspected Islamic militants operating from Mali, multiple sources with knowledge of the incident told NBC News.

According to the sources, one soldier form Niger was also killed in the attack.

The U.S. military did not confirm the deaths officially, but did acknowledge that a “hostile fire” incident involving U.S. troops had occurred. ...

still can't marry, divorce, travel, open a bank account, or get a job without first getting permission from a male guardian or go outside without wearing an abaya...

If they could fix the first five of those I think they'd concede the last one as least important.

interesting from the nyer profile of tillerson

In November, 2013, Tillerson travelled to Washington, D.C., to meet with Nuri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq. Maliki was hoping to persuade Tillerson to change his mind about a sensitive political matter. Exxon was then negotiating a multibillion-dollar deal with the government of Iraqi Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region in the northern part of the country, which has long sought independence. Under the deal, Exxon would explore for oil in some eight hundred and forty thousand acres, potentially providing the Kurds with a steady stream of revenue that was independent of the government in Baghdad. In Maliki’s view, giving the Kurds their own revenue would hasten a breakup of the country.

Maliki was not alone in objecting; President Obama opposed the deal, and his aides had prevailed upon Exxon executives to drop the Kurdish project. “We were concerned that this would further embolden the Kurds to strike out on their own,” Tony Blinken, Obama’s deputy national-security adviser at the time, told me.

The meeting, held at the Willard Hotel, ended in acrimony. Exxon had previously made an agreement with Maliki to undertake two drilling projects in southern Iraq, and Maliki, a former dissident and guerrilla fighter, threatened to cancel them if Exxon pursued the Kurdish deal. Tillerson refused. Maliki argued bluntly, “You’re dividing the country. You’re undermining our constitution!” But Tillerson held firm. “It was one of the worst meetings of my career,” a senior Iraqi official who was in attendance said. In the end, Exxon made the Kurdish deal.

http://www.dw.com/en/kurds-blame-outside-world-for-loss-of-territories-to-iraq/a-41029920

Kurds...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/17/somalia-bomber-was-ex-solider-whose-town-was-raided-by-us-forces

a theory

I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know US soldiers were in Niger, and I don't know why they're there or what the mission is.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-troops-niger/story?id=50559788

When did US forces arrive in Niger?

They arrived in early 2013 to help the French military that had intervened in neighboring Mali the year before. The French had moved into Mali after an Al Qaeda affiliated group and tribal groups took over the vast northern part of the country and were moving toward the capital of Mali. As part of the U.S. effort to assist that mission then-President Barack Obama ordered 150 U.S. military personnel to set up a surveillance drone operation over Mali that would fly from Niger's capital of Niamey.

How many U.S. troops are there in Niger?

About 800, but the vast majority of them are construction crews working to build up a second drone base in Niger’s northern desert. The rest run a surveillance drone mission from Niger’s capital of Niamey that helps out the French in Mali and other regional countries in the fight against Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and now ISIS. A smaller component, less than a hundred, are Army Green Beret units advising and assisting Niger’s military to build up their fighting capability to counter Al Qaeda and ISIS. There are an additional 300 U.S. military personnel in neighboring Burkina Faso and Cameroon doing the same thing. They are there as part of what’s known as the mission in the Lake Chad Basin.

So wait, what's happening in Saudi Arabia right now?

Saw something about a missile from Yemen, then this?

Wow lot of big news out of Saudi tonight. Reports of big names being taken into custody (Waleed bin Talal, Khaled Tuwaijri, Waleed Ibrahim).

— Tobias Schneider (@tobiaschneider) November 4, 2017

Reuters: Saudi Arabia detains princes, ex-ministers in anti-corruption drive

Saudi Arabia has detained 10 princes and dozens of former ministers through its newly formed anti-corruption committee, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV reported, citing unnamed sources.

The new committee, headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was formed by royal decree hours earlier on Saturday.

Then again, anti-corruption drives in autocratic regimes are not always anti-corruption drives.

on top of that,

Yemeni rebels on Saturday targeted an airport in Saudi Arabia's capital with a ballistic missile, according to Yemen's Houthi-controlled Defense Ministry.

But the missile was intercepted over northeast Riyadh, the Saudi Ministry of Defense said in a statement carried on government-backed Al-Arabiya television.

Yemen's Defense Ministry said the missile attack "shook the Saudi capital" and the operation was successful. The attack was conducted using a Yemeni-made, long-range missile called the Burqan 2H, it said.

The Riyadh airport tweeted that it hadn't been affected.

"Travelers across King Khalid international airport in Riyadh, we assure you that the movement is going on as normal and usual, and trips going according to time," the airport said on Twitter.

Airstrikes later in the day targeted Yemen's capital Sanaa, shaking homes and breaking windows. This is the first night attack on Sanaa in weeks, according to CNN's Hakim al-Masmari from Sanaa.

Saudi Arabia has been leading a coalition of states against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who toppled Yemen's internationally recognized government in 2015.

The missile launch on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh was the first time the heart of the Saudi capital has been attacked and represents a major escalation of the ongoing war in the region.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/04/middleeast/saudi-arabia-ballistic-missile/index.html

...and now?

A plane transporting eight Saudi officials including Prince Mansour Bin Muqrin, reportedly crashed near Abha #KSA

— Michael Horowitz (@michaelh992) November 5, 2017

Lots of rumours that Prince Abdulaziz bin Fahd, who was arrested a few weeks ago, is also dead - though not clear if it is the same incident.

