We share above a panel discussion Hillary participated in yesterday on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story on the U.S.-Egyptian relationship and Secretary Clinton’s recent visit to Egypt. The discussion may be viewed by clicking on the video frame above or through the link here. Egypt’s future trajectory is critical to the strategic balance in the Middle East—and, thus, to both the United States and the Islamic Republic. The discussion suggests that Egypt’s post-Mubarak evolution is likely to be quite problematic for the United States—and, therefore, a strategic gain for Tehran and others who seek to push back against Washington’s hegemonic ambitions in the region.
–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Leverett
I’d just like to clarify what I mean when I said that Islam is in such bad shape, as it is likely to be interpreted differently by everyone otherwise. It is this:
When the Prophet passed from the earthly plane, the community made a dreadful mistake and took a very wrong turn. It is a long story, but the bottom line is that a large majority went down a road whose eventual outcome was the kowtowing of its priests to oppressors and tyrants of all stripes, from the Umayyads and Abbasids on down. This was (and remains) a patent betrayal of the values and objectives of the Prophet’s project. The Partisans (Shi’a) of ‘Ali, when they were not divided and idolyzing false prophets (like the Ismailis’ Agha Khans, and the motley crew of the Ghulat (“extremists”) who deified the Imams), went into a tailspin after the Occultation of the 12th Imam – a disorientation that lasted over 1,000 years (941-1970 CE) in which the foqaha (doctors of theosophy-cum-jurisprudence) waited for the advent of the Mahdi and spun their high-falutin’ theories in vacuo. Now, thanks to Imam’s Khomeini, the faqih par excellence, Shi’a Islam, true Islam, has found its bearings again. But was 1,000 in the wilderness too long of a wait? We shall watch as see as the Divine Tragedy unfolds. I’m told there’s a “happy ending”.
Arash Succotash:
First off, thank you so much for your kinds words and thoughts. It is always nice to find new friends. That’s the thing with Alzheimer’s: you get to make all these new friends every day :o)
I guess you have figured out by now that you misread my post, and that the stupid dittohead thang was part of a question which my interlocutor answered admirably. But yes, some people ARE beyond the pale. Indeed, if more of our otherwise highly intelligent commentators here at RFI had realized this of a certain hazbara troll and completely ignored him in every way, he would surely have gone his merry way before we came to this pass. And I am sure that if everyone promises to do just that (as our hosts had requested in a post written specifically for that purpose!) then perhaps we can go back to the oasis of sanity RFI ws before this drought.
Rehmat: you just don’t get it do you? The point is, so what if someone is of “Jewish origin”? You say it like it is a bad thing. I’m sorry, but that is stupid.
All: “Islam is in horrible, horrible shape.” QED. But it IS our ONLY hope. May God send a dozen more Imam Khomeinis. Ameen.
imho:
You are right: you did just talk about the goal. And it was the goal itself that I intended to clarify, as the cognitive arena is so cluttered with hazardous waste that when one states what you stated, one is apt to put the the worst aspects of the world government Atlanticists together with all of the clutter that surrounds Islam thanks to the Uncle Suzerain-funded heretical sects (the Wahhabi cavemen and the modernist la-mazhab Salafists – It is hard to determine which is worse), and associate that with Islam. Anyway, I can see that you took my post in the constructive spirit that it was written in. And yes, your post did help in my estimation of your gray cells; clearly, the Borg still has some work to do ;o)
You say of the possibility of a just world order that “It won’t happen given the human desire to dominate the other humans.” I want to take this opportunity to make the important distinction between what is usually thought of as “human nature”. The usual argument goes something like this: Man is fallen and so it is a hopeless expectation to expect that justice can prevail “on Earth as it is in Heaven.” The liberal social projects, communism, fascism, national socialism (and indeed Islam”ism”) are utopian fantasies, and the sooner we get rid of them, the sooner we will come down to reality and begin the work of social organization bereft of fantasy and denial and hopeless expectation. The Church tried it, and look how that ended up: they went medieval on our ass, to borrow a happy phrase from the gimp scene.
But this is incorrect. In my opinion it is a form of despondency and despair, which is a grave sin. Hopelessness is always the work of the de-viiiiiiiiiiiiiil. And of course the disempowerment feeds right into the hands of the Satan-worshipping one-worlder Bilderbergers.
It is incorrect because it is based on false anthropology. Man’s “nature” is not animal. Man has the potential of acting like an animal and actually much worse than an animal. Neither is man’s nature angelic. It is something in between, with the potential to swing both ways.
The whole purpose of revelation generally, or if you prefer, we can stick to Islam and say of Islamic revelation is to provide the necessary rules and regulations to ensure that man does not stray below the human mark, and actualize his azalic or divine potential. It is for our own good, because only our Maker knows what is best for us in this world as well as the next. The shari’a (Islamic canon law) is the broad pathway back to God, without which we will not succeed in our quest to return back home.
