Tag Archives: Middle East

The Middle East’s nuclear technology clock starts ticking, by James M. Dorsey

Posted on March 4, 2018 | Leave a comment

Everyone wants nuclear reactors, essential for nuclear weapons. From James M. Dorsey at mideastsoccer.blogspot.sg:

The Middle East’s nuclear technology clock is ticking as nations pursue peaceful capabilities that potentially leave the door open to future military options.

Concern about a nuclear arms race is fuelled by uncertainty over the future of Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement, a seeming US willingness to weaken its strict export safeguards in pursuit of economic advantage, and a willingness by suppliers such as Russia and China to ignore risks involved in weaker controls.

The Trump administration  was mulling loosening controls to facilitate a possible deal with Saudi Arabia as Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu prepared, in an address this week to a powerful Israeli lobby group in Washington, to urge US President Donald J. Trump to scrap the Iranian nuclear deal unless the Islamic republic agrees to further military restrictions and makes additional political concessions.

Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal of its own and fears that the technological clock is working against its long-standing military advantage.

The US has signalled that it may be willing to accede to Saudi demands in a bid to ensure that US companies with Westinghouse in the lead have a stake in the kingdom’s plan to build by 2032 16 reactors that would have 17.6 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear capacity.

In putting forward  demands for parity with Iran by getting the right to controlled enrichment of uranium and the reprocessing of spent fuel into plutonium, potential building blocks for nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia was backing away from a 2009 memorandum of understanding with the United States in which it pledged to acquire nuclear fuel from international markets.

“The trouble with flexibility regarding these critical technologies is that it leaves the door open to production of nuclear explosives,” warned nuclear experts Victor Gilinsky and Henry Sokolski in an article Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

While Israeli opinion is divided on how the US should respond to Saudi demands, Messrs Trump and Netanyahu’s opposition to the Iranian nuclear accord has already produced results that would serve Saudi interests.

 

To continue reading: The Middle East’s nuclear technology clock starts ticking

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Trump the Deal-maker and the Middle East, by Amir Taheri

Posted on March 4, 2018 | 1 comment

An outsider, like President Trump, has little chance of negotiating a Middle East peace. From Amir Taheri at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • The first reason that so many deal-makers have failed is that peace is never negotiated and is always imposed by the side that wins a war. There is not any instance in history, which is primarily a narrative of countless wars, in which an outsider has imposed peace on unwilling belligerents.
  • The second reason is that outside deal-makers have their interests and agendas which make an already tangled web even more complicated. For example, in the case of American deal-makers, how to win Jewish votes in the US without antagonizing the Arabs who sell us oil and buy our arms?
  • The third reason is that whenever a status quo is at least tolerable for both belligerents, the desire for risking it in the hope of an ill-defined peace is diminished. Many people in the world live with a status quo they don’t regard as ideal.
  • There is one thing that Trump the deal-maker could do. He could ask the Israelis and the Palestinians to work on an agreement, each in their own camp, on what they exactly want, and report to him.

Casting himself as the best friend Israel could hope for, President Donald Trump is promising, some may say threatening, to unveil his grand plan for a peace “deal” to end the so-called “Middle East problem”.

Trump has always fancied himself as a deal-maker; he has even written a book on the subject. It is, therefore, no surprise that he might want to put his skill to use on an issue which has defied numerous deal-makers for six decades.

What are the chances of him succeeding? The short answer is: nil!

To continue reading: Trump the Deal-maker and the Middle East

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“We Can’t Continue to Run the World’: Ron Paul’s EXCLUSIVE Interview for Sputnik

Posted on February 26, 2018 | 1 comment

Ron Paul talks about President Trump, the Middle East, and gun control. To the extent the mainstream media notice this interview, they might criticize Paul for giving an interview with Russian Sputnik News. Of course, none of those critics would interview Paul if their lives depended on it. From sputniknews.com:

Former Texas Congressman and leading libertarian thinker Dr. Ron Paul has shared his views on President Trump’s job as president after his first year in office, the situation in Syria and the renewed debate on gun control in the wake of the Florida school shooting.

