The Middle East and the Nuclear Question

[Stavros]

If there is one region of the world in which the development of nuclear energy is thought of as a threat too far, it must be the Middle East. Is this is an irrational thought? Israel has had a nuclear capability since the 1950s, one which added nuclear weapons to nuclear power, and it is well known that the Shah of Iran wanted it before the Islamic Revolution, and that Iran has continued to develop a nuclear energy resource with much consternation. From being declared a 'Nuclear free Zone' the Gulf Co-operation Council' has since c2010 reversed that position, with Abu Dhabi and now Saudi Arabia both setting out onto the path of nuclear energy. Has deterrence lost its meaning, or would the development of nuclear weapons consequent upon the energy portfolio make the region a safer place?

For those of you interested in this, the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies has published a thoughtful paper on this topic which covers the politics, and in particular the eccentric economics in which a state can project spending billions on an energy resource which then runs at a loss. Perhaps they would be better of without it.

http://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The-GCC-and-the-Nuclear-Question.pdf

[Stavros]

The USA's former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton believes the only response the USA should have to the development of Iran's nuclear energy industry is to bomb it into nothing. Bolton was one of the major obstacles to a rapprochement with Iran when he refused the overtures from Iran's President Khatami in 2001, even though he has been associated with the 'neo-cons' in the Bush presidency whose policy on Iraq has been instrumental in the elevation of Iran's political influence in that country and indeed, across the regoin, which makes a mockery of Bolton's attempt to pin the blame on Obama for the latest developments in Iran, as when he says -

The Obama administration’s increasingly frantic efforts to reach agreement with Iran have spurred demands for ever-greater concessions from Washington. Successive administrations, Democratic and Republican, worked hard, with varying success, to forestall or terminate efforts to acquire nuclear weapons by states as diverse as South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa. Even where civilian nuclear reactors were tolerated, access to the rest of the nuclear fuel cycle was typically avoided. Everyone involved understood why.
This gold standard is now everywhere in jeopardy because the president’s policy is empowering Iran.

Bolton nowhere refers to any energy component of Iran's programme, being only interested in weapons development, yet also never mentions deterrence as a decisive element in nuclear capability that is said to be the guarantor that states possessing nuclear weapons will not use them. It has not occurred to him that Iran, constantly threatened with military attack by nuclear-armed Israel, may want strategic parity, even if this debate on nuclear weapons is stil hypothetical.

More to the point, if the USA did bomb Iran, how would Iran respond? Bolton surely knows that Iran would, in some way, much as it paid a Palestinian 'guerilla' group to bring down a US passenger aeroplane in response to the US destruction of an Iranian airbus in 1988. Sounds to me like Bolton believes in permanent war.

His article in the New York Times is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/to-stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[broncofan]

It has not occurred to him that Iran, constantly threatened with military attack by nuclear-armed Israel, may want strategic parity, even if this debate on nuclear weapons is stil hypothetical.

I agree with everything else you said. But the logic of this to me says, "Iran wants to have nuclear weapons in order to prevent Israel from threatening to attack it based on its desire to have nuclear weapons." It just seems a little bit circular. Or are the threatened attacks based on something other than their nuclear ambitions?

We had this discussion earlier, but I DO think that if Israel did not have nuclear weapons the Middle East would be safer. But I don't actually think it's a good region for parity...I think every country that develops them makes the region significantly less safe. Forget Iran's political differences with Israel. What about its political differences with other ambitious Middle Eastern countries, such as Saudi Arabia? It's not a bilateral series of conflicts, but a mess of entrenched interests. If Iran has nuclear weapons how would that effect the balance of power between Sunni and Shiite in the region.

But it's easy to decide on Bolton's article. There is no case for bombing Iran. It's not called for in the circumstances, it would not be effective, and it would lead to retaliation.

[trish]

MAD was based on a kind of circular feedback too. The perfect balance of two forces can (for a short period) keep one side from overpowering the other. The stronger the forces (e.g. nuclear vs conventional) the more catastrophic the moment when the balance become less than perfect. The perfect balance of multiple forces, if achievable at all, will certainly not be stable.

To think that someone like Bolton was once our representative in the U.N. sends shivers down my spine–and not the good kind.

[Odelay]

Interesting question. Current international nuclear policy consensus seems to be that any new actors is necessarily a bad thing.

I wonder if the current As-is situation (yeah, I'm an IT geek) has been studied to sufficient degree to support such a uniform consensus. Has anyone done a wide study on the cause and effects associated with the nuclear weaponization of India and Pakistan? That looked like a disaster in the making as it unfolded and yet here we are 30 or 40 years later and not one nuke has been deployed. The questions I would like answered, if they are answerable, include:

Did the nukes cause violence btwn the 2 nations to rise or fall?

Did the nukes cause the relationship to worsen or better?

How were the effects of a Muslim nation acquiring nukes different from every other nuclear nation, none of whom are Muslim.*

*I recognize that some of the former Soviet states are now principally Muslim and might have control of nuclear weapons.

[Stavros]

Interesting question. Current international nuclear policy consensus seems to be that any new actors is necessarily a bad thing.

I wonder if the current As-is situation (yeah, I'm an IT geek) has been studied to sufficient degree to support such a uniform consensus. Has anyone done a wide study on the cause and effects associated with the nuclear weaponization of India and Pakistan? That looked like a disaster in the making as it unfolded and yet here we are 30 or 40 years later and not one nuke has been deployed. The questions I would like answered, if they are answerable, include:

Did the nukes cause violence btwn the 2 nations to rise or fall?

Did the nukes cause the relationship to worsen or better?

How were the effects of a Muslim nation acquiring nukes different from every other nuclear nation, none of whom are Muslim.*

*I recognize that some of the former Soviet states are now principally Muslim and might have control of nuclear weapons.

