Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Gatestone Update :: Soeren Kern: Germany: "Islamists Want to Bring Jihad to Europe", and more


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Germany: "Islamists Want to Bring Jihad to Europe"

by Soeren Kern
August 21, 2012 at 5:00 am
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The report also states that over 100,000 native Germans have converted to Islam in recent years.
German Intelligence Chief Gerhard Schindler has issued a warning saying that Europe is at great risk of terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists.
In a wide-ranging interview with the German newspaper Die Welt, Schindler said the German foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), is particularly concerned about the threat posed by homegrown terrorists, individuals who are either born or raised in Europe and who travel to war zones like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia or Yemen to obtain training in terrorist methods.
Schindler said: "A particular threat stems from Al Qaeda structures in Yemen. They want to bring Jihad to Europe. Among other tactics, this involves the 'lone wolf' model, which involves individuals who are citizens of the targeted country and who go abroad for training. We know that this is strategy is currently high on Al Qaeda's agenda, and we are accordingly attentive."
Schindler's comments came just days after Spanish authorities arrested three suspected al Qaeda terrorists who were allegedly plotting an airborne attack on a shopping mall near Gibraltar, the British overseas territory on the southernmost tip of Spain.
Schindler's warning also comes amid the backdrop of a high-security court trial of four suspected Al Qaeda members which began in the German city of Düsseldorf on July 25. German public prosecutors say the defendants -- three home grown Islamists born in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and one Moroccan national -- were planning to stage a "sensational terror attack" in Germany.
Also known as the "Düsseldorfer Cell," the defendants are also accused of plotting to assassinate the former commander of German Special Forces (KSK Kommando Spezialkräfte) as well as to attack the US Army base in the Bavarian town of Grafenwöhr.
German authorities began monitoring the group in early 2010, when the American Central Intelligence Agency alerted German police to the fact that the Moroccan, Abdeladim el-Kebir, 31, had entered Germany after having been trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Waziristan along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2010.
German public prosecutors say El-Kebir, also known as Abi al-Barra, was the ringleader of the Düsseldorfer Cell and, following orders from an unidentified senior Al-Qaeda operative, in November 2010 began working on a plot to blow up public buildings, train stations and airports in Germany. After several months of surveillance by German police, El-Kebir was arrested in April 2011.
Before his arrest, El-Kebir also recruited three accomplices he knew from his student days in the German city of Bochum: a 32-year-old German-Moroccan named Jamil Seddiki, a 21-year-old German-Iranian named Amid Chaabi, and a 28-year-old German named citizen Halil Simsek. The three were arrested in Germany in December 2011.
Prosecutors say that Seddiki was in charge of producing explosives while Chaabi and Simsek were responsible for communications with the al Qaeda leadership.
During testimony in court, it emerged that all four defendants led inconspicuous lives. Simsek, for example, who was born in the German city of Gelsenkirchen, earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Bochum. He had wanted to become a German police officer but his application was rejected for medical reasons. Chaabi, who was born in Bochum, was studying Information Technology at the University of Hagen when he was arrested. Seddiki, a high school graduate, was working as an electrician.
Prosecutors have compiled 260 ring-binders containing evidence gathered by investigators; the prosecutor's arraignment runs to 500 pages. The main accusation against the men is that they set up a terrorist cell and prepared to commit murder.
Federal Prosecutor Michael Bruns told the court that the defendants "planned to carry out a spectacular and startling attack" in Germany and that the defendants "wanted to spread fear and horror."
The trial is expected to run for 30 days; a verdict is expected in November. If the four accused men are found guilty, they face up to ten years in prison.
(In November 2011, a federal court in Brooklyn, New York indicted el-Kebir on charges of conspiring to provide Al-Qaeda with explosives and training. If extradited and convicted, el-Kebir faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.)
Underscoring German officialdom's anxiety over home grown Islamic terrorism, the German state of Lower Saxony recently published a practical guide to extremist Islam to help citizens identify tell-tale signs of Muslims who are becoming radicalized.
Security officials said the objective of the document is to mitigate the threat of home-grown terrorist attacks by educating Germans about radical Islam and encouraging them to refer suspected Islamic extremists to the authorities -- a move that reflects mounting concern in Germany over the growing assertiveness of Salafist Muslims, who openly state that they want to establish Islamic Sharia law in the country and across Europe.
The 54-page document, "Radicalization Processes in the Context of Islamic Extremism and Terrorism," which provides countless details about the Islamist scene in Germany, paints a worrisome picture of the threat of radical Islam there.
According to the report, German security agencies estimate that approximately 1,140 individuals living in Germany pose a high risk of becoming Islamic terrorists. The document also states that up to 100,000 native Germans have converted to Islam in recent years, and that "intelligence analysis has found that converts are especially susceptible to radicalization…Security officials believe that converts comprise between five to ten percent of the Salafists."
Soeren Kern is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
Related Topics:  Germany  |  Soeren Kern

Gexit Is Better Than Grexit

by Peter Martino
August 21, 2012 at 4:30 am
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There would be no domino effect if Germany leaves. Remaining in the euro entails Germany's paying indefinitely for debts made by others.
Any reasonable person would assume it highly unlikely that Europe's leaders would have adopted the euro as their common currency if they had known 10 years ago what a mess they would be in today. The euro project, however, was not a project of reason but of political correctness. Ten years ago many economists warned that adopting a common currency for countries with such divergent economies as divergent as Germany and Spain (not to mention Finland and Greece) could not work. In spite of this, Europe's unelected political class pushed through the euro.
Today it is clear as well that the euro in its present form cannot survive without bankrupting all the economies of Europe. Yet the Europe Union's political class still persists in its vain and costly attempts to save the common European currency -- simply because giving up on the euro would mean admitting they were wrong from the start. What's more, the EU ideology that Europe is to develop into a genuine federal state does not allow its leaders to admit that Europe is a cluster of distinctly different nation states with different interests, cultures, languages and traditions.
The people of Europe were cheated from the start. They outspokenly did not want their nations to be submerged into a "United States of Europe." That is why, when the euro was instituted, the political class promised that no country would ever have to foot the bill of another country. However, in 2009, when Greece needed its first bailout to avoid bankruptcy, Europe's leaders at once violated the EU rules which forbid the member states to bail out other members. If the EU had played by its own book – as it should have done – Greece would have gone bankrupt and left the euro two years ago.
Sticking to the rules, however, was out of the question: neither France nor Germany was prepared to drop Greece. France sees itself as the leader and patron of the bloc of southern EU countries; Germany fears that if it insisted on pushing a country out of the eurozone it would be accused of immoral selfishness and all the goodwill it had acquired since the Second World War would be lost. As the two major EU countries were prepared to bail out Greece, the smaller member states all went along, assuming that only one bailout (and just for Greece) would be needed.
Meanwhile, the EU has been forced to bail out Ireland and Portugal, as well, and Greece for a second time, while Greece is now clamoring for a third bailout and Spain also needs to be bailed out.
The EU's fatal decision to bail out Greece in early 2010 indicates that in an ideologically driven political environment such as the EU, it is easier for the political class to break the formal rules and ignore objective facts than to depart from the unwritten ideological imperative.
Today, despite the worsened situation, it seems to be ever more difficult for the EU's political class to change course. Doing so would imply that all the money spent on bailouts so far is lost – squandered on the fatal conceit of an ideological dream which is slowly turning out to be a nightmare.
One day soon, however, Europe will have to face reality. Either the EU is turned into a fiscal and political union, a genuine superstate where national debts are shared. Or the euro and possibly the EU disintegrate. The former option is what the political class wants, but what the European people loathe. Hence, the growing rift between the people and their political leaders everywhere in Europe, but especially in Germany which is acting as the paymaster for the whole EU. This course is the more dangerous as it will lead to enormous political resentment in Germany. Eighty years ago, we saw what that can lead to.
The alternative is a disintegration of the eurozone. Here there are several scenarios. Greece may be forced to leave the euro, followed by Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus and Spain. According to last week's Economist, this will be a costly process. A Greek exit (Grexit) might cost €323 billion; an exit of Greece plus the four above mentioned countries might cost a staggering €1,155 billion.
A more likely scenario is for Germany to leave. A recent poll indicated that 51 percent of Germans think it is time to resurrect the Deutschmark. British journalist and economist Anatole Kaletsky thinks that a German exit from the euro could be relatively easy. According to Kaletsky, German departure would be less disruptive than Grexit for three reasons.
First, a Greek exit would lead to a domino effect with capital fleeing the next weakest country in the eurozone. There would be no domino effect if Germany leaves. Second, the eurozone would become more coherent without Germany and the remaining countries could use quantitative easing to bring down interest rates, issue jointly guaranteed Eurobonds and form a genuine fiscal union, with a public deficit of 5.3 percent of GDP and a gross debt of 90.4 percent of GDP – all comparing favorably to the deficit and debt levels in Britain, the U.S. and Japan. Third, a break-up caused by Germany withdrawing would be far less chaotic from a legal standpoint than a break-down in which the euro disintegrates as weak countries are pushed out. The euro without Germany would remain a legal currency, governed by the same treaties as before. Obviously, there would be costs for German companies, German banks and the Bundesbank, but these would all constitute local difficulties for Germany.
The benefits of a German exit (Gexit) are clear for Germany as well. It would incur costs, but these are one-time costs, while remaining in the euro entails Germany's paying indefinitely for debts made by others. Better a miserable end than endless misery.
A German exit would also be better for the American economy than the current situation, in which pressure is increasing on a country such as Spain. An economic collapse of Spain would inflict a severe blow to the U.S. stock exchanges. Rather than exerting pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to accept a European fiscal union, which would mean political suicide for her, the United States might try to persuade her to leave the eurozone.
Related Topics:  Germany  |  Peter Martino

