Hezbollah on The Huffington Post

Jamal Dajani: The Saudi-Iranian Neo Cold War

2009-11-13T10:04:38Z

It's been four months since I described Yemen as a powder keg ready to explode. At the time the entire world was riveted to the television, watching the unfolding events of the "Velvet Revolution" in Iran. The Yemeni keg has since exploded. It is currently on the verge of causing regional conflict.

For more than a week now, Saudi Arabia has been carrying out military operations on its remote southern border to punish Houthi rebels from neighboring Yemen who crossed over and attacked one of its patrols. Both Yemen and Saudi Arabia have accused Iran of arming the rebels.

Accusations and counter accusations have been flying between the two rival regional powers. On Tuesday, Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned that, "those who pour oil on the fire must know that they will not be spared from the smoke that billows."

This is not the first time Saudis and Iranians have faced off in the region. The rivalry between the two countries has been out playing its course for years, extending from the Persian Gulf (where the name alone is a point of contention, Saudis refer to it as the Arabian Gulf) into Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. Like the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Saudi Arabia and Iran have been supporting their factions in all these countries, either militarily, financially, or both.

Both Tehran and Riyadh used Lebanon as their own battlefront to settle scores to the point of almost tipping the country into another civil war less than two years ago. Iran has been accused of pumping millions of dollars into Gaza and supplying Hamas with arms, while Saudi Arabia has been supporting the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Many Iraqi Shiites have accused Saudi Arabia of aiding the Sunni insurgency in the country.

Nowadays, even Hajj (Islamic pilgrimage) is not spared from being a subject of contention between the two rivals. The Saudi government has recently issued a warning against pilgrims staging demonstrations during this year's Hajj, which runs from November 25-29. Although Iran was not specifically mentioned in the Saudi statement, Tehran replied that it would take "appropriate measures" if Iranian pilgrims were interfered with in any way. The Islamic Republic of Iran has long complained about the mistreatment and harassment of its pilgrims to Mecca by Saudi authorities during the Hajj season.

Like the original Cold War, both countries have launched sophisticated misinformation campaigns against one another. A propaganda war has raged between Iranian and Saudi government controlled media. During the Iranian election, Saudi media and its proxies viciously attacked the Iranian regime, highlighting poll irregularities, and the brutality of the Iranian Basij security forces. The Iranian media has constantly questioned, and on many instances mocked, the House of Saud's role as the custodian of the Holy Islamic sites in the Kingdom.

Last week without warning, two satellite companies, the Egyptian-owned Nilesat and the Saudi-managed Arabsat pulled the plug on Iran's Arabic-speaking news channel, al-Alam, or the World. Nilesat's executive director, Ahmed Anis, announced that the broadcasting was cut due to contract violations; however, media sources throughout the Middle East suggest that al-Alam's support for the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen angered Saudi officials, who in turn used their influence to take it of the air.

So far, both countries have shied away from direct military contact. Iran and Saudi Arabia, like the US and the USSR of old, have been competing in a series of peripheral surrogate conflicts. Could their relations be strained enough to lead to direct confrontation? Everything seems to be possible these days in the Middle East.

Sharmine Narwani: Did Clinton Just Change US Policy on Hezbollah?

2009-11-12T12:24:55Z

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared to break with US policy on Tuesday when she discussed Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah on the Charlie Rose show, identifying only the organization's "military wing" as a terrorist concern.

Discussing the recent negotiations between the five UN Security Council nations plus Germany -- P5+1 -- and Iran, Secretary Clinton told Rose:

"I mean, the Iranians not only worry us because of their nuclear program, they worry us because of their support for terrorism, their support for the military wing of Hezbollah, their support for Hamas, their interference in the internal affairs of their neighbors, trying to destabilize gulf countries and other countries throughout the greater region."

Hezbollah has been on the US State Department's List of Terrorist Organizations since 1999, with no distinctions thus far made between the group's military or political branches. Hezbollah itself rejects distinctions between its various bodies.

Earlier this summer, the British government did make that distinction however, placing only Hezbollah's military wing on its list of organizations banned under the 2000 Terrorism Act. Globally, only the United States, Canada and Israel view Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

A State Department spokeswoman, however, denied any policy shift, saying: "The Secretary's statement is fully consistent with our existing policy. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization."

But if Clinton's statement during the lengthy interview with Rose was a mere slip of the tongue, it was a very precise and specific gaff.

Which begs the question, is the US administration about to tweak its decade-long position on Hezbollah, and if so, why now?

The US Secretary of State's new phrasing comes exactly one day after the formation of a unity government in Lebanon, led by US-backed Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

The government's new cabinet includes ten ministerial positions for the Hezbollah-led opposition, two of which will go to Hezbollah members.

Any change in the US's position on the Lebanese resistance group could reflect this new reality: that Hezbollah participated in democratically held elections and is now part of Lebanon's official governmental body.

In the background, however, lurks another possible incentive for a US policy shift. A war of words between Israel and Hezbollah has persisted since the end of Israel's 33-day war on Lebanon in mid-2006. The stalemate that resulted was widely viewed as a defeat for Israel, a country that has relied on the psychology of victory to act as a deterrent for its Arab neighbors. And this perception of defeat has caused significant frustration within Israel's military establishment.

This past summer, Israeli rhetoric threatening Lebanon peaked when it became clear that although the pro-US coalition had won the Lebanese elections, a unity government including Hezbollah was inevitable.

"If Hezbollah joins the Lebanese government as an official entity, let it be clear that the Lebanese government, as far as we are concerned, is responsible for any attack -- any attack -- from its area on the state of Israel," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as recently as August. These comments followed similar statements by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, increasing speculation that another military conflict could be in the offing.

Could the US administration be softening its stance on Hezbollah in order to give Lebanon's new government a shot at succeeding, and simultaneously warning Israel to back off? President Obama has a lot on his plate, juggling talks with Iran -- an Israeli foe and Hezbollah ally -- managing US military activities in Afghanistan and Iraq and trying to jumpstart peace talks between Palestinians and Israel. The last thing he needs is another large-scale armed conflict in the region to distract from his Mideast agenda.

In August, Obama's Assistant on Homeland Security and Counter-terrorism, John Brennan introduced more moderate language about the Lebanese resistance group at an event held at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in DC.

While reiterating the US position on Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, Brennan painted a more nuanced picture of the group:

"Hezbollah started out as purely a terrorist organization in the early '80s and has evolved significantly over time. And now it has members of parliament, in the cabinet; there are lawyers, doctors, others who are part of the Hezbollah organization ... And so, quite frankly, I'm pleased to see that a lot of Hezbollah individuals are in fact renouncing that type of terrorism and violence and are trying to participate in the political process in a very legitimate fashion."

In an article in The Nation a few days later, a State Department spokesman responded to Brennan's comments: "U.S. policy toward Hezbollah has not changed. We do not make any distinction between the political and military wings."

But his Secretary of State just did.

Whether Clinton on Tuesday deliberately meant to redefine US policy on Hezbollah or not, it seems the thinking within the administration has taken a turn anyway.

Iranian Memoir By Freed Prisoner Haleh Esfandiari

2009-11-12T08:54:04Z

In Emin Prison

Claire Messud
The New York Review of Books

"My Prison, My Home:
One Woman's Story of
Captivity in Iran"
by Haleh Esfandiari.
Ecco, 230 pp., $25.99

Extraordinary events in Iran over the past six months have brought us images, voices, and narratives until recently unimaginable; they reveal, among other things, how little we understand about quotidian life in that country since the revolution. In the United States, we are nevertheless aware, with a dark tremor, of Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, the black hole of the hard-liners' repressive system. Emblematic of the regime, it is a site of torture and interrogation, of isolation, and of emotional as well as physical violence. It is a prison for the breaking of souls.

Prominent intellectuals, politicians, activists, and journalists have vanished into its maw. Many, like the Canadian-Iranian photographer Zahra Kazemi, who died in 2003 after being brutally beaten, or the twenty-nine Iranian prisoners executed in July 2008, have not survived to speak of their ordeals there. Many others remain incarcerated, among them scores of reformists arrested during the summer's demonstrations and, in particular, the Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh, originally arrested in 2007 at the same time as Haleh Esfandiari, and recently shockingly condemned, at a show trial, to at least twelve years in prison.

In this company, Haleh Esfandiari, the Iranian-American director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., is one of the lucky ones. An apparently unlikely candidate for arrest--a sixty-seven-year-old grandmother at the time of her imprisonment in 2007, Esfandiari was in Iran to visit her ninety-three-year-old mother--she was sucked into the surreal vortex of the nation's Intelligence Ministry, interrogated for months, and held in solitary confinement for four months. Her release was apparently the direct result of an exchange of letters between Lee Hamilton, her employer and the director of the Wilson Center, and the office of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei; although Esfandiari's husband, the historian Shaul Bakhash, along with many others (including the editors of The New York Review) campaigned tirelessly for her freedom, both in the United States and around the world. As she makes clear, it is impossible to know exactly what confluence of events led her captors to set her free: so much of their understanding of the world and of her role in it remained opaque to the last.

In the wake of her experience, Esfandiari has written a memoir of considerable delicacy and sophistication. "My Prison, My Home" is, primarily, an account of her annus horribilis, from the initial staged "robbery" when she was on her way to Tehran airport on December 30, 2006, that left her conveniently without a passport and unable to leave the country, through her lockup and eventual liberation almost eight months later. But Esfandiari also provides us with a lucid, concise history of Iran through the twentieth century and into the first years of the twenty-first, and with it an outline of her own remarkable life across continents and cultures. She is restrained in her telling--the book is filled with vivid details and facts, rather than emotional outpouring--a decision for which her narrative is only the more powerful; but her position as someone who fully understands both America and Iran affords her the opportunity to elucidate, for American readers, some of the apparent mysteries of her native culture.

In order for us to make sense of her imprisonment, we need to grasp both its historical background and Esfandiari's own particular life story. (This assertion may seem painfully rudimentary, but facts that are common knowledge to any Iranian, such as the people's abiding resentment of the 1953 CIA-backed coup that restored the Shah to power, seem frequently to have eluded our nation's policymakers.)

Cosmopolitan and intellectual, Esfandiari's own upbringing reminds the reader of Iran as the West once knew it. She is the older child of an Iranian botanist, himself the descendant of regional governors and politicians from the eastern city of Kerman, and of an Austrian mother. Her parents met at university in Vienna before the war. Raised between her mother's German-style home and her grandmother's traditional Iranian household, Esfandiari, like her parents, attended university in Vienna:

While I stayed clear of the student movement,...my time in Vienna had a huge hand in shaping my intellectual development and my love for Western culture.

Having completed her doctorate, she returned to Iran in 1964 at the age of twenty-four.

Esfandiari lays out the vital information of her nation's history alongside her own. The pivotal power struggle in the early 1950s between the Shah and his prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who sought to nationalize the Iranian oil industry, took place when Haleh was only a child, but

even as an eleven-year-old I was caught up in these currents, as were the rest of the students at the normally staid Jeanne d'Arc [a Catholic girls' school run by French nuns]. We had all become politicized and wanted the British out.

Unfortunately, the CIA did not agree with the schoolgirls. (The importance of the Jeanne d'Arc school in educating the young women of Iran's future elite in pre-revolutionary times is evident: a quick glance at contact information for alumnae shows them to be predominantly working professionals, with most of them living in the diaspora.) The Esfandiari household's relation to the Mossadegh uprising was complicated, moreover, because "the family was divided.... Mossadegh, the aristocrat who had emerged as a defender of the masses, was a close relative."

Esfandiari explains the increasing difficulties of the Shah's regime during the course of the 1960s and 1970s--although she does not provide the sort of lavish detail about his infamous material excesses that can be found in Ryszard Kapus´cin´ski's "Shah of Shahs" (1985) or Christopher de Bellaigue's riveting "In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs" (2005)--and she makes these problems concrete in relation to her own life. Her first career upon returning to Iran was as a journalist. She translated and wrote for the nation's largest daily newspaper, Kayhan, where she met her future husband, Shaul Bakhash, while they were both covering a visit to Iran by the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie. (That Bakhash is Jewish and she a Muslim was, at the time of their marriage in 1965, "highly unusual," but by no means scandalous: her conservative Muslim grandmother blessed their union.) After leaving Tehran for several years so that Bakhash could pursue his academic career at Harvard and Oxford, the couple returned in 1972.

Although she went back to Kayhan, Esfandiari found that she could not stay there long: "Increasingly the shah and the government showed less tolerance for even the mildest criticism, and the grip on the media of the emboldened Information Ministry grew tighter." When Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda's protégé, Amir Taheri, was appointed editor of the paper, Esfandiari quit, and went to work for the Women's Organization of Iran (WOI), a women's rights group founded in 1966.