There is an argument that possession of nuclear weapons has limited effect on security as the use of proxies enables states with nuclear weapons to wage war without bringing the nuclear element into play. Consider the proxy wars the USA fought in Latin America, and the USSR in Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. This is a consequence of the Cuban Missile Crisis which created such tension and fear that senior policy-makers and the military in the USA and the USSR backed down from making inflammatory statements, although there were subsequent nuclear threats during the spat between China and and the USSR in 1969 (which led directly to the rapprochement between the USA and China), and during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

Possession of nuclear weapons has not stopped the violence between India and Pakistan although a ground war has not happened for some time, mostly because Pakistan always loses, though India believes terrorist attacks from Pakistan have been sanctioned high up in the ISI or the Pakistan military.

You may be aware the USA has for some years had a strategic plan to 'neutralise', 'evacuate' or 'render-safe' Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. It is discussed in a fascinating article in this link on Pakistan and the weird relationship it has with the USA. You might not be able to sleep if you read this late at night. Hard to believe the biggest nuclear threat may come from a road accident in Karachi...
And you might want to ask your Senators what exactly Pakistan spends that $2bn dollars a year it gets from the American tax-payer, but don't expect an itemised statement in reply.
http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/the-pentagons-secret-plans-to-secure-pakistans-nuclear-arsenal/

[Stavros]

The parameters of an agreement with Iran over its nuclear development that were agreed in Lausanne on the 2nd of April have been hailed as a triumph of diplomacy. The agreement is due to be signed in June. A summary of what has been agreed reads as follows:

As Iran pursues a peaceful Nuclear program Iran's enrichment capacity, enrichment level and stockpile will be limited for specific durations and there will be no other enrichment facility than Natanz. Fordow will be converted into a nuclear physics and technology center and Iran's research and development on centrifuges will be carried out based on a mutually agreed framework. A modernized heavy water reactor in Arak in will be redesigned and rebuilt with the assistance of an international joint venture that will not produce weapons grade plutonium. There will be no nuclear processing, and spent nuclear fuel will be exported. Monitoring of the provisions of the JCPOA including implementation of the modified code 3.1 and provision of the additional protocol, will be done based on a set of measures. To clarify past and present issues regarding Iran's nuclear program, the International Atomic Energy Agency will be permitted the use of modern technologies and will have announced access through agreed procedures. Iran will take part in international cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear energy including supply of power and research reactors as well as nuclear safety and security. The European Union will terminate the implementation of all nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions, and the United States will cease the application of all nuclear-related secondary economic and financial sanctions simultaneously with the International Atomic Energy Agency-verified implementation by Iran of its key nuclear commitments. To endorse the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a new UN Security Council resolution will be approved which terminates all previous nuclear-related resolutions, and incorporate certain restrictive measures for a mutually agreed period of time..."
Negotiations on Iran nuclear deal framework - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiations_on_Iran_nuclear_deal_framework)

The agreement is opposed by Israel and its allies in Congress and has caused such concern in Arabia that President Obama has invited the leaders of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia to a special conference in Camp David later this Spring.
One of the key elements in the agreement sets back any attempt Iran might have to enrich uranium, but as the New York Times put it, referring to Mohammad Zarif's statement:

What he agreed to in Lausanne, at least according to those fact sheets, would drastically cut Iran’s capability for 10 years and then allow it to build up gradually for the next five.After that, Iran would be free to produce as much uranium as it wishes — even building the 190,000 centrifuges that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei talked about last summer. That is bound to be a major concern for Congress, the Israelis and the Arab states, because it amounts to a bet that after 15 years, Iran will be a far more cooperative international player, perhaps under different management.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-talks.html


A cynic might argue that Iran is selling itself short to play the longer game, yet so far the Iranians have insisted that they do not intend to develop a nuclear weapons capability. As to the future, well perhaps one should recall that the first attempt to develop nuclear weapons took place when the Shah of Iran was one of the closest allies the US had in the Middle East. In theory, had the US been pro-active in its development, Iran could have been well on the way to developing its nuclear sector by the time the Shah was overthrown in 1979. Whether or not Iran will be a nicer place in 15 years time is impossible to know -but then the same is true of Israel, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and the other actual or potential nuclear states in the world.
How this will play out in Congress is going to be interesting, if predictable, but may also become a factor for Presidential candidates to think about -to support or not to support the agreement, not least if Iran, however reluctantly, is seen as a key ally in the 'war' against IS in Iraq and Syria. Allies don't have to be friends.
One other thing -Iran is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is how these negotiations were even possible, and Iran is expected to abide by the rules of the IAEA, and open all of it's nuclear facilities to inspection. The Iranians have said they will not cheat on the deal, affirming their commitment to international law and the rules of the IAEA.

Israel is not a member of the IAEA and does not allow inspection of its nuclear facilities, yet believes it can make as many claims about Iran's ambitions to develop nuclear weapons as it likes, and use that as the case against Iran. Perhaps if Israel were to join the club it might be taken more seriously on this issue.

[broncofan]

Anyone concerned about Iran developing nuclear weapons should be pleased about the resolution. Of course, the Israelis and Republican members of Congress are not, but I'm not sure what their expectation could have been. The Iranians may have been cagey about it, but they would not have suffered through sanctions if they had not been determined to develop weapons.

I only partly agree with the Israelis when they say that Iran having a nuclear weapon was a regional and international concern as well; it was mostly (80% or thereabouts) an Israeli concern. And the U.S and its diplomatic allies moved heaven and Earth to put pressure on Iran through sanctions and to isolate it internationally. The final outcome had to be accomplished through negotiation. Their breakout period will be a year, and they will now see a strong upside for maintaining compliance with the provisions above. Let's hope June approaches without anything scuttling the deal.

I can't begin to guess what Iran will be like in 15 years..it's unlikely given the attitude of its various religious leaders that it will have better relations with the United States or any relations with Israel. Even during negotiations we heard the usual "Death to America" rhetoric by Khamenei and a few diplomatic statements about desiring in the long run that there be no state of Israel (this latter point Iran has expressed consistently but they could not have thought they were allaying the concerns of their diplomatic partners by reiterating it). It's impressive that Obama was able to remain undeterred and flesh out an agreement that forestalls what I think would have been an enormous ramping up of volatility in the region while his diplomatic partners engaged in such rhetoric. The Iranians, for their part, have chosen the prosperity of their people over Middle Eastern hegemony.

