Iran is a regional superpower contributing to the resolution of world problems even without nuclear weapons

Iran is a regional superpower contributing to the resolution of world problems even without nuclear weapons

We can say a lot of things about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but we cannot deny his chivalry. "By chance" he ran into his Greek counterpart, George Papandreou, during his visit to Moscow and was quick to warn him that one of the dangers behind Iran's nuclear program is "a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race, where countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt will seek to acquire nuclear weapons." The threat to Greece, Netanyahu hinted, lies in the possibility that Muslim Turkey would acquire nuclear weapons.

Of course, Netanyahu forgot to mention to Papandreou what he already knows - that there are about 90 American-made tactical nuclear weapons in Turkey, part of the NATO arsenal, which no one knows what to do with as Turkey has no aircraft dedicated to this purpose. Saudi Arabia lacks the scientific infrastructure for nuclear capability, and Egypt has for more than 25 years been debating where it will build its first nuclear reactor. A nuclear Middle East is still a distant dream.

Greece appears to be a lot more concerned about its financial crisis than Iran's nuclear weapon, but the beauty of the Israeli-Greek dialogue in the Pushkin Restaurant lies in how far the "Iranian bomb" has come. Here is what this bomb, which does not yet exist, has managed to do: sparked dangerous friction between China and the United States, with Washington selling arms to Taiwan in order to twist China's arm; turned Europe's missile defense program into a hostage, dependent on Russian support for sanctions against Iran; triggered a clash between U.S. President Barack Obama, who does not want sanctions against Iran that are too severe, and Congress, which seeks extensive sanctions; stirred a debate within the U.S. administration between those who think Iran should be considered a player that can contribute to stability in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those who oppose that approach; created a rift between Arab states concerned about Iranian hegemony in the region and those who don't want to be on the same side as Israel against Iran.

Therefore, even before manufacturing a single bomb, Iran has become a regional superpower influencing international policy. To preserve its position as a country around which the world revolves, it does not even need to build a bomb. It is enough for it to unnerve the world over and over by, for example, announcing the gradual enrichment of uranium from 20 percent to 40 percent to 60 percent to 80 percent. Thus it can perpetuate the dilemma faced by Western intelligence services, which are unable to determine whether Iran has decided to build a nuclear weapon. In other words, they are still incapable of identifying Iran's interest in developing a nuclear bomb.

Statements made by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reflect this confusion. She has warned that Iran is on the verge of becoming a military dictatorship, hostage to the Revolutionary Guards. Does this mean the Revolutionary Guards will move toward building a nuclear weapon? After all, it was Mohammad Khatami, the liberal president, who pushed Iran's nuclear program forward, while some veterans of the Revolutionary Guards are in opposition. In any case, is a military dictatorship worse than a radical Islamist dictatorship?

The frightening combination of the Revolutionary Guards, a nuclear program and the Ayatollahs makes Iran look like an irrational country. But if it is not rational, why would sanctions scare it? Will they lead the Iranian public to bring the regime down, or will it find itself stabilized against the Western foe? No one can provide an answer, and anyway such an answer is impossible to come by.

The race for sanctions has become a struggle for superpower prestige with a life of its own and with Iran playing the role of director. Any doubt about imposing sanctions is sacrilege. Nonetheless, there is no choice but to come up with a new strategy that will offer a solution in case Iran does acquire nuclear arms, like several other countries in the region - Pakistan, India, and allegedly also Israel. How will the threat be neutralized then? It's hard to imagine Iran as a candidate for the role of superpower contributing to the resolution of world problems.

Perhaps the effort to formulate sanctions should instead be directed toward finding a way to remove Iran's motivation to use the arms by making it a partner to decision making in the international club of decision makers. After all, this will not be such a revolutionary development: It already plays such a role...

There are a deliberate attempt to force regime change from within by the west. And it isn’t working. Persians are a strong people. Iran is the only Muslim country in the world whose leader is not a western puppet! – That is why the West USA (at the behest of Israel) wants to subjugate Iran and its people to follow their rules of secular ideologies both socially and economically. This has been well documented in both the above comments and in other blogs – what is not mentioned is how important it is that the Iranian clergy retain power – These are amongst the most pious and knowledgeable scholars in the Islamic world and actually are holding up the reality of Islam in the face of the degenerate wahhabist influence that pervades everywhere. This has full western support because it divides the Muslim ummah. Wahhabism and its fundamental dogma demeans shariah in the ignorance of its application as implemented in both Arabia and the sub continent. Shariah cannot be changed . It is as sound and relevant to today as it was 1500 years ago – what has to be changed is the fiq – (application) which hasn't been updated in 800 years and makes Islam look like the relic of medievalism as is portrayed by the western media. Neither the wahhabis nor the sub continent Muslims want to change the fiqh. Imagine if under the Westminster System in a court of law you are charged with a driving accident which caused the death of a pedestrian and the Judge based his punishment on a ruling made by John of Gaunt in 1150 when a cart of hay toppled over in a town square and squashed the ironmonger. This would be absurd and would make the western judicial system look as antiquated as shariah does today. The Iranian clergy are updating the fiqh for our contemporary Islamic world. This is the greatest fear of the West. That Islam might be seen to be relevant and a serious threat to the western hegemony of law. Remember that the Westminster system is half roman law and half common law — Common Law comes from Shariah. Particularly Imam Shafi' to whose madhab Saladin was an adherent – and it is where the crusaders took their idea for the magna carta and property rights. If any of the great Imams of Islamic jurisprudence were alive today their rulings would be quite different than they were 1000 years ago. While shariah cannot change – our application of it must. Support Iran. It is the duty of the Muslim Ummah!!!.

OBAMA'S CRUMBLING GRAND STRATEGY IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND CENTRAL ASIA

OBAMA'S CRUMBLING GRAND STRATEGY IN THE MIDDLE EAST , CENTRAL ASIA...and AFRICA

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=116

http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2010/03/israel-loses-turkey.html

For the next two decades, Middle Asia—the predominantly Muslim region of the Middle East, the Caucuses and Central Asia—will dominate international security concerns. Extricating U.S. armed forces from Afghanistan and Iraq and containing Iran’s nuclear program will occupy the center of President Obama’s foreign policy agenda. From Turkey to the West Bank, from Yemen to Pakistan, Middle Asia is the world’s most dangerous region. Rent with the currents of Islamic empowerment, nationalism, secessionist struggles, terrorist movements and nuclear proliferation, it is a cauldron of global instability. Middle Asia is also home to sixty percent of the world’s oil and natural gas reserves in the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea Basin and Central Asian steppes. For these reasons Middle Asia has become the focal point of war and great power rivalry between Europe, Japan, China, India and Russia over spheres of influence and energy resources. Thus, the pacification and reorganization of Middle Asia is the central task of the U.S.--European global project. The precipitous decline of U.S. power in “Middle Asia” now poses the most serious threat to American global hegemony and its role as the ultimate guarantor of international security. The Obama administration’s setbacks in the region during his first year in office underscore the urgent need to reassess American grand strategy and the direction of its foreign policy.

America’s grand strategy to sustain its preponderance of global power rests on two pillars; maintaining the unfettered flow of Middle Asia’s energy resources to the U.S.-Atlantic alliance and preventing any single power or constellation of hostile powers from dominating Eurasia. The ascendency of an adversary to political and military dominion over Asia or the Middle East would inevitably reduce America to a second rate power. While Europe remains firmly committed to the Atlantic alliance, American hegemony in Middle Asia is the geo-strategic lynchpin sustaining U.S. global pre-eminence. President Bush’s wars to subdue Iraq and Afghanistan were part of a larger regional strategy to establish a permanent forward military presence on China and Russia’s doorstep while encircling Iran to foment regime change. Seeking to leverage America’s “unipolar moment” after the Soviet Union’s collapse, President Bush sought to achieve overwhelming control of Middle Asian energy resources as a strategic component of preventing the “rise of a global peer.” But wars have uncertain outcomes. Bush’s “imperial overreach” resulted in American engagement in two unwinnable wars that drained its treasury, unleashed domestic dissent and tarnished Washington’s image around the world.

