This Iranian proposal may very well end the world's Muslim problems.
A short time ago, Iran's Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the Muslim World to boycott anything and everything that originates with the Jewish people.
In response, Meyer M. Treinkman, a pharmacist, out of the kindness of his heart, offered to assist them in their boycott as follows:
"Any Muslim who has Syphilis must not be cured by Salvarsan discovered by a Jew, Dr. Ehrlich. He should not even try to find out whether he has Syphilis, because the Wasserman Test is the discovery of a Jew. If a Muslim suspects that he has Gonorrhea, he must not seek diagnosis, because he will be using the method of a Jew named Neissner.
"A Muslim who has heart disease must not use Digitalis, a discovery by a Jew, Ludwig Traube.
"Should he suffer with a toothache, he must not use Novocaine, a discovery of the Jews, Widal and Weil.
"If a Muslim has Diabetes, he must not use Insulin, the result of research by Minkowsky, a Jew. If one has a headache, he must shun Pyramidon and Antypyrin, due to the Jews, Spiro and Ellege.
"Muslims with convulsions must put up with them because it was a Jew, Oscar Leibreich, who proposed the use of Chloral Hydrate.
"Arabs must do likewise with their psychic ailments because Freud, father of psychoanalysis, was a Jew.
"Should a Muslim child get Diphtheria, he must refrain from the "Schick" reaction which was invented by the Jew, Bella Schick.
"Muslims should be ready to die in great numbers and must not permit treatment of ear and brain damage, work of Nobel Prize winner, Robert Baram.
"They should continue to die or remain crippled by Infantile Paralysis because the discoverer of the anti-polio vaccine is a Jew, Jonas Salk.
"Muslims must refuse to use Streptomycin and continue to die of Tuberculosis because a Jew, Zalman Waxman, invented the wonder drug against this killing disease.
"Muslim doctors must discard all discoveries and improvements by dermatologist Judas Sehn Benedict, or the lung specialist, Frawnkel, and of many other world renowned Jewish scientists and medical experts.
"In short, good and loyal Muslims properly and fittingly should remain afflicted with Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Heart Disease, Headaches, Typhus, Diabetes, Mental Disorders, Polio Convulsions and Tuberculosis and be proud to obey the Islamic boycott."
Oh, and remind me again, what medical contributions to the world have the Muslims made? Or contribution to the well-being of the world? Or the well-being of fellow Moslems!
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
SAUDI CONFIDENCE IN USA VANISHING as is their support for Obama
Alan note: Obama's anti-Israel, pro-Iran/Syria, pro-Shia Islam, chosen position loses Saudi support for a perceived treacherous, unreliable USA.
Another "ally" albbeit two-faced - being shoved under the Obama bus that destabilizes the WORLD as it moves forward. Far worse than Jimmuh the Idiot Carter's efforts to do the same. Moronic Obama for Islam and Marxism, Carter for Soviet Communism and sheer stupidity.
By Reva Bhalla
Something extraordinary, albeit not unexpected, is happening in the Persian Gulf region. The United States, lacking a coherent strategy to deal with Iran and too distracted to develop one, is struggling to navigate Iraq’s fractious political landscape in search of a deal that would allow Washington to keep a meaningful military presence in the country beyond the end-of-2011 deadline stipulated by the current Status of Forces Agreement. At the same time, Saudi Arabia, dubious of U.S. capabilities and intentions toward Iran, appears to be inching reluctantly toward an accommodation with its Persian adversary.
Iran clearly stands to gain from this dynamic in the short term as it seeks to reshape the balance of power in the world’s most active energy arteries. But Iranian power is neither deep nor absolute. Instead, Tehran finds itself racing against a timetable that hinges not only on the U.S. ability to shift its attention from its ongoing wars in the Middle East but also on Turkey’s ability to grow into its historic regional role.
The Iranian Position
Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said something last week that caught our attention. Speaking at Iran’s first Strategic Naval Conference in Tehran on July 13, Vahidi said the United States is “making endeavors to drive a wedge between regional countries with the aim of preventing the establishment of an indigenized security arrangement in the region, but those attempts are rooted in misanalyses and will not succeed.” The effect Vahidi spoke of refers to the Iranian redefinition of Persian Gulf power dynamics, one that in Iran’s ideal world ultimately would transform the local political, business, military and religious affairs of the Gulf states to favor the Shia and their patrons in Iran.
From Iran’s point of view, this is a natural evolution, and one worth waiting centuries for. It would see power concentrated among the Shia in Mesopotamia, eastern Arabia and the Levant at the expense of the Sunnis who have dominated this land since the 16th century, when the Safavid Empire lost Iraq to the Ottomans. Ironically, Iran owes its thanks for this historic opportunity to its two main adversaries — the Wahhabi Sunnis of al Qaeda who carried out the 9/11 attacks and the “Great Satan” that brought down Saddam Hussein. Should Iran succeed in filling a major power void in Iraq, a country that touches six Middle Eastern powers and demographically favors the Shia, Iran would theoretically have its western flank secured as well as an oil-rich outlet with which to further project its influence.
So far, Iran’s plan is on track. Unless the United States permanently can station substantial military forces in the region, Iran replaces the United States as the most powerful military force in the Persian Gulf region. In particular, Iran has the military ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz and has a clandestine network of operatives spread across the region. Through its deep penetration of the Iraqi government, Iran is also in the best position to influence Iraqi decision-making. Washington’s obvious struggle in trying to negotiate an extension of the U.S. deployment in Iraq is perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of Iranian resolve to secure its western flank.
The Iranian nuclear issue, as we have long argued, is largely a sideshow; a nuclear deterrent, if actually achieved, would certainly enhance Iranian security, but the most immediate imperative for Iran is to consolidate its position in Iraq. And as this weekend’s Iranian incursion into northern Iraq — ostensibly to fight Kurdish militants — shows, Iran is willing to make measured, periodic shows of force to convey that message.
While Iran already is well on its way to accomplishing its goals in Iraq, it needs two other key pieces to complete Tehran’s picture of a regional “indigenized security arrangement” that Vahidi spoke of. The first is an understanding with its main military challenger in the region, the United States. Such an understanding would entail everything from ensuring Iraqi Sunni military impotence to expanding Iranian energy rights beyond its borders to placing limits on U.S. military activity in the region, all in return for the guaranteed flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz and an Iranian pledge to stay clear of Saudi oil fields.
The second piece is an understanding with its main regional adversary, Saudi Arabia. Iran’s reshaping of Persian Gulf politics entails convincing its Sunni neighbors that resisting Iran is not worth the cost, especially when the United States does not seem to have the time or the resources to come to their aid at present. No matter how much money the Saudis throw at Western defense contractors, any military threat by the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council states against Iran will be hollow without an active U.S. military commitment. Iran’s goal, therefore, is to coerce the major Sunni powers into recognizing an expanded Iranian sphere of influence at a time when U.S. security guarantees in the region are starting to erode.
Of course, there is always a gap between intent and capability, especially in the Iranian case. Both negotiating tracks are charged with distrust, and meaningful progress is by no means guaranteed. That said, a number of signals have surfaced in recent weeks leading us to examine the potential for a Saudi-Iranian accommodation, however brief that may be.
The Saudi Position
Not surprisingly, Saudi Arabia is greatly unnerved by the political evolution in Iraq. The Saudis increasingly will rely on regional powers such as Turkey in trying to maintain a Sunni bulwark against Iran in Iraq, but Riyadh has largely resigned itself to the idea that Iraq, for now, is in Tehran’s hands. This is an uncomfortable reality for the Saudi royals to cope with, but what is amplifying Saudi Arabia’s concerns in the region right now — and apparently nudging Riyadh toward the negotiating table with Tehran — is the current situation in Bahrain.
When Shiite-led protests erupted in Bahrain in the spring, we did not view the demonstrations simply as a natural outgrowth of the so-called Arab Spring. There were certainly overlapping factors, but there was little hiding the fact that Iran had seized an opportunity to pose a nightmare scenario for the Saudi royals: an Iranian-backed Shiite uprising spreading from the isles of Bahrain to the Shiite-concentrated, oil-rich Eastern Province of the Saudi kingdom.
This explains Saudi Arabia’s hasty response to the Bahraini unrest, during which it led a rare military intervention of GCC forces in Bahrain at the invitation of Manama to stymie a broader Iranian destabilization campaign. The demonstrations in Bahrain are far calmer now than they were in mid-March at the peak of the crisis, but the concerns of the GCC states have not subsided, and for good reason. Halfhearted attempts at national dialogues aside, Shiite dissent in this part of the region is likely to endure, and this is a reality that Iran can exploit in the long term through its developing covert capabilities.
