Egypt’s Military not the force for democracy we had hoped for, but….

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Maria

Ok, Egypt’s military is resisting the movement toward democracy, won’t make public its vast economic power, and reserves the right to reverse anything the Parliament does or the Constitutions says. At the same time they appear to favor continuing the peace treaty with Israel, serve as a check on the Islamist parties, and are a force for maintaining domestic and regional stability. So what should U.S. policy be toward the Egyptian military?

Egypt’s military guards its own power

By Leila Fadel, Wash Post, Published: November 12

CAIRO — Two weeks before parliamentary elections billed as a first big step toward democracy, there are new signs that the generals ruling Egypt are trying to steer the transition to preserve their vast political and economic power.

A widening circle of critics say that new proposals from Egypt’s ruling military council suggest that the generals are backing away from a pledge to quickly hand over authority to elected leaders. They note that guidelines put in place by the generals have prolonged the transition to democracy, allowing them to stay in place as de facto rulers until after presidential elections that could be held as late as 2013.

The deceleration could allow the generals time to protect their vast commercial holdings, which extend from large tracts of prime real estate to water-bottling plants to factories that manufacture air-conditioning units. In recent proposals, the generals have pressed for rules that would forbid civilian oversight of the military budget and grant the military council, rather than a new parliament, the most influence in the writing of a new constitution.

Egyptians welcomed the military rulers as heroes nine months ago, when the army helped demonstrators bring to an end to the almost 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, then pledged to yield to elected leaders as soon as possible.

But pro-democracy activists and prominent members of Egypt’s political elite are accusing the generals of trying to maintain a dominant hand in the country’s future, a role that the military has played here since Gamal Abdel Nasser and his Free Officers overthrew King Farouk in 1952.

“They want to protect their own power and privileges. They have no notion of what democracy is about,” said Hani Shukrallah, editor of the English-language al-Ahram Online Web site. “They want a stable political system where they can keep their privileges, where they can exercise some power over the future of Egyptian policy as a whole.”

Used to the shadows

Even now, the extent of the military’s holdings in factories and other businesses remains so shrouded in secrecy that estimates vary widely, from 5 to 45 percent of Egypt’s economy. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which acts as the head of state under Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the Mubarak-era defense minister, operates almost entirely in the shadows, announcing most decisions by Facebook.

U.S. officials have said they remain confident that the generals will eventually surrender power to a new Egyptian president. But Western diplomats and most experts here say it appears that the criticism of their actions has only prompted the military leaders to slow the pace of change and to act indecisively, sometimes reversing decisions after they are announced.

Their current role at the top of Egypt’s power structure has clearly been jarring for the historically reclusive generals, who, until the toppling of Mubarak, had always wielded influence behind the scenes.Beginning with Nasser, and continuing through Anwar Sadat and Mubarak, each of Egypt’s modern leaders has emerged from the officer corps and ruled as an autocrat backed by a powerful army.

With voting set to begin Nov. 28 and lasting through March, the coming parliamentary elections could be the first test of whether the military’s powers will be rolled back or will remain untouchable.

It remains unclear how much power an elected parliament will wield. For now, the military has made clear that it intends to retain the right to appoint the prime minister and cabinet and to control the budget, even after the new parliament is in place.

But those proposals have been condemned across Egypt’s activist political spectrum, most strongly by Islamist leaders. If adopted, they would allow the military to veto any portion of the constitution that it opposes and to disband a constitutional assembly chosen by parliament and appoint a new one if the assembly does not meet a six-month deadline. The proposals would also allow the military to exclude its budget from civilian oversight.

“The military has put its cards on the table and shown that it intends to maintain a lot of control, but to do so even more openly than it did in the past,” said Marina Ottaway, director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There was never anything in writing that the military had total control of their own budget. Now they have put it in writing. It goes further than anything that happened before. They also made it very clear that they are going to control the process of writing the constitution.”

Broad public support

The Egyptian military is a notoriously change-averse institution, as U.S. diplomats noted in a 2008 cable from the embassy in Cairo that was made public by the group WikiLeaks. Tantawi, the military chief, was called “aged and change-resistant.” The same dispatch said he was opposed to economic and political reforms that would contribute to decentralization of power.

A desire to maintain a strong central government, presumably propped up by the military, is partly what drives the generals’ grasp for power in these uncertain times, analysts say. Advocates of that approach say that without generals at the helm, Egypt would plunge into lawlessness and economic collapse, a scenario that the military council appears to truly fear.

Even now, the army and its top commanders enjoy broad public support, regularly polling at the top in surveys on whom Egyptians trust most since Mubarak’s ouster. That has left critics in a delicate situation — trying to raise concern about military rule when most Egyptians are highly supportive of Egypt’s army and the generals seem reluctant to leave.

Though they are visibly uncomfortable in the spotlight, disentangling them from power could take years.

In addition to their quest for stability, the generals also seem determined to safeguard the economic perks they have amassed through decades of authoritarian rule, analysts say. The military’s expansive holdings have never been subject to domestic or international scrutiny, and the generals are loath to put them before the public now, according to the analysts. They want to lay the groundwork to protect their financial interests and become the guardians of Egypt’s political system before they pass the reins, said Robert Springborg, an expert on the Egyptian military at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

“In a fully functioning democracy, they would be subjected to government control,” he said. “They do not want the development of oversight capacity that would impinge upon them. They don’t want democratization.’’