Assuming the Oval Office with America’s power on the wane, President Obama moved quickly to re-position his exhausted U.S. military forces and repair Washington’s damaged international image. By reducing America’s military footprint in Middle Asia President Obama attempted to balance Washington’s global overextension with the need to reinforce America’s core national security interests. However, the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted in a major contraction of American power in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. President Obama’s actions may minimize America’s short term losses, but the long-term impact of America’s strategic retreat in Middle Asia will have far reaching implications.

Despite the surge of 30,000 U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan, scheduled troop withdrawals in 2011 were a tacit acknowledgement that the Taliban cannot be defeated militarily. Even if efforts to bring the Taliban into the Karzai government succeed the Taliban will likely remain a powerful non-state actor. The pullout of U.S. forces will also increase Pakistan’s need to preserve Taliban and Al Queda forces along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border as a hedge against India’s encroachment in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The possible outbreak of civil war between the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance majority and the Taliban cannot be dismissed. Intervention in Afghanistan by Russia, Iran, India and Pakistan is also a contingency if the government collapes. At best, Kabul’s weak central government will exercise nominal control over a highly fragmented country—making Afghanistan a very dangerous country and flashpoint for a regional conflagration for years to come.

On the heels of America’s retreat in Afghanistan, Russia and China have strengthened their efforts to push American military bases out of the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Moscow and Beijing are also seeking to block U.S. efforts to underwrite new energy pipelines from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Western Europe. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) led by China and Russia has evolved as the key vehicle for both countries to exert political and military control over Central Asia’s “Four Stans” that hold 21 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 45 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves. China has substantial energy interests in Central Asia. And maintaining stability in neighboring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan is critical to China’s efforts to suppress its restive Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjaing Province. In furtherance of China’s efforts to limit U.S. influence in Central Asia, Beijing has been conducting annual joint military exercises with its SCO partners and expanded its naval presence and ports in the Indian Ocean. Assuming all the trappings of a rising world power China’s presence in the Middle East is growing. With 17 percent of its oil imports coming from Saudi Arabia and 15 percent from Iran, more than half of all Chinese oil imports now come from the Middle East. China is not only locking up long-term access deals but purchasing exploration and development rights. China's economic muscle in the Middle East and Central Asia is undermining U.S. influence and its long-term energy agreements with Iran and the Sudan is further undercutting U.S. attempts to isolate hostile regimes.

Similarly, Russia’s backing of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its strategic energy alliance with Tehran threatens to reconfigure the balance of power in Middle Asia. The convergence of Iran and Russia’s interests in controlling gas and oil pipelines transiting Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Armenia and Turkey enhances both countries potential to exert strategic leverage over Europe, India and China—all massive energy importers. In 2008, with Russia’s support, Iran was granted “Observer Status” in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Although the 2008 announcement by Qatar, Iran and Russia to form an international gas cartel never matured, the trace lines of an “Eastern Energy Alliance” anchored by Moscow and Tehran is an idea in search of a viable organizational structure. In this light, Russia’s military action in the breakaway Caucus republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia that torpedoed Georgia’s ascension to NATO and threatened Tbilisi’s energy pipelines to the Caspian Sea reinforced Moscow’s contention that the former Soviet Union’s republics are its “near abroad” security perimeter.

It remains to be seen whether Russia's actions are those of a strategic competitor or adversary. However, President Obama’s hopes of securing Russia’s cooperation to derail Iran’s nuclear program by canceling missile defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic in return for Moscow’s support for sanctions against Tehran was rejected by President Medvedev. Moscow has helped build and protect Iran’s nuclear program from sanctions precisely because a nuclear armed Iran threatens America’s allies and its dominance in Middle Asia. Increasingly, the Obama’s administration is conceding that it cannot stop Tehran from crossing the nuclear threshold. Therefore the administration is accelerating the deployment of sea and land based missile defense systems in the Persian Gulf while trying to avert a nuclear arms race in the region. With Russia expanding its sale of weapons systems and arms to Iran, Turkey, Syria and most recently Saudi Arabia, Moscow’s re-entry into the Middle East is a unsettling enterprise undermining U.S. influence.

America’s decline in the region has also been complicated by its troop withdrawals in Iraq to avoid entanglement in another Vietnam-style quagmire. For the first time since World War 2, Iraq and Iran--the two nations that policed America’s imperial order in the Persian Gulf--have vacated Washington’s orbit, leaving Saudi Arabia more vulnerable than ever. Notwithstanding the possibility of Iraq fracturing into another round of sectarian violence, Iran has become the dominant foreign influence over Baghdad’s Shi’a-led government. Greater access to Iraqi oil and a friendly Shi’a led government on its rival Saudi Arabia’s border has enhanced Iranian strategic depth across the Middle East and Southern Caucuses. As the leader of the Shi’a Muslims empowerment movement in the Middle Asia Iran also spearheads the anti-U.S. rejectionist front that includes Syria, HAMAS and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Iranian enlargement has effectively split the Middle East into pro-America and anti-American camps. Iran's ascendency to the nucluer club will only exacerbate the split in the Middle East and exert enormous pressure on the pro-U.S. Gulf states, many of which are already seeking accomodations with Tehran. President Obama hasn’t ruled out missile strikes against Iran to degrade its nuclear program. However, with America’s regional allies opposing air strikes and Iran’s opposition movement against President Ahmadinejad and the clerical establishment growing, surgical strikes against Iran are less likely to occur.

Beyond the dangers posed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran's destabilizing expansion, the Obama administration has been buffeted by other setbacks in the region. The failure to counter Al Queda’s buildup in Yemen and force President Saleh to broker agreements with the Shia-based al Houthi insurgency and the secessionist Southern Movement finds Yemen tottering of the brink of collapse. The volatile situation has left Saudi Arabia with a war on its southern border and Al Queda with a launching pad to attack the Kingdom. President Obama’s attempt to renew Israeli-Palestinian peace talks by demanding Israeli concessions on settlement activities was an embarrassing failure. In reviving the talks Obama hoped to remove the conflict as the source code of Arab—U.S. tension and accelerant of Islamic radicalism across the Middle East. The peace talks debacle demoralized the “Arab street” and squandered the political capital Obama amassed in the Cairo Address. President Obama’s back channel efforts to coax Syria out of Iran’s orbit never got off the ground. Worse still, Turkey’s Prime minister Erdogan’s refused to back U.S. sanctions against Iran, stating that Ankara’s energy relationship with Iran and Russia are not negotiable. And although, Hezbollah failed to win Lebanon’s hotly contested parliamentary elections, Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah’s militia forces maintain control of most of the country.

With the United States retreating in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. power being challenged across the region, America’s project to pacify and re-organize Middle Asia is faltering. The expansion of Russian and Chinese power in Central Asia and the Middle East is a new reality that must be managed with great diplomatic skill. No longer dominant enough to impose its will on the region, Obama’s foreign policy must strive to achieve two strategic goals. First, prevent a China-Russia-Iran alliance that severely curtails American power in the region. While Moscow and Beijing have substantial interest in Middle Asia, China's foreign policy seeks to dominate East Asia while Russia's ultimate fate is tied to continental Europe. Just as Richard Nixon's "Opening to China" in the 1970's help divide the two powers, Obama must wedge the Eastern Alliance while simultaneously engaging Moscow and Beijing in policies that promote regional stability, contain terrorism and foster the equitable sharing of energy resources.

Second, the Obama administration must increase its pressure to reform the authoritarian regimes whose repressive policies and stagnant economies are fueling radical movements and anti-American sentiment. America’s defense of dictatorial Arab kings, sheikhs and presidents in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Yemen and the other Gulf states has placed the United States on the wrong side of history and the majority of Middle Asian citizens. Middle Asia is engaged in a historical course correction where the artificial borders and nations created by the British and French after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and World War 1 are crumbling. A mass awakening of political, ethnic, Islamic and nationalist movements is in full bloom. So too, the breakup of the Soviet Union has put the energy rich, but predominantly poor Muslim Central Asian states in play as the revival of the “Great Game” drags the world powers into the vortex of struggle for hegemony over energy resources. Accommodations and political space for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Kurds, the Al Houthi, the Baloch, the Shi’a and other must be made. And the sooner the better. The overwhelming majority of these movements are not jihadist struggles and therefore must be embraced. Indeed, recent history suggests that radical and even anti-American forces participating in more democratic environments in Iraq and Lebanon tend to moderate over time... The burden of governing often proves to be a sobering check on radicals-come-to-power. In short, America must stop defending the dead hand of the past in Middle Asia.

