rolling middle east 2013 thread

No discussion on ILX, that is.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/rouhani-on-iranian-tv-in-may-detailed-how-he-broke-nuclear-pledge/

http://ottomansandzionists.com/2013/10/17/turkey-spies-like-us/

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/assads-terror-famine

Saudi Arabia says security council is bullshit if they can't even stop a war in syria:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/19/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-rejects-security-council-seat.html

everyone is talking about how insane the SA decision is - how it seemed to be last minute

also i first heard it was primarily about Syria (this morning on BBC) but now i hear Iran has a lot to do w/ it too-- is SA worried that current negotiations are about to let iran off the hook re nukes?

“The Saudis no doubt quickly realized that being on the U.N.S.C. would mean they could no longer pursue their traditional back-seat and low-key policies and therefore decided to give it up,” said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University and an authority on Saudi Arabia.

“Regardless of the short-term costs, a seat on the U.N.S.C. may have also meant that Saudi Arabia would be more constrained in backing the Syrian opposition,” Mr. Haykel said in an e-mail.

as if being on the security council ever stopped other countries from backing rebel groups

i always kind of wonder what it's like to be a country that's not the US where UN politics actually matter to you

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2013/10/18/why-did-saudi-arabia-reject-a-un-security-council-seat/

Why then did they change their minds at the last moment? One speculative hypothesis is that they were impressed by the U.S. cutting off the delivery of large-scale military systems to Egypt, suggesting that the threat of aid removal has become more credible. The increased credibility of that threat may be enhanced by increasing energy production in the U.S. The expected cost of getting into serious trouble with the U.S. may just have gone up enough to make participation in the Security Council simply no longer worth it.

$10,000 in aid a year acc to foreignassistance.gov so what exactly are they worried about? maybe stuff like http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-29/u-s-saudi-formally-sign-boeing-f-15-jet-deal-proposed-in-2010.html ?

Frederic Wherey, a Saudi expert at the Carnegie Endowment, said: "This is a dramatic but ineffectual gesture. The Saudis realised the tide of the security council was against them on portfolios they care about. But operationally, it doesn't mean much. It's more theatrics than substance."

Pregnant women in Syria are being picked off by snipers in a sickening war game in which their unborn babies appear to be used for target practice, according to a British surgeon.

David Nott, who has just spent five weeks volunteering in a Syrian hospital, said that he and his despairing colleagues started to notice a disturbing pattern among the women and children who were being shot as they ran the daily gauntlet across a divided zone to buy food and supplies in a major city.

"One day it would be shots to the groin. The next, it would only be the left chest. The day after, we would see no chest wounds; they were all neck [wounds]," he said in an interview with The Times. "From the first patients that came in in the morning, you could almost tell what you would see for the rest of the day. It was a game. We heard the snipers were winning packets of cigarettes for hitting the correct number of targets."

this is horrific if true. from times of london -- not sure how reputable their stories are?

Washington Post's neo-con editorial page editor offers 2 editorials expressing anger at Obama re Syria because of Assad statement in an interview in a Lebanese paper:

Mr. Assad’s latest statements might be dismissed as so much bluster. But they are entirely plausible. The regime did manage to trade an arsenal that had outlived its original purpose for the cancellation of a U.S. military onslaught that might have tipped the balance in the civil war. That deal prompted further divisions in the U.S.-backed opposition and triggered a number of rebel groups to switch allegiance to an Islamist front. The Geneva meeting is looking doubtful, in part because U.S. diplomats are unable to explain how it could lead to Mr. Assad’s departure. Perhaps it’s no surprise that it’s Mr. Assad rather than Mr. Obama who wants to talk about this. For the United States, it’s a bleak and shameful picture.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/syrias-crisis-averted-not-so-fast/2013/10/20/99062f90-380b-11e3-ae46-e4248e75c8ea_story.html

and also here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fred-hiatt-obamas-u-turn-on-human-rights/2013/10/20/7040e52c-3807-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop

finkelstein tells mondoweiss readers that they're morons:
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/10/american-opinion-ignored.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/world/middleeast/tradition-of-not-voting-keeps-palestinians-politically-powerless-in-jerusalem.html

Is it really this simple, and are Palestinian leaders who urge folks not to vote that blinded by principle (I guess so):

If Arab residents voted en masse like the ultra-Orthodox minority, Mr. Margalit said in an interview, they could win enough seats not only to demand better garbage pickup and more playgrounds, but to “change history” by blocking the Jewish settlement expansion that they say threatens their future capital and the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“I would like to see them be more pragmatic,” Mr. Margalit said. “Ideology is a great thing, but in this specific context, ideology is not the main issue. The main issue is how to save East Jerusalem. In order to do it, they have to do it in the political arena.”