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The Explosion of US/Americas Oil & Gas Production

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Maria

Colleagues: Two columns today looking at the nation’s energy future, with the key arguments being that the coming explosion in availability of natural gas and, yes, oil, makes a focus on some renewable sources, such as wind and solar, questionable at this recessionary time. First, my column that appeared in today’s Reno Gazette Journal, and the second by a leading energy expert, Dan Yergin, in today’s Washington Post. A key takeaway–the Americas, if not the US, can soon be “energy independent”, a thought we could not have considered uttering just a year ago. Ty

Let’s Stop Drinking the Renewable Energy Kool-Aid

Proponents of “Green Energy” continue to hype the potential of solar, wind, biomass and other renewable resources as cheap, abundant engines that can efficiently propel economic growth in the state. These cheerleaders, however, ignore the soaring costs associated with producing electricity from these sources, a differential that will only be magnified as vast new reserves of traditional fossil fuels become available.

These adherents seem unaware of the shale gas revolution that has occurred in the last few years and the coming explosion of oil production in North America. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has unearthed vast natural gas reserves previously buried in inaccessible shale rock. That technique is now being applied to extracting oil, opening up tremendous potential in Canada and throughout the central United States.

There is a historic shift occurring in global oil and gas production. American expert Dan Yergen predicts an anmazing “new rebalancing”, with the Western hemisphere moving back to self-sufficiency and an end to our reliance on long distance energy shipments from areas of conflict! Venezuela is now considered to have bigger oil reserves than Saudi Arabia, new finds in the Arctic area are very promising, and recent oil exploits in Canada and the U.S. suggest that technology may be trumping geology. Offshore oil will be tapped, but the most significant development is the exploitation of extensive rock formations ranging from Texas to North Dakota, believed previously to be too costly and technologically impossible to extract the fuels.

Just a few years ago, many of us worried that the world had reached “peak oil”, the point at which global petroleum production began a steep downward slope. Now these new extraction techniques promise such an expansion of oil and gas production that some observers believe the United States could soon become energy independent. While these estimates are somewhat optimistic there is no doubt that the revolution in technology will alleviate our dependence on oil from the volatile Middle East and gas from such unreliable suppliers such as Russia and Algeria.

Inexplicably, in the midst of this revolution we still hear claims that Nevada can play a key role in the development of green technology as well as becoming a net exporter. In fact, the only renewable that offers real potential for the state is our extensive geothermal resources. We need to maintain the emphasis on geothermal, with a view to exploiting the promising returns that could come from deep drilling and “fracking”.

Presently solar and wind cost about five times per kw/hr of electricity generated than natural gas, despite questionable extensive federal subsidies (think Solyndra, whose bankruptcy caused the government to lose a half billion dollar loan guarantee!) We need to continue conducting research in these areas given that fossil fuels can’t last forever, but the expansion of gas and oil production affords us time to make solar, wind and, yes, nuclear, more reliable and cost efficient alternatives.

While the United States must continue to invest in renewable energy technologies, and exploit the potential offered by nuclear and geothermal today, we must take advantage of the coming surge in shale gas and oil production here. To not embrace this revolution would be economic suicide.

Tyrus W. Cobb

This op-ed appeared in the Reno Gazette-Journal, October 30, 2011

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Oil’s new world order

By Daniel Yergin, Washington Post, October 30, 2011

For more than five decades, the world’s oil map has centered on the Middle East. No matter what new energy resources were discovered and developed elsewhere, virtually all forecasts indicated that U.S. reliance on Mideast oil supplies was destined to grow. This seemingly irreversible reality has shaped not only U.S. energy policy and economic policy, but also geopolitics and the entire global economy.

But today, what appeared irreversible is being reversed. The outline of a new world oil map is emerging, and it is centered not on the Middle East but on the Western Hemisphere. The new energy axis runs from Alberta, Canada, down through North Dakota and South Texas, past a major new discovery off the coast of French Guyana to huge offshore oil deposits found near Brazil.

This shift carries great significance for the supply and the politics of world oil. And, for all the debates and speeches about energy independence throughout the years, the transformation is happening not as part of some grand design or major policy effort, but almost accidentally. This shift was not planned — it is a product of a series of unrelated initiatives and technological breakthroughs that, together, are taking on a decidedly hemispheric cast.

The search for a “hemispheric energy policy” for the United States has been a subject of discussion ever since the oil crises and supply disruptions of the 1970s. Yet it was never easy to pin down exactly what such a policy would mean. Some years ago, an economic adviser to a presidential candidate dropped in to see me, explaining the directive that his boss had given him: “You know that Western hemispheric energy policy that I have been giving speeches about? Could you talk to some people around the country and find out what I actually mean by a Western hemispheric energy policy?”

The notion of “hemispheric energy” in the 1970s and 1980s rested on two pillars. One was Venezuela, which had been a reliable petroleum exporter since World War II. The other was Mexico, caught up in a great oil boom that had transformed the United States’ southern neighbor from an oil importer into a major exporter.