When we saw in late June that Saudi Arabia was willingly drawing down its military presence in Bahrain at the same time the Iranians were putting out feelers in the local press on an almost daily basis regarding negotiations with Riyadh, we discovered through our sources that the pieces were beginning to fall into place for Saudi-Iranian negotiations. To understand why, we have to examine the Saudi perception of the current U.S. position in the region.
The Saudis cannot fully trust U.S. intentions at this point. The U.S. position in Iraq is tenuous at best, and Riyadh cannot rule out the possibility of Washington entering its own accommodation with Iran and thus leaving Saudi Arabia in the lurch. The United States has three basic interests: to maintain the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, to reduce drastically the number of forces it has devoted to fighting wars with Sunni Islamist militants (who are also by definition at war with Iran), and to try to reconstruct a balance of power in the region that ultimately prevents any one state — whether Arab or Persian — from controlling all the oil in the Persian Gulf.
The U.S. position in this regard is flexible, and while developing an understanding with Iran is a trying process, nothing fundamentally binds the United States to Saudi Arabia. If the United States comes to the conclusion that it does not have any good options in the near term for dealing with Iran, a U.S.-Iranian accommodation — however jarring on the surface — is not out of the question.
More immediately, the main point of negotiation between the United States and Iran is the status of U.S. forces in Iraq. Iran would prefer to see U.S. troops completely removed from its western flank, but it has already seen dramatic reductions. The question for both sides moving forward concerns not only the size but also the disposition and orientation of those remaining forces and the question of how rapidly they can be reoriented from a more vulnerable residual advisory and assistance role to a blocking force against Iran. It also must take into account how inherently vulnerable a U.S. military presence in Iraq (not to mention the remaining diplomatic presence) is to Iranian conventional and unconventional means.
The United States may be willing to recognize Iranian demands when it comes to Iran’s designs for the Iraqi government or oil concessions in the Shiite south, but it also wants to ensure that Iran does not try to overstep its bounds and threaten Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth. To reinforce a potential accommodation with Iran, the United States needs to maintain a blocking force against Iran, and this is where the U.S.-Iranian negotiation appears to be deadlocked.
The threat of a double-cross is a real one for all sides to this conflict. Iran cannot trust that the United States, once freed up, will not engage in military action against Iran down the line. The Americans cannot trust that the Iranians will not make a bid for Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth (though the military logistics required for such a move are likely beyond Iran’s capabilities at this point). Finally, the Saudis can’t trust that the United States will defend it in a time of need, especially if the United States is preoccupied with other matters and/or has developed a relationship with Iran that it feels the need to maintain.
When all this is taken together — the threat illustrated by Shiite unrest in Bahrain, the tenuous U.S. position in Iraq and the potential for Washington to strike its own deal with Tehran — Riyadh may be seeing little choice but to search out a truce with Iran, at least until it can get a clearer sense of U.S. intentions. This does not mean that the Saudis would place more trust in a relationship with their historical rivals, the Persians, than they would in a relationship with the United States.
Saudi-Iranian animosity is embedded in a deep history of political, religious and economic competition between the two main powerhouses of the Persian Gulf, and it is not going to vanish with the scratch of a pen and a handshake. Instead, this would be a truce driven by short-term, tactical constraints. Such a truce would primarily aim to arrest Iranian covert activity linked to Shiite dissidents in the GCC states, giving the Sunni monarchist regimes a temporary sense of relief while they continue their efforts in trying to build up an Arab resistance to Iran.
But Iran would view such a preliminary understanding as the path toward a broader accommodation, one that would bestow recognition on Iran as the pre-eminent power of the Persian Gulf. Iran can thus be expected to make a variety of demands, all revolving around the idea of Sunni recognition of an expanded Iranian sphere of influence — a very difficult idea for Saudi Arabia to swallow.
This is where things get especially complicated. The United States theoretically might strike an accommodation with Iran, but it would do so only with the knowledge that it could rely on the traditional Sunni heavyweights in the region eventually to rebuild a relative balance of power.
If the major Sunni powers reach their own accommodation with Iran, independent of the United States, the U.S. position in the region becomes all the more questionable. What would be the limits of a Saudi-Iranian negotiation? Could the United States ensure, for example, that Saudi Arabia would not bargain away U.S. military installations in a negotiation with Iran?
The Iranian defense minister broached this very idea during his speech last week when he said, “the United States has failed to establish a sustainable security system in the Persian Gulf region, and it is not possible that many vessels will maintain a permanent presence in the region.” Vahidi was seeking to convey to fellow Iranians and trying to convince the Sunni Arab powers that a U.S. security guarantee in the region does not hold as much weight as it used to, and that with Iran now filling the void, the United States may well face a much more difficult time trying to maintain its existing military installations.
The question that naturally arises from Vahidi’s statement is the future status of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain, and whether Iran can instill just the right amount of fear in the minds of its Arab neighbors to shake the foundations of the U.S. military presence in the region. For now, Iran does not appear to have the military clout to threaten the GCC states to the point of forcing them to negotiate away their U.S. security guarantees in exchange for Iranian restraint. This is a threat, however, that Iran will continue to let slip and even one that Saudi Arabia quietly could use to capture Washington’s attention in the hopes of reinforcing U.S. support for the Sunni Arabs against Iran.
The Long-Term Scenario
The current dynamic places Iran in a prime position. Its political investment is paying off in Iraq, and it is positioning itself for negotiation with both the Saudis and the Americans that it hopes will fill out the contours of Iran’s regional sphere of influence. But Iranian power is not that durable in the long term.
Iran is well endowed with energy resources, but it is populous and mountainous. The cost of internal development means that while Iran can get by economically, it cannot prosper like many of its Arab competitors. Add to that a troubling demographic profile in which ethnic Persians constitute only a little more than half of the country’s population and developing challenges to the clerical establishment, and Iran clearly has a great deal going on internally distracting it from opportunities abroad.
The long-term regional picture also is not in Iran’s favor. Unlike Iran, Turkey is an ascendant country with the deep military, economic and political power to influence events in the Middle East — all under a Sunni banner that fits more naturally with the region’s religious landscape. Turkey also is the historical, indigenous check on Persian power. Though it will take time for Turkey to return to this role, strong hints of this dynamic already are coming to light.
In Iraq, Turkish influence can be felt across the political, business, security and cultural spheres as Ankara is working quietly and fastidiously to maintain a Sunni bulwark in the country and steep Turkish influence in the Arab world. And in Syria, though the Alawite regime led by the al Assads is not at a breakpoint, there is no doubt a confrontation building between Iran and Turkey over the future of the Syrian state.
Turkey has an interest in building up a viable Sunni political force in Syria that can eventually displace the Alawites, while Iran has every interest in preserving the current regime so as to maintain a strategic foothold in the Levant.
For now, the Turks are not looking for a confrontation with Iran, nor are they necessarily ready for one. Regional forces are accelerating Turkey’s rise, but it will take experience and additional pressures for Turkey to translate rhetoric into action when it comes to meaningful power projection. This is yet another factor that is likely driving the Saudis to enter their own dialogue with Iran at this time.
The Iranians are thus in a race against time. It may be a matter of a few short years before the United States frees up its attention span and is able to re-examine the power dynamics in the Persian Gulf with fresh vigor. Within that time, we would also expect Turkey to come into its own and assume its role as the region’s natural counterbalance to Iran. By then, the Iranians hope to have the structures and agreements in place to hold their ground against the prevailing regional forces, but that level of long-term security depends on Tehran’s ability to cut its way through two very thorny sets of negotiations with the Saudis and the Americans while it still has the upper hand.
Read more: The U.S.-Saudi Dilemma: Iran's Reshaping of Persian Gulf Politics | STRATFOR
Another "ally" albbeit two-faced - being shoved under the Obama bus that destabilizes the WORLD as it moves forward. Far worse than Jimmuh the Idiot Carter's efforts to do the same. Moronic Obama for Islam and Marxism, Carter for Soviet Communism and sheer stupidity.
By Reva Bhalla
Something extraordinary, albeit not unexpected, is happening in the Persian Gulf region. The United States, lacking a coherent strategy to deal with Iran and too distracted to develop one, is struggling to navigate Iraq’s fractious political landscape in search of a deal that would allow Washington to keep a meaningful military presence in the country beyond the end-of-2011 deadline stipulated by the current Status of Forces Agreement. At the same time, Saudi Arabia, dubious of U.S. capabilities and intentions toward Iran, appears to be inching reluctantly toward an accommodation with its Persian adversary.