Upset at President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Syria, members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are threatening a rift with the United States that could take the alliance between Washington and the kingdom to its lowest point in years.

Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief is vowing that the kingdom will make a 'major shift' in relations with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria's civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.

yeah that's a big deal. idk what to think of it.

one one hand it's never good one when one country loses an ally. on the other, it's saudi arabia.

big protests going on in SA atm re women driving

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/25/saudi-arabia-women-action-driving-laws

The Obama administration appears to be deadlocked over what to do in Syria, forcing a policy of inaction, according to a widely circulating New York Times story. But U.S. officials will likely have years more time to debate what to do about Syria's civil war, which could continue into and perhaps through the next presidential administration. According to a review of the political science on the duration of civil wars, Syria's conflict will most likely last through 2020 and perhaps well beyond.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/10/23/political-science-says-syrias-civil-war-will-probably-last-at-least-another-decade/?tid=up_next

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/11/04/wow-nearly-half-of-egyptians-support-suspending-tv-satirist-bassem-youssef/?tid=up_next

anti-israel right reviews book from the anti-israel left:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/will-israel-go-fascist/

book sparks 90s era intra-democrat fight

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/clinton-adviser-sid-blumenthals-new-cause-his-sons-anti-isra

haha were following this on twitter? boy, what a day

uh no. a few stray mentions of it. but i must not be following the core ppl.

centerpiece of it was an excruciating back-and-forth btw gray and labor reporter m1k3 3lk, plus appearances by eli lake, max b himself, the mondoweiss crew, etc

Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, a variety of sources have told BBC Newsnight.

While the kingdom's quest has often been set in the context of countering Iran's atomic programme, it is now possible that the Saudis might be able to deploy such devices more quickly than the Islamic republic.

Earlier this year, a senior Nato decision maker told me that he had seen intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery.

Last month Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, "the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring."

Since 2009, when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned visiting US special envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross that if Iran crossed the threshold, "we will get nuclear weapons", the kingdom has sent the Americans numerous signals of its intentions.

http://www.mrdrybones.com/blog/D07204_2.gif

ok i lol'd a little

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/world/iran-nuclear-talks.html

mondoweiss types are blaming the israel lobby for influencing france. if you had any doubt that the 'lobby' was just lysergic conspiracy, the conjuring of them to explain french resistance to negotiations should seal things. i've even seen multiple comments in the NYT, MW, Haaretz, etc blaming the 'Rothschild banking family of France' for jettisoning a deal. right, whatever.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jackson-diehl-john-kerrys-middle-east-dream-world/2013/11/10/5b17d2d2-47cf-11e3-b6f8-3782ff6cb769_story.html

xp

lol my first thought when i heard about the French objections was "well nobody's gonna be able to pin this one on Israel"

lack of faith

they keep pointing out how fabius' mother was a convert from judaism. u know there's a zio-conspiracy there!

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/nov/11/irans-plutonium-game/

lysergic conspiracy

Why are you bringing acid into this

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2013/11/12/Syrian-Kurds-declare-autonomous-government.html

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/dec/05/syria-way-genocide/

Well, that's depressing.

I spoke with the veteran Moroccan diplomat Mokhtar Lamani, who has been the UN–Arab League representative on the ground in Syria since September last year. “If there is no political solution,” he said, “I would not be surprised to see a genocide.” Lest I misunderstand him, I asked him to repeat his view. In slightly different form, he stated, “The ingredients are there for a genocide in a few months.” He did not say whether he meant a genocide by government or rebel forces or mass killing on both sides.

While Syrians do most of the fighting and dying, both sides have welcomed foreigners into their ranks. Iranians and Lebanese Shiites reinforce the government army, while Sunni jihadists from more than forty countries have become the revolt’s shock troops. They are less concerned with majoritarian democracy than with deposing a president whose primary offenses they consider to be his membership in an Islamic sect, the Alawites, that they condemn as apostate, and his alliance with Shiite Iran. A Red Cross worker who, like Lamani, has worked on both sides of the barricades, said, “If there are secularist rebels, I haven’t met them.”

