Recently in The Middle East Category

"'The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching,' Obama said in a written statement. 'We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people.'"

As protests -- and violence -- escalate in Tehran after last week's dubious election returns, the world increasingly looks to social networking sites to ascertain what's really going on in the streets. The revolution may not be televised, but -- so far at least -- it seems to be managing quite well with Twitter: "This is a country where you have tens of thousands of bloggers, and these bloggers have been in a situation where the Internet has been filtered since 2004. Anyone worth their salt knows how to find an open proxy [to get around government firewalls and filters], knows how to work around censorship...The Iranian government, by filtering the Internet for so long, has actually trained a cadre of people who really know who to get around censorship."

Update: Over at Salon, Iranian-American journalist Hooman Majd (who's making the rounds -- I saw him on the Lehrer News Hour yesterday as well) argues that the role of social networking has been vastly overstated: "More people have access to the Internet in Iran than other Middle Eastern countries but often it's dial-up, it's slow, they don't do it like we do all day long...The depiction of the Internet revolution isn't quite accurate. We're putting our own image onto Iran. Of course there are people Twittering from the demonstrations; they're just not representative of the vast majority of Iranians. What was so heartwarming about this whole thing is that the Iranian people stood up in mass and said you can't take this away from us."

Speaking of those ostensibly terror-despising free peoples, I haven't written here on the depressing situation in Gaza, but friend and colleague Liam of sententiae et clamores concisely and elegantly summed up my basic sentiment toward recent events the other day: "it seems that almost all the discussion and reporting on the issue is one-sided and simplistic. Let me state my position: I am pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian, anti-Hamas and against current Israeli policy. I oppose what the Israeli government is doing now in the same way I opposed my own government's war against Iraq: not only is it immoral, heartless, and cynical, but actually increases the long-term security problems for Israel, much like our invasion of Iraq has weakened our own security situation."

Given what little I know about what's going on, that's basically my view of it as well. On the one hand, Israel is responding to an untenable security situation -- Hamas rockets being fired into neighborhoods and cities -- that we wouldn't tolerate for a second. (In fact, we invaded Iraq on a much flimsier security pretext.) Still, it's hard to shake the feeling that Israel is trying to run the table right here right now, in the twilight moments of the Dubya presidency, because they know they have carte blanche from 43 to do what they will. And I suspect this particular neocon-run advance, like all the rest of 'em in recent years, is doomed to failure -- if anything, I'd wager, it's just swelling the ranks (and the coffers) of Hamas.

Regardless, the Obama administration and Secretary of State Clinton are going to have their work cut out for them. I'm not one who believes particularly that conflicts with roots in millennia-long religious strife can get "solved" in one or two US presidential terms. But let's at least hope, under their watch, we can start to achieve the type of broader range of discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that you can find in...say, Israel. It's both embarrassing and extremely counterproductive for our nation to be seen -- and to continually be used -- as a knee-jerk diplomatic dupe that will always blindly support policies initiated by the most conservative factions in Israeli politics.

"I didn't know what the guy said, but I saw his sole." Say what you will about the 43rd president -- and, no doubt, the history books will -- the man has cat-like reflexes for his age. The story of the weekend was, of course, the shoe incident in Baghdad, which ended up clearly overshadowing Dubya's remarks and reason for his visit -- the signing of a Status of Forces agreement -- and serving as an exclamation point of sorts for the president's, shall we say, fraught relationship with the nation and people of Iraq. I have to give him credit, tho' -- Bush not only handled the incident with agility, aplomb and a surprising amount of sang-froid, but generally struck the right tone about it afterward. "Okay, everybody calm down for a minute. First of all thank you for apologizing on behalf of the Iraqi people. It doesn't bother me. And if you want some -- if you want the facts, it's a size 10 shoe that he threw. (Laughter.) Thank you for your concern, do not worry about it."