In a moving aside--and one that feels particularly significant, given the growing influence of women in the current Iranian reform movement and their heightened presence on the streets during last summer's demonstrations, as was noted in the anonymous "Letter from Tehran" published in The New Yorker in early October--Esfandiari comments on her work with WOI, which lasted until 1975:

After the revolution, the clerics sought to undo as many of our accomplishments as they could.... But I believe the WOI played a role in making a new generation of women conscious of their rights, and these women were determined not to be relegated to second-class status again. For these reasons, my three years at the WOI remain among the most rewarding of my working life. I became, and remain, an unrepentant feminist.

From there, Esfandiari went on to the Shahbanou Farah Foundation, a cultural organization set up by and named after the Shah's third wife (herself a graduate of the Jeanne d'Arc school), through which she oversaw museums and cultural centers. From this vantage, she watched the Shah's Iran crumbling around her:

By 1977, for example, Tehran's "poetry nights" at the German-sponsored Goethe Institute had taken on a decidedly political color. Large gatherings listened while poets read from works praising liberty and criticizing oppression. Lawyers and intellectuals addressed open letters to the prime minister and the shah calling for the reinstitution of basic freedoms and the release of political prisoners.

In this setting, Esfandiari explains, the popular appeal of Khomeini--who had publicly and volubly denounced the Shah since the early 1960s, and had lived in exile in Turkey, Iraq, and France--gained inexorable momentum. While the Shah's opponents were politically diverse, ranging from Communists to intellectuals to civil servants, "Khomeini's clerical lieutenants came to dominate the movement, and Khomeini emerged as its undisputed leader." During 1978, demonstrations grew exponentially in size and force, and Esfandiari writes that "the regime, hammered by strikes, shutdowns, demonstrations, and violence on the streets, was in a hopeless situation."

While Esfandiari is clear about some sources of the unrest, she does not dwell on the people's grievances against the Shah. It is enlightening to read Kapus´cin´ski's account of life in the Shah's last years of rule, written at the time of the revolution, and to note how familiar the Pahlavi regime's methods sound to any of us reading the newspapers today:

More than a hundred thousand young Iranians were studying in Europe and America.... Today more Iranian doctors practice in San Francisco or Hamburg than in Tebriz or Meshed. They did not return even for the generous salaries the Shah offered. They feared Savak [the Shah's secret police, comparable to the contemporary Intelligence Ministry].... An Iranian at home could not read the books of the country's best writers (because they came out only abroad), could not see the films of its outstanding directors (because they were not allowed to be shown in Iran), could not listen to the voices of its intellectuals (because they were condemned to silence).

For Esfandiari and Bakhash, with a small daughter at the time, the upheaval of the revolution was too uncertain: Esfandiari took their daughter to London in early December 1978 for two weeks, to "wait things out."

In fact, however, she would not return home for many years. Khomeini returned to Iran in February 1979 and within ten days the Shah's monarchy collapsed. Now "armed revolutionary committees roamed the streets. Every day, grisly pictures appeared in the Tehran papers of executed members of the old regime--many I had known personally or had covered as a journalist." Bakhash had been offered a visiting professorship at Princeton, and the family moved to the United States, where they have lived since. Esfandiari taught Persian at Princeton until 1992. She then wrote her first book, "Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran's Islamic Revolution" (1997), with the support of fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Center, and was asked by Robert Litwak, then the Wilson Center's director of the Division for International Studies, to start a Middle East program there, where she still works.

Esfandiari first returned to Iran in 1992, encouraged by the more liberal climate fostered by the relatively pragmatic President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his then minister of culture, Mohammad Khatami. After her father's death in 1995, she visited more frequently, to help care for her aging mother. She says of the late 1990s and early 2000s:

These were years when the possibility of fundamental change seemed real and when Iranians believed, for a brief moment, that they could take charge of their own lives and government. It was not to be, and it was heartbreaking to me to witness the snuffing out of so much promise and hope.

Following the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, however, the tenor of society changed so much that "I made it a point on these trips to stay away from even mildly 'political' people." Unfortunately, her efforts were insufficient to protect her from the roving eye of the Intelligence Ministry, "heir to the Shah's secret police, SAVAK," although far more murderous even than they, and responsible for the deaths of thousands of dissenters.

This institution defined Esfandiari's existence from December 30, 2006, when she was to have returned home to Washington, D.C., until September 2007, when she finally did; and her interactions with its emissaries make for astounding reading. The experience was absurd, horrendous, and disturbingly banal: in a final, blackly comic flourish, her principal interrogator, Mr. Ja'fari, presented her, on the eve of her departure, with a gift: "a large, beautiful inlaid box" containing a leather-bound volume of the poetry of Hafez, Iran's famed fourteenth-century poet: "I examined this curious gift, turning over and over in my mind its intended meaning. It was truly bizarre. The Intelligence Ministry was sending a message: 'No hard feelings. Let's be friends.'" As she says of them, "It's the way we play the game," and there is, about the surreal dance of her eight months in their hands, the quality of a game--destructive, potentially lethal, but a game nevertheless.

The Intelligence Ministry existed for Esfandiari primarily in the form of two men: her chief interrogator, Ja'fari, and his superior, Hajj Agha. Ja'fari she first met in early January 2007 at an interrogation center in a "house...modeled after the Petit Trianon," where he questioned her for long hours at a time, over a fortnight:

He was in his mid-thirties, of medium height, with a bit of stubble on his face. He wore an open-necked shirt beneath a modified safari jacket. A smirk never left his face. His manner alternated between solicitous official...and faceless bureaucrat.

Hajj Agha, the more gracious and apparently accommodating of the two men, with whom she had more dealings once she was imprisoned in early May 2007, emerges in spite of his urbanity as the more sinister: his name is honorific rather than personal ("Hajj" refers to one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca; "Agha" is a title for a military officer), so he is, in fact, nameless; and as Esfandiari was not permitted to see his face, and forced to face the wall, he remains, hideously, a cipher.

Ja'fari's line of questioning was, from the outset, clear: "He imagined that the Wilson Center was an agency of the American government, that we were implicated in some nefarious plot against the Islamic Republic, and that we routinely held secret meetings to plan strategy to this end." Esfandiari marvels, "How does one persuade a man with Ja'fari's mind-set that the Ford Foundation...is not part of a 'Zionist conspiracy'? How could I convince him that my husband was not an Israeli agent?"

More specifically, Esfandiari came to realize that Ja'fari and the Intelligence Ministry feared "that the Wilson Center was part of a conspiracy to bring about a velvet revolution...in Iran":

It was the National Endowment for Democracy and the Open Society Institute (OSI) that earned Ja'fari's most intense scrutiny. The OSI was part of the Soros Foundations.... [It] had been active in newly in-dependent countries of the former Soviet Union.... In these countries, mass popular movements led by intellectuals and opposition parties had succeeded in bringing down Soviet-style governments. These movements became known as "velvet revolutions" or "rainbow revolutions" because of their peaceful, nonviolent nature and because protesters had adopted a particular identifying color--orange in the Ukraine, rose in Georgia, for example. In the twisted mind of Ja'fari and his colleagues, the Soros Foundations had caused these velvet revolutions, and since George Soros was a Jew, a shadowy, Jewish conspiracy hovered in the wings.

The wildness of this paranoia is of course all the more intriguing because it is not, in some details, so very far from reality: orange in the Ukraine, rose in Georgia, and green in Iran? This year's thwarted presidential candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi may not have sought to provoke a "velvet revolution," but in their passionate cries for democratic reform, his supporters were not far from doing so, and their resistance, albeit less visibly, continues. While it is madness to blame the United States and Britain for supposedly coordinating and manipulating this discontent, Ja'fari is not wrong to be alarmed, or wrong to imagine that the West would wish for the reformists' success.

Nevertheless, to appreciate that a faction of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry (because it becomes clear, during Esfandiari's ordeal, that there are bickering factions behind the scrim: "one ready to let me go, the other determined to hold on to me") would seriously believe that the OSI was responsible for the revolutions in former Soviet countries, and intent on a similar strategy in Iran, is already to grasp the strange, novelistic, mutual incomprehensions that exist between Iran and the United States: we could not have imagined that they could genuinely imagine that. Suddenly, with Esfandiari's explanation, Tehran's apparently lunatic assertions about Western involvement in the events of June of this year take on a new tenor: it is vital that we understand that this is not mere rhetorical flourish. At least some portion of the Iranian establishment may believe, or believe they have to believe, these statements to be true.

Esfandiari's interrogations changed in nature, intensity, and locale. She was called upon to answer questions in writing, to provide documents and information pertaining to her work and life, and to speak on camera in a filmed "interview" that was broadcast nationally, along with those of two other prisoners: the political philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo (who had already been released, and who described the broadcast as "a page out of Stalinist Russia and George Orwell's '1984'") and the social scientist and urban planner Kian Tajbakhsh. But the focus of the discussions never changed.

The questioning did, however, cease for a time: after the "Petit Trianon" interrogations and before Esfandiari's arrest, there were "eleven weeks of silence. It was a period of anxious waiting, which I tried to fill in various ways.... I spent my days in a figurative crouch...waiting for the blow to fall." This hiatus, during which she did not know what her fate might be, was nothing short of psychological torture:

My entanglement with the Intelligence Ministry meant I would never again feel safe in Iran, even at home. I could no longer carry out an unguarded conversation over the telephone. I believed the intelligence people were reading my e-mail. My nerves were always on edge.... I hated being cooped up in the apartment, but I was uncomfortable going out....
Mutti and I became increasingly isolated. The small group of academic "insiders" who had generously tried to help me began to disappear from my life....
I could no longer see the beauty of the landscape I had always loved. I saw only the gray ugliness of the streets, the piles of uncollected garbage, the potholes, the dirty water in the canals, the smog and the snarled traffic.

In this period, Esfandiari came to realize that while she "had always thought of my dual Iranian-American nationality as an accurate reflection of the two worlds and two cultures between which I shuttled," the reality was different: "My adopted country and the country of my birth were engaged in a dangerous, undeclared war; and I, and many others like me, were caught in their cross fire." The Americans' support for Saddam Hussein during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war; the Iranian funding of Hezbollah; the bombings in Lebanon in 1983 and the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996; the George W. Bush administration's "democracy promotion" program, "a policy of promoting regime change by trying to give money to dissidents"--all of this history played into the fate of a single woman on a visit to her aged, widowed mother in Tehran.

Finally, on May 2, 2007, Ja'fari announced that Esfandiari was being arrested and taken to Evin, to solitary confinement, where she would spend the next four months. Her vivid account of this experience, from her initial blindfolding upon entering the prison, provides us with a wholly unsensational picture both of her treatment and of her own psychological resistance. We learn what her cell looked like, how she slept and washed, what she ate, how she did her laundry, how the interrogations were conducted, what the guards were like--in short, all the details that enable us to imagine the imprisonment clearly. Esfandiari tells of her considerable weight loss, of her resistance to the prison doctors, and of the skin complaint that she worried might be cancer.

Inevitably, the mental toll of her incarceration is less readily communicable, but here, too, Esfandiari provides pragmatic explanations of her decisions and thoughts: "From the first day, I decided that if I were to avoid succumbing to despair, I had to impose a strict discipline on myself.... I knew I had to be mentally strong, keep my wits about me, remain focused on the interrogations," a decision that meant she would not dwell on her family and friends, and would instead devote much of her time to doing exercises to remain physically strong and fit. "While I exercised, I composed two books--not on paper but in my head. One was a biography of my paternal grandmother.... The other book was a children's story for my granddaughters." Eventually, she was allowed to borrow books from Kian Tajbakhsh, also in Evin at the time (although she did not meet him: "I never once spoke to another inmate").

Only once does Esfandiari speak of breaking down, following her one visit from her mother: not wanting her captors to see her vulnerability, she asked to take a shower: "In the shower, I let go of myself and cried copiously. I cried for what I had done to my mother. Instead of the calm, happy old age she deserved, she was experiencing a living hell." Even small moments of kindness in the prison proved hard to bear: when one of the guards, Hajj Khanum, brought her a flower, "a tiny rose, the size of my middle finger," or when another she had nicknamed Sunny Face brought in a rice dish that Esfandiari had taught her to cook, she was all but overcome.

