Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

[lakedaemonian]

Re: What do Russia and Iran want ?.

Firstly, Russia is economically weak, no longer a military superpower so another Afghanistan type of campaign is unlikely. Secondly, Putin is a cautious man so he won't take more risk than necessary.

My guess is this will look like a replay of Ukraine. The whole world thinks that Putin will invade Ukraine, reinstate his crony Viktor Yanukovych, or spit Ukraine into half, but in the end, he kept only the Crimean port and a strip of border land in East Ukraine.

If this is the case, Putin will only need to secure Damascus and the Tartus Port. Both cities border Lebanon and can be easily secured by wall fortification and mines which won't cost more than a couple hundred millions to build and a couple thousand troops can defend it once it is built.

With Damascus and the Port of Tartus bordered up, ISIS will move their attention elsewhere.

Maybe.

Ukraine has been far from cheap for Putin.

Even a thin coastal strip of Alawite Syria as I've also posited could be an expensive endeavour as there will be several million residents in need of residence, jobs, infrastructure, quality of life, and standard of living.

Will the Alawite led Syrians who remain possess the productivity and entrepreneurial spirit of their Lebanese neighbours to the South and rebuild a smaller/rationalised country?

Israel did it once.

Lebanon did it multiple times.

Can the Syrians?

Sure. Theoretically.

Lots of variables though. The jury is most certainly still out.

[touchring]

Re: What do Russia and Iran want ?.

Maybe.

Ukraine has been far from cheap for Putin.

Yes, but does he have a choice? Put oneself in else's shoes. If Russia decides to build a military base in Saudi Arabia, would the West react any differently?

Even a thin coastal strip of Alawite Syria as I've also posited could be an expensive endeavour as there will be several million residents in need of residence, jobs, infrastructure, quality of life, and standard of living.

Will the Alawite led Syrians who remain possess the productivity and entrepreneurial spirit of their Lebanese neighbours to the South and rebuild a smaller/rationalised country?

Israel did it once.

Lebanon did it multiple times.

Can the Syrians?

Sure. Theoretically.

Lots of variables though. The jury is most certainly still out.

Agree. But in the meantime, millions of Syrian refugees and probably a couple hundreds ISIS operatives in their midst will be trying to get to Europe. Why did this happen and who is responsible for their predicament?

[Verrocchio]

Re: china vs oil

Yes, I would agree that China is vulnerable to higher prices, but no more vulnerable than any other major economy.

I'm not sure if you have lived in Hong Kong or anywhere in China, it's possible to live without cars for the following reasons:

1. Almost everyone live in apartments.
2. There's usually a grocery store, coffeeshop or eatery, 24 hour convenience shop and supermarket within 5 minute's walk from your home.
3. There's a bus stop within 1-2 minutes walk from your home.
4. Public transport is very cheap and the bus for every route comes every 5-10 minutes.
5. There's usually a metro station within 5-15 minutes walk from your home. Trains travel faster than cars during peak hours.
6. Electric bicycles are very popular.
7. To travel to another nearby city, you could take an inter-city bus and they depart every 10 minutes.

Major economies differ in their vulnerability to higher oil prices. Can China rely on domestic sources to supply most of the oil it needs? Does most of the oil China needs come from foreign sources? Can China protect the supply line (e.g., sea lanes, pipelines)?

While certainly true that it's possible to live in Hong Kong without a car, you've overstated the case for the convenience of public transportation, at least based on my experience as an expat in HK.

1. Yes, almost everyone lived in an apartment.
2. More like 20-45 minutes walk away, depending on which of these you wanted.
3. Yes, the bus stop was a few minutes walk from home.
4. Yes, bus transport was cheap but the bus, depending on the route, came every 20 minutes to an hour.
5. No, a metro station wasn't located 5-15 minutes walk away. However, once you got to an MTR, you could quickly travel great distances.
6. Yes.
7. There really aren't other cities in Hong Kong, but see #4.

[Polish_Silver]

CIA and Al Qaeda

AQ and ISIS manufactured by the U.S. are conspiracy theory jokes.

If you want to talk indirect 2nd and 3rd order effects then I think a rational conversation can be had.

OBL and US interests may have been temporarily aligned in Soviet era Afghanistan, but that doesn't imply or prove guilt.

. . .

.

I think the US provided arms to various Afghan gorilla groups during the Soviet period. Some of these groups probably
had religious ideologies, and might have recruited people from beyond Afghanistan's border. When the Soviet Union withdrew forces, these groups
would have been looking for another enemy to fight.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: What do Russia and Iran want ?.

Yes, but does he have a choice? Put oneself in else's shoes. If Russia decides to build a military base in Saudi Arabia, would the West react any differently?

I reckon the west would react more aggressively to GCC petrodollar recycling by purchasing Russian gear than the usual western slicing of that pie.