(Reuters) - Two suicide bombings rocked Iran's embassy compound in Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 23 people including an Iranian cultural attaché and hurling bodies and burning wreckage across a debris-strewn street.

A Lebanon-based al Qaeda-linked group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, claimed responsibility and threatened further attacks unless Iran withdraw forces from Syria, where they have backed President Bashar al-Assad's 2-1/2-year-old war against rebels.

Security camera footage showed a man in an explosives belt rushing towards the outer wall of the embassy before blowing himself up, Lebanese officials said. They said a car bomb parked two buildings away from the compound had caused the second, deadlier explosion. The Lebanese army, however, said both blasts were suicide attacks.

I remember when I used to believe suicide bombers were indicative of a helpless civilian population who must resort to suicide out of emotional/physical distress - as opposed to a really shitty political development propagated by shitty human beings.

i think the people who wear the vests are probably vulnerable and depressed; the men who are building the vests and planning the attacks are not

(can't remember where i read all this but) terrorist planners know who to look for. it is weaponized depression, of a kind.

I thought this recent article was very interesting on the subject: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/24/russia_s_mysterious_deadly_phenomenon_of_new_black_widows

Yusup told me how his Arab commander was able to prepare an entire brigade of troops who were not merely prepared for death but desired it. "Lots of different people came to this forest. Some were hyper, wanting to fight, to train, but there were always people who lacked a certain amount of attention at home, lacked love," Yusup said. "These were weak people, who just wanted to be respected and loved, and Khattab was a very good psychologist. He was able to spot such people and assign to them a particular instructor. The first thing that these people received upon entering the collective was love. They were called brothers and sisters, they were coddled, food was prepared for them, prayers were read with them, much time was spent in conversation with them. Then -- all of a sudden -- the instructor would begin asking, almost as a passing thought, whether there were strong brothers among them who would be willing to sacrifice themselves for Allah and for the sake of the common goal. And many among the weak wanted to become strong."

Yusup explained how at their base even the most pathetic felt powerful, a feeling they had seldom felt among their domineering elders and siblings back home. It was that feeling of empowerment which drew them back into the forest like a magnet. "If a terrorist attack is being prepared and the person carrying it out begins to feel fear or doubt, he would not be forced into it," said Yusup. "If today he couldn't do it, another brother or sister would go, while he would continue receiving love and affection until it became more terrible for him to be thrown out of this community, to lose its respect and love, than to die. Through death, you would become a hero; through escape -- a traitor and a coward. And in any case, everyone understood that you would never be forgiven if you wanted to abandon the community."

http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/photo-of-palestinian-mother-was-the-wrong-choice/

Inside The One-Man Intelligence Unit That Exposed The Secrets And Atrocities Of Syria's War

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/world/asia/key-issue-said-to-be-resolved-in-us-afghan-security-talks.html

If Obama apologizes, the US maybe gets to continue doing counterterrorism sweeps of private Afghan homes.

The letter would clarify what was meant by “extraordinary circumstances” justifying home raids, and go beyond that as well. “The idea was to indeed mention that there were mistakes made in the conduct of military operations in the past, in the conduct of military operations by United States forces in the last decade, and that Afghans have suffered, and that we understand the pain and therefore we give assurances and make sure those mistakes are not repeated,” Mr. Faizi said.

Afghan officials said they expected to see the text of the letter by Wednesday before Mr. Karzai signs off on the security agreement.

With one day remaining to finalize the wording of the security agreement before the loya jirga meets, Mr. Faizi said that was the remaining issue in talks, carried out in their last phase by Mr. Karzai with the American ambassador, James B. Cunningham, and the American military commander, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr.

Will Obama apologize? Y/N

Kerry says Yes, Susan Rice says No

I'm thinking none of the above. A letter that's not an apology and maybe not signed by Obama, but admits unintentional mistakes

naftali bennett being interviewed on charlie rose atm

http://www.thenational.ae/world/europe/pope-francis-says-no-middle-east-without-christians

“We will not resign ourselves to imagining a Middle East without Christians,” he said after meeting with Patriarchs from Syria, Irak and Egypt, before calling for “the universal right to lead a dignified life and freely practise one’s own faith to be respected”.