But since Hugo Chavez took power in Venezuela, its petroleum output has fallen — about 25 percent since 2000. Moreover, Venezuela does not seem quite the pillar to rely on when its leader denounces “the U.S. empire” as “the biggest menace on our planet” and aligns his country with Iran. And Mexico, which depends on oil for 35 percent of its government revenue, is struggling with declining output. Without reform to its oil sector and international investment, it could become an importer of oil later this decade.

The new hemispheric outlook is based on resources that were not seriously in play until recent years — all of them made possible by technological breakthroughs and advances. They are “oil sands” in Canada, “pre-salt” deposits in Brazil and “tight oil” in the United States.

In little more than a decade, Canada’s oil sands have gone from being a fringe resource to a major one. Oil sands (sometimes known as “tar sands”) are composed of very heavy oil mixed with clay and sand. The oil is so heavy and molasses-like that, for the most part, it does not flow until it is separated from the sand and clay and treated. To do that on a large scale and on a commercial basis has required substantial advances in engineering over the past 15 years.

Oil sands production in Canada today is 1.5 million barrels per day — more oil than Libya exported before its civil war. Canadian oil sands output could double to 3 million barrels per day by the beginning of the next decade. This increase, along with its other oil output, would make Canada a larger oil producer than Iran — becoming the world’s fifth largest, behind Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States and China.

The oil sands have become particularly controversial because of environmental groups’ vigorous opposition to the proposed 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from Alberta to the Texas coast. The pipeline is waiting for the Obama administration to say “yea” or “nay.” Though large, it would increase the length of the oil pipeline network in the United States by just 1 percent.

The main reason given for the opposition is the carbon dioxide associated with oil sands production, but the impact of this should be considered in the context of the overall release of CO2. When measured all the way from “well to wheels” — that is, from production to what comes out of an auto tailpipe — oil sands average 5 to 15 percent more carbon dioxide than the average barrel of oil used in the United States. And this country uses other streams of oil that generate CO2 in the same range.

Even while the environmental argument rages, oil sands are proving to be a major contributor to energy security. Although it is easy to assume that most U.S. oil imports come from the Middle East, the largest individual share by far — nearly a quarter of the total — comes from Canada, part of a dense network of economic ties that makes Canada the United States’ largest trading partner. More than half of Canada’s oil exports to the United States come from oil sands, and that share will rise steeply in the years ahead.

At the other end of that hemispheric oil axis is Brazil. When Brazil began to develop ethanol from sugar in the 1970s, it did so based on the conviction that the country had no oil. As it turns out, Brazil has lots of oil. Just the increase in Brazilian oil production since 2000 is more than one and a half times greater than the country’s entire ethanol output.

In the middle of the last decade, new breakthroughs in technology made possible the identification and development of huge oil resources off the southern coast of Brazil that until then had been hidden below a belt of salt a mile thick. The salt had rendered unreadable the seismic signals necessary to determine whether oil was there. “The breakthrough was pure mathematics,” said Jose Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo, the president of Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company. “We developed the algorithms that enabled us to take out the disturbances and look right through the salt layer.” Once discovered, further technical advances were required to cope with the peculiarities of the salt layer, which, sludge-like, keeps shifting.

Developing these “pre-salt” resources, as they’ve become known, is a big technical, political and logistical challenge for Brazil, and will require huge investments. But, if development proceeds at a reasonable pace, Brazil could be producing 5 million barrels of oil per day by around 2020, about twice Venezuela’s current output — and more than half the current output of Saudi Arabia. That would make Brazil, not Venezuela, the powerhouse of Latin American oil, and could make it a major exporter to the United States.

The third major supply development has emerged right here in the United States: the application of shale-gas technology — horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, a process popularly known as “fracking” — to the extraction of oil from dense rock. The rock is so hard that, without those technologies, the oil would not flow. That is why it is called “tight oil.”

Case study No. 1 is in North Dakota, where, just eight years ago, a rock formation known as the Bakken, a couple of miles underground, was producing a measly 10,000 barrels of oil per day. Today, it yields almost half a million barrels per day, turning North Dakota into the fourth-largest oil-producing state in the country, as well as the state with the lowest unemployment rate.

Similar development is taking place in other parts of the country, including South Texas and West Texas. Altogether, tight oil production is growing very fast. The total output in the United States was just 200,000 barrels per day in 2000. Around 2020, it could reach 3 million barrels per day — a third of the total U.S. oil production. (And that is a conservative estimate; others are much higher.)

Together, these three developments will radically alter the global flow of oil. The Western Hemisphere will still require supplies from the rest of the world, but not to the same degree — and certainly nowhere near the growing amounts forecast just a few years ago. The need could fall by as much as half by 2020, which will mean declining imports from the Middle East and West Africa.

Oil that would have gone west from those regions will instead flow in increasing volumes to the east — to the booming emerging markets of Asia. And those markets will be in urgent need of additional supplies. China, which today consumes half as much oil as the United States, could by the beginning of the next decade overtake America as the world’s largest oil consumer. All of this points to a major geopolitical shift, with Asian economies having an increasing stake in the stability of Mideast oil supplies. It also raises a very significant question over the next several years: How will responsibility be shared among the great powers for the stability of the Persian Gulf?

