Why Washington Fears Iran – Part 2 Thursday, Jun 20 2013 

Iran and Nuclear and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , Sandboxer 12:12 am

Iran's nuclear plant at Bushehr

Iran’s nuclear plant at Bushehr

By Sharmine Narwani

“Tehran has developed technical expertise in a number of areas—including uranium enrichment, nuclear reactors, and ballistic missiles—from which it could draw if it decided to build missile-deliverable nuclear weapons,” reads Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper’s April 2013 report to the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

Then comes the statement usually ignored by mass media: “We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”

The fact that Iran is not producing a nuclear bomb – nay, hasn’t even decided if it wants to – has not deterred the US government from slapping the Islamic Republic with the most punishing unilateral sanctions in history.

While the Iranian economy struggles to adjust to periodic US sanctions “upgrades”, a significantly devalued currency and restrictions in global financial transactions have suddenly challenged even Iran’s famed adaptability to these kinds of externally-imposed pressures.

But something is awry. There is no implosion in Iran.  How is that possible with off-the-chart hikes in the price of basic goods, unaffordable housing in congested urban areas, increased youth unemployment? Instead, Iranians who love nothing better than to complain about government and economy, have grumpily rallied against these foreign efforts to pit population against state.

According to results of a Gallup poll in February, 85% of Iranians claim sanctions have hurt their livelihood either “a great deal” or “somewhat.” But 70% of those polled blame external parties (the US, western European countries, Israel and the UN) for this suffering; remarkably, only 10% blame their government and their leaders. Instead of sanctions forcing a change in Iran’s calculation about pursuing nuclear enrichment – which is a stated US goal – 65% of Iranians favor a continuation of the country’s nuclear power capabilities.

As former head of the International Energy and Atomic Agency (IAEA) Mohamed El Baradei astutely observed before leaving his 11-year post: “The line was, ‘Iran will buckle under pressure.’ But this issue has become so ingrained in the Iranian soul as a matter of national pride. They talk about their nuclear program as if they had gone to the moon.”

Instead of changing tack and identifying novel new ways to gain favor with Iran’s population while pressuring their leaders, the US administration went off the rails last week and upped the sanctions ante – targeting for the first time Iran’s rial currency and its auto industry, a large source of domestic jobs.

No – there can no longer be any mistake about what that means. Washington isn’t trying to change Iran’s “calculations” about “its nuclear program.” It is trying to break Iran’s back. (more…)

 

Mideast Backlashes Yet to Come Sunday, May 19 2013 

Arab Awakening and Egypt and Middle East and Syria and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 10:37 am

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By Sharmine Narwani

The Middle East is treading water these days. Two years of rhetoric about ousting dictators, revolution, freedom, honor, dignity and democracy – without result – has people on edge, their disillusionment now demanding an outlet.

There are no outlets though. Sensing the fast-growing disenchantment with undelivered promises, even the “bright new leaders” are tightening the reins and demanding compliance.

These new heads of state simply can’t deliver the goods for one main reason: They are just as caught up in global and regional power contests as were their predecessors. Nothing has changed with these uprisings – nothing.

Except now the stakes are higher than before. A recession-bound west, the fast-rising BRICS and their respective regional allies are locked in a competition to consolidate power and influence in this important region before it finds its bearings.

The relatively new influencers on the Arab scene like Qatar and Turkey have recognized this as a unique opportunity to slip into region-wide leadership roles. For the entrenched old hands – Washington, Riyadh, Paris, London – a race is on to prevent the region from shrugging off their decades-long dominance and embracing the anti-imperialism of the Resistance Axis.

The result has been an onslaught of interventions. Every tool in the arsenal has come out to play. Money, espionage, propaganda, weapons, assassination and that old colonial trick: divide-and-rule.

The main game is still the old battle of the blocs, Iran versus the United States, with everyone else filing in line behind their team. There have been a few surprises thrown into the mix: the newcomers like Turkey and Qatar have moved over to the US side; the BRICS, however, have lent their considerable clout to team Iran. Iraq has moved behind the latter formation and Hamas still doesn’t know where to stand so it straddles the two.

This is not a game for the faint-hearted, and it permeates every major social, economic and political decision in the region today. Want a new electrical plant outside Cairo, Beirut or Kirkuk? Good luck choosing a national supplier who doesn’t offend. IMF loan? Allowing over-flights or passage for ships? Inking a trade deal? Formulating a new constitution? Scheduling a football match?

Mideast states are now paralyzed and polarized over such things, and governance has come to a standstill. But in this paralysis lies a dangerous volatility: a backlash in the brewing, a pressure cooker about to blow. (more…)

 

Chemical Weapons Charade in Syria Monday, Apr 29 2013 

Arab Awakening and Syria and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 12:22 pm

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By Sharmine Narwani

Let us be clear. The United States can verify absolutely nothing about the use of chemical weapons (CWs) in Syria. Any suggestion to the contrary is entirely false.