Finally, while America still enjoys a preponderance of global power, it can no longer dominate the new international system. In the new multi-polar world order of competing great powers and rising middle powers, President Obama must now lead by forging international consensus to legitimize America’s global leadership role--always seeking to balance American national interests with the interest of a shared global community. Over the next three years that leadership must be exercised with great energy, intellect and diplomacy in Middle Asia...

New force emerges in Kirkuk

New force emerges in Kirkuk
By Charles McDermid

KIRKUK, Iraq - The first time Kurdish resistance hero Mam Rostam led a rowdy convoy through the streets of Kirkuk was March 21, 1991, after his guerrilla fighters stormed down from the surrounding dun-colored mountains to rout the occupying troops of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army.

Twelve years later, he held his hometown for three days as field commander of the Kurdish Peshmerga after the United States-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam and set off bloody sectarian and ethnic battles that continue to consume disputed parts of Iraq, notably Kirkuk.

Last Friday, Rostam was at it again; riding shotgun in the lead car of a 100-vehicle procession filled with boisterous young men, children and battle-scarred soldiers. Flags and AK-47s waved from SUV windows and the beds of pick-up trucks as the procession wound past Kirkuk's crumbling ancient citadel, its perpetually flaming gas and oil fires, and its sprawling mud-brick refugee camps.

"In 1991, we liberated Kirkuk from dictatorship, this time we are liberating it from corruption," said Rostam.

This was opening day for political campaigning ahead of Iraq's much-anticipated national parliamentary elections on March 7, and Rostam was representing Goran (Change), an upstart political movement digging in at the frontline of what many believe will be the most hotly contested electoral battle in the country.

It will certainly be Iraq's most-scrutinized local election.

Kirkuk province sits on gargantuan oil fields with the potential to gush petrodollars - and the accompanying political capital - for decades. The 970-kilometer Kirkuk-Ceyhan is already Iraq's largest crude oil export line, pumping an estimated 500,000 barrels to the coast of Turkey every day.

Due to its ethno-religious diversity, Kirkuk is referred to as "Little Iraq" - a microcosm of the fractious nation's divided and uncompromising communities. If a panacea for Iraq's problems can be found, Kirkuk would be the ideal spot to test it.

Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen have fought for control of the millennia-old city since Iraq's independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1919. Each of the ethnic groups claims Kirkuk as a historical homeland, and all have made it clear their members are willing to die for it.

"Kirkuk is the Jerusalem of Kurdistan," Rostam told Asia Times Online.

Since the US-led invasion of 2003, Kirkuk has been a listed as a "disputed territory" between Baghdad and Irbil, the capital of Iraq's politically autonomous Kurdistan region. It stands as the main potential flashpoint on what's known as the "trigger line" - the boundary running from Iran to Syria that separates heavily armed Arab and Kurdish forces that are kept at arm's length by the presence of US forces.

Many power-sharing equations have been discussed to placate Kirkuk's competing factions, but none have been enacted. Most recently, the United Nations proposed creating a "special status" for Kirkuk for up to 10 years - a move supported by Washington and Ankara .The UN proposal would give Kirkuk political autonomy but prevent it from joining or being annexed by Kurdistan .

Conventional wisdom holds that if the Kurds can control Kirkuk and its hydrocarbon bounty, they will be one step closer to their dream of an independent state. This ambition has been frowned on by the Kurds' biggest ally, the US, and has drawn outrage from Syria, Iran and Turkey, which have large Kurdish populations.

Now, for the first time in five years, Kirkuk's 12 seats in the Iraqi parliament are up for grabs and the results could send reverberations through Baghdad and beyond.

"The Kirkuk issue is hugely important to the international community because it has the biggest potential to break up Iraq , and they don't want that," said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East deputy program manager for the International Crisis Group. (To read an interview with Hiltermann, click here Searching for solutions, Asia Times Online, February 19)

"The UN scenarios are useful, and the US and UN plan to work on it once the elections are finished and they know who the new leaders are. I expect Kirkuk to get a lot of focus. Whether the Kurds and Arabs and Turkmen will embrace the solution is another matter."

But Rostam, for the moment, isn't worried about the world. A charismatic barrel of a man, Rostam's fierce reputation as a fighter is belied by an avuncular mien and hearty Kurdish humor. Cigarette in hand, he swept a burly arm at the Shorja slum where he grew up and explained that the people of Kirkuk have immediate needs that trump pipelines and geopolitical debates.

"Look around; this town is ruined. There are no services, the roads are terrible. People here don't even have electricity and water or fuel," said Rostam. "Iraq is a rich country, especially Kirkuk, but the ruling parties here are not representing the people. They money from the land and the oil is going right into their wallets."

Kurdistan's two main parties - the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) - have dominated Kirkuk's government and security apparatus since 2003. The two groups fought each other from 1994-1998 in a bloody civil war that killed as many as 5,000 Kurds, but in 2003 joined to form the Kurdistan Regional Government. The parties have controlled Kirkuk for the past seven years as the Kurdistani Alliance, but analysts say the partnership is unraveling and the entrance of Goran may be the final blow.

Arabs, Turkmen and Assyrian Christians claim widespread abuse from Kurdish authorities in Kirkuk. Allegations that Kurdish forces use murder, kidnapping and physical threats to intimidate minorities into leaving the area have skyrocketed since the start of the campaign season.

"We have no power in this city and our rights are violated. The Kurdish main parties control everything. Since the beginning of the election campaign we have had violence and problems every day. The Kurdish parties have armed militias; they are the cause of this violence," said Jamal Shan, head of the Turkmen National Party, a member of the Turkmen Front coalition in Kirkuk.

Critics claim the Kurdish parties have taken advantage of a policy allowing resettlement of Kurds kicked out of Kirkuk by Saddam during his "Arabization" campaign to control disputed areas. Minority leaders say the parties have flooded Kirkuk with tens of thousands of Kurds and subsidized the newcomers to control a promised referendum to determine if local people want to be part of Kurdistan.

The Kurds of Kirkuk, roughly 55% of the province's estimated 900,000 people, have their own complaints about the ruling parties. Most agree that corruption and cronyism are a fact of life and complain of unlivable public utilities and infrastructure. Lingering animosities between the Irbil-based KDP and the Sulaymaniyah-based PUK have also made for a dysfunctional government, experts and locals said.

"The ruling parties did not have a good policy in Kirkuk, especially in terms of providing services. They did not work as a team. There are still two Kurdish security agencies - one KDP and one PUK - and some state employees are supported by the PUK and others by the KDP," said Kurdish political analyst Ali Kurdistani.

"They did not treat other ethnic groups well, and they did not fulfill the promises they made to people over the last seven years. In short, they couldn't solve the Kirkuk crisis, the Kurds are unhappy, and now Goran can take advantage of all this dissatisfaction."

There has been no election in Kirkuk since 2005. Escalating street violence and political bickering excluded the province from local council elections in 2009. In the last vote, the Kurdish parties won 26 of the 41 provincial council seats behind a strong showing by the PUK which earned the right to appoint the city governor and head of the provincial council.

The PUK is now susceptible to the brunt of an angry public and an ambitious challenger in next month's vote. Some observers feel the political battle for Kirkuk could be the last stand of the PUK and its founder and general secretary, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

The PUK claims it isn't worried. Party spokesman Muhammad Osman said the people of Kirkuk would vote for the PUK because of the party's accomplishments in the area and its support during hard times.

Osman also pointed out that Talabani, who spent his childhood in Kirkuk, had arrived and would be spending the entire campaign in the city to raise votes. He estimated that the PUK would win six seats in parliament, and that Goran would be lucky to get one.

But Rostam wasn't having it. He estimated that 75% of veteran Peshmerga have joined Goran and those that haven't yet defected are only interested in keeping their paychecks. (Goran has been careful not to register itself as a political party so its followers can still belong to other parties. It is whispered that many Goran members still draw salaries from the PUK.)

"I was with the PUK for 34 years. The PUK broke its promise and sacrificed the people in the party in order to get rich. They said they would serve the people in Kirkuk but ended up oppressing them," said Rostam.

"I didn't spend all those years fighting for that."

By tapping into such popular discontent, the fledgling Goran movement is poised to become the spoiler in Kurdish politics. Its opposition to the two main parties is a direct threat to several years of lockstep Kurdish unity in Baghdad over such issues as oil revenues and disputed areas like Kirkuk.