Maybe a Russian military presence in the GCC would take the heat off of all the hatred towards the ex military infidels who represent high wage service contracts that are also part of the petro dollar recycling machine? Something to keep an eye on is Russia/Putin's volatile but successful quid pro quo with Kadyrov Junior in Chechnya. Kadyrov's forces have quickly and quietly become the "go to" proxy force in dealing with fundamentalist movements that go a bit too far.



Agree. But in the meantime, millions of Syrian refugees and probably a couple hundreds ISIS operatives in their midst will be trying to get to Europe. Why did this happen and who is responsible for their predicament?

Thats a good question with a lot of very emotional opinions on the matter.

I'm of the belief that the Saudi offer to build 200 mosques in Germany is not too indifferent to the terraforming reactors in the Alien movie franchise.

Germany's offer to accept roughly 1% of its population per year for several years will have 1st, 2nd, 3rd order effects that will have substantial consequences for Germany's demographics, culture, society, and economy.

I personally view this mass migration as nothing less than long-game strategic unconventional warfare, especially in light of the fact that fully 3/4 of refugees are fighting age adult males.

The urban ethnic ghettos of Paris and increasingly so in places like Sweden represent non permissive spaces with very high potential to become malignant tumors for sovereign states, unless decisively and effectively dealt with.

Bringing in highly vetted and educated refugees with a high likelihood of integration and success? Certainly. Average up.

Bringing in refugees highly likely to be destined for an ethnic ghetto for life and highly unlikely to integrate? Averaging down is madness.

i think the outcome I'd predictable-ish looking out a few decades, the degree is certainly up for debate.

Who did it and why did it happen?

What's more important? How we got here or how we mitigate/deflect the long game?

[shiny!]

Re: What do Russia and Iran want ?.

I personally view this mass migration as nothing less than long-game strategic unconventional warfare, especially in light of the fact that fully 3/4 of refugees are fighting age adult males.

Precisely. This looks like a trojan horse. Three-quarters of the Muslim refugees coming in to Europe are males of fighting age. If the conditions they are escaping are so dire, then why are they leaving their mothers, wives and children to it?

I'm concerned that once they are established in sufficient numbers, the signal will go out and they will all rise at once against their hosts.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: What do Russia and Iran want ?.

Precisely. This looks like a trojan horse. Three-quarters of the Muslim refugees coming in to Europe are males of fighting age. If the conditions they are escaping are so dire, then why are they leaving their mothers, wives and children to it?

I'm concerned that once they are established in sufficient numbers, the signal will go out and they will all rise at once against their hosts.

Culturally, I know there are reasons why males from the region are more likely to leave first in bad circumstances, including the earning of income to send for the remainder of the nuclear then extended family.

Several of my interpreters individual families did the same thing down here, and then worked to get get their nuclear and extended families migrated down.

But the ones I know are all above board legal immigrants(although it includes several special visas for those who worked on behalf of government and deemed at risk) who followed the rules and integrated well.

I don't foresee a Hollywood-esque immediate revolution on queue.

I see a multi decade, long term, slow shift in Western Europe's ethno-socio-political makeup.

Think Irish/Italian immigration to America.

There were good parts(cornerstones of blue collar America) and bad parts(ethnic semi permissive ghettos and persistent organised crime networks).

These illicit networks and semi permissive ghettos were leveraged into political power in political wards and machines.

And they eventually and largely moved into the suburbs after 100 or so years to enjoy the Middke Class American Dream.

-----

The problems I see with this mass illegal migration include:

More remote linguistic/cultural/religious/education refugee mean/median/mode from target country average

Fundamentally incompatible religious/political/economic doctrinal mashup that underpins a stable and homogenous sovereign state

-----

I see it as similar to the fight against communism.

There was much to genuinely fear(they WERE often out to get us), but they hated(or competed with) each other(China/Russia) often more than they hated us.

The same or similar can be said of Islam/Muslims.

The US was able to successfully integrate large numbers of immigrants despite real/imagined fears(Sacco/Vanzetti) in the past, and hopefully Europe will as well.

But I think bleeding hearts will lead to massive bleeding wallets and unintended consequences like bleeding non permissive and persistent ghettos.

Maybe it's like egg, larvae, pupae, butterfly cycle of life(or in this case large cohort progress/development) as per other immigrant/refugee cohorts.

Skip to butterfly, get them into middle class communities as soon as possible so they can enjoy the EU version of the American Dream

That's expensive.

That requires very aggressive filtering and vetting, and turning back the majority.

The alternative is a guaranteed growth in non permissive ethnic ghettos as already seen in Europe and a horrible cycle of poverty, crime, violence, terrorism, and cohort leveraging for political power and legitimacy by not very nice people.

There will be both indigenous politicians fighting for their future votes competing with emerging refugee leaders of both benign and truly malignant purpose.

Poverty caralyzing non permissive EU ethnic ghettos used as safe harbours leveraged by those with malignant agendas incompatible with indigenous and evolving western cultures is the enemy here.