Don’t take it from me – here is what US officials have to say about the subject:

A mere 24 hours after Washington heavyweights from the White House, Pentagon and State Department brushed aside Israeli allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and the White House changed their minds. They now believe “with varying degrees of confidence” that CWs have been used “on a small scale” inside Syria.

For the uninitiated, “varying degrees of confidence” can mean anything from “no confidence whatsoever” to “the Israelis told us” – which, translated, also means “no confidence whatsoever.”

Too cavalier? I don’t think so. The White House introduced another important caveat in its detailed briefing on Thursday:

“This assessment is based in part on physiological samples. Our standard of evidence must build on these intelligence assessments as we seek to establish credible and corroborated facts. For example, the chain of custody is not clear, so we cannot confirm how the exposure occurred and under what conditions.”

“The chain of custody is not clear.” That is the single most important phrase in this whole exercise. It is the only phrase that journalists need consider – everything else is conjecture of WMDs-in-Iraq proportions.

I asked a State Department spokesman the following: “Does it mean you don’t know who has had access to the sample before it reached you? Or that the sample has not been contaminated along the way?”

He responded: “It could mean both.” (more…)

 

Shipping Death and Destruction to Syria Friday, Apr 12 2013 

Arab Awakening and Foreign Affairs and Middle East and Syria and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , Sandboxer 11:42 pm

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By Sharmine Narwani

“The weapons of choice in (today’s) new conflicts are not big-ticket items like long-range missiles, tanks, and fighter planes, but small and frighteningly accessible weapons ranging from handguns, carbines, and assault rifles on up to machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and shoulder-fired missiles,” explained William Hartung more than a decade ago in an article entitled The New Business of War.

“Because they are cheap, accessible, durable, and lightweight, small arms have been a primary factor in the transformation of warfare from a series of relatively well- defined battles between ‘two opposing forces wearing uniforms’ to a much more volatile, anarchic form of violence,” says Hartung, now director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy in Washington DC. “More often than not, today’s wars are multisided affairs in which militias, gangs, and self-anointed “rebels” engage in campaigns of calculated terror, civilian targets are fair game, and the laws of war are routinely ignored.”

“The ready availability of small arms makes these conflicts far more likely to occur, far more deadly once they start, and far more difficult to resolve once the death tolls mount and the urge for revenge takes hold.”

Hartung could have been describing Syria today. And no – the anarchic, violent rebels he describes in his article do not appear everywhere else in the world except in Syria. They are the Syrian prototype.

Tens of thousands of Syrians killed, millions displaced as a result of violence in their direct environment. Would these figures be so wretched if there were no armed rebellion? Most certainly, no.

Since early 2012, the Syrian death toll has increased at least tenfold  – from around 6,000 to 60,000 – as rebel supply lines opened up, borders became more porous and the militarization of the conflict was accepted in the mainstream. (more…)

 

BRICS Summit draws clear red lines on Syria, Iran Sunday, Apr 7 2013 

BRICS and Foreign Affairs and Iran and Syria and United Nations and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 9:53 pm

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By Sharmine Narwani

The BRICS just became impossible to ignore. At the close of the Fifth annual BRICS Summit in Durban, South Africa last week, there was little question that this group of five fast-growing economies was underwriting an overhaul of the global economic and political order.

The eThekwini Declaration issued at summit’s end was couched in non-confrontational language, but it was manifestly clear that western hegemony and unipolarity were being targeted at this meeting.

The BRICS hit some major western sore spots by announcing the formation of a $50 billion jointly-funded development bank to rival the IMF and World Bank. Deals were signed to increase inter-BRICS trade in their own currencies, further eroding the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

A series of unmistakable challenges were dealt to old world leaders: reform your institutions and economies – or we’ll do it ourselves. (more…)

 

The Dirty Numbers Game in Syria Friday, Feb 22 2013 

Arab Awakening and Human Rights and Media and Middle East and Syria and United Nations and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 2:10 pm

syria22n-5-web

By Sharmine Narwani

An abridged version of this article appeared in The Guardian on February 15, 2013

A trip to Syria last January piqued my interest in the ubiquitous Syrian death toll that accompanies most news items on the country. The overwhelming assumption about these casualty numbers is that they represent dead civilians killed by a brutal regime, but inside Syria I found widely conflicting opinions on who was doing the killing and who was dying.

In my February 2012 investigation I concluded that the UN total of 5,000 victims of violence in Syria included a more diverse universe than what was being portrayed in the media: civilians caught in the crossfire between government forces and opposition gunmen; victims of deliberate violence by government forces and by opposition gunmen; “dead opposition fighters” whose attire do not distinguish them from regular civilians; and members of the Syrian security forces, both on and off duty.