Goran began as a splinter group within the PUK intent on reform of the party. It split with the PUK last year and stood in July elections for the Kurdish parliament on a platform of anti-corruption, fiscal transparency and the abolishment of political party militias. The new group won 25 seats in the 111-seat parliament, 23% of the overall vote, and embarrassed the PUK by winning in the older party's stronghold of Sulaymaniyah.

Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group notes, "It's an interesting thing that the top leaders of Goran are from the same mould as the leaders of the PUK and KDP in terms of being former Peshmerga leaders who lived in the mountains and fought Saddam during the 1980s. The founder [Nowshirwan Mustafa] was Talabani's number two and the PUK ideologue for all those years. He's a noted historian of the period and has written some serious histories of the national movement. Now, here he is, still surrounded by all these old Peshmerga from the mountains, but he has managed to appeal to younger people who were never in the mountains."

Kirkuk will now be the proving ground for Goran's ability to attract votes from other ethnic groups in its push for parliament seats. According to Kurdistani, Goran is the first Kurdish political group that is actively trying to attract people from different political backgrounds, ideologies and ethnic groups.

"I see main common points between the platforms of the [Goran] list and our list so this paves the way to form a coalition after the election and better serve the people of Kirkuk. Together we could show the Iraqi identity of the city, this is a vision the other Kurdish parties don't like," said Omar Jwad Aljbury, leader of the main Arab party in Kirkuk , the Iraqi Arab Coalition.

Even as some Goran candidates are predicting victory in Kirkuk, there is skepticism on the street about the untested movement facing off against older parties with well-established political networks. On Wednesday, Goran accused PUK security forces of opening fire on an opposition rally in Sulaimaniyah and wounding three supporters.

Still, if Goran wins parliament seats in Sulaimaniyah as expected and manages to pick up a few in Kirkuk, it could make for an intriguing political calculus in Baghdad.

"So much depends on post-election coalition-building. The number of seats they get overall may give them significant leverage," said Hiltermann. "This could play a key role in determining the presidency [a post held by Talabani]. The PUK and KDP want Talabani back in office. Nowshirwan is clearly opposed to that, but he may acquiesce if some key demands are met ... Clearly these other parties are worried that Goran will have some real power in Baghdad and ally with an Arab party."

"Why Chuckles Greet the Hillary Show"

Author: Rami Khouri,

BEIRUT -- American secretaries of state have been coming to the Middle East to create all sorts of complex alliances against Iran for most of my happy adult life, and every time this show passes through our region I learn again the meaning of the phrase "lack of credibility." Hillary Clinton is the latest to undertake this mission, and like her predecessors her comments often are difficult to take seriously.

We are told that her trip to the region has two main aims: strengthen Arab resolve to join the United States and others in imposing harsh new sanctions to stop Iran's nuclear development program, and harness Arab support for resumed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. These important issues also represent two critical diplomatic arenas where the United States has both taken the lead and also achieved zero results. Either the actors involved -- Arabs, Israelis, Iranians -- are all chronically or even chromosomally dysfunctional (for which there is some evidence) or the United States is a particularly inept party to assume leadership in these endeavors.

The weakness in both cases, I suspect, has to do with the United States trying to define diplomatic outcomes that suit its own strategic objectives and political biases (especially pro-Israeli domestic sentiments in the US). So Washington pushes, pulls, cajoles and threatens all the players with various diplomatic instruments, except the one that will work most efficiently in both the Iranian and Arab-Israeli cases: serious negotiations with the principal parties, based on applying the letter of the law, and responding equally to the bottom-line rights, concerns and demands of all sides.

Two Clinton statements during her Gulf trip this week are particularly revealing of why the United States continues to fail in its missions in our region. The first was her expression of concern that Iran is turning into a military dictatorship: "We see that the Government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament, is being supplanted, and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship."

Half a century of American foreign policy flatly contradicts this sentiment (which is why Mrs. Clinton heard soft chuckles and a few muffled guffaws as she spoke). The United States has adored military dictatorships in the Arab world, especially states dominated by the shadowy world of intelligence services. This has become even more obvious since Sept. 11, 2001, when the US has intensified cooperation with intelligence services in the fight against Al-Qaeda and other terror groups.

Washington's closest allies in the Middle East are military and police states where men with guns rule, and citizens are confined to shopping, buying cell phones, and watching soap operas on satellite television. Countries like Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Libya, the entire Gulf region, and others are devoted first and foremost to maintaining domestic order and regime incumbency through efficient multiple security agencies, for which they earn the friendship and cooperation of the United States. When citizens in these and other countries agitate for more democratic and human rights, the US is peculiarly inactive and quiet.

If Iran is indeed becoming a military dictatorship, this probably qualifies it for American hugs and aid, rather than sanctions and threats. Mrs. Clinton badly needs some more credible talking points than opposing military dictatorships. (Extra credit question for hard-core foreign policy analysts: Why is it that when Turkey slipped out of military rule into civilian democratic governance, it became more critical of the United States and Israel?)

The second intriguing statement during her Gulf visit was about Iran's neighbors having three options for dealing with the "threat" from Iran: "They can just give in to the threat; or they can seek their own capabilities, including nuclear; or they ally themselves with a country like the United States that is willing to help defend them...I think the third is by far the preferable option."

This sounds reasonable, but it is not an accurate description of the actual options the Arab Gulf states have. It is mostly a description of how American and Israeli strategic concerns and slightly hysterical biases are projected onto the Arab Gulf states' worldviews. These Arab states in fact have a fourth option, which is to negotiate seriously a modus vivendi with Iran that removes the "threat" from their perceptions of Iran by affirming the core rights and strategic needs of both sides, thus removing mutual threat perceptions.

This is exactly the same option the United States used when it negotiated détente and the Helsinki accords with the Soviet Union for decades (and whose results ultimately caused the collapse of Communism). Why the United States does not use the same sensible approach to the perceived threat from Iran is hard to explain, other perhaps than two reasons: The United States would have to deal with Iran (and other defiant Middle Easterners) through negotiations rather than haughty neo-colonialism, and, Israel would have to submit to nuclear inspections and stop its aggressive behavior.

Iran aims for an energy break-out

Iran aims for an energy break-out
By Peter Lee

While Western attention was focused on Saudi Arabia's possible provision of energy guarantees to China in return for a "yes" vote on Iran sanctions, Iran was working to leverage its natural gas reserves into economic alliances with China, India and Pakistan.

In addition to awarding concessions to China, on February 8 Tehran invited Beijing to take the place of India in one of the most contentious energy projects in South Asia: the Iran-Pakistan-India or "Peace" natural gas pipeline.

However, economics and the realities of the confrontation with the United States over Iran's nuclear program may force China to disregard the strategic attractions of Tehran's offer - and the pressing energy needs of its ally, Pakistan - and decline.

The world is in the middle of a boom in demand for natural gas and Iran happens to be sitting on one of the largest undeveloped reserves in the world - the offshore South Pars field. Tehran has carved the reserve into more than two dozen blocks or "phases", which it offers to foreign partners for development.

Access to South Pars gas is a matter of considerable interest to China and India, especially since their national energy companies have a chance to get into the game because Western sanctions have sidelined the majors.

On February 11, Reuters reported that China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) had "clinched" its deal for Phase 11 and would begin exploratory drilling in March. The $4.7 billion investment, combined with on-shore crude and refining projects, would give CNPC a total exposure of $10 billion inside Iran.

Meanwhile, India is moving more cautiously to finalize a deal with Iran to participate in a 40% share in Phase 12 production and 20% in the related onshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility. The Iranian government seems keen to sweeten the deal, according to Dow Jones:

India has the option to raise its investment in South Pars. For every extra dollar investment, India will get a right in the downstream LNG project, [managing director of India's state-run Oil & Natural Gas Corp Ltd Seifollah] Jashnsaz said.

Iran may also help Indian companies raise funds for the projects, with Naftiran Intertrade [an arm of the National Iron Oil Co] depositing its foreign exchange with Indian banks ...

These deals have a definite diplomatic value to Tehran, as they increase the stake of key Asian players in the continued viability of the current Iranian regime.

At the same time, they are strongly market-driven, designed to deliver cheaper LNG for ocean shipment to India and China in return for their investment.

