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

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

so sick of this left wing anti semitism from uh Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit

"Channel 13 News reported that Hollywood producer Milchan, the central figure in Case 1000, told police that he attended a dinner at the Prime Minister's Residence in which Netanyahu's wife lashed at the Adelsons, telling them, 'You are spilling my blood, you are all spilling my blood.” Sheldon Adelson reportedly responded: "Calm down, we're doing the best we can. I lose 40 to 50 million dollars a year [on Israel Hayom]. … We regularly write in your favor and you keep shouting at me."

Another report from Channel 12 involving testimony from Case 2000 quoted Miriam Adelson as saying that Sara Netanyahu “once told me that if Iran gets nuclear weapons and Israel is wiped out, I’ll be to blame, because I’m not defending Bibi.”

Both the prime minister and his wife complained about their coverage with the Adelson newspaper’s former editor in chief, Amos Regev, both in person and in “screaming phone calls.”

Eventually, Miriam Adelson said, she and her husband got fed up and stopped visiting the Netanyahus."

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-netanyahu-israel-indictment-cases-charges-1.8160019

Still think they should name the US Embassy after Adelson, who effectively paid for it with his own money

warming up to bibi and sara reading that anecdote

does any other asshole world leader have such an affectionate nickname that both his supporters and haters use?

refuse to call this piece of shit "Bibi"

my dad (a chilean exile from the pinochet dictatorship) and i sometimes jokingly refer to pinochet as "el tata" (grampa) so i don't mind calling netanyahu bibi

Dubya?

This thread is not getting used that much. Do we start a 2020 one, anyway?

We can discuss>

Netanyahu wants temporary immunity

Predicting how Iran will respond to the US action.

Complexity of knowing that Soleimani was responsible also for crushing Iranian and Syrian opponents of dictators in addition to Americans who never should have been in Iraq, but determining that if an outside force takes action against him without authority, that end result may still not help poor folks who were suffering in those countries, or help Western powers either

i think a new thread makes sense. it got over 200 posts and i definitely used it last year for things i'd otherwise be bumping this thread to post

Any new title ideas for thread? I see an older Iranian thread is getting use now

We're talking about sand and death

"We're talking about sand and death-- Middle East, North Africa and other nearby Political Hotspots 2020 " works for me

"We're talking about sand and death"-- Middle East, North Africa (MENA) and other nearby Political Hotspots 2020

New thread started