Iran clearly stands to gain from this dynamic in the short term as it seeks to reshape the balance of power in the world’s most active energy arteries. But Iranian power is neither deep nor absolute. Instead, Tehran finds itself racing against a timetable that hinges not only on the U.S. ability to shift its attention from its ongoing wars in the Middle East but also on Turkey’s ability to grow into its historic regional role.
The Iranian Position
Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said something last week that caught our attention. Speaking at Iran’s first Strategic Naval Conference in Tehran on July 13, Vahidi said the United States is “making endeavors to drive a wedge between regional countries with the aim of preventing the establishment of an indigenized security arrangement in the region, but those attempts are rooted in misanalyses and will not succeed.” The effect Vahidi spoke of refers to the Iranian redefinition of Persian Gulf power dynamics, one that in Iran’s ideal world ultimately would transform the local political, business, military and religious affairs of the Gulf states to favor the Shia and their patrons in Iran.
From Iran’s point of view, this is a natural evolution, and one worth waiting centuries for. It would see power concentrated among the Shia in Mesopotamia, eastern Arabia and the Levant at the expense of the Sunnis who have dominated this land since the 16th century, when the Safavid Empire lost Iraq to the Ottomans. Ironically, Iran owes its thanks for this historic opportunity to its two main adversaries — the Wahhabi Sunnis of al Qaeda who carried out the 9/11 attacks and the “Great Satan” that brought down Saddam Hussein. Should Iran succeed in filling a major power void in Iraq, a country that touches six Middle Eastern powers and demographically favors the Shia, Iran would theoretically have its western flank secured as well as an oil-rich outlet with which to further project its influence.
So far, Iran’s plan is on track. Unless the United States permanently can station substantial military forces in the region, Iran replaces the United States as the most powerful military force in the Persian Gulf region. In particular, Iran has the military ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz and has a clandestine network of operatives spread across the region. Through its deep penetration of the Iraqi government, Iran is also in the best position to influence Iraqi decision-making. Washington’s obvious struggle in trying to negotiate an extension of the U.S. deployment in Iraq is perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of Iranian resolve to secure its western flank.
The Iranian nuclear issue, as we have long argued, is largely a sideshow; a nuclear deterrent, if actually achieved, would certainly enhance Iranian security, but the most immediate imperative for Iran is to consolidate its position in Iraq. And as this weekend’s Iranian incursion into northern Iraq — ostensibly to fight Kurdish militants — shows, Iran is willing to make measured, periodic shows of force to convey that message.
While Iran already is well on its way to accomplishing its goals in Iraq, it needs two other key pieces to complete Tehran’s picture of a regional “indigenized security arrangement” that Vahidi spoke of. The first is an understanding with its main military challenger in the region, the United States. Such an understanding would entail everything from ensuring Iraqi Sunni military impotence to expanding Iranian energy rights beyond its borders to placing limits on U.S. military activity in the region, all in return for the guaranteed flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz and an Iranian pledge to stay clear of Saudi oil fields.
The second piece is an understanding with its main regional adversary, Saudi Arabia. Iran’s reshaping of Persian Gulf politics entails convincing its Sunni neighbors that resisting Iran is not worth the cost, especially when the United States does not seem to have the time or the resources to come to their aid at present. No matter how much money the Saudis throw at Western defense contractors, any military threat by the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council states against Iran will be hollow without an active U.S. military commitment. Iran’s goal, therefore, is to coerce the major Sunni powers into recognizing an expanded Iranian sphere of influence at a time when U.S. security guarantees in the region are starting to erode.
Of course, there is always a gap between intent and capability, especially in the Iranian case. Both negotiating tracks are charged with distrust, and meaningful progress is by no means guaranteed. That said, a number of signals have surfaced in recent weeks leading us to examine the potential for a Saudi-Iranian accommodation, however brief that may be.
The Saudi Position
Not surprisingly, Saudi Arabia is greatly unnerved by the political evolution in Iraq. The Saudis increasingly will rely on regional powers such as Turkey in trying to maintain a Sunni bulwark against Iran in Iraq, but Riyadh has largely resigned itself to the idea that Iraq, for now, is in Tehran’s hands. This is an uncomfortable reality for the Saudi royals to cope with, but what is amplifying Saudi Arabia’s concerns in the region right now — and apparently nudging Riyadh toward the negotiating table with Tehran — is the current situation in Bahrain.
When Shiite-led protests erupted in Bahrain in the spring, we did not view the demonstrations simply as a natural outgrowth of the so-called Arab Spring. There were certainly overlapping factors, but there was little hiding the fact that Iran had seized an opportunity to pose a nightmare scenario for the Saudi royals: an Iranian-backed Shiite uprising spreading from the isles of Bahrain to the Shiite-concentrated, oil-rich Eastern Province of the Saudi kingdom.
This explains Saudi Arabia’s hasty response to the Bahraini unrest, during which it led a rare military intervention of GCC forces in Bahrain at the invitation of Manama to stymie a broader Iranian destabilization campaign. The demonstrations in Bahrain are far calmer now than they were in mid-March at the peak of the crisis, but the concerns of the GCC states have not subsided, and for good reason. Halfhearted attempts at national dialogues aside, Shiite dissent in this part of the region is likely to endure, and this is a reality that Iran can exploit in the long term through its developing covert capabilities.
When we saw in late June that Saudi Arabia was willingly drawing down its military presence in Bahrain at the same time the Iranians were putting out feelers in the local press on an almost daily basis regarding negotiations with Riyadh, we discovered through our sources that the pieces were beginning to fall into place for Saudi-Iranian negotiations. To understand why, we have to examine the Saudi perception of the current U.S. position in the region.
The Saudis cannot fully trust U.S. intentions at this point. The U.S. position in Iraq is tenuous at best, and Riyadh cannot rule out the possibility of Washington entering its own accommodation with Iran and thus leaving Saudi Arabia in the lurch. The United States has three basic interests: to maintain the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, to reduce drastically the number of forces it has devoted to fighting wars with Sunni Islamist militants (who are also by definition at war with Iran), and to try to reconstruct a balance of power in the region that ultimately prevents any one state — whether Arab or Persian — from controlling all the oil in the Persian Gulf.
The U.S. position in this regard is flexible, and while developing an understanding with Iran is a trying process, nothing fundamentally binds the United States to Saudi Arabia. If the United States comes to the conclusion that it does not have any good options in the near term for dealing with Iran, a U.S.-Iranian accommodation — however jarring on the surface — is not out of the question.
More immediately, the main point of negotiation between the United States and Iran is the status of U.S. forces in Iraq. Iran would prefer to see U.S. troops completely removed from its western flank, but it has already seen dramatic reductions. The question for both sides moving forward concerns not only the size but also the disposition and orientation of those remaining forces and the question of how rapidly they can be reoriented from a more vulnerable residual advisory and assistance role to a blocking force against Iran. It also must take into account how inherently vulnerable a U.S. military presence in Iraq (not to mention the remaining diplomatic presence) is to Iranian conventional and unconventional means.
The United States may be willing to recognize Iranian demands when it comes to Iran’s designs for the Iraqi government or oil concessions in the Shiite south, but it also wants to ensure that Iran does not try to overstep its bounds and threaten Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth. To reinforce a potential accommodation with Iran, the United States needs to maintain a blocking force against Iran, and this is where the U.S.-Iranian negotiation appears to be deadlocked.
The threat of a double-cross is a real one for all sides to this conflict. Iran cannot trust that the United States, once freed up, will not engage in military action against Iran down the line. The Americans cannot trust that the Iranians will not make a bid for Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth (though the military logistics required for such a move are likely beyond Iran’s capabilities at this point). Finally, the Saudis can’t trust that the United States will defend it in a time of need, especially if the United States is preoccupied with other matters and/or has developed a relationship with Iran that it feels the need to maintain.
When all this is taken together — the threat illustrated by Shiite unrest in Bahrain, the tenuous U.S. position in Iraq and the potential for Washington to strike its own deal with Tehran — Riyadh may be seeing little choice but to search out a truce with Iran, at least until it can get a clearer sense of U.S. intentions. This does not mean that the Saudis would place more trust in a relationship with their historical rivals, the Persians, than they would in a relationship with the United States.
Saudi-Iranian animosity is embedded in a deep history of political, religious and economic competition between the two main powerhouses of the Persian Gulf, and it is not going to vanish with the scratch of a pen and a handshake. Instead, this would be a truce driven by short-term, tactical constraints. Such a truce would primarily aim to arrest Iranian covert activity linked to Shiite dissidents in the GCC states, giving the Sunni monarchist regimes a temporary sense of relief while they continue their efforts in trying to build up an Arab resistance to Iran.