Iran's multinational pipeline projects - which remove Iranian energy exports from dangerous international waters and lock in support for uninterrupted supply by the sovereign states across whose territories the pipes run - have been marked by greater frustration.

Over the past weeks, as the United States labored to tighten the noose around Tehran, there has been a major flurry of activity over the proposed IPI pipeline, designed to link South Pars natural gas with markets in Pakistan and India.

This project has been limping along for over a decade in the face of determined US resistance, pricing squabbles, and Indian misgivings over relying on Pakistan to protect the pipeline and ensure supply.

By 2008, India had discretely drifted away from the IPI project, never formally abandoning it but never responding to calls to schedule further negotiations.

Iran, anxious for a geopolitical win on the pipeline, has restructured the first stage as a smaller-diameter pipeline supplying Pakistan only. India's departure also allowed the two partners to put the pipeline on land (India had been agitating to put the pipe in shallow coastal waters to protect it from Pakistani and terrorist shenanigans) and significantly reduces its cost.

After months of negotiations, on February 11 Islamabad and Tehran finalized agreement on the key issues, including the issuance by Pakistan of a "comfort letter" that provided Iran with the assurance that India - or China - could be brought into the project at a later date. The two parties have vowed to sign the formal agreement by March 8 in Ankara, Turkey. Dawn reported:

Under the comfort letter, the government of Pakistan would allow the third country to import gas through [the] IP [Iran-Pakistan] line in case any country in future comes to join the project, but the permission will be subject to the gas tariff and transit fee to be worked out as per best practices of that time.

On February 10, as the Iran-Pakistan agreement neared conclusion, Iran's ambassador to India stated that "the door is still open" for India to participate. New Delhi has not responded.

Despite its apparent abandonment of the lower-cost IPI pipeline - and its commitment to purchase millions of tons of LNG every year from Qatar - the temptation for India to continue playing pipeline diplomacy is apparently irresistible.

As an alternative to the IPI line, Indian promoters proposed a consortium called "SAGE" or South Asia Gas Enterprise, a deep-sea pipeline envisioned as India's geopolitical game-changer. It would draw on supplies from all the major players - Qatar, Iraq and Iran -and carry natural gas from Oman to western India at depths of as much as 3,500 meters. The cost of this unprecedented effort was budgeted at a suspiciously inexpensive $3 billion (almost as cheap as the downsized, overland IP pipeline, which came in at $2.538 billion in its final form).

Indian diplomats also visited natural gas export giant Turkmenistan in early February and received a polite expression of support for the legendary TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline, an anti-Russian conception once so powerful it compelled Unocal to negotiate with the Taliban, and that still clings to life in American strategy as the "other" non-Iranian pipeline to India.

Turkmenistan's interest in TAPI (which adds the seemingly insurmountable security headaches of Afghanistan on top of Pakistan's) is presumably less than intense, since it recently completed pipelines to move its natural gas to China and Iran.

A proposal reported by UPI seemed to defy geography by calling for landlocked Turkmenistan to establish "an undersea route that would bring gas from Turkmenistan through a point south of Iran using the proposed South Asia Gas Enterprise pipeline to India ... [rendering] Iran's South Pars plans irrelevant."

In another effort to bring Turkmen natural gas into play, India also proposed to invest in Turkmenistan and have its gas swapped to Iran. Iran would then put its own gas into the ubiquitous SAGE network.

It remains to be seen if any of these plans come to fruition, or are being floated merely to provide Western governments and investors with further reason to shun the IP project.

India has the reserves, foreign exchange, and accommodating allies needed to pursue natural gas pipe dreams.

For Pakistan, things are much more desperate. For Islamabad, the Iran-Pakistan pipeline is seen as a vital source of energy and, if it can ever get extended to a third country, potentially millions of dollars in transit fees.

Pakistan's desperation has also impelled it, albeit cautiously and equivocally, to defy the US on the issue of dealing with Iran.

Pakistan, without significant oil and coal reserves, relies on natural gas for 50% of its energy needs - one of the highest levels of natural gas dependency in the world. The deterioration of domestic gas production has translated directly into power shortages. Today, Pakistan faces a daily shortfall of one billion cubic feet, 20% of demand.

Pakistan's energy authority has signed contracts for Qatar LNG (and a storage and regasification facility at Karachi) that will take care of about half of the shortfall. The balance plus some extra for growth - about 750 million cubic feet per day - could be supplied by the pipeline from Iran.

However, Islamabad is not in a strong position to resist American pressure and finance its $1 billion section of the pipeline on its own.

High import costs and weak exports have combined to drain Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves; it is relying on an injection of more than $10 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to sustain its position.

As it struggles through the global recession and domestic security and economic difficulties, Pakistan is also dependent on aid orchestrated by the US in order to patch over its government deficit - now over 5% of gross domestic product - and so keep the IMF happy.

For whatever reason, aid has been slow in coming.

A January filing with the IMF revealed that, of the $2 billion generously pledged by "Friends of Democratic Pakistan" in April 2009, exactly zero had been disbursed and only $100 million was expected by the end of the fiscal year in March 2010.

At the end of January, President Asif Ali Zardari also raised the issue of $1.3 billion in arrears in "Coalition Support Funds", the US subsidy covering Pakistan's war on terror-related expenditure, with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

In a speech before Pakistan's National Defense University on February 13, US ambassador Anne Patterson put America's spin on Pakistan's complaints, stating:

[T]he ultimate solution to Pakistan's current and future economic challenges does not reside with the United States or with the international donor community. It rests with you, the people of Pakistan. American taxpayers will not forever pay for Pakistan's economic and social development.

Based on Washington's actions to date, if and when it comes time to finance a pipeline connecting Pakistan with Iran, Islamabad will probably find itself bereft of any US financial support, possibly in difficulties with the IMF over its deficits, and unable to attract funding by international or private investors.

As Pakistan's energy minister promised that the much-delayed final signing would take place in Turkey before March 8, it became clear that the US was quite willing to play hardball over Pakistan's energy shortage.

Dawn reported that, according to sources, "another reason for the delay was that [the] Pakistani government had been unable to allocate proper financing for this project and the US was not willing to give financial assistance in this regard".

Meanwhile, Asian News International reported: "According to sources, US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, during his meeting with Petroleum Minister Syed Naveed Qamar, said Islamabad would have to abandon its pipeline accord with Tehran in order to qualify for extensive American energy assistance, especially for importing Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and electricity.

"Insiders said that in case Pakistan cancels its plan of importing gas from Iran through pipeline, the US would help Islamabad import electricity from Tajikistan through Afghanistan's Wakhan corridor."

With the departure of India from the IPI consortium and the imposition of relentless US pressure, both Iran and Pakistan are feeling the lack of a partner with international financial and diplomatic muscle.

Unsurprisingly, there is interest in China replacing India in the project.

On February 8, the Tehran Times ran the following story entitled "China May Replace India in IPI Project":

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki stated China might replace India in the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project very soon as India has been dithering over the deal.

So far, there has been no official Chinese acknowledgement of this feeler.

China, like India, relies on ocean shipments of Qatar LNG for the bulk of its natural gas needs for sound economic reasons.

The questionable economics of the IP project as far as supply to China is concerned may restrain Beijing's enthusiasm for pitching in and pre-empting New Delhi on this project.

None of the near-term options appears inviting for China.

Potentially, China could build an LNG train at the port in Gwadar, near the pipeline's point of entry into Pakistan, to ship its share by sea. But that would mean an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to transport and liquefy gas it could get near the wellhead at South Pars as part of its CNPC deal.

Or it could spend billions building a pipeline north through Pakistan and the Khunjerab Pass to Kashgar in Xinjiang, and in the process solve the unprecedented technical difficulty of constructing and operating a gas line over the high passes of the Himalayas.

It may transpire that the most feasible option for China would be to defer any natural gas-related investment until Beijing and Islamabad jointly complete the planned rail link between Gwadar and Kashgar, and LNG shipments can become a viable component of growing two-way mixed freight traffic between China's west and the Arabian gulf.

From a geopolitical perspective, China is pursuing its confrontation with the United States over Iran very cautiously. It will think twice before antagonizing India and further isolating itself diplomatically at this juncture by poaching the IP pipeline project.