Through these women guards, a number of whom were distinctly sympathetic to her plight, Esfandiari brings us a portrait of women's lives in contemporary Iran rather different from that of Azar Nafisi's lively literature students in her memoir "Reading Lolita in Tehran" (2003):

They seemed all to come from the same working-class or lower-middle-class background. They were all religious, prayed regularly, and observed a strict form of the hijab. They were raised in traditional homes, but their lives were in flux. All had finished secondary school; one had been to university; one had trained at a seminary and another aspired to do so. They had learned to care about their looks, their clothes, their weight, and their health. At least one aspired to go to America.

In her isolation, Esfandiari was almost wholly unaware of the extensive efforts underway to secure her release, including interventions from European governments. She did not know how long she might remain in isolation and was leery of all promising indications--such as Hajj Agha's question in June: "How do you know Obama?"

She fought back with rage and defiance--"I knew I must not let them break me"--and with her insistence, even when it was most difficult, on retaining perspective:

Outside prison, Ja'fari's and Hajj Agha's repeated references to "the triangle," "plots," and "conspiracies" seemed outlandish, even amusing. In solitary confinement, under interrogation, cut off from the outside world, accused of the most serious crimes against the state, I found these endlessly repeated assertions sinister: part of a world of secret cabals, plotters, and conspiracies in which I was supposedly involved without being aware of it. I had to be careful not to lose my grip on reality or to succumb to Hajj Agha's deceptive view of the world.

This, of course, is the struggle for any prisoner in such a situation; but it is also the struggle for the Iranian people at large: How not to succumb to the regime's view of the world? Theirs is a society of constant contradictions, of mirrors and masks, of both authority and a theater of authority, to which they must subscribe. They, too, are terrorized by prolonged uncertainty, never knowing the limits of what is allowed--can women show their hair in public this month without fear of arrest? Can weddings allow dancing in private homes this year, or will the morals police break down the door? Can the press question the regime this week, or will the newspapers be shut down? Can you demonstrate freely today, or might you be arrested, tortured, and killed?

For Esfandiari, even in her darkest hour, there was always the American knowledge of the actuality of "reality as it might be": it hovered almost in sight, a passport and a plane journey away. Whether, before Lee Hamilton's letter to Khamenei apparently led to her release, this knowledge made the ordeal more or less endurable is hard to say. But as an Iranian, she was also always aware of the ironies of her native society; she could be at once fully in the world and yet not of it, and this may have been her salvation. She knew that her guards, for the most part, were not her enemies; and while shocked, she was perhaps not surprised when Ja'fari and "the boys," his colleagues at the Intelligence Ministry, presented her with the gift of a book of poetry at the end of her time in Evin. Perhaps they thought that, in spite of the horrors they had inflicted upon her, the greatness of the poet Hafez was something on which they could all agree.

Claire Messud's most recent novel is "The Emperor's Children." Her earlier novels include "When the World Was Steady."

Read more at The New York Review of Books.

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Sharmine Narwani: Interview: Hezbollah And Hamas on Obama, Netanyahu, Terrorism ... And Oprah

2009-11-09T15:30:53Z

In early August and late October, I met with Hamas' Usama Hamdan and Hezbollah's Ammar Mousawi, chiefs of their respective organizations' foreign relations portfolios. The two groups are vastly different in structure, level of development and historical experiences, but share much in common too. Each can credit its origin to Israeli occupation. Hamas was born on the eve of the first Palestinian Intifada, from a single incident when an Israeli truck mowed -- some claim deliberately -- into a carload of Palestinian workers in the Gaza strip. Officially formed in 1985, Hezbollah, in turn, was jumpstarted by Israel's 1982 invasion and occupation of Southern Lebanon. Although Hamas is a Sunni organization and Hezbollah a Shiite one, both groups embrace Islamic values as their core ideology and driving principle, though their political actions appear to be driven more by realpolitik than Quranic mandate. And the two groups form part of an increasingly powerful Mideast bloc that unapologetically refuses to accept any regional status quo that features an occupying and militarily adventurous Israel.

Hamas and Hezbollah are both seasoned denizens of the US State Department's List of Terrorist Organizations, a designation that seems odd when one considers that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese would fall through the cracks without the vital social services -- healthcare, education, employment, infrastructure development -- these two groups provide their indigenous populations. Ask a secular Palestinian or Lebanese civilian which of their political parties they trust most, and even the most begrudging among them may name Hamas or Hezbollah as the "cleanest" of their politicians.

And this influence continues regionally. Polls throughout the Middle East consistently point to Hezbollah's secretary general Hassan Nasrallah as the most popular leader in the Arab world. Hamas' Khaled Meshaal is never far behind -- a far cry from his main political opponent, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, whose US-supported Fatah party is viewed as corrupt and incompetent, sometimes even by its own supporters. Despite US and Israeli efforts to isolate these groups by swathing them in the dreaded "terrorist" label and all that implies post 9-11, even pro-US Arab leaders are careful not to malign these groups. Popularity rubs off, so to speak.

But this isolation from mostly Western nations has taken its toll. Officials of both groups recognize that any resolution of conflict in the Middle East will likely necessitate US and European involvement. Concurrently, it appears that the West has copped on to a similar notion - that any resolution of regional conflicts will in turn necessitate the involvement of both Hamas and Hezbollah.

As a result, former US officials and current European officials have been making quiet pilgrimages to Beirut and Damascus for some years now - with occasional reciprocal visits - to try to build relationships and influence these groups. Tellingly, Hezbollah's Mousawi was meeting with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner just hours after our final interview. The going has been hard, but he points to the European Union's non-interference policy during the June Lebanese elections as a dividend of improved communications.

So where do things stand on rapprochement? What do they think of Obama? Do they have "hope" that US policy will "change?" What do they think of the peace process? Extremist groups in the Mideast - who are the worst offenders? Do they find inspiration in Americans and who might these figures be? Hamdan and Mousawi had plenty to say.

On Obama...

Ammar Mousawi: There is no doubt that we find certain traits that are distinguished in the character of Obama -- that he is no repetition of former US presidents. When we listen to his speeches, we certainly note something new. However, the political forces that make policy in the US allow any exceptional steps to be only limited. There is no doubt that there is a change in tone, but it is doubtful that there will be a change in policy. If change were to take place, it would not be in Cairo University -- it would have to be in the US Congress.

We know that Obama is experiencing political difficulties from his opponents. He is being besieged in domestic policy challenges and internal issues - healthcare reform, issues of his roots. So when he declared his ambitious approach for his solutions for the Mideast, they sent him the Israel lobby to put him in a corner.

Usama Hamdan: I think there has been no change since Obama became president. In fact, I believe we faced a great failure last month (when the US administration caved on the issue of an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank). It was a minor failure, but a failure nonetheless. Brings me as a Palestinian to ask why Palestinians should accept any conditions when Israel doesn't. I liked Obama's Cairo speech, but we have to see what happens on the ground.

The US is putting itself in a corner by thinking it is their responsibility to protect Israel in the region when Israel is doing the attacking. Someone has to be courageous enough - there must be conditions for Israel. If you have a child that doesn't have to follow rules, he will be spoilt. Israel is the US's spoilt child.

The US has to say to the Israeli government "That's it." They can do that. It is not so simple, but it is not too difficult either. Who in the world will support Israel against the US? Fifty percent of Europeans identified Israel as the biggest threat to peace and stability in the world -- not in the Middle East -- but in the world.

I understand that Obama is facing internal and external problems and pressures. But his priorities are not clear to us -- he seems confused. Palestinians will not wait forever.

On Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

Usama Hamdan: Netanyahu has always been against a genuine peace process. We had experience with him when he was prime minister from 1996-98 -- he undermined the Oslo Agreements, he divided the issues - there is a very bad experience with him. Adding to this is his foreign minister is Avigdor Lieberman -- the worst political figure in all the world. Add to that Ehud Barak. We are facing a government formed of extremists. Netanyahu, Lieberman and Barak? The worst combination in Israeli history.

Ammar Mousawi: One of the unfortunate aspects of Obama's term as president is that it is coupled with Netanyahu's. Netanyahu is not ready to even have an "apparent" flexibility toward peace.

On being called "terrorists:"

Ammar Mousawi: The War on Terror's objective was to corner legitimate resistance and prevent it from achieving its mission. The West still resists differentiating between resistance and terrorism -- and that is done on purpose. Resistance is defined as a legal fight against occupation as opposed to terrorism, which is defined as systematically killing innocent people. We are interested in having a dialog with the West because we would like to make them aware of our point of view. Resistance is part of world history -- it is not an uncommon thing. All these negative positions taken by the West are because of their support for Israel and unwillingness to see that the people of this region have the right to exist in peace. After the failure of all their attempts to destroy these resistance groups through military and political means, they concluded that they must now know more about us, how we operate. And so the dialogue begins.

(Hezbollah has been on the US terrorism list since 1999. Only the US, Israel and Canada recognize Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.)

Usama Hamdan: We were listed on the US terrorism list in 1993 just because Israel asked for it -- before that we had direct contacts with the Americans. We even sent a letter to then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asking why. They know that they are wrong in this. They know that anyone who supports rights and justice supports the Palestinians. We want them to accept Hamas as the choice of the Palestinian people - they must respect the fact that Palestinians are committed to their rights. They will talk with us eventually. We are not in a hurry for that.

In the West, they try to shape you before dealing with you. This is the Palestinian experience. They've done this with Fatah. Hamas' position is to say what we are, what we stand for - clearly - and we can defend our rights best that way.

On Extremist Islamic Groups:

Usama Hamdan: All Islamists should want the good of their people. The most important point is how they deal with their own communities. In my belief, you have to be a good man to your own people - not push them hard or kill them if they don't accept your point of view. In Rafah, Gaza this August, we had clashes with a minority group which started killing Palestinians just because they had different ideas, by putting bombs in internet cafes, beauty salons and wedding parties.

We are against groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban for this reason. We condemned the attacks of 9-11, the explosions in London, the Madrid bombing when it was clear to us that these were not accidents.

Ammar Mousawi: We try to promote a positive image of Islam that is open to dialogue between people and cultures. We are not responsible for the actions of groups that present a different picture of Islam. We do not agree with the behavior of these groups -- they give a negative view of Islam. But the question is who created and supported these extremists?

What gives life to these entities is the policies of the West: unlimited support for Israel will cause this extremism. All the wars in Afghanistan will feed this extremism. We are in a situation where we will have wars with no end. Sovereignty, development, mutual respect, the right to determine your own destiny -- these issues need dialog, not wars.

Hezbollah condemns the deliberate killing of innocent people -- it promotes in us a sense of sadness as happened with 9-11, London, Madrid. And if there are some differences between us and the US, this is not the way to sort out our problems -- these acts are not excusable.

Mr. Mousawi, what is the status of efforts to form a Lebanese unity government -- and what are the chances of such a government being successful in overcoming the deadlocks and disagreements of the past?

We believe there are currently good chances for the formation of a national unity government, having overcome the most serious obstacles. We have finally reached agreement on the inclusion of Jubran Basil as a member of the cabinet, and General Michel Aoun has been granted the Telecommunications Ministry, both issues having been points of contention for the opposition.
As for the issue over various ministries, we are still deliberating the cabinet posts that will go to the opposition, but we are hopeful that things will go smoothly.

Mr. Hamdan, what is the status of efforts to form a Palestinian Unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah? How will this impact the holding of elections in 2010?

I have to say that we are still committed to the Palestinian reconciliation and we are willing to have this reconciliation for the benefit of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian cause. I believe that Mahmoud Abbas' move to hold elections on January 24, 2010 has undermined these efforts, but we are still working with the Egyptians to overcome this problem. However, I believe that no elections will take place without reconciliation between the two parties. On this same issue, a few days ago, Abu Mazen declared a clear failure in the peace process, saying that he will not be a candidate in the upcoming election. I think that was supposed to be a helpful step to go back to the Palestinian dialogue, because when you feel there is a failure in the process, you have to go back to the people. I think Abu Mazen was saying there is a failure in the political track, and he invited all the people to support national unity, to face the Israeli threat. This may help Palestinian unity.

No one can trust that there will be real elections without Palestinian unity and so it will be a waste of time and a new complication in the Palestinian cause if there is an election without this unity.

There must be a change in the Israeli mentality because they must understand that without ending the occupation, there will be no peace.

Outside of your own bloc, name a Middle Eastern leader you admire and tell us why:

Ammar Mousawi: I admire the Emir of Qatar who made something of his country -- it is small, but he has made it into a country of influence. They've helped us in rebuilding what Israel destroyed in its 2006 attack on Lebanon. The Emir was the first and only Arab head of state to come to the suburbs of Beirut to witness the horrifying destruction of the Israeli aggression. And we thank him for this because it motivated our own Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to come himself. Imagine the prime minister of all Lebanon didn't see the urgency to visit this area that had taken heavy bombardment and destruction? We are embarrassed in one sense, and angry on the other hand.