-----

In short, after a long diatribe, this will be a largely non kinetic fight lasting decades.

A fight far far too slow and boring for many to care.

[don]

Sand Trap?

Oil war

BY SALMAN RAFI on SEPTEMBER 16, 2015 in ASIA TIMES NEWS & FEATURES, MIDDLE EAST

While Saudi Arabia is busy pursuing a covert alliance with Israel, the “oil war” it’s started with other producers, including the US, is already impacting the kingdom and the rest of the world. What Riyadh’s doing on the oil front will create more repercussions as the “war” drags on into next year — most of them economically bad for Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis are certainly not happy with the US due to the Iran-nuke deal. This is adding to their eagerness to ensure that US shale oil companies go bankrupt. However, Saudi policy seems to be falling short of its “grand” objectives.

The scenario that appears to be developing goes something like this: Production of shale oil is on the rise in the US, and with the US maintaining current levels of production, the Americans would be in a position to further cut its dependence on Saudi oil imports and other OPEC countries. Hence, the US will definitely be able to follow a more relaxed financial policy, and much more relaxed foreign policy, especially with regards to the Middle East.

As a matter of fact, according to the data provided by the US Energy Information Department (EIA), US oil imports from OPEC have already fallen to a 28 year low. The US is pumping more oil and relying less on OPEC imports than at any time since 1987.

While the US imported 45,626 barrels of oil every month from Saudi Arabia in 2005, the figure dropped to as low as 25,418 in January 2015. In June 2015, the import figure went slightly high again, reaching 32,324 barrels of oil per month. The overall trend for oil imports is certainly showing a heavy decline, thanks to the extra pumping of crude oil as well as increased production of shale oil.

The US’ overall production jumped by 1.2 million barrels per day in 2014, to 8.7 million barrels per day. This has been called the biggest expansion in the US oil production since record-keeping began in 1900. Even after oil prices fell by more than 50% last year, the U.S. boom continued. Production will increase 8.1% this year and 1.5% next year, according to the EIA.



With OPEC not ready to cut production and with low oil prices not affecting the US economy as much Saudi Arabia’s, it seems that the Saudis are walking straight into the very trap they set for the non-OPEC oil countries, including US shale oil companies.

There’s no way the Saudis could have directly manipulated production of oil in the US. The only way they could make an impact was to increase production and knock oil prices further down. With the Saudis depending on 90% of their budget collections on revenue collected from oil production sector, low prices were eventually going to hurt them.

Notwithstanding that the cost of Saudi Arabia’s oil production is the lowest and that oil shipments are much more convenient because of close proximity of seaports to oil wells, the low prices have already started to blowback on them.

With oil prices continuously falling, Saudi Arabia’s national budget is certainly going to suffer because of a high reduction in the annual revenue earned. For instance, the kingdom earned almost 1.05 trillion riyals in 2014. The 2014 budget was prepared based on an estimated oil price of $103 per barrel. However, the 2015 budget was based on an oil price estimated at $80 per barrel. Hence, the total revenue earned in 2014-2015 stood at 715 billion riyals. With this fall in revenue earned, Saudi Arabia’s budget deficit may rise this year to 20% of GDP, or $140 billion. Highly reduced oil revenues have already forced the Saudi authorities to issue two series of government bonds in a row this summer.

The Saudis were forced to tighten down to make up for the reserves they had used to the tune of $65 billion. These two series of bonds would help the Saudis earn $27 billion by year’s. But this is far from adequately recovering their monetary loses.

With global oil production set to increase following the lifting of sanctions against Iran, oil prices are expected to fall by another 21% from their current level next year, according to World Bank. With Saudi Arabia set on pursuing its key strategy and unwilling to reduce its spending, especially on defense, it seems that its foreign exchange reserves will soon run out. This would cause Riyadh to fall a victim to the trap it was trying to for its two main rivals: Iran and US shale-oil producers.

According to Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali al-Naimi, lower oil prices in the short term will lead to higher prices in the long term because of reduced investments in the sector. He was speaking about the US. The kingdom’s officials also have been expressing confidence that the country’s substantial foreign exchange reserves would help counter the effects of falling oil prices. Keeping prices low for an extended period seemed to be a good idea at one point, on the expectation that producers of more costly oil would be squeezed from the market. Production was expected to shrink and prices to recover.

However, instead of driving producers of expensive oil from the market and feasting on a recovery in oil prices, the expected addition of Iranian oil to the market will knock prices down further. This is will create a “between the devil and deep sea” situation for the Saudis. Their economic situation will deteriorate further as a result.

Due to Saudi Arabia’s direct and indirect involvement in various wars across the Middle East and beyond (funding right wing religious parties in Pakistan, for instance), it’s defense spending is also reaching an all-time high. Saudi Arabia is now the world’s largest importer of defense equipment. Its spending is expected to reach$9.8 billion in 2015.

