What Do You MENA (Middle East, North Africa and other nearby Political Hotspots) 2019

also the question is how long do you think the US should have kept occupying syria to marginally stymie road delivery of materiel?

If the strategic interest of the US is in buttressing the Saudi-UAE-Israel coalition in their proxy wars against the Iran-Syria coalition (and yes, I'm dubious about this objective), then a US presence in Syria and developing an autonomous Rojava provided leverage.

SDF is the most competent military force between Tehran and Damascus, and maybe between Tehran and Jerusalem. Ignoring morality, betraying them is bad geopolitics, and markedly reduces US influence in the region now and in the forseeable future.

fair enough.

i think the most classically trumpian aspect is that the biggest upside that could come from turning your back on the kurds would be improving relations with turkey. instead he responds to them doing what they were obviously going to do with sanctions.

Do we think he's been influenced by Putin in this? Are the trump towers in Turkey signs of substantial investment there?

seemingly it stemmed directly from a phone call he had with erdogan on the 6th, but he had expected him not to "[do] anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits".

turkey is going to stop the offensive for 120 hours but will commence again if kurdish forces haven't withdrawn.

president deals does it again

hmm did Erdogan also agree not to resettle Syrians in the territory and to let the Kurds back in

this is just an empty gesture, what does a ceasefire even mean 120 hrs from now, the damage is done

meanwhile, can we put a fork in Bibi yet

https://www.yahoo.com/news/netanyahus-latest-call-unity-government-143751810.html

hmm did Erdogan also agree not to resettle Syrians in the territory and to let the Kurds back in

this is just an empty gesture, what does a ceasefire even mean 120 hrs from now, the damage is done

― The Ravishing of ROFL Stein (Hadrian VIII), Thursday, October 17, 2019 12:35 PM (fourteen minutes ago)

well it means advancing the advance which hasn't been completed yet. the sdf would likely have to strike a deal wit the saa again as they did with kobani and manbij tho as obviously turkey aren't exactly to be trusted

that advancing should halting

Bibi out

Gantz not hugely likely to be able to form a government either though?

yeah it's a mess, but I relish any diminishment of Bibi's power tbh

removing Bibi from the center of power limits the damage he can do. even if it's only temporary, that's still good.

prob good for israel to just not have functioning govt for a year

Anyone have a sense of how much personal animosity to Netanyahu is contributing to this impasse? Is Likud thinking of electing Yuli-Yoel Edelstein or Israel Katz as party leader?

to me (hardly an expert in israeli politics) the issue seems to be avigdor lieberman. if he supported bibi then the impasse would be finished - they could have formed a government in may even. they've been in government before, they don't have huge political differences that are readily apparent. but he's taken this "secularist" turn so he can't go into government with netanyahu, as that would mean going into government with the ultra-orthodox. this seems to be simply a wedge issue he's created because he knows that if he goes into government with netanyahu again he'll get some nice ministerial appointment as in the past but bibi will pull the strings. changing of the guard and king-making with gantz would perhaps open new vistas to him

(on the other hand the chance of lieberman wanting to go into a coalition with benny gantz which would include the arab parties - and vice versa, seems hard to imagine)

oh yeah also no one in likud looks like they want to dethrone netanyahu rn. he's too popular with the party's supporters it seems

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/world/middleeast/global-protests.html

Protests in Lebanon

i have no idea how this is measured, but this is interesting:

But as protest movements grow, their success rates are plunging. Only 20 years ago, 70 percent of protests demanding systemic political change achieved it — a figure that had been growing steadily since the 1950s, according to a study by Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard University political scientist.

In the mid-2000s, that trend reversed. Success rates now stand at 30 percent, the study said, a decline that Professor Chenoweth called staggering.

These two trends are closely linked. As protests become more frequent but likelier to flounder, they stretch on and on, becoming more contentious, more visible — and more apt to return to the streets when their demands go unmet. The result may be a world where popular uprisings lose their prominence, becoming simply part of the landscape.

Interesting and depressing.

In Lebanon, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri survived recent embarrassing revelations about a $16 million gift to a bikini model whom he met at a luxury resort in the Seychelles in 2013, a move that, for some critics, epitomized Lebanon’s ruling class. Then last week he announced the tax on WhatsApp calls, setting off a revolt.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/27/us-reportedly-carries-out-operation-against-isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi

No word yet on exactly what has happened.

More info available now.

Meanwhile in Lebanon, Hezbollah supporters are not happy with protestors or even folks selling food near protest site. So they’re knocking everything down and chasing out protesters

https://apple.news/AENL-FDeFMcavqKHQUFL6UA

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/29/middleeast/lebanon-saad-hariri-resigns-intl/index.html

Lebanon Prime Minister resigns

"It's a good first step but we're still going to stay in the streets," Pierre Mouzannar, a 21-year old filmmaker told Al Jazeera in central Beirut. "Hariri is part of the problem but he's not all of the problem … I don't think anyone thinks we're done."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/lebanese-protesters-celebrate-hariri-resignation-191029203414584.html

The Trump administration has frozen all military aid to the Lebanese army, including a package worth $105 million that both the State Department and Congress approved in September, congressional officials said Friday.

The halt to American funding of the Lebanese Armed Forces, an important multisectarian group, comes at a critical time for Lebanon, as officials are grappling with the country’s largest street protests since its independence in 1943 and a change in leadership forced by the demonstrations. A freeze on the assistance could give Iran and Russia an opening to exert greater influence over the Lebanese military, analysts say, and perhaps even allow the Islamic State and Al Qaeda to gain greater footholds in the country.