When juxtaposed with the government’s list of around 2,000 dead Syrian soldiers and policemen, it appeared that there was some “parity” in the numbers of violent deaths on both sides. But that information would suggest that the Syrian army was responding in relative proportion to the threat posed, which is not the way we understand the conflict in Syria in the mass media. (more…)

 

Russia and China: Arms Around the Middle East Sunday, Jan 20 2013 

Arab Awakening and BRICS and Foreign Affairs and Iran and Middle East and Syria and United Nations and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 11:40 pm

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By Sharmine Narwani

Russia and China have drawn a great deal of censure this past year for resisting UN Security Council resolutions to intervene in the domestic affairs of Syria and Iran. Why, many ask, would this duo leverage their growing global political clout for two Mideast states so actively marginalized by their fellow UNSC members – the US, UK and France?

And do these new Russian and Chinese positions place them on a collision course with Washington – in the Middle East and elsewhere?

While the US has typically viewed this activism as a direct challenge to its global hegemonic interests, neither Moscow nor Beijing have any specific strategy to slay the American behemoth. On the contrary, the non-confrontational positions they take in the Middle East are “reactive” ones, designed to slow down, halt or counter US economic, political and military aggressions heading in their direction.

Russia and China have good reason to be concerned about US initiatives in the international arena in the past few years: (more…)

 

Debate on Syria: Chemical Weapons, Foreign Intervention, Regime Change and More… Wednesday, Jul 25 2012 

Arab Awakening and Foreign Affairs and Middle East and Syria and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 11:47 am

I haven’t posted any of my Syria media interviews on this blog – I figure most readers have heard these views from me in some form or other over the past eight months. It is worthwhile though to hear them in context of a broader discussion on Syria that includes other participants, with varying points of view.

Participants in the Voice of Russia (UK) radio discussion on Syria included Jonathan Steele, Guardian columnist, foreign correspondent and author; Nadim Shehadi, Associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa programme for Chatham House, London; Gumer Isaev, head of the St Petersburg Centre for Modern Middle East studies – and myself.

The discussion was broad, but focused largely on recent events inside the country: armed clashes in the major cities, Syria’s chemical weapons cache, foreign intervention, the militarization of the conflict, use of information warfare to create perceptions, regime change and even whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad still enjoys popularity.

Click here to hear the full debate.

Follow the author on Twitter, Facebook, The Huffington Post and Al Akhbar English

 

Going Rogue: America’s Unconventional Warfare in the Mideast Saturday, May 26 2012 

Arab Awakening and Iran and Middle East and Syria and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 5:57 pm

By Sharmine Narwani

The intent of U.S. [Unconventional Warfare] UW efforts is to exploit a hostile power’s political, military, economic, and psychological vulnerabilities by developing and sustaining resistance forces to accomplish U.S. strategic objectives…For the foreseeable future, U.S. forces will predominantly engage in irregular warfare (IW) operations.

So begins the 2010 Unconventional Warfare (UW) Manual of the US Military’s Special Forces. The manual attached here (TC 18-01) is an interim publication, developed to address the definition of Unconventional Warfare and some other inconsistencies in UW Doctrine. The new UW document (ATP 3-05.1) is in the initial draft and not yet available, though sources tell me it is unlikely to differ much from TC 18-01.

But most of us have not had the pleasure of leafing through this truly revelatory blueprint that shows how America wages its dirty wars. These are the secret wars that have neither been approved by Congress, nor by the inhabitants of nations whose lives – if not bodies – are mauled by the directives on these pages.

A quote from President John F. Kennedy in 1962 opens the document. These few lines illustrate a core Washington belief that US forces have the right to destabilize, infiltrate, assassinate, subvert – all in service of questionable foreign policy objectives, with no evident consideration of a sovereign state’s preparedness or desire for change:

There is another type of warfare—new in its intensity, ancient in its origin—war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins; war by ambush instead of by combat, by infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It preys on unrest. (more…)

 

Excuse Me, But Israel Has No Right To Exist Saturday, May 19 2012 

Israel and Palestine and peace process and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 1:37 am

By Sharmine Narwani

The phrase “right to exist” entered my consciousness in the 1990s just as the concept of the two-state solution became part of our collective lexicon. In any debate at university, when a Zionist was out of arguments, those three magic words were invoked to shut down the conversation with an outraged, “are you saying Israel doesn’t have the right to exist??”

Of course you couldn’t challenge Israel’s right to exist – that was like saying you were negating a fundamental Jewish right to have…rights, with all manner of Holocaust guilt thrown in for effect.

Except of course the Holocaust is not my fault – or that of Palestinians. The cold-blooded program of ethnically cleansing Europe of its Jewish population has been so callously and opportunistically utilized to justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arab nation, that it leaves me utterly unmoved. I have even caught myself – shock – rolling my eyes when I hear Holocaust and Israel in the same sentence.

What moves me instead in this post-two-state era, is the sheer audacity of Israel even existing.

What a fantastical idea, this notion that a bunch of rank outsiders from another continent could appropriate an existing, populated nation for themselves – and convince the “global community” that it was the moral thing to do. I’d laugh at the chutzpah if this wasn’t so serious. (more…)

 

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