Your thoughts on US Middle East policy?

Ammar Mousawi: America is a great nation -- to get to this place has taken some great people, and a certain individuality that is renowned through history. We have no issues with the American people, we share many concerns with them on their government's policies. We have in the Middle East paid a heavy price for US policy. There are many Americans paying for these failed policies of previous administrations. Bush's ratings in the US dropped into the 20s. Therefore, can anybody be surprised if we say we object to aspects of US foreign policy?

We would like to say to Americans that they are subjecting themselves to a double standard - on one hand talking about values and on the other hand resisting and undermining these very values through their unconditional support of Israel's actions. The way they have received and treated the Goldstone Report has caused an uproar here.

I tell you this - America will not find anyone to assist it to come out of its Mideast crisis other than this bloc of nations that Hezbollah belongs to. If we count today the total US crises - in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, even Pakistan, what does the supposed Arab "moderate" bloc have and what does our group have in terms of cards to help the US. The strength is in the hands of our resistance bloc.

Usama Hamdan: The US administration has to realize that Israel is occupying Palestinian lands, not the other way around. But they are sending weapons to be used against Palestinians every day -- at least $2 billion worth is sent to Israel annually. They have to put these basic facts on the table before pointing a finger at Hamas' rockets. We have said before we are ready to engage in a prolonged ceasefire if there is a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian lands -- they did not even try to respond to this offer.

There is a peace process. Hamas opposes that peace process, not because we like to be against it, but because we believe there is no real peace. The Israelis and the sponsors of the process, mainly the US administration, were not creating peace through negotiations, they were dismantling the Palestinian cause. If you go through the Oslo Agreement, you discover that this agreement pushed aside the main issues that created the conflict -the status of Jerusalem, the land, sovereignty of a future Palestinian state, the right of return for refugees, and our natural resources. They said all of these have to be negotiated afterward!

We have an Arab saying that goes: the one who is safe from punishment will act badly. Israel feels it is totally protected, that it can do anything -- it feels it is a country above the law when the US uses its veto to protect Israel at every turn. If the Arabs work to protect their own interests, talk to the Americans about their mutual interests, I think the Americans will see the value of re-balancing their strategic interests in the region.

At the moment, nobody in the region can view the US as an honest broker of peace. That is because of the history of American foreign policy. The US has to make a major change - they have to show that they are balanced on the Palestinian issue and not just following the line of the Israeli lobby in the US.

Mr. Hamdan, are there any US presidents you admire, and why?

George Washington, because he led his people to independence. And John F. Kennedy, because he tried to make a change for the better.

Mr. Mousawi, do you watch any American television shows? Any particular programs you admire?

My wife likes the Oprah show, and I watch it with her sometimes -- Oprah seems to cover some interesting topics of social value.

Hezbollah Denies Link To Arms Ship Seized By Israel

2009-11-05T08:13:12Z

JERUSALEM — Israel said Thursday that Hezbollah could have bombarded the Jewish state for a month with the weapons confiscated in the country's largest-ever arms seizure, and called on the world to focus on the Lebanese militants' chief backer, Iran, rather than assailing Israel.

Palestinian leaders expressed concern that Israel would use the seizure of a ship laden with what officials described as hundreds of tons of weapons from Iran to divert attention from its settlement expansion and accusations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Israel Seizes Iranian Arms Bound For Hezbollah, Say Officials

2009-11-04T08:50:51Z

JERUSALEM — Open crates from a cargo ship seized Wednesday by Israel revealed dark green missiles inside. Containers from the vessel bore writing in English that said "I.R. Iranian Shipping Lines Group."

Israel alleged that the shipment of hundreds of tons of rockets, missiles, mortars, grenades and anti-tank weapons – the largest it ever seized – was headed for Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

Amb. Marc Ginsberg: Timidity Vs. Audacity? The Tests Are Yet to Come

2009-11-03T15:46:35Z

A year ago today I was sitting on a cold floor of a dark elementary school at 5am determined to be the first in my precinct to vote for Barack Obama. I could not sleep the night even though as a veteran of other election campaign nights I could feel the anticipated outcome coursing through my veins -- one of those few and far between great election highs. How great it felt -- no artificial stimulation necessary!

The world is a far better place because Obama is president. In most of the world (but in too many vital places not necessarily so where it may matter, such as Russia and Israel) Obama has shepherded a restoration of trust and confidence in the ideals that rekindle America's role as a beacon of hope. The President has positioned himself as a first among equals on the world stage -- and has done so with aplomb, steady bearing and an incredible grasp of national security minutiae. For those who questioned this young president's national security experience he has been consistently sure-footed on the world stage and a credit to his countrymen.

And yes, just ask them. Obama and his talented national security team are globally "engaged." Engaged with Russia, engaged with Europe, engaged with Latin America, engaged with Iran, and today, even engaged in Myanmar. Engagement is great. I am all for it. But "engagement" is a means to an end, and not a national security strategy, but a tactic -- an important one given what was inherited from the un-engaging (please read pejorative into my use of this word) Bush Administration.

But to date, other than the impending monumental Afghan troop decision, there's not many "buck stops here" tests of presidential leadership on which history books are written.

Much of the initial global euphoria has given way to the hard reality of inherited messes, and the Oval Office is becoming a lonely place for our global hero, who confronts life and death choices that will shape his presidency and the nation's future.

Afghanistan is a "buck stops here" decision. So, too, is what to do about Iran's "give and take back" uranium export offer. What will Obama do if the Iranians kick more sand in his face on fulfilling its IAEA obligations? Is conflict avoidable and, if so, at what cost to our security? And what can be done to move the Israeli-Palestinian equation off its dead center? Time's a-wastin' and in a year of best intended efforts we're not much closer to any acceptable Palestinian state goal line. Extremism and terrorism remain ever constant threats to our homeland. And nothing gives me more pause than the future stability of Pakistan. Like the scene out of "Naked Gun", one can't help fearing the world's dictators and terrorists are gathered around some mountain hideaway contriving up a crisis to surely test presidential mettle.

These are the tests that may likely make a 3am wakeup call a certainty in the months ahead.

So far there has been a tendency to vocalize intent and engage in convenient can-kicking, rather than actionable resolve. That's not timidity....that's testing the state of the ship's rudder. Well, I for one am glad that the Nobel Peace Prize will sit on its rightful pedestal in the White House as a tangible reminder of what constitutes unfinished business.

But these are damn difficult problems and they would have been easier to contend with had Bush and Co. not fallen flat on their proverbial derrieres while on the job. And Cheney's neocons have the audacity to accuse Obama of making the country less safe...what temerity!

I know this President is determined to make his mark internationally -- and the canvas is before him. Transforming eloquent word into sustainable deed will be the true test of his audaciousness.

So, one year after the election, what do you think Candidate Obama would think of President Obama? Tweet your response (our Twitter hashtag is #OneYearLater), or post it in the comments section.

Patrick Nayyar, Conrad Stanisclaus Mulholland Charged With Trying To Give Weapons To Hezbollah

2009-10-27T15:11:01Z

NEW YORK — Two New York City men have been charged with trying to provide weapons, ammunition and vehicles to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Forty-five-year-old Patrick Nayyar of Queens and 43-year-old Conrad Stanisclaus Mulholland were indicted Monday in federal court in Manhattan on a charge of trying to provide material support to a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.

Kevin Sullivan: A Soft Power Opportunity for Iran

2009-10-14T18:45:35Z

During his recent visit to New York for the UN General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, much to the chagrin of officials in Washington and elsewhere, repeatedly insisted that the United States should view the Islamic Republic of Iran as a friend. Iran, Ahmadinejad proclaimed, is "an opportunity for everyone." This alleged "opportunity" must have come as news to Iran's Mideast neighbors -- especially Israel. With its well-documented penchant for supporting terrorism and upheaval throughout the region, it's difficult to see any opportunity in Tehran's often hollow overtures.

But in the neighboring country of Yemen, a very real opportunity to make good on its promise of friendship is rapidly emerging for Iran. Deprived of ink and oxygen by wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a bloody and volatile conflict has been raging in the unstable northern Yemeni province of Sa'ada. Houthi Rebels -- Shia disciples of the late Zaidi leader Hussein al-Houthi -- have for five years engaged in an on-again, off-again battle with Yemen's central government for sovereignty of the nation's mountainous north. The conflict reached its apparent apex in recent months, when the Sunni-dominated government in Sana'a unleashed what it termed "Operation Scorched Earth"; an aggressive and intentionally overwhelming summer assault from both land and air intended to shock the Shia insurgents into submission.

The conflict has created a growing humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, as approximately 150,000 refugees trapped between Yemen's warring factions have been forced to flee their homes and take to makeshift camps near the southern border of Saudi Arabia. Both Riyadh and UN relief workers have to date struggled getting essential aid to these Yemeni refugees, as both Sana'a and the Houthi rebels place blame on each other for the prolonged conflict. The group Human Rights Watch recently accused both factions of endangering civilians and perpetuating the refugee crisis; while Yemen's central government continues to accuse Shia agents in Iran and Iraq of supplying and aiding the rebels.

Tehran, for its own part, has done little to assuage Yemeni -- and, for that matter, Saudi -- concerns of an Iranian hand in the conflict beyond rote denial and perfunctory statements. Sana'a, certainly not lacking in its own paranoia and fear of all things Shia, claims to have recovered Iranian-made short range missiles and other armaments from Houthi weapons depots. And just last week, one of Yemen's top Sunni clerical figures, Sheikh Abdul Majid al-Zandani, placed blame for the burgeoning civil war squarely upon the Islamic Republic. "The way events are moving in this country," exclaimed al-Zandani, "indicates to us that Iran wants to export the Shia ideology by force, which we utterly reject."

However, beyond Yemeni accusations, there has been little evidence thus far pointing to Iranian involvement in the conflict. With Tehran moving tentatively toward engagement with Washington over its controversial nuclear program, it would do little good for Iran to fuel a humanitarian crisis on the border of America's primary Arab ally in the region. The concerns over Iranian misdoings being voiced in Riyadh and other Mideast capitals are more often rooted in geopolitical brinkmanship and serious misconceptions about Iran's range in the region.

But then, that's the funny thing about misconceptions -- often, they can create a window of opportunity for the misunderstood; and in the case of Iran, the conflict in Yemen could potentially serve as a leveraging device of goodwill in its efforts at Western rapprochement. Whether actual or exaggerated, Iran may possess the influence to manage and foster a ceasefire in Yemen's war torn north.

Since its inception, the Islamic Republic has invested in various proxies to aid it in its war against the West. Whether it was Sunni Hamas in the Palestinian territories, or Shia Hezbollah in the Levant, Iran quickly realized after its long and bloody war with Iraq that direct military engagement with the United States was not feasible. Instead, Tehran offered up its services to the dissidents and dispossessed of the Middle East. For these aggrieved groups, Iran provided the training and tools to resist and terrorize their enemies. For Iran, these proxies gave them legitimacy on the so-called Arab Street, as well as a tool for pressuring Western forces in the Middle East.

Using those same resources it routinely employs for asymmetric upheaval in places like Iraq and Palestine, Iran possesses the means to alter the Yemeni conflict in several ways. One, Tehran could deploy its diplomats and prominent Shia clerical figures to assist -- alongside UN monitors and Saudi officials -- in the mediation of an immediate armistice between Sana'a and the Houthis. Using its infamous Quds Force, Iran's Revolutionary Guard could divert resources and training away from its more insidious activities, and instead work to integrate Yemen's Shiites into the social and governmental fabric in Sana'a. Inverting the model it used in Lebanon, Tehran could employ, pacify, and ultimately help disarm Yemen's aggrieved Shia community.

If this sounds unlikely or far-fetched, that's because it is. Still, with just a little imagination and reorganization, Iran could transform itself into a kind of public defender for Shia minorities all around the Mideast -- call it a Peace Corps for Quds.

In the case of Yemen, Iran could earn points with the Saudis by helping to avert a refugee crisis on the Saudi border. And by pacifying the north, Tehran will free Yemen's military to focus its attention on Al Qaeda operatives in the south, earning Iran more points in Sana -- and in Washington.

