PoliticsArabZone: WSJ list: Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria, Palestinian Authority, Iran, and of course Tunisia and Egypt

Wall Street Journal carries a summative dispatch by margaret Coker, Matt Bradley, and Tamer El-Ghobashiny that overviews "demands for similiar political reforms" that have already "swept across the Arab world ... following the resignation of [Egypt's] President Hosni Mubarak.

Caution your optimism, however.  Iran is trying to co-opt the revolutionary virus, vainly imagining it can steer Arab youth in its own direction (Iran is not Arab, but Persian predominately).   Gaddafi's regime in Libya has been given almost a full week to prepare its troops and goons to smash the scheduled mass demonstrations planned for Thursday, Feb18,2k11.

Not mentioned on WSJ's list, both Jordan and Lebanon are still two cawt in their old ways, too impacted by stalemates (at best) that divide the new generation, apparently thus preventing the launch of any genuinely new initiative.  Don't look for any real change in these countries unless the new generational in Iran seizes its moment against the Ayatollahs, and wins.  More likely, the Iranian state woud use massive repression by its army and its Revolutionary Guards before a real chance were opened.  At the moment, Syria seems to have made its own separate peace with the agents of Iran who put the former country into the Iranian Ayatollah's orbit.

Three factors must be weighed in most of these countries:  women, Sunni vs Shi'ite differences in each population, and the size and entanglements of the Christian population in each of these countries where it exists.

-- Politicarp

PoliticsIran: Sanctions & Oil: With a new nuke test, Iran scoffs at Western oil sanctions

Christian Science Monitor began publishing a 3-page selection of its top stories, and you can receive it free for a month, to try it out and to decide if you want to obtain a paid subscription. I'm dutifully trying it out. The top story of the first issue issue received, a kind of sampler, I guess, is not current news "Iran tests powerful missile: launch determins claims of peaceful intention" (Dec17,2k9) by CSM reporter Scott Peterson. So, I'm not all that impressed, yet there's sometihing uncanny about the article, it's déjà-vu quality. Here it is after more than a year.

ISTANBUL, TURKEY – 
Iran test-fired the latest version

of its longest-range missile on Wednesday,

sending a message of defiance as pressure

mounts on Tehran over its nuclear program.

The test came a day after the US House of

Representatives overwhelmingly approved

tougher sanctions legislation against Iran.

Click the t+mstap to Read more ...

FLASH: Iran at UN: Ahmadi-Nejab wavers on rich-uranamium processing?

Jabber says Iran may end enrichment

by Ali Akbar Dareini and John Heilprin, Associated Press Writers – 5 mins ago (Sept24,2k10)

NEW YORK – Iran would consider ending higher level uranium enrichment, the most crucial part of its controversial nuclear activities, if world powers send Tehran nuclear fuel for a medical research reactor, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told reporters Friday.

-- Politicarp

PoliticsUN: USA Prez Obama: vs Iran's Ahmadi-Nejab on 9/11

The USA President responds to the whatever-he-is Iranian ranter for the latter's "hateful" weird numbnuttery previously at the same forum that claimed "the U.S. government may have been behind the September 11, 2001, attacks." Enuff said; for more go to the good stuff here (Reuters via Yahoo! News, Sept24,2k10) and there (Wall Street Journal, Sept24,2k10).  I add only that the US media, both lamestream and Fox-kind, seem to have a consensus that A-Nejab was playing to a specific Iranian audience he wants to motivate to increase and maintain its support of the Jabber's cause which is in trouble in Iran, while the conservatives (including the clerics) engage each other with their inf+ting propensities. Obama has tried and tried to negotiate with Iran to quit its nuclear adventure, for fear the religio-political psychosis in sway in the country will nucleate some n+t when the moon is h+.  The very project intimidates the regional scene alraedy, not least the Jewish State of Israel, but also the Muslim monarchies of the Gulf States.

-- Politicarp

Israel: Iran: Israel must juggle negotiations with Palestinians, threat of nukes from Iran, massing Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Gaza under Hamas

New York Times (July 6, 2010), report by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mark Landler:

President Obama said Tuesday that he expected direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to begin “well before” a moratorium on settlement construction expired at the end of September, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel pledged to take “concrete steps” in the coming weeks to get the talks moving.

Don't miss the following detail:

--><. Saudi Arabia: We will not give Israel air corridor for Iran strike - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News> (Monday, August 23, 2010)

Nukes: War Policy USA: Iran closer to being target, says General

Associated Press, using a map of known nuclear s+ts in Iran, via Yahoo!News, reports:

A former CIA director and Airforce General says military action against Iran now seems more likely because no matter what the U.S. does diplomatically, Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program.

Michael Hayden, a CIA chief under President George W. Bush, says that during his tenure a strike was "way down the list" of options. But he tells CNN's "State of the Union" that such action now "seems inexorable."

He predicts Iran will build its program to the point where it's just below having an actual weapon. Hayden says that would be as destabilizing to the region as the real thing.

U.S. officials have said military action remains an option if sanctions fail to deter Iran.  Iran says its nuclear work is for peaceful purposes such as power generation.

As USA Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton tries to gather a new alliance against Iran's nuclear ambitions, a moment of déja vu seems to call Americans back to the period when neiboring Iraq under dictator genocidist Saddam Hussein was denying admission to his country's nuclear factories, refusing monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (a UN affiliated agency)...who also had elaborate maps of nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

But the statement by the former Airforce General and CIA Director constitutes the first time anyone so h+ in rank, civilian or military, has moved the discussion into its near ultimate stage:  Sanctions have failed, now is the time to face up to the possible need shortly for effective military pre-emption of Iran's apparently oncoming nuclear threat.