Obviously this is a long discussion and whole volumes have been written on the subject. What I want to say is that if you consider humanity in light of its correct anthropology, and consider that while we have been given the freedom to act in any way we choose, we have also been provided with the means to build the Virtuous City (just East of Eden if you want to google it). Indeed, we must try to do so: it is an issue of utmost and yes salvific significance.
You also say: “who is telling the truth in Islam today is the big question that may not have an answer yet”. Yes, it would be an easier world to live in if truth was more easily separated from falsehood and there would only be one true path; one religion on whose tenets everyone agrees. But that is the way of unicity and not multiplicity. Kuntu kanzan makfi’an…: “I was a hidden treasure and wanted to be known, so I created creation in order to be known.”
And: “That is why it is important to not being indoctrinate[d] in any way.” As I tried to demonstrate to another doctrinaire-in-denial individual, there is no such thing as not being wedded to some doctrine, even if that doctrine is the doctrine of non-doctrine: “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice” – Rush, from the Moving Pictures album, if memory serves. And trust me, the choice of no-choice is so sixties it’s not even funny anymore. We are “condemned to have to choose” (Albert Camus?). The good news is, Christianity is bankrupt, Hinduism is a cruel joke, Confucianism has been coopted by Marx who meant well but was obviously confused. The Mayas and Aztec and that whole gang is almost extinct and is for the birds anyway, unless you want to sweat it out in a teepee “lodge”. And that leaves Islam, which I grant you is in horrible, horrible shape. But there it is. It’s that or hitchin’ up with Angus Young who is already on the Highway to Hell. And no, the “post-Christian secular West” is no longer an option. It showed its true colors on 9/11 and the “Harvard Constitutional Scholar” has made a mockery of all of its supposed values, which us Sand N****rs were never the beneficiary of anyway, given the always-present double-standards that undermined them from the get-go anyway. All you will be is a coopted member of the Borg, or turn into a Goth with black makeup or some queer on a Mardi Gras float or the latest adumbration of Hare Krishna waiting to be beemed up to the mothership from La Joya. All of which is fine, as long as you pay your taxes so that the Satanists government that you pledge allegiance to can service its unrepayable debt to the Arch-Satanists.
I guess I’ve ranted long enough! Back to work…
Flynt-san: RFI is on life-support. WTF? Better all that spam than this lethargy.
On July 13, 2012, Anthony Cordesman moderated a panel comprised of Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International and Aram Nerguizian, Visiting Fellow at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Ms. Rovera reported on five weeks of travel through 23 towns and villages in northern Syria last April and May. Rovera was in Aleppo, Syria’s financial center, “the last place in Syria where there is no armed confrontation between armed opposition and government forces. Aleppo has been very late in joining the protest movement. It didn’t start as early as 17 months ago as in other parts of the country,” Rovera said.
She went on to describe that protesters in Aleppo who did assemble were, within 15 minutes, confronted by Syrian army forces accompanied by plain-clothes paramilitary units, who fired live rounds at protesters from Kalyshnakovs and hunting rifles.
Rovera described numerous other acts of violence that she said the Syrian army inflicted upon Syrian civilians.
At least twice Rovera made the argument that the west considered no other option to intervening in Syria other than a military intervention. She complained that other options were available — Assad could have been referred to the International Criminal Court, but the international community “failed to think outside the box.” She had harsh words for Russia and China, who refused to cooperate with UN actions.
It is my understanding that Russia’s opposition to a number of US-led proposals regarding Syria revolved around the situation in Libya, in which Qaddafi was referred to the ICC, a plan that Russia supported, but within a matter of days, that plan was dropped and a full military intervention took place in Libya. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has stated numerous times that Russia — and Libya — were betrayed by that gambit, and Russia will not allow itself to be put in the same position again.
Furthermore, as Rovera hinted in a response in the Q&A session, “northern states” — the USA? — were opposed to a referral to ICC. WINEP fellow David Pollock affirmed that posture in comments on June 30, 2012 — here. Pollock discussed the UN Security Council meeting that considered Kofi Annan’s plan for an interim unity government in Syria. According to Pollock, in addition to opposing a referral to the ICC on grounds that “it would only make the Syrian regime more determined to stay in power,” Pollock reported that the United States opposed Russia’s recommendation that Iran be included in the UNSC negotiations, a position that Russia accepted only after Saudi Arabia was also excluded from the talks. In other words, United States diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis in Syria consisted of finding ways to eliminate rule-of-law resolutions and to isolate, rather than incorporate, key parties to the crisis.
Rovera failed to take account of these important details.
Aram Nerguizian’s prepared comments are encapsulated in this article published on June 20, 2012. Nerguizian introduced his argument with the claim that “The roots of the crisis . . .are tied to socioeconomic disparity . . .but has metastasized” crisis in which “Syria now sits on a broad Sunni-Shiite fault line, not necessarily by design but by default.”