KSA now saying Lebanon has declared war against them.

Note: Lebanon has not declared war against them.

Still no clarity on whether Abdulaziz bin Fahd is dead, btw. Some press reports indicate he may have been killed resisting arrest but nothing wholly credible.

I hardly know how to think about politics in an autocratic context... is consolidation of power for Mohammed bin Salman a good thing all things considered? It seems like he's advancing an agenda that we want for Saudi Arabia.

He is currently fighting a murderous war in Yemen, on the verge of declaring war with Lebanon, leading a largely arbitrary blockade of Qatar - in part because he doesn’t like one of their TV stations, is pushing anyone who is hesitant of doubling down in Syria out, etc. Obviously ymmv as to the agenda we want KSA to have but I am not sure the signs are exactly positive.

Mohammed bin Salman is a total idiot who is going to end up starting a huge war hey?

Okay, I was simply looking at some of the purported social reforms. I don't know this area very well.

Lebanon's PM suddenly resigning is quite mind blowing, too:

Lebanon's outgoing prime minister who unexpectedly resigned during a trip to Saudi Arabia met with Saudi King Salman on Monday as speculation continued to swirl over his surprising move.

You don't say. Him stepping back will give way for new elections. Which will put Hezbolah (Iran backed) in the spotlight again, much to KSA's dismay. But it could also be he got a head start, and gave in because he knows what's coming (both for his country - Lebanon is practically bankrupt - and him personally).

If you want 4D political chess, look no further.

Mohammed bin Salman is a total idiot

He consorts with noted geopolitical expert, Jared Kushner.

I recommend the Nov 5 Background Briefing with Ian Masters for expertise here.

MBS+Kushner+Trump could get the US into fighting on the losing side of the Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict. An ostensibly isolationist political movement behind Trump would project us into a centuries old conflict.

Kushner's security detail isn't remotely large enough.

A blockade on basic supplies to war-ravaged Yemen is threatening millions of people and should be lifted immediately, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The call follows a reported decision on Saturday by Saudi Arabia, which is leading the coalition fighting Houthi separatists in the country, to close air and sea ports in Yemen.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=58044#.WgIb_NIUlYU

this saad al-hariri story is crazy

i have no idea what to make of it

are the saudis going to attack lebanon? that seems impossible right?

Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for Saudi Arabia's foreign policy debacles over the past few years (v. Syria, Yemen, and Qatar). Seems following his tête-à-tête with Jared Kushner, he decided to double down on the arrogance.

Ian Master's interviews with David Hearst (editor, Middle East Eye) and Thanassis Cambanis (Beirut journalist) from Nov 5 shed some light.

Oops, I posted this already. Guess memory impairment is one of the side effects.

are the saudis going to attack lebanon? that seems impossible right?

― Mordy, Friday, November 10, 2017 3:24 PM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think they'll attack, but ratchet-up tensions, put in place trade restrictions, give israel a nudge (and maybe some financial inducements) to deal with hezbollah while they're presumably weakened by their involvement in the syrian civil war?

Saudis probably want Israelis to fight Lebanon, but I don't think the Israelis want that now, as much as they despise Hezbollah

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security-airport/saudi-led-coalition-air-raid-puts-yemens-sanaa-airport-out-of-service-agency-idUSKBN1DE27Y

Greenwald and others like him are blaming the US for this. Predicting more famine and death

I talked to a friend who lived Beirut a long time (and speaks Arabic but isn't Arab) and her view is that KSA is sidelining Hariri in order to make Lebanon *more* unambiguously a Hezbollah govt so they (the Saudis) can have a freer political hand to intervene there militarily; I don't really see how that makes sense but neither does any other theory I've heard

I've actually been hearing that theory a lot tbf

me2 thus my question above - it's hard to imagine SA really intends to conduct a military operation in Lebanon unless they plan on ramping up + turning the tide in Syria...

Which also doesn't make sense, given the recent [Russia-Saudi arms deal](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-king-salman-visit-saudi-arabia-moscow-vladimir-putin-a7985161.html).

But on other issue...Is anyone working to resolve Saudi vs Houthi in Yemen war, and the humanitarian crisis in Yemen for civilians?

certainly not the u.s., canada, or uk who are happy to sell the saudis weaponry/send them military advisors

the fact that we hear so much about the humanitarian crisis in syria and even say the rohingya but the yemeni catastrophe is barely covered by western media makes me feel kinda greenwald lol

Yemen has the special position of being both dirt fucking poor and Muslim, so nobody in the US gives a shit

There are a bunch of wars going on that receives less attention than Yemen, though. South Sudan, for instance. And the opportunity to put blame on the US is one of the main reasons that people like Greenwald care, which is sorta racist in it's own way.

oh ffs.. yemen is arguably the biggest humanitarian disaster that's happening right now with the potential for millions of deaths from starvation. greenwald's american. it is actually his government's fault to a large extent. why should he not care? i'm a british person who lives in canada, i'm disgusted at the governments of both countries as i think it's natural to be. yet our press could not be more obsequious regarding the arms/military assistance to saudi arabia.

Sure, but compared to the other three countries in this article, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria, Yemen isn't underreported: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/11/world-faces-worst-humanitarian-crisis-since-1945-says-un-official

And some of the coverage is frankly abhorrent, as when some old email was dug up to blame the whole war on Hillary Clinton. That is not about moral disgust, that's about using dead yemeni to score political points.

the fact that our governments are directly responsible for the yemen crisis and could end it if they wanted would be the key point to me. but I'm just trying to score political points.