For the United States, these new sources of supply add to energy security in ways that were not anticipated. There is only one world oil market, so the United States — like other countries — will still be vulnerable to disruptions, and the sheer size of the oil resources in the Persian Gulf will continue to make the region strategically important for the world economy. But the new sources closer to home will make our supply system more resilient. For the Western Hemisphere, the shift means that more oil will flow north to south and south to north, rather than east to west. All this demonstrates how innovation is redrawing the map of world oil — and remaking our energy future.

outlook@washpost.com

Daniel Yergin is chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates and the author of “The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World.”

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Iran: Who is Supreme Leader Khamenei and is it time to target him?

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Maria

Colleagues: Although the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in a Washington restaurant seemed implausible and something from the Keystone Cops sagas given its absurdity, the evidence increasing confirms the involvement of high level Iranian authorities. In particular, the powerful Quds Force/Revolutionary Guards, according to the Obama administration, were orchestrating the plot that would have killed a number of Americans as well as the Ambassador.

Secretary of State Clinton pledged we would take action against Iran; many observers demanded action. The problem was, short of declaring war on Tehran and being prepared to employ decisive military force, there appears to be little the United States can realistically do. In addition, after the first days of astonishment, many experts began to shy away from employing any coercion or sanctions against the Iranian regime. “Was this infantile project worth war?”, many asked.

Lee Smith, writing in the NeoCon journal, the Weekly Standard, has laid out a series of strong actions the US/West should undertake, including efforts to depose the Supreme Ruler, Ayatollah Khamenei. While I sympathize with Smith here, I am not persuaded that we have identified and can effectively execute the series of realistic actions that would be needed to destabilize Iran, assist the dissidents, and even depose Khamenei. But we certainly need to keep trying–dealing with Iran will only get more difficult as time goes by and its nuclear program nears reality.

Finally, I don’t think many of us really know much about the Supreme Leader himself. Following Smith’s op-ed, I have included a biographical sketch on Ali Khamenei, whose earlier pragmatism and conciliatory approach in contentious issues left him under attack from more fervent Islamists. The Supreme Leader today has shifted significantly, however, and now espouses strong Islamist, anti-West/US, and revolutionary rhetoric. Interesting transformation!

– Ty
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/tripoli-tehran_598448.html

From Tripoli to Tehran

Lee Smith

October 31, 2011, Vol. 17, No. 07

Killing Muammar Qaddafi wasn’t easy. What President Obama said would take days wound up taking eight months. At first the administration did not seem to understand that NATO’s objective of protecting the civilians rising up against the Libyan tyrant’s 40-year rule would require capturing or killing the man who was most likely to harm them. Unfortunately, the learning curve here seems to be something of a yardstick for Washington’s understanding of the Middle Eastern state most likely to kill Americans—the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Still, we applaud the White House for at last getting Qaddafi. His execution at the hands of Libyan rebels closes a dark chapter in history, one that saw the murder of hundreds of U.S. citizens in acts of terror sponsored and directed by Qaddafi, including most spectacularly the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. Our thoughts are primarily with the family and friends of those killed by Qaddafi’s agents. The justice they have now is final and cannot be betrayed again, as it was two years ago when Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison and returned home to a hero’s welcome. Later it became clear that Megrahi’s freedom was the price the British government paid for a prospective oil deal—with the cost borne by the relatives of Qaddafi’s victims.

London, to be sure, played a leading role in the NATO action against Qaddafi. But the Megrahi deal should remind us that our interests do not always align with those of our allies. The point of American leadership is not only that we lead, but that we do so for the purpose of maintaining and advancing American security, especially the protection of U.S. citizens. If this is not a priority for the British, then it is certainly not going to matter to, say, the Russians and Chinese. So why is the Obama administration wasting valuable time seeking support from Moscow and China in its efforts to isolate Iran?

When one considers Qaddafi’s career of anti-American terror, a larger and even more dangerous assault on the United States becomes ever clearer: the Islamic Republic of Iran’s decades-long war against America. Given Tehran’s efforts the last several years in Iraq and Afghanistan, the clerical regime and its Revolutionary Guards cohort are perhaps responsible for more American deaths than Qaddafi. The U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein compelled Qaddafi to abandon his nuclear weapons program. The Iranians have pressed on with theirs.

The White House is rightly proud to have brought down Qaddafi without risking the lives of American ground troops. Libya, the administration believes, is a new model for projecting American power. “What we’re moving towards,” says deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, “is a far more targeted use of force in which we apply direct power against al Qaeda and those who pose a direct threat to the United States and then galvanize collective action against global security challenges.” But that is not the way it is going to go with Iran. Instead, the United States is going to find itself in a large and destructive conflict with the Islamic Republic.

The plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in a Washington restaurant shows that the Iranians are getting bolder. The bizarre belief that the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, and CIA have fundamentally misconstrued the Iranian operation in its details and its provenance shows that American elites have become even more elaborate in their efforts to explain away Iranian intentions and ambitions. In effect, we’ve executed a disinformation campaign against ourselves, in which we keep saying the water that is about to come to a boil is only getting a little warmer. The Iranians, though, see it rather more clearly: The Americans have deterred themselves and will pull back even further once we’ve acquired the bomb.