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq also was home to supposedly opposing communities of Sunnis and Shiia, who got along and even prospered in Iraq, until the US intervened. In Iraq as in Syria, the imposition of American notions of how things ought to be done resulted in exacerbating the fault lines between disparate communities rather than in achieving “democracy.”
The crisp but pessimistic picture Nerguizian painted had several glaring holes in it, the same holes that the Middle East has been dealing with for almost a century: No diplomat or pundit who wishes to keep his job in Washington is capable of dealing with the concept and reality of zionism.
Because neither Assad’s government nor the “nebulous opposition” is willing to compromise but is intent on retaining “authoritarian power,” Nerguizian sees nothing but turmoil for Syria and the region for the next five or ten years, as Arab-Iranian competition over the Gulf region, and Arab-Israeli (and Lebanon) tensions create more instability than the region has ever seen. Nerguizian bleakly recited that “there is no international community” concerned about Syria. Such a statement overlooks 3 billion people — Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, India, Turkey, about half of whom are Muslims, a large portion Christian, and others — Chinese — are Confucian; all have been participants in the Silk Road where they shared and cross-fertilized their cultural and religious traditions.
Audience members asked if the “spill-over effect” of the Syrian crisis might engulf the region in a 1914-like situation. Emphasizing the competition between Iran and Arab states in the Gulf region, as well as fissures between Sunni, Christians, and Shia that would inevitably involve Hezbollah and Lebanon, both Nerguizian and Cordesman traced the various fault lines among states in the region that seemed to suggest such an outcome was possible.
The Muslim Brotherhood is the only organized group in Syria that has, so far, made a credible and practical bid for organizing and governing Syria in the absence of Assad. It seems to me that if Iran supports the Muslim Brotherhood, pivots toward Saudi Arabia with whom Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has already formed bonds, and also strengthens its ties with Turkey; and nurtures ties with Russia-Syria, a combined Muslim-Christian cooperative alliance could guarantee a generation of peace and prosperity for all concerned. “It is no dream if you will it.”
Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi announced Tehran’s readiness to hold meetings with the Syrian dissidents in a move to facilitate talks between the opposing parties in the Muslim country. Moscow has always insisted that the conflict cannot be resolved peacefully without the active participation of Iran.
http://rehmat1.com/2012/07/22/unsc-extends-syrian-observer-mission-for-30-days/
In comments at a February 2012 panel discussion, Israeli former defense minister , Ephraim Sneh, who, since 1992, has been at the vanguard of Israel’s campaign to take down Iran, included Lebanon in states that would experience (at 13.30 min), “the Arab Spring unrest — Tunis, Libya, Syria, Lebanon — because Syria will spill over into Lebanon . ..”
Today, Times of Israel featured a story about Lebanese Sunni Sheikh Ahmad Assir’s opposition to Hezbollah:
“Few in Lebanon have dared take on the Shiite militant group in such a public way, but Assir, a hardline Sunni cleric, senses weakness. He sees a chance to push back against Hezbollah’s domination of the country’s politics.
The growing popularity among some Sunnis of the previously little known local cleric is a sign of how vulnerable Hezbollah has become as it faces the possibility of the downfall of its crucial ally, President Bashar Assad in Syria. Its reputation as a popular resistance movement has already taken a severe beating for siding with Syria against the anti-Assad uprising even after it supported Arab revolts in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Bahrain.”
It would appear that Sneh is quite the fortune-teller.
Some of Pat Lang’s participants posted links to good sources for information on Syria (including Juan Cole; take the bitter w/ better).
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2012/07/scenarios-flowing-from-a-syrian-outcome.html#comment-6a00d8341c72e153ef0176169c87e1970c
In Lang’s assessment, there is no outcome of the Syria conflict that will be anything but bad news for Israel, and even worse for Palestinians.
It turns out that, similar to the way that Saddam was holding together a state composed of fractious communities, so was Assad. That egg has been cracked; “All the king’s horses . . .”
@Rehmat:
In your article on the social situation of the Israelis you wrote:
“According to American Jewish writer, Stephen Lendman , 1.77 million (out of total Jewish population of 4.7 million) Israelis are poor.”
The is not part of Lendman’s article. Please be careful. The original paragraph is:
“Various studies show it, including annual Latet ones, its latest saying 1.77 million Israelis are poor. About 850,000 children live in poverty. As a result, 75% of those affected miss meals, a 21% increase from 2009. Moreover, 83% of poor children lack proper dental care, most getting none. Some beg for money. Others steal to eat.”
Lendman emphasizes:
“Though mainly an Arab problem, increasing numbers of Jews are also affected.”
So, these are not 1.77 million Jewish poor.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5htQbN7vg4um2o0ZnreZ_t7_NXdMA?docId=67a54f2571cd4e85894f37589872e7e0
If a 10% of this shooting had occured in Iran, how much do you think the west’s blame would have been on the Mad Mullahs?
Prince Bandar bin Sultan has been appointed intelligence chief for Saudi Arabia.