That is not a fact. Unless you live in Saudi Arabia?

the US is providing arms + intelligence it's kinda silly to quibble over whether that equals "directly" or not. would SA prosecute this war w/out US help? i'd think so (surely they are more committed to fighting Iran through proxy conflicts than the US is). but they wouldn't be able to do as much damage.

The US and the West clearly has blood on our hands in Yemen, but so do we in South Sudan, Somalia, Syria, etc. The idea that somehow the US could stop the humanitarian crisis in Yemen if we wanted to is, well, not a fact. If anything, the lack of a regional power behaving like a lunatic might mean the West could do a hell of a lot more good wrt humanitarian help in Somalia or Nigeria.

u.s. provides logistical and intelligence support to saudis in yemen. u.s., along with canada, uk, france etc. provided the majority of planes, bombs (including cluster bombs) and missiles that have been used to enforce blockade of yemen and destroy civilians (packed public places such as markets have been deliberately targeted) and civilian infrastructure. the u.s. weapons deal is to saudi arabia in the time leading up to the war is the largest weapons deal in u.s. history.

leading up to and during i should have said

Part of the reason the weapons deal is so large is because Saudi Arabia is a really really rich country that isn't on any sort of sanctions list. They can get enough weapons they want for a number of genocides. Which is not to say that the West is without guilt in this case, our relationship with Saudi Arabia has been cynical and disgusting for decades. But we're not 'directly responsible' for the war in Yemen, and we could not just end it if we wanted to. Saudi Arabia is a big regional power, a rich and powerful country, and they can pretty much do what they want to. The responsibility for the Yemen disaster lies with them, and especially with crown prince Mohammad bin Salman.

What Saudi Arabia and its allies are doing in Yemen is abhorent, but Yemen has topped my list of Malthusian basket cases for a some time. Population has more than doubled since 1990, according to the FAO it imported 95% of it cereal in 2011-13, and the cost for this equaled a third of its exports. A few years ago Guardian reported Yemen had nearly drained the aquifer under Sana'a, with 45% having gone to grow the narcotic qat.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.823163

this doesn't augur particularly well for the people of lebanon

i disagree

Eisenkot said Israel has no intention of initiating an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon. "We see Iranian attempts at bringing about an escalation, but I don't see a high chance for this at the moment."

i don't think israel has any motivation to start a conflagration in lebanon. the only possible motivation would be attempting to deny hezbollah strategic assets (primarily coming from iran) but bombing those transports in syria have proven sufficient (and garnered russian support). another asymmetrical counter insurgency quagmire would go against bibi's conservative status quoism and would produce no obvious benefits. this is a good read: https://ottomansandzionists.com/2017/11/16/are-israel-and-saudi-arabia-on-the-same-page/

directly responsible for the yemen crisis and could end it if they wanted

I agree with the idea that the US and other western allies of KSA share a direct responsibility for some of the events in Yemen. I disagree with the idea that KSA's western allies could end it 'if they wanted'.

It's tempting to believe that the world dances to the tune the west decides to play, but KSA is a very wealthy country with its own regional and international interests and nothing short of full-scale military intervention by the west could force KSA to stop a war it views as necessary to its interests. I think we've had ample demonstrations since the Vietnam War that just because a western power "wants" a particular outcome to some conflict, is no guarantee that it gets what it wants.

i disagree

Eisenkot said Israel has no intention of initiating an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon. "We see Iranian attempts at bringing about an escalation, but I don't see a high chance for this at the moment."

i don't think israel has any motivation to start a conflagration in lebanon. the only possible motivation would be attempting to deny hezbollah strategic assets (primarily coming from iran) but bombing those transports in syria have proven sufficient (and garnered russian support). another asymmetrical counter insurgency quagmire would go against bibi's conservative status quoism and would produce no obvious benefits. this is a good read: https://ottomansandzionists.com/2017/11/16/are-israel-and-saudi-arabia-on-the-same-page/

― Mordy, Thursday, November 16, 2017 9:25 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i just meant israel further aligning itself with the increasingly reckless saudis -using their nonsense "shia crescent" slogan and all - and donald trump and the fact that hezbollah/lebanon seems like the most likely target if any of this rhetorical sabre-rattling is to turn into military action. admittedly (and this is a pretty huge admittedly) israel would need some sort of provocation from hezbollah to launch such an attack, if history is any indicator, and even with the war in syria winding down and assad's place looking assured i don't think hezbollah are going to be up to any shenanigans with israel any time soon.

That "Shia cresent" talk may be shaping U.S. military action. I've seen several leaked combat footage clips of U.S. SOF working with opposition Syrian militia along Syria route 2, the shortest route between Damascus and Baghdad. Reflected in the green blob extending from the Iraqi border at this war situation site, recently. It's not particularly relevant ground for the war against ISIS.

the crescent isn't a joke imo. at least from israel's perspective it is a huge threat having iranian weapons on its border across lebanon + syria.

Big story that's been underreported in the US.

Nov 14: Raqqa’s dirty secret

The BBC has uncovered details of a secret deal that let hundreds of IS fighters and their families escape from Raqqa, under the gaze of the US and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city.

A convoy included some of IS’s most notorious members and – despite reassurances – dozens of foreign fighters. Some of those have spread out across Syria, even making it as far as Turkey.

...

In light of the BBC investigation, the coalition now admits the part it played in the deal. Some 250 IS fighters were allowed to leave Raqqa, with 3,500 of their family members.

