U.S. and Iran Face Common Enemies in Mideast Strife: they find themselves on the same side of a range of regional issues surrounding an insurgency raging across the Middle East

U.S. and Iran Face Common Enemies in Mideast Strife: they find themselves on the same side of a range of regional issues surrounding an insurgency raging across the Middle East

    Tuesday, January 07, 2014   No comments

By THOMAS ERDBRINK
TEHRAN — Even as the United States and Iran pursue negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program, they find themselves on the same side of a range of regional issues surrounding an insurgency raging across the Middle East.

While the two governments quietly continue to pursue their often conflicting interests, they are being drawn together by their mutual opposition to an international movement of young Sunni fighters, who with their pickup trucks and Kalashnikovs are raising the black flag of Al Qaeda along sectarian fault lines in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

The United States, reluctant to intervene in bloody, inconclusive conflicts, is seeing its regional influence decline, while Iraq, which cost the Americans $1 trillion and more than 4,000 lives, is growing increasingly unstable.

At the same time, Shiite-dominated Iran, the magnetic pole for the Shiite minority in the region, has its own reasons to be nervous, with the ragtag army of Sunni militants threatening Syria and Iraq, both important allies, and the United States drawing down its troops in Afghanistan.

On Monday, Iran offered to join the United States in sending military aid to the Shiite government in Baghdad, which is embroiled in street-to-street fighting with radical Sunni militants in Anbar Province, a Sunni stronghold. On Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry said he could envision an Iranian role in the coming peace conference on Syria, even though the meeting is supposed to plan for a Syria after the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, an important Iranian ally.

To some, the Iranian moves reflect the clever pragmatism of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, aimed at building their country into a regional power. To others critical of the potential reconciliation, the moves are window dressing aimed at lulling the West into complacency while Tehran pursues nuclear weapons and supports its own jihadists throughout the region.
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The Moral Case for Ending America's Cold War with Iran: The stakes are higher than restraining Tehran's nuclear program; Improved relations may be our last best hope of ending the Syrian civil war

The Moral Case for Ending America's Cold War with Iran: The stakes are higher than restraining Tehran's nuclear program; Improved relations may be our last best hope of ending the Syrian civil war

    Monday, January 06, 2014   No comments

The debate over a final nuclear deal with Iran can be mind-numbingly technical. To what percentage will Tehran be allowed to enrich uranium? What rules will govern inspections of its nuclear sites? Which sanctions will be lifted and how?

But to a large extent, that debate misses the point. Yes, an agreement may contain Iran’s nuclear program somewhat. Yes, it could make the program more transparent. But deal or no deal, Iran will be a threshold nuclear power, able to build a nuke relatively quickly whenever it wants. (Attacking Iran, according to experts like former Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin, would only speed that process up). One day, I suspect, the people obsessing about the details of an Iranian nuclear deal will look a bit like the people who obsessed about the details of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. in 1987. In retrospect, what mattered wasn’t the number of ballistic and cruise missiles each side dismantled. What mattered was ending the cold war.

When the cold war ended, America and the Soviet Union stopped viewing every third-world regime as a chess piece in their global struggle. They realized that by fueling civil wars in countries like Angola and Nicaragua, they were wasting money and subsidizing murder. Once the world’s superpowers scaled back their arms sales and began urging their former proxies to reach political agreements, some of the world’s most horrific wars stopped.

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'Chance of a Century': International Investors Flock to Tehran

'Chance of a Century': International Investors Flock to Tehran

    Saturday, January 04, 2014   No comments

By Susanne Koelbl
Since the West reached a landmark deal with Iran on its controversial nuclear program late last year, many Iranians are hoping for an end to sanctions. Western companies are also gearing up do big business.

Daniel Bernbeck has learned that in Tehran there's no point getting worked up about things like the gridlock between Gholhak, his neighborhood in the northern part of the city, and downtown, where his office is located. Here he is again, stuck in traffic, with everyone honking their horns. Tehran is a murderous city, says Bernbeck, even without international sanctions and threats of attack from Israel.

Bernbeck is sitting in a gray SUV. He's a wiry, tall blond man who wears lawyer-like glasses. The only departure from the standard business look is a narrow soul patch on his chin, which suggests a certain degree of individualism. His cell phone rings. Bernbeck's Iranian secretary is on the line. She's expecting him, and the deputy German ambassador has also arrived, along with two investment bankers from London and Hong Kong. They are asking about stock tips for Iran.

"Iranian stocks for Hong Kong?" Bernbeck exclaims with a grin, and then says in his best Farsi: "The same bankers would have said a year ago: You're crazy." Then he asks the driver to hurry up, although it doesn't do any good.