Unknown Unknowns says: July 20, 2012 at 9:21 am
UU, I always read your posts with great interest, and always learn from them as they are nuggets of wisdom. Wisdom that is bestowed upon very few. This post left me with quandary. You say, and I quote the entire paragraph so as not take anything out of context: “While it is true that (true) Moslems work toward and pray for the day that Islam pervades the entirety of the earth as a belief in the hearts of its devout and righteous practitioners, it is against not only Islamic law but also against the very purpose of Islamic government – which is to establish a just social order on earth – to force our creed, way of life and system of governance on anyone else. If Islam is to rule the world, it must be accomplished through education, debate, rational engagement and the hard and peaceful work of teaching by example – something I grant you that we are decades and perhaps centuries away from”
You then go on, and as if to reinforce the decades and perhaps centuries by calling imho a “stupid American dittohead” without any gray matter whom cannot not be reasoned with. My question to you dear UU is, isn’t it every Moslem’s responsibly to assume (I know, I know, when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me ~Neil Simon) that this gray matter exists and to try to hasten the day Islam pervades the entirety of the earth by, as you say, educate, debate, [and by] rational engagement and the hard and peaceful work of teaching by example? Are you not a Moslem? Do you not espouse these values? Or is he really beyond the pale?
Unknown Unknowns – Please allow MOHAMMAD SAKHER to put his hoof in your mouth, please. (only if not deleted by the Moderator).
RESEARCH AND PRESENTATION OF: MOHAMMAD SAKHER , who was ordered killed by the Saudi Regime for the following findings:
1. Are the Saudi Family members belonging to the Tribe of ANZA BEN WA’EL as they allege to be?
2. Is Islam their actual religion?
3. Are they of an ARAB ORIGIN at all?
http://muslimvilla.smfforfree.com/index.php?topic=2433.0
Israeli ‘Bouazizi’ dies
http://rehmat1.com/2012/07/20/israeli-bouazizi-dies/
Sorry, I didn’t laugh enough
===========================
How many realized (be honest) at the time that the used car salesman bomb plot of October 2011 was ignominiously unfurled, it was only a rush job to get the long-AIPAC-wished-for sanctions against Iran’s central bank?
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/02/the-used-car-salesman-a-mexican-drug-cartel-and-the-saudi-ambassador/
Since then, all these other impossible-to-explain bomb plots in New Delhi, Tbilisi, Bangkok, Cypress, … Bulgaria rested on an essential feature of the original used car salesman plot: sheer preposterousness with USG imprimatur.
It is that officially sanctioned height of absurdity that made possible all the rest of the absurd plot allegations since, and all the ones yet to come.
Unknown Unknowns says:
July 20, 2012 at 9:21 am
I did just talk about the goal not about the means.
I am not against a world John Lennon-style, peace, no borders, prosperity, etc. for all. But it’s just an utopia. It won’t happen given the human desire to dominate the other humans. You’re right about Zbig , CFR, Trilateral, Bilderbergers & co. They want to rule the world no matter how many million people will die. And the way they shape events now, is the proof of the hell awaiting us if they ever succeed.
It is interesting when you emphasize “true” Muslims in your post in saying that we’re centuries away from that ideal. We’ll not be here to see it if it ever happens. We can only guess based on “true” history, our human nature and… our belief. This is one factor that differentiate us.
That Salafists and Wahhabites are not “true” Muslims is something I can easily accept but then who is telling the truth in Islam today is the big question that may not have an answer yet. The same question applies to other religions as well. That is why it is important to not being indoctrinate in any way.
Hope this post helps you estimate the amount of unaltered cells I could still have.
Sanction do hurt!!! In this global economy, the hurting will be shared….
“To top it off, it is not clear whether Iran would actually surrender its nuclear program because it faces increasing economic pressure. As the New York Times has noted, this may be the most comprehensive economic sanctions regime that the US initiated since imposing sanctions on raw materials going to Imperial Japan in the 1930s and ’40s, which of course hastened the start of the Pacific War.
More prevalently, while the tensions are not immediately obvious, South Korea and Japan’s forced self-harm to their own economic interests may have deep consequences for the future of the trans-Pacific relationship.”
http://atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NG21Dg01.html
imho says, “This is in line with fundamentalism Islam which is after a world ruled by one single Islamic authority.”
No. The Trilateralists and the Neo-Straussian Fascisti are after world domination by force of arms. They both want to enslave and rape the world (and Zbig thinks he is morally superior to the Zionazi clowns because he advocates the use of a lubricant. This is stupid, because the use of a lubricant in rape makes no difference whatever to the victim.
While it is true that (true) Moslems work toward and pray for the day that Islam pervades the entirety of the earth as a belief in the hearts of its devout and righteous practitioners, it is against not only Islamic law but also against the very purpose of Islamic government – which is to establish a just social order on earth – to force our creed, way of life and system of governance on anyone else. If Islam is to rule the world, it must be accomplished through education, debate, rational engagement and the hard and peaceful work of teaching by example – something I grant you that we are decades and perhaps centuries away from.