Iranian aggression and American wishful thinking will bring not peace but war. Hitler was incensed with Chamberlain when the Brits finally went to war after the invasion of Poland: There was nothing in the past behavior of the allies that suggested they would ever do anything but appease the German dictator. We can imagine Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khameini will be similarly furious when we finally take action against the Iranian regime. The Americans did nothing to stop us before, they will rightly note—not when we bombed their embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks, not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not when we plotted to kill the Saudi envoy regardless of American casualties in the U.S. capital.

One day soon, however, the Iranians will cross the line, and the American president will have no choice but to retaliate—even if the Iranians have the bomb. There won’t be time then for the “collective action” prized by Obama and his deputies. The time for “collective action” is now.

Collective action does not mean bringing the unmovable Russians and Chinese on board. It means going after Revolutionary Guard camps. It means destabilizing Iran’s ally Syria by creating a no-fly zone there that protects the Syrian opposition and helps bring down Bashar al-Assad. Collective action means using every possible method and tactic to destabilize the Iranian regime by working with allies inside and outside of Iran. It means doing everything possible to ensure that Ayatollah Ali Khameini, stripped of his clerical robes, is the next Middle East dictator dragged from a hole in the ground.

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Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei

Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei (born 1939) followed Ayatollah Rohollah Khomeini as supreme spiritual and political leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A favored Khomeini disciple, key revolutionary strategist, and innovative president, Khamenei was elected supreme leader by a Council of Islamic Experts on June 5, 1989.

Born in 1939, Sayyid Ali Khamenei was raised in a family of Islamic scholars in Meshed, a key city in northeast Iran. At 18 he began advanced religious training at Najaf, Iraq. Some sources claim that Khamenei also undertook limited paramilitary training in Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Libya. He moved to Qom, Iran, in 1958, where he became a close student of Ayatollah Khomeini. In 1963 Khamenei was involved in the massive student protests against the shah’s Western-oriented reforms. The protests were brutally crushed, and Khomeini was exiled. Khamenei continued his studies in Meshed, eventually achieving recognition as hojatolislam (“authority on Islam”), a rank only one step beneath ultimate esteem as an ayatollah.

Khamenei’s Farsi, Arabic, and Turkish language skills helped him as a literary critic and translator of works on Islamic science, history, and Western civilization. Khamenei’s own books include a study of “the role of Muslims in the liberation of India.”

Revolutionary Strategist

Khamenei’s teachings drew the wrath of the shah’s agents. Frequent arrests and three years of imprisonment were followed by a year of internal exile in the Baluchi desert region. Undaunted, Khamenei returned to Meshed in time to help orchestrate the nationwide street battles that resulted in the shah’s overthrow and the triumphant return of Khomeini in 1979.

Khamenei rose rapidly as the clerics gradually consolidated their control over the revolution. An original Revolutionary Council member, Khamenei cofounded the Islamic Republican Party, was designated the prestigious Friday prayer leader for the capital city of Tehran, and was elected to the Majlis (consultative assembly). Khamenei’s early tasks also included the ideological indoctrination of the shah’s military and the formation of the autonomous and ideologically driven Revolutionary Guards. Khamenei staunchly defended the militant students who held 52 American diplomats for 444 days (1979-1981). After Iraq invaded Iran, Khamenei was Khomeini’s first personal representative on the powerful Supreme Defense Council, from where he helped discredit then president Bani-Sadr for being inclined to accept Iraqi cease-fire offers. Khamenei viewed hard-line stands as beneficially producing a “born again” self-confidence in the Iranian people.

Khamenei was elected president on October 2, 1981, almost by default, since scores of top revolutionary clerics had been killed by bombs planted by the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (Islamic-Marxist guerrillas). Khamenei himself barely survived a tape-recorder bomb; his right arm and voice remained damaged.

Presidential Years

As president, Khamenei’s authority was significantly checked by Iran’s complicated constitutional structure. Khomeini’s original choice for prime minister, Ali-Akbar Velayati, was rejected by the Majlis in favor of the independent-minded Hussein Moussavi. Like the French system, Iran’s divided executive increasingly suffered from bureaucratic confusion and tensions. Velayati, for example, became foreign minister, but many of his deputies were morebeholden to Moussavi.

Khamenei’s policy positions did not necessarily follow his earlier hard-line reputation. In social matters Khamenei tended to advocate stern social and cultural purity. Yet, he was quick to encourage skilled Iranians to return from abroad, regardless of their fidelity to revolutionary norms. In economics Khamenei’s defense of the Bazaaris (merchants) against un-Islamic socialism clashed sharply with Moussavi’s enactment of radical land and businessreforms. When such disputes became severe, the theoretically supreme Ayatollah Khomeini tended merely to endorse such “constructive debate” and to praise the loyal service of both Moussavi and Khamenei. Though Moussavi’s measures were often vetoed by Iran’s conservative Council of Guardians, some observers viewed Khamenei’s presidency as becoming ceremonial.

Khamenei’s most significant presidential contribution was in foreign policy. As Iran struggled to break its pariah status, Khamenei launched in 1984 what became known as an “open door” policy. With Khomeini’s blessing, Khamenei transformed the “neither east nor west” revolutionary slogan away from isolationism to mean neither eastern nor western domination. “Rational, sound, and healthy relations with all countries” will help Iran meet its “needs,” he said, while aiding in the non-violent spread of Iran’s revolutionary message. Khamenei insisted that reciprocity and mutual respect were Iran’s criteria for good relations, not ideological conformity. Thus, even unconverted “Satans” like the United States could become friends.