Justice for the Kurds

by Michael Curtis
August 21, 2012 at 4:00 am
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If a Palestinian state is justified and endorsed by the international community, shouldn't similar approval and endorsement simultaneously be given to the creation of a Kurdish state?
Much ink has been spilled about the desirability or even the inevitability of a separate State for Palestinians, whose identity stems from the middle of the 20th century, but what has been much less discussed by the international community -- and for the most part ignored -- is a similar claim by the Kurds, a people with a truly separate ethnic identity as well as a long history,
A Palestinian state would encompass 5 to 6 million people, the separate identity of whom stems only from the middle of the last century. Until that time those living in the area of Palestine did not consider themselves Palestinians, but as part of the Pan-Arab or Pan-Islamist movement rather than as a separate people. A Palestinian identity was not regarded as distinct from the identities of other Arabs who inhabited adjacent regions. The concept of such a separate identity arose, among other reasons, partly as a response to the Zionist movement and the establishment in 1948 of Israel, which until then was called Palestine: all citizens, including Jews, had on their passports that their country of origin was Palestine. There is now a demand for a Palestinian state separate from that of other Arabs.
The Kurds, on the other hand, are a frequently forgotten people, numbering over 35 million, who have a distinct identity and who have been pleading, fighting and dying for an independent state of their own since the 19th century.
The Arab League with its 22 members, along with Turkey, and many countries and groups in the international community have passionately advocated that part of the disputed land in the formerly Palestine area become a Palestinian state. The same individuals and groups, however, have opposed the creation of a Kurdish non-Arab state, on territory it claims as its own, and with it is unwilling to cooperate in sharing, even as they discount Israel's claims - from 1800 BCE, up to the Balfour Delaration, the British White Paper and UN Resolution 242 -- to all or part of what they want as Judenrein [with no Jews] Palestinian land.
By any reasonable and objective historical and cultural criteria, however, the claim of the Kurds for political sovereignty is infinitely stronger than that of Palestinians. In contrast to the Palestinians, the Kurds have few friends in the international community. Kurdish nationalism emerged a century earlier than did Palestinian nationalism. Collectively the Kurds, who are not Arabs, live in an area usually referred to as "Kurdistan," despite its uncertain borders. The Kurds make up a significant ethnic group that speaks its own language, part of the Indo-European language group.
During the late 19th century the Kurds made demands, mounting uprisings, and pressed for political autonomy in the areas in which they lived or independence free of any control by the Ottoman Empire or Persian authorities, each of which ruled Kurdish areas. Although the uprisings for an independent state in 1880 were particularly fierce, the Ottomans and the armies of Qajar Persia suppressed them.
After World War I, the Treaty of Sèvres in August 1920, the peace treaty between the Ottoman Empire and the victorious Allies of the war, dissolved the Empire and replaced it with a number of new nation-states -- Iraq, Syria, Kuwait and Turkey -- but not by a Kurdish state. The newly created Turkey renounced all rights over Arab Asia and North Africa. Two Articles in the Treaty were relevant to the issue of the Kurds. Article 62 of the Treaty suggested the creation of an autonomous region for Kurds in the new Turkey. Article 64 proposed the later possibility of an independent Kurdish state "inhabiting that part of Kurdistan which has hitherto been included in the Mosul vilayet (of the Ottoman Empire)."
However, the Treaty of Lausanne, signed in July 1923 and put into effect in August 1924, ended the continuing state of war between Turkey and a number of the victorious Allies. Between the time the two treaties were signed, the monarchy in Turkey had been overthrown and a republic establish under Kemal Ataturk. The new Treaty defined the borders of the modern Turkish state and ignored the earlier proposal for a Kurdish state. Political machinations, particularly by the British who were concerned with the threat of Communist Russia, led to decisions by which the territorial integrity of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey were heightened to counteract that threat.
The Treaty of Lausanne made no mention of Kurdish independence; instead, the Kurdish population was divided into different areas of Northern Iraq, Southeastern Turkey, and parts of Iran and Syria. Exact figures are difficult to calculate and in dispute, but it is clear that Kurds now constitute large minorities in these different countries. In Iraq they constitute 17% of the population, in Turkey 18%, in Syria 10%, and in Iran 7%. In all these countries they have suffered from oppression. In 1962 about 120,000 Kurds were denied citizenship in Syria on the specious grounds that they were not born in that country. Kurdish land in northern Syria in 1973 was confiscated and given to Arabs. Their language and books were banned from schools and their traditional celebrations prohibited.
Kurds challenged the state of Turkey by an armed insurgency in the 1980s but were suppressed. Turkey had outlawed the Kurdish language and forbidden Kurds to wear their traditional dress in the cities. It encouraged the Kurds to move from their mountain base to the cities to dilute their identity. The Turkish Constitution includes an apartheid clause that all citizens of the country must be ethnic Turks.
Aggression against the Kurds has not only been political and constitutional; it has also been physical. In the armed fighting between Turkey and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Part (PKK) -- formed in 1984 and the leader of which leader has long been imprisoned-- about 40,000 people were killed, many of whom were PKK fighters. In the 1990s, more than 3,000 Kurdish villages on the borders of Iraq were destroyed by Turkey. Turkish planes have, on many occasions in the last few years, attacked PKK bases and killed civilians in northern Iraq. And in March 2012, Kurds in a number of Turkish towns, including Istanbul, who were celebrating the Kurdish New Year (Nowruz) were arrested or wounded by riot police.
In Iraq chemical weapons were used against them in 1988: their villages were burned, thousands were killed. The attempted rebellion by the Kurds after the Gulf War of 1991 was crushed by Iraqi troops. Saddam Hussein destroyed more than 4,000 Kurdish villages and killed perhaps as many as 180,000 civilians. Only after the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein had ended did Iraqi Kurdistan become an autonomous but not fully independent regime, an area that was extended after the U.S. invasion of 2003. The alternative Kurds face is either greater autonomy in the individual countries in which they live, or an independent state of their own.
The international community and the world media have argued feverishly for a Palestinian state. No such attention or concern has been accorded the Kurds -- or the brutality towards them or the oppression they have suffered -- both of which are very much greater than anything experienced by the Palestinians.
The Turkish government donated the funds for the 70 foot high monument recently dedicated to "international activists" and erected in Gaza City's Port. The monument bears the names of the nine "martyrs" killed by Israel commandos in May 2010 when they were on the Mavi Marmara, one of the vessels that tried to break the legal Israeli naval blockade of Gaza to prevent armaments being shipped that could be turned on Israelis. The Turkish Foreign Minister, who referred to the "oppressed" Arabs in Gaza, ignores with a mote in his own eye, the oppression of the Kurds in his own country. Those purportedly concerned with human rights and self-determination have rarely, if ever, expressed support or even paraded for an independent Kurdish state. If a Kurdish state is "unthinkable," as Arabs argue, so, logically, is a Palestinian one. Surely the conclusion should be clear that if a Palestinian state is justified and endorsed by the international community, shouldn't similar approval and endorsement be given simultaneously to the creation of a Kurdish state?
Michael Curtis is author of Should Israel Exist? A Sovereign Nation under attack by the International Community. Fred Gottheil is Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois.
Related Topics:  Michael Curtis

Bread Shortages Appear in Egypt: From Al-Ahram

by David P. Goldman  •  Aug 20, 2012 at 10:41 am
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Alaa Abdallah , Monday 20 Aug 2012
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bread
File photo: A child balancing a tray of bread On his shoulder, which he has just bought from a bakery in Cairo , Feb. 6, 2008. that sells government-subsidized bread. (Photo:Reuters)
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Resident of the city of Desouk in the northwestern Nile Delta governorate of Kafr El-Sheikh have been suffering from a shortage of subsidised bread since the beginning of Eid on Sunday, according to the Al-Ahram Arabic news website.
Bakeries, which serve close to three million residents in the governorate, have not received their share of subsidised wheat and have therefore been unable to produce enough bread.
As a result, several bakeries in the city will be closed for the three-day Eid festival.
Burullus, Kafr El-Sheikh city and Riad in the same governorate are also experiencing bread shortages, with many residents complaining that what little bread they are able to buy is of poor quality.
Fawzy Abdel-Aziz, undersecretary at the supply ministry, has said the problem is not due to a shortage of subsidised wheat, and has instead accused bakeries of illegally selling subsidised wheat on the black market.
Monitors will be sent to the bakeries suffering from shortages, Abdel-Aziz said.
Egypt has been suffering from subsidised bread shortages for a number of years. The crisis reached its peak during the final years of the Mubarak era, when fatal brawls at bakeries were not uncommon.
Related Topics:  David P. Goldman