I haven’t followed your posts enough to know whether you are just another stupid American dittohead, or if there are some gray cells left that have not been coopeted or occupied by the Borg, but if it is a case of the latter, know that the crap that the Salafists advocate has nothing to do with traditional Islam (of the Sacred Law-abiding Sunni and Shi’a type), and everything to do with the petrodollars of the heretical Wahhabite sect fueling hate (with Uncle Suzerain’s connivance, of course). That is not to say that we are not responsible for having spawned these vermin. We take responsibility for them**. But Uncle sure isn’t helping the situation any.
** Sag-e zard baradar-e shoghal-e. A yellow dog is a brother of the coyote.
*
Rehmat: You put your hoof in your mouth again. What the hell does the (supposed) “Jewish roots” of the Wahhabis have to do with anything? Some of the greatest contributors to Islamic spiritual and intellectual achievement were made by Moslems with “Jewish roots”. Hell, some of the greatest fighters against the Zionist injustices in the world are Jewish, including our hostess. Its not as if you don’t know this.
Rehmat says:
July 19, 2012 at 8:25 pm
Money doesn’t smell. Better take it wherever it comes from.
“Muslim Brotherhood is not an armed Resistance group like Islamic Hamas or Islamic Hizbullah – and therefore, cannot pose a threat to Jewish occupation of Palestine.”
Usually armed groups are backed by political wings.
Brzezinski to Newsmax: War With Iran Could Last Years, Devastate Global Economy
Wednesday, 18 Jul 2012
Obama is the spiritual son of Brzezinski who helped him to the presidency.
This interview again shows that two schools of though dominates US foreign policy with each having the upper hand at one period of time. One is the Neocon school backed by Israel and its agents in US, promoting total domination by war, culminated in Bush presidency and the other the realism, now promoted by Obama’s soft power policy. With the Afghan trap for USSR, Brzezinski began to implement Bernard Lewis’ scheme to balkanize the “Greater Mideast” along tribal and Islamic religious lines with the aim of destabilizing the USSR. This continues today with the goal extended to China in order to control the Eurasia, which following Brzezinski’s own statement is key to control the planet. Brzezinski founded the Trilateral Commission with a globalist march toward a world government. This is in line with fundamentalism Islam which is after a world ruled by one single Islamic authority.
http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/brzezinski-iran-war-oil/2012/07/18/id/445804?promo_code=F53B-1&utm_source=Debka&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1
Rd. Looking at the Al-Jazeera’s pro-USrael propaganda – I would rather believe Israeli daily Ha’aretz than your Al-Jazeera. Imam Hassan al-Banna was a Hanafi Sunni scholar while the Saudi ‘royals’ are Wahabis with Jewish family roots. So it’s hard to believe that al-Banna would have slept with Al-Saud as the later sleep with the anti-Muslim Zionists.
The fear of ‘Islamists’ created by Zionist warmongerers is based on their own duplicity – that’s since they’re not truthful, their enemies cannot be truthful either. Muslim Brotherhood is not an armed Resistance group like Islamic Hamas or Islamic Hizbullah – and therefore, cannot pose a threat to Jewish occupation of Palestine.
http://rehmat1.com/2008/12/11/al-jazeera-pro-israel-arab-network/
Scientific American article from 1968 that reveals fresh facts about Persian relations with Egypt:
The Qanats of Iran, by H. E. Wulff
“The qanat works of Iran were built on a scale that rivaled the great aqueducts of the Roman Empire. Whereas the Roman aqueducts now are only a historical curiosity, the Iranian system is still in use after 3,000 years and has continually been expanded. There are some 22,000 qanat units in Iran, comprising more than 170,000 miles of underground channels. The system supplies 75 percent of all the water used in that country, providing water not only for irrigation but also for house-hold consumption . . .
{snip}
“As early as the seventh century B.C. the Assyrian king Sargon II reported that during a campaign in Persia he had found an underground system for tapping water in operation near Lake Urmia. His son, King Sennacherib, applied the “secret” of using underground conduits in building an irrigation system around Nineveh, and he constructed a qanat on the Persian model to supply water for the city of Arbela. Egyptian inscriptions disclose that the Persians donated the idea to Egypt after Darius I conquered that country in 518 B.C. Scylax, a captain in Darius’ navy, built a qanat that brought water to the oasis of Karg, apparently from the underground water table of the Nile River 100 miles away. Remnants of the qanat are still in operation. This contribution may well have been partly responsible for the Egyptians’ friendliness to their conqueror and their bestowal of the title of Pharaoh on Darius.”
An exciting new book:
A New History of the Silk Road, by Prof. Valerie Hansen, Yale University.