“We didn’t want anyone to leave,” says Col Ryan Dillon, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, the Western coalition against IS.

“But this goes to the heart of our strategy, ‘by, with and through’ local leaders on the ground. It comes down to Syrians – they are the ones fighting and dying, they get to make the decisions regarding operations,” he says.

Mike Lofgren asks:

Was there a diplomatic exchange between the Saudis and the United States over the Raqqa deal to preserve a Saudi “asset?”

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/hundreds-of-isis-fighters-covertly-evacuated-as-part-of-us-uk-deal-report/articleshow/61703015.cms

Various tweets and more about this

Oops, what I meant to say is the Lofgren idea plausible, or hard-to-believe conspiracy theory as compared to more mainstream take that deal was just designed to limit casualties

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/hundreds-of-isis-fighters-covertly-evacuated-as-part-of-us-uk-deal-report/articleshow/61703015.cms🕸

Various tweets and more about this

Fox and Friends and Tweeter in Chief are not covering or acknowledging this theory:

It is common knowledge that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has funded and logistically supported ISIS. It is plausible that the Saudis, particularly under the energetic new Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the virtual power behind the throne in the Kingdom, would be involved in any decision involving ISIS, a number of whose fighters were Saudi nationals. Since the crown prince gained power, Saudi Arabia has orchestrated the blockade of Qatar, held the Lebanese prime minister as a near-prisoner, used famine as a weapon against Yemen, and replaced Benjamin Netanyahu as the most active force trying to instigate war between America and Iran. Was there a diplomatic exchange between the Saudis and the United States over the Raqqa deal to preserve a Saudi “asset?”

Who is covering it in the western 'MSM'?

Newsweek & CBS picked it on their websites up on the 14th, but I don't know if it made print or broadcast. Repurcussions inbound: Turkey appalled, thinks Kurds want conquest, not end to ISIS, and doesn't have info on ISIS fugitives. French military said coalition opposed the escape.
UK envoy admits knowing, but coalition couldn't stop it.

Is this the same story as that isis convoy of buses that was wandering around the war zone a couple months ago?

184 dead ... so far

200 now.

235.

that's utterly horrible.

IS is the main suspect in yesterday's Egypt mosque massacre but there's no claim. HOWEVER: the act appears to have shocked influential IS supporters on social media who are claiming IS's innocence

— Samer Al-Atrush (@SameralAtrush) November 25, 2017

Death toll now over 300.

this is quite difficult to process and utterly horrifying

imagine being a sufi anywhere in the world right now, this is krystallnacht p much

probably a bad comparison but seriously. this feels like a declaration of genocide. fuck these people

Salafists [have been persecuting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Sufis) Sufis throughout the Sunni world, especially since 2005.

Salafist clerics can be found whereever Saudi largess has built mosques. When future histories of Islam are written in a few centuries, the pact between ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Muhammad bin Saud in 1744, and the discovery of oil in 1938, will be seen as disasters for the rest of the religion.

sources say Trump will announce on Wednesday that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel

https://www.axios.com/trump-to-declare-jerusalem-the-capital-of-israel-on-wednesday-2514099094.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twsocialshare&utm_campaign=organic

So hold on

#BreakingNews: #Israel Channel 2 says police is determined to indict the Prime Minister (Netanyahu) on range of charges, including corruptionhttps://t.co/4bhU8OGi3X

— Meir Javedanfar (@MeirJa) December 1, 2017

merry christmas indeed

I was really hoping this thread would be active so some of you people could explain to me what the hell is going on in Yemen

I don't think anyone understands exactly what's going on? The broad strokes as I understand them is that Saudi Arabia thought they'd win easily, then got bogged down, and now has resorted to what seems pretty close to genocidal tactics, closing the borders to a country that imports nearly all of it's food, and putting millions of people in danger of starving to death.

Saudi Arabia currently has no official relations with Israel but they have been widely reported to have secretly cooperated for years on security issues.

Saudi Arabia policy...(article starts with discussion of latest alleged Saudi proposal that has angered Palestinians and others). Summary of prior recent Saudi steps below

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/03/world/middleeast/palestinian-saudi-peace-plan.html

But several of Prince Mohammed’s foreign policy efforts so far have sputtered, reflecting what many officials and diplomats in the region say is a lack of understanding of basic regional dynamics, or a willingness to ignore them.

His move to isolate Qatar, in part for being too close to Iran, has if anything forced it to become closer to Iran. Last month, his gambit to pressure the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, to resign — to isolate Iran’s Lebanese ally, Hezbollah — backfired, leaving Mr. Hariri still in place and arguably stronger than before.

it continues to be weird that a group that supposedly has zero leverage and is by far the weaker party to any agreement can so boldly - even before a proposal has officially been made - reject any offer. it's almost as if they believe that they are holding a stronger hand.

rip saleh, you mercurial man

Saleh’s apparently violent end removed one the Arab world’s most resilient and ruthless strongmen, a onetime U.S. ally who was toppled six years ago during the Arab Spring protests that swept the region but who managed to retain his influence. His death left Yemen—chronically impoverished, riven by violence and in the throes of a catastrophic civil war—facing even greater uncertainty.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/yemens-former-leader-ali-abdullah-saleh-has-died-amid-escalating-fighting-political-aides-say/2017/12/04/319413b6-d8f9-11e7-a841-2066faf731ef_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_yemen-930am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.e82eba48b2de

it continues to be weird that a group that supposedly has zero leverage and is by far the weaker party to any agreement can so boldly - even before a proposal has officially been made - reject any offer. it's almost as if they believe that they are holding a stronger hand.

