Monday, January 14, 2013

Iran and the Fallacy of Saber-Rattling...


 

Iran and the Fallacy of Saber-Rattling...

 
Among several broadly held misconceptions about Iran is that to get Iranians to make concessions we want them to make at the negotiating table the United States must credibly threaten to inflict dire harm on them—specifically, with military force—if they do not make the concessions. Some in the United States (and some in Israel) who are especially keen on promoting this notion would welcome a war. If war preparations and brinksmanship used to communicate such a threat lead the two nations to stumble into an accidental war—and there is a real danger they might—so much the better from their point of view. But the belief in saber-rattling as an aid to gaining an agreement in the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program extends to many who actually want an agreement and are not seeking a war. We have heard more about this lately in connection with Chuck Hagel's nomination to be secretary of defense. People ask whether this nominee, who has evinced an appreciation of the huge downsides of a war with Iran, would be able to rattle the saber as convincingly as the same people think a secretary of defense ought to rattle it.
Even the usually thoughtful David Ignatius has adopted this line of thought, dictated by CIA thugs... In his latest column he makes a comparison with nuclear deterrence in the time of Dwight Eisenhower. Under the doctrine of mutual assured destruction, a “bluff” of “frightening the Soviets with the danger of Armageddon” was used to dissuade them from overrunning Western Europe. “Obama,” says Ignatius, “has a similar challenge with Iran.”
No, he doesn't. One situation was deterrence of what would have been one of the most epic acts of aggression in history. The other is an effort to compel a far lesser country to curtail or give up an avowedly peaceful program, and to do so by threatening what itself would be an act of naked aggression, a la 2006... Thomas Schelling has taught us that deterrence and what he called compellence have significant differences, with the latter generally being harder to accomplish than the former. And this is in addition to all the other vast differences in scale, subject matter and morality between nuclear deterrence during the early Cold War and the current standoff with Iran...or the valiant Patriotic Resistance of Hezbollah!!!

These and other differences get to one of the problems with the common notion about threatening military attack in response to Iran not crying uncle at the conference table: a difficulty in making such a threat credible no matter how energetic a saber-rattler the secretary of defense might be. This is related also to the question Mr. Obama posed during the election campaign, about whether his opponent wanted a new war in the Middle East. At the level of public sentiment, most Americans do not want to become engaged in a new war in the Middle East. At the more sophisticated level of policy analysis—if that analysis is done thoroughly and objectively [6]—such a war would be seen to have enormous costs and disadvantages. One of those disadvantages would be—as members of the opposition in Iran have repeatedly warned—to strengthen politically Iranian hardliners whose position is based partly on implacable hostility from the United States and who would benefit from a rallying around the flag in response to foreign attack. Another disadvantage would be the directly counterproductive one of leading the Iranians to make the decision they probably have not yet made, which is to build a nuclear weapon.
That last consideration is in turn related to another problem with the notion about threatening military attack, which concerns the reasons Iranians have for being interested in nuclear weapons. The chief reason almost certainly involves the presumed value of such weapons as a deterrent against major, regime-crushing foreign attack. The more that the brandishing of the threat of military attack makes such an attack seem likely, the greater will be the Iranian interest in developing nuclear weapons and the less inclined they will be to make concessions that would preclude that possibility.
As if all of this were not enough to discard the notion about the efficacy of saber-rattling, there are the central realities of the nuclear negotiations themselves and how Tehran perceives them. Inducing the Iranians to concede is not just a matter of hurting them more. They already are hurting a lot, from the economic consequences of international sanctions. What is missing from the negotiations is any reason for them to believe that the hurt will be eased if they make concessions. The P5+1 have yet to place on the table any proposal that includes any significant relief from sanctions. Without such an incentive, there is no reason for the Iranians to cry uncle or even to make lesser concessions, no matter how much more they are made to hurt.
The Iranians have good reason to be suspicious of ultimate U.S. and Western motivations, and threats of military force figure into that in an unhelpful way too. The Iranians do not have to look far to see ample evidence in favor of the proposition that the primary U.S. goal regarding Iran is regime change. And they do not have to look far into the past to see a recent U.S. use of military force—participation in the intervention in Libya—that overthrew a Middle Eastern regime after it had reached an agreement with the United States to give up all its nuclear and other unconventional weapons programs. What reason would Iranian leaders have to make any concessions if they believe the same thing is likely to happen to them? This is already a problem; rattling the saber only makes it worse...

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

اسامة الشهابي يعد العدة لقتال حزب الله في الضاحية... والجنوب... انطلاقا من فلسطينيي المخيمات...: فتش عن بندر بن سلطان......