“What was the nature of the Silk Road trade over the period up to 800 CE? Although the
Silk Road trade is often portrayed as the purchase of Han-dynasty China silks by Roman
coins, this talk reexamines the evidence to suggest that China’s main trading partner at
the height of the trade in 500-800 CE was Iran, not Rome. Excavated documents from
the sites of Niya and Turfan in modern Xinjiang and Dunhuang in Gansu offer a glimpse
of the main currencies in use.”
Fiorangela says:
July 19, 2012 at 11:05 am
It took time for Russia to understand
Geoff Dyer has some good observations in the Financial Times today (“Israel remains the wild card amid US bluster on Iran”). He argues that any serious negotiations between the US and Iran will have to wait until after the elections.
Well, with this third double veto of a western sponsored resolution on Syria, All indications point to breakage of current UN’s UNSC system. The world officially is no longer managed on a unipolar system but it rather again is divided to a bipolar system between a group formed around US as New Atlanticists desperate to preserve their existing power, and the other formed around China as New Internationalists who are set to maintain a new global balance of power. Iran is an important member of this group.
Following on Iran’s 2011 initiative, AlJaZeera reported today that [Russia's Parliament] passed a new law that would limit the operation of NGOs in Russia “. . .with only one vote against and one abstention. . . . foreign-funded NGOs would have to declare that they are foreign agents on all their publicity materials.”
rebel says:
“The fact that Morsi’s first trip will be to Saudi Arabia says it all for Iran. Maybe Morsi can give iran some chicken.”
It may be a bit too early to count those chickens….. it may be best to wait and see how the eggs hatch!
“That the Saudis invited President Morsi to interrupt his work and visit them, offering them full obeisance (though they opposed his candidacy), and that he actually did so obsequiously and was badly treated during the visit, is in line with the Muslim Brothers’ subservience and connivance with the Saudis since the 1950s.
To remind the Muslim Brothers who is boss, Saudi newspapers unearthed a picture a week ago showing Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna kissing the hand of King Abd al-Aziz in submission in the 1940s. Indeed, Morsi’s reception in Saudi Arabia was humiliating. While the newly minted Saudi crown prince (but not the king) received Morsi at the airport, neither accompanied him to the airport to bid him farewell. “
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/07/201271511521721772.html
“For more than 30 years, Egypt under Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak viewed Iran’s revolutionary Islamic leadership as a threat, and relations between the two regional competitors were characterized by hostility and a severing of diplomatic relations. Now, the West and its allies want to know if Egypt’s new Islamist leadership will try to reverse that state of affairs and embrace Iran. Certainly Tehran has sensed an opportunity to make a new friend and ally,” wrote Patrick Martin in Canadian daily ‘Globe And Mail’ on July 16, 2012.
http://rehmat2.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/morsi-spreads-his-presidential-wings/
Eliot Engels, US representative from NY, discussed the situation in Syria on C Span Washington Journal this morning.
We learned from Engels that Assad is a brutal brutal brutal (Iran) brutal brutal dictator (Iran) who is killing his own people, has killed thousands of his own people, is a fascist dictator brutal (Iran) thug who is killing thousands, maybe trillions, maybe killing (Hezbollah) more of his own people than the US national debt. (Iran). Israel is the only (Hezbollah)democracy in the Middle East because it elects its own government. Iran tried to have a revolution in 2009 [at the time when Iranians re-elected their president] but the United States failed to properly support the aspirations of Iran’s people who were seeking the overthrow of their government which they do not elect since they are a police state dictatorship unlike Israel which is the only democracy in the region. Iran is a fascist dictatorship whose revolution in 1979 was hijacked by Islamists, and the same must be resisted in Egypt — and Syria, which has been ruled by the brutal dictator Assad family for forty years — did I mention that Assad is a brutal dictator?
C Span’s audience ain’t buyin’ it.
Two callers registered support for Engel’s position. The first of them may have been a set-up: C Span took extraordinary care to keep the man on the line; he seemed to be reading from a script; and when he mentioned that (former ambassador to Syria) Robert Ford had spoken to numerous groups of Syrian expats in Michigan, Engels winced. Check out Ford’s wiki.
The second caller who was favorable to Engel’s position was a relative of the congressman.
Propaganda that is so excessively overdone is a sign of a desperate attempt to cover up a very big lie.
Related:
“Cairo will respond to Iran’s overtures for renewed ties, but not at the expense of alienating the Gulf Arab states.”
http://www.stratfor.com/sample/analysis/egypt-seeks-balance-iran-and-gulf-states
Read MB wants GCC’ dollars, yet needs Iran to challenge Israel
Bombing in Bulgaria from Bulgarian press:
The story is tagged “Iran”. Yet there isn’t one word of Iran in the text!!!
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=141436
And German foreign minister said:
“For now, there are no data about the perpetrators and Israel should be careful in commenting the attack,” said Germany’s Foreign Ministers.
Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Foreign Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman have all attributed the attack to Hezbollah or a similar organization, stressing that Iran is at the root.
