Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski
Very informative interview with one of the most knowledgeable foreign policy experts in the United States. ”Whether weighing in on the Iran deal or calling to shrink the U.S. military, the 85-year-old Poland-born academic still plays a mean game of tennis each day and is a regular on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where his daughter, Mika, is co-host. Here, Brzezinski shares candid reflections on his remarkable life with Charles Gati, a scholar at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies—as well as his skeptical thoughts on promoting human rights, his complex feelings toward Israel and the heart-stopping 3 a.m. phone call warning him of a nuclear attack.”
Monday, November 25, 2013
Will Iran define President Obama’s legacy ?
Even before becoming President, then Senator Obama campaigning for his first presidency warned George Bush and Dick Cheney about Iran and that “they must hear loud and clear from the American people and the Congress: You do not have our support, and you do not have our authorization, to launch another war.” Obama reminded the public that the fateful decision to invade Iraq in 2003 had only enhanced Iranian influence. Instead of issuing threats, he argued for direct negotiations and diplomacy with Iran. Following his election as President in 2008, Obama sent letters to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. In his letters to the Iranian leader, Obama urged strategic engagement with Iran, and called on the Iranian leader to resolve the nuclear dispute. Yet, in 2009 Iran was beset with internal uprisings following disputed presidential elections that kept Ahmadinejad in power for another four years. After the 2009 elections, a major political rift between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad undermined Khamenei’s reputation and influence inside the country. After lending strong support to Ahmadinejad, the latter turned out to be the worst nightmare for Khamenei. By 2013 presidential elections and arrival of Hassan Rouhani, Khamenei had been weakened and was forced to accept the results of 2013 elections that led to the emergence of a moderate “who ran on a reformist platform, promising a solution to Iran’s nuclear negotiations and the Iranian people’s need for relaxing the sanctions.” Obama’s persistence and patience paid off, and now he has a historical chance to make his legacy with Iran.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Kuwait Airways flight lands in Iraq for first time in 23 years
A Kuwait Airways flight landed in the city of Najaf in Iraq, the first first flight in 23 year since the 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times writes that it’s time to cut a deal with Iran
Writing from Abu Dhabi, UAE, NYT columnist Thomas Friedman who attended a security conference in UAE makes the following observations: “Never have I seen Israel and America’s core Arab allies working more in concert to stymie a major foreign policy initiative of a sitting U.S. president, and never have I seen more lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans — more willing to take Israel’s side against their own president’s.” Yet, this unlikely alliance will only strengthen Iran’s determination to negotiate a deal with the West.
Le Monde diplomatique: France’s new neocons
Exclusive report by Le Monde diplomatique reveals the reasons for the French obstruction of a nuclear deal with Iran. According to the article, ”France’s foreign policy seems to have taken a decisive neoconservative turn, independently of the political party in power.”
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Lost Legitimacy : Why Governing Is Harder Than Ever
While emerging markets like Turkey, India, and China move forward with their economic growth, their leaders and political elites confront new challenges "as citizens use new tools to make new demands, coordinate protest, and pool their collective power. Governments of all kinds are scrambling for short-term solutions to help them through to the next business cycle, the next election, the next political transition. The result is a global crisis of legitimacy."
Bahman Bakhtiari
Monday, November 18, 2013
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Russia: The Populist Threat to Putin's Power
Fiona Hill and Hannah Thoburn from Brookings have an interesting article about Vladimir Putin.They ask if he is "really the most powerful person in the world ?" The article gives a good analysis of the domestic situation in Russia, and the potential populist movements that may arise to challenge Putin.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Typhoon Haiyan: at least 10,000 reported dead in Philippine province
Estimated death toll soars as path of destruction leaves many parts of Philippines inaccessible to government and aid officials. About 70-80% of the buildings in the area in the path of Haiyan in Leyte province was destroyed,
Israeli Intelligence Sources Contradict Bibi, Congress on Iran
In this article by Marsha Cohen, she points out how several high-level Israeli intelligence and defense officials are far more receptive to a nuclear deal with Iran, and do not want Israel to pursue a policy of endless confrontation with Iran.