Khamenei’s “open minded policy” was frequently denounced by radical hardliners, particularly after the revelations of covert dealings with the United States. Still, the pragmatic analyses of Khamenei and Majlis speaker Rafsanjani arguably were behind Iran’s “surprise” acceptance of a cease-fire with Iraq in August of 1988. The Salman Rushdie uproar was a subsequent setback for the pragmatists. When Khamenei suggested that the condemned author could redeem himself, Khomeini publicly reversed Khamenei, saying that Rushdie could not repent from intentional blasphemy.

Supreme Leader

Despite past controversial stands, the 49-year-old Khamenei was swiftly selected as the new supreme leader after Ayatollah Khomeini’s death by an 80-member Council of Islamic Experts. The context for Khamenei’s selection had been set by Khomeini’s demotion of his previously designated successor, Ayatollah Hossein Montazeri, for his hardline international views and brazen criticisms of postwar executions of Mujahedeen leaders. Though elevated to ayatollah status, Khamenei’s credentials were challenged by more senior Islamic clergy, including Montazeri. Yet, Khamenei’s loyalty to Khomeini and his “skills gained during eight years as president” were deemed to take “priority” over religious training.

As spiritual leader, Khamenei followed Khomeini’s tendency to seek conciliation among factions. To placate the marginalized radicals, Khamenei occasionally cautioned the powerful new president, Ali Rafsanjani, not to lose sight of revolutionary principles. Yet Khamenei’s sanctioning of careful international financing of reconstruction exemplified his continued emphasis on pragmatic needs.

No longer as immersed in policy making, Khamenei’s sermons took on the air of a detached theoretical historian. Such reasoned discourses on the unique and lasting aspects of Iran’s Islamic revolution can still be displaced by fiery rhetoric. Amidst the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf crisis, Khamenei proclaimed a “Holy War” against notions of permanent U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, even as he supported “international” efforts to remove Iraq from Kuwait.

Kamenei continued his defiance of the U.S. during the 1990s. In a ceremony marking the sixth anniversary of the death of Khomeini, he accused Washington of interfering in the affairs of Iran, saying; “It is very clear that the government of Iran is against U.S. interests.” Anything with an American flavor came under his attack. With Khamenei’s religious ruling, both Coke and Pepsi were banned in Iran. He launched a drive to make the universities more Islamic, and to increase censorship of newspapers, books, and films. While many in the public sector had little enthusiasm for continuing the revolutionary fervor, Khamenei with an extremist viewpoint attempted to keep Iran from moderating its stance. During the 1997 elections, Khamenei’s choice for president, Ali Akbar Nateq-Noori, was defeated by Mohammed Khatami in a referendum by the general public for more freedom and liberty.

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Reykjavik: Turning Point of the Cold War

Posted on October 22, 2011 by Maria

Twenty-five years ago this month President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik, Iceland, at a summit that appears, in retrospect, to truly be the “turning point in the Cold War.” To many observers, and those of us at the talks, the protracted and animated negotiations seemed initially to have ended in failure, as the two leaders left the conference without an agreement and with dour expressions on their faces.

The road to Reykjavik actually began with proposals made by Reagan in 1981 to eliminate all intermediate range ballistic missiles (the so-called Zero Option) and in 1982 to reduce deployed strategic nuclear warheads by at least one-third. This was a significant departure from arms control thinking, which had previously focused only on limiting future growth of these systems.

Until Reykjavik, Soviet leaders dismissed these ideas as one sided and insincere, and rejected them. Yet Gorbachev came to Reykjavik with his own dramatic proposals, including a 50% reduction in strategic offensive arms, complete elimination of all intermediate range (INF) missiles, and a non withdrawl from the 1972 ABM treaty for 10 years.

While the Soviet leader had initially suggested only a mini summit in preparation for more detailed negotiations in 1987, the Soviets came prepared with these far-reaching and detailed proposals on arms control. President Reagan embraced the negotiations with enthusiasm, delighted to see Moscow’s willingness to consider many of our most ambitious suggestions.

The negotiations were complex, animated and highly substantive, and Gorbachev proved to be intelligent, knowledgeable and facile. Reagan held firm in his principles. No more unverifiable treaties (“Trust but Verify” he loved to say in Russian), no more agreements codifying Soviet superiority in arms on the European continent, no more tolerating Moscow’s refusal to grant its citizens basic human rights, and – perhaps most importantly to the President – no more reliance on offensive nuclear missiles to provide for our security. Gorbachev hung firm on many key points, I think hoping that the President would “understand” that an agreement on Moscow’s terms would ensure the President emerged from the Summit as a popular and respected world leader and peacemaker.

The Soviets were clearly prepared to agree to major reductions in strategic forces, intermediate range weapons, and warheads. Gorbachev even showed a willingness, however strained, to discuss our positions on regional and human rights issues. But, the one point he needed to lock in was an agreement that the U.S. would confine its research and testing on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to the laboratory.