In the wake of the biggest shoe-related world incident since Nikita Khrushchev (or perhaps Richard Reid), there's been some discussion of late about the legitimacy of shoe-throwing as a form of political protest. (Throwing shoes into machines, a.k.a. "sabot-age," is already generally considered a no-no.) It's not hard to understand, or even empathize with, the anger that drove Muntadar al-Zaidi to this act of protest. Here's a journalist who's been covering airstrikes and Abu Ghraib, who has seen the "collateral damage" of this war-of-choice firsthand, and who himself was briefly arrested by American security forces at one point. That being said, to my mind, any attempted act of physical violence against the president -- even something as seemingly innocuous as shoe-throwing -- cannot be countenanced. Now, I'm not saying the guy needs to rot in jail for the rest of his life -- far from it -- but let's not start pretending that that this form of protest is "ok." It's not. End of story.

Plus, keep in mind that a horrible situation was averted by Bush here just by his underreacting estimably to the incident. I don't think it's a stretch to think that al-Zaidi may have put his life in danger by making a threatening lunge at the president. The Secret Service are -- and have to be -- a hair-trigger bunch. Ok, al-Zaidi was only armed with a shoe...anybody ever heard of Amadou Diallo? All too often, tragedy results from a simple misunderstanding of intentions. Mr. al-Zaidi made his point, no doubt...but it was still a stupid and dangerous stunt, by any reckoning.

And besides, It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.

"It's a truism that Barack Obama faces the most intractable set of challenges that any president has faced in at least 50 years. But on a few issues in foreign and military policy, he's caught a break. Whether by luck, the effect of his election, or President George W. Bush's stepped-up drive to win last-minute kudos, Obama will enter the White House with some paths to success already marked, if not quite paved." Having covered six diplomatic priorities for Obama right after the election (the link was buried in this post), Slate's Fred Kaplan takes a gander at five foreign policy arenas primed for good news under the coming administration.

"'We have a text,' Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said after a day-long visit Thursday by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice." How badly do the Republicans want to keep the White House? Apparently enough that the Dubya administration, contrary to its earlier stance (and to McCain's promises of "100 years" in Baghdad), seems to be on the verge of signing a withdrawal accord with Iraq that would have all U.S. troops out by the end of 2011. (Not that we have much choice in the matter, given that Baghdad has already made it clear it wants us gone.) Well, however politically influenced, this is clearly a step in the right direction...but it's way too late in the game to save the GOP now. It's not like we're all going to forget who started -- and enabled -- this disastrous sideshow.

"That it was a forgery can no longer be doubted; that it originated with the White House may be harder to prove. Two former CIA officials -- Rob Richer and John Maguire -- have gone on record as saying they were personally charged with carrying out the forgery, but their marching orders, if they existed, came directly from Tenet (who has fiercely denied the story). The closest thing Suskind has to a smoking gun is Richer's memory, five years later, of 'looking down at the creamy White House stationery on which the assignment was written.'"

In his review of Ron Suskind's The Way of the World, Salon's Louis Bayard tells the tale of the Habbush letter, a forgery fabricated by the CIA to tie Iraq to Al Qaeda (and, thus manufacture a casus belli for the War in Iraq.) In other words, George Tenet -- perhaps on higher authority -- signed off on an illegal black op aimed against the American people. If this goes up the food chain -- and, at this point, who'd be surprised if it didn't -- this is definitely an impeachable offense. Where's the outrage?

Update: Politico has more.

After stops in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel, Sen. Obama takes his message to the heart of Berlin, before a crowd of over 200,000 at the Brandenburg Gate. [Video | Transcript.] As Der Spiegel's chief foreign desk editor put it after the speech: "No. 44 has spoken."

Well, let's make sure we all do our part on Election Day first. Still, it's safe to say the Obama World Tour has been knocked out of the park so far. Between this and Iraq's backing of the Obama plan earlier in the week, McCain's chances are, at least to my mind, looking downright dismal these days. And whining about the press, a.k.a. the mythical maverick's former "base", isn't going to right the ship for the GOP. Yep, all in all, things are looking pretty good for November...and beyond.

(By the way, when Sen. Obama isn't making the case for world peace, he's also got a pretty sweet jumper.)