― Mordy, 4. december 2017 18:32 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is the least weird thing ever. Weak parties are never ever in a rush to solidify their weakness into a binding agreement.

only if they believe that they have some kind of leverage that can be summoned. if it seemed like they were getting weaker as time went on (and that future deals would leave them in an even worse position) they would presumably be motivated to make a deal now. if however they believed that there was a better deal on offer if they just waited then they'd be motivated to hold out. out of either realism or fantasy they've generally settled on the latter (imo to their detriment but i don't share their strategic interests).

You might think it doesn't make sense, but it's completely normal. The weak part often doesn't think they have anything to lose, and therefore doesn't want to settle.

I think it's normal because I think they believe they have leverage (demographic leverage, political leverage from the EU and the Arab nations, etc), not because I think they believe they have nothing to lose. Because they still have plenty to lose. They could lose the possibility of getting any State at all.

it's an awful, stupid, classic MBS proposal

sooner he is assassinated by one of his fellow in-bred sauds the better

I think it's normal because I think they believe they have leverage (demographic leverage, political leverage from the EU and the Arab nations, etc), not because I think they believe they have nothing to lose. Because they still have plenty to lose. They could lose the possibility of getting any State at all.

― Mordy, 4. december 2017 20:12 (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They don't have a state, they risk not having a state, what have they lost?

And yeah, it's an awful proposal, and the whole idea is to quickly solve the Palestinian issue so that big smart thinkers like MBS and Kushner can focus on the real tough issues. Of course Abbas won't play along.

the PLO have more territory and sovereignty now than they did pre-oslo. they could lose that. under olmert they could've had a state in gaza, the WB and east jerusalem. now it seems like jerusalem is entirely off the table probably for good. the smart play is doing what the jews did in 47 - accept the imperfect partition plan bc it's better to have a bird in the hand than two in the bush and see what you can make happen after that.

see what you can make happen after that.

Sounds ominous.

but abbas i believe thinks he has more leverage than that. for reasons (some good, some delusional) he thinks israel will ultimately be pressured into giving into maximalist palestinian demands aka palestinian state in WB, Gaza, East Jerusalem capital AND ROR for refugees AND Israel not an explicitly Jewish state but just a "state of citizens." the latter two are deal breakers and like i said the former is becoming more circumscribed every year. at this pt tho idk that he even could accept a lesser offer even if he thought it was in his best interests since it would make previous rejections look particularly foolish. he's pot committed iow.

see what you can make happen after that.

Sounds ominous.

― Action of Boyle Man Prompts Visitor to Stay (Tom D.), 4. december 2017 20:27 (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, it makes absolutely no sense.

Heavy airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition pounded Yemen’s capital overnight, targeting Sanaa’s densely populated neighborhoods in apparent retaliation for the killing of the former Yemeni president by the country’s Shiite rebels, residents said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/yemens-chaos-deepens-after-rebels-killed-ex-president-saleh/2017/12/05/4ccf0f62-d982-11e7-a241-0848315642d0_story.html?utm_term=.f879da77609a

NYT says the capital recognition is going forward

This is going to get ugly really fast.

based on what? threat of days of rage? they also raged bc israel put metal detectors at the temple mount.

based on apartheid

trump declaring that the US recognizes that jerusalem is the capital of israel will get ugly really fast because of apartheid. okay genius.

since the last u and i discussed this have you bothered looking into the issue at all or nah not really

based on what? threat of days of rage? they also raged bc israel put metal detectors at the temple mount.

― Mordy, Tuesday, December 5, 2017 7:22 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That, for starters, but that's not what I meant. This wrecks the whole process and sends ripples through the whole ME. It'll undo the extremely fragile 'not all-out war' phase we're in. USA is now officially out as middle man for any kind of talks (perhaps they were already, perhaps it's for the best etc). I suspect you can see why this will have huge repercussions.

Time for Russia to step up to the plate.

russia recognized w jerusalem as the capital months ago

presumably there were no threats of violence bc no one thinks russia cares. you only threaten violence when you think threats of violence can force the policy you want.

Russia recognised West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in the context of a future agreement that saw East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestine, iirc. It’s not recognition outside of the context of the peace process.

“We reaffirm our commitment to the UN-approved principles for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, which include the status of East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. At the same time, we must state that in this context we view West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said in a statement.

in this context

The statement starts by condemning unilateral moves and ends by saying the status of Jerusalem needs to be decided by bilateral talks.

What I'm seeing about Trump's statement is that it'll be very similar saying something like that the final borders and status of Jerusalem will need to be determined in negotiations.

If Trump says that he will recognise West Jerusalem as a future capital, after the two state solution has been implemented, and not that he is moving th Embassy there immediately, I’m sure there will be a sigh of relief in a number of places.

it's trump he'll probably say something confusing that satisfies no one imo

Here’s hoping!

welp

BREAKING: President Trump calls on Saudi Arabia to end Yemen blockade immediately, citing humanitarian concerns.

— The Associated Press (@AP) December 6, 2017

Huh.

...let's see if they stick to that for more than 48 hours, I guess?

fwiw predicting the future is tricky business but i doubt this jerusalem thing becomes a huge deal. maybe there's some rioting, some casualties but predictions of broad destabilization around the middle east imo are overblown

Yeah, that never happens.

what never happens? broad destabilization around the middle east? it happens but normally bc you've overthrown a government or fomented a revolution not bc you make a symbolic speech

The Middle East being so stable at present.