[Stavros]

I can't begin to guess what Iran will be like in 15 years..it's unlikely given the attitude of its various religious leaders that it will have better relations with the United States or any relations with Israel. Even during negotiations we heard the usual "Death to America" rhetoric by Khamenei and a few diplomatic statements about desiring in the long run that there be no state of Israel (this latter point Iran has expressed consistently but they could not have thought they were allaying the concerns of their diplomatic partners by reiterating it). It's impressive that Obama was able to remain undeterred and flesh out an agreement that forestalls what I think would have been an enormous ramping up of volatility in the region while his diplomatic partners engaged in such rhetoric. The Iranians, for their part, have chosen the prosperity of their people over Middle Eastern hegemony.

I think within Iran there is a division between the hardliners for whom the Islamic Revolution must be maintained and protected, and those more pragmatic elements who are more concerned with the economy and social issues. Rouhani's election in this context was seen as a victory for the pragmatists, but Khatami was also a pragmatic leader in 2001 and he could have gone a long way to repairing US-Iranian relations had the Bush administration not been so cold on the idea, and Khatami was then succeeded by Ahmadinejad who was a gift to American hawks.

As to your last point: The Iranians, for their part, have chosen the prosperity of their people over Middle Eastern hegemony. The Iranians may want influence, but I don't think the Iranians have ever sought hegemony in the Middle East. They are Muslims but Shi'a at a time when it has been made an issue, and are not Arabs. The Ayatollah Khomeini once slated Saddam Hussein, in the early phase of the war between their two countries, because Saddam made a remark about 'the Arabs' going to war with 'Persians', and Khomeini wagged his finger to point out he preferred 'Arabs' to 'Muslims' implying -correctly in my view- that Saddam was at war with Islam, the point being Iraq was encouraged to invade Iran and start a war as part of the broader attempt to stop the Revolution in its tracks, something that most Revolutions have experienced since 1776.

There was an attempt by Gamal Abdul Nasser to impose Egyptian hegemony on the Middle East, particularly after his so-called 'triumph' at Suez in 1956 and the creation in 1958 of the 'United Arab Republic' with Syria. There is no doubt Egypt in the 1960s was seen as the most powerful of the Arab states, yet the war with Saudi Arabia over the Yemen drained its resources, and the war with Israel in 1967 exposed as hollow most of Nasser's rhetoric, indeed, apart from the October War of 1973 which started out promising but ended in another defeat, Egypt never recovered its position after Nasser's death, and was seen to detach itself from regional politics with the shift away from the USSR to the USA (Americans = better pay and better weapons), and the Treaty with Israel in 1979.

Look south, for Saudi Arabia has not only sought regional hegemony since Ibn Saud re-established control of Riyadh for his family in 1902 -spending the next thirty years swallowing most of the Nejd and the Hejaz through military force- it has used its vast oil wealth to internationalise its deviant brand of Islam and to demonise all the alternatives. Two attempts to drive the British out of TransJordan were repelled -mostly by the RAF- in the 1920s, and it is beyond doubt that the Saudis are furious with the Iraqi zealots for declaring the existence of an 'Islamic caliphate' because that is their long term goal, and yes, it does include Jerusalem, and no, it doesn't accommodate the Jews, or the Christians, whose historical record in the Hejaz has been all but wiped out by the Saudis.

Although in purely doctrinal terms there are differences between the ideology of Abdul Wahab and say, the ideology of Abdullah Azzam and Sayed Qutb which formed the 'intellectual'/'theological' basis of al-Qaeda, and the more extreme thinkers associated with IS, all share the same mono-cultural perspective is Islam that derives from Abdul Wahab's view that everything that has happened in Islam since the death of Muhammad has been a perversion of the faith.

Saudi Arabia funds madrassas and schools from South America to North America, from the UK and western Europe to the Indian sub-continent, Africa to Australia. However, it is not clear that everyone wants a slice of the Saudi pie, and as Robert Fisk pointed out the other day, their military adventure in the Yemen -the most energetic use of Saudi Armed forces sine the 1960s- could be a major mistake.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-battle-for-the-middle-easts-future-begins-in-yemen-as-saudi-arabia-jumps-into-the-abyss-10140145.html

At some point the USA may have to confront the fact that it has no real allies in the Middle East. Israel is a strategic liability; Saudi Arabia funds Islamic terror worldwide as well as in the USA; Iran is unpredictable at best, untrustworthy at its worst.

How the candidates in the next Presidential election deal with this may be of interest, but consider: many of the senior leaders in IS in Iraq are former political and senior officers of the Ba'ath party and the Iraqi armed forces -the two institutions that were supposedly demolished by Paul Bremer III when he was head of the 'Coalition Provisional Authority'. If the aim of US policy in the Middle East is to protect and advance the interests of the USA, it would appear that the USA has not only achieved almost nothing since losing its ally in Iran in 1979 (see below), the USA is more alienated from the region than at any time since the first tentative moves in the region were made in the 1790s. It seems almost bizarre to recognise that the one success the US can lay claim to, the Peace Treaty between Israel and the PLO in 1993, forms part of supposedly the most intractable conflict in the region, even if Clinton exploited an existing dialogue between the Israelis and the Palestinians for his own benefit.

I can't remember where the phrase originates, but 'You aint seen nothing yet' seems par for the course.

[broncofan]

I accept that. I think I meant that the purpose of developing a nuclear weapon is to have a certain prestige but also implied power in regional conflicts. I don't take the Israeli line that Iran is suicidal and would launch a first strike. I also don't think they really believe that Israel one day would decide to launch a series of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against their nation though I understand the desire for strategic parity. I think a nuke has a more important strategic purpose; to signify in any regional or more broadly international conflict that they are dangerous and should be handled with care.