Therefore, Iran may be unable to leverage its natural gas advantage into pipeline links to Pakistan, India, and China for the time being. Instead, it may have to settle for liquefaction near the wellhead, and continue to endure the vulnerability of ocean shipment to sanctions and war.

Russia 'on board', but not in line

Russia 'on board', but not in line
By M K Bhadrakumar

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17948

http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/us-black-sea-military-buildup-could-trigger-missile-war-1/

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2010-01.html

United States National Security Advisor James Jones, who is usually taciturn, needed 20 words to sum up Russia's current foreign policy. "Russia is supportive and is on board, and has been a steady friend and ally on this with President [Barack] Obama." he told Fox News on Sunday.

The "this" Jones referred to was Obama's move to deepen pressure on Iran. He was speaking just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Moscow to press Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to back punitive sanctions on the Islamic republic.

Curiously, Vladimir Nazarov, deputy secretary of the Russian National Security Council, was telling the media around the same time that the Kremlin saw no reason to delay the sale of its S-300 anti-aircraft systems to Iran. "There is a signed contract that we must fulfil, but supplies have not started yet. This deal is not restricted by any international sanctions because these are merely defensive weapons." http://www.frontline.in/stories/20100312270505300.htm

While S-300 missiles could be called "defensive", the weapon in fact could make Iranian airspace impregnable and is a game-changer, which is why Washington and Tel Aviv want to pull out all the stops to see that the Kremlin does not deliver them to Iran.

"Russia received and continues to receive many requests and even demands to supply or not supply weapons," Nazarov noted. "These countries that are addressing such calls to us should better look at their own deals with Georgia." His beef was that Americans and Israelis supplied "defensive weapons" to the southern Caucasus country.

Russian intelligence last week reported a major Israeli arms deal with Georgia. But Nazarov quickly switched tack. "Any military action against Iran will explode the situation, will have negative consequences for the entire world, including for Russia, which is a neighbor of Iran," he pointed out, underlining that problems linked to Iran's nuclear program should be resolved through diplomacy.

Enigma of US-Russia 'reset'
Jones and Nazarov didn't really contradict each other. Russia openly proclaims itself to be a thoroughbred pragmatic player on the world stage. Last November, in his state-of-the-nation address, Medvedev declared that "We [Russia] must rid ourselves of our exaggerated sense of self-importance ... Instead of chaotic action dictated by nostalgia and prejudice, we will carry out an intelligent domestic and foreign policy based on purely pragmatic aims."

A US-Russia deal over Iran cannot be ruled out. The Obama administration has held a fistful of propositions out to Moscow. The problem is Russia sees them as ambivalent. Take the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). The proposition helps perpetuate Russia's "strategic balance". However, the US refuses to link the treaty with a commitment to abandon its missile defense program, without which Russia is reluctant to pare down its nuclear stockpile.

Last September, Obama pulled the plug on the George W Bush administration's plan to deploy a radar site and interceptor rockets in Poland and the Czech Republic and Moscow took it in the best spirit of the "reset" of US-Russia ties. But Moscow is distraught to learn that the US is now going to deploy the Patriot missiles in Poland and SM-3 interceptors in Romania.

The SM-3 prompted Moscow to demand "exhaustive explanations" from Washington. "How can we stay calm when alien military infrastructure, US military infrastructure, has come to the Black Sea area?" Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ambassador, asked on Russian television last week. The SM-3 may not immediately threaten Russia's nuclear deterrent, but what happens if the US chooses to replace it eventually with a second generation of interceptors?

Again, Washington allowed the resumption of NATO-Russia consultations, which were suspended following Russia's conflict with Georgia in August 2008. But it refuses to concede a Russian veto on NATO enlargement. At the Munich security conference on February 6, NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen presented a vision to turn the alliance into a global security organization - "the hub of a network of security partnerships" - and urged Russia to cooperate.

In essence, he threw cold water on Medvedev's counter-vision of a new security architecture stretching from Vancouver to Vladivostok. Speaking at the L'Ecole Militaire in Paris on January 29, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also chided Medvedev by pointing out that European security was "far more" than strategic interests and is also "an expression of our values".

That is the kind of tutorial on Western enlightenment that the European Union usually reserves to talk down to Turkey. Objecting to the idea of "any spheres of influence", Clinton called on Russia to respect its ceasefire agreement with Georgia, refused to take note of "Russia's claims" on the independence of the breakaway Georgian states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, insisted NATO's enlargement "actually increased Russia's security and prosperity", and underscored that "NATO must and will remain open to any country that aspires to become a member".

Clinton saw Medvedev's proposal on new security architecture as a "very long and cumbersome process" and felt no need for it anyway as "common goals are best pursued in the context of existing institutions such as the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] and the NATO-Russia Council, rather than by negotiating new treaties, as Russia has suggested."

'Forward-leaning' Russia
Finally, if Moscow assumed that the so-called Northern Corridor would act as transit route for NATO supplies for Afghanistan and become a chip in the resetting of US-Russia ties, it now transpires that the US uses the route sparingly and prefers to depend on going through Pakistan.

Obviously, Washington wants to keep Russia out of the Hindu Kush and continues to spurn the Russian request for cooperative ties between NATO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

At the London conference on Afghanistan on January 28, Russia offered to rehabilitate more than 140 Soviet-era economic projects, but the US gave short shrift to that. Meanwhile, Moscow has little choice but to go along with the Obama administration's plan to "reintegrate" the Taliban and pretend not to notice the track two - involving British, Saudi and Pakistani intelligence - in reconciling the hardline Taliban leadership and the Jalaluddin Haqqani network.

The harsh reality is that Obama's promise to Moscow on a "more substantive and constructive relationship based on mutual respects and mutual interests" remains a promise.

Moscow faces what can only be called a systemic problem, which is that, as the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, Fyodor Lukyanov, recently wrote: "Developing specific criteria for what constitutes pragmatic government policies is complicated, because the word 'pragmatic' has never been clearly defined in political terms."

As days pass and the Obama administration's drive to impose punitive sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program reaches the United Nations Security Council, Moscow needs to make up its mind.

In the event, Jones may well prove right. Four days before he spoke, Nikolai Petrushev, head of Russia's National Security Council, said: "The actions it [Iran] is taking, including when it began enriching low enriched uranium to 20%, raise doubts in other countries and those doubts are valid. Political-diplomatic methods are important for a resolution. But there is a limit to everything." The Russian Foreign Ministry has since echoed Petrushev's remark. And last Tuesday, Obama anticipated a "forward-leaning" Kremlin cooperating with him on Iran.

However, nothing runs quite that straight in the Middle East. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hosted a Hamas delegation led by its political leader Khalid Meshaal in Moscow just before Netanyahu arrived. But Netanyahu claimed after Monday's talks in the Kremlin that he received Medvedev's assurances that Moscow would hold off on its contract to sell S-300 system to Iran. "On this issue Russia is taking into consideration the needs for stability in the region," he told reporters.

The Ha'aretz newspaper, quoting Israeli Foreign Ministry sources, reported that Moscow wished to link the reported Israeli arms sales to Georgia with Israel's demand for a freeze on the S-300 deal to Iran. However, as regards UN sanctions against Iran, Medvedev merely "heard from me [Netanyahu] my position about the need for sanctions with teeth. They can bite only if they have teeth. Diluted sanctions don't work."

Art of 'incentivizing'
Equally, how much can Russia afford to be pragmatic over Iran, where its interests are not insubstantial? Maybe, a new START treaty, which assures Russia its nuclear deterrent and affirms the launch of the US-Russia "reset", will give the Kremlin enough reason to validate its angst over Iran's nuclear program.

Maybe, therefore, Netanyahu should alert the Jewish lobby in Washington to get on with the job of "incentivizing" the Obama administration to finalize START so that Russia may allow the passage of a punitive UN sanctions regime that may dissuade Iran from challenging Israel from its stance as something of a regional manager in the Middle East.

However, what if START goes through and a US-Russia strategic condominium forms, but Beijing still disallows a sanctions resolution? "We're ... going through the UN this month to present sanctions and achieve solidarity," was what Jones had to say. "We have tremendous [international] support. We need to work on China a little more ... on this issue, they cannot be non-supportive."