Such an effort would require a massive sea change of thought inside the Islamic Republic; stripping the country's power brokers of their anti-American crutch. But in its ideological stead would be the seedlings of a positive soft power role for Iran in the Middle East. Instead of fermenting upheaval in Sunni-ruled regimes with sizable Shiite populations -- as it once did in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait -- Iran could aid in the politicization and, when necessary, the pacification of dissidents and insurgents throughout the region.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Fatally Flawed UN Goldstone Report Could Come Back to Bite America For Fighting Terrorists

2009-10-13T19:02:34Z

Here we go again as the United Nation pursues its unique "verdict first--trial afterwards," treatment of the State of Israel. This week, not one but two UN agencies, the UN Security Council in New York, and over in Geneva--in its 6th 'special session' on Israel in 3 years--the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) are heeding calls led by the newly sanitized terrorist Libyan regime to consider Judge Richard Goldstone's UN "fact-finding report" about Israel's three-week military operation to end the hellish barrage of 8,000 rockets from the Gaza Strip. (See www.wiesenthal.com/Goldstone).

Not surprisingly, the Israelis are outraged that the prepackaged conclusions of the 600-page hatchet job--still calls Israel the "occupying power in Gaza" (!), gives Hamas a slap on the wrist, and condemns Israel for "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" inflicted on Palestinians used as human shields by Hamas fighters.

Never mind that Goldstone's commission refused to view available video evidence showing that Hamas openly boasts of using Gazan civilians as human shields (some on YouTube!), or that Judge Goldstone stood by while Hamas officials impudently lied to him about their responsibility for kidnapping Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and missile attacks on civilian centers.

Goldstone's report, in effect, equates Israel with Nazis and other tyrants of history by accusing the Jewish State of deliberately targeting civilians-- a potent but patently false accusation, easily debunked by confirming with residents in Gaza or checking open sources on the Internet, that prior to attacks aimed at terrorist installations purposely implanted by Hamas within the civilian centers, that Israel Defense Forces dropped leaflets, contacted cell phones and interrupted Palestinian TV and Radio Broadcasts.

Oh, and did I mention that Judge Goldstone now denies his was an investigation at all?

Just last week, Goldstone admitted during an interview with The Forward that his findings came not from a full-blown investigation, but from what he called 'fact finding'. Goldstone is quoted as saying, "If this was a court of law, there would be nothing proven."

Whatever his intentions--Goldstone's folly has already unintentionally damaged President Obama's Mideast game plan.

It is discouraging average Israelis from going along with the risky step of withdrawal from West Bank strategic real estate adjacent to every major population center in the Jewish state. Back in 2005, Prime Minister Sharon said it was OK to withdraw from Gaza because--if Hamas tried to make it into a launching pad for terrorist attacks--the IDF would respond decisively with the support of a sympathetic international community. But in wake of Goldstone's attack, what sane Israeli would cede the West Bank? No democratically elected leader could afford to be blamed for opening Israel to more terror even as it would suffer another round of condemnations as "an occupying power" by the next Judge Goldstone. Jerusalem has enough threats from Tehran and Hezbollah to deal with without worrying that its soldiers and leaders will face arrest and trial by the International Criminal Court if they dare respond to attacks against Tel Aviv and Haifa--not from Gaza-- but from Ramallah and Jenin.

Meanwhile, Team Obama is discovering that it's impossible to keep any anti-Israel Genie bottled up in the UN. First, UN Ambassador Susan Rice said the U.S. had "serious concerns" about many recommendations in the Goldstone Report whose mandate the State Department labeled "unbalanced and one-sided." But then, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Michael Posner declared in Geneva in Judge Goldstone's presence that--despite unproven "negative inferences about the intentions of Israeli officials"--the U.S. was "seriously" ready to "engage in discussion of this Report" at a future meeting of the UN Human Rights Council. For U.S. diplomacy in Geneva, the future is now--as it only recently rejoined the serially anti-Israel UNHRC on President Obama's instructions.

And here's another consequence of the Goldstone Follies: His report demands that everyone treat any new terrorist attack organized by a non-state player as a job for the NYPD--not the Marines. The U.S. must preemptively veto any discussion of the Goldstone Report by the UN Security Council unless we are prepared for it to come back and bite America. Do we really want to risk Judge Goldstone's meddling, not only derailing the Mideast peace process, but further unraveling NATO's counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan as well as U.S. unmanned drone attacks on Al Qaeda in Pakistan?

What goes around comes around. This year, it may be Jerusalem that's the target of international kangaroo courts designed to strip it of the inalienable right to "the individual and collective inherent right of self-defense" guaranteed to every member state by Article 51 of the UN Charter: a minor detail to seems to have slipped Judge Goldstone's mind. Next year, it may be Washington that is forced to defend its actions in Afghanistan--not behind closed White House doors--but at an arraignment at the Hague of our Generals and political leaders for "crimes against humanity" as well as "war crimes" during anti-terrorist operations in the Af-Pak region. In this Kafkaesque court, not even President Obama's unexpected Nobel Peace Prize would provide him with a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Mr. President and Madam Secretary of State: deep six the Goldstone Report before it buries every democracy confronted by terrorists. We cannot afford to respond to the threat of the next 9/11 by agreeing to the perverse notion that international law suddenly means signing on to a suicide pact.

Historian Dr. Harold Brackman, a consultant to the Simon Wiesenthal Center co-authored this essay.

Sharmine Narwani: Key Lebanese Leader Says Iranian Weapons Can Deter Israeli Aggression

2009-09-19T12:30:42Z

While the US media fixed its sights once again on Bin Laden's latest platitudes, a far more critical statement of intent was being delivered in Beirut simultaneously. Druze patriarch Walid Jumblatt -- until just last month a firm member of the pro-US March 14 coalition which won a majority in Lebanon's highly-contested elections in June - on Saturday stirred the murky waters of Lebanese politics by embracing old foes and challenging the regional status quo.

In an interview with Iran's Press TV, Jumblatt said that Lebanon can turn to Iran for the procurement of sophisticated weapons systems to deter its enemies, and that Lebanon has only one enemy, Israel.

Pointing to recurrent and unveiled Israeli threats this summer of reinvading Lebanese territory if the anti-Israel Hezbollah party was included in the new Lebanese government -- a certainty because of the number of parliamentary seats the Shiite group won in Lebanon's June elections -- Jumblatt warned that the Israelis "are not hiding that, they are saying we will attack or we will one day come to Lebanon again."

In an about turn from his years of criticizing Hezbollah, its patron, Iran, and regional ally, Syria, the Druze leader pointed to the benefit of Hezbollah maintaining its controversial weapons arsenal as a deterrent against Israeli designs on Lebanon.

The weapons available to the Lebanese Army from the United States and other Arab countries "are not the weapons we need...we need anti-tank weapons and anti-aircraft weapons which I think we can find in Iran or in Russia or in China." Washington will not provide these weapons because it fears they will inevitably be used against its Israeli ally, added Jumblatt.

The Druze leader also downplayed Saudi and Egyptian rumblings about an Iranian threat. "It appears that several points of conflict are rooted in misinformation and/or disengagement between the Iranians and the Arabs," said Jumblatt. He urged both parties to engage in dialogue, a position he says is also advocated by Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, as a way to deter "Israeli aggression on Lebanon and on Iran."

Jumblatt's statements to Press TV marks the most recent in a series of disclosures by the maverick politician that has shaken electoral politics in Lebanon. Shortly before voting day, a video of Jumblatt speaking with a small group of loyal Druze sheikhs was leaked to the media, in which he spoke of shifting political realities in the country. Citing the growing fortunes -- demographically, financially and politically -- of the Shiites, a "dangerous" rise in Sunni fundamentalism, and a decline in power within Lebanon's once-prominent Christian community, Jumblatt called for a careful rapprochement with the Shia and Syrians.

In the secretly taped video, the Druze chieftain also drew attention to the changing status of Shiites internationally: "Britain has launched a dialogue with Hezbollah, and America has launched one with Iran because they both need to confront the danger of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan," groups that target Shiite populations as much as they do US forces.

Then, on August 2, Jumblatt publically rocked the boat by announcing his departure from the US-backed March 14 coalition, which decisively won the June elections against a Hezbollah-led opposition. To the horror of March 14 and the White House, the former neoconservative darling described his dalliance with the Bush administration as a "black spot" in his political career.

What is the significance of all of this? The wily Jumblatt, who is often referred to in Lebanon as the "weathervane" of local and regional politics because of his penchant for switching alliances according to power shifts, is literally today in the position of kingmaker, whatever the outcome of the new Lebanese government. With 11 parliamentary seats under his control, his defection on any issue leaves the current majority with a slim three-seat advantage over the opposition.

And that, of course, leaves Lebanon's strategic role in the Middle East wide open to external influences - whether from the US, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia or others. Perhaps the crafty Jumblatt has things just as he would like them, providing his minority Druze community with maximum leverage. In one fell swoop, the Druze patriarch has ensured the attention of major powers and regional players alike. How he plays this out will be interesting to watch.

Salah Ezzedine, "Lebanese Bernie Madoff," Humiliates Hezbollah

2009-09-16T11:20:12Z

TURA, Lebanon -- The investor, a heavyset man in a gray polo shirt, sat back in a plastic chair in his hardware store and sighed, unable to explain how his life savings had vanished so quickly into thin air.

"It's a disaster, a tsunami," he said. "Some farmers mortgaged their fields and brought in cash. Others sold land they had inherited from their parents. Teachers gave up all their savings. Old people lost everything they had."

U.S. Envoy Arrives In Israel To Kick Start Mideast Peace Talks

2009-09-12T18:01:15Z

JERUSALEM — U.S. Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell is in Israel to try and kick start Israeli-Palestinian talks before the two sides meet at the U.N. later this month.

A spokesman for the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem said Mitchell arrived in Israel Saturday night. He is set to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders next week.

Lebanon's Prime Minister-Designate Saad Hariri Steps Down

2009-09-10T14:31:07Z

Lebanon entered a new chapter of political uncertainty today as prime minister-designate Sa'ad Hariri stepped down after the Hezbollah-led opposition rejected his proposed cabinet.

James Denselow: Hariri's Big Risk

2009-09-08T17:08:20Z

Lebanese prime-minister-in-waiting Saad Hariri has rolled the political dice in presenting a cabinet for approval to the president without a national consensus.

More than three months have passed since the June 7 elections supposedly boosted the pro-western March 14 alliance and curbed the democratic legitimacy of the Hezbollah-led March 8 opposition. However, initial promises for an instant cabinet being formed a week later were quickly dispelled and replaced by a political merry-go-round where the various key players have been engaged in endless rounds of meetings between themselves and their respective external patrons.

As ever, the major questions concern the balance of power in the country, and in particular the assignments of seats within the new "national unity cabinet" itself. Following the election, the formula of 15-10-5 was created (15 to Hariri's March 14, 10 to the Hezbollah-led opposition and five to the president) allowing the president to be the pivot for any opposition boycott. The theory behind the formula is that it avoids both a clear government majority and an opposition veto. A government where the opposition can easily boycott is anathema to those who saw the Cedar Revolution of 2005 and the Hariri June victory as providing an impetus to real change in the country.

Hariri justified his sudden cabinet submission by stating that the opposition does not have the right to indefinitely hold the government hostage. Indeed after he announced his decision he reminded people that "there is only one parliamentary majority in Lebanon." Yet despite being offered the leadership of a third of the cabinet, Hezbollah rejected the decision, deflecting Hariri's critique by arguing that only a unified opposition could join the cabinet.

Speaking at an Iftar dinner, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nassrallah implicitly backed Christian ally Michel Aoun's demand for his candidate, son-in-law Jebran Bassil, to hold the telecommunications ministry, giving credence to those who see any Lebanese "unity" cabinet simply as a "patronage pie" of ministries and titles that are doled out to the respective parties. Bassil appeared on television shortly after Hariri's announcement to claim that his party was being "politically persecuted".

Hariri's decision appears a calculated gamble. Having the cabinet rejected may show up the inability of the 39-year-old billionaire to form the consensus that Lebanon has historically required for political stability. Hariri has, after all, overstepped the mark before, his decision to go after Hezbollah weapons and communications infrastructure (hence opposition concern over the leadership of the telecoms ministry) led to the opposition's takeover of Beirut and a radical rebalancing of power in the country, creating the conditions that would eventually lead members of his own alliance to distance themselves from him (i.e., the defection of Walid Jumblatt).

The alternative argument would see Hariri's decision not as a gamble, but rather as the logical next step, occurring within the framework of his constitutional prerogatives. The control over the process is now out of his hands, Hariri has ushered the ball into President Sleiman's court, therefore avoiding further blame for the political deadlock resting within his office.

Beyond these domestic factors it is important to assess the extent to which external factors are playing a role in events. Hariri may be playing a smarter game reliant on insider knowledge of the results of recent meetings between the Syrians and the Saudis, whose rapprochement could give him a stronger hand than Hezbollah could have predicted. Interestingly the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) didn't cover the event at all, while Iranian funded Press TV unsurprisingly focused largely on Nasrallah's negative response to Hariri's decision.