Bernbeck is the head of the German-Iranian Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Tehran. He paves the way for business ties in a country where Western politicians have been trying for decades to make such relationships impossible, especially since 2006.

At the time, the Islamic Republic started to rapidly expand its nuclear program. Intelligence agencies predicted that it would be only a matter of a few years before the Iranians had a nuclear bomb. Arab Gulf states in the region felt threatened, and Israel was determined to go to war with Tehran if a political solution could not be found quickly.

For over five years now, Bernbeck, 50, has been living between these two adversarial worlds, more specifically "on the dark side of Mars, where the cannibals and Holocaust deniers live." Bernbeck says that's how Iran is portrayed in the West.
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Sunni monarchs back YouTube hate preachers: Anti-Shia propaganda threatens a sectarian civil war which will engulf the entire Muslim world

Sunni monarchs back YouTube hate preachers: Anti-Shia propaganda threatens a sectarian civil war which will engulf the entire Muslim world

    Tuesday, December 31, 2013   No comments

Anti-Shia hate propaganda spread by Sunni religious figures sponsored by, or based in, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, is creating the ingredients for a sectarian civil war engulfing the entire Muslim world. Iraq and Syria have seen the most violence, with the majority of the 766 civilian fatalities in Iraq this month being Shia pilgrims killed by suicide bombers from the al-Qa'ida umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis). The anti-Shia hostility of this organisation, now operating from Baghdad to Beirut, is so extreme that last month it had to apologise for beheading one of its own wounded fighters in Aleppo – because he was mistakenly believed to have muttered the name of Shia saints as he lay on a stretcher.

At the beginning of December, al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula killed 53 doctors and nurses and wounded 162 in an attack on a hospital in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, which had been threatened for not taking care of wounded militants by a commentator on an extreme Sunni satellite TV station. Days before the attack, he announced that armies and tribes would assault the hospital "to take revenge for our brothers. We say this and, by the grace of Allah, we will do it".

Skilled use of the internet and access to satellite television funded by or based in Sunni states has been central to the resurgence of al-Qa'ida across the Middle East, to a degree that Western politicians have so far failed to grasp. In the last year, Isis has become the most powerful single rebel military force in Iraq and Syria, partly because of its ability to recruit suicide bombers and fanatical fighters through the social media. Western intelligence agencies, such as the NSA in the US, much criticised for spying on the internet communications of their own citizens, have paid much less attention to open and instantly accessible calls for sectarian murder that are in plain view. Critics say that this is in keeping with a tradition since 9/11 of Western governments not wishing to hold Saudi Arabia or the Gulf monarchies responsible for funding extreme Sunni jihadi groups and propagandists supporting them through private donations.

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Glenn Greenwald: U.S., British Media Are 'Devoted Servants' To Government

Glenn Greenwald: U.S., British Media Are 'Devoted Servants' To Government

    Monday, December 30, 2013   No comments

Journalist Glenn Greenwald did not hold back Friday in criticizing the media during a speech about his work with Edward Snowden.

Greenwald, who reported on the National Security Agency's secret domestic surveillance programs with the help of documents leaked by the former NSA contractor, spoke to the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany, via satellite from Brazil. According to Russia Today, he denounced journalists in the United States and Britain, accusing them of failing to challenge those in political power and of discrediting anyone who dared to do so.

“[W]e knew in particular that one of our most formidable adversaries was not simply going to be the intelligence agencies on which we were reporting and who we were trying to expose, but also their most loyal, devoted servants, which calls itself the United States and British media," Greenwald said.

He said that the NSA programs came to light "almost entirely without them and despite them." Their role as journalists, Greenwald claimed, "is not to be adversarial, their role is to be loyal spokespeople to those powerful factions that they pretend to exercise oversight."

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Al Qaeda-linked Yusuf Al Qadi and Osama Khoutub, who are among suspects in a major graft probe, has reportedly fled Turkey after the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) blocked a police raid on Wednesday as İstanbul police didn't comply with orders of prosecutors to detain several suspects in the second leg of the investigation

Al Qaeda-linked Yusuf Al Qadi and Osama Khoutub, who are among suspects in a major graft probe, has reportedly fled Turkey after the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) blocked a police raid on Wednesday as İstanbul police didn't comply with orders of prosecutors to detain several suspects in the second leg of the investigation

    Thursday, December 26, 2013   No comments

Gulen and Erdogan now at odds

The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office has ordered the detention of 30 suspects, including a number of deputies and businessmen. The İstanbul Police Department, which saw an extensive purge of its top officers over the last week, has not complied with the order, however.