The Saudis are also keen on maintaining their expenditures in other sectors outside of defense areas. Despite the catastrophic decrease in oil revenues, they will not cut government spending on domestic sectors and will continue to subsidize health care and education. If the trend continues (which all indications suggest) the Saudis will soon see their $672 billion in foreign reserves begin to evaporate.

To recapitulate, this is due to Saudi Arabia’s miscall about how non-OPEC oil producers would react to low oil prices. With the contract price of the US crude oil for delivery in 2020 still set at almost $62 per barrel, OEPC countries face hard times ahead. If nothing else, it certainly implies a drastic change in the economic landscape of the Mideast petro-states.

According to a recent claim in a Bank of America report, OPEC is now “effectively dissolved.” The fear of the “oil war” backfiring was also clearly stated by a recent Saudi central bank stability report. It said: “It is becoming apparent that non-OPEC producers are not as responsive to low oil prices as had been thought, at least in the short-run.” It added: “The main impact has been to cut back on developmental drilling of new oil wells, rather than slowing the flow of oil from existing wells. This requires more patience.” It’s not clear what the Saudis can do to make “patience” a worthwhile policy option.

The one thing the Saudis also can’t do at the moment is reduce their own oil production. If they cut production, shale oil producers from the US will replace them, dealing them a huge loss. A further loss to the Saudi economy will also have serious repercussions for Saudi adventurism in the Mideast and beyond.

With time running out, the Saudis, are running out of options. The question is how long can they continue to play the “oil game?”

Salman Rafi Sheikh is a freelance journalist and research analyst of international relations and Pakistan affairs.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Sand Trap?

Thanks Don.
I have seen similar pieces that present similar facts but draw a different conclusion.
The author above concludes that Saudi Arabia has blundered and is caught in its own trap, implying that SA could have made other oil production choices and thus avoided the damage to its economy.

Other people conclude that the situation and the damage were unavoidable, and SA is acting wisely to minimize the damage.
That argument says that SA has lost the ability to control the price of oil, and oil prices would be about where they are now regardless of production cutbacks in SA.
Realistically, SA could not ever go to zero production and just shut off its national income.

Faced with the unavoidable fact of oil at $50 or less, SA was left with a simpler choice.
It could hold production steady or cut back a bit, and maybe get a couple bucks more for each barrel while selling fewer barrels, and have a massive decline in income.
Or SA could exploit its low cost advantage and grab market share by pumping all it can sell, and have a slightly less massive decline in income.
The Saudis decided half a loaf is better than none.

In this interpretation, SA did not set out intending to shut down expensive oil from shale, tar sands, and deep water.
Instead, pushing out expensive oil producers is just a happy side effect for SA as they maximize income when prices are low.
These observers also add that the brain trust in SA has concluded oil prices will be low for years to come and there is no point in leaving Saudi oil in the ground for twenty years just to sell it cheap later.
SA have decided its best to pump it now, take the cash now, and knock out a few competitors for no extra charge.
.
.
.

[don]

Re: Sand Trap?

Thanks Don.
I have seen similar pieces that present similar facts but draw a different conclusion.
The author above concludes that Saudi Arabia has blundered and is caught in its own trap, implying that SA could have made other oil production choices and thus avoided the damage to its economy.

Other people conclude that the situation and the damage were unavoidable, and SA is acting wisely to minimize the damage.
That argument says that SA has lost the ability to control the price of oil, and oil prices would be about where they are now regardless of production cutbacks in SA.
Realistically, SA could not ever go to zero production and just shut off its national income.

Faced with the unavoidable fact of oil at $50 or less, SA was left with a simpler choice.
It could hold production steady or cut back a bit, and maybe get a couple bucks more for each barrel while selling fewer barrels, and have a massive decline in income.
Or SA could exploit its low cost advantage and grab market share by pumping all it can sell, and have a slightly less massive decline in income.
The Saudis decided half a loaf is better than none.

In this interpretation, SA did not set out intending to shut down expensive oil from shale, tar sands, and deep water.
Instead, pushing out expensive oil producers is just a happy side effect for SA as they maximize income when prices are low.
These observers also add that the brain trust in SA has concluded oil prices will be low for years to come and there is no point in leaving Saudi oil in the ground for twenty years just to sell it cheap later.
SA have decided its best to pump it now, take the cash now, and knock out a few competitors for no extra charge.
.
.
.

The differential between high cost extraction (North America) and low cost (Saudi) would appear to be a play for SA, within the parameters of keeping high-cost oil from reaching its cost tipping point, making up for any SA instigated barrels-per-day shortfall.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Sand Trap?

What I find interesting is the quiet and increasing alignment of Israel with Saudi(the core of the GCC) at a time when Saudi's long-term stability is becoming slowly, but increasingly untenable.

On the surface it seems dangerously analogous to Israel's quiet but strong relationship with pre-revolution Iran's disconnected Shah......before it went completely septic post revolution.

[don]

Re: Sand Trap?