If Sleiman rejects Hairi's cabinet then the entire process will have to start again from scratch, further undermining faith in the Lebanese political structure's ability to function. Observers of current events, in the Iraqi political arena in particular, will be conscious of the snail's pace and potential for slippage that occurs in such national unity polity. Despite the absence of violence shielding events from global media attention, the current struggle for political agreement is a critical test of the Lebanese state.

Magda Abu-Fadil: Arabia Felix 102: Yemeni Government Fingers Iran as Arms Supplier to Northern Houthi Rebels

2009-08-23T09:34:10Z

The sixth Sa'ada war between central government forces and Houthi rebels in Yemen's north is well underway and expected to drag on given the latter's rolls of fresh recruits from the region and their unconventional tactics aided by weapons from Iran, according to the country's ruling party.

Yemeni officials told the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat the government would deal a decisive blow to the Houthis to prevent them from planning a seventh war but that the conflict may be drawn out, as the army proceeds with a "scorched earth" policy.

A military source quoted by another pan-Arab daily, Asharq Al-Awsat, said the army had seized six depots of Iranian-made weapons in the region, 240 kilometers (149 miles) north of the Yemeni capital Sana'a.

Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh in a speech this week promised to eradicate the Houthis, dubbing the rebellion "diabolical" and a "cancer in Sa'ada."

Al Hayat cartoon depicting blazing Yemen, with matchbook marked
"fitna" (sedition) and matches designed as traditional janbiyya knives

"Undoubtedly, what is happening in Yemen is a scene from the Iranian scenario aimed at undermining Arab countries' stability and fomenting sectarianism among the country's people," wrote Al Hayat columnist Daoud Al Shiryan, whose paper is funded by neighboring Saudi Arabia.

He added that the battle waged by the Yemeni government could be repeated in other Arab countries, noting that Iran had sought to trigger sectarian problems in Kuwait, Sudan, Morocco, Bahrain and Lebanon.

Asharq Al-Awsat editor Tareq Al Houmayed cautioned in May against Iran's "soft diplomacy" after Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani visited Yemen bearing Persian rugs to assuage fears of Iran's naval deployment in the Gulf of Aden on the pretext of protecting Iranian vessels from pirates.

Arabs fear Iran could reinforce its military position there ahead of a Western or Israeli attack.

The rug symbolizes Tehran's patience, Al Houmayed explained. Rugs can take up to 12 years to weave and anyone seeking to understand Iranian intentions should read extensively about Persian rug production, he said, adding that President Saleh should have reciprocated the gift offering with a janbiyya, the curved dagger worn almost religiously by Yemeni men.

Janbiyya (dagger) is part of Yemeni men's
existence (Abu-Fadil)

In April 2009, a Yemeni court sentenced two men to death for being in contact with Iran.

It charged them with violating terrorism and state security laws between 2007 and 2008 by providing Iran with documents relating to Yemen's defense, security and economy, as well as details of President Saleh's whereabouts.

In June, Houthi spokesman Saleh Habra told Asharq Al-Awsat his movement was preparing for war and denied being an extension of Iran or Lebanon's Hezbollah (Party of God).

He accused the government of preparing for its sixth war against the Houthis in Sa'ada by charging the rebels with the kidnapping of foreigners.

He also denied being part of a secessionist movement, like that of his southern compatriots in Hadramawt and Aden, noting that all the Houthis sought was true citizenship, not marginalization and hegemony by the central government.

The Houthis have managed to control large swathes of territory along the vast Yemeni-Saudi border during recent clashes.

Earlier this month, they blocked the Sana'a -Sa'ada road to prevent the government from sending reinforcements and much-needed supplies to the north.

The rebels have used firearms, katyusha rockets and artillery, and resorted to low intensity conflict, while the government has relied on air and ground forces to pound the Houthis into submission.

Yemeni Information Minister Hassan Al-Lawzi accused "foreign parties" of financing the rebellion and charged Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam TV channel of skewing coverage to favor the Houthis.

Al Alam TV logo

The Houthis belong to the Zaidi branch of Shiite Islam that claims most of Iran's population. Yemen is mostly Sunni Muslim like its larger neighbor to the north Saudi Arabia, but its president, Ali Abdallah Saleh, is a Zaidi.

A Yemeni official denied claims by Al Alam TV that Yemen and Saudi Arabia had established a joint military command to battle the Houthis, calling the reports lies and fabrications.

Meanwhile, Yemeni civil society group "Together Against Sa'ada War," called for an immediate halt to the war, the free flow of humanitarian aid and relief, and, unfettered access to the region by the media.

Together Against Sa'ada War campaign

The campaign's emergency session grouped activists, jurists, politicians and members of the media.

The campaign, launched in June 2007, is an independent civil society coalition for the protection of civilians. It does not absolve either party to the war.

The International Crisis Group in May warned in a report entitled "Yemen: Defusing the Sa'ada Time Bomb" that a fragile truce then in effect risked being short-lived.

"The Saada conflict might not be the most covered internationally, but it carries grave risks for Yemen's political, sectarian and social equilibrium," it said.

Yemen in southern Arabian Peninsula (Google Maps)

The U.S. Embassy in Sana'a on Saturday expressed deep concern about the continued armed conflict in Sa'ada.

"We call on both parties to return to the ceasefire that was established last year. In the meantime, both parties should avoid any action that would endanger the civilian population in the affected area," it said.

The antagonists have been at war since 2004. Countless army troops, rebels and civilian victims have died in the fighting but there are no accurate figures to confirm numbers provided by the warring factions.

The government has denied its forces have used phosphorous bombs to quell the rebellion.

The war, one of several battles bogging down the government on multiple fronts is a complex fight involving various local and regional players.

The war expanded because it became a microcosm of a series of latent religious, social, political and economic tensions, said the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based source of analysis and advice to governments and intergovernmental bodies.

Northerners from Sa'ada have long complained about being deprived of social services, infrastructure projects and government employment opportunities.

Lack of infrastructure in Yemeni heartland (Abu-Fadil)

"With only some exceptions, the international community has not recognized the Sa'ada conflict's destabilizing potential or pressured the government to shift course," the ICG report said.

It blamed the West's single-minded focus on Yemen's struggle with Al-Qaeda and the regime's portrayal of the Houthis as a subset of the war on terror.

Meanwhile, an estimated 120,000 people have been displaced by the conflict, with children and women facing the brunt of it, according to UNICEF, the UN agency that cares for children.

"We are trying our best to reach the most vulnerable children and women who have fled their homes empty-handed in a state of panic," said UNICEF Representative Aboudou Karimou Adjibade.

Sa'ada children caught in the crossfire
(Al Hayat)

The UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, has asked donor governments for an additional $5 million to help thousands of Yemeni civilians caught in the escalating battles.

"Today it is a real tragedy," said Claire Bourgeois, UNHCR's representative in Yemen. "Some internally displaced people are displaced for the second or third time. They were already living in precarious situations for months or even years and now they have to go through the drama all over again."

UNHCR's Claire Bourgeois (Abu-Fadil)

Foreign aid workers, doctors and professionals have worked in various parts of Yemen to help with the country's infrastructure, refugee and health care services.

Magda Abu-Fadil: Arabia Felix 101: Yemen in the Grips of Unrest

2009-08-17T16:54:25Z

Yemen has mounted a tight security plan for the holy Moslem month of Ramadan starting this week in a bid to thwart any new terrorist attacks, the Yemen Times reported.

It said the Interior Ministry had announced the protection of houses of worship, markets and main streets, but didn't say how foreign facilities would be safeguarded, notably since terrorists have had the U.S. embassy and other locales in their sights for years.

"Terrorist groups have the tendency to threaten and carry out attacks during Ramadan against western interests and organizations as well as against Arab embassies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates," the paper said.

It's not a pleasant prospect for a country long known as "Al Yaman Al Saeed" (Arabia Felix, or Happy Arabia).

A cartoon in the Saudi-owned, pan-Arab daily Al Hayat depicts the words Al Yaman Al Saeed falling off a cliff, in reference to mounting terrorism attributed to a resurgent Al Qaeda, a separatist movement in the south, and a rebel movement in the northern Sa'ada Province led by the Houthis, a disenchanted group of the minority Zaidi denomination -- an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Yemen's majority is Sunni Muslim, but its president, Ali Abdallah Saleh, is a Zaidi.

Orientalist Danish explorer Carsten Niebuhr who visited that country in the 1760s presented a more romantic view of Arabia Felix.

His expedition traveled to Yemen "to explore a frontier that had so far remained elusive to the outside world," explained Shafee Saif in the Yemen Times in 1995 of the historical and Biblical attractions of myrrh, frankincense, and possibly gold.

Self-portrait of Danish explorer
Carsten Niebuhr in Yemeni
clothes (www.aerenlund.dk)

Fast-forward to the 21st Century and attempts by armed groups to stave off latter-day foreign exploiters of the region's wealth.

Osama bin Laden, whose family originates in Yemen, was especially outraged when foreign forces (including women) were deployed to roll back Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990-91, and "desecrated" the birthplace of Islam, following decades of what he felt was the siphoning of its black gold.

Meanwhile, Nasser Al Waheeshi (Abu Baseer), head of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in May declared his support for Yemen's southern separatists battling President Saleh, in an Internet statement.

Nasser Al Weheeshi, Al Qaeda chief in Yemen (Asharq Al-Awsat)

But Salah Al Shanfara, leader of the southern Al Hirak Al Jounoubi (Southern Movement) rebuffed the call to arms and told the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat: "We have no ties to Al Qaeda and totally reject such talk."

The Southern Movement's position was bound to become more complicated given its insistence on splitting from the rest of the country and Saleh's determination to maintain its unity.

Prior to 1990, Yemen was divided in two, with the Marxist southern republic allied with the then Soviet Union, and the north closer to Saudi Arabia.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al Qurbi told the paper the dissidents were people suffering from the union following raging battles in 1994 that led to the north overwhelming the oil-rich south.

Southerns have felt particularly dispossessed by their northern brethren and repeatedly complained that the president had fired many southerners from key government positions, only to fill them with cronies and supporters.

Detractors have also accused the president and his entourage of accumulating wealth and readying "El Walad" (the boy), Saleh's eldest son, for high office. On a tour of the capital, they pointed to several high-walled palaces belonging to the son.

The president has often cautioned that the alternative to his regime is either the devil or a wipeout flood, after the French "après moi, le déluge."

The Sana'a correspondent of Lebanon's daily An-Nahar asked rhetorically in March whether 2009 would be "the year of Al Qaeda," following a series of political and economic setbacks in Yemen.

He reported that the fundamentalist movement had announced earlier this year the creation of an Al Qaeda branch run by a joint command for Saudi Arabia and Yemen (including Guantanamo alumni).

The announcement preceded suicide attacks targeting foreign tourists and diplomats, and promised plans for a series of unprecedented operations.

The correspondent added that Al Qaeda had moved countless young men from Saudi Arabia and had recruited others locally who were then sent to training camps in outlying areas in Yemen.

In recent years, Yemeni women -- most of whom are veiled anyway -- have taken to wearing the niqab (full face cover with slits for the eyes) in larger numbers. Asked for the reason, this writer's veiled guide said it was due to the Wahabi influence of Saudi Arabia.

Rising conservatism attributed to Wahabism (Abu-Fadil)

Although President Saleh claims to be on excellent terms with Saudi leaders, some of his countrymen criticize their larger and wealthier northern neighbor, Saudi Arabia, for not doing enough to help them.

A summary of a 2008 study entitled "Yemen: Fear of Failure" by London-based think tank Chatham House said President Saleh faced an intermittent civil war in the north, a southern separatist movement, and resurgent terrorist groups.

"Yemen's jihadi networks appear to be growing as operating conditions in Iraq and Saudi Arabia become more difficult," it added.

Saleh admitted in an interview that terrorists seeking hideouts and refuge in Yemen were aided by the country's difficult terrain of mountains, rocky areas, valleys and deserts.

He acknowledged that worsening economic conditions and falling oil revenues had contributed to terrorist organizations' success in attracting followers.

Yemen map (University of Texas Library)

Saleh added that young men drawn to fight the "Red Menace" in Afghanistan had returned to promote the cause of jihad across the region.

The Yemeni government has used a series of traditional and unconventional methods to combat terrorism.

Besides armed confrontations, Yemeni officials have also tried to win hearts and minds through film.

A movie called Al Rihan Al Khaser (The Losing Bet), featuring young Yemeni actors, examines the process of radicalization in an instructive and entertaining (i.e. non-boring) way.