Trump’s Year in Office

Sputnik: Donald Trump has been in office for over a year. What is your general assessment of his job as president?

Ron Paul: Mediocre; probably not worse than the other options. But I don’t think presidents really have much control. I think the deep state – the people behind the scenes and the shadow government, who control the monetary system, who control our foreign policy and the welfare state, and are connected to the media and the military-industrial complex. – I don’t think the presidency is as important as it’s made out to be. But everybody talks about it; it’s a political thing, and they keep churning the issue and directing everybody to ask ‘is Trump a good guy or a bad guy, and are we going to impeach him or what’s going to happen’, rather than [asking] what kind of philosophy do we have: why do we have this philosophy of welfare-warfare, spend money, run up debt and let the central bank print all that money.

They don’t even talk about it; the major parties, including Trump, they sign even more controls on us when it comes to FISA courts and spying on us. In spite of the fact that government officials like the FBI and others actually spy on our own president, he supports this; he passes and signs bills on that. So that really raises questions about ‘does the president really have much to say’, and I think he has much less to say than a lot of people believe. I believe that if he had stuck to his guns and had a different relationship with Russia and started bringing troops home and not aggravating things, he wouldn’t have been tolerated. Something would have happened.

To  continue reading: “We Can’t Continue to Run the World’: Ron Paul’s EXCLUSIVE Interview for Sputnik

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China Steps Into The Middle East Maelstrom, by James Dorsey

Posted on February 18, 2018 | 1 comment

Will China get stuck on the Middle Eastern tar baby like everyone else has? From James Dorsey via zerohedge.com:

The Middle East has a knack for sucking external powers into its conflicts. China’s ventures into the region have shown how difficult it is to maintain its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states.

China’s abandonment of non-interference is manifested by its (largely ineffective) efforts to mediate conflicts in South Sudan, Syria and Afghanistan as well as between Israel and Palestine and even between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is even more evident in China’s trashing of its vow not to establish foreign military bases, which became apparent when it established a naval base in Djibouti and when reports surfaced that it intends to use Pakistan’s deep sea port of Gwadar as a military facility.

This contradiction between China’s policy on the ground and its long-standing non-interventionist foreign policy principles means that Beijing often struggles to meet the expectations of Middle Eastern states. It also means that China risks tying itself up in political knots in countries such as Pakistan, which is home to the crown jewel of its Belt and Road Initiative — the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Middle Eastern autocrats have tried to embrace the Chinese model of economic liberalism coupled with tight political control. They see China’s declared principle of non-interference in the affairs of others for what it is: support for authoritarian rule. The principle of this policy is in effect the same as the decades-old US policy of opting for stability over democracy in the Middle East.

It is now a risky policy for the United States and China to engage in given the region’s post-Arab Spring history with brutal and often violent transitions. If anything, instead of having been ‘stabilised’ by US and Chinese policies, the region is still at the beginning of a transition process that could take up to a quarter of a century to resolve.

There is no guarantee that autocrats will emerge as the winners.

China currently appears to have the upper hand against the United States for influence across the greater Middle East, but Chinese policies threaten to make that advantage short-term at best.

To continue reading: China Steps Into The Middle East Maelstrom

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How regional rivalries threaten to fuel the fire in Syria and Iran, by James M. Dorsey

Posted on January 31, 2018 | 1 comment

Proxy wars are not over in either Syria or Iraq. This article illustrates why the only way the US is ever going to “win” in the Middle East is to get out. The Middle East is centuries-old rivalries that have seen many outsiders have their heads handed to them. The US is not exempt. From James M. Dorsey at almasdarnews.com:

Turkish allegations of Saudi, Emirati and Egyptian support for the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) threaten to turn Turkey’s military offensive against Syrian Kurds aligned with the PKK into a regional imbroglio.

The threat is magnified by Iranian assertions that low-intensity warfare is heating up in areas of the Islamic republic populated by ethnic minorities, including the Kurds in the northwest and the Baloch on the border with Pakistan.