Obviously, the chain is way beyond Netanyahu's able hands. So, despite worries over her husband Bill's health, Clinton flew down to Saudi Arabia, which helps China build its strategic oil reserves. But the influential al-Hayat newspaper wrote on Friday: "It seems that Beijing is ready to make use of its veto to reject all anti-Iran decisions by the Security Council since China regards Iran as an important trade partner."

Besides, the oil slick now spreads to realms beyond King Abdullah's also able hands - Google, the Dalai Lama, Taiwan and free trade in auto parts, steel pipes, gift boxes and ribbons. The sprightly thing about the bleak, soulless Iran affair seems to be that it is not entirely lying in the bazaar.

A study of Byzantine grand strategy.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/the-hizbollah-project-last-war-next-war

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/cmec9_salem_broken_order_final.pdf

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/22/the_new_rules_of_war

A study of Byzantine grand strategy.

I. Avoid war by every possible means, in all possible circumstances, but always act as if war might start at any time. Train intensively and be ready for battle at all times -- but do not be eager to fight. The highest purpose of combat readiness is to reduce the probability of having to fight.

II. Gather intelligence on the enemy and his mentality, and monitor his actions continuously. Efforts to do so by all possible means might not be very productive, but they are seldom wasted.

III. Campaign vigorously, both offensively and defensively, but avoid battles, especially large-scale battles, except in very favorable circumstances. Don't think like the Romans, who viewed persuasion as just an adjunct to force. Instead, employ force in the smallest possible doses to help persuade the persuadable and harm those not yet amenable to persuasion.

IV. Replace the battle of attrition and occupation of countries with maneuver warfare -- lightning strikes and offensive raids to disrupt enemies, followed by rapid withdrawals. The object is not to destroy your enemies, because they can become tomorrow's allies. A multiplicity of enemies can be less of a threat than just one, so long as they can be persuaded to attack one another.

V. Strive to end wars successfully by recruiting allies to change the balance of power. Diplomacy is even more important during war than peace. Reject, as the Byzantines did, the foolish aphorism that when the guns speak, diplomats fall silent. The most useful allies are those nearest to the enemy, for they know how best to fight his forces.

VI. Subversion is the cheapest path to victory. So cheap, in fact, as compared with the costs and risks of battle, that it must always be attempted, even with the most seemingly irreconcilable enemies. Remember: Even religious fanatics can be bribed, as the Byzantines were some of the first to discover, because zealots can be quite creative in inventing religious justifications for betraying their own cause ("since the ultimate victory of Islam is inevitable anyway …").

VII. When diplomacy and subversion are not enough and fighting is unavoidable, use methods and tactics that exploit enemy weaknesses, avoid consuming combat forces, and patiently whittle down the enemy's strength. This might require much time. But there is no urgency because as soon as one enemy is no more, another will surely take his place. All is constantly changing as rulers and nations rise and fall. Only the empire is eternal -- if, that is, it does not exhaust itself.

As Obama bets on Asia, regional players hedge

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17948

By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, February 14, 2010;

NEW DELHI

Asia forms the crossroads of success or failure for Barack Obama's grandest foreign policy designs. This impression has crystallized over a year in which the president has shown himself indifferent to Europe, sentimental and somewhat conflicted about Africa, perplexed by the Middle East and largely oblivious to Latin America.

Obama's choices about China, India, Japan and Pakistan loom at least as large as the urgent challenges of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The president has outlined the need for the United States to shed burdens abroad to help repair the badly damaged American economy. That means that Obama must settle discarded U.S. burdens -- and power -- across a range of international organizations in which Asian nations are becoming increasingly influential.

The president consigned the Group of Eight industrial countries to leadership oblivion in his recent State of the Union message, omitting any mention of it while singling out the G-20 forum of developed and developed nations. This was no oversight: His administration hopes to shift climate change negotiations out of the unmanageable U.N. format that doomed the Copenhagen summit in December and place these talks in the G-20 process, according to U.S. officials.

Asia's giants, India and China, present differing and opposed models of international cooperation. A G-20 world needs at its center a dynamic U.S.-Indian relationship to help bridge the divides between haves and have-nots and their different political systems. But here in New Delhi, Indian officials increasingly fear that the Obama team does not see it that way.

Indians are flattered that the only state dinner Obama hosted last year was given for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose remarkable intelligence and gracious manner would make him a welcome guest anywhere. But they also detect an air of ambivalence blowing their way from Washington -- and are reacting by hedging against a quick U.S. pullout from Afghanistan that would bring greater U.S. reliance on China and Pakistan, at India's expense.

Romanced by the Bush administration to balance China's inexorable rise in military and economic power, India finds itself out of sync with the Obama administration on some key issues. There is no open conflict. But neither is there the air of excitement and innovation about the U.S. relationship that I found on my last trip here 18 months ago.

Since then, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has rejected balance-of-power politics as a relic of the past. Yet India, Japan and other Asian states fear that without a supportive U.S. hand on the scales, they will be swamped by China's growing military capabilities and its increasingly aggressive, and effective, diplomacy.

The somewhat fanciful notion of a G-2 directorate in which the United States and China collude to determine global economic and political direction is increasingly colliding with reality. Tensions over Taiwan, trade and Tibet make the G-2 unworkable, as recent events have again shown. But the specter lingers for Asians as well as Europeans that Obama will be tempted to try -- even though a failed G-2 would be the worst possible outcome for everyone.

"The G-2 carries the implication that the United States would leave Asia to China to run," says B.J. Panda, a rising young political star here. Adds another Indian strategist: "We have to balance the Chinese, irrespective of what the U.S. and others do."

Obama's emphasis on setting an initial date for withdrawal from Afghanistan in his Dec. 1 policy speech, even as he sent additional U.S. troops, stirred doubt here about U.S. strategic patience. So have the frequent U.S. military visits to and overblown praise for Pakistan's army leadership, despite credible evidence of high-level Pakistani involvement in cross-border terrorism directed at India.

The dominant impression from three days of informal conversations organized here by the Aspen Strategy Group with Indian officials and analysts is that Pakistan has become a second-tier problem for India, even as it increasingly preoccupies Washington. What one Indian analyst described as "Obama's nuclear alarmism" also gives Pakistan increased leverage over Washington.

India has recently moved troops away from the Pakistan frontier while increasing deployments into border areas that China is claiming in pugnacious and offensive rhetoric. In a break with its past opposition to foreign bases in the region, India has secured military transit and stationing rights at an airbase in Tajikistan. And Singh's government lavishly welcomed Japan's new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, on a recent three-day visit that included publicity about plans for joint military maneuvers in the Indian Ocean.

These are clear signs of Indian hedging: seeking allies for worst-case scenarios while accommodating China on economic matters. The Obama administration's failure to reaffirm clearly that India's rise is in U.S. strategic interests has contributed to this hedging. That is a mistake the president should quickly correct, in the interests of his own vision of a new world order centered on the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Strategic Trends 2010: Key Developments in Global Affairs

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/china-cyber-war

The Center for Security Studies (CSS) has released the inaugural publication, Strategic Trends 2010. Offering a concise annual analysis of major developments in world affairs, Strategic Trends’ primary focus is international security.

Along with the publication, the CSS has also launched the website Strategic Trends Analysis, where you will find both Strategic Trends and the complementary policy brief series CSS Analysis in Security Policy. The website also features graphics, audio and video podcasts, and a discussion forum on current security issues. You can also sign up for the Strategic Trends newsletter to learn about new publications.

Last year was noted as a year of crisis by our in-house policy experts, but 2010 remains a highly uncertain period for recovery. This is not only relates to economics, but broader security threats.... http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/22/planet_war?page=0,0

Geoeconomic shifts eastward, energy security, nuclear proliferation, a crisis of political conflict management, and US approaches toward South Asia and the Middle East will be most critical challenges hitting international headlines in 2010.

Sitting at the heart of these policy dilemmas remains a lack of effective global governance. We were presented with formidable challenges in 2009. This year, novel ideas have either been lacking or proven politically impossible to implement. With power gradually shifting from the West to the East, finding effective solutions to global governance questions will become ever more complex.