Actor from The Losing Bet film (Rosana Productions)

The film, released last August, aims to dissuade potential recruits from taking the terrorist plunge, destabilizing the country and attacking Western targets.

It followed a crackdown on militants in the southern province of Hadramawt, where Al Qaeda fighters have reportedly been welcomed.

Yemeni young men are increasingly being drawn to such causes through various media, including TV, cassette tapes, CDs and, more recently, the Internet.

Vendor hawking religious cassette tapes in a Sana'a market
(Abu-Fadil)

Hezbollah-owned Al Manar TV is quite popular in Yemen and its leader Hassan Nasrallah has acquired many fans for standing up to Israel during the latter's 33-day summer war on Lebanon in 2006.

So is the Palestinian Hamas movement, for its "resistance" to Israel.

Its fans can even be found in the Yemeni boondocks, with pictures of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin (assassinated by Israel) and leader Khaled Misha'al adorning shop doors.

Hamas fans in outlying Yemeni village (Abu-Fadil)

Adding fuel to the extremist fire is poverty.

A number of international organizations have ranked Yemen as the poorest Arab country.

According to the Chatham House study, Yemen's inflation rate stands at 27%, unemployment at 40%, and child malnutrition at 46%.

"Half of its 22 million citizens are under 16 and the population is set to double by 2035," it said, noting that seven million people live in poverty.

The country is heavily dependent on food imports, making it especially vulnerable to global price shocks, the author wrote, with Yemenis' woes compounded by rapidly diminishing reserves of groundwater and oil.

High illiteracy -- some say up to 70%, or higher -- is another major problem, as is the legal chewing of large quantities of qat, a mild drug that literally paralyzes the country, saps users' energy and cuts deeply into people's meager earnings (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/magda-abufadil/qat-increasingly-turns-on_b_164905.html)

Yemeni woman crosses qat field (Abu-Fadil)

Yemen also hosts hundreds of thousands of African refugees escaping worse fates on their continent (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/magda-abufadil/yemen-hosts-african-refug_b_170732.html) every year, further burdening the country's resources.

"Who will save Yemen from an uncertain future and dark tunnel dug by Yemenis themselves? And who is paying attention to the coming danger to regional, and even international, security emerging from the southern Arabian Peninsula?" asked Yemeni writer Najib Ghalab in Asharq Al-Awsat.

If all that seems a tad complex, stay tuned for Arabia Felix 102.

Hezbollah Chief: We'll Hit Tel Aviv If Beirut Hit

2009-08-14T23:57:07Z

BEIRUT The leader of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah warned Israel Friday his fighters would hit Tel Aviv with rockets if Israeli forces attack Beirut or the guerrillas' stronghold in its southern suburbs.

Speaking on the anniversary of the end of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said the Shiite militants are now capable of striking any Israeli city.

Georges Ugeux: Iran: Let's Get Back To Business!

2009-08-12T15:46:52Z

One of the most politically complex issues confronted by the Western world is its handling of Iran. Thirty years of disputes, including eight years of ostracizing and economically boycotting Iran, have been totally ineffective, as was the Bush administration's more directly confrontational stance. The United States cannot drive Iran into bankruptcy because of Iran's ranking as the world's fourth largest oil producer. The boycott of Iranian banks because they handle the accounts of the Iranian Army was a particularly bad idea, since every substantial bank in the world handles army accounts. There are 44 foreign banks in Iran and the government recently decided to allow more foreign branches in the country. In other words, Iran's substantial oil revenues will find their ways into the banking system, regardless of the U.S. policy. It is time to reconsider one of the biggest failures of the U.S. foreign policy.

I am definitely not underestimating the threat that Iran represents to the world. Its possible production of nuclear weapons in a few years, its non-democratic regime and its anti-Israeli stance are particularly alarming. But we should not forget that it is also the second largest Jewish population in the Middle East after Israel. Their involvement in Iraq (with the consensus of the local leadership the U.S. put in place), with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and with Hamas in Palestine mean that the future of peace in the Middle East requires a serious reconsideration of our attitude vis-à-vis Iran. The enormity of the conflict is such that political progress, initiated with President Obama's first declaration on the subject, will take years to produce concrete results.

Does that mean that we should not try to (re)build normal business and trade relationships with Iran now? Do we need to continue to enforce an ineffective boycott? The question merits close examination for a number of reasons.

The last election and the following demonstrations have significantly damaged the united front of the leadership in Iran. For the first time since the revolution, the clerical leadership of the mullahs is deeply divided. Significant demonstrations protested against what every country knows but refuses to openly state: the elections were won by the opposition. But taking advantage of these divisions will require subtlety, certainly not confrontation. We cannot afford to support openly the opposition, but can support openness, especially in business.

When I first went to Iran for business in 1976, I was impressed by the quality, wisdom and shrewdness of their business leadership. After I joined the NYSE, those business interactions could only happen at global meetings such as the World Economic Forum, where the Iranian leadership was represented. They were keen to understand and develop capital markets. The Tehran Stock Exchange has quadrupled in market capitalization since 2000 and its trading was multiplied by five.

Now is the time for the administration to send a clear signaling that, in a measured and limited way, they no longer object to business dealings in sectors that carry no military or nuclear energy risks. The best way for the situation to improve, is for the Iranians to see concretely that the Western world is willing to deal with them in a fair way. This will strengthen the hand of the Iranian partisans of openness better than any statements or declarations.

It will also be good business for everybody. Iran needs to export as much as it needs to import. The fourth five-year plan provides for the creation of free trade zones to allow gateways to and from international markets. Free trade zones can become gateways for other positive exchanges as well. We should encourage them.

Even if the U.S. continues to refuse to do business with Iran, others will not follow its lead. Are we convinced that it is smart to let Russian, Chinese or Indian interests build businesses (and influence) in Iran? Is it the right policy to refuse to be part of the $ 10 billion of foreign direct investments in 2007 in beverage, tobacco, textiles, clothing, leather, chemical, steel and oil derivatives? Most of the largest European groups in the energy, automotive and engineering sectors already have substantial presence in Iran. The U.S. simply cannot continue to ignore this market.

For those who would have any doubts, I have absolutely no contacts or cooperation activities with Iran and my comment are entirely based on my personal assessment of the situation, and its urgency.

Nicholas Noe: The End of March 14?

2009-08-11T16:50:27Z

As Lebanon's Pro-US Coalition Fractures, New Opportunities for Peace Emerge

Beirut -- In the depths of summer, and with scant coverage by the US media, one would be forgiven for not having noticed a fairly significant development in Lebanon: the crumbling of the pro-US majority alliance known as March 14.

Despite having narrowly won the recent June 7 elections -- reportedly with the help of $750 million dollars in Saudi money -- the Sunni, Druze and Christian coalition that first took the reins of power in July 2005 following the withdrawal of Syrian troops was dealt what may end up being a lethal blow this past week when the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt formerly left the March 14 Secretariat.

With his exit, the motley alliance lost yet another one of its most able and articulate founding figures -- having previously lost the most popular Christian leader in the country, General Michel Aoun, just before the 2005 elections, and, somewhat differently, having drawn the ire of its former electoral ally, the militant Shiite movement Hezbollah, who promised in late 2006 to never again run on a unified ticket with the main March 14 parties.

The mini earthquake set off by Jumblatt's turn could, however, actually improve the prospects for real peace building in this perpetually unstable Mediterranean nation should the Obama administration, together with its European and Arab allies, accelerate the approach it now seems to be encouraging: an oblique form of diplomacy that deftly seeks to draw in and undermine Hezbollah's rationale and desire to use the frightening array of weapons it now has at its disposal.

This was, of course, not the preferred policy of the Bush administration and March 14 hardliners (including Jumblatt) who, shortly after the Syrians were successfully pressured into leaving, pursued a narrow policy of constant pressure and force as a means of hammering away at both Syria and Hezbollah.

Unfortunately, the result for Lebanon (and US interests) was devastating both in moral and material terms, immediately undercutting the myriad openings and opportunities that Syria's unexpected exit had brought.

Indeed, rather than bolstering stability and patiently encouraging the pro-US tilt of the country, the hawkish line instead helped to foster a sustained and vicious series of assassinations by Damascus, a relatively coherent and (for many Lebanese) reasonably appealing opposition anchored by Hezbollah and its new Christian ally Aoun, near civil war, economic decline and, most notably, the bloody 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel that was reportedly encouraged by leading figures in March 14 and openly championed by the Bush administration as a means of "destroying" Hezbollah once and for all.

As the dust settled in mid 2008, Syria actually came out looking more like the required address for regional stability, while Hezbollah, its domestic reputation partially bruised, nevertheless could claim nearly double the number of rockets compared to 2005 and an enduring political alliance that preserved the opposition's strong hand in Parliament.

In this context, and with a new US president, the tide in Beirut and Washington finally began to turn earlier this year towards a recognition that the original promise of Lebanon's "Cedar Revolution" had gone badly off track and a new strategy was needed.

To this day however, remaining March 14 hardliners, their advocates in the former Bush administration (and some in the current Obama administration) as well as neo-conservative commentators generally still haven't come to terms with the shift, refusing to accept that in the battle of ideas about how best to approach Lebanon's problems, the hawkish approach failed on a range of accounts.

Although it may very well work elsewhere in the world or when applied to other problems, in Lebanon the popular and parliamentary majority now believe otherwise; the Europeans and the Americans, for the most part, now seem to believe otherwise; and even some in the Arab world, such as Saudi Arabia, appear to accept this.

Jumblatt, for his part, finally weighed in by hitting on the crucial point that his recent break with March 14 is not just about protecting his Druze minority; it is also about finding a better way to build peace and enhance justice. In short, the last four years, he says, prove that he was wrong both morally and strategically when he actively encouraged conflict with Syria and Hezbollah as the main (some would say only) pillars of March 14 policy and practice.

Now that these pillars have seemingly fallen, where does this leave Lebanon?

Even though the actual timing of Jumblatt's much anticipated break has momentarily thrown the composition of the next Cabinet into some doubt, the Druze leader's thinking is actually not so far off from that of Saad Hariri, the leader of the Sunnis and the current prime minister designate.

In recent weeks, Hariri has reshuffled his own inner circle and, with Saudi encouragement, led the charge for a national unity government that would numerically deny him the ability to pass or enact anything with just a simple majority vote.

In this formula, one that is likely to stand, Hezbollah and the Christian opposition of General Aoun will also play key roles, with control over a number of ministries.

Crucially, as far as the Obama administration is concerned, there does not seem to be a push back.

In fact, key US policymakers appear to be actively moving in the opposite direction: by not harshly or publicly rebuking Jumblatt, openly suggesting that the mandate of UN troops in South Lebanon should not be changed to more aggressively go after Hezbollah, and by allowing European allies to continue to engage Hezbollah leaders.

In one recent speech, John Brennan, a top security official at the White House, went so far as to offer a reading of Hezbollah whose basic framework -- Hezbollah is not merely a terrorist organization and is open to substantial shifts -- Bush officials would have been loath to even entertain.

While all these developments would seem to signal a real, though belated, shift in the US approach to Lebanon and the key issue of how to deal with Hezbollah's independent arsenal, there remains the distinct possibility that, as in so many other areas of international relations, the US might not go far enough towards achieving a tipping point.

To do this, the US would have to move aggressively on three fronts for which it has hitherto been reluctant to expend real capital: convincing the Israelis that the time has come to hand over to the UN three small parcels of land in South Lebanon claimed by Hezbollah and the Lebanese government (thus ending the issue of occupation); equipping the Lebanese Army with a modest does of heavy weapons to credibly defend the country (substantially undercutting Hezbollah's claim that it is the sole protector of the nation); and, finally, offering strong support to the consensus President in his effort to chip away at the sectarian system of power (a Shiite, for example, cannot be army commander, President or a range of other positions).

Fortunately for the US and for the prospects of a more stable, democratic Lebanon, the time for moving on exactly these kinds of solutions is relatively propitious.

First, after all the conflict of recent years, and given the absence of a direct occupier, most of the parties and their constituents suggest that there is in fact an attractive Grand Bargain to be had: mainly that the Shiites would gradually integrate their own private army (Hezbollah) under the authority of a more robust state and, in return, Shiites (and all citizens) would finally have fair access and say in that authority, regardless of sect.

Second, Hezbollah has clearly been sobered by the election results, with its leader, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, noticeably muting the Party's increasingly irrational and sometimes wildly belligerent rhetoric of the past three years.

Third, the turmoil of the Iranian elections, HAMAS's current preference for non-military struggle and the general mood of engagement in the region (especially vis-à-vis Syria) precipitated by the Obama administration are all further conspiring to undercut Hezbollah's ability to exercise violence or disrupt credible domestic peace building efforts.