Smaller nuclear powers (Pakistan, Israel, North Korea) can act with a sort of impunity that non-nuclear powers cannot. A nuclear power becomes impervious to any international consensus or to intervention based on that consensus. Perhaps a nuclear weapon would be an insurance policy against Western powers deciding to interfere and carry out "regime change". The weapon would also have all sorts of pragmatic uses in terms of shifting the balance of power and affecting the posture of other countries towards it. I understand Iran's desire for a nuclear weapon but they were given a strong reason to abandon the project and they accepted it.

Your comment about Khatami not having a good diplomatic partner underlines an important issue. The need to have leaders who are willing to work towards solutions; in any multi-lateral negotiation it is very unlikely that reasonable people will be in power at the same time. It's an enormous setback every time a Netanyahu, a George Bush, or an Ahmadinejad is elected.

[Odelay]

It's an enormous setback every time a Netanyahu, a George Bush, or an Ahmadinejad is elected.
Ain't that the truth.

[Bark]

Build Solar out there, More than enough sun to power the whole planet where they are, Why the F! would they want Nuclear anyway?.

[fred41]

Don't pop those champagne corks yet...nothing's signed...let's see what it ultimately amounts to in June...or later.

[Stavros]

Build Solar out there, More than enough sun to power the whole planet where they are, Why the F! would they want Nuclear anyway?.

Solar is still facing storage problems on the technical level and can't power a city the size of Dubai, which also relies on Abu Dhabi for its oil and gas these days. Nuclear is a prestige product for people with the money, which they have, and is a carbon neutral form of energy which some feel ought to be the long term replacement for coal, oil and gas in Europe. If the nuclear industry had not had such poor public relations in the last 25 years it might be the 'fuel of the future'. The core issue in Iran and eventually in Arabia relates to the development of nuclear weapons, with which some people are obsessed in the case of Iran in spite of Iran's claims that it has no plans to weaponize the energy sector. The same people who conjure up the reckless Iranians dropping nuclear bombs all over the place are sometimes the same Americans who seem reluctant to admit that the most serious contravention of protocols was committed by their close ally Pakistan, whose nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan helped the development of nuclear centrifuges in Iran, North Korea and offered it to Libya before Qadhafi decided to abandon the plans. But then the USA is now giving Saudi Arabia military assistance in its war with the Yemen, which is rather like the frog accepting a lift from a scorpion over that tempestuous river.

[Stavros]

Meanwhile the development of Saudi Arabia's nuclear programme moves on with the decision to begin extracting some of the estimated 60,000 tonnes of uranium in the Kingdom. This is part of the policy to diversify Saudi Arabia's energy profile, as is also the case with the development of nuclear energy in the United Arab Emirates, and of course in neither case has the stage in which uranum is enriched and reprocessed been part of the plan, those being the ingredients for a nuclear weapon. After all, in the Middle East, if you cannot trust Saudi Arabia, who can you trust?

So no hysterical tweets from the White House, no emergency debates in the House of Commons, no threatening speeches from Benjamin Netanyahu.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-nuclear-programme-uranium-extraction-atomic-power-self-sufficiency-a8029331.html

[Stavros]

The nuclear question in the Middle East, framed in terms of enabling or not enabling development may be taking a different and more sinister turn as the US government now considers the actual use of nuclear weapons to be a practical option. There has for some time been a difference of opinion in the military on the use of 'tactical' or 'battlefield' nuclear weapons which, it is claimed, can remove a 'target' with extreme efficiency but without the payload of an Hiroshima type bomb, thus reducing the extent of nuclear fall-out. On one side are those who believe the time has come to use them, while for others the danger is not just a strategic one that raises stakes in the conflict concerned, but establishes the use of nuclear weapons as an accepted part of military engagement which other nuclear armed states would consider gives them the right to use them, though there is a third school of thought that argues the use of nuclear weapons is illegal under international laws that govern the use of chemical and biological weapons.

The new Presidency that is determined to 'think outside the box' is led by a semi-literate idiot who has already asked why the US can't use the nuclear weapons that it has, and has appointed to positions of influence soldiers who may be more rather than less likely to use them, not least because their Commander-in-Chief has judged their careers so far to have been one long history of failure, given that is only since January 2017 that the US has succeeded on the battlefield, if you believe the US has been the demise of so-called 'Islamic State'. These old soldiers may feel they need a spectacular victory to justify their wages. That they couldn't care less how many people are killed is a basic fact that doesn't lose them any sleep.

The scenario unfolding now concerns the view that the Ba'ath regime in Syria is in the last phase of crushing the rebellion that broke out in 2011, with rebels in Idlib province, and the Ghouta district of Damascus facing annihilation from the regimes indiscriminate and illegal bombing campaign. But, if this brings an end to this phase of the conflict, it does not mean an end to conflict as there remains in the north a significant Kurdish presence in what may be in effect an autonomous zone along the Turkish border. It remains to be seen if the Asad regime will make a temporary agreement with the Kurds, or insist that the region return to Syrian sovereignty, but this is complicated by Turkey's rejection of any form of Kurdish independence or autonomy on its border, while the Russians are non-committal on the Kurds as they wait to see if the US which helped the Kurds defeat Daesh, decides to throw them under the bus as part of its withdrawal from the conflict, something the US might want but may not be able to achieve.

The rogue elements in this have been seen this week with Israel's bombing in Syria, which it claims targeted weapons being shipped from Syria to Lebanon, an attack that has enraged the Syrians, not that they can do much about it. The Russians, again, may be biding their time to see if Asad can be replaced with anyone who promises to retain the Russian presence, but the prospects of a military conflict appear most likely to focus on the Kurds, but it is not clear if the US would use a nuclear weapon here as the target is not clear. What could change the game is an attack on Israel by Syria, with or without Russian approval and assistance. Syria may appear to be exhausted, militarily and financially, having only survived since 2015 with Russian assistance, but with the Israeli government, in effect declaring a two-state solution dead, and with Syria still keen to repatriate the al-Jawlan currently occupied by Syria, a rash move could be on the cards, given that rash moves are not uncommon in the region, and support for Syria from Iran would as it has done, automatically bring Saudi Arabia on the side of Israel, indeed the two allies may be plotting the overthrow of Asad even as we speak.