The Arabian spring began because a fruitseller set himself on fire.

what are you guys arguing exactly? that this is going to make syria/iraq worse? that it'll destabilize egypt or turkey? i'm seeing a lot of hysteria out there about the ramifications of this speech but not a lot of clarity about what those ramifications will be. i doubt any governments fall bc of this.

I mean, I agree, it's probably just a 5% chance that this leads to Hezbollah taking over Lebanon, I'm just lolling a bit about that being the standard to measure this.

hezbollah are not going to "take over lebanon"

if hezbollah took over lebanon this would be like the 20th cause imo. you'd first look at syria, iran, the saudis, etc. obv any major shift in the middle east would be overdetermined but idk ppl have been anticipating trump starting ww3 since last nov. once his term is over do u think they will apologize for fearmongering?

what are you guys arguing exactly?

I'm agreeing with you. On this point.

Yeah, I agree, this probably won't lead to any governments falling. It's still utterly stupid. Going above the heads of the Palestinians is one thing, if it was a part of a good plan towards peace, but the plan seems to let Kushner and MBS do their thing together, and then rely on people hating Iran. It's not going to work, because nothing what either of those two idiots does ever works ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

relatedly so many ppl on social media claiming that this is the death knell of the peace process many of whom have said the exact same thing a dozen times over the last decade

the peace process has been long dead. this just makes it harder for people like abbas, "moderate arab" states, and the US to keep pretending they don't know that.

if you'd like but no one learned anything new today that they didn't know a year ago

I agree. But that doesn't make the whole thing less idiotic...

The peace process wasn't a literal peace process any more, hasn't been for a long time. Instead though, it did maintain a status quo, and not an insignificant one at that: to keep Israel (ignoring every resolution and happily building away new settlements, oppressing Palestine but not "hard enough" for the West to act upon) from demolishing Palestine further, and on the other side to prevent a third intifada, of rockets flying into Israel.

Fact is that this is an unwanted, rash and ill-thought through (if at all) intervention. Israel won't mind. But the rest of the world looks on in dread. Because that fuckup of a president of yours put the cat among the pigeons with this utterly useless provocation. And for what?

It's one thing to fear major repercussion because of this. I agree that might be a bit overblown. But it's another to act all "what's new? nothings gonna happen! be cool ppl! nothing to see here! been there done that," a position you seem very keen on to take. Bit too keen imo. Saying this won't have big consequences doesn't mean it's not an absolutely cuntish thing to do for a US president. It's something he, nor the US, nor anyone benefits from (apart from maybe dollars from Israel for mr. Trump himself but who knows right?). It achieves nothing, doesn't give him any leverage or hand he did not have already. It only sparks the flame of instability. Because that's what Trump does. No new war in the Middle East because of it? Probably. But it's not something to shrug off and sneeze at either.

(that was an xp to Mordy, but I think you got that Fred)

it's true i think it's much ado about nothing. i think trump and his critics would prefer everyone think otherwise.

i mean we'll soon find out who was right so it doesn't make much sense to argue esp since you seem to agree ""Saying this won't have big consequences doesn't mean it's not an absolutely cuntish thing to do for a US president."

We're not arguing iirc. Just strikes me as odd as to why you'd make a song and dance about something you think has zero implications and does not matter one bit in the first place.

i thought i said that upfront? it's bc i've seen a lot of ppl online say hysterical things about it. like that it would spark ww3. ppl on this v website!

idk why you'd call what i wrote a "song and dance" btw i think i've been extremely straight-forward. i'm projecting what i think will result from this. i'm not making any argument about what i think should result or what i hope results or what i think a good resolution would be etc. there are arab writers i'm reading today that say the exact same thing.

Idk your last ten (?) posts here are all 'I don't see anything coming from this'. Which you are entitled to, obv, it just feels a bit like driving home a 'nothing happens' (nethack flashback) point over and over. Which is, I agree with you, "projecting what you think will result from this".

"We'll see" indeed...

And for what?... It only sparks the flame of instability. Because that's what Trump does.

this is otm

today on NPR Up First, the framing was exclusively WILL THERE BE ANOTHER INTIFADA? THIS ONE GUY WE INTERVIEWED SAID THERE WILL BE AN INTIFADA! HAMAS WANTS AN INTIFADA! WILL PALESTINIANS WAIT FOR A PEACE PROPOSAL BEFORE THEY START INTIFADA-ING?

— techno-serf (@worldfleshdevil) December 7, 2017

yep. also the frame Cory Booker, Sanders, and other dems used. The “but Trump will unleash the scary Arab!”, “inflame tensions” “Now is not the time” line is the safe liberal take because it’s a process objection that avoids addressing issue of apartheid and land theft. https://t.co/Kj20JLohBt

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) December 7, 2017

Jerusalem: More journalists than protestors after Friday prayers https://t.co/bQZ55JMlCE

— Björn Stritzel (@bjoernstritzel) December 8, 2017

This is interesting:

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/saudi-arabias-crown-prince-identified-as-buyer-of-record-breaking-da-vinci-1512674099?__twitter_impression=true

Prince Mohammed, known by his initials MBS, was identified as the buyer of the 500-year-old painting, “Salvator Mundi,” in U.S. intelligence reports, according to people with direct knowledge of the information. American officials have closely watched the activities of the 32-year-old, who is trying to portray himself as a reformer determined to root out corruption in the oil-rich kingdom.