What I find interesting is the quiet and increasing alignment of Israel with Saudi(the core of the GCC) at a time when Saudi's long-term stability is becoming slowly, but increasingly untenable.

On the surface it seems dangerously analogous to Israel's quiet but strong relationship with pre-revolution Iran's disconnected Shah......before it went completely septic post revolution.

Before Desert Storm it was Iraq, Iran, Syria - Egypt was out of the mix, happy with their annual payments from Uncle Sam. These were the principal states on the ME chessboard Israel was playing against - all of whom were playing against each other, under the looming power of the the US. Now Iraq and Syria are shattered, leaving only Iran along with Israel as intact, independent rivals for ME regional majors. With the US pivot to compromise Russian energy by softening their posture with Iran, Israel needs a counterweight, as does SA. Politics makes strange bedfellows, which could easily be rephrased in cruder terms.

[jk]

Re: Sand Trap?

What I find interesting is the quiet and increasing alignment of Israel with Saudi(the core of the GCC) at a time when Saudi's long-term stability is becoming slowly, but increasingly untenable.

On the surface it seems dangerously analogous to Israel's quiet but strong relationship with pre-revolution Iran's disconnected Shah......before it went completely septic post revolution.

can you point to any references or articles about the israeli-saudi relationship? or is it just the enemy of my enemy is my friend?

[vt]

Re: Sand Trap?

JK,

Lots on google:

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...ations/395015/

http://www.businessinsider.com/irani...-arabia-2015-6

http://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-ar...ran-1434627043

[don]

Re: Sand Trap?

Chomsky on the Iranian deal:

Professor Chomsky, how would you characterise the Republican Party’s reaction to the Iran nuclear deal?

The Republicans are almost unanimously opposed to the nuclear deal. The current Republican primaries illustrate the proclaimed reasons. Ted Cruz, considered one of the intellectuals of the group, warned that Iran may still be able to produce nuclear weapons, and it could use one to set off an electromagnetic pulse that “would take down the electrical grid of the entire eastern seaboard” of the U.S., killing “tens of millions of Americans”. The two most likely winners of the primary, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, are battling over whether to bomb Iran immediately after being elected or after the first Cabinet meeting. The one candidate with some foreign policy experience, Lindsey Graham, described the deal as “a death sentence for the State of Israel,” which came as a surprise to Israeli intelligence and strategic analysts—and which Graham too knows to be utter nonsense, raising immediate questions about actual motives.

It is important to bear in mind that the Republicans have long abandoned the pretence of functioning as a normal parliamentary party. Rather, they have become a “radical insurgency” that scarcely seeks to participate in normal parliamentary politics, as observed by the respected conservative political commentator Norman Ornstein of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. Since Ronald Reagan, the leadership has plunged so far into the pockets of the very rich and the corporate sector that they can attract votes only by mobilising sectors of the population that have not previously been an organised political force, among them extremist evangelical Christians, now probably the majority of Republican voters; remnants of the former slave-holding States; nativists who are terrified that “they” are taking our white Christian Anglo-Saxon country away from us; and others who turn the Republican primaries into spectacles remote from the mainstream of modern society—though not the mainstream of the most powerful country in world history.

The Republican suspicion of Iran seems to be shared across sections of the political spectrum, even among those who are for the deal. Could you address that suspicion of Iran?

Across the spectrum, there is general agreement with the “pragmatic” conclusion of General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the Vienna deal “did not prevent the U.S. from striking Iranian facilities if officials decide that it is cheating on the agreement”, even though a unilateral military strike is “far less likely” if Iran behaves. Former Clinton and Obama Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross recommends that “Iran must have no doubt that if we see it moving towards a weapon, that would trigger the use of force” even after the termination of the deal, when Iran is free to do what it wants. In fact, the existence of a termination point 15 years hence is “the greatest single problem with the agreement,” he adds, recommending that the U.S. provide Israel with B-52 bombers to protect itself before that terrifying date arrives.

The underlying assumption here is that Iran is a serious threat, that it would attack Israel with nuclear weapons. How credible is that threat?

To be sure, Israel faces the “existential threat” of Iranian pronouncements: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously threatened it with destruction. Except that they didn’t—and if they had, it would be of little moment. They predicted that “Under God’s grace [the Zionist regime] will be wiped off the map.” Another translation suggests that Ahmadinejad actually said that Israel “must vanish from the page of time”. This is a citation of a statement made by Ayatollah Khomeini, during a period when Iran and Israel were tacitly allied. In other words, they hope that regime change will someday take place. They do not say that they will attack Israel either now or later.

Ahmadinejad’s threats fall far short of regular U.S.-Israeli direct calls for regime change in Iran, not to speak of actions to implement regime change going back to the actual “regime change” of 1953, when the U.S. organised a military coup to overthrow the Iranian parliamentary regime and install the dictatorship of the Shah, who proceeded with one of the world’s worst human rights records. These crimes were known to readers of Amnesty International and other human rights organisations, but not to readers of the U.S. press, which has indeed devoted plenty of space to Iranian human rights violations, but only after 1979, when the U.S.-imposed regime was overthrown. The instructive facts are documented carefully in a study by Mansour Farhang and William Dorman.