But Iran would view such a preliminary understanding as the path toward a broader accommodation, one that would bestow recognition on Iran as the pre-eminent power of the Persian Gulf. Iran can thus be expected to make a variety of demands, all revolving around the idea of Sunni recognition of an expanded Iranian sphere of influence — a very difficult idea for Saudi Arabia to swallow.
This is where things get especially complicated. The United States theoretically might strike an accommodation with Iran, but it would do so only with the knowledge that it could rely on the traditional Sunni heavyweights in the region eventually to rebuild a relative balance of power.
If the major Sunni powers reach their own accommodation with Iran, independent of the United States, the U.S. position in the region becomes all the more questionable. What would be the limits of a Saudi-Iranian negotiation? Could the United States ensure, for example, that Saudi Arabia would not bargain away U.S. military installations in a negotiation with Iran?
The Iranian defense minister broached this very idea during his speech last week when he said, “the United States has failed to establish a sustainable security system in the Persian Gulf region, and it is not possible that many vessels will maintain a permanent presence in the region.” Vahidi was seeking to convey to fellow Iranians and trying to convince the Sunni Arab powers that a U.S. security guarantee in the region does not hold as much weight as it used to, and that with Iran now filling the void, the United States may well face a much more difficult time trying to maintain its existing military installations.
The question that naturally arises from Vahidi’s statement is the future status of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain, and whether Iran can instill just the right amount of fear in the minds of its Arab neighbors to shake the foundations of the U.S. military presence in the region. For now, Iran does not appear to have the military clout to threaten the GCC states to the point of forcing them to negotiate away their U.S. security guarantees in exchange for Iranian restraint. This is a threat, however, that Iran will continue to let slip and even one that Saudi Arabia quietly could use to capture Washington’s attention in the hopes of reinforcing U.S. support for the Sunni Arabs against Iran.
The Long-Term Scenario
The current dynamic places Iran in a prime position. Its political investment is paying off in Iraq, and it is positioning itself for negotiation with both the Saudis and the Americans that it hopes will fill out the contours of Iran’s regional sphere of influence. But Iranian power is not that durable in the long term.
Iran is well endowed with energy resources, but it is populous and mountainous. The cost of internal development means that while Iran can get by economically, it cannot prosper like many of its Arab competitors. Add to that a troubling demographic profile in which ethnic Persians constitute only a little more than half of the country’s population and developing challenges to the clerical establishment, and Iran clearly has a great deal going on internally distracting it from opportunities abroad.
The long-term regional picture also is not in Iran’s favor. Unlike Iran, Turkey is an ascendant country with the deep military, economic and political power to influence events in the Middle East — all under a Sunni banner that fits more naturally with the region’s religious landscape. Turkey also is the historical, indigenous check on Persian power. Though it will take time for Turkey to return to this role, strong hints of this dynamic already are coming to light.
In Iraq, Turkish influence can be felt across the political, business, security and cultural spheres as Ankara is working quietly and fastidiously to maintain a Sunni bulwark in the country and steep Turkish influence in the Arab world. And in Syria, though the Alawite regime led by the al Assads is not at a breakpoint, there is no doubt a confrontation building between Iran and Turkey over the future of the Syrian state.
Turkey has an interest in building up a viable Sunni political force in Syria that can eventually displace the Alawites, while Iran has every interest in preserving the current regime so as to maintain a strategic foothold in the Levant.
For now, the Turks are not looking for a confrontation with Iran, nor are they necessarily ready for one. Regional forces are accelerating Turkey’s rise, but it will take experience and additional pressures for Turkey to translate rhetoric into action when it comes to meaningful power projection. This is yet another factor that is likely driving the Saudis to enter their own dialogue with Iran at this time.
The Iranians are thus in a race against time. It may be a matter of a few short years before the United States frees up its attention span and is able to re-examine the power dynamics in the Persian Gulf with fresh vigor. Within that time, we would also expect Turkey to come into its own and assume its role as the region’s natural counterbalance to Iran. By then, the Iranians hope to have the structures and agreements in place to hold their ground against the prevailing regional forces, but that level of long-term security depends on Tehran’s ability to cut its way through two very thorny sets of negotiations with the Saudis and the Americans while it still has the upper hand.
Read more: The U.S.-Saudi Dilemma: Iran's Reshaping of Persian Gulf Politics | STRATFOR
Friday, July 15, 2011
SUMMARY DEBKA EXCLUSIVES JULY 15TH
July 8, 2011 Briefs:
Erdogan backtracks on normalizing ties with Israel. Israel must first apologize for 9 deaths on Turkish vessel last year, compensate victims and end Gaza blockade.
Barack replies: Israel acted legally according to UN report. Responsibility for deaths rests with Turkey and IHH.
Syrian security forces kill 15 protesters in Hama Friday as quarter of a million turned out under slogan: No to dialogue with Assad!.
Qaddafi again threatens to send hundreds of Libyans as "martyrs" to Europe.
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July 9 2011 Briefs:
US within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda, Defense Secretary Panetta. Most of 20 remaining leaders are in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, North Africa, he said on way to Afghanistan.
Iran says it test-fired missiles to the Indian Ocean for the first time earlier this year.
Tehran also claims it can hit US aircraft carriers.·
Syrian security forces kill 16 protesters demonstrating in several towns Friday •
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 10, 2011 Briefs:
An Israeli woman killed, 14 injured, two seriously in Israeli tourist minibus accident in Georgia 200 km west of Tbilisi.
Israeli cabinet approves exclusive economic zone in Mediterranean that includes Tamar and Leviathan oil wells.
The maps and coordinates will be submitted to the UN
It is based on partition treaty last year between Israel and Cyprus and challenged by Lebanon.
Israel air force strikes N. Gaza tunnel Sunday after Palestinians fired 3 Qassams overnight.
Syrian FM summons US, French ambassadors to explain Hama visits to protesters.
Assad government opens two-day "dialogue with opposition leaders". Organizers of anti government protests boycott the event.
Murdoch's News of the World and Israel's media tycoons
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Murdoch's News of the World and Israel's media tycoons
DEBKAfile Special Analysis
10 July. The News of the World hacking scandal hanging over Rupert Murdoch's global empire and British Prime minister David Cameron could conceivably erupt in Israel where tycoons with large media holdings also aspire to determine who rules the country. Tabloid methods are just as dodgy in Israel, but the difference lies in that the influence the British media has over the voter thanks to their high professional standards which attract huge audiences.
In Israel, local and foreign billionaires have successfully wielded the media against government decisions and persons more than once, but they miss influencing the voter. In every general election in the last two decades, the average Israeli voter has turned against the op-ed views of the mainstream newspapers and TV news channels.
Israeli newspaper and news broadcasts' audiences are shrinking because they offer too little competently-produced news and are swamped with over-aggressive advertizing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 11, 2011 Briefs:
French call for talks with Muammar Qaddafi causes dismay in NATO.
Defense minister Gerard Lonquet said it was time the rebels talked to the Libyan ruler.
Armored Syrian forces storms third-largest Syrian city of Homs, killing at least two, injuring 20.
Cyprus news agency reports at least 10 killed in massive explosion at southern Evangelos Florakis military base early Monday. DEBKAfile: The blast hit a munitions dump storing thousands of rockets and shells confiscated in 2009 from the Iranian Francop bound for Hizballah.
The blast cut off power for most of the island.
US will take unilateral action to deal with Iran-armed Shiite militias threatening US troops in Iraq. Leon Panetta made this pledge Monday on first visit to Iraq as defense secretary.
June saw 14 US service deaths, July three, for which Washington holds pro-Iranian Shiite militias responsible.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clinton: The US has no interest in Assad staying in power
DEBKAfile Special Report
11 July. Monday, July 11, after a pro-Assad mob invaded the US embassy in Damascus, a personal attack on Syrian President Bashar Assad was heard in Washington for the first time. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Assad "is not indispensible and we have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power."
Assad's hooligans rampaged through the building, damaged equipment, raised the Syrian flag and smeared offensive graffiti on the walls. Syrian security officers stood by and did nothing.
DEBKAfile's intelligence sources reported that the ambassador, a small number of personnel on duty and the US Marines guarding the building took shelter in a fortified wing of the building behind concrete walls and steel doors equipped with supplies to sustain them for a week against a siege. They used a special video link to stay in touch with the situation room of the State Department in Washington. .