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Financial Times: Iran nuclear talks end without a deal
By Geoff Dyer in Washington, James Blitz in London and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran
November 10, 2013
"Three days of intense negotiations in Geneva failed to reach an interim agreement to freeze Iran’s nuclear programme, despite the optimistic predictions that had accompanied the talks.
High-level talks between Iran and six world powers are due to resume on November 20, but the continued differences in Geneva underlined the considerable obstacles in reaching a lasting agreement over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Diplomats remained locked in talks past midnight as they tried to hammer out the first major agreement over Iran’s nuclear ambitions in a decade, but were unable to conclude the much-anticipated deal.
Lady Ashton, EU foreign policy chief, told a press conference at the conclusion of the talks that there had been a lot of “concrete progress but some differences remain”.
John Kerry, US secretary of state, said after the talks closed that “we are closer now than when we came.” He added: “With good work and good faith, we can in fact secure our goal.”
The talks appeared to falter in part because of objections raised by France, which alongside the US, UK, Germany, China and Russia, is one of the countries involved in the negotiations with Iran.
Indeed, it was Laurent Fabius, French foreign minister, who first announced the failure of the talks ahead of a joint press conference by Lady Ashton and Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iranian foreign minister.
“The meetings in Geneva have made it possible to move forward,” Mr Fabius said. “But we have not yet managed to conclude, because there are still some questions remaining to be dealt with.”
Earlier in the day, Mr Fabius said that France did not want to be part of a “fool’s game”.
The near two-week gap before the next talks could prove uncomfortable for the US and Iranian negotiators, who both face considerable opposition at home to their efforts at diplomacy.
The Obama administration’s critics in Congress, who are already pushing for tougher sanctions on Iran, could well be emboldened by French criticism of the deal US diplomats appeared ready to support.
At the same time, Mr Zarif’s apparent last-minute failure to secure some relief from tough international sanctions could encourage those in Iran who say the regime cannot trust the west. At the press conference, Mr Zarif said the diplomats had had a “very productive three days” and that the talks were “something we can build on”.
The diplomats were discussing an interim deal to buy time for more detailed negotiations about a final agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme, which many western governments believe is fast approaching a point where it could make the final steps towards building a nuclear bomb in a short period of time.
The broad outline of the proposed deal involved Iran halting key parts of its nuclear programme in return from some modest relief from the tough regime of international sanctions that it faces.
One of the two main sticking points at negotiations in Geneva was the Arak heavy water reactor south east of Tehran. Western diplomats have long feared that the reactor could produce enough plutonium to give Iran a nuclear bomb at a later date unless its operations are halted.
A second sticking point is Iran’s stockpile of more highly enriched uranium, which is close to weapons grade. Iran has said that it will stop production of more highly enriched uranium at the 20 per cent concentration. But it is unclear whether it is prepared to convert its stockpile of 20 per cent uranium into a form that could not be used to make a nuclear weapon.
Before the break-up of the talks, some diplomats suggested that France might be playing “bad cop” to the US “good cop” in a bid to extract final concessions from Iran.
France has long been regarded as the most hawkish of the four western powers that negotiate with Iran over its nuclear programme. That hawkishness has been a feature of all recent French presidencies and reflects the country’s deep-seated political commitment to the principle of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Romain Nadal, French foreign ministry spokesman, pointed to “rather large cohesion”’ among the negotiators, and said France wanted “the international community to see a serious change in the climate” of talks with Iran.
“There have been years of talks that have led to nothing,’’ Mr Nadal said, alluding to the need for tough terms on Iran.
Another bone of contention may have been the limited willingness of western powers to remove sanctions in return for Iran’s commitment to halt key aspects of its program.
“Countries should know that any agreement should be based on mutual respect and take into consideration the rights of Iranian nation, otherwise it would not be sustainable,” Mr Zarif said."
Former Israeli Security Chief Says U.S. Iran Policy ‘Is A Policy Of Wisdom’
The former head of Israel’s internal security service told the Chicago Sun-Times that he supports U.S. rapprochement with Iran, saying, “The American policy is a policy of wisdom….In my eyes, American policy is not coming out of weakness. It comes out of power,” said former Shin Bet Chief Carmi Gillon.