None of this is a departure from the norm. The U.S., as is well known, holds the world championship in regime change, and Israel is no laggard either. The most destructive of Israel’s invasions of Lebanon, in 1982, was explicitly aimed at regime change, along with securing its hold on the Occupied Territories. The pretexts offered were very thin, and collapsed at once. That too is not unusual and pretty much independent of the nature of the society, from the laments in the Declaration of Independence about the “merciless Indian savages” to Hitler’s defence of Germany from the “wild terror” of the Poles.

No serious analyst believes that Iran would ever use, or even threaten to use, a nuclear weapon if it had one, thus facing instant destruction. There is, however, real concern that a nuclear weapon might fall into jehadi hands—not from Iran, where the threat is minuscule, but from the U.S. ally Pakistan, where it is very real.

In the journal of the (British) Royal Institute of International Affairs, two leading Pakistani nuclear scientists, Pervez Hoodbhoy and Zia Mian, write that increasing fears of “militants seizing nuclear weapons or materials and unleashing nuclear terrorism [have led to] the creation of a dedicated force of over 20,000 troops to guard nuclear facilities [though] there is no reason to assume, however, that this force would be immune to the problems associated with the units guarding regular military facilities,” which have frequently suffered attacks with “insider help”. In brief, the problem is real, but is displaced by fantasies concocted for other reasons.

Professor Chomsky, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, has said that the problem is the “instability that Iran fuels beyond its nuclear programme”. She echoed U.S. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, who went to Israel’s northern border and said, “We will continue to help Israel counter Iran’s malign influence” by supporting Hizbollah. The U.S., he intimated, reserved the right to use military force against Iran. Could you comment on this?

Power’s usage is standard: she defines “stabilisation” according to a peculiar logic. For instance, U.S. policy in Iraq is defined as stabilisation. What does that stabilisation look like? The U.S. invades a country, with hundreds of thousands killed and millions becoming refugees, along with barbarous torture and destruction that Iraqis compare to the Mongol invasions, leaving Iraq the unhappiest country in the world according to WIN/Gallup polls. It also ignited sectarian conflict that is tearing the region to shreds and laying the basis for the ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] monstrosity along with its Saudi ally. That is stabilisation. The standard usage sometimes reaches levels that are almost surreal, as when liberal commentator James Chace, former editor of Foreign Affairs, explains that the U.S. sought to “destabilise a freely elected Marxist government in Chile” because “we were determined to seek stability” [under the Pinochet dictatorship].
Let us consider the case of Hizbollah and Hamas. Both emerged in resistance to U.S.-backed Israeli violence and aggression, which vastly exceeds anything attributed to these organisations. Whatever one thinks about them, or other beneficiaries of Iranian support, Iran hardly ranks high in support for terror worldwide, even within the Muslim world. Among Islamic states, Saudi Arabia is far in the lead as a sponsor of Islamic terror, not only by direct funding by wealthy Saudis and others in the Gulf but even more by the missionary zeal with which the Saudis promulgate their extremist Wahhabi-Salafi version of Islam through Quranic schools, mosques, clerics, and other means available to a religious dictatorship with enormous oil wealth. The ISIS is an extremist offshoot of Saudi religious extremism and its fanning of jehadi flames.

In generation of Islamic terror, however, nothing can compare with the U.S. “war on terror”, which has helped to spread the plague from a small tribal area in Afghanistan-Pakistan to a vast region from West Africa to South-East Asia. The invasion of Iraq alone escalated terror attacks by a factor of seven in the first year, well beyond even what had been predicted by intelligence agencies. Drone warfare against marginalised and oppressed tribal societies also elicits demands for revenge, as ample evidence indicates.

The two Iranian clients [Hizbollah and Hamas] also share the crime of winning the popular vote in the only free elections held in the Arab world. Hizbollah is guilty of the even more heinous crime of compelling Israel to withdraw from its occupation of southern Lebanon in violation of [U.N.] Security Council orders dating back decades, an illegal regime of terror punctuated with episodes of extreme violence, murder and destruction.

Iran’s “fuelling instability” is particularly dramatic in Iraq, where, among other crimes, it alone came at once to the aid of Kurds defending themselves from the ISIS invasion and it is building a $2.5 billion power plant to try to bring electrical power back to the level before the U.S. invasion.

The other argument made here is that Iran has a terrible human rights record. How can the U.S. cut a deal with such a state?