Five years ago, the American embassy in Damascus itself was attacked for the first time. On Sept. 13, 2006, al Qaeda detonated a bomb car outside the building as a gang of armed men tried to break in. Then, they failed to gain entry. This Monday was the first time a large number of intruders has ever managed to storm an American embassy and ambassadorial residential compound in the Middle East.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gaza blockade in reverse: Hamas fortifies Egyptian border against Libyan infiltrators
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
11 July. Hamas complains about the Israeli and Egyptian blockades. However, bizarrely, while continuing its own smuggling operations underground, illicitly importing munitions, rockets and explosives for terrorist use, on the surface, Hamas is putting in place a rampart for blockading its own border with Egyptian Sinai, DEBKAfile reports. They are concerned by the spillover of post-revolutionary chaos from Egypt and Sinai and the new influx of fighters and smugglers from Libya. The Libyans and al Qaeda-linked Sinai Bedouin have gone into the smuggling tunnel business on their own account and are causing mayhem.
Hamas blames the unwelcome Libyans, housed by the "Army of Islam" (Al Qaeda affiliates) in the Gaza Strip and provided with shelter and food in the refugee camps around Gaza City, for the resurgence of rocket fire into Israel in violation of the informal ceasefire agreed with Israel four months ago.
A Palestinian work force is working overtime to throw up a fortified earthworks barrier 10-12 meters high and 14 kilometers long, running from the Rafah crossing up to the Mediterranean 50 meters inside Gaza territory.
July 12, 2011 Briefs:
Obama says US ready to support Libya negotiations provided Qaddafi steps aside.
French FM Juppe denies direct talks with Qaddafi government but admits contacts and urges early government-rebel negotiations.
Masked saboteurs blow up Egyptian gas pipe to Israel and Jordan in Sinai for fourth time in six months, second time in a week. The blast occurred near El Arish early Tuesday.
French PM Fillon says pro-Assad loyalists attacks on French and US embassies make it increasingly difficult for Syrian ruler to stay in power.
String of US drone attacks Tuesday kills 30 in North and South Waziristan terrorist strongholds.
Middle East quartet will reconvene to break impasse on Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Cyprus' navy commander Andreas Ionnides was among 12 killed when 90 containers of explosives and weapons exploded at military base Sunday.
The illegal cargo was seized in 2009 from an Iranian ship bound for Syria.
Cypriot defense minister and military chief resign as island struggles against extensive blackouts caused by destruction of main power station.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afghan President's half-brother's assassination attests to superior Taliban capabilities
DEBKAfile Special Report
12 July. Tuesday July 12, the day French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai's half-brother, Kandahar strongman Ahmad Wali, was shot dead by a bodyguard. This was no coincidence, DEBKAfile's sources note: It was Taliban's way of again refuting as unreal the accounts of the situation in Afghanistan presented by US, British and French leaders and parading its penetration of NATO and Afghan government's top counsels.
Four insurgent terrorist attacks in the two weeks since June 28 had these objectives.
One was the attack on the Kabul Intercontinental shortly before a top-secret high-level security conference. A US helicopter had to be called in to end their siege. The day before British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in Afghanistan, a British soldier was abducted from his base in Helmund province and murdered. And the day Leon Panetta paid his first unannounced visit to Afghanistan as defense secretary, one of the bodyguards of a high-ranking deputy of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security opened fire on a group of US military advisers and killed two of them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 13, 2001 Briefs:
Palestinian killed in clash with IDF force in Al Fara camp NW of Nablus on West Bank. Force attacked with firebomb on arrival to arrest Jihad Islami suspect.
A fourth Qassam fired from Gaza in 12 hour Wednesday without causing damage.
Israeli air force overnight targeted two Palestinian munitions workshops in N. Gaza after first two missiles were aimed at Shear Hanegev.
First Israeli homeland drill in evacuating population in war emergency starts Wednesday in Herzliya, Kfar Shmaryahu north of Tel Aviv.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
US, French envoys to visit more anti-Assad protest hubs. First attack on Syrian oil infrastructure
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
13 July. After Hama, US and French ambassadors to Damascus Robert Ford and Eric Chevalier will Friday, July 15, try to reach the eastern Syrian oil town of Deir al-Zour on the Iraqi border to meet opposition leaders, although DEBKAfile's reports government forces are poised to stop them. The town is also a Sunni tribal and Kurdish center.
In a key policy shift, US President Obama Tuesday questioned Bashar Assad's legitimacy. And another first: A bomb blast damaged East Syrian gas pipelines.
Friday, July 15, the half a million dwellers of Deir al-Zour plan their fifth consecutive weekly anti-Assad rally, braving the two 9th Division tank brigades and commando units besieging the city and using live ammunition against them. If the ambassadors gain entry to this town, they will also make for another flashpoint Euphrates Valley city, the much smaller Abu Kemal (100,000).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 14, 2011 Briefs:
A suicide bomber killed four people in a Kandahar mosque holding memorial service for Afghan president's assassinated half-brother.
Two more Qassam missiles fired from Gaza Thursday – three in all. Aimed at Ashkelon and Shear Hanegev they exploded harmlessly.
Israeli air force in action over Gaza Wednesday night after three more missiles rounds struck two tunnels.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Libyan War is over. Obama makes Moscow peace broker. NATO halts strikes
DEBKAfile Exclusive
14 July. Bar the shouting, the Libyan war virtually ended Thursday morning, July 14, when US President Barack Obama called Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to hand Moscow the lead in peace negotiations for Muammar Qaddafi to step down and make way for a transitional administration. He thereby accepted the Russian-Libyan peace formula over NATO's heads.
Instead of standing in the dock in The Hague, Qaddafi and his sons will take their seats in talks for Libya's next regime, having waited out NATO's operation to unseat him.
By the time Obama called Medvedev, the individual governments which had spearheaded the anti-Qaddafi campaign were quietly melting away. From Saturday, July 9, NATO air strikes against Tripoli and government targets were discontinued; Italy withdrew its warplanes last week; France urged negotiations to start and the British defense secretary admitted his ground corps, naval and air forces do not have the means to continue the war.
Erdogan backtracks on normalizing ties with Israel. Israel must first apologize for 9 deaths on Turkish vessel last year, compensate victims and end Gaza blockade.
Barack replies: Israel acted legally according to UN report. Responsibility for deaths rests with Turkey and IHH.
Syrian security forces kill 15 protesters in Hama Friday as quarter of a million turned out under slogan: No to dialogue with Assad!.
Qaddafi again threatens to send hundreds of Libyans as "martyrs" to Europe.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 9 2011 Briefs:
US within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda, Defense Secretary Panetta. Most of 20 remaining leaders are in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, North Africa, he said on way to Afghanistan.
Iran says it test-fired missiles to the Indian Ocean for the first time earlier this year.
Tehran also claims it can hit US aircraft carriers.·
Syrian security forces kill 16 protesters demonstrating in several towns Friday •
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 10, 2011 Briefs:
An Israeli woman killed, 14 injured, two seriously in Israeli tourist minibus accident in Georgia 200 km west of Tbilisi.
Israeli cabinet approves exclusive economic zone in Mediterranean that includes Tamar and Leviathan oil wells.
The maps and coordinates will be submitted to the UN
It is based on partition treaty last year between Israel and Cyprus and challenged by Lebanon.
Israel air force strikes N. Gaza tunnel Sunday after Palestinians fired 3 Qassams overnight.
Syrian FM summons US, French ambassadors to explain Hama visits to protesters.
Assad government opens two-day "dialogue with opposition leaders". Organizers of anti government protests boycott the event.
Murdoch's News of the World and Israel's media tycoons
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Murdoch's News of the World and Israel's media tycoons
DEBKAfile Special Analysis
10 July. The News of the World hacking scandal hanging over Rupert Murdoch's global empire and British Prime minister David Cameron could conceivably erupt in Israel where tycoons with large media holdings also aspire to determine who rules the country. Tabloid methods are just as dodgy in Israel, but the difference lies in that the influence the British media has over the voter thanks to their high professional standards which attract huge audiences.
In Israel, local and foreign billionaires have successfully wielded the media against government decisions and persons more than once, but they miss influencing the voter. In every general election in the last two decades, the average Israeli voter has turned against the op-ed views of the mainstream newspapers and TV news channels.
Israeli newspaper and news broadcasts' audiences are shrinking because they offer too little competently-produced news and are swamped with over-aggressive advertizing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 11, 2011 Briefs:
French call for talks with Muammar Qaddafi causes dismay in NATO.
Defense minister Gerard Lonquet said it was time the rebels talked to the Libyan ruler.
Armored Syrian forces storms third-largest Syrian city of Homs, killing at least two, injuring 20.
Cyprus news agency reports at least 10 killed in massive explosion at southern Evangelos Florakis military base early Monday. DEBKAfile: The blast hit a munitions dump storing thousands of rockets and shells confiscated in 2009 from the Iranian Francop bound for Hizballah.
The blast cut off power for most of the island.
US will take unilateral action to deal with Iran-armed Shiite militias threatening US troops in Iraq. Leon Panetta made this pledge Monday on first visit to Iraq as defense secretary.