All hypothetical, but the question remains, where, if it were deployed, would the mad Americans drop their tactical nuclear weapon, and what would be the consequence?

The US pondering the use of nuclear weapons-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/09/us-to-loosen-nuclear-weapons-policy-and-develop-more-usable-warheads

Patrick Cockburn's current assessment of the situation in Israel and Syria-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-syria-air-strikes-assad-regime-isis-rebels-defeat-eastern-ghouta-civil-war-a8150031.html

[Stavros]

Saudi Arabia has declared that if Iran develops a nuclear weapon so will the Kingdom in spite of the terms of the Iran Agreement, from which the US might withdraw its support.

“Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible,” bin Salman told CBS television.

Saudi Arabia wants initially to build two nuclear stations as part of its medium term program to wean itself off oil. It plans to build 16 civil nuclear stations over 20 to 25 years generating 16 gigawats of nuclear energy.
Although Saudi Arabia stresses it wants nuclear technology only for peaceful uses, it has left unclear whether it also wants to enrich uranium to produce nuclear fuel, a process which can be used in the production of atomic weapons.

US administration officials have already met bin Salman in London to discuss the terms of a deal.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/15/saudi-arabia-iran-nuclear-bomb-threat-mohammed-bin-salman

[Stavros]

Yesterday the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, proved to those who don't already know, what a worthless, bloated piece of shit he is, unfit to represent the UK, a vanity project whose only rival to self-invented greatness is the President of the USA.

For once, Johnson realised there is a greater person than himself, and went on US tv to grovel in public before the King, having been told that the only way to get his attention is to shower his Majesty with praise. Boris Johnson now shows more deference to the King of the country in which he was born than the Queen of the country he serves. How this fat, fatuous vanity project survives in British politics is a mystery that may soon be solved if he either resigns or is sacked as a result of his refusal to support Theresa May.

Boris Johnson in 2017 endorsed the 'Iran Nuclear Deal' to the extent that he wrote an article for the Washington Post to explain why, but yesterday fronted his tv appearance with this sort of garbage-

“The president is right to see flaws in [the deal] and he set a very reasonable challenge to the world,” said Johnson, offering praise of the president that he would repeat.

He didn't see that many flaws in it before, yet here he is, this nauseating hypocrite, so utterly desperate for the Americans to rescue Britain from the Brexit mess he played such a major role in creating, mostly through barrel-bombs of lies, that he is prepared to sacrifice the last shreds of respectability the office of Foreign Secretary has to save his rotten soul. And to think that he subscribes to the view that the American Majesty must be given the Nobel Peace Prize because a Black Man got it and no Black Man can ever upstage the greatest and most popular President in the history of the USA. And yet over many years the Nobel Peace has been so degraded as to be worthless, but the President is obsessed with it and is more important to him than the lives of real people with real problems in Korea and Iran.

This is how far we have sunk, all values discarded, the rule of law dismissed as irrelevant, international politics reduced to the level of a third-rate game show relegated to cable.

Johnson in 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/boris-johnson-without-the-iran-nuclear-agreement-the-world-would-be-in-supreme-danger/2017/07/13/e2583574-6806-11e7-a1d7-9a32c91c6f40_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.03e8f1b26fa8

Johnson, crawliing on his hands and knees before his King in 2018-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/07/boris-johnson-fox-friends-trump-iran-deal

[Jericho]

Blimey, How's the blood pressure? :hide-1:

[Stavros]

Blimey, How's the blood pressure? :hide-1:

One Amlodipine every day, a Metformin after meals.

[Stavros]

As expected, the President of the USA has declined to continue certifying the 'Iran Nuclear Deal' and, in effect, withdrawn the USA's support for it. There are multiple issues involved in this decision, so I offer an overview below, but in the most general sense of the word this is an example of the President 'delivering' his campaign promise -even if the promise was based on a false premise- and most important of all, proving that he cannot function as a human being with using every opportunity he has to take revenge on President Obama. That international relations and genuine security issues in the Middle East should pivot on one man's incendiary hatred and obsession with revenge is a testament to his weakness, but also his indifference to the advice given by those who wanted the US to maintain the deal.

Point 1: does the President have the authority to withdrawn from the deal?
There are legal arguments that suggest that because the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was endorsed by the Security Council of the UN and contains legally binding clauses it is not an 'informal agreement' but an international treaty in law, and that this therefore means the President can register his desire to withdraw from the JCPOA but only Congress can actually make the decision. As is often the case the language of the JCPOA is sufficient to allow interpretation both ways, but one assumes the President has gone through this with lawyers. Nevertheless, the legal argument can be found here-
http://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2018/apr/05/report-legality-withdrawing-nuclear-deal

Point No 2: will the deal unravel because of the USA's decision?
Hard to know at this point. France, Germany and the UK are of course dismayed by the decision but the real problem may lie in the US threatening those companies that continue to do business with Iran as the US increases sanctions. France has a major aviation contract with Iran at a time when the national carrier, Air France is in crisis. The Boeing Corporation has a $20 billion contract with Iran which it considers a minor deal, but also has contracts in China threatened by tariffs, so in theory this could undermine Boeing's long term viability but even if the company began to decline it would probably be taken over, but either way withdrawing from the Iran Deal could lead to job losses in Washington State.

Point no 3: Who benefits from the withdrawal?
Without doubt this is a major boost to the hardliners in Tehran around Ayatollah Khamenei and a blow for the reformers around democratically elected President Rouhani. The long term strategy, if there is one, will be to weaken Iran internally and hope 'regime change' from within follows public anger at the impact of sanctions. But it is also a major victory for Saudi Arabia which views Iran as its major rival across the Middle East. It has urged the President to withdraw to compensate for is own failures in Syria where by contrast Iran can claim to be more effective. It is supposed to be a victory for Israel but in reality the President preferred to listen to a corrupt politician like Netanyahu rather than the sane voices in Israel's military who take the opposite view to their Prime Minister (who has been threatening Iran with violence since 1994). Thus, on Netanyahu's pantomime stunt the other day it was reported:

Mr Netanyahu’s claims are contradicted by the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lieutenant General Gadi Eisenkot who has stressed: “Right now the agreement, with all its faults, is working and is putting off realisation of the Iranian nuclear vision by 10 to 15 years.”