Taken together, the two developments raise the spectre of a potentially debilitating escalation of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran as well as an aggravation of the eight-month-old Gulf crisis that has pitted Saudi Arabia and its allies against Qatar, which has forged close ties to Turkey.

The United Arab Emirates and Egypt rather than Saudi Arabia have taken the lead in criticizing Turkey’s incursion into Syria designed to remove US-backed Kurds from the countries’ border and create a 30-kilometer deep buffer zone.

UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said the incursion by a non-Arab state signalled that Arab states would be marginalized if they failed to develop a national security strategy.

Egypt, for its part, condemned the incursion as a “fresh violation of Syrian sovereignty” that was intended to “undermine the existing efforts for political solutions and counter-terrorism efforts in Syria,”

Despite Saudi silence, Yeni Safak, a newspaper closely aligned with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), charged that a $1 billion Saudi contribution to the reconstruction of Raqqa, the now Syrian Kurdish-controlled former capital of the Islamic State, was evidence of the kingdom’s involvement in what it termed a “dirty game.”

To continue reading: How regional rivalries threaten to fuel the fire in Syria and Iran

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A Rare Glimpse Into the Inner Workings of the American Empire in the Middle East, by Edward Hunt

Posted on January 22, 2018 | 1 comment

Straight from the mouths of Deep Staters, here’s what US Middle Eastern policy is all about. From Edward Hunt at antiwar.com:

The U.S. foreign policy elite still wants the Middle East for its oil and its strategic location

In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, four former US diplomats provided remarkably candid commentary on recent US involvement in the Middle East, revealing a number of the most closely guarded secrets of US diplomacy.

The four former diplomats emphasized the importance of the region’s oil, spoke critically about the weaknesses of US strategy, made a number of crude comments about US partners, displayed little concern about ongoing violence, and called for more “discipline” throughout the region.

One of the former diplomats, James Jeffrey, criticized the Obama administration for withdrawing US forces from Iraq in 2011 rather than going through with a secret deal to maintain a secret network of military bases in the country. Even today, Jeffrey said, officials in Washington must not “melt down” and retrench when US forces get killed. Officials must accept that there could always be “new Benghazis and new Nigers,” he said, referring to incidents in which US agents have been killed.

The four former diplomats also lambasted US partners in the region. They criticized many of their closest allies for poor governance, a lack of democracy, and an inability to coordinate on shared strategic objectives.

Jeffrey made some of the strongest criticisms, charging Kurdish leaders in Iraqi Kurdistan with making their region into “another basket case” in the Middle East. He also complained that US officials had to deal “with a lot of bitching” from the Turkish government over US support for the Kurdish fighters confronting the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) in Syria.

In addition to Jeffrey, who once held high-level positions in the George W. Bush administration, the group of former diplomats included Ryan Crocker, Eric Edelman, and Stuart Jones. Crocker has been the US ambassador to six different countries in the Middle East. Edelman and Jones, who have both been diplomats in the Middle East, have held senior positions in numerous administrations.

Over the past few decades, all four men have played significant roles in crafting and implementing US policies in the region. They were “giants” who had “walked the earth,” according to Edelman.

To continue reading: A Rare Glimpse Into the Inner Workings of the American Empire in the Middle East

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Getting Others To Untie the Knot, by Patrick Armstrong

Posted on January 3, 2018 | Leave a comment

Only time will tell, but this may prove an astute analysis of President Trump’s foreign policy goals. It certainly offers a fair amount of food for thought. From Patrick Armstrong at theburningplatform.com:

President Trump is a new phenomenon on the American political scene. Not a professional politician begging for funds but a rich man who spent his own money and raised money on his own name: he arrived in office unencumbered with obligations. Free from a history in politics, he owes nothing to anyone. Add in his personality, grandiosity and late-night tweets and the punditocracy is in a state of angry incomprehension. Even more offensive to their notions of propriety is that this “dangerously incompetent“, unqualified, mentally ill man beat the “most qualified presidential candidate in history“. No wonder so many of them believe that only cunning Putin could have made it happen – even if they don’t know how. But the punditocracy is as befuddled about him today as it was last year and the year before. (Scott Adams, who got it right, reminds us just how clueless they were.) The very fact that Trump won despite the opposition of practically every established constituency in the United States shows that there is more to him than readers of the NYT and WaPo or watchers of CNN and MSNBC (can) understand.