The story is completely false - the painting was bought for the new Abu Dhabi Louvre by the UAE - but there appears to have been an attempt by (someone in) US intelligence to undermine MBS with a planted story, unless the WSJ made it up themselves, which seems unlikely. Not sure if it should be read alongside the Yemen tweet earlier in the week as a warning to play ball.

African refugees not welcome in Israel or Europe. African Refugees arriving in Libya mistreated

https://psmag.com/social-justice/understanding-libyas-slave-trade

While most migration in Africa is within African countries, after Israel's fence went up, many asylum seekers turned to Libya and the sea...

The number of asylum seekers reaching Italy's shores plummeted in 2017...

In 2015, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that all Syrian asylum seekers would be allowed to stay in Germany independent of their first country of contact. The move was celebrated by some as a watershed moment. What received less attention was that these asylum seekers amounted to a little under half of those in the country at the time; other asylum seekers, including many from Africa, were stuck in the unstable purgatory of the undocumented.

i'll read it but i think expecting unlimited immigration to europe was always unrealistic

expectations by EU countries, unrealistic or otherwise, are not the core issue imo. mass emigration from poor unstable countries into wealthier more stable countries will continue beyond the effective control of governments, because desperate people will risk the chance of death to escape certain misery.

Mass migration toward its northern coast will continue to be a reality of the 21st century whether or not it is convenient for Europe. Global attempts at containment are not only inhumane, but insufficient: People will always fight to survive. Western countries can't ask them to find a quieter place to die, even though the measures they've taken over the past decade have amounted to just that. This includes the E.U. paying Turkey €3 billion to ensure that Syrians and other refugees never make it to Greece, the U.S. paying Mexico to ensure that children fleeing the gangs of Central America's Northern Triangle never make it to America, Israel building its southern border fence to keep Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers out, and Australia maintaining numerous, horrific offshore detention centers such as those on Manus and Nauru. The list goes on.

The belief that these barbarous exercises in inhospitality will serve as effective deterrents has proven false. The destination might change, but nothing will stop migration, because nothing will stop those who know their lives are threatened from seeking refuge elsewhere.

maybe i'm misreading but this certainly sounds to me like an attempt to shame first world western countries for not accepting desperate migrants. expectations are the core issue bc this is written for westerns and it is attempting to convince them of something and i think we know what that something is.

While inhumane, genocide is an effective deterrent. As the bottleneck century progresses and the number of overpopulation/conflict/climate refugees grows, Europeans and North Americans will support nationalists in the Maghreb, Turkey and Mexico as bulwarks against the human tide. Its just the reality of lifeboat ethics.

There are several elements in your response that need to be teased apart.

sounds to me like an attempt to shame first world western countries for not accepting desperate migrants

and?

if one accepts that compassion and charity are the appropriate responses to desperate and miserable humans, and that morality enjoins those with excess resources to use them to mitigate that misery, then the first question becomes whether or not that moral standard is being met. if one believes it isn't being met, then what is to be done next?

if you lack the power to change the situation unilaterally, then you must persuade others to see the situation as you do. if one sees this in moral terms, then defining your point of view as the moral high ground is one obvious way to approach the task of persuasion. you can call it shaming if you wish, but you seem to be implying that using shame as a tool is wrong or underhanded, iow you seem to be using a sort of shaming, too.

i think we know what that something is

why use circumlocution here? just blurt it out and we can all decide if we know what "that something" is.

and presumably as it increases and becomes increasingly dire western countries will be pressured by unprecedented efforts to open their borders for more migration. ppl who oppose this will be labeled bigots and murderers for their complicity in the deaths of these refugees. it will be very hard for western countries who consider compassion to be a core value to say no to photographs of dead children. if the left becomes seen by its polity as untrustworthy in keeping the borders closed nations will choose more right-wing governments to do so on their behalf. xenophobia, nationalism, etc will increase. xp

The Four Freedoms enshrined in the Rome Treaty back in 57 are the free movement of goods, services, capital and persons. And as long as EU and the rest of the west insist on having the first three freedoms guide globalization, people elsewhere will take the fourth into their own hands.

aimless you're a smart guy. it was obvious what i was saying. articles like these are pushing for looser borders and they're disapproving of countries that close them.

The responses to the migration crisis are either open borders or a serious, comprehensive plan for alleviating global inequality. There is no other choices.

you mean there are no other choices that you personally think are moral bc there are other choices that are real choices and much more likely than either of those

as always it's important to keep ought/is in mind

No, in the long run there are no other choices. Everything else is avoidance.

Neither Iran or Saudi Arabia is likely to be very helpful; some will continue to choose to rationalize supporting or working with certain authoritarian governments but not others

The EU is currently working with Erdogans Turkey to keep out immigrants, but clearly that's not a longterm solution either.

everything else is avoidance of what? what are you saying exactly? why can't a country limit immigration, build walls, etc and continue on ignoring the misery going on outside the walls? isn't that history of most of civilization? xxp

the problems with the EU bribing Turkey and Libya to be their border control are frightfully obvious.

xpost: And it has never worked in the long run...

Also, it's really not true, most states throughout history has been trying to expand, I'd say.

there are other choices that are real choices and much more likely than either of those

I understand your concern that immigration is strengthening the trend toward fascism in all western nations. But you seem to be preemptively embracing the solutions proposed by the radical nationalists, as a way of undercutting them. In my view this not only makes you their unwilling ally, but also concedes that a huge swath of their political principles are legitimate. You might be hitting yourself in the hope that the blows will be softer if self-administered.