Twenty-six former senior officials from Israel’s military and intelligence services, as well as the head of the country’s Atomic Energy Authority, have sent an urgent message to Washington stating: “The consensus among the military and intelligence services around the world – including Israel’s own defence community – is that the pact is working.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-iran-nuclear-deal-latest-un-theresa-may-emmanuel-macron-angela-merkel-a8342301.html


Point No 4: Can the USA be trusted to abide by agreements it has signed?
Yes, but not if they were made when Obama was President of the USA. In other words, no. Does the President care if the USA is viewed as an unreliable ally? No.

Point No 5: Does this make it more likely Iran will 'go nuclear'?
Probably. This is an example of the rubbish the President said yesterday:
The deal’s sunset provisions are totally unacceptable. If I allowed this deal to stand, there would soon be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Everyone would want their weapons ready by the time Iran had theirs.
Why would Iran cheat on the deal if the Sunset Clauses mean it can build nuclear weapons when they end? And does it not now make more sense to build a nuclear weapons capability to 'join the club' and deter mlitary attacks? Why is the US opposed to nuclear weapons in Iran, but not Saudi Arabia?

Point No 6: Iran and Terrorism
In his statement yesterday the President said:
The Iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror. It exports dangerous missiles, fuels conflicts across the Middle East, and supports terrorist proxies and militias such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and al Qaeda.

Though it may simply beggar belief that the President does not know the extent to which Saudi Arabia, formally through its government or informally through its wealthy citizens has sponsored terrorist atrocities -not least 9/11 in the USA- we do know that Saudi Arabia is a major source of money for the President and his family, so we can safely say the President has been bought and paid for by Saudi Arabia and that he will not threaten the flow of money into his pockets which takes precedence over the security of the USA and the Constitution of the USA, a document the President has not read and considers to be an obstacle to Supreme Power.

Nobody disputes that Iran is involved in conflict zones across the Middle East, and that it has been since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 -or more precisely since the war with Iraq that began in 1980. But how one interprets Iran's activities depends on how one defines terrorism.
For example, the USA describes Hezbollah as a 'terrorist organization', yet not only has Hezbollah just increased its presence in the Lebanese Parliament following the democratic elections in the last week, it has done so at the expense of the Sunni Prime Minister's party largely because Saad Hariri has failed to manage the economy well and in the last year made a fool of himself in Saudi Arabia exposing the divisions with Lebanon that have been generated not by Iran, but by the USA's ally Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia also played a major role in the destabilization of Syria that has seen over a million take refuge in Lebanon. A fair assessment of Lebanon's election can be found in Israel's paper Ha'aretz here where it points out-
The unofficial results indicate Sunni voters are losing faith in Hariri's party amid a declining Saudi role in Lebanon, a deteriorating economy and general exasperation over the civil war in neighboring Syria, which has brought more than a million refugees to Lebanon.
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/with-hezbollah-set-to-make-big-wins-hariri-loses-seats-in-election-1.6069714

That Hezbollah also has military capability has enabled those who want to, to refer to it as a 'terrorist organization' but ignores the fact that the military wing of the party emerged from a time when the Shi'a majority that vote for Hezbollah lived in Southern Lebanon when part of its was under Israeli occupation and the Lebanese army useless in deterring Israel's incursions and defending the citizens -that the last Israeli campaign in 2006 was seen as a 'victory' by Hezbollah has strengthened its case, while there have also been attempts to absorb Hezbollah's military into the Lebanese army. And yes, Iran does provide arms and money to its Shi'a allies in Lebanon -just as the US does with Israel.

HAMAS again has been described as a 'terrorist' organization even when it won the elections that made it the governing party in Gaza, yet few seem to understand that the majority of Gaza's residents are refugees or descendants of refugees who fled their homes in what is now Israel in 1948 and thus view themselves as living as refugees in their own country. We can debate to the end of time the attacks from Gaza and Israel's response, but HAMAS, which was created with Israel's blessing during the first Intifada in 1988 has on more than one occasion offered to negotiate a peace deal with Israel, and if it were not for Netanyahu this might still be possible

Iran and the Taliban is a more complex issue. The President ought to know that the Taliban was born, nurtured and supported -as it still is today, by the USA's ally Pakistan, with funding then and now, from the USA's ally Saudi Arabia. In 1998 the Taliban slaughtered Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif and sought to murder as many Shi'a Hazara as they could find. Yet to some extent it is true that in recent years Iran has formed a 'strategic' or 'tactical' relationship with the Taliban, but not for the reasons the President might assume -thus:
Tehran is also reportedly offering clandestine support to the Afghan government's most potent enemy, the Taliban. The main reason for Iran's backing is the rise of the Islamic State's Khorasan chapter in Afghanistan. Unlike the Taliban, whose chief aim is to reconquer Kabul, the Khorasan group is part of a transnational jihadist movement that threatens Iran, too.
https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/iran-taliban-islamic-state-khorasan-afghanistan

The President could have looked back over 17 years of permanent war in Afghanistan and wondered how the Taliban that governed the country before being bombed out of power is still there, retains some popularity in the country and is still supported by the USA's allies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. But this is not a coherent mind at work, and one cannot expect much more from a man with so small an intellect.

Iran has indeed been involved in acts of terror: the bomb on PanAm flight 103 that exploded over Lockerbie in 1988 was a revenge attack following the USS Vincennes missile attack on Iran Air 655, and Iran was in some way involved in the suicide bombing of the barracks that killed over 221 marines and 12 others in Lebanon in 1983. On the other side, the US supported Iraq's illegal invasion of Iran in 1980 and continued to support the government of Saddam Hussein throughout the War, turning a blind eye to Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran and also Kurds in the north of the country. One could thus challenge the concept of 'terrorism' and argue the US has been, in effect, at war with Iran since 1979 and that the JCPOA was in fact one tentative step towards the normalizaton of relations.