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=141455
Even Javedanfar says it in NYT:
“It’s far too early to conclude who was behind the bombing in Bulgaria today,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Iran expert at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.
rebel says:
July 19, 2012 at 1:38 am
The first reason of Morsi’s trip to SA is probably to get assured of Saudi cash that Egypt needs.
As I said earlier this is another reason why MB’ rise is not so good for Iran.
rebel says:
July 19, 2012 at 1:38 am
empirically speaking, it is difficult to square military expenditure (Iran spends less than tiny UAE) and rhetoric (Iran consistently says she has no need/desire for extra territory) with this oft-repeated meme of Iran’s “hegemonic ambitions.” Can you point us to specifics that distinguish between ‘support for the oppressed’ from hegemony?
As for Mr. Morsi’s visit to Saudi Arabia, why do you feel anyone, including Egypt, has to make a choice? Wouldn’t it be wiser for Egypt or anybody else, to choose not to have hostile relations with anyone in the region, especially not at the behest of a third country, and double especially not with a fellow Muslim nation?
The title should read: Syria’s Post-Assad Evolution Challenges Iran’s Hegemonic Ambitions In the Middle East
It’s a nice distraction by the Leverett’s. One would hardly even notice Iran’s deteriorating position in the middle east if they read this. The fact that Morsi’s first trip will be to Saudi Arabia says it all for Iran. Maybe Morsi can give iran some chicken.
On the Bombing in Bulgaria
=========================
Cyrus asks Cui Bono?
http://www.iranaffairs.com/iran_affairs/2012/07/iranian-bomb-in-bulgaria-cui-bono.html
I think an equally important question to ask about this and all the other bomb plots attributed to Iran is: Who does it hurt?
The answer invariably is the bilateral relations between Iran and the country involved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQA67JN1hMs
On Wednesday, a bomb exploded in the bus carrying Israeli tourists at the Sarafovo airport terminal of the Bulgarian city of Burgas. Bulgarian television has reported that seven Jewish tourists were killed and 30 more injured. As expected, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu blamed the Islamic Republic for the blast. Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Leiberman immediately called his Bulgarian counterpart, Nikolay Mladenov, on phone to tell him who should be blamed for the bombing. Israel has already despatched a rescue team to remove evidence as they did at the Israeli-owned Hotel Paradise Mombassa in Kenya on November 22, 2002, Madrid train bombing on March 11, 2004 and London train bombing on July 7, 2005.
http://rehmat1.com/2012/07/19/mossad-blasts-7-israeli-tourists-in-bulgaria/
Appropriately, Yahoo news reports:
http://news.yahoo.com/israeli-prime-minister-blames-iran-bulgaria-bomb-171241420.html
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday blamed Iran for a bomb blast which killed at least three people in the Bulgarian resort of Burgas and said Israel would respond.
“All the signs lead to Iran. Only in the past few months we have seen Iranian attempts to attack Israelis in Thailand, India, Georgia, Kenya, Cyprus and other places,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
“Eighteen years exactly after the blast at the Jewish community center in Argentina, murderous Iranian terror continues to hit innocent people. This is an Iranian terror attack that is spreading throughout the entire world. Israel will react powerfully against Iranian terror,” he said.”
Hillary Mann Leverett whips it up during the discussion “Egypt has been subordinated to Israeli interest” for decades.
Over at Emptywheel.net
Reasons to Dismiss
Posted on July 17, 2012 by emptywheel
As the NYT and TPM have reported, Manssor Arbabsiar–the accused plotter in the Scary Iran Plot–has moved to have his indictment dismissed because he is bipolar. His lawyers are basing that motion on the diagnoses of Clinical Neuropsychologist Joel Morgan and Psychiatrist Michael First. First cites six passages from his interrogation (all redacted) to support his assertion that Arbabsiar was likely cycling in and out of manic episodes during his confession.
“The Americans remain committed not to “democracy” but to stability, a strategy identified by US academic and government consultant Samuel P Huntington in his classic academic book of 1968 on the importance of political order and stability in the changing Third World for imperial interests. That democracy is seen as inherently unstable and dictatorship as ensuring stability is no longer a viable course of action for members of the US administration, though they are still undecided on whether this understanding should be abandoned in some countries while maintained in others. Whereas the region continues to lack the democracy for which its people have been fighting for more than a century, despite the “Arab Spring” and the regime changes it elicited, the main achievement of the uprisings has so far been an instability that could end up changing the strategic rules of the game that the United States introduced to the region after World War II. And that is good news for the Arab peoples. ”
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/07/201271511521721772.html
Over the last weekend, Israel-Firster Hillary Clinton visited both Israel and Egypt. She had a rough ride in both countries. She had to cancel her trip to the West Bank due to pro-Israel Al-Jazeera’s new scandal about the possible poisoning of Yasser Arafat by Israeli Mossad.
http://rehmat1.com/2012/07/18/hillary-hackled-in-israel-and-egypt/
“Yes, sanctions do hurt, but its the pain that drives people to pull themselves up. I for one can see the long term effects already being felt from sanctions and I am truly relieved that we are not a nation of below 20 million like Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, and others under sanctions. We are a nation of 80 million and growing with the resolve and determination to use the sanction challenge to pull ourselves up. Today we are the world’s 17th largest economy. Iran’s President has predicted in 2 years we will be the 15th largest. This not in spite of sanctions but in my opinion directly because of sanctions!”
http://therealamirtaheri.blogspot.co.uk/
I doubt future developments in Egypt would benefit Iran and be problematic for US.