Weekly Call at "The Gate" blog: Israel's Options After the Debacle of US Foreign Policy

by David P. Goldman  •  Aug 20, 2012 at 9:55 am
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Background:
Israeli President Shimon Peres, supported by a substantial section of Israeli opinion, insists that Israel cannot strike Iran's nuclear program without the support of the United States. President Obama, as Ha'aretz defense analyst Amos Harel observes, has done everything to dissuade Israel from attacking Iran short of appearing in person before the Knesset. Senior American officials, most recently Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, have been trotted out to assert that Israel can't stop Iran's nuclear program single-handed.
The problem is that American foreign policy faces catastrophic failure, or rather a comprehensive set of failures, bearing directly on Israeli security. Not only have sanctions failed to deter Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapons program, but the Islamic Republic has broken out of diplomatic isolation. Turkey, supposedly America's partner in regional diplomacy, has reached out to Russia and China. And Egypt has reached out to Iran while threatening Israel in the Sinai. China is hosting a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement at which Iran will assume the organization's three-year rotating chairmanship. Egyptian President Morsi will visit Tehran on Aug. 25 on his way back from the summit.
In our April 12 summary, we concluded that
...the fluid and chaotic situation in the Eastern Mediterranean and the rapidly dwindling pre-Islamist-takeover interregnum in Egypt both argued in favor of the likelihood of an Israeli strike on Iran. The current lack of real equilibrium is favorable for – and even invites -- radical game-changing actions. Whatever equilibrium is established in the future (whenever that is) is likely to be much less favorable for Israel and more favorable for Iran, insofar as both Israel and the US will be in weaker positions and their Sunni rivals will be both weaker and poorer.
The shift towards a new equilibrium "much less favorable for Israel and more favorable for Iran" was already in progress as we wrote, with the purge of the Egyptian military's old guard and its replacement by officers allied to the Muslim Brotherhood. If Israel does nothing, it is likely to confront
1) A major Egyptian military presence in the Sinai in contravention of the Camp David treaty. An Egyptian build-up is already in progress.
2) An open alliance between Cairo and the Hamas government in Gaza, allowing Hamas to acquire new offensive capacities. As Amos Harel observed in yesterday's roundtable of Gatestone analysts, Israel already faces rocket attacks in parts of the country previously considered immune;
3) An alliance between Sunni Muslim Brotherhood elements in Syria and Iranian-sponsored Shi'ite irregulars, and Hizbollah in Lebanon.
Threats to Israel from the Sinai, Gaza, Lebanon and Syrian borders are likely to worsen as the Egyptian rapprochement with Iran proceeds. Iran's capacity to retaliate against any prospective Israeli strike will be enhanced and may include threats from Egypt.
The dilemma facing Jerusalem is that Israel can't live without the United States, but it also can't live with it. That may compel Israel to maneuver independently of Washington. As Rotem Sella reported on The Gate Aug. 17, there is speculation that Israel may concede the European natural gas market to Russia in return for Russia's forbearance in delivering anti-aircraft systems to Iran.
Blowback in Egypt
Egyptian President Morsi's announcement that he will visit Tehran on Aug. 30 occurs a week after Morsi  purged the military leadership. Qatar's $2 billion loan to Egypt announced the morning of Aug. 12 preceded Morsi's purge by hours.  The Obama administration sought to portray Morsi's new army chief,  General el-Sissi, , as an an ideal compromise between the secular-minded military old guard and Mr. Morsi's Brotherhood , " as the  Wall Street  Journal wrote:
Mr. Sissi's appointment may also represent People with knowledge of the Egyptian military said Gen. Sissi has a broad reputation within military circles as a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer, a rare trait in a military culture inured against Islamism. "Sissi is known inside the military for being a Muslim Brother in the closet," said Zeinab Abul Magd, a professor at the American University in Cairo and an expert on Egypt's military.
The notion of an "ideal compromise" is turning out to be absurd. The younger officers can't reproduce the career path of their elders, who will be retiring to yachts in Monaco, because the Egyptian economy is sucked dry and there's nothing more to loot. The old regime said in effect, Après moi le deluge. I can only imagine the apocalyptic stirrings among the younger officers. This has been brewing for some time; as the New York Times reported Aug. 16,
The chief of staff of Egypt's armed forces argued in a paper that the American military presence in the Middle East and its "one sided" support of Israel were fueling hatred toward the United States and miring it in an unwinnable global war with Islamist militants. he paper, written seven years ago by the new chief of staff, Gen. Sedky Sobhi, offers an early and expansive look into the thinking of one member of the new generation of military officers stepping into power as part of a leadership shake-up under Egypt's newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In  Ha'aretz , Avi Issacharoff adds:
The fears in Israel of a deterioration in relations with Egypt, following President Mohammed Morsi's removal from office of the head of the Supreme Military Council, Hussein Tantawi, and armed forces chief Sami Anan, are both premature and exaggerated. ..[but] there there are some causes for concern."
…
The development that, more than any other, should set off warning bells in Jerusalem, is the unilateral action taken by the Egyptians in Sinai during the past few days. Israel had prior knowledge about, and consented to, the use of some of the military reinforcements that were sent into the peninsula as well as the warplanes that were employed. But Egypt took action above and beyond what both sides agreed the Egyptian military needed to do in order to operate throughout Sinai. It turns out that additional forces were sent in, almost without anyone noticing, and without Jerusalem's agreement.
The Times account commented, "American officials said their confidence in Egypt was unshaken, while analysts argued that despite the changes in the nation's military and civilian leadership, any realignment in relations with Washington could be slow — in part because of Egypt's urgent need for assistance from the United States and the West."  That is an egregious error, because the most that Egypt can expect is enough assistance to allow the poorer half of its population to keep body and soul together (and with the rise in food prices, perhaps not even that). Cozying up to Iran does not suggest that Morsi will go hat in hand to the Saudis, but rather that he will try to blackmail them. It is a high risk strategy, but the Egyptians really don't have a lot to lose.
Severe economic distress benefits the Muslim Brotherhood. I wrote in Asia Times April 11 under the headline, "Muslim Brotherhood Chooses Chaos", that the Brotherhood would use shortages of food and fuel to consolidate its power in the street:
As Egypt headed towards chaotic breakdown, Western observers asked how its economy might be stabilized. This appears to have been the wrong question to begin with, for the Muslim Brotherhood will not allow the West to stabilize Egypt's financial position. The right question is: who will benefit from the chaos?
At this writing, the Muslim Brotherhood appears to be the winner by default, for no other actor has the courage and cold blood to exploit the emerging crisis. America, by contrast, is locked into the defense of a deteriorating fixed position. And Egypt's military leaders are more concerned with feathering their nests in exile, like the Iranian generals in 1979.
The Brotherhood believes that widespread hunger will strengthen its political position, and is probably correct to believe this. As the central government's corrupt and rickety system of subsidies collapses, local Islamist organizations will take control of food distribution and establish a virtual dictatorship on the streets.  American analysts mistook the protestors of Tahrir Square for revolutionaries. The Muslim Brotherhood now reveals itself to be a revolutionary organization on the Leninist or Nazi model.
Wishful thinking blinded American analysts to the Muslim Brotherhood's intent and methods. As late as Aug. 2, Fox News commentator Fouad Ajami still argued that "Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia's rulers bury their differences to fight the Shiite enemy," adding, "An Egyptian alliance with Saudi Arabia is the beginning of wisdom—a necessary, though hardly sufficient, condition for Egypt finding a way out of its crippling past."
On the contrary, the Muslim Brotherhood appears to believe that there is no way out of Egypt's "crippling past" (45% illiteracy, 90% rate of female genital mutilation, 30% rate of consanguineous marriages, 50% dependency on imported food). Half of Egyptians live at the verge of starvation on $2 or less a day, dependent on the government bread subsidy, and the Brotherhood explains their privation and fear to maintain political control in Orwellian fashion.
Washington, in sum, has helped to create a monster in the form of the Morsi government. The Israelis have to assume that Camp David is dead and that sooner rather than later, a new front will open against them in the South.
Iran's Threats to Saudi Arabia
Morsi came back from his July visit to Saudi Arabia empty handed. The Saudis evidently did not want to fund a movement committed to the overthrow of the House of Saud. Morsi appears to have chosen to ally with Iran to threaten the Saudis. A report by the Indian journalist Saeed Naqvi suggests the thrust of Iranian policy: Threaten the Saudis with subversion in Eastern province, perhaps via adjacent Bahrein, as well as assassination. Writes Naqvi:
To please some in the West, a possible result may already have been achieved in West Asia: quarrelling Muslim Societies, too self-absorbed to worry about Israel or Palestine. But a prolonged sectarian strife may not be entirely to Saudi Arabia's liking. It has its own oil rich Eastern province to worry about. Dammam, the centre of this province, is directly linked by a 37 km causeway to the troubled Kingdom of Bahrain with its 80 percent Shia population in revolt against the Sunni King. Bahrain is home to the United States 5th fleet and a holiday resort for the Saudis tired of their own institutionalized austerities.
And:
Since the death of successive Crown Princes Sultan bin Abdel Aziz in October 2011 and Naef bin Abdel Aziz in June 2012, intimations of mortality are knocking at the doors of a series of prospective successors. King Abdullah himself was in hospital in Europe when the Arab Spring disturbed his convalescence. In February 2011 he returned and took charge. He faces dissensions at home. There have been unconfirmed reports that Saudi Spy Chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan has been assassinated. In the absence of any official Saudi confirmation or denial, speculation and innuendo are rife. Former Chief of India's External intelligence Agency and Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, Vikram Sood says: "What must have stunned the Saudi government into silence was not just that Bandar was killed but that the Syrians had the reach to strike deep in Saudi Arabia."
Sanctions against Iran, meanwhile, are held in open contempt by a great deal of the world. Reuters Aug. 10:
Asia's major crude buyers are finding ways around tough U.S. and EU sanctions to maintain imports from Iran, suggesting that, for now, the worst may be over for the OPEC producer that is losing more than $100 million a day in oil export revenues. China, India, Japan and South Korea buy most of the one million barrels per day of crude Iran is able to export despite financial, shipping and insurance sanctions aimed at curbing funds for its controversial nuclear programme. After a lull in imports in the middle of the year caused by Asian refineries reducing purchases as sanctions kicked in, analysts expect shipments to rise in August and September. But on average, imports are likely to remain steady until the end of the year, unless the United States and the European Union come up with fresh sanctions to curb Iran's earnings.
"The drop in Iranian oil exports has leveled out over the past couple months at roughly 1 million barrels per day below 2011 levels," said Trevor Houser, a partner at the New York-based Rhodium Group and a former State Department adviser.
The Saudi Gazette notes that with oil prices rising, "Tehran seems to be enjoying the unexpected windfall- despite the odds"
Iraq is also helping Iran skirt financial sanctions, and continuing to do in open contempt of American actions. President Obama personally announced in June that the US was "cutting off" the Elaf Islamic Bank, "but the treatment the bank has received in Baghdad since it was named by Mr. Obama suggests that the Iraqi government is not only allowing companies and individuals to circumvent the sanctions but also not enforcing penalties for noncompliance" (New York Times). Iran is also trading currency and gold through Afghanistan. Again, the New York Times: "On its own, the rush of Iranian money to Afghanistan is unlikely to be enough to undercut the sanctions, which are the cornerstone of Western efforts to coerce Iran into abandoning its nuclear program. But it is clear that American officials are worried… The Iranians are 'in essence using our own money, and they're getting around what we're trying to enforce,' one American official said."
With inflation in the mid-20s, Iranians are buying local real estate, al-Arabiya reports:
With increased sanctions, the demand went up for gold, foreign currency and anything independent of the rial. In fact, the real estate market in Tehran has been growing over the last six months. It had slowed in previous years due to a housing crash just like everywhere else. People are even putting money into real estate in poorer neighborhoods, which means people are continuing to take money out of the banks and invest it in housing.
Iran's economy is hurting but in no danger of collapse in the near future.
Regarding Turkey, I wrote in The Gate on July 31:
Turkey's application to join the SIno-Russian Shanghai Cooperation Organization following Prime Minister Erdogan's July 19 pilgrimage to Russia is a diplomatic humiliation for the United States, and of the first order. Just when Washington is demanding that Russia withdraw support for the Assad regime in Syria, and when Turkey is the linch-pin for American logistics in support of the Syrian opposition, Erdogan has proposed in effect to joint the Russian-Chinese club (without being compelled to hand in his NATO credentials).
What Would be the Consequences of an Israeli Strike Against Iran?
Israeli (and Western) views are sharply polarized. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, reflecting briefings from the Israeli left, concluded:
But a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran today would be disastrous. It unites Iran in fury; locks in the Islamic Republic for a generation; gives a substantial boost to the wobbling Assad regime in Syria; radicalizes the Arab world at a moment of delicate transition; ignites Hezbollah on the Lebanese border; boosts Hamas; endangers U.S. troops in the region; sparks terrorism; propels oil skyward; rocks a vulnerable global economy; triggers a possible regional war; offers a lifeline to Iran just as sanctions are biting; adds a never-to-be-forgotten Persian vendetta to the Arab vendetta against Israel; and may at best set back Iran's nuclear ambitions a couple of years or at worst accelerate its program by prompting it to rush for a bomb and throw out International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors.
The counterargument is that all of these things, and worse, are happening in any case.  Yoram Ettinger, a former senior Israeli diplomat, argued in Israel HaYom Aug. 17 that an Israeli initiative to strike Iran would benefit America's world standing, even if the present administration opposed such a strike. He wrote:
On June 3, 1967, U.S. President Johnson pressured Prime Minister Eshkol against pre-empting the pro-Soviet Egypt-Syria-Jordan military axis, which threatened the survival of moderate Arab regimes (e.g., Saudi Arabia) and Israel's existence. Johnson advised that "Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone. We cannot imagine that [Israel] will make this decision."
Johnson warned that a unilateral Israeli military pre-emptive strike could trigger severe regional turmoil, transform Israel into a belligerent state, and preclude assistance by the U.S. Johnson refrained from implementing the 1957 unilateral and multilateral guarantees issued to Israel by Eisenhower. He insisted that Israel should rely on the diplomatic-multilateral option.
Eshkol defied Johnson. He pre-empted the anti-U.S., Arab axis; devastated a clear and present danger to vital Western interests; rescued the House of Saud from the wrath of Nasser; expedited the end of the pro-Soviet Nasser regime and the rise of the pro-U.S. Sadat regime in Egypt; dealt a major setback to Soviet interests; and demonstrated Israel's capability to snatch the hottest chestnuts out of the fire, without a single U.S. boot on the ground. He transformed the image of Israel from a national security consumer (a client state) to a national security producer (a strategic ally).
Eshkol realized that a defiant national security policy — in defense of the Jewish state — yielded a short-term political and diplomatic spat with the U.S., but resulted in a long-term national security upgrade and dramatically enhanced strategic respect.
The Israeli government will make the difficult choice on its own, independent of what outside analysts might say. But the events of the past week surely strengthen the case that there is far less to lose by attacking Iran than the Obama Administration believes.
* * * *
The Call for August 19, 2012
This week's call reviewed the material contained in the summary above and tried to evaluate the US-Israeli relationship and the likelihood of an Israeli strike against Iran. The participants seemed to agree that Prime Minister Netanyahu is deadly serious about attacking Iran, and that President Obama is equally serious about trying to stop him from doing so.
Our regulars are:
Pepe Escobar -- Author of the"Roving Eye"feature for the Asia Times
David Goldman -- aka "Spengler"
Amos Harel -- military correspondent and defense analyst for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz
David Samuels -- Contributing Editor at Harper's Magazine
Rotem Sella -- a journalist at Ma'ariv, an Israeli daily newspaper
David G.: Yoram Ettinger says that Israel should strike Iran and shouldn't care what Washington thinks.
Amos: David, Netanyahu has to care, at least about 3 billion $ a year, not to mention the American follow up needed for an Israeli strike against Iran. Also - It's amazing how much the Israeli media resents a strike at this moment, and not just the usual suspects in Ha'aretz.  Ettinger now seems a part of a tiny minority. The PM actually calls journalists saying he needs their help on Iran. I kid you not.
Rotem: Well, Haaretz and Yedioth mainly.
David G: Here is how I would organize the mass of material we have viewed in the past week.  1) the US has a set of objectives;  2) US policy isn't working (sanctions, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, you name it); everybody is maneuvering independently of the US, including (if we believe Rotem's Russian gas story) maybe even Israel;  4) there are a number of branching points for all the players. The branching points include:
1) are maybe Israel hits Iran
2) maybe the Saudis cut a deal with Iran behind the back of the US;
3) what else?
Am I wrong about how much US influence has diminished? I know Pepe shares that view.
Rotem: I don't think that Netanyahu won't strike because he have bad press, but I think he won't strike in the next months. I don't see how it's possible that he and Barak are talking about it and striking Iran at the same time.
Amos: I agree about the diminishing influence. Again, I might be overstating this because of my specific perspective - but the final test is: Israel vs. Iran. Will Bibi risk it - and how will Obama react, if he hopes to preserve some regional stature, especially considering the elections? We're talking late September to late October, presumably. Bibi is dead serious about a strike on Iran.
Pepe: Gen. Dempsey laid down the law; Israel cannot do it technically, and the Pentagon apparently is not delivering the goods in time.
Amos: In his speech in March, at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, President Obama declared that he will not settle for containment against Iran. Obama, however, had never sworn that he would not contain Israel. This is exactly what he is about to do now. His only mission regarding Israel in the next two and a half months would be to prevent an Israeli strike against Iran - by any means necessary. This should include a speech at the Knesset - as former Israeli military intelligence chief General Amos Yadlin just suggested - but the President hasn't made a decision yet, although it seems that President Peres at least is hoping for that.