"The consequences of Bush and Rice's passivity were disastrous. Israel didn't lose the war, but it didn't win, either, and that's what it had to do to maintain its image of invincibility, which has long deterred hostile neighbors from contemplating aggression. Hezbollah didn't win, but all it had to do was not lose, and it clearly achieved that goal, enhancing its reputation as the power that had stood up to the Zionists and faced them down." In his discussion of the recent Mideast summit in Annapolis (which publicly aimed to kickstart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and privately aimed to pry Syria further away from Iran), Slate's Fred Kaplan brings up a crucial -- and missed -- opportunity for diplomacy last year, during the Israel-Lebanon crisis. "(By the way, this may have been the genesis of a new Israeli verb, lecondel—in Hebrew, 'to Condel,' short for 'to Condoleezza' -- meaning, as the New York Times' Steven Erlanger has explained, to come and go for meetings that produce few results.)" And, speaking of political linguistics, it turns out that Annapolis, however picturesque, might not have been the best place to hold the summit -- In Arabic, "Annapolis" roughly translates to "I am the Police."

"If you're really worried about Iran, do you want to put your faith in the United States, the country that bungled Iraq? If you really care about Islamic fundamentalism, do you want to be led by the country that, distracted by Iraq, failed to predict the return of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan?" Why has the world soured on America of late? The real reason, argues Slate's Anne Applebaum and the data she surveys, is that, thanks to seven years of Dubya, we're starting to look incompetent. "And even if the surge works, even if the roadside bombs vanish, inept is a word that will always be used about the Iraqi invasion."

"There's a broader lesson here, and it speaks to the Bush administration's present jam throughout the Middle East and in other danger zones. If the British had adopted the same policy toward dealing with Pakistan that Bush has adopted toward dealing with, say, Syria or Iran (namely, it's an evil regime, and we don't speak with evil regimes), then a lot of passenger planes would have shattered and spilled into the ocean, hundreds or thousands of people would have died, and the world would have suddenly been plunged into very scary territory." In light of yesterday's foiled plot, Slate's Fred Kaplan points out one of the critical flaws of Dubya Diplomacy (which, thankfully, the British do not share.)

"Once again, Bush demonstrated that he doesn't understand what makes young democracies flourish or why Hezbollah has appeal even to many nonterrorists. He doesn't seem to realize that democratic governments require democratic institutions and the resources to make them thrive. He evinces no awareness that the longer Israel bombs Beirut into oblivion, the harder it becomes for Siniora (who has few resources) to retain legitimacy -- and the easier it becomes for Hezbollah (which has many more resources) to gain still greater power." Slate's Fred Kaplan parses yet another dismaying press performance by Dubya regarding the current international scene.

Update: "Scholars who enter the chambers of power should use their training as a tool to help them make decisions. Condi Rice is using hers as a chant to wish away the consequences." In a related piece, Kaplan examines Condaleeza Rice's tendency to hide behind her PhD when faced with tough questions. Well, she may be a "student of history," but as Sean Wilentz noted earlier, she's never been a very good one when you get right down to it (although, to her credit, she has been very busy creating work for future members of the profession.)

"This has constrained U.S. foreign policy in many damaging ways...The United States does not have effective diplomatic channels for managing the situation, much less resolving it." Former members of Bush administrations past and present criticize the Dubya White House for their complete lack of diplomatic avenues with Syria, Iran, the Palestinians, or anyone else that might be able to mitigate the current Middle East crisis. "As unattractive as they are, the Syrians are in a position to affect U.S. interests in Iraq and Lebanon...We should be having a broad-based dialogue with them -- not as a favor to them but as a favor to ourselves."

"What [Connecticut] tells us about the fall is something I think we've known all along, and that is the status quo in Iraq is unacceptable. It's unacceptable to Democratic primary voters, it's unacceptable to independents and it's unacceptable to a large minority of Republicans. Iraq is the number one issue and the message is exceptionally simple: We cannot abide the status quo." As Joe Lieberman likely nears the end of his days as a Democrat, Hillary, the DLC, and other centrist Dems prep for the fallout from the Connecticut primary.

"'What about Kofi Annan?' Bush asked Blair. 'I don't like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically cease-fire and everything else happens.'" Dubya and Tony Blair get caught (apparently) off-guard and on tape discussing the escalating crisis in the Middle East. "Bush said that he feels 'like telling Kofi to get on the phone with [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and make something happen. We're not blaming Israel, and we're not blaming the Lebanese government.'" (A lot of news sources seem to be fronting Dubya's use of the S-word -- "See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over." -- but, really, who gives a shit about his language?) "Bush also told Blair that he would be sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region soon. 'She's going,' Bush said. 'I think Condi's going to go pretty soon.'" Update: Watch it online, just to get a sense of how boorish and out-of-his-depth our president seems on the world stage. (Exhibit B: Dubya's ill-fated and cringeworth back-rub attempt.)