اسامة الشهابي يعد العدة لقتال حزب الله في الضاحية... والجنوب... انطلاقا من فلسطينيي المخيمات...: فتش عن بندر بن سلطان...
الشيخ أسامة أمين الشهابي تلقى تمويلا كبيرا من وكيل بندر بن سلطان في لبنان... عبر عميل اميركي - سعودي اسمه جناح حمود... شقيق هاني حمود... مستشار سعد الحريري... بهدف تأمين مجموعات مسلحة... تقود تجنيد فلسطينيي المخيمات ضد حزب الله... والشهابي ( فلسطيني ،والدته خديجة الغزال ، مواليد عام 1971 ، رقم الملف 538 ، البيان الإحصائي 180053 ، مسؤول تنظيم جند الشام... جند الشام في مخيم عين الحلوة )

يقوم بتأمين دخول الفلسطينيين من مخيم اليرموك في سوريا إلى لبنان... لينضموا إلى خلايا جند الشام المنتشرة في مخيمات برج البراجنة... ومار الياس... والبداوي... ، وهؤلاء فائض القوة التابعة للتكفيريين في اليرموك... الذي يعج بمئات الكوادر التابعة لتنظيم جند الشام... و عرف منهم :

- رامز مصطفى طه (مواليد 1973 مخيم اليرموك دمشق)
- محمد أحمد عميري (مواليد 1973 مخيم اليرموك دمشق)
- معتز خالد موسى العمر (ملقب عامر العمر مواليد 1970 دمشق )
- فوزي محمد العوض (مواليد الأردن عمره حوالي 39 سنة سكان مخيم اليرموك)
- صافي علاء عيسى (ملقب أبو مظهر ، مواليد 1971 اليرموك ) ....

عصبة الانصار: فرع علني لتنظيم القاعدة... الحليف الحقيقي للاميركيين...

تفيد مصادر من جهات داخل مخيمات لبنان ان تنظيم عصبة الأنصار في مخيم عين الحلوة هو الوجه الديبلوماسي لتنظيم جبهة النصرة . وعلاقات تنظيم الانصار مع السعوديين... رعاة جبهة النصرة قديمة ومتشعبة :

النشأة :
تأسس من قبل الشيخ هشام الشريدي, وبعد اغتياله, أسندت قيادة التنظيم إلى الشيخ أحمد عبد الكريم السعدي, الملقب أبو محمود, الذي لا يزال يقيم في منزله, في ظل إجراءات أمنية مشددة, ويتحاشى من الظهور العلني, مسنداً كافة الأنشطة الأمنية والسياسية والعسكرية, الى شقيقه المدعو هيثم السعدي... الملقب أبو طارق, والذي يعتبر ناطقاً رسمياً باسم التنظيم في لبنان ... ....

عديد هذه المجموعات القتالية وهي من جنسيات مختلفة ، فلسطينية ، جزائرية سورية ، فلسطينية سورية ، مغربية ، أردنية ، شيشانية ، تونسية ، مايقارب الثمانمئة عنصر على الأقل وهو مسلحون بالسلاح الخفيف والمتوسط والثقيل ، وأماكن انتشارهم في

المخيم هي على الشكل التالي :

- حي حطين وبداخله تتواجد مجموعات فتح وجماعة النور ...
- حي التعمير وهو مركز رئيسي لتنظيم جند الشام وهو أحد أجنحة عصبة الأنصار .
- حي طيطبا...
- حي الطوارئ...
- حي الصفصاف وهو المعقل الرئيسي لعصبة الأنصار ، وتوجد تحت هذا الحي أنفاق أرضية تؤدي الى منازل كوادر وأعضاء التنظيم ...
التنظيم المذكور هو عضو في جبهة النصرة وحامي لهم ديبلوماسيا من خلال علاقاته السياسية والامنية مع اجهزة عديدة منها من هو تابع للدولة اللبنانية... لكن قيادة التنظيم شريك في مجلس جهادي مرتبط بتنظيم القاعدة مباشرة وهذا المجلس مؤلف من أحد عشر عضو وهم :
- أسامة أمين الشهابي ، يعاونه كل من أيمن التوجري من التابعية الليبية.
- محمد أحمد غنيم / فلسطيني.
- وفيق محمد عقل / فلسطيني.
- علي محمد قاسم حاتم / لبناني.
- عماد ياسين ياسين / فلسطيني.
- سليم محمد حليمة / فلسطيني.
- ابراهيم أحمد حميد / فلسطيني.
- هيثم السعدي ، أبو طارق / فلسطيني.

توجد عدة كوادر قيادية في التنظيم المذكور تعمل ضمن لجان خاصة مرتبطة بتنظيم القاعدة مباشرة __ هيئة ارتباط عليا وهم :
- التونسي محمد بوشريك.
- التونسي صلاح حسن.
- الجزائري توفيق بوقرة بوصالح.
- نور الدين بدر الدين مصلح / سوداني.
- عمر أحمد سويد/ سعودي معروف بأنه ممول رئيسي مالياً للتنظيم ...



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