-- Politicarp

PoliticsSyria: Economics: Syria's Bashar Assad advances economy, while clinging to autoritarianism and alliances with Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran

Under the title "Reforms transform Syrian economy, but not politics," by Associated Press via Yahoo! News, we get an updated bird's-eye view of a country usually seen from an Israeli perspective in much of the English-speaking world. But AP is claiming that the anti-Israeli identity has receded as the raison d'etre of Syria's current regime. Yes, the new entrepreneurs are "licensed" on the basis of polite intrigues and sycophancy by the govt sponsorsponsorship[, one imagines. Neverthless, the evidence of wealth has given Damascus and other urban centers a conspicuous cafe-life. Tho, of course, the gap between the rich (including now the new money), and the poor with the same old, same old, remains.

We need a better look at the universities and education. Are they increasing and receiving more students? What disciplines are growth zones of thawt in Syria? How are hospitals and the medical profession, with its specialists, faring?

While technically the Syrian state is still at war with Israel, one doesn't see Syria as planning and spending for that eventuality, if its putting money into hospitals and universities, and educating a new generation in a wide spectrum of professions.

One wonders how the ancient Christian communities of this country are faring these days.

Iran: Mediation: A deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey fails, 'Big Powers' sanction Ayatollahland

Brazil brokers a swap deal between Iran and Turkey regarding enriched uranium (nuclear grade) for use in a key Turkish medical project, but meantime the slow grind of Big-Power diplomacy reaches agreement on draft resolution to be presented for a vote at the UN Security Council. Reuters via Yahoo! News offers this May18,2k10 dispatch, "Big powers agree on Iran sanctions draft":

The United States handed the U.N. Security Council a draft resolution on Tuesday that would expand U.N. sanctions against Iran by hitting its banking and other industries for refusing to halt nuclear enrichment.

The 10-page draft, agreed by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia after months of negotiations, also calls for international inspection of vessels suspected of carrying cargo related to Iran's nuclear or missile programs.

The Security Council draft restricts Iran's international expansion of banking for nuclear-war purposes, and it specifically names the Revolutionary Guard's activities, alerting the world to the latter's insidious if clandestine manoeverings.

Politics: Iraq: Fissures and mistrust, war politics of Sunnis in Anbar Province, Iraq's neibours, oil production shortfall

Washington Post published a detailed overview of the current situation in Iraq in the immediately preceding period. The article by Sudarsan Raghavan explains why there is a stalemate in the Iraqi parliament, where seemingly completed negotiations come undone quickly, sometimes allegedly because Prime Minister al-Maliki signs a document for which he doesn't have a consensus. He seems to have a presidential view of his office, but he lacks the support of the pro-Iran Shia of the Sadrist sect who have withdrawn their 6 ministers from the cabinet, while keeping their 30-member delegation in parliament with reps on at least two key committees thereof. Mr. Raghavan's important coverage is entitled "Baghdad's Fissures and Mistrust Keep Political Goals out of Reach (Apr26,2k7).

With the parliamentary stalemate in the background, the "war on the ground" continues. Looking at it from the various Iraqi points of view, while recalling that it is supposed to be for them "a sectarian civil war," pure and simple, we find the fascinating developments in the mostly-Sunni province of Anbar. There the Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders are turning against their foreign fellow Sunnis, Al Quaeda in Iraq. The forces of the anti-AlQuaeda chieftans have knocked off some of the AlQaeda leaders in the last week or so. They are saying that once the Americans are gone, the real problem will be these foreign fanatical fellow Sunnis, reports Sam Dagher in Christian Science Monitor. The "warlords" are on the warpath in a self-interested alliance with the USA against Al Qaeda. Sam Dagher in a second report, "Sunni Muslim sheikhs join US in fighting Al Qaeda -- Iraqi tribal support is linked to drop in violence in Anbar Province" (May3,2k7).

MidEast > Iraq

In yet a third dispatch the same Sam Dagher asks
"Can US sustain Anbar success?--While Al Qaeda in Iraq has been largely driven out of Ramadi, the US is hoping to build on the gains by fixing basic services and mediating tribal hostilities" (May4,2k7).

At the same time as the parliamentary stalement and the encouraging developments of the shift among the Sunnis, CSM carries a further report by
Howard LaFranchi regarding the just-concluded regional conference that included both Syria and Iran, with representatives of which US Secretary of State, Mdme. Condoleeza Rice, met. "Iraq's neibors wei next steps after regional conference --
Participating countries – including Syria and Iran – now face the test of fulfilling promises of security and economic aid" (May3,2k7).

But, cumulatively the juncture of the parliamentary stalemate and the shift of many Sunnis away from Al Qaeda in Anbar Province and the tenuous break-thru with various Iraqi neibours make all the more important what Peter Grier discusses under the title, "Iraq's oil production falls short of goals -- Despite years of rebuilding, petroleum production continues to fall short of targets, due to insurgency vandalism, poor field management, and corruption" (May7,2k7). At the same time, the success/failure of the oil industry in the country is dependent upon the disposal of the anticipated profits down the line. Which Iraqis--Shia, Sunnis, Kurds (also mostly Sunnis)--which of these will benefit from the oil fields is a key problem that impacts upon the three big problems: parliamentary stalemate, Sunnis breaking with AlQaeda, and again the neibours.