A belated happy 230th Independence Day to you and yours, and here's hoping the recent spate of scary news (North Korean missiles, incipent war in Gaza) didn't detract too much from the festivities in your parts. (Also, with regards to more joyous fourth of july rocket launches, congrats to the crew of Discovery STS-121 on a successful return to space yesterday.)

"We say that this fake regime [Israel] cannot ... logically continue to live." How 'bout some WWIII grandstanding to go with your Monday coffee? In a press conference early this morning (EST), Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes more freakshow statements about Israel, and Israel, rightly, is not amused: 'Of all the threats we face, Iran is the biggest. The world must not wait. It must do everything necessary on a diplomatic level in order to stop its nuclear activity,' [Defense Minister Shaul] Mofaz told a conference on Iran at Tel Aviv University. 'Since Hitler we have not faced such a threat,' he added."

"God may smile on us, but I don't think so. The bottom line is that Iran cannot become a nuclear-weapons state. The problem is that the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the U.S. Something bad is going to happen." Although Dubya is personally dismissing the report as "wild speculation", The New Yorker's Sy Hersh argues in a terrifying piece that the administration is actively planning for "regime change" in Iran, and -- no joke -- the use of tactical nuclear weapons (particularly "bunker-busters") is on the table.

No doubt about it, this is trouble. A nuclear Iran would represent a grievous threat to the region (and particularly Israel), and must be prevented by diplomatic means if at all possible. But, after the Iraq WMD debacle, this administration has become the boy who cried wolf, and -- just as the US is facing perhaps its thorniest diplomatic issue yet, neither our European allies nor many US observers trust Dubya's motives or credibility any more, to say nothing of his basic competence. ("Speaking of President Bush, [one] House member said, 'The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.'.") And, needless to say, if Dubya and the neocons screw this one up, the consequences for both the entire Middle East and the war on terror -- as well as our own homeland security -- could be nightmarish. "If we move against Iran, Hezbollah will not sit on the sidelines. Unless the Israelis take them out, they will mobilize against us...If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle."

Update: ""I'm announcing officially that Iran has now joined the countries that have nuclear technology." The situation darkens with Iran's successful (increased) enrichment of uranium. "Iran had previously enriched uranium to a level of about 2 percent, using a smaller cascade, and separately enriched uranium to about 15 percent during laser experiments in 2002. Bomb-grade uranium must be enriched to a level of well over 80 percent...Though it is technically possible, most nuclear experts agree it is unlikely Iran would be able to make bomb-grade uranium with the[ir current] 164-centrifuge cascade." Still, Russia and Britain are decrying the advance, and Secretary Rice wants "strong steps" by the UN Security Council in reply.

"The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein." The NYT relates the details of a January 2003 pre-war meeting between Bush and Blair, and it's not pretty. Not surprisingly (and like the July 2002 Downing Street memos, the recollections of Paul O'Neill, and countless other sources), this new material confirms that Dubya and the neocons wanted a war in Iraq, come hell or high water.

"We may have been seduced into something we might be inclined to regret. Is strategic failure a possibility? The answer has to be 'yes.'" Several internal Downing Street memos, recently obtained by the Guardian, suggest that our British allies have been wary of US mismanagement in Iraq since at least 2003, when Baghdad envoy John Sawers called the US post-invasion operation "an unbelievable mess." (By way of Dateline: Bristol.)

By way of a friend, the State Department releases its mandated yearly human rights report for 2005 (here), finding cause for alarm in Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, Burma, North Korea, Belarus and Zimbabwe and (surprise, surprise) progress in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report doesn't delve into human rights violations here at home (although China tries to fill that gap in response every year), but it does unequivocally state -- in bold, no less -- that "countries in which power is concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers tend to be the world's most systematic human rights violators." Hey y'all might be on to something. Deadpans the head of Amnesty International: "The Bush administration's practice of transferring detainees in the 'war on terror' to countries cited by the State Department for their appalling human rights records actually turns the report into a manual for the outsourcing of torture."