And, yes, I know this is a huge issue with massive ramifications that is bound to increase rapidly in the next couple of decades and it isn't at all clear what is the most practical means of dealing with it.

fwiw I am not particularly concerned nor am i advocating for anything. i'm just observing what seems to be a fait accompli at this point.

fwiw it does not work to compromize with the radical nationalists at all. They've been pretty much in control of Danish immigration politics for 12 out of the last 16 years, and the government in the remaining 4 years didn't to anything that different. It's a mistake to say radical nationalists in Europe are for closed borders, and if only the left closes them enough, they will be mollified. They are 'tough on immigration' parties, and their whole raison d'etre is to always be tougher than the other parties. Any law they get through, and any move in their direction, only lead to further demands, while also in most cases hurting actual efforts at immigrating people who have legitimate reasons to be here. Which of course leads to further problems, leading to more demands, leading to more problems, etc.

'integrating' not 'immigrating', sorry.

fred otm about the hard right. however

The responses to the migration crisis are either open borders or a serious, comprehensive plan for alleviating global inequality. There is no other choices.

imo the choices are either fascism, or a serious comprehensive plan for alleviating global inequality (feat. open borders). open borders without the latter will have the results mordy describes.

this is why revolutionary internationalist leftism and fascism are the only real political positions and everything else is fantasy tbh.

One too many. Revolutionary Internationalist Leftism. Everything else is reaction.

lol well sure but the reactionaries might win, which is more than you can say for anyone else but us. i mean we could comfort ourselves by saying that actually it wouldn't count as winning because their civilization would extinguish itself. but that would be no comfort at all so instead we'd have to hope that they escaped the dying earth and constructed a monstrous fascist empire throughout the stars that much later fell to revolutionary internationalist leftism. which aside from requiring an even greater exertion of teleological faith would actually feel even worse.

lads

your two realistic options for how to resolve the migration crisis is "revolutionary international leftism" and "fascism" - neither of which mean anything.

#IntergalacticRevolutionaryLeftism

Do keep up

fascism would look pretty much like how it usually looks.

revolutionary internationalist leftism would aggressively redistribute global wealth downward by every means possible, redistributing political power along with it, in the belief that this would relax the stresses that give rise to fascist nationalism, maintain habitability on the maximum planetary surface, and produce the minimum possible 21-22c death toll.

imo if i can be monday morning stoned on anyone's middle east north africa and other geopolitical hotspots thread it's mordy's.

thoughts?

http://www.rojava-info.com/2017/12/us-gives-ypg-500-million-weapon-aid.html?m=1

Take that with huge handfuls of salt. The US does arm the YPG but it’s a sticky point of negotiation between various parties. Turkey believed it secured a commitment from Trump to stop sending them weapons, the US has said that they will reduce arms deliveries and may phase them out over time, it is still up for discussion. If they were going to spend half a billion next year, they wouldn’t be announcing it.

Actually, I think the US technically claims to arm SDF divisions under YPG command rather than the YPG directly. The $500m figure seems familiar - it might be the total cost of supporting the SDF and aligned groups.

Have any writers critiqued the Politico allegation re the Obama White House allegedly derailing an in investigation into alleged drug dealing by Hezbollah, in order to ensure that the Iran Nuclear Treaty would be reached?

https://www.npr.org/2017/12/20/572195727/politico-reporter-says-obama-administration-derailed-hezbollah-investigation

http://www.jpost.com/International/Hezbollah-scandal-perfect-timing-for-Trump-administration-520038

https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

saw some references to the CIA/FBI not giving a fuck about whatever the DEA is up to because of the pecking order in these sorts of things..

The obvious critique is- who cares? If you consider the threat of Iran obtaining nuclear capability to be a serious one, you'd obviously prioritise that over aome drug trafficking by an Iranian proxy.

Sounds like US done played itself, letting the drug trafficking continue for the sake of halting a fictional weapons programme.

Idk if Purdue pharma pretended to have a nuclear weapons programme lol

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-usa/mattis-sees-larger-u-s-civilian-presence-in-syria-idUSKBN1EN1H8

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday that he expected to see a larger U.S. civilian presence in Syria, including contractors and diplomats, as the fight against Islamic State militants nears its end and the focus turns toward rebuilding and ensuring the militants do not return.

Hmmm, wonder who will decide on the contractors...

no-bid contracts, here we come!

Thread on Iran protests from yesterday

Thread: Iran’s protests--including in traditional cities like Qom and Mashhad--are a reminder of the country’s deep political, social, and above all economic frustrations https://t.co/PRT1RUTdNX

— Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) December 29, 2017

Trump tweeting about Iran being an “oppressive regime “ after he has been selling military ware to Saudi Arabia and sucking up to China, Philippines, and Russia is well typical. Plus Trumpies tweeting that CNN is ignoring the protests is wrong . If Glen Greenwald tweets about Iran it will probably just be a mention of the CIA’s history in Iran.

Any 2018 thread name ideas?

MENA, MENA, Tekel, Parsin 2018

Confess that I had to google that, but it works

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belshazzar%27s_feast

Seems legit.

I took Mordy's suggestion and started a 2018 thread

MENA, MENA, Tekel, Parsin (Middle East, North Africa & other Geopolitical Hotspots) 2018