Iran, in fact, has been the only place in the region where the Obama administration did not fail miserably during the last year. Washington failed in dealing with Libya, Egypt, Syria - and would probably fail again now with Mursi in Egypt. But regarding Teheran, Obama actually led quite an impressive campaign, which brought about some very tough sanctions. Evidently, this isn't enough. If the President wants to prevent chaos - he'll have to deal with Netanyahu directly - and block an Israeli military strike before November.
David G.: It's easier for Obama if Bibi promises to wait until the day after the election. It's also better for Israel to wait: none of the technology is perfect and the more time to prepare, the better. If we believe the Hans Rühl account, success depends on placing one bunker buster directly into the crater made by the last one. Israel has enough bunker-busters already to do it in theory. Dempsey is saying what Obama tells him to say. It's not necessarily "true."
Amos: Dempsey said it publicly - and the Israeli generals are saying it privately. David, I have to disagree here. Barak himself (Ehud) estimates a success as a year to two years delay. Dempsey is quite correct, it seems
David G.: OK, it's a policy issue not a technical issue as to what "success" means. Apart from flattening the whole country there's no way to permanently stop any country's nuclear program.
Pepe:  Allow me to stress once more this is not the point; the point is - if there is a strike THEN Tehran will go all out for a nuclear weapon, which, for the moment, is not the case according to every bit of intel available.
David G.: No-one ever has intel on where a nuclear weapons program stands, Pepe. India, N. Korea and others took the world completely by surprise.
Pepe:  Of course, because they were not monitored 24/7 by the IAEA.
David G.: I don't know any pro in the field who thinks that IAEA or any of the alphabet soup, least of all CIA, can tell what Iran is doing.
Rotem:  There are voices in Israel claiming that the operation to knock out Iraq's Osiris nuclear reactor was a failure because it caused Iraq  to speed up its nuclear program. I think the Iranians will try to get nuclear weapon as fast as they can anyway.
Pepe: The IAEA inspectors are all pros. Just like the guys in Iraq, which I met - and nobody believed them at the time when they said there was nothing in Iraq.
Amos: Nobody knows for sure. Israeli Intelligence still claims it would be able to identify an Iranian breaking-out towards a bomb. The PM and Defense Minister doubt that, as one might expect
Pepe: The IAEA would be able to verify a break out practically just--in-time - and the US intelligence agencies know it.
Pepe: OK, we agree to disagree. The best info I get from Iranians inside Iran is that the IRGC controls the program - but they depend on a Khamenei order to go all out. There is absolutely NO evidence Khamenei wants a bomb, either by what he has said so far of being un-Islamic and comparing to the Iranian strategy.
David G.: Pepe, I just don't believe it and I don't know anybody in the business who does. Let's move away from stuff we simply don't know about and can't find out.
Any thoughts from regarding Egypt a week after the Morsi purge? And how this is perceived in Israel
Rotem:  No one knows what "Egypt" wants, but it seems Israel is pretty clueless and without a coherent plan. The Egyptian army is now in Sinai with our permission, which hasn't, of course, happened since the peace treaty. We aren't getting any gas, and Morsi visits Iran, even as the Egyptian people starve.
I spoke to some people at an Israeli company that is among the world's largest manufacturers of underclothing. They have 2,500 employees in Egypt, and there are more Israel companies like them who keep working, but don't know what will happen tomorrow.
Israel built a fence with Egypt to try to guard against the flood of Sudanese and Eritrians that have come into Israel at a pace of more than 2,000 a month. This year, the number has dropped by 90%, not, in my opinion, thanks to the fence. The mayhem in Egypt and in Sinai is playing to Israel's benefit here. We had less than 300 refugees in July. I don't think its the fence, fences don't stop refugees anywhere else
Amos: Rotem, the fence isn't finished yet. It will be helpful, but it can't prevent Katyushas from falling on Eilat, as it happened just last week. This is a completely different situation for us. There are new dangers in arenas that were considered relatively safe before. Meanwhile the Israeli public is busy watching "Survival VIP."
Rotem: Which is a good show!
Pepe: They should export it. Good PR.
Amos: The fence should be finished by march 2013. Have you seen it from up close? It looks almost impossible to pass through
I have seen it. I don't think a Sudanese who walked thousands of kilometers will be stopped by a fence.
Rotem: Another area in which the Egyptians are being unreasonable is gas. In the last year, there were several explosions in the pipeline that brings gas from Egypt to Israel. In April, the Egyptians said they would 'stop selling gas' to Israel. Then they said 'let's negotiate a better deal'. (That 'better deal' was then found in May, with the Jordanians). Then, they said, they'll negotiate a new, more economically favorable deal with the Israelis. Nothing  has happened since. Three days ago, the Egyptians announced that they would go to the UN, seeking a share of the "Leviathan" gas field which Israel claims as its own.
David G.: So Israel has additional dangers on its southern border, not just rockets, but also the Egyptian army moving in violation of the treaty, led by a guys who don't believe in the treaty. Egypt is a wild card. Let me put this very simply: Morsi goes to Saudi Arabia July 17, comes back with nothing -- he's almost out of money. On August 12 the Emir of Qatar hands him a $2 billion check, and he goes for broke: fires Tantawi, and sets up a visit to Iran. He's telling the Saudis he'll play with their enemies -- he's got nothing to lose.
Or am I missing something? This is what I don't see reflected in any of the press coverage:  Morsi is taking big risks because if he just sits there without money from the Saudis he's dead in a few months anyway. That seems like arithmetic to me, but I don't see anyone talking about it, so I am wondering if I am crazy.
Amos: I'm still impressed by the way he handled the generals. Maybe he's here to stay, at least more than what some experts have led us to believe
Pepe:  David, the answer to all of your questions is: the Emir of Qatar.
David G.: I'm impressed, too. But there are a few ways to read that. One is that you have a legitimate, democratic government clearing away old has-been, corrupt generals. Another is that Tantawi  et. al. will retire to their yachts in Monte Carlo and leave an economic catastrophe to younger officers who won't get rich, even if they wanted to.
Amos: Follow the money. But what about Iranian money? Do they still have enough to help both Bashar and Hezbollah?
Pepe: We'll see after the Morsi meeting in Tehran.
David G.: Pepe, Qatar has about $30 billion -- it can't do much. Iran's oil exports are way down and they have 22% inflation driven by shortages -- they can spare the old $100 million to keep their surrogates in business but they can't bail out Egypt. The numbers don't add up. My point is that everbody is weak: Egypt, Iran, Saudi, Syria, Turkey -- and that's what makes them take risks.
Pepe: It's not only money. It's barter, and for Iran the essential relationship with Egypt back in business. But I agree; everbody is weak at the moment, including the US.
me: Pepe, barter what? Even they wanted to barter oil to Egypt, Iran and Egypt both need the same things, mainly food.
Amos: And another point about Hezbollah: It was hardly noticed anywhere, but last week the Shin Bet arrested a group of Arab Israeli drug dealers. Apparently they received 20 kilos of C4 explosive from Lebanon and hid it inside Israel, waiting for an order to use it. That could have been a very effective terror operation. That supports the theme that everybody  is taking greater risks. I'm not sure we can pass this summer season without any conflict, even before discussing Iran
David G.: One has to presume that Iran is already preparing for a possible Israeli strike.
Pepe: Hezbollah is ready; how did the Nasrallah interview play in Israel?
Amos: Nasrallah's speech wasn't taken too seriously. Israelis keep reminding themselves that's he's still in hiding - which isn't exactly true.
David G.: Amos, where is conflict most likely?
Amos: I'm not sure. I suspect Gaza, by way of Sinai. But Lebanon is also tense, partly because of the Syrian crisis.
David G.: It would be in Iran's interest to distract Israel with problems on its borders. That was part of David Samuels' point last week: the situation now is maximally fluid (less fluid after Morsi fired the generals) and any change is likely to be to Israel's disadvantage.
Amos: Peres' attack on Bibi was very interesting. He's been saying that off-record for two years. I think he's really worried
David G.: He should be worried. If Israel hits Iran now, the shape of the Middle East will change radically (presuming the operation is a success). Effectively it's a statement that the treaty with Egypt is dead anyone so not worth trying to save, no? The Roger Cohen op-ed in the NY Times is interesting. Cohen talked to someone with a coherent readout. Here's Cohen (and probably what Peres is thinking): "But a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran today would be disastrous. It unites Iran in fury; locks in the Islamic Republic for a generation; gives a substantial boost to the wobbling Assad regime in Syria; radicalizes the Arab world at a moment of delicate transition; ignites Hezbollah on the Lebanese border; boosts Hamas; endangers U.S. troops in the region; sparks terrorism; propels oil skyward; rocks a vulnerable global economy; triggers a possible regional war; offers a lifeline to Iran just as sanctions are biting; adds a never-to-be-forgotten Persian vendetta to the Arab vendetta against Israel; and may at best set back Iran's nuclear ambitions a couple of years or at worst accelerate its program by prompting it to rush for a bomb and throw out International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors."
Pepe: Let me advance an hypothesis here. Israel is in fact winning as we speak. The Palestinian question simply disappeared. It rated a mere mention at the OIC summit. The Bibi-Barak hysteria is all about Iran  and that plays marvelously for all those players interested in fomenting Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian hatred.
What Cohen says  is more or less what would happen.
me: Pepe, I agree. The question is whether it's worth it.
Pepe: Excellent point for the next call.
Related Topics:  David P. Goldman