We did not fully appreciate at the time that Gorbachev, unlike his predecessors, was cognizant of the depths that the Soviet economy had fallen. Most importantly, he apparently had come to the conclusion that should the United States seriously embark on its “Star Wars” plans, what was at stake was more than a space defense program. Gorbachev believed that should the USA seriously pursue SDI it represented the possibility that America would bring together its technological prowess and economic superiority in a manner that would consign the USSR, to use the Marxist term, “to the trash heap of history”.

Some have said that the reason so many Soviet concessions were made was because Reagan used SDI as a “bargaining chip”. Maybe so. However, the reason SDI succeeded so well was precisely because the President believed in the program so passionately. It was a great bargaining tool because the President did not believe it was a “bargaining chip”.

The final session that stretched into the night was a scene of high drama. Gorbachev offered to eliminate all strategic forces, not just ballistic missiles. Reagan then countered that it would be fine with him if they could agree to eliminate all nuclear weapons. They almost had an agreement. The sticking point fell to the area that most concerned the Soviets – confining Reagan’s SDI to the laboratory.

This the President could not agree to. As the two leaders walked to the door with dour looks on their faces, Gorbachev asked the President, “What more could we have done?” Reagan, asking Gorbachev how he could “turn down a historic opportunity because of a single word”, simply said to the General Secretary, “You could have said yes.”

Despite the apparent failure at Reykjavik the two parties resumed negotiations and the following year signed the INF treaty at the Washington Summit, totally eliminating the intermediate range missiles. By 1991 the two sides agreed on a START treaty that cut the US and Soviet nuclear arsenals by 80% over the next decade.

Mikhail Gorbachev wrote this week that while the Reykjavik Summit failed to “achieve our highest aspirations”, the Summit served as “the major turning point in the quest for a safer and secure world.” Years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev was asked what precipitated the USSR’s demise. Without hesitation, he answered, “Oh, its Reykjavik.”

Tyrus W. Cobb served as Executive Secretary for President Reagan’s Summits in Geneva in 1985 and Reykjavik in 1986.

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Aside from the huge policy implications of the Reykjavik Summit, let me share a few anecdotes and side notes:

I served as the Executive Secretary for the Geneva and Reykjavik Summits, which essentially meant I was in charge of coordinating the briefing sessions and preparatory papers. Nothing glamorous. However, having found out about the proposed Summit that would occur in Iceland in less than two weeks, I immediately requested that we have the President’s full attention for a series of briefings on key issues. Well, that led to a tumultuous intra-White House fight, as the Political Directorate was more concerned with having the popular President on the campaign trail since the 1986 mid-term elections were coming up. In one of the exchanges I said to the political team that there was no way we could permit the President to be out on the campaign trail now. One responded to me that on the schedule were “two stops in Nevada, on behalf of your buddy, Jim Santini”, running for the Senate. “Oh”, I said, “Guess that would be ok!”

When I went home I told my wife Suellen that we would be heading for Reykjavik for a “mini-Summit” in 10 days, but were not going to have but a few prep sessions with the President. “Mini-Summit?” she responded with a doubtful look. “Gorby got his clocked cleaned in Geneva”, she said, “Do you really think he is just coming for a handshake?”

Hmmm. She was right. When the Soviet delegation arrived it was clear that they had a full team that was thoroughly ready to pursue a very ambitious agenda. And, by the way, contrary to the agreements that no wives would join the leaders, Raisa Gorbacheva stepped off the plane. Bad sign. Nancy did not come to the Summit and President Reagan did not function as well without her. As the Summit became more substantive and contentious, we could tell that Reagan really missed having Nancy there with him.

The Icelanders were kind to provide a small venue for the talks—the supposedly haunted Hofdi House—but it was really tiny. As the talks proceeded and became more detailed, Soviet and American negotiators found themselves huddled almost together in the cramped quarters’ basement, all sharing only one bathroom!

The American team imposed a blackout on contacting “higher HQ” during the talks. This put BG John Moellering, who was the JCS representative there, in a most difficult spot. He was a relative neophyte to the arms control arena and had been in that postion only a few days, but he was astute enough to recognize that major decisions were being reached without the advice and comments of the Joint Chiefs. At one crucial point, weighing the potential wrath of violating the secrecy ban against the obvious need to keep his superiors informed, he asked me what I thought he should do…..What would you have advised him? I think John retired as a one-star! The Chiefs were NOT happy campers.

When we came back from Reykjavik, our European allies were up in arms—what were we thinking trading away their security—the GLCM and Pershing missiles especially—without consultations! Alas, weren’t these the same Europeans who had been beating us down for years with birch rods for our inflexibility on arms control issues? Mitterrand and Kohl, especially, but yes, Maggie, too. Loved it.

A final point—until Reykjavik many outside observers were unaware of President Reagan’s strong opposition to nuclear weapons and his desire to rid the earth of these horribly destructive weapons. Now they knew it, but those around the President had often heard him just ask, “Well, Cap…or Bud…or George…why can’t we just agree to abolish ALL nuclear weapons”. All of his advisors—and that included George Shultz at the time, despite his more recent declarations in favor of a nuclear-free world—would recoil and say something like, “Well, Mr. President, we agree in principle, but given Soviet conventional force advantages, we cannot at this time consider giving up our reliability on nuclear weapons to repel Soviet aggression”. The President would nod, “Well, ok, I won’t push it”. But you knew he would and he certainly did at Reykjavik!