Leon Wieseltier, contributing editor of the venerable liberal journal The Atlantic, said that the U.S. should pursue “an American-sponsored alliance between Israel and the Sunni states”. This is in reaction to his and others’ outrage that the U.S. would make a deal with the “contemptible” regime in Iran. Wieseltier can barely conceal his visceral hatred for all things Iranian. With a straight face, this respected liberal intellectual recommends that Saudi Arabia, which makes Iran look like a virtual paradise in comparison, and Israel, with its vicious crimes in Gaza and elsewhere, should ally to teach Iran good behaviour. Perhaps the recommendation is not entirely unreasonable when we consider the human rights records of the regimes the U.S. has imposed and supported throughout the world. The Iranian government is no doubt a threat to its own people, though it regrettably breaks no records in this regard and does not descend to the level of favoured allies [of the U.S.]. But that cannot be the concern of the U.S., and surely not Israel and Saudi Arabia.

It might also be useful to recall —surely Iranians do—that not a day has passed since 1953 when the U.S. was not severely harming Iranians. As soon as Iranians overthrew the hated U.S.-imposed regime of the Shah in 1979, Washington at once turned to supporting Saddam Hussein’s murderous attack on Iran. Ronald Reagan went so far as to deny Saddam’s major crime, his chemical warfare assault on Iraq’s Kurdish population, which Reagan blamed on Iran. When Saddam was tried for crimes under U.S. auspices, this horrendous crime, and others in which the U.S. was complicit, were carefully excluded from the charges, restricted to one of his very minor crimes, the murder of 148 Shias in 1982, a footnote to his gruesome record.

Saddam was such a valued friend of Washington that he was even granted a privilege accorded otherwise only to Israel: to attack a U.S. naval vessel with impunity, killing 37 crewmen—the USS Stark, in 1987. Israel did the same in its 1967 attack on the USS Liberty. Iran pretty much conceded defeat shortly after when the U.S. launched Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian ships and oil platforms in Iranian territorial waters. The Operation culminated in the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner in Iranian airspace by USS Vincennes, under no credible threat, with 290 killed, and the subsequent granting of a Legion of Merit award to the Vincennes commander for “exceptionally meritorious conduct” and for maintaining a “calm and professional atmosphere” during the period when the attack on the airliner took place. “We can only stand in awe of such display of American exceptionalism!” Thill Raghu commented.

After the war, the U.S. continued to support Iran’s primary enemy, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. President Bush I, the statesman Bush, even invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the U.S. for advanced training in weapons production, an extremely serious threat to Iran. Sanctions against Iran were intensified, including against foreign firms dealing with Iran, along with actions to bar Iran from the international financial system.

In recent years, the hostility has extended to sabotage, murder of nuclear scientists [presumably by Israel], and cyberwar, openly proclaimed with pride. The Pentagon regards cyberwar as an act of war, justifying a military response, with the accord of NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation], which affirmed in September 2014 that cyberattacks might trigger the collective defence obligations of the NATO powers. When we are the target that is, not the perpetrators.

It is only fair, however, to add that there have been breaks in the pattern. President Bush II provided several major gifts to Iran by destroying its major enemies, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. He even placed Iran’s Iraqi enemy under Iranian influence after the U.S. defeat, which was so severe that the U.S. had to abandon its officially declared goals of establishing military bases and ensuring privileged access to Iraq’s vast oil resources for U.S. corporations.

There seems to be little evidence that the Iranians would ever use nuclear weapons. In 2005, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivered a fatwa (decree) against nuclear weapons. Why is there this belief that the Iranians are eager almost to use their non-existent nuclear weapons?


We can decide for ourselves how credible the denials from Iranian leaders are, but that they had such intentions in the past is beyond question, since it was asserted openly on the highest authority, which informed foreign journalists that Iran would develop nuclear weapons “certainly, and sooner than one thinks”. The father of Iran’s nuclear energy programme and former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation was confident that the leadership’s plan “was to build a nuclear bomb”. A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report also had “no doubt” that Iran would develop nuclear weapons if neighbouring countries did [as they have].

All of this was under the Shah, the highest authority just quoted. That is, during the period when high U.S. officials—Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger and others—were urging the Shah to proceed with nuclear programmes, and pressuring universities to accommodate these efforts. As part of these efforts, my own university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), made a deal with the Shah to admit Iranian students to the nuclear engineering programme in return for grants from the Shah, over the very strong objections of the student body, but with comparably strong faculty support, in a meeting that older faculty will doubtless remember well. Asked later why he supported these programmmes under the Shah but opposed them now, Kissinger responded honestly that Iran was an ally then.

Putting aside absurdities, what is the real threat of Iran that inspires such fear and fury? A natural place to turn for an answer is, again, U.S. intelligence. Recall its analysis that Iran poses no military threat, that its strategic doctrines are defensive, and its nuclear programmmes [with no effort to produce bombs, as far as intelligence can determine] are “a central part of its deterrent strategy”.