But not any more.

[Stavros]

Patrick Cockburn in The Independent offers a warning:

Sanctions are a powerful but blunt instrument, take a long time to work and usually do not produce the political dividends expected by those who impose them. The Iranian rial may fall and hyperinflation return to 40 per cent, but this will most likely not be enough if Iran returns to enriching uranium. It has already said that it is not going to keep abiding by its part of the nuclear agreement if it is not getting any of the economic benefits promised.

What will the US do then? This is the crucial question for the Middle East and the rest of the world. Trump has just torpedoed any diplomatic solution to what he sees as the threat of Iran developing a nuclear bomb. The only alternative is a military response, but this would have to be more than a few days of intense airstrikes. Anything less than total war would not win for Trump the kind of results he says he wants.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iran-nuclear-deal-patrick-cockburn-syria-iraq-donald-trump-europe-a8343361.html

Hard to know what comes next because so far this President has shown himself to be the man with no deal.
-Repeal and replace 'Obamacare' -with what? Nobody knows.
-Withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. How will this shape US trade in the Pacific region? Nobody knows.
-Scrap NAFTA. How will the US trade with Canada and Mexico? Nobody knows.
-Withdraw from the Paris Climate Change Agreement. And follow it up with? Nobody knows. No climate change = no policy.
-Withdraw from the Iran Nuclear Deal. To be followed by? Nobody knows.

[buttslinger]

The USA's former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton believes the only response the USA should have to the development of Iran's nuclear energy industry is to bomb it into nothing. Bolton was one of the major obstacles to a rapprochement with Iran when he refused the overtures from Iran's President Khatami in 2001, even though he has been associated with the 'neo-cons' in the Bush presidency whose policy on Iraq has been instrumental in the elevation of Iran's political influence in that country and indeed, across the regoin, which makes a mockery of Bolton's attempt to pin the blame on Obama for the latest developments in Iran, as when he says -

The Obama administration’s increasingly frantic efforts to reach agreement with Iran have spurred demands for ever-greater concessions from Washington. Successive administrations, Democratic and Republican, worked hard, with varying success, to forestall or terminate efforts to acquire nuclear weapons by states as diverse as South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa. Even where civilian nuclear reactors were tolerated, access to the rest of the nuclear fuel cycle was typically avoided. Everyone involved understood why.
This gold standard is now everywhere in jeopardy because the president’s policy is empowering Iran.

Bolton nowhere refers to any energy component of Iran's programme, being only interested in weapons development, yet also never mentions deterrence as a decisive element in nuclear capability that is said to be the guarantor that states possessing nuclear weapons will not use them. It has not occurred to him that Iran, constantly threatened with military attack by nuclear-armed Israel, may want strategic parity, even if this debate on nuclear weapons is stil hypothetical.

More to the point, if the USA did bomb Iran, how would Iran respond? Bolton surely knows that Iran would, in some way, much as it paid a Palestinian 'guerilla' group to bring down a US passenger aeroplane in response to the US destruction of an Iranian airbus in 1988. Sounds to me like Bolton believes in permanent war.

His article in the New York Times is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/to-stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

From three years ago. I have to imagine every country in the World has a gameplan on how to act when Trump is in charge, and how to act when he gets impeached. Fifty million rednecks CAN be wrong.

[Stavros]

From three years ago. I have to imagine every country in the World has a gameplan on how to act when Trump is in charge, and how to act when he gets impeached. Fifty million rednecks CAN be wrong.

A pathetic response given the seriousness of the situation. The fact that Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron went to Washington DC in person to persuade the Americans to abide by their international agreements, and were insulted and humiliated by a man who can barely read and write, proves there is no 'gameplan' other than to wait for your prime time idiot who claims to be President to leave the stage. What will he leave behind when he goes?

Had you given this any thought you would be shaking your head in disbelief that the USA has only one 'gameplan' and that it is the same as the one that went so badly wrong in Iraq: regime change. Your President, who knows absolutely nothing about the Middle East other than the volume of dollars it throws at him, has been persuaded by John Bolton -a draft-dodging coward like his boss- that Iranians yearn to overthrow their Mullahs and 're-join' the modern world, egged on by the opposition Mohahedin-e-Qalq (who?, exactly) much as Bush and Cheney and the US Congress gave millions of $$ and support to the Iraqi group led by Ahmad Chalabi that deliberately violated the USA's agreement with Iraq post-Saddam with catastrophic results. Bolton's view is as simple as it is deadly and doomed to fail: if you don't hit it, it won't fall. For a man whose notorious lawyer told him attack is the best form of defence this is all the justification the President needs.

The USA has gone from its idealist campaigns for freedom, democracy and human rights to adopting a simple strategy -they even call it 'realism'- that 100 years of Middle Eastern has shown is the one strategy that does not work: violence. The USA is now in the business of killing people, destroying their homes, their schools, their hospitals -basically, anything that stands and in return it gets nothing at all except a reputation for being unreliable, incompetent and now little more than a dancing monkey in a street fair in Idaho with an Organ Grinder called MBS.

Consider: Netanyahu -the USA's No 1 Ally in the Middle East (or is it now No 2?) was actually in Moscow, (Not Washington, but Moscow -the USA's ally?) when Israeli jets were 'pounding' Iranian targets in Syria having warned the Russians in advance so they could warn the Iranians -we have no idea how effective these air strikes were, but all Iran has to do, presumably with or without the permission of the Syrian government, is just replace what was destroyed as if it had never happened. It doesn't matter to Israel because however much it cost, the USA will pay for it, because that is what the USA has been reduced to: a sap country that takes advice from a man with four indictments that could see him in prison this time next year.