That’s The NY Times take

Which is the globalist-imperialist perspective, straight, no chaser. Lebanon is seen as just a pawn of much bigger powers and what matters is how this might affect the players who really count.

It seems the protestors are angering everyone- Hezbollah isn't happy, Lebanese officials and army, & Iran, Russia, US supporters of status quo who just don't want Hezbollah to get stronger. Not sure what Trump's motive is in Lebanon and whether his broken clock approach will help or hinder the protestors

Lebanon is a deeply corrupt state, and my understanding is this outcome is perpetuated by the provisions of the Taif Agreement of 1989.

Taif essentially prevents successful popular parties that cut across sectarian lines, so the nation is locked into a set of sectarian fiefdoms, and individual voters are limited to (at best) selecting between leaders of the sect they were born into/assigned. Only a small minority residing in Beirut can vote for local leadership, most are assigned to vote at their place of birth.

Definitely a country that needs a constitutional assembly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/world/middleeast/russia-libya-mercenaries.html?module=inline

Russian Snipers, Missiles and Warplanes Try to Tilt Libyan War
Moscow is plunging deeper into a war of armed drones in a strategic hot spot rich with oil, teeming with migrants and riddled with militants.

The snipers are among about 200 Russian fighters who have arrived in Libya in the last six weeks, part of a broad campaign by the Kremlin to reassert its influence across the Middle East and Africa.

After four years of behind-the-scenes financial and tactical support for a would-be Libyan strongman, Russia is now pushing far more directly to shape the outcome of Libya’s messy civil war. It has introduced advanced Sukhoi jets, coordinated missile strikes, and precision-guided artillery, as well as the snipers — the same playbook that made Moscow a kingmaker in the Syrian civil war.

The Russians have intervened on behalf of the militia leader Khalifa Hifter, who is based in eastern Libya and is also backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and, at times, France. His backers have embraced him as their best hope to check the influence of political Islam, crack down on militants and restore an authoritarian order.

Mr. Hifter has been at war for more than five years with a coalition of militias from western Libya who back the authorities in Tripoli. The Tripoli government was set up by the United Nations in 2015 and is officially supported by the United States and other Western powers. But in practical terms, Turkey is its only patron.

The new intervention of private Russian mercenaries, who are closely tied to the Kremlin, is just one of the parallels with the Syrian civil war.

The conflict has become a bipolar combination of the primitive and futuristic. Turkey and the Emirates have turned Libya into the first war fought primarily by clashing fleets of armed drones. The United Nations estimates that during the past six months, the two sides have conducted more than 900 drone missions.

But on the ground, the war is between militias with fewer than 400 fighters typically engaged on both sides at any time. The fighting happens almost exclusively in a handful of deserted districts on the southern outskirts of Tripoli, while in neighborhoods just a few miles away, streets are clogged with civilian traffic and espresso bars bustle amid heaps of uncollected garbage.

I was in New Delhi earlier this year at the same time MBS was there, and received a very light-touch in-person warning from Saudi intelligence within an hour for saying something rude about them on my anonymous Twitter account https://t.co/hvJJsWqWY2

— 🦃🦃 gracious goat 🦃🦃 (@marxatfarpoint) November 6, 2019

State intelligence and security forces are the premium upgrade from mere high-powered multi-national PR firms.

Talking of state intelligence and security forces:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/11/europe/syria-white-helmets-backer-james-le-mesurier-intl/index.html

huge leak from iran in the intercept and NYT today - some of the links here. mostly about how they took power in iraq. i haven't read much of it yet but looks like a significant publication:

Good morning, here's our series of stories based on 700 pages of top secret documents from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. This has never happened before: https://t.co/AiDfviY14I

— Murtaza Mohammad Hussain (@MazMHussain) November 18, 2019

The importance of these Iranian cables seems more to provide confirmation and details to what could be reasonable inferred from the power dynamics in the region and the visible 'hot' conflicts. Iran and Saudi Arabia are both pushing hard to accumulate and consolidate regional influence, through every means available to them and the situation is very fluid and constantly shifting.

yes it's a world of difference between vague inferences + real information as "through every means available to them and the situation is very fluid and constantly shifting" is practically meaningless in content whereas these 700 pages help fill in the gaps of what those means include and how they actually look

Iran is a land of contrasts

Just stunning work by the Bush administration. Spend a couple trillion dollars and kill a couple hundred thousand civilians so that Iraq can become a client state of Iran.

Experts on the Ian Masters news program were talking about this as early as 2002. Iraq is a majority Shi'a country, many of whose leaders had spent years in Iranian exile; and Iran a neighboring hedgemon that has taken the indirect/subterfuge approach to regional politics for centuries. Installing Ahmad Chalabi and other Western affiliated INC exiles to govern was always a fantasy that only neocons were indoctrinated enough to believe.

no gov't for Benny. Time for yet another election!

Not necessarily - indictment coming down tomorrow supposedly which could mean Likud minus Bibi aka potential gov as minor partner

indictment meaning Bibi would step aside? or would he have to be removed/challenged from within the party?

Either potentially I imagine depends on whether Bibi and Likud think he can beat it?

Bibi is getting all Trumpy like in his criticisms re attorney general he appointed. Bibi's status could get get ruled upon by Israel Supreme Court