If at times somewhat turgid, Steven Spielberg's Munich, which I caught this afternoon, is a lively and admirable piece of filmmaking. For the most part, it works as both an expertly-told cloak-and-dagger thriller and a timely rumination on the moral consequences and violent blowback that accompany vengeance as an anti-terror policy. (Indeed, the film infuses Spielberg's dramatic strengths with contemporary gravitas much more smoothly and profoundly than this summer's War of the Worlds, which, like Tom Cruise's earlier Collateral, seemed like it'd be a better movie until taking a tremendously ill-conceived jag in the second hour.) Still, while Munich is assuredly a very good film, ultimately I think the gears grind a bit too loudly at times to consider it a great one.

After a chilling retelling of the horrible events that forever marred the 1972 Olympics (told mostly through newsfootage at first, with reenactment filling in the details later on) and a grim strategy session presided over by Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen), the film introduces us to Avner (Eric Bana), the family man-cum-Mossad agent assigned to head one of Israel's deep-undercover response teams. Comprised of embittered wheelman Steve (Daniel Craig), nebbishy bombmaker Robert (Matthieu Kassovitz), resigned forger Hans (Hanns Zichler), and conflicted clean-up man Carl (Ciaran Hinds), Avner's team crisscrosses various scenic European vistas, clumsily dealing death to the alleged perpetrators of the Munich tragedy. (One would think an assassination squad that included James Bond, Julius Caesar, and the Hulk wouldn't have as much trouble as they do here.) But as the (terrorist and collateral) body count piles up and Avner's hunters become the hunted, these agents of vengeance increasingly question the righteousness of their retribution, and wonder whether the costly murders they've perpetrated have made any dent in the war against Black September.

The acting in Munich is universally good, with special marks going to Bana and his colleagues, particularly as their early relish for the job shades into reluctance and, eventually, paranoia and abject horror. (Mathieu Almaric and Marie-Josee Croze are also memorable as a French information dealer and Dutch assassin respectively.) And, for most of the film, Spielberg's direction is exquisite. Still, sadly, there are some flaws -- The pacing of Munich noticeably lags in the middle hour. And, more troubling, the film seems to strain visibly at times to seem arty and high-minded. For every few import-laden scenes executed with a deft touch (for example, the sequence in which Avner's team shares a safehouse with a PLO cell), there's one where the symbolism seems just a tad inflated. (Particularly egregious in this regard is the, ahem, climax, which intercuts the Munich massacre with scenes of a tortured-looking Avner having sex with his wife. What, exactly, does this mean? Are love and war meant to seem oppositional or synchronous? Is this union the "home" that Israel must protect, or what? Whatever the intended message, the scene comes across as not only opaque but overblown.)

Still, not to miss the forest for the trees, Munich is a movie well worth-seeing, the rare thriller that's not afraid to grapple with today's thorniest political questions, and without insulting the audience's intelligence by giving easy, simple-minded answers to seemingly insoluble problems. The film may at best be a long triple, but, to his credit, at least Spielberg is swinging for the fences.

"The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets." In the world-gets-even-scarier-department, Iran's hardliner president publicly indulges in Holocaust denial. Clearly, Iran is living up to its axis-of-evil appellation these days, but remember: Ahmadinejad's election was in part blowback from Dubya's amateurish and tone-deaf Middle-East policy in the first place. At any rate, it's clear that our Iran situation is worsening, and that Iranian possession of nukes is a truly frightening scenario.

Another terror strike: This time, a series of bombs in Amman kill 67 and wound 150, many of them guests at a wedding celebration. No one's claimed responsibility yet, but Al Qaeda is obviously a good bet...word is they've tried to hit Jordan before. Update: Al Qaeda it is.

As if the revelations of Syria's role in the Hariri assassination weren't disturbing enough, now the recently-elected president of Iran, a state with nuclear ambitions, is making nightmarish and freakshow statements reasserting the goal of Israel's destruction. With rhetoric escalating and five years of Dubya's "with-us-or-against-us" diplomacy helping to shore up hardliners across the Middle East, it seems Iraq may soon be the least of our problems in the region.