How about Saudi Arabia, the USA's ally -is it No 1 or No 2? Yes, that will be the same Kingdom being 'reformed' under the wise leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or MBS as he is know. MBS and Otaibi in the UAE have Jared Kushner in their pocket, or so they joked some time ago, and though we don't know if Kushner is still advising the President having had his official security clearance withdrawn (which probably means nothing in the chaos that is the White House), we do know that the President's 'Middle East Expert' has been part of this transformation of US policy that sees an alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia as the key to unlocking the blockages in the region. And yes, this is still the same Saudi Arabia that holds public executions every week where you can watch someone's head being chopped off, or a teenager whipped to within an inch of his life; where the 'education' material printed for use in the thousands of Madrasas around the world promotes the Wahabi heresy and makes claims about the Jews so offensive I won't repeat them here. One only wonders if the Wahabi hate the Shi'a more than they hate the Jews.

What the Saudi's lack in humanity they replace with money, and lots of it. And what the Saudi Arabians can't do -even after spending billions and billions of $$ on arms from the UK, France and the USA- to defeat their enemies, is get the Americans to do it for them, and guess what? You don't even have to give anything political back to get it done, just give the President $25 million (paid to a bank of your choice in the name of 'John Barron' or 'David Dennison') and hey presto! Americans go into a war in the Yemen that cannot be won on the battlefield; head off to Libya to fight another war that cannot be won, ditto Somalia and Niger, while all the time maintaining a presence in Iraq, and Afghanistan where the USA is fighting the same people being funded by, yep you guessed, it Saudi Arabia. And this from a man who said in his Inaugural Address the US would no longer be fighting other people's wars! But hey, the US might abandon the Kurds in Syria pretty soon, so that will deliver his promise.

I hear music, and see the USA in a red jacket, dancing along the top of an organ in exchange for laughter, ridiculous laughter, and for peanuts. You should be ashamed of yourself and your country.

[buttslinger]

I would say it's actually uglier than it appears, even without the Middle East.
Trying to get other people to do what you tell them is tough.
Fox News has been bombarding it's listeners with propaganda not against Putin, but against the Justice Dept!
It is much worse than it appears.
The fact that the Democrats couldn't beat Trump and still have no replacement is troubling. Trump is more afraid of the Media than the Democrats.
Trump v. World
Trump might win. (with nukes on his side)
Every day never-never land gets closer.
Right before our eyes.

[filghy2]

Among the many incoherencies is that Trump and his fans have been crowing about a possible deal with North Korea. Yet the only deal that would appear to be plausible is an agreement similar to the one with Iran - ie North Korea agrees to put its nuclear program on hold and allow international inspections in return for relief from sanctions and other assistance.

[Stavros]

Among the many incoherencies is that Trump and his fans have been crowing about a possible deal with North Korea. Yet the only deal that would appear to be plausible is an agreement similar to the one with Iran - ie North Korea agrees to put its nuclear program on hold and allow international inspections in return for relief from sanctions and other assistance.

The 'deal' that the Americans have said they want with North Korea is more severe than what they would want from Iran, and takes no account of what the North Koreans have said, thus:

Mike Pompeo, has defined the US goal at the summit as “permanent verifiable, irreversible dismantling of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction”, something that had to happen “without delay”. A bad deal is “not an option”.
According to the Japan Times, the US demands also include the North Korean surrender of documents on weapons design and even the exile of the country’s own nuclear weapons engineers, so that the regime is divested of its atomic knowhow.

Yet at the same time Pompeo was told by
Kim Yong-chol, the vice-chairman of the Workers’ party central committee... “we have perfected our nuclear capability” while insisting that the achievement was “not the result of sanctions that have been imposed from outside”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/11/trumps-approaches-geopolitics-like-the-apprentice-but-this-is-not-his-show

With Iraq going to the polls in an election this weekend that will probably return Abadi to the head of government, the dilemma for the Americans that now exists concerns the threat by the USA to punish any state that does business with Iran as it moves to re-impose sanctions lifted when the JCPOA was signed. But does this mean that Iraq will be punished for its trading relations with Iran which have grown substantially since 2003? Bahrain, Qatar and the the United Arab Emirates all trade with Iran, does this mean that the UAE is suddenly going to feel the 'wrath' of America?

So here it is: nuclear armed North Korea, a state the USA does not officially recognize exists, is led by a 'nice man' who is going to give up the one strategic advantage he has against the USA -indeed, everyone- in return for the promise of what on paper sounds like a staggering amount of US taxpayer's money:
“If North Korea takes bold action to quickly denuclearize, the United States is prepared to work with North Korea to achieve prosperity on the par with our South Korean friends,” Pompeo said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/11/mike-pompeo-north-korea-aid-nuclear-weapons

This is the same North Korea that does not recognize that South Korea exists and believes in a unified Korea under the leadership of 'Nice' Kim Jong-un and the 'Eternal Leadership' of Kim il-Sung.

Would a nuclear armed Iran, led by 'nice' Ayatollah Khamenei be given the same guarantees of American cash in exchange for 'de-nuclearization'? I thought all that cash was going to be spent filling in the pot-holes in American roads, repairing bridges so they don't fall down, hell, maybe even invest in the education for the 21st century American's children so desperately need.

Incoherent indeed!

[Stavros]

So, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has listed 12 demands of Iran that it needs to obey to avoid crushing sanctions which the USA intends to extend globally by punishing any and every state that does not comply and obey. Needless to say the 12 demands are intended to be rejected by the Iranian government, and are in the link below, but what has been missed is the simple fact that there are 12 demands, because in Iran they practise the 'Twelver Shi'ism' that has dominated the country since the 16th century, prior to which Iran was mostly Sunna and indeed, the birthplace of many distinguished Sunni thinkers, poets and jurists, as the second link shows.

I think the 12 demands are a calculated insult to Iran to increase their rejection and maintain a relationship based on confrontation and ignorance.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/mike-pompeo-speech-12-demands-iran-180521151737787.html

https://ballandalus.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/the-conversion-of-iran-to-twelver-shiism-a-preliminary-historical-overview/