June saw 14 US service deaths, July three, for which Washington holds pro-Iranian Shiite militias responsible.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clinton: The US has no interest in Assad staying in power
DEBKAfile Special Report
11 July. Monday, July 11, after a pro-Assad mob invaded the US embassy in Damascus, a personal attack on Syrian President Bashar Assad was heard in Washington for the first time. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Assad "is not indispensible and we have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power."
Assad's hooligans rampaged through the building, damaged equipment, raised the Syrian flag and smeared offensive graffiti on the walls. Syrian security officers stood by and did nothing.
DEBKAfile's intelligence sources reported that the ambassador, a small number of personnel on duty and the US Marines guarding the building took shelter in a fortified wing of the building behind concrete walls and steel doors equipped with supplies to sustain them for a week against a siege. They used a special video link to stay in touch with the situation room of the State Department in Washington. .
Five years ago, the American embassy in Damascus itself was attacked for the first time. On Sept. 13, 2006, al Qaeda detonated a bomb car outside the building as a gang of armed men tried to break in. Then, they failed to gain entry. This Monday was the first time a large number of intruders has ever managed to storm an American embassy and ambassadorial residential compound in the Middle East.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gaza blockade in reverse: Hamas fortifies Egyptian border against Libyan infiltrators
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
11 July. Hamas complains about the Israeli and Egyptian blockades. However, bizarrely, while continuing its own smuggling operations underground, illicitly importing munitions, rockets and explosives for terrorist use, on the surface, Hamas is putting in place a rampart for blockading its own border with Egyptian Sinai, DEBKAfile reports. They are concerned by the spillover of post-revolutionary chaos from Egypt and Sinai and the new influx of fighters and smugglers from Libya. The Libyans and al Qaeda-linked Sinai Bedouin have gone into the smuggling tunnel business on their own account and are causing mayhem.
Hamas blames the unwelcome Libyans, housed by the "Army of Islam" (Al Qaeda affiliates) in the Gaza Strip and provided with shelter and food in the refugee camps around Gaza City, for the resurgence of rocket fire into Israel in violation of the informal ceasefire agreed with Israel four months ago.
A Palestinian work force is working overtime to throw up a fortified earthworks barrier 10-12 meters high and 14 kilometers long, running from the Rafah crossing up to the Mediterranean 50 meters inside Gaza territory.
July 12, 2011 Briefs:
Obama says US ready to support Libya negotiations provided Qaddafi steps aside.
French FM Juppe denies direct talks with Qaddafi government but admits contacts and urges early government-rebel negotiations.
Masked saboteurs blow up Egyptian gas pipe to Israel and Jordan in Sinai for fourth time in six months, second time in a week. The blast occurred near El Arish early Tuesday.
French PM Fillon says pro-Assad loyalists attacks on French and US embassies make it increasingly difficult for Syrian ruler to stay in power.
String of US drone attacks Tuesday kills 30 in North and South Waziristan terrorist strongholds.
Middle East quartet will reconvene to break impasse on Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Cyprus' navy commander Andreas Ionnides was among 12 killed when 90 containers of explosives and weapons exploded at military base Sunday.
The illegal cargo was seized in 2009 from an Iranian ship bound for Syria.
Cypriot defense minister and military chief resign as island struggles against extensive blackouts caused by destruction of main power station.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afghan President's half-brother's assassination attests to superior Taliban capabilities
DEBKAfile Special Report
12 July. Tuesday July 12, the day French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai's half-brother, Kandahar strongman Ahmad Wali, was shot dead by a bodyguard. This was no coincidence, DEBKAfile's sources note: It was Taliban's way of again refuting as unreal the accounts of the situation in Afghanistan presented by US, British and French leaders and parading its penetration of NATO and Afghan government's top counsels.
Four insurgent terrorist attacks in the two weeks since June 28 had these objectives.
One was the attack on the Kabul Intercontinental shortly before a top-secret high-level security conference. A US helicopter had to be called in to end their siege. The day before British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in Afghanistan, a British soldier was abducted from his base in Helmund province and murdered. And the day Leon Panetta paid his first unannounced visit to Afghanistan as defense secretary, one of the bodyguards of a high-ranking deputy of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security opened fire on a group of US military advisers and killed two of them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 13, 2001 Briefs:
Palestinian killed in clash with IDF force in Al Fara camp NW of Nablus on West Bank. Force attacked with firebomb on arrival to arrest Jihad Islami suspect.
A fourth Qassam fired from Gaza in 12 hour Wednesday without causing damage.
Israeli air force overnight targeted two Palestinian munitions workshops in N. Gaza after first two missiles were aimed at Shear Hanegev.
First Israeli homeland drill in evacuating population in war emergency starts Wednesday in Herzliya, Kfar Shmaryahu north of Tel Aviv.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
US, French envoys to visit more anti-Assad protest hubs. First attack on Syrian oil infrastructure
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
13 July. After Hama, US and French ambassadors to Damascus Robert Ford and Eric Chevalier will Friday, July 15, try to reach the eastern Syrian oil town of Deir al-Zour on the Iraqi border to meet opposition leaders, although DEBKAfile's reports government forces are poised to stop them. The town is also a Sunni tribal and Kurdish center.
In a key policy shift, US President Obama Tuesday questioned Bashar Assad's legitimacy. And another first: A bomb blast damaged East Syrian gas pipelines.
Friday, July 15, the half a million dwellers of Deir al-Zour plan their fifth consecutive weekly anti-Assad rally, braving the two 9th Division tank brigades and commando units besieging the city and using live ammunition against them. If the ambassadors gain entry to this town, they will also make for another flashpoint Euphrates Valley city, the much smaller Abu Kemal (100,000).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 14, 2011 Briefs:
A suicide bomber killed four people in a Kandahar mosque holding memorial service for Afghan president's assassinated half-brother.
Two more Qassam missiles fired from Gaza Thursday – three in all. Aimed at Ashkelon and Shear Hanegev they exploded harmlessly.
Israeli air force in action over Gaza Wednesday night after three more missiles rounds struck two tunnels.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Libyan War is over. Obama makes Moscow peace broker. NATO halts strikes
DEBKAfile Exclusive
14 July. Bar the shouting, the Libyan war virtually ended Thursday morning, July 14, when US President Barack Obama called Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to hand Moscow the lead in peace negotiations for Muammar Qaddafi to step down and make way for a transitional administration. He thereby accepted the Russian-Libyan peace formula over NATO's heads.
Instead of standing in the dock in The Hague, Qaddafi and his sons will take their seats in talks for Libya's next regime, having waited out NATO's operation to unseat him.
By the time Obama called Medvedev, the individual governments which had spearheaded the anti-Qaddafi campaign were quietly melting away. From Saturday, July 9, NATO air strikes against Tripoli and government targets were discontinued; Italy withdrew its warplanes last week; France urged negotiations to start and the British defense secretary admitted his ground corps, naval and air forces do not have the means to continue the war.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
NO ORIGINAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE EXISTS IN HAWAII !!!
"What I believe you are looking at is a classic example of an attempt at plausible deniability," wrote Doug Vogt, who has filed a criminal complaint that charges Obama's birth record is forged.
Vogt, who describes himself as an expert in documents, typesetting, imaging, scanners and document imaging programs and has owned Archive Index Systems since 1993, referenced the widely broadcast White House event when officials, including then-White House Counsel Robert Bauer and Obama's communications director Daniel Pfeiffer, released the purported Hawaiian "Certificate of Live Birth."
Jerome Corsi's new book, "Where's the Birth Certificate?," is now available for immediate shipping, autographed by the author, only from the WND Superstore.
"Everything that came out of the mouths of both these men and the president's was carefully orchestrated and scripted. It also implies that the president's contingency plan was that in case the forgery was detected, that one or both of them would take the blame," Vogt concluded.
He said in the affidavit, a copy of which was obtained by WND, "The preponderance of evidence leads me to conclude that the Certificate of Live Birth the White House presented at the 8:48 a.m. news conference (on April 27) and not mentioned on television an hour later is a forgery."
He continued, "A strong legal argument can be made that per U.S. Code Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 47, Sec.1028(a)(2 and 4) Mr. Pfeiffer and Mr. Robert Bauer could have made themselves principles in the forgery.
There is also the possibility that the director of the Department of Health in Hawaii knows much more about this forgery than she is telling.
If it is later proven in federal court that this Certificate of Live Birth issued by the Department of Health is a forgery, then any and all personnel involved with the forgery, would also be principles in the forgery.
Read the full analysis of the White House presentation.