A Compendium of Recent Iranian Foreign Policy Proposals

by Claire Berlinski
August 20, 2012 at 9:23 am
Yigal Palmor of the Israeli Foreign Ministry just sent me a compilation of recent Iranian foreign policy proposals. Useful to have them all in one place. I don't know about you, but to me, they just don't sound reasonable.
"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told them there was no place for the Jewish state in a future Middle East…. 'You want a new Middle East? We do too, but in the new Middle East ... there will be no trace of the American presence and the Zionists' ... President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Quds Day Address, 17 August 2012; Reuters
"The Israeli regime is a tool in the hands of Zionists to control the Middle-East and the entire world, Ahmadinejad stated. The Iranian president further stated that the International Quds Day is the day of unity among all human beings to remove the Zionist black stain from the human society." President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Quds Day Address, 17 August 2012; Fars News Agency, Iran
"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ... said the very existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to the humankind and an affront to all world nations … The Iranian President further described the World Quds Day as an occasion for the unity of all human communities to wipe out this scarlet letter, meaning the Zionist regime, from the forehead of humanity." President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Quds Day Address, 17 August 2012; IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
"Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei…. noted that liberating Palestine from the grip of Israel and its allies is a religious duty for all Muslims across the world." Ayatollah Sayyid Khamenei - Statement made during a meeting with hundreds of veterans from the Iraq-Iran war, 15 August; Fars News Agency, Iran
"General Amir Ali Hajizadeh … said if the Zionist hooligans embark on practicing their verbal threats, they will provide the best opportunity for the destruction of Israel because then the forged regime will be wiped out of the map and thrown into the trash bin of history for ever." Commander of the Aero-Space Forces of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Bridadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh - Interview with IRNA; IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
"He [Ahmadinejad] added: 'Anyone who loves freedom and justice must strive for the annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the way for world justice and freedom.'" President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Speech to ambassadors from Islamic countries ahead of Quds Day, published on Ahmadinejad's website on 2 August 2012
"Zionists understand only the language of force, Ayatollah Khatami reiterated. He further noted that the Zionist regime will meet destruction through unity in the Islamic world." Tehran's Provisional Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami - Address to a large congregation of worshippers on Tehran University campus, 17 August 2012; Fars News Agency, Iran
"Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami underlined the importance of this year's International Quds Day (August 17, last Friday of the Ramadan) rallies, and said that 'The nations of the region, which have toppled dictators, also have the power to annihilate the Zionist regime (Israel).'" Tehran's Provisional Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami; Iran Daily Brief; Published: 14 August 2012
"Khomeini's successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, said on Wednesday that the liberation of Palestine was top on the Islamic world agenda and predicted that 'the fake Zionist regime would soon fade away from geography and every inch of the occupied territories be returned to Palestinians.' Ayatollah Sayyid Khamenei -15 August; DPA and the Associated Press
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told an annual anti-Israel protest in Tehran on Friday that the Jewish state was a "cancerous tumour" that will soon be excised….'The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumour,' he said. 'The nations of the region will soon finish off the usurper Zionists in the Palestinian land.... A new Middle East will definitely be formed. With the grace of God and help of the nations, in the new Middle East there will be no trace of the Americans and Zionists,' he said." President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Quds Day Address, 17 August 2012;
"Supreme Leader of Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, said on Sunday that noble Quds and Palestine are the main issues of the world of Islam … Elsewhere in his address, the Ayatollah referred to ignorance of Muslim nations and governments for years and rule of the hegemonic powers over their fate as well as creation of the cancerous tumor of Zionism in heart of Muslim world … Zionism is a danger for entire humanity ... "  Ayatollah Sayyid Khamenei - Address to officials and others, including ambassadors of Muslim states in Tehran, 19 August 2012;  IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
"'The very existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to humankind and an affront to all world nations," the news agency's English-language report on the speech quoted him as saying. "Confronting Zionists will also pave the way for saving the whole humankind from exploitation, depravity and misery.'" President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Quds Day Address; 17 August 2012
"Ahmadinejad said that a "horrible Zionist current" had been managing world affairs for "about 400 years." Repeating traditional anti-Semitic slurs, the Iranian president accused "Zionists" of controlling the world's media and financial systems…. 'Quds Day is not merely a strategic solution for the Palestinian problem, as it is to be viewed as a key for solving the world problems,' he said.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Speech to Ambassadors from Islamic countries ahead of Quds Day, published on Ahmadinejad's website on 2 August 2012
He [Ahmadinejad] said Zionists, who think solely of power, wealth and dominance over others, have been inflicting very heavy damage and suffering on the whole humanity for over two thousand years especially during the past four centuries. Saying that the two world wars were designed by Zionists and carried out by the US to retain dominance on other countries, the president further noted that Zionists have been administrating affairs in the US since the very beginning of its establishment." President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Quds Day Address, 17 August 2012; IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Maybe we need to send them a copy of Getting to Yes. They really need to learn negotiating skills.
Related Topics:  Iran, Israel  |  Claire Berlinski