France, Israel move to block nuclear deal with Iran
The nuclear talks between Iran and P5+1 are stalled due to objections from the French who are demanding tougher interim agreement. Western diplomats are telling the Associated Press that the ”French holding out for conditions on the Iranians tougher than those agreed to by the U.S.” This is because France ( regardless of its new government) has had the most pro-Israeli position on Iran. The French President Hollande was expected to travel to Israel in late November for a three-day state visit. Despite the last minute obstruction by the French, they will not be able to block the deal since U.S., UK, Germany, and the EU are inclined to go ahead with the agreement.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
BBC report on Saudi Arabia's "ready for delivery" nuclear bombs from Pakistan
According to BBC Newsnight, "Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will."
Iran Culture Minister Wants Social Media Ban Lifted
Several Iranian officials including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham have Facebook (FB) or Twitter accounts, or both.... About 2 million Iranians have Facebook accounts, half of them in the capital, Tehran."
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Book Review Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline of Representative Government
Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline of Representative Government
By: Joshua Kurlantzick
New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2013
By: Joshua Kurlantzick
New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2013
Monday, November 4, 2013
Taskforce Report: CIA made doctors torture suspected terrorists after 9/11
The report of the Taskforce on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centres concludes that after September 11, "health professionals working with the military and intelligence services "designed and participated in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment and torture of detainees".
Ex-Mossad Chief Efraim Halevy sees possible with opening with Iran
Article by Laura Rozen , "From cold war to cold peace? Ex-Mossad chief sees possible opening and signs of a potential opportunity emerging from recently intensified US-Iran nuclear diplomacy."
Nathan Brown: Whether Sisi runs for president will determine the fate of the Egyptian constitution
One Word will define Egypt's Constitution: "Those interested in following every word of the work of the Committee of 50 drafting comprehensive revisions to Egypt's constitution now have a variety of sources to follow: one "official" twitter feed; an "unofficial" one; and the latest addition, an "official" Facebook page. But the most important word governing Egypt's future constitutional order will not be mentioned in any of those places. Indeed, it will not even be placed in the final text scheduled to be submitted to voters next month. That fateful word will be spoken only by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and it will be a simple "yes" or "no" concerning his candidacy for the presidency of the Egyptian republic. "
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Misconceptions about Iran’s Nuclear Program
Paul Pillar has an excellent article discussing some of the misconceptions about Iran’s nuclear program, and how these misconceptions may one day force the Iranian regime to pursue policies that the West has done its utmost to block and neutralize.
New Book by Homan Majd
Hooman Majd, author of the book, “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ,” has written a book about his family’s year in Tehran, “The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay.” In this book, Majd has some interesting observations about Iranians, and how they put up with the restriction imposed by the Islamic Republic. Majority of Iranians have adjusted to life under the Islamic Republic, and I agree with him that as much as the Iranians have suffered from mismanagement and ill-advised policies of their government, people inside Iran do not want to necessarily overthrow the Islamic Republic. As their participation in the June 2013 Presidential elections demonstrates, they are still looking for alternatives within Iran to make their Islamic Republic more republican and democratic, and less Islamic.
Even though the road to this realization during the reformist period of President Khatami was a major disappointment, the disenchantments have not convinced the Iranians that there is a better more prosperous future waiting for them if they overthrow the current regime. In Majd’s book, Khatami is quoted as saying that Iranians ”don’t have the culture for human rights & democracy.” Whether this is a truen statement or not, young Iranians today are idealistic, and do want to see a democratic Iran. For this post-revolutionary generations of Iranians, the revolution of 1979 is viewed as a major mistake that could have been avoided and should not have happened again. Their lives have been impacted by a series of connected developments that begins with the Revolution of 1979: The hostage crisis (1979-1981), the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), the Salman Rushdie Fatwa ( 1980-1998), the nuclear dispute and sanctions. Yet, despite all the hardship, it is stunning to see how young Iranians still hope for a better future.
Financial Times: Oil majors weigh benefits and costs of return to Iran By Guy Chazan in London
November 3, 2013
"There are very few places in the world that are entirely off limits to the western oil majors, a group who will literally go anywhere in search of crude. But Iran is the big exception. Thanks to US and EU sanctions, Iran is, for Big Oil at least, beyond the pale.