The strategic outlook: Five key trends

• Geoeconomic power has made a significant shift the East, and most notably toward China, not least because the financial and economic crisis has been a defining trend of international affairs over the past two years. The West now has huge liabilities from stepping in to save the financial system, and took a further fiscal hit when launching stimulus measures to rekindle economic growth. China adopted similar measures, but has emerged far stronger from the crisis so far. The East’s newfound geo-economic clout will take a long time to translate into geopolitical gains, but international institutions have to adapt sooner rather than later to these power shifts.
• US foreign policy will be dominated by ongoing challenges in South Asia and the Middle East. US President Barack Obama’s new approaches to Afghanistan, the Iran nuclear crisis, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have failed to translate into policy success so far. Tough choices lie ahead, as he needs to reconcile policies on Afghanistan and Pakistan, reassess engagement with Iran, and decide about more robust mediation in the Middle East conflict. Preparing to exit from Iraq is an additional challenge. The scope for progress remains slim, with domestic issues likely to increasingly dominate Obama’s agenda in 2010.
• Nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation will face critical tests in 2010. Taking the lead on this issue, Washington has made nuclear disarmament the cornerstone of its nonproliferation policy. It has resumed talks with Russia on a post-START treaty, reopened the domestic debate on ratifying the CTBT, and pushed for talks on reducing fissile material stockpiles. Obama went as far as calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. But the link between disarmament and nonproliferation is weaker than many think; prospects for strengthening the Non-Proliferation Treaty thus remain unlikely. Iran and North Korea will remain the most obvious and important test cases in this regard in 2010.
• Energy security has been high on the agenda in 2009-2010. When oil prices turned from highs of $147/b into lows of $33/b, the demise of producer regimes was expected to follow. But amid the crisis, producers proved to be politically resilient, with production cuts playing an important role. Their political survival is now being turned into sharpened resource nationalism into 2010, a trend that is likely to increase in coming years as supply-demand fundamentals tighten. Prices have already lifted to over $ 80/b; consumers are feeling the brunt. Unless lessons are learned to forge greater producer-consumer cooperation, all states will lose out. If nothing else, the failure of climate negotiations at Copenhagen shows that international consensus on how to approach hydrocarbons, or indeed the emissions they produce, remains a long way off.
• Crisis management to address political violence has been in record demand in 2009-2010. Yet it continues to suffer from three major failings. First, there is insufficient political will to formulate a strategic vision of how to address violent conflicts in an increasingly multipolar world. Second, there is a lack of institutional coordination among the principal providers of crisis management. Third, due to capability shortages, many operations struggle to deliver in today’s complex conflict environments. These flaws must be fixed as crisis management remains an indispensible tool to secure peace and stability. We can expect conflicts in Somalia, Yemen, Guinea and Sudan to deepen in 2010, while Afghanistan could get worse before it slowly gets better.

Until we see greater consensus on issues of global governance across the board, and the political desire to address deep seated flaws, we can expect security dynamics to worsen in the coming years. The key trends identified by the Center of geoeconomic shifts east, US foreign policy approaches, proliferation, energy security, and crisis management of political conflict in 2009-2010 will sit at the heart of these governance concerns. Getting policies right in these areas will inevitably relate to other challenges of regional security, maritime security, terrorism, state resilience and resource management....

Chinese Foreign Policy: A Chronology

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Yemen, the new Waziristan and the full spectrum dominance machine

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/08/i_dont_mean_to_say_i_told_you_so_but

Yemen, the new Waziristan and the full spectrum dominance machine...

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17460

Like an ever-profitable horror B-movie franchise, the al-Qaeda myth simply refuses to die.

United States intelligence has now focused its lasers on the alleged 300 al-Qaeda jihadis concealed in Yemen's craggy, rural Maarib province - as much as the Pentagon has deployed infinite might to find those maximum 100 prowling the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan.

But wait. Didn't top US intelligence officials recently swear on their government paychecks that it's all but "certain" that this sinister, multifaceted hydra with sleeper cells all over the planet - "al-CIAda" - will attack inside the US within the next six months?

What is more likely is that these neo-jihadis will never come from

Yemen or the Waziristan tribal areas in Pakistan or the whole AfPak tribal belt for that matter. And they will not be native, pious Sunnis from Saudi Arabia or Egypt either. They will have at best a vague connection to some Middle Eastern dictatorship/petro-monarchy. They will certainly be young, ultra-globalized and passionately, perversely addicted to a fantasy - the virtual ummah (Muslim community).

Their life journey will certainly have evolved as in a triangulation. Many will have moved from their home country to live in a Western country - or even have been born there; and that's where they will have honed their yearning to join jihad in a third country.

Like characters in a novel

Neo-jihadis may eventually - but not necessarily - go to Yemen or the Waziristans only after they have made the conceptual leap from idealizing the ummah on the Internet to actually feeling the irresistible urge to act on the ground.

Whenever this happens, they have already broken communication with their families. This is the pattern followed by virtually every neo-jihadi - from Dhiren Barot (who planned to bomb the New York Stock Exchange) to the shy underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. They are all living exercises in deterritorialization. It's all virtual - especially their idea or vision of Islam itself. It's all very individualistic - no orchestration by a sinister "al-Qaeda" network. And it's all done in English - the lingua franca of global communication - not Arabic. Welcome to the age of the virtual jihadi nomad. In earlier times, these would have been characters in a Fyodor Dostoevsky or Albert Camus novel.

As for the motivations of "al-Qaeda", Olivier Roy, professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and a top global scholar of terrorism, argues that al-Qaeda "does not have a political strategy of establishing an Islamic state". But he insists al-Qaeda's global enemy is the West - not local regimes. That's not true; al-Qaeda, the historic leadership, treats local regimes as US lackeys, thus they should be toppled. It's not their priority; a hefty case can be made that "al-Qaeda" is nothing but a dissidence (or a "rogue" arm) of Saudi intelligence, considering the very close relationship between Osama bin Laden and wily Prince Turki bin Faisal, the former director general of Saudi intelligence.

Unlike Roy's assessment, al-Qaeda's fight has nothing to do with Che Guevara's in the 1960s. Al-Qaeda is certainly not about ideology - but about an idea/flame that seduces, as Roy puts it, "the lonely avenger, the hero, who can redeem a life he is not happy with by achieving fame while escaping a world where he finds no room". But that could also be a portrait of John Lennon's murderer.

American intelligence is unlikely to consider these subtleties. The multi-billionaire machine is still hostage to the outdated notion of "territory". So it's automatic to have the Pentagon dispatch its might to fight "al-Qaeda" in Yemen and in the Waziristans. They will find nothing but ghosts.

Iraq, AfPak and now Yemen have been granted by Washington the same holy trinity of building "development" and "governance", and counter-terrorism, which in practice means governance hijacked by Beltway-conceptualized counter-terrorism. No wonder this recipe was a failure in Afghanistan and will be a failure in Yemen.

The Yemeni theater will feature yet another deadly mix of counter-insurgency as applied by the Israelis in Gaza and West Bank and the Americans in AfPak. What happened in the AfPak tribal belt is enlightening. The power of hardcore locals - the Pakistani Taliban - was greatly enhanced; and "al-Qaeda" jihadis quietly left the building, spawning a mini-global migration. The same will happen in Yemen.

All this is tragically farcical. Obama has done a George W Bush in Afghanistan, branding the al-Qaeda ghost to justify Washington's "soft" invasion of Yemen. The government of US-aligned President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sana'a accuses the Huthis of being linked to both al-Qaeda (Wahhabi radicals who consider Shi'ites as worse than the plague) and Iran (Shi'ites who abhor al-Qaeda). It doesn't matter whether this is utter nonsense. Sooner or later, Washington will inevitably brand the Huthis as "terrorists" - just like every resistance in Iraq was "terrorist", whether they were Sunni or Sadrists.

And the Pentagon runs amok

Tens of thousands of foreign troops are bogged down in Afghanistan because the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked its Article 5 collective defense provision in 2001 to fight "al-Qaeda". Sooner rather than later, NATO will also hit Yemen.

As much as oil is power, the good ol' "war on terror" - rebranded or not by the US - is alive and kicking. Iraq, Afghanistan (then AfPak), Yemen, Somalia, these are all cogs in the relentless full spectrum dominance machine, the real deal behind the "war on terror" cover story, intimately linked to Washington's scramble to control and/or monitor as many global sources of oil and gas as possible.

And for a Pentagon already running amok, it is getting deeper and deeper into this key stretch of the "arc of instability", from North Africa to the Persian Gulf, and at the same time instilling the flames of a new Cold War between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Blessed are those "al-CIAda" virtual jihadi nomads.