What follows is an attempt to divine Trump’s foreign policy. It proceeds from the assumption that he does know what he’s doing (as he did when he decided to run in the first place) and that he does have a destination in mind. It proceeds with the understanding that his foreign policy intentions have been greatly retarded by the (completely false) allegations of Russia connections and Russian interference. There was no Russian state interference in the election (the likelihood is that Moscow would have preferred known Clinton) and, as I have written here, the story doesn’t even make sense. I expect when the Department of Justice Inspector General completes his report that the Russiagate farrago will be revealed as a conspiracy inside the US security organs. We do not have a date yet, but mid-January is suggested. Readers who want to follow the story are recommended to these websites:Dystopiausa, CTH and Zerohedge.

To continue reading: Getting Others To Untie the Knot

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Saudi-Israeli Friendship Is Driving the Rest of the Middle East Together, by Federico Pieraccini

Posted on November 25, 2017 | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia and Israel may find themselves the odd men out in the Middle East. From Federico Pieraccini at strategic-culture.org:

Through its top official, Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), Saudi Arabia continues a wave of internal arrests, having seized nearly $800 billion in assets and bank accounts. A few days later, MBS attempted to demonstrate his authority by summoning Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Saudi Arabia, where he was forced to resign on Saudi state TV. Trump tweeted support for Bin Salman’s accusations against Iran and Hezbollah, and the future Saudi king even obtained Israel’s secret support. Iran, meanwhile, denies any involvement in Lebanon’s domestic affairs or involvement with the ballistic missile launched by Houthi rebels towards Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport a few days ago. Meanwhile, Trump, Putin and Xi met recently and seem to have decided the fate of the region in an exercise of realism and pragmatism.

News that upends the course of events has now become commonplace over the last few months. However, even by Middle East standards, this story is something new. The affair surrounding Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hariri generated quite a bit of commotion. Hariri had apparently been obliged to announce his resignation on Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya news channel while being detained in Riyadh. His most recent interview seemed to betray some nervousness and fatigue, as one would expect from a person under enormous stress from forced imprisonment. In his televised resignation statement, Hariri specified that he was unable to return to Lebanon due to some sort of a threat to his person and his family by operatives in Lebanon of Iran and Hezbollah. The Lebanese security authorities, however, have stated that they are not aware of any danger faced by Hariri.

In an endless attempt to regain influence in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has once again brought about results directly opposite to those intended. Immediately after receiving confirmation that the resignation had taken place in Saudi Arabia, the entire Lebanese political class demanded that Hariri return home to clarify his position, meet with the president and submit his resignation in person. Saudi actions have served to consolidate a united front of opposition factions and paved the way for the collapse of Saudi influence in the country, leaving a vacuum to be conveniently filled by Iran. Once again, as with Yemen and in Syria, the intentions of the Saudis have dramatically backfired.

To continue reading: Saudi-Israeli Friendship Is Driving the Rest of the Middle East Together

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Russia’s Arms Sales to Middle East Countries Spike to Record-High Levels, by Andrei Akulov

Posted on November 20, 2017 | Leave a comment

There’s a vendor in the Middle East arms bazaar who has technology as good or better  than the US’s, at lower prices. That total orders from all vendors have tripled in two years is cause for concern, at least for those who concerned with peae. From Andrei Akulov at strategic-culture.org:

Russia’s Arms Sales to Middle East Countries Spike to Record-High Levels

Dubai Airshow 2017, one of the largest and most successful air shows in the world, ended on Nov.16, having drawn over 79,000 trade visitors, up around 20% over the last version of the event in 2015. The total order tally is $113.8 billion in orders. It nearly tripled from the $37.2 billion signed two years ago.