That may now be about to change. The recent charm offensive by Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, has raised hopes of a diplomatic rapprochement between Tehran and Washington and an easing of sanctions. Iran has now gone further, suggesting it could offer more lucrative contracts to foreign companies prepared to invest in its oilfields.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mehdi Hosseini, an adviser to the Iranian oil minister, said the government was working on scrapping the current system of “buybacks” – a kind of deal that has proven one of the most problematic in the oil industry – and replacing it with a new type of contract. It is part of a push to attract at least $100bn of investment into Iran over the next three years.
In principle, there could be a lot of interest. Iran, after all, does boast the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves and the world’s largest endowment of natural gas. Its South Pars natural gasfield, the biggest in the world, was once the hottest ticket in the global oil industry.
“Iran still has a number of very attractive opportunities,” says Alex Munton of consultancy Wood Mackenzie. He cites South Pars and the huge potential gains from using modern western technology to boost recovery from Iran’s mature oilfields, which peaked in the 1970s and are now in steep decline.
But the majors are sceptical. So many things have to change before they would even consider investing in Iran – not least an end to sanctions. And even then, success is not assured.
“Oil companies have a lot more opportunities now than they did even 10 years ago,” says a senior executive at one of the majors. “The world has changed – there is Africa, Latin America, US shale. In that context, Iran’s going to have to offer much more competitive terms if it wants to attract companies like ours.”
Still, Mr Rouhani’s election has brought a rare ray of hope. Industry experts were particularly heartened by his appointment of Bijan Namdar-Zanganeh as oil minister. A technocrat who occupied the same job between 1997 and 2005, under the reformist president Mohammad Khatami, he was instrumental in attracting billions of dollars in foreign investment into the oil sector. Nonetheless, he faces major challenges in reviving that interest.
The biggest problem is the buybacks, a type of contract first introduced in the early 1990s, under which foreign companies pay all the upfront costs of developing an oilfield and, over a fixed number of years, are allowed to recoup their costs and make a small profit – but at a specified rate of return.
Initially, the contracts were quite attractive, and companies like Total and Petronas won reasonable rates of return. But then, as resource nationalism took hold in Tehran, the Iranian parliament intervened to reduce the rates.
Despite the deteriorating terms, companies like Royal Dutch Shell were lured into Iranian ventures like South Pars. However, the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, imposed by Washington to squeeze foreign companies out of Iran, achieved its purpose. In 2008, Total, one of the last foreign groups that retained a big interest in Iran, threw in the towel.
Ideally, investors would like to see buybacks replaced by the kind of production-sharing agreements, joint ventures and concessions seen in the more investor-friendly oil-producing countries. But that would bump up against Iran’s constitutional ban on foreign ownership of its oil and gas resources.
Mariam Al Shamma, a Middle East analyst at consultancy PFC Energy, says the outcome of Mr Hosseini’s reform efforts will probably be a type of service contract “with a high enough rate of return to attract the international oil companies”.
She says there is also a “remote possibility” of legislation that allows the majors to book oil reserves – thereby reflecting the potential value of the oil or gasfields in their accounts – without actually owning them.
Any hope of reviving Iran’s oil industry rests on its ability to attract foreign investment. “If there is no foreign involvement in Iran’s upstream, its [oil and gas] production will stay flat and could start declining in the medium to long term,” says Shapour Saba of Wood Mackenzie.
With so many other places to operate, oil companies need a lot of persuading to return to Iran. “If you want to compete for investment, you have to offer very attractive contracts,” says Salar Moradi, an oil market analyst at FGE."
Did Israel, under the shah, help start Iran’s nuclear program?
A new documentary recalls the ‘paradise in a bubble’ of Israelis in Iran before 1979. It also suggests they played an initial role in setting Iran on the nuclear path.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Israel to drill for oil in the West Bank. Palestinians unlikely to reap benefits
A large reserve may lie under Israel and the occupied territories, but Palestinians are unlikely to reap the benefits. AL JAZEERAH
Friday, November 1, 2013
Fareed Zakaria: The Saudis Are Mad? Tough!
Fareed Zakaria has a thoughtful piece analyzes why the “Saudi royals have been rattled by the events in their region and beyond.” This is because ”they sense that the discontent that launched the Arab Spring is not absent in their own populace. They fear the rehabilitation of Iran. They also know that the U.S. might very soon find itself entirely independent of Middle Eastern oil.”
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