Who, then, would be concerned by an Iranian deterrent? The answer is plain: the rogue states that rampage in the region and do not want to tolerate any impediment to their reliance on aggression and violence. Far in the lead in this regard are the U.S. and Israel, with Saudi Arabia trying its best to join the club with its invasion of Bahrain to support the crushing of the reform movement by the dictatorship and now its murderous assault on Yemen, accelerating the humanitarian catastrophe there.

Could you talk a bit more about these “rogue states”? After all, this is not the typical characterisation of rogue states, a term developed in 1994 by U.S. National Security Adviser Anthony Lake to refer to North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, Iran and Libya. Your list does not include these powers. It has the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Fifteen years ago, the Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard, the prominent political analyst Samuel Huntington, warned in the major establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, that for much of the world the U.S. was “becoming the rogue superpower” considered “the single greatest external threat to their societies”. His words were echoed shortly after by the president of the American Political Science Association, Robert Jervis, who observed, “In the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is the U.S.”
Global opinion supports this judgment by a substantial margin. According to the leading Western polling agencies (WIN/Gallup), the greatest threat to world peace is the U.S. Far below in second place is Pakistan, its ranking probably inflated by the Indian vote. Iran is ranked below, along with Israel, North Korea and Afghanistan.

The U.S., by its own admission, is the gravest threat to world peace. That is the clear meaning of the insistence of the leadership and the political class, in media and commentary, that the U.S. reserves the right to resort to force if it determines, unilaterally, that Iran is violating some commitment. It is also a long-standing official stand of liberal democrats, for example the Clinton Doctrine, that the U.S. is entitled to resort to “unilateral use of military power” even for such purposes as to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources”, let alone alleged “security” or “humanitarian” concerns. And adherence to the doctrine is well confirmed in practice, as need hardly be discussed among people willing to look at the facts of current history.

Turning to the next obvious question, what in fact is the Iranian threat? Why, for example, are Israel and Saudi Arabia trembling in fear over the threat of Iran? Whatever the threat is, it can hardly be military. U.S. intelligence years ago informed Congress that Iran had very low military expenditures by the standards of the region and that its strategic doctrines are defensive, designed to deter aggression. Intelligence reports further confirmed that there was no evidence that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons programme, and that “Iran’s nuclear programme and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy.”

The authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) review of global armament ranks the U.S., as usual, far in the lead in military expenditures, with China in second place at about one-third of U.S. expenditures. Far below are Russia and Saudi Arabia, well above any Western European state. Iran is scarcely mentioned. Full details are provided in an April study of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which finds “a conclusive case that the Arab Gulf states have … an overwhelming advantage [over] Iran in both military spending and access to modern arms”. Iran’s military spending is a fraction of Saudi Arabia’s, and is far below even the spending of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Altogether, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—outspend Iran on arms by a factor of eight, an imbalance that goes back decades. The CSIS observes further that “the Arab Gulf states have acquired and are acquiring some of the most advanced and effective weapons in the world [while] Iran has essentially been forced to live in the past, often relying on systems originally delivered at the time of the Shah”, which are virtually obsolete. The imbalance is, of course, even greater with Israel, which, along with the most advanced U.S. weaponry and its role as a virtual offshore military base of the global superpower, has a huge stock of nuclear weapons.

Finally, could you say a little on what you just mentioned—namely, on Israel’s stockpile of nuclear weapons?

Israel, of course, is one of the three nuclear powers, along with India and Pakistan, whose nuclear weapons programmes have been abetted by the U.S. and who refuse to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif welcomed the nuclear deal and said that it was now the turn of the “holdout”, namely Israel. The regular five-year NPT review conference ended in failure this April. One of the main reasons for the failure was that the U.S. once again blocked the efforts to move toward a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East [West Asia]. These efforts have been led by Egypt and other Arab states for 20 years. Two of the leading figures promoting them at the NPT and other U.N. agencies, and at the Pugwash conferences, Jayantha Dhanapala and Sergio Duarte, observe that “the successful adoption in 1995 of the resolution on the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East was the main element of a package that permitted the indefinite extension of the NPT”, the most important arms control treaty, which, were it adhered to, could end the scourge of nuclear weapons. Repeatedly, implementation of the resolution has been blocked by the U.S., most recently by Barack Obama in 2010 and again in 2015. Dhanapala and Duarte comment that the effort was again blocked “on behalf of a state that is not a party to the NPT and is widely believed to be the only one in the region possessing nuclear weapons”, a polite and understated reference to Israel. They “hope that this failure will not be the coup de grâce to the two longstanding NPT objectives of accelerated progress on nuclear disarmament and on establishing a Middle Eastern WMD-free zone”. Their article, in the journal of the Arms Control Association, is entitled: “Is There a Future for the NPT?”

A nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East is a straightforward way to address whatever threat Iran allegedly poses. And a great deal more is at stake in Washington’s continuing sabotage of the effort, protecting its Israeli client. This is not the only case when opportunities to end the alleged Iranian threat have been undermined by Washington, raising further questions about just what is actually at stake.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/...-noam-chomsky/