Russia’s exposition at the Dubai Airshow 2017 included the combat helicopter Ka-52, multi-mission fighter MiG-29M, Su-35 supermaneuverable air defense fighter, Be-200 multipurpose amphibious aircraft, combat-transport helicopter Mi-35M, long-range air defense system S-400 Triumph, and short-range air defense missile system Pantsir–S1. The ‘Russian Knights’ aerobatic demonstration team performed extraordinary stunts riding through the skies to greatly impress spectators.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is interested in procuring the Sukhoi Su-35 multi-role fighter. The country is considering the purchase of 10 or more of such aircraft. The UAE and Russia signed a letter of intent on the purchase of Su-35 fighter jets in Feb. 2017. The talks are in progress. The Emirates will be the second country after China to buy the plane.

The UAE has already purchased Russian ground weapons, such as BMP-3 infantry combat vehicles and Pantsir S1 air-defense systems. In February, the Emirates entered into military contracts with Russia worth $1.9 billion. The deal includes 5,000 anti-armor missiles in addition to training and logistic support. The UAE started talks with Rostec company on the development of light fighter based on the MiG-29 twin-engine aircraft with development set to kick off in 2018.

The military cooperation with the UAE is a good example to illustrate the increasingly growing demand for Russian weapons in the Middle East. Orders from Arab countries account for roughly 20 percent of Russian weapons’ exports. Last year, Russia delivered more than $1.5 billion in arms to Algeria, $37 million to Egypt, $374 million to Iran and $300 million to Iraq. Today, the Russia’s portfolio of weaponry orders from the countries of the region is $8 billion. In 2017, the Russian defence industry has been making major inroads in the Middle East and North Africa. Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia are interested in purchasing Russian weapon systems.

To continue reading: Russia’s Arms Sales to Middle East Countries Spike to Record-High Levels

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Reining in the Rogue Royal of Arabia, by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on November 14, 2017 | Leave a comment

The US needs to tell Mohammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s 32-year-old crown prince, that if starts wars he’d better be able to end them, because he’ll be on his own. Unfortunately, that isn’t what the US has told him with regards to Yemen. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

If the crown prince of Saudi Arabia has in mind a war with Iran, President Trump should disabuse his royal highness of any notion that America would be doing his fighting for him.

Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, the 32-year-old son of the aging and ailing King Salman, is making too many enemies for his own good, or for ours.

Pledging to Westernize Saudi Arabia, he has antagonized the clerical establishment. Among the 200 Saudis he just had arrested for criminal corruption are 11 princes, the head of the National Guard, the governor of Riyadh, and the famed investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

The Saudi tradition of consensus collective rule is being trashed.

MBS is said to be pushing for an abdication by his father and his early assumption of the throne. He has begun to exhibit the familiar traits of an ambitious 21st-century autocrat in the mold of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

Yet his foreign adventures are all proving to be debacles.

The rebels the Saudis backed in Syria’s civil war were routed. The war on the Houthi rebels in Yemen, of which MBS is architect, has proven to be a Saudi Vietnam and a human rights catastrophe.

The crown prince persuaded Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE to expel Qatar from the Sunni Arab community for aiding terrorists, but he has failed to choke the tiny country into submission.

Last week, MBS ordered Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Riyadh, where Hariri publicly resigned his office and now appears to be under house arrest. Refusing to recognize the resignation, Lebanon’s president is demanding Hariri’s return.

After embattled Houthi rebels in Yemen fired a missile at its international airport, Riyadh declared the missile to be Iranian-made, smuggled into Yemen by Tehran, and fired with the help of Hezbollah.

The story seemed far-fetched, but Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said the attack out of Yemen may be considered an “act of war” — by Iran. And as war talk spread across the region last week, Riyadh ordered all Saudi nationals in Lebanon to come home.

To continue reading: Reining in the Rogue Royal of Arabia

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