How to Read Today's Unbelievably Bad News

by Claire Berlinski
August 20, 2012 at 6:03 am
An unshocking admission: I've made some ungodly-embarrassing retraction-worthy journalistic mistakes over the course of my career. Almost every journalist does. It's hard to write about complex events at once quickly, without boring your readers witless, and without making mistakes. One example in particular embarrasses me; I'll share it with you at the end of this piece. For now, I point this out to set the stage: When I criticize my colleagues, as I am about to do, I hardly mean to suggest that I do so from a platform of unblemished faultlessness.
But criticize I must. Something has gone very wrong in American coverage of news from abroad. It is shoddy, lazy, riddled with mistakes, and excessively simplistic.
Above all, it is absent.
Many things are to blame for this. In 2009, I wrote a piece for City Journal observing the disappearance of international news from the American press. It is a long-term trend. A number of studies suggest a roughly 80 percent drop in foreign coverage in print and television media since the end of the Cold War. it seems to me—based upon my casual perusal of the American media—that the trend is accelerating.
I asked, in that essay,
Why has the U.S. increasingly forgotten that a wider world exists? One possible reason is many Americans' sense that since September 11, U.S. efforts to get involved abroad have been (arguably) unsuccessful and (inarguably) unappreciated. Another is the demoralization of the American workforce. The U6 rate of unemployment in the States—the more expanded measure that includes those who have stopped looking for work and those unwillingly settling for part-time employment—is now 17 percent. Many people are now underemployed in jobs that offer little pride or satisfaction, suffering a general sense of aimlessness and disgruntlement. Such a mood discourages the cultivation of a lively curiosity about the world.
These points seem all the more true now. In-depth international news coverage in most of America's mainstream news organs has nearly vanished. What is published is not nearly sufficient to permit the reader to grasp what is really happening overseas or to form a wise opinion about it. The phenomenon is non-partisan; it is as true for Fox News as it is for CNN.
Yet this is odd. In the era of the Internet, mobile phones, social media and citizen journalism, it has never been easier to learn about the rest of the world. So why have American news collection priorities have changed so dramatically? What effect does this have upon American national security? The answer to the first question is complex; the answer to the second is simple: a bad one.
During the Cold War, every major American newspaper and television station covered foreign news, particularly from the Soviet Union and Europe. American television networks set the standard for global news coverage and—this is important—they drove the global news agenda. All the major networks had bureaus across the globe, staffed by correspondents who had been on the ground for years. Whether they were in Berlin, Cairo, Istanbul, or Moscow, they knew their region, they knew the people, they spoke the local languages, and knew the history of the stories they covered.
In that golden era of Cold War journalism, even small local papers had bureaus overseas. They hired foreign correspondents, paid them a living wage, and sent them—and their families—to foreign countries with generous expense accounts and housing allowances and a budget for interpreters and fixers. Their reports ended up on the papers' front pages, or, in the case of television news, at the top of the hour. Working in a bureau, learning from the bureau's old hands, and having the time to get to know a country and a region deeply enabled reporters to do the things reporters need to do: connect dots, notice anomalies and details and trends, sense weird moods that outsiders—even seasoned journalists—simply cannot sense in their first week in a foreign country. This is intuitively obvious. Consider where you work. How likely is it that an underpaid temp could show up at your company and within three days understand its culture, power structure, personalities, gossip and unspoken rules? How likely is it that a foreigner who speaks no English could do it? How likely would he be to intuit that the accountant is cooking the books? How likely would he be to know that a big management shakeup is in the works?
You can't replace the kinds of insight you gain about a foreign country by living in it and living in it for a very long time. The following kinds of experiences, for example, help a great deal when you're trying to understand another culture and write about it intelligently: being a victim of a crime (that's how you really learn about a country's criminal justice system); opening a business (that's how you really learn about the economy and the investment climate); being sued or harassed for what you've written (that's how you really learn how free the press is); experiencing a medical emergency (that's how you really figure out what the health care system is like); taking up a sport or a hobby (that's how you really learn how politics there are conducted) and seeing, day after day, the difference between what's in front of your eyes and what the local media reports—no less what the international media reports. Moreover, it takes years to acquire good, trustworthy sources. But it only takes hours to acquire bad, untrustworthy ones, because they are trying to find you: The people who want to spin you are looking for naïve, fresh-off-the-boat foreign correspondents, and they know exactly where to find them.
In the Cold War era, US network news coverage was delivered worldwide: ABC fed Britain's United Press International Television News, NBC fed Visnews, also based in Britain; CBS had its own syndication service. Few national news stations outside of the United States had the capacity to cover international news, but the United States did. During the final decades of the Cold War, for example, CBS had 14 massive foreign bureaus, 10 smaller foreign bureaus, and stringers in 44 countries. CBS has since shut down its Paris, Frankfurt, Cairo, Rome, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Beirut, and Cyprus bureaus. The other large networks have downsized similarly. US news stations have decided that some places aren't worth covering at all. We have almost no coverage out of India, for instance—disasters, yes, but nothing else. Likewise with Africa. As for the Middle East, we hear an enormous amount about Israel, but ask yourself what you've heard, recently, about Libya—a country where we recently toppled the government. Does it not seem odd to you that almost no one is reporting on the aftermath? More than ever, news is reactive: There is no coverage before a story breaks, even if people on the ground could have spotted it coming a hundred miles ahead. So Americans are shocked when an emergency occurs overseas (or, for that matter, at home, as on September 11)—because they had no idea it was even a situation.
In the event of a massive breaking story—such as the uprisings in Tahrir Square—the networks parachute their people in. They bone up on the story by reading the local English-language newspapers (and in any country where English isn't widely spoken, it is important to ask: Why does it have an English-language newspaper? The answer, usually, is that the paper is trying to sell a particular version of local events to investors and to English-speakers—a version, needless to say, that is not necessarily the whole truth). In this scenario, the US correspondent functions as a talking head: He repeats the locally-produced news story in front of a camera. In other words, the pattern has now been reversed. Whereas local news stations once relied upon American networks for global coverage, American networks now rely upon local news services for their global coverage. Many dedicated and talented freelancers pick up some of the slack, but there is no substitute for the support of a fully-staffed local newsroom with collective decades of institutional knowledge—and as someone who has been trying to earn a living as a freelancer for many years, I can promise you that the job insecurity is enough to discourage many talented people.
According to the American Journalism Review, at least eighteen American newspapers and two chains have closed every last one of their overseas bureaus since 1998. Other papers and chains have dramatically reduced their overseas presence. Television networks, meanwhile, have slashed the time they devote to foreign news. They concentrate almost exclusively on war coverage—and then, only on wars where US troops are fighting. That leaves the big four national newspapers—the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times—with independent foreign news coverage. But they too have closed foreign bureaus in recent years. In 2003, the Los Angeles Times shut down 43 percent of its foreign bureaus. This is especially significant because the Los Angeles Times provides foreign coverage for all the Tribune Company papers.
But couldn't this be seen as a good and inevitable thing? Aren't local news services inherently more qualified to provide this coverage? Isn't it obviously more cost-effective to rely upon them? Yes, and no—but mostly no.
First, the system has not yet been replaced by a platform of highly-competent local news agencies that share a commitment to the basic codes of journalistic conduct that even the sleaziest of American papers take for granted—by this, for example, I mean that one shouldn't just make up quotes, or grossly alter them to change their meaning, and that one should at least try to confirm rumors before reporting them.
Second, there is little diversity. Without much exaggeration, we can say that Al-Jazeera has replaced American television news as the global driver of the television news agenda, and not only in the Middle East. Al-Jazeera's coverage of Cuba, for example, is unexcelled by any American media outlet. Compare its coverage over the past year to CNN's, for example.
But Al-Jazeera is Qatar's foreign-policy arm, not ours. Qatar is entitled to have one, as is any nation. Still, if no one else is offering an equally compelling, in-depth counter-narrative, Qatar's prejudice's, priorities and view of the world will win by default—and theirs are not necessarily yours. Recall this article by Tuvia Tenenbom on the role played by Al-Jazeera in fomenting the Arab uprisings:
Al-Jazeera understands the power of pictures. It was a marvel to watch how it used this power after Ben Ali fled Tunisia. Al-Jazeera got its hands on a couple of soldiers who kissed demonstrators, plus two policemen who were seen crying—or almost crying—during the same demonstration. This video was shown again and again and again and again, creating the feeling that the "Army and Police are with you. Keep on going, Tunisians!" Once Al-Jazeera decided a situation was so, it could be made a reality. No one could argue: it was Democracy in the Making!
But in all the tumult, no one remembered to ask: "Why is Al-Jazeera not championing democracy in Qatar?"—where Al-Jazeera is owned by the rulers there.
I don't entirely agree with her analysis: These events were, paradoxically, contingent (in the sense that they were triggered by a series of coincidental events) and over- determined (in the sense that the pressures on these regimes were so enormous, for so long, that they were at some point bound to collapse.) Al-Jazeera is just one part of the story—demography, the spread of a fuzzy notion of democracy (for which we can take much credit, for good or ill), the age of the dictators in question and the youth of the populations of the countries in question; rising global food prices—these and many other factors are all part of the story. But yes, Al-Jazeera played a key role, and not necessarily a salubrious one.
Yet Al-Jazeera should not be excoriated: It's a superb, highly professional news gathering organization without which we'd have almost no in-depth television news coverage of the Middle East. The problem is not that they exist, it's that they're the only ones who exist. American broadcasters have simply given up on covering the region in a serious way.
Second, the local press is often not free, or if it is relatively free, it is not necessarily good. If you read only English, there's a huge barrier to understanding the opinions expressed in foreign newspapers. Machine translation is still in its infancy. The larger context necessary to make a local story comprehensible to Americans is rarely provided, for example, by a Turkish newspaper—Turkish newspapers cater to Turkish audiences who already know the context, and if a Turkish newspaper is publishing in English, it is not because the editors enjoy dabbling in foreign languages; it is because it wants to sell a version of a story to you, prospective foreign investor and influencer of your government's foreign policy. That does not mean the paper has your best interests at heart. Take, for example, Turkey's Today's Zaman: Although it's published in increasingly good English, it would be a remarkably poor idea to rely upon in it exclusively for news from Turkey. The Zaman media brand has a very particular identity. It is associated with Fethullah Gülen's religious civil-society movement and surrounded by controversy. It has an agenda. All stories published in Today's Zaman must be understood in this context. It takes a great deal of experience to understand who the correspondents at Today's Zaman are, what political tradition they come from, and what their articles really mean. Most Americans would have no idea how to interpret any of this. "Interpretation" is what foreign correspondents are supposed to do, and once did. They knew how to read the local press, they understood the partisan biases of the news organs in question, and they learned the correct strategy for reading a local story and getting the most real news—news of relevance to Americans—out of it. They don't do this anymore.