"I am sure that there is someone at the Department of Health who searched their document imaging system to find the certificates that became the elements used to assemble the final Obama fraudulent Certificate. An FBI investigation in Hawaii will be necessary to get to the whole truth of this scandal," he said.
Obama is tied in to the plot, Vogt contends, through his speech shortly after the Hawaii document was released, in which he referenced "the old history of the Short Form certification" and then said, "We've posted the Certification that is given by the State of Hawaii on the Internet for everybody to see."
The president didn't reference the newly released "Certificate of Live Birth" unveiled at the news conference, Vogt writes, in his address that day.
What the White House released:
"Let me ask you a simple question," Vogt writes, "let's say you live in New York, and you were born in California and you want two copies of your Certificate of Live Birth, not because you need it for a passport application or any other legal reason, but just because you want to show it to some friends. So you pay your high priced lawyer to fly on a moment's notice to California and back again with your Certificate.
This whole process has cost you thousands. Are you going to want to see it and take possession of at least one of the Certificates? The obvious answer is YES. Next, read the answer given by Mr. Pfeiffer and Robert Bauer from the 8:48 a.m. news conference":
Question: And this is going to sound …. I mean, you can just anticipate what people are going to …. remain unconvinced. They're going to say that this is just a photocopy of a piece of paper, you could have typed anything in there. Will the actual certificate be on display or viewable at any …. (laughter.)
Will the president be holding it?
MR. PFEIFFER: He will not, and I will not leave it here for him to do so. But it will …. the State Department of Health in Hawaii will obviously attest that that is a …. what they have on file. As Bob said, it's in a book in Hawaii.
MR. BAUER: And you'll see the letter from the director of the Health Department that states that she oversaw the copy and is attesting to ….
"Plausible deniability refers to the denial of blame in loose and informal chains of command where upper leadership quarantine the blame to the lower management, and the lower management are often inaccessible, meaning confirming responsibility for the action is nearly impossible," Vogt said. "In the case that illegal or otherwise disreputable and unpopular activities become public, high-ranking officials may deny any awareness of such act or any connection to the agents used to carry out such acts. This method was used in the Nixon administration during the Watergate scandal to protect the president – it did not work then."
Case of fraud advances
Jerome Corsi, Ph.D., the author of "Where's The Birth Certificate," said Vogt "continues to advance the case that the Obama birth certificate was fraudulently contrived in an attempt to deflect the news cycle from the issues I raised in 'Where's the Birth Certificate?' – a book that was set to crush Obama on the eligibility issue, unless Obama responded."
Plans to make the Obama document public were being made just as Corsi's book reached No. 1 on Amazon, weeks ahead of the book's release.
"Unfortunately, rather than tell the truth, the White House rushed to get a forged document into the waiting hands of a compliant and loving mainstream media," Corsi said. "Rather than establish a chain of evidence that would establish the PDF file released on the White House website as legitimate, the Obama administration and the Hawaii DOH continued their dance, pretending it was impossible to release a long-form birth certificate."
Corsi said Vogt's analysis "shows not only that the Hawaii DOH remains complicit with the Obama White House in advancing the fraud that Obama was born in Hawaii, but also shows the cover-up is continuing."
"The public must now demand to see the 'best evidence' of the Obama birth certificate – namely, the document itself," he said.
Vogt's affidavit describes several specific concerns, including alleged anomalies in the image released to the public, Obama's dispatching of an attorney to travel to Hawaii for such a document and the careful language that was used to describe its acquistion.
What "waiver"?
Vogt cited Bauer's statement that, "Early last week the decision was made to review the legal basis for seeking a waiver from the long-standing prohibition in the state Department of Health on releasing the long-form birth certificate. And so we undertook a legal analysis and determined a waiver request could be made, that we had the grounds upon which to make that request."
The affidavit describes how Obama's private attorney, Judy Corley of the law firm of Perkins Coie, was dispatched to travel to Hawaii to retrieve the document.
Continued Bauer, "The department, as I understood it, after reviewing the law and reviewing the grounds asserted in the request, came to the conclusion that a waiver could be appropriately granted. We were advised that the long-form birth certificate could be copied and made available to us as early as Monday, April 25th – the day before yesterday. And we made arrangements for counsel to travel to Honolulu to pick it up and it was returned to the White House yesterday afternoon."
But Vogt notes Hawaii law requires, "Subject to the requirements of sections 338-16, 338-17, and 338-18, the Department of Health shall, upon request, furnish to any applicant a certified copy of any certificate."
"The law clearly states 'shall,' that does not mean maybe or 'out of the goodness of their hearts.' It means the Health Department must issue a copy of the Certificate of Live Birth not the Certification if requested. The Hawaiian law has a list of who can receive the Certificate and they include over 20 individuals, as well as government agencies."
He wrote that Loretta Fuddy, the chief of the health department, had announced an "exception" to departmental policy, even though other long-form certificates had been made available to others only weeks before Obama's request.
Which document?
Several forms of the birth document were distributed, including copied images handed out to reporters, the online image and an image taken by a selected reporter who was allowed to see the White House copy.
Vogt says the evidence indicates the "original" copy at the White House may have been a descendant of the online image, not the other way around.
He says the image distributed to media has the previously reported registrar's rubber stamp anomaly, with "TXE" instead of "THE." The reporter's image is from Savannah Guthrie of NBC, who was allowed to see one of the White House copies that "arrived from Hawaii".
"She claims she touched it and felt the raised seal, or what looks like a seal. This was important to Robert Bauer and company because the copy they showed the news people did not show any embossed seal.
So the White House handlers felt it necessary to have at least one reporter, they could trust, see and feel the Certificate. She was also permitted to take a photo of the Certificate, which we will assume was done by her camera phone, because the quality was not very good," Vogt explained.
The top image is from the Guthrie image, the bottom of from what was given to reporters. Both appear to have the "TXE" error.
Bottom image is from another document just a few weeks earlier that does not have the "TXE" error embedded.
Vogt notes several discrepancies, including an "italicized E" under the "A" in Alvin in the image given to reporters that appears not to be present in Guthrie's image. He concedes, however, it could be explained by the low-resolution of the latter image.
He notes that the PDF image that was uploaded from the White House, which reportedly was scanned from a hard copy, reveals it was created April 27 on a Mac computer.
"On the PDF file the italics "E" under the "A" in Alvin also shows up clearly. … That would mean that [the image given reporters and the PDF file] have a common origin.
"The most logical conclusion is that [the image given to reporters and the image from Guthrie] were produced from the same file, namely the PDF file. … The only way to know for sure would be to have the White House place both certificates next to each other and photograph or scan them."
Exactly the same
Further, he said, "What is interesting about these three images of the registrar's seal and the date stamp just to the left of it, is that all are in the exact same position to the hundredths of an inch and I mean both horizontally and vertically to the above form.
So you have two certificates [the copies the White House says came from Hawaii] with two hand applied rubber stamps on the bottom and a hand placed embossed seal applied by a machine and all three are in the exact same position.
It is impossible to put two forms next to each other and hand stamp them as shown and get all in exactly the same position, along with being placed almost perfectly straight on the two forms.
This could only be done with a graphics program like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. Keep in mind the clerk or registrar has no reason or preference requirement to place these stamps in exactly the same position."
Vogt said, "The preponderance of evidence leads me to conclude that the Certificate of Live Birth, the White House presented at the 8:48 a.m. news conference and not mentioned on television an hour later, is a forgery."
Corsi said it's mostly likely that "there is no long-form birth certificate in the Hawaii DOH vault, or if there is one, it is a mere print-out of the PDF file."
"Very likely the PDF file is the 'best evidence' of the document, especially if all the paper documents of the Obama long-form birth certificate derive from that electronic file," Corsi said.
"Soon the American public will have compelling expert testimony that the Obama birth certificate was electronically manufactured and electronically modified – using as templates various authentic birth certificates, including the Nordyke twins' birth certificates," he said. "This crude forgery will not survive genuine forensic expert examination – but the White House will continue lying – and showing the one copy with the 'seal' only to a trusted press photographer that the White House knew would not ask any critical questions."
Custody
Vogt also pointed to the chain of custody for the physical documents that the White House said it got from the state of Hawaii, brought to Washington Obama's attorney and then handed over to the White House. But unknown is who created the online image that many experts believe shows evidence of manipulation.
Corsi points out that the government's own guidelines for accepting the authenticity of an electronic document features a long list of conditions.
The Government Printing Office "will inform users about a publication's integrity and chain of custody through the designation of at least 2 different levels of authentication, 'authentic' and 'official.'
GPO defines 'authentic' as content that is verified by GPO to be complete and unaltered when compared to the version received by GPO. 'Official' content is content that is approved by, contributed by, or harvested from an official source in accordance with accepted program specifications," the government outlines.