How could it be when MB in Egypt as well as in Syria are pushing for Assad out ?
Also, Hamas changed their headquarters out of Syria, came close to MB in Egypt and their relations with Iran are not so warm as it used to be.
And in a Sunni-Shia battle perspective, MB (Egypt) and Iran are in two opposing sides.
Lastly, one must not underestimate the cash problem in Egypt, which can only be resolved by either US or Qatar/SA.
“Egypt has enough foreign exchange on hand to cover six weeks’ of its imports (US$7.8 billion in liquid reserves, against a $5.5 billion monthly import bill)” according to atimes
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NG10Ak01.html
Fiorangela, assuming you don’t know this already, most of Solzenitsyn’s “200 Hundred Years Together” is available in English at the site below. It’s worth a look.
http://200yearstogether.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/chapter-4-in-the-age-of-reforms/
Iraq’s al-Maliki government has rejected Washington’s offer to return half of Iraq’s Jewish archives stolen by the US occupation forces in 2003. Liwa Samaism, Iraqi Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, in an interview with daily Azzaman early this month, accused the United States of violating international law and its obligations as a former occupying power by holding Iraq’s Jewish archives and other ancient documents.
http://rehmat1.com/2012/07/18/iraq-rejects-us-proposal-to-split-jewish-archives/
As I understand Israel’s history, neither in its mythos nor praxis has Israel ever demonstrated the ability to rule democratically. Israel’s diaspora experiences, for example, in mythological Egypt, in ancient Persia, in Andalusia, in post-Andalusia Italy as well as among Ottoman Turks; and in Poland for over a millenia, and in Germany for a relatively brief time, Jews functioned in close collaboration with the elites and governments of the land. In many situations — such as Poland and Ottoman empire — Jews were tax farmers, acting as middle men between the government and the people. In these situations, Jews tended to seek favor as well as protection from the government, and were generally resented by the lower classes.
A democratic Egypt that is not coerced to maintain a cold peace with Israel will by its very existence and proximity demand a dramatic change in Israel’s behavior. The United States has not been a friend to Israel by allowing it to bully its way about the world as it ‘grew up’ into statehood. At a time when Israel requires someone with a strong hand to teach Israel how to ‘do democracy,’ the United States has, instead, itself devolved into a bully; both lack an introspective capacity, foolishly equating military power and unmitigated gall with maturity.
What teacher is out there to take on these two “SINS” — States in Need of Supervision — China plus Russia?
The powerful military junta ruling Egypt, doesn’t represent those protesters but the USrael interests. Hillary Clinton knows that as her department sponsored of the Alliance for Youth Movements (AYM) Summit in New York in 2008. The summit was attended by members of variety of Jewish thinks, like Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Israel-firsters officials from National Security staff, Department of Homeland Security advisers – and the Jewish-controlled mainstream-media, such as, Google, Facebook, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and MTV. The meeting was attended by actress Whoopi Goldberg, Facebook Co-Founder Dustin Moskovitz and Ben-Obama’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James K. Glassman.
http://rehmat1.com/2011/02/16/anti-government-protests-and-israeli-connection/
very disappointing analysis by Joshua Landis at Wilson Center the other day
http://www.c-span.org/Events/Syria-Expert-Discusses-the-Future-of-the-Region/10737432337-1/
Haleh Esfandiari must have been terribly embarrassed; she introduced Landis with much warmth and respect.
Landis’ analysis amounted to “Assad is a loser; he will fail, the sooner the better but it will take awhile; many will die. Christians in Syria will lose out; they’ll have to suck it up.”
At least twice Landis said, Best thing that could happen would be a missile or two into the presidential palace. Take him out and get started with the business of building a democracy.
Landis was laudatory of the progress made in Libya, thanks to the courage of US in assassinating Qaddafi.
Landis figures that new leaders will sorta kinda develop emerge fight their way to the top; “revolutions and new leadership comes about by war.”
Excellent discussion. Ms. Leverett presented her arguments clearly and effectively. Well done.
“But the real test of Morsi’s policy with regard to American and Israeli dictates might be in fulfilling his campaign promise to lift the siege on Gaza. According to Israeli sources Clinton extracted a promise from him during her recent visit to maintain the blockade, while Hamas leaders assured the people of Gaza that their suffering would soon come to an end.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/17/clinton-in-cairo/