Tyrus W. Cobb

Minister of Enlightenment, the NSF

Posted in General News, Newsletter | Comments Off

More evidence of high level Iranian complicity in plot

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Maria

Anyone still believe that Iran at the highest levels was not involved in this plot? Anyone not believe that this demands a strong response from the US to destabilize Iran?

Notorious Iranian militant has a connection to alleged assassination plot against Saudi envoy

By Peter Finn, Published: October 14

When nearly $100,000 landed in an undercover FBI bank account from a source linked to an Iranian paramilitary force, officials began taking seriously an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador that at first had seemed outlandish.

And as the investigation unfolded over recent months, a name emerged that chilled some in the U.S. government. The Iranian cousin of the man accused of plotting the assassination was Abdul Reza Shahlai, a senior commander in Iran’s Quds Force, who had been linked to the killing of American troops in Iraq.

Shahlai was known as the guiding hand behind an elite group of gunmen from the feared militia of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. They had dressed as American and Iraqi soldiers and, in a convoy of white SUVs, stormed a provincial government building in Karbala on Jan. 20, 2007.

Five Americans were killed and three were wounded in the attack, whose brazenness rattled the military. The daring raid became even more notorious after some of the suspected killers were later released by the Iraqi government.

The U.S. military found a 22-page memo that detailed preparations for the operation and tied it to the Quds Force, a branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Treasury officials singled out Shahlai as “the final approving and coordinating authority” for the Iran-based training of members of Sadr’s militia before they went back to Iraq to attack coalition forces.

The 54-year-old Iranian also supplied parts of Sadr’s militia with large quantities of C-4 plastic explosives, 122mm grad rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, according to the U.S. Treasury report targeting him for sanctions.

“The Quds Force is Iran’s arm for supporting terrorists and planning attacks. . . . It has, in the past, reached out to groups that might seem unlikely partners,” said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. “The U.S. government has known for quite some time that the Quds Force was involved in this type of external plotting and has known that Shahlai has been behind much of it. That he is still at it is no surprise.”

Shahlai’s cousin in the United States is Mansour Arbabsiar, who had grown up with him in the Iranian city of Kermanshah (now Bakhtaran) but emigrated to Texas in the late 1970s.

This year, the 56-year-old Arbabsiar, running from a series of failed businesses and a collapsing marriage, returned to Iran to live. And Shahlai apparently decided that he had found another proxy to strike at two of Iran’s principal enemies: the United States and Iran’s regional rival, Saudi Arabia. The Saudi ambassador to the United States,Adel al-Jubeir, is a key foreign policy adviser to King Abdullah.

U.S. officials say that Shahlai hoped that Arbabsiar, by virtue of his time in Texas, might be able to get in touch with Mexican drug traffickers who would kidnap Jubeir. The plan allegedly later evolved into assassinating him in Washington.

It is unclear how much Shahlai understood about his cousin’s life in the United States and if he understood how unlikely it was that a struggling used-car salesman in Corpus Christi, Tex., could successfully orchestrate a high-profile international plot.

Arbabsiar was charged with conspiracy to murder a foreign official and conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism, among other charges. His court-appointed attorney said he will plead not guilty.

Several former friends of Arbabsiar’s said in interviews that he was hopelessly disorganized. Shahlai may have not known, or he may have not cared. In either case, his cousin “was a throwaway,” said one U.S. official.

Arbabsiar allegedly told Shahlai that he might have a connection. He gave Arbabsiar several thousand dollars to return to the United States and get to Mexico, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and court papers.

The alleged plot began to unravel when Arbabsiar attempted to find a contact in the Mexican underworld. Officials said he believed that the nephew of a female friend was a member of Los Zetas, a group formed by ex-Mexican soldiers that acted as an enforcer for the gulf drug cartel before the two groups split in a violent feud. But the nephew, in fact, was a Drug Enforcement Administration informant.

Both the gulf cartel and Los Zetas have been the target of investigations by a DEA strike force operating out of Houston. “Over the past two years, DEA Houston has developed several highly placed confidential sources with direct access to key leadership elements of the cartels,” said a federal law enforcement official.

On May 24, Arbabsiar traveled from Texas to Reynosa, Mexico, to meet with the informant. Arbabsiar allegedly spoke about attacking the Saudi Embassy and asked the informant what he knew about explosives.

In two more meetings in Mexico in July, the informant recorded the conversation as Arbabsiar described his cousin as someone who was “wanted in America” and had been on CNN.

“He’s got the, got the government behind him,” said Arbabsiar, according to court papers. “He’s not paying from his pocket.”

Arbabsiar said he told his cousin that he wanted “another fifteen,” presumably $15,000.

“Next morning, they send one guy, you know, that work for him. He’s like a colonel, the guy,” Arbabsiar said. “He bring the envelope.”

The colonel was Ali Gholam Shakuri, Shahlai’s deputy. Arbabsiar and Shakuri, speaking in code, referred to the plot as buying a Chevrolet.

But Arbabsiar was arrested in New York on a flight from Mexico, where he had been refused entry. He telephoned Shakuri, who also was charged, as federal officials recorded the conversation.

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