Such provenance has yet to be offered regarding the White House document, he explains.
When the White House released Obama's document in April, officials with the Hawaii Department of Health and the office of Gov. Neal Abercrombie declined to respond to WND requests for a simple confirmation that the image released in Washington was an accurate representation of the information in the state's files.
The previous reports on Vogt's criminal complaint:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=305705
Criminal complaint charges Obama birth record 'forged'
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=306953
Criminal complaint details birth-certificate 'forgery'
Why did Obama release electronic birth certificate?
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=308277
COMMENT
Listen to the idiot Obots still trying to defend their little Communist God from all those honest Americans who are trying as hard as they can to save our Country and protect our Freedom.
"TXE" is not "THE" and this is from a rubber stamp! Hawaii would not keep and continue to use a rubber stamp that the stamp manufacturer cast with "THE" misspelled "TXE"!
Nobody can misspell a word on a rubber stamp accidentally as they ink and then stamp it.
The document that the "TXE" appears on had to have been redacted by a computer program.
The fact nobody caught this obvious typo shows just how childish and inept these people really are. The "TXE" mistake shows without a doubt the image has been altered and is not a actual copy of any actual document.
If one part has been redacted one has to at least wonder what else is not real. Be leery of all these Obots that fill these blogs with disinformation. Some are paid to do so. Some have several people posting under one name as they post 24-7. This group is organized and well funded. Believe not one word they type - our Freedom is at stake.
Now lets simplify this discussion and make it simple enough for any 5th grader, even one from a democRAT family.
If your daddy was a Kenyan Brit, you can never be fit for the office of POTUS
No Birth Certificate, or Certificate of Live Birth needed. Just A2. S1. p5. of our Great Old Constitution. If your father was not an American Citizen at the time of your birth you are not a A2. S1. p5. Natural Born American Citizen.
All the rest is simply smoke and mirrors trying to distract you from this simple truth.
All spin and no truth! Wake Up America. Foreigners can not be President. Certainly not British Subjects. Google (John Jay, George Washington, Natural Born.)
(By the way John Jay was our 1st Supreme Court Chief Justice). Rember - The Truth Will Set You Free! America needs a big dose of the Truth - Right About NOW!
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Read more: Deception evidence reaches Oval Office? http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=320133#ixzz1RwqbRLFF
Thursday, July 07, 2011
TREASURY SECRETLY WEIGHS OPTIONS TO AVERT DEFAULT
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pauses while speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative in Chicago, June 30, 2011.
By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A small team of Treasury officials is discussing options to stave off default if Congress fails to raise the country's borrowing limit by an August 2 deadline, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
Senior officials, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have repeatedly said there are no contingency plans if lawmakers do not give the U.S. government the authority to borrow more money.
But behind the scenes, top Treasury officials have been exploring ways to prevent a financial meltdown that would be triggered if the government were unable to pay its bills on time, sources told Reuters.
Treasury has studied the following issues:
- Whether the administration can delay payments to try to manage cash flows after August 2
- If the U.S. Constitution allows President Barack Obama to ignore Congress and the government to continue to issue debt
- Whether a 1985 finding by a government watchdog gives the government legal authority to prioritize payments.
The Treasury team has also spoken to the Federal Reserve about how the central bank -- specifically the New York Federal Reserve Bank -- would operate as Treasury's broker in the markets if a deal to raise the United States' $14.3 trillion borrowing cap is not reached on time.
The U.S. government currently borrows about $125 billion each month. The Obama administration wants Congress to raise the limit by more than $2 trillion to meet the country's borrowing needs through the 2012 presidential election.
(IT'S ALL ABOUT HIM! Country be damned?)
The contingency discussions, which have remained a closely guarded secret throughout weeks of negotiations with Congress over the debt ceiling, are being led by Mary Miller, Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets, who is effectively custodian of the country's public debt.
Miller's team has debated whether Obama could ignore Congress and order continued borrowing -- by relying on the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution -- if it fails to raise the borrowing cap.
The fourth section of the 14th Amendment states the United States' public debt "shall not be questioned." Some argue the clause means the government cannot renege on its debts.
Obama dismissed talk of invoking the amendment on Wednesday. "I don't think we should even get to the constitutional issue," he said. "Congress has a responsibility to make sure we pay our bills. We've always paid them in the past."
HINT OF PLAN B COULD HURT TALKS
The White House declined to comment on the discussions at Treasury, but administration officials sought to tamp down talk of relying on the 14th Amendment.
There has been growing speculation in Washington in recent days that the administration could use the amendment to ignore the congressionally imposed limit on the amount of money the United States can borrow.
"Despite suggestions to the contrary, the 14th Amendment is not a failsafe that would allow the government to avoid defaulting on its obligations," said White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage.
Miller's team has discussed the Government Accountability Office's 1985 assessment that Treasury has the authority to prioritize payments in the event of a default -- an option Treasury officials have been wary of.
The administration's nightmare scenario is that investors panic at the prospect of a default, triggering a crisis that eclipses the 2008 financial meltdown. That could plunge the U.S. economy into another recession, something that could doom Obama's re-election prospects in 2012.
Some conservative Republicans have argued the Treasury can prioritize payments and manage a default. The administration wants to keep lawmakers focused on the August 2 deadline, and even a hint of a "Plan B" could lessen the urgency to strike a deal by then.
"As we have said repeatedly over the past six months, there is no alternative to raising the debt limit," Treasury spokeswoman Colleen Murray said when asked to comment on the Treasury discussions.
"The only way to prevent a default crisis and protect America's credit-worthiness is to enact a timely debt limit increase, which we remain confident Congress will do."
TREASURY OFFICIALS MUM
Obama meets leaders from both parties at the White House on Thursday as he seeks to get an agreement to cut trillions from the U.S. deficit, which Republicans have demanded in exchange for their support to raise the debt limit.
The fear of any loss of momentum in the debt and deficit talks is so great that even in their private conversations with former colleagues and investors, administration officials are refusing to admit to contingency discussions.
"There has to be contingency planning," said one former Obama administration official. "But they won't even tell me that."
That view was echoed by numerous former officials from the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations.
"You have to have a backup plan. If you are relying on Congress to avoid the possibility of an Armageddon, you can't just bet on that," said Keith Hennessey, who headed the White House National Economic Council during President George W. Bush's administration.
In August, the Treasury will take in roughly $172 billion, but is obligated to make $306 billion in payments -- meaning it cannot pay about 45 percent of its bills without borrowing more money, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
That would force the administration to make some difficult choices, even though officials believe emergency measures will buy little time and cannot stave off an economic catastrophe.
OPTIONS "PRETTY UGLY"
If Treasury were to decide to delay some payments, one option could be to postpone a disbursement of more than $49 billion to Social Security recipients that is due on August 3.
It would be a politically explosive step but one that could allow the government to temporarily pay bondholders to try to avoid foreign investors dumping U.S. Treasuries and the dollar.
The administration has warned that any missed payments, including those to retirees, veterans and contractors, would be default by another name, and the Treasury team still has concerns that any contingency plan would prove unworkable.
Steve McMillin, a former deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget under Bush, said Treasury has options but most of them are "pretty ugly."
If Treasury were to decide to delay payments, it would need to re-program government computers that generate automatic payments as they fall due -- a massive and difficult undertaking. Treasury makes about 3 million payments each day.
From their second floor offices in Treasury, Miller and Fiscal Assistant Secretary Richard Gregg, are the lieutenants Geithner is relying on if the administration's first option of negotiating a deal with Republicans falls apart.
"She's dealing with this day in and day out," said a former Treasury official.
The former official said Treasury aides were "speaking with Congress on a daily basis," giving them the latest updates on receipts and when default could occur.
The source said White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley and other officials regularly ask Miller for information.
"Every day they talk about the debt ceiling. The night before, they get the most recent numbers," the source said.
Michael Barr, a former Treasury official who worked closely with Miller, said he spoke with Miller and Gregg a month ago.
"They were exploring if there were any legal and practical alternatives. It was not obvious to them that the president has the legal authority to pick and choose who gets paid," he said.
Barr added: "It is not obvious that even if they had legal authority, that as a practical matter you can do it."
As recently as June 21, Miller told a group of sovereign debt holders in London that there is no Plan B and assured them that the debt limit would be raised before August 2.
Publicly, Treasury has maintained there is no contingency plan. "Our plan is for Congress to pass the debt limit," Geithner said late in May. "Our fall-back plan is for Congress to pass the debt limit, and our fall-back plan to the fall-back plan is for Congress to pass the debt limit."
(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai, Tim Reid, and Caren Bohan Editing by Ross Colvin and Jackie Frank)
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