So what's happened here? For one thing, the Internet and other technological revolutions in news gathering have resulted, to put it simply, in giving consumers who are in no position to determine what's newsworthy too much power to decide what they think is important. News consumers may now customize the news they receive to an extraordinarily high level of precision and ignore everything else. Because stories are no longer bundled together in a single physical item—the newspaper—the reader no longer has to slog through, or at least cast his eyes over, stories about high-level meetings on nuclear disarmament in order to get to the sports page. We choose each item with a mouse-click—bye-bye, P5+1, hello, Jerry Sandusky.
News producers rely increasingly on independent companies to sell their ads; they are now dependent upon aggregators (such as Google) and social networks (such as Twitter) to bring them a large part of their audience. Consumers read stories that interest them; the aggregators, noticing that a consumer liked a story, offer them more of the same—stories, in fact, as similar as possible to the ones they just read. Obviously, readers end up having their biases confirmed this way, rather than being exposed to stories that might disconfirm them.
Similarly, sharing stories on Facebook and Twitter means, by definition, receiving your news from people who have been pre-selected to be very much like you in their political instincts—but not people who have been pre-selected to be good news editors. Recently, for example, a Facebook friend posted a news item on my page with great alarm. The story came from Pamela Geller's ludicrous website. Its headline: JIHADIST "REBELS" IN SYRIA HANG CHILD AFTER KILLING FAMILY MEMBERS. Now, it is almost certainly true that some of the rebels are committing atrocities. But in this case—much to my amusement—neither Geller nor my Facebook friend had taken the time to look at the source of this report, which happened to be the Ahlulbayt News Agency. What's that? Well, look it up. Postal address: 6th St., Jomhouri Eslami Boulevard, Qom, Iran. For someone who really doesn't care for Muslims, Pamela Geller is oddly content to trust them—ones from Qom, no less!—to report with neutral dispassion on this situation.
And this is how bad it's become among people who are interested in the foreign news to begin with. The people who understand how to target content and advertising to fit users' interests are not foreign news specialists. They're software programmers and technology companies. Most wouldn't recognize a significant foreign story if it bit them in the ass. Thus most Americans will be aware of Madonna's views about Pussy Riot, but will have no idea that the leader of South Ossetia, Leonid Tibilov, has declared that Georgian homes in the region will be completely demolished and its villages renamed. They won't, for that matter, have the first clue who Leonid Tibilov is, or why this story might be significant. Nor will they hear about the equally attractive and brave young women of Turkey's Vardiye Bizde platform, who have also protested—and protested, and protested, always peacefully, the detention of their fathers and husbands in Turkey's so-called "Sledgehammer" case—but alas without ingeniously describing themselves as "Pussy Riot," without desecrating a religious site, and without using awful music to make their point. Moreover, they protest in Turkish, a language no one outside Turkey understands. If Americans were receiving non-stop coverage of their sad, pretty faces, they would be just as disturbed as they are by the Pussy Riot case, I'm sure. But you won't know a thing about them unless you've lived in Turkey for quite some time; and you won't know about it from reading the Turkish press, either, particularly since journalists who cover these issues here tend to find themselves fired or locked up.
We are in a recession, and Craig's List killed the advertising model for local newspapers. Local papers no longer have the resources to pay for foreign correspondents and their housing and their staff. It's easier and cheaper to run wire-service stories. It makes perfect economic sense for local papers to focus on local news. But obviously, the reliance on wire services grossly reduces the diversity of reporting and reinforces the echo-chamber effect—it's all Pussy Riot, all day, and it's springtime or a nightmare in the Arab world, and who knows what's happening in China, not me, for sure. Nor is the slack being picked up by bloggers: Their domestic focus is almost identical to that of the mainstream media, suggesting that the mainstream media is still driving the agenda.
Nor is this just an American problem, by the way. A report titled "Shrinking World" published by the Media Standards Trust suggested that international reporting in UK newspapers has decreased in the past 30 years by nearly 40 percent. Let me point out a particularly disturbing line from that report: "In such a setting, it's no surprise that UK-based correspondents rely on news sources from the country of origin as well as newswire content like that provided by Business Wire to fill in the gaps, turning the loss of foreign correspondents in UK newspapers into a gain for PR professionals and their clients."
Let those words roll around in your mind—"a gain for PR professionals and their clients"—and think about what that entails. What it entails is this, as I noted here:
Wikileaks is at it again, this time, leaking a (promised) two million-plus emails from the Syrian regime, which has in the past eighteen months tortured, raped and killed at least 15,000 of its own citizens. And look what we have here: A memo explaining how to get away with it from Brown Lloyd James.
Brown Lloyd James, according to its website, "is managed by an elite group of distinguished former news executives, top-level White House and Downing Street political advisors, high-profile entertainment industry executives and experts in international affairs. Our staff have been at the right hand of presidents, prime ministers, media barons – and yes, even The Beatles."
Among their areas of expertise is "reputation management." As their promotional material helpfully explains, "Things happen in the course of global events that can quickly change your public image. A positive reputation and image are powerful strategic tools and effective insurance policies should something go wrong. Brown Lloyd James has the skills and experience to manage and control fast-moving and potentially volatile situations."
Now, obviously, this is a problem.
It's foundational to the American idea of press freedom that the press performs an important role in a democratic polity. The press, in principle, checks the power of government, nourishes a marketplace of ideas and initiates debate. Jefferson, famously, remarked that "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." To be engaged as a citizen in a democracy requires understanding what your government is doing. Foreign reporting is as essential as domestic reporting to the cultivation of an informed electorate that can reward or punish its leaders appropriately at the ballot box for serving or failing to serve their interests.
Yet survey upon survey indicates that Americans are not at all well-informed about foreign news—they are still stumped by questions, for example, asking them to name the two main branches of Islam. The European debt crisis has attracted scant interest or concern among the US public, despite the obvious risk it poses to the United States' own economic recovery. The American public needs reliable information about what's going on overseas because America is a global power, and what happens overseas affects them; likewise, what Americans do overseas affects billions. Yet study upon study suggests that knowledge about international affairs has declined significantly over the past 20 years—unsurprisingly, because news coverage has declined.
College graduates now know much less about the world than their peers did in 1989. The same goes for high school graduates. These graduates will obviously be less competitive globally when their jobs are shipped overseas. But this is not even the most disturbing aspect of the trend. Not only does a democracy require a polity that's sufficiently well-informed to have opinions about foreign policy and know whether the government is executing their desires, it requires policymakers who are sufficiently well-informed that they might have the first clue how to execute them. Most of what they know about foreign countries comes from the same media, and this includes policy-makers at the highest level.
The lack of competence in covering foreign news shows, and it shows painfully, if you live in one of the many countries that is now badly covered by the US press. I was thrilled when I read that The New York Times had sent Jeffrey Gettleman to Turkey to cover the Syrian crisis, having always admired his reporting from the Horn of Africa. I shouldn't have been. One of his first pieces involved a grotesque conflation of the Turkish Alevis with Syrian Alawites—a conflation the significance of which was well-explained here by Stephen Schwartz (who tactfully refrained from mentioning Gettleman's name), and here by Susae Elanchenny, who didn't.
Anyone who follows Turkish politics closely will know that the Alevi issue is significant and sensitive, and that this is no trivial mistake. The Times issued a belated correction, but only many days later, and not before the damage was done. What was the damage? Among other things, it fueled anti-American conspiracy theories in Turkey. The truth, obviously, was that a journalist who wasn't properly equipped to report on this story landed, spoke to other journalists who provided him with the skeleton of the piece; thought "sectarian conflict" sounded like a plausible things to write about; and figured Alevi and Alawi look the same—what's a consonant, after all. Besides, he was on a deadline. No one in America, or very few people, will know that what happens in Malatya is not at all the same as what happens in Syria, although they would instantly realize that something was very wrong with a news report hinting at imminent sectarian clashes arising in Florida owing to Mitt Romney's Pennsylvania Amish roots. The story published by the Times sounded just as absurd to Turkish ears, and given the unduly high esteem afforded here to the Times and American brands, generally, the conclusion seemed logical: Americans are far too advanced and powerful to make such a mistake by mistake, so the conflation must have been deliberate and nefarious.
The damage done to Americans' understanding of this issue was also grievous. Correction notwithstanding, the impression with which Americans came away was that Turkey was on the verge of "sectarian conflict," a term most Americans associate with anarchy and beheadings and suicide bombings in Iraq. This simply isn't correct. There is conflict here, certainly, but this is absolutely not the right image of it, nor even the right conflict: The conflict about which Americans should be worried, should the Syrian crisis spill over—and it is—is the Kurdish conflict. And why should we care? Suffice to say that if you are asking that question, you have not been well-served by your newspapers.
This is not to say that Turkish journalists, or foreign reporters of long-standing, do not make egregious mistakes as well. The Economist's Amberin Zaman, in a recent piece that mercifully distinguished clearly between Alevis and Alawites, repeated the myth that Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was the first Sunni leader to visit Ali's shrine. In fact, he was the fourth to do so. This mistake is repeated over and over—but it is still a mistake. It is, again, the echo chamber at work.
And this brings me to the point with which I began: mistakes I have made. I point out Amberin Zaman's error with great humility, for I too have misled my readers. In a 2010 piece titled Press Freedom Alla Turca, I described Amberin as a columnist for Today's Zaman—which, as I've explained, is a suggestion fraught with a very particular meaning in Turkey. She wrote to me, very politely, to point out that she was not and never had been a columnist for Today's Zaman, although her articles for the German Marshall Fund had been reprinted by the newspaper.
She was absolutely correct, and I promised her that I would ask Standpoint to issue a correction. I meant entirely to do so, but—very simply—I forgot. I've got no better excuse. I put it on a list of things to do, but as so often happens, other things came up. She politely reminded me again, two years later. I felt awful when I saw that, and sent the magazine an e-mail right away asking them to correct it, which they did.
There was no conspiracy involved, just carelessness--and again, Amberin, I'm sorry. But there is a moral. If you are asking, "How should I read the unbelievably awful news from abroad?" The answer is, "with utmost caution." No matter where it comes from.
Related Topics:  Claire Berlinsk
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Posted by solsticewitch13 at 1:07 PM

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