Finally, although both Hezbollah and Israel have been trading high-pitched threats over the past few weeks (as they often do), the reality is that it is not in either actors' interest to start a new conflict now.

This could, of course, change in the future.

In fact, it probably will if decisive, mitigating steps are not taken in the near term.
For now, however, the window on a Lebanon-focused solution is wide open, waiting for the main external actor on the domestic scene -- the US -- to decide whether it really wants to test its particular approach to international relations in a country that may be the most amenable in the region to just such an alternative.

Hezbollah Rocket Stockpile On Israeli Border Reaches 40,000

2009-08-04T14:38:30Z

Three years after Israel fought a bloody war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, there are growing fears that hostilities could erupt again this time with the militant group better armed than ever.

Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood Is Linked To Terrorists

2009-08-04T09:34:02Z

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa Al-Omrani | Inter Press Service

CAIRO, Aug 4 (IPS) - The Egyptian government is now accusing the Muslim Brotherhood of links to Palestinian resistance groups and of establishing "global networks". Recent months have seen a host of government accusations - which critics say are fabricated - against opposition groups it claims have ties with Hamas, Hizbullah, and the ever-elusive Al-Qaeda.

"The government is making up so many charges of 'terror networks' and 'Islamist cells' that it's hard to keep track of them all," Islamist lawyer Montasser Al-Zayat told IPS.

Abdel Moneim Abul-Fotouh, senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood and secretary-general of the Arab Doctors' Union, was arrested Jun. 28 along with seven leading Brotherhood members. They face charges of setting up an illegal "committee for communications abroad" and of "conspiring with foreign organisations."

According to official claims, Abul-Fotouh received instructions from Lebanese resistance group Hizbullah during Israel's January assault on the Gaza Strip to organise anti-government street demonstrations in Egypt and throughout the Arab world. He was also allegedly mandated with recruiting "jihadist cells" to be sent to Gaza to receive paramilitary training from Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

Spokesmen for the Muslim Brotherhood deny all charges. According to Al- Zayat, the case against the group is "entirely political."

"The regime wants the Brotherhood's support for its plan, which many say is imminent, to transfer presidential authority from President (Hosni) Mubarak to his son Gamal," he said. "So it's twisting the group's arm by cracking down on its middle and upper level echelons."

Although officially banned, the Muslim Brotherhood represents Egypt's largest opposition movement, with roughly one-fifth of seats in parliament. The rest of the National Assembly is held by the National Democratic Party (NDP) of President Mubarak.

Al-Zayat says that linking Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood to Palestinian groups Hamas and Hizbullah accomplishes two government objectives.

"First, it will hinder dialogue between the West and the Brotherhood since the U.S. and most of the EU consider Hamas and Hizbullah terrorist organisations rather than legitimate resistance groups. Secondly, it will deter Egyptians at home from supporting the Brotherhood by unjustly associating it with terrorism."

Ibrahim Mansour, executive editor of independent daily Al-Dustour says the campaign specifically targets Brotherhood members who have been outspoken critics of Egypt's position during Israel's recent assault on the Gaza Strip.

Over the course of the three-week assault from December 2008 into January this year, Egypt kept its border with the Hamas-run territory tightly sealed, effectively preventing the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid. According to critics, the decision amounted to tacit support for Israel's war on Hamas.

"All the Brotherhood leaders that had been vocal critics of Egypt's closed- border policy at the time have since been arrested or charged," Mansour told IPS. "Those arrested had also been active in organising humanitarian aid donations to Gaza's besieged population during and after the assault."

In a closely related case, 26 men were referred to a state emergency court in late July on charges of spying for Hizbullah and plotting "terrorist activity" on Egyptian territory. Members of the group were first arrested in April, and accused of planning attacks on tourist destinations and on ships passing through Egypt's Suez Canal.

At the time, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah admitted to having dispatched a single agent to Egypt on a "logistical" mission to assist the besieged Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip. He denied all accusations of plotting violent operations on Egyptian soil or of spying on the Egyptian state.

But in recent weeks headlines in the official press have been peppered with phrases like "Islamist cell" "global terror network" and "links to Al-Qaeda".

"All these Islamist 'cells' supposedly being uncovered, with links to Al-Qaeda or otherwise, are obvious fabrications with little or no basis in reality," says Mansour.

The recent spate of Al-Qaeda claims is "strange in the extreme," says Mansour. "During the 1990s, the regime constantly reiterated that local Islamist groups had absolutely no links with Al-Qaeda, whose presence in Afghanistan at the time was well-established," he said. "So why are they making all these claims now, when there is no evidence whatsoever that Al- Qaeda even exists?"

Read more from Inter Press Service.

Jamsheed K. Choksy: Happy Inauguration Day, Dr. Ahmadinejad: Don't Count on Success

2009-07-31T17:57:34Z

Iran's "re-elected" president faces turmoil of his own making.

Next week, on August 5, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is scheduled to be inaugurated for a second term in office as Iran's president. He faces a hornets' nest. Iran's society is in the worst political turmoil since 1979. Its economy is sliding downward rapidly too. Even once staunch supporters are turning against him.

After 7 weeks of very aggressive repression, Ahmadinejad's government still has only limited success keeping dissent out of the public view. Revolutionary Guards bashing of heads at funerary commemorations this week was yet another dismal try at quashing the popular uprising that is underway in Iran.

But the resistance has morphed, and continues to adapt and thwart the regime. Even when the fundamentalist government controls the streets, it is undermined by cyber attacks, work stoppages, incapacitation of administrative infrastructure, denunciation after Muslim prayer services, impromptu gatherings, and demonstrations. Essentially, every occasion has become a potential focus of protest against a government viewed as illegitimate by the Iranian people including leading mollahs like Hossein Ali Montazeri and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

During his first term in presidential office, Ahmadinejad squandered Iran's fiscal reserves on pet projects -- nuclear energy, tactical missiles, aid to Hamas and Hezbollah, price subsidies for groups within Iran such as the Revolutionary Guards, Basij paramilitary, and villagers who had supported his initial election in 2005. Now, his new administration will have to grapple with an inflation rate over 28 percent and an unemployment rate of at least 12 percent. The state's revenues are not thriving either as crude oil prices fail to bring in a foreign currency bonanza.

What shape Ahmadinejad's new government will take is unclear as well. His choice for 1st vice president -- a relative -- was ousted by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other fundamentalists for not being sufficiently anti-Israeli and for attending gatherings such as dances at which men and women mingle! His current cabinet of ministers has stormed out of meetings, refusing to accept his authority -- like rats deserting the proverbial sinking ship. He has retaliated against them by firing the Minister of Intelligence and Security. Many hard-line clerics are advising the supreme leader to stop siding with Ahmadinejad and turn him into a scapegoat for the failed electoral process. They fear that the theocracy itself is in danger of being overturned by the people.

The Iranian fundamentalist theocracy is indeed in serious trouble. Events may appear to us, from outside Iran, to be sputtering. But we should recall that the last Iranian revolution took years to gain momentum, and then the actual uprising itself lasted one year. Even if he does take the oath of office next week with Supreme Leader Khamenei's blessings, Ahmadinejad will experience an uphill struggle to make Iran function successfully as a nation state, to regain the trust of Iran's people, and to prevent an internally-generated revolution. At the same time, he will have to deal with, stall, or face off the West on nuclear weapons, terrorism, and Middle East peace. It's likely to be a gloomy, stressful inauguration day in Tehran.

Christopher Herbert and Victoria Kataoka Rebuffet: Weekly Foreign Affairs Roundup

2009-07-24T17:53:48Z

The Week's Top Stories in Foreign Affairs :

The Geopolitical Importance of Syria

SI Analysis: Engagement with Syria seems to be a priority for many different parties with varying and vying interest of late. There have been ongoing discussions by the US and Israel considering opening talks with Damascus on issues as varied as economic expansion, resolving the conflict over the Golan Heights and curbing the transfer of arms and support to Hezbollah and Hamas. But Washington and Tel Aviv are not alone. Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr expressed a desire to create an Arab alliance with Damascus on a visit with President Bashir Assad, suggesting he is interested in other regional alliances that will fill the vacuum left by the US as it continues to withdraw. Russia too reiterated its interest to reopen a Soviet-era naval base in the Mediterranean port town on Tartus, (though in light of Russia's dwindling reserves, it remains to be seen whether this can be accomplished). And Turkey announced its intentions to pursue a strategic agreement with Damascus, a significant change for two countries who were on the brink of war only a decade ago. Geopolitical maneuvering is in full swing in the region as the US withdraws from Iraq and as Iran continues its effort to expand its regional influence. Israel will certainly be uneasy that such developments may compromise its security.

Indian Seduction

SI Analysis: US Secretary of State Clinton returned from India after securing nuclear, defense, seucity, energy, space and arms agreements. India is gleeful that the Bush-era policy -- that overlooked its status as a non-signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty -- remains for all intensive purposes in effect. This is because the US needs India as an ally: to pursue peace talks with Pakistan and wants to secure its alliance as a counter-force to China's growth in Asia.

Speculation of the Week: Hezbollah sparking Lebanese-Israeli Tensions

SI Analysis: Rhetoric on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border has been growing in recent weeks and most recently there have been reports of skirmishes on and around the border. This is a follow-up to the arrest and break-up of a massive alleged Israeli spy ring in Lebanon, over a month ago. While some analysts suggest that Israel is reeling and therefore a bit jumpy since its intelligence network has been greatly undermined. Lebanon has expressed surprisingly unified concern of late for its security and territorial integrity with regards to Israel. Israel however is eager that UN Interim Force (UNIFIL) proceed with its mandate to disarm Hezbollah. What is important to note here however is that things are different in Lebanon from two years ago when conflict broke out between Hezbollah and Israel: Lebanon is more politically stable and more politically unified. Even the pro-Western March 14th Coalition leadership has expressed concern about Israel's recent activity along the border. What this means is that if a conflict were to erupt it would pit Israel against the whole of Lebanon and not just the very heavily re-armed southern-based Shia minority, which could lead to an all-out war. Aware of this, Hezbollah is playing a high-stakes bluff with Israel: the current tension has been contrived by Hezbollah to avoid disarmament and inspections. Expect more of this.

Hodge-Podge/Under-the-Radar

Somalia Conflict Causing Regional Concern

SI Analysis: Kenya expressed concern over the increased number of Somali refugees in Kenyan camps. Moreover, analysts say that the border with Kenya is porous allowing for a flow of militants and arms to continue to nourish the conflict and risk its spread throughout the whole Horn of Africa.

Careful US Policy on Ukraine and Georgia

SI Analysis: US VP Biden traveled to Ukraine and Georgia to reassure the former Soviet states of US support of their fledgling democracies. However rhetoric was much toned down from the previous administration, notably not calling for immediate NATO expansion.

Turkish Trials

SI Analysis: The ongoing conflict between Army-backed secularists and the former Islamists-leadership regained headlines as Turkey begins a retrials of members of the army accused of plotting a coup against the government led by President Abdul Gul and PM Recip Erdogan, whose AKP party has links to an Islamist past.

War Reports:

SI Analysis on Afghanistan and Pakistan: Independent militias fighting the Taliban in the Pakistani region of Dir request aid from the Pakistani military, but it unclear whether Pakistan is willing or able to provide such assistance. Afghan security forces have made significant progress in competency of late, as illustrated in the recent thwarting suicide bomb attempts.

SI Analysis on Iraq: The security transition from the US to Iraq under the terms of the bilateral security pact is all in all going well. Notably, Iraqi security forces are making extra efforts to protect the Christian minorities who have been under attack of late. Elections in the Kurdish provinces of Dahuk, Sulaimaniya and Erbi will be held on Saturday.

To go to Simple Intelligence, click here.

Hezbollah Converts Lebanese Homes Into Secret Weapons Warehouses: Israel

2009-07-16T11:29:48Z

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is estimating that Hezbollah has converted hundreds of homes in southern Lebanon into secret warehouses for storing rockets, the Jerusalem Post reports.

The IDF's estimation came in the wake of an explosion in the area on Tuesday morning which is believed to have been a cache exploding in a house.

The Post reports that UNIFIL, the UN peace keeping forces in Lebanon, said such storage of munitions is a "serious violation" of the UN resolution that ended the 2006 Lebanese conflict.

Israeli officials also criticized the stashed weapons, telling the Jerusalem Post that it is evidence of Israel's "longstanding claim that Hezbollah uses civilian infrastructure to hide its weaponry."

UNIFIL and the Lebanese army are conducting investigations into Tuesday's bombing, Reuters reports.

Reuters writes that Hezbollah had no comment on Tuesday's explosion.

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