News reports suggest that when the list of 30 suspects leaked to media on Wednesday, some of the suspects took precautionary measures to avoid any allegation in case of a police raid to their houses and offices.

And some suspects fled Turkey, including al Qaeda's Turkey operatives Yusuf Al Qadi and Osama Khoutub after government blocked the investigation through newly appointed police chiefs who didn't comply with court decision.

Prosecutor Muammer Akkaş who was leading the second round of the probe was taken away from the case. “All my colleagues and the public should know that as a public prosecutor I was prevented from carrying out the investigation,” the prosecutor said in a statement on Thursday, adding that pressure had clearly been placed on the judiciary both from the Public Prosecutor's Office and the police, allowing an opportunity for suspects to destroy the evidence.

Akkaş said although he issued detention and search warrants for the suspects and relayed these to the İstanbul Police Department on Wednesday morning, the police department had not complied with his orders.

"By not implementing the court decisions, police chiefs committed a crime. An opportunity was given to suspects to take measures, escape or mitigate the evidence," he said.

Saudi businessman Al Qadi's assests was frozen in Turkey after he was named as financer of terrorism in international community. News reports point out that the al Qaeda suspect is allowed to enter Turkey freely and has access to high-level diplomats and security officials, including the Undersecretary of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Hakan Fidan.

According to claims, former Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin, who left his post on Wednesday in a major Cabinet reshuffle, asked İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor to close the case.

The Home Secretary: revoked the British citizenship of 20 people this year to prevent the return of dual-nationals who have gone to fight in Syria

The Home Secretary: revoked the British citizenship of 20 people this year to prevent the return of dual-nationals who have gone to fight in Syria

    Monday, December 23, 2013   No comments

Secret use of citizenship-stripping powers has been dramatically stepped up as Theresa May moves to prevent the return of dual-nationals who have gone to fight in Syria.

The Home Secretary has so far revoked the British citizenship of 20 people this year – more than in her previous two- and-a-half years combined.

She has removed the citizenship of 37 people since May 2010, according to figures collated by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Critics warned the practice could leave individuals at risk of torture and ill-treatment in their home countries.

Security sources are particularly alarmed because Syria’s proximity to Europe makes it easier for violent UK-based extremists to travel to and from the country.

A former senior Foreign Office official said it was an “open secret” that British nationals fighting in the Syrian civil war were increasingly losing their citizenship.

He told the Bureau: “This [deprivation of citizenship] is happening. There are somewhere between 40 and 240 Brits in Syria, and we are probably not as quick as we should be to strip their citizenship.”

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AKP corruption probe: Turkey's recent past is filled with political parties that were swept to power thanks to their promises to root out corruption in the country but which disappeared from the political scene due to claims of corruption and fraud in their own ranks

AKP corruption probe: Turkey's recent past is filled with political parties that were swept to power thanks to their promises to root out corruption in the country but which disappeared from the political scene due to claims of corruption and fraud in their own ranks

    Sunday, December 22, 2013   No comments

Corruption, a large and troublesome problem for Turkey, led to the demise of several governments in the past and analysts warn that the same fate might await the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), some of whose members have been targeted as part of a major bribery and fraud operation along with dozens of businessmen and bureaucrats, unless the party proves itself “clean.”
Turkey's recent past is filled with political parties that were swept to power thanks to their promises to root out corruption in the country but which disappeared from the political scene due to claims of corruption and fraud in their own ranks.

“Turkish people are very sensitive about corruption. They consider corruption to be ‘exploiting the poor and orphans.' Many political parties suffered losses in their votes and power due to claims of corruption and fraud. Furthermore, some others were shut down due to the same claims,” stated Nazlı Ilıcak, a veteran journalist, in remarks to Sunday's Zaman.

On Dec. 17, İstanbul and Ankara police staged dawn raids and detained over 50 people as part of a major investigation into claims of corruption and bribery. Among the detainees were bureaucrats, well-known businesspeople and the sons of three ministers. Allegations emerged that several ministers were also implicated in bribery. The suspects are accused of rigging state tenders, accepting and facilitating bribes for major urbanization projects, obtaining construction permits for protected land areas in exchange for money, helping foreigners to obtain Turkish citizenship through falsified documents, involvement in export fraud, forgery of documents and gold smuggling. There are also claims that the suspects illegally sold historical artifacts that were unearthed during excavations of the Marmaray underwater rail project that connects Europe and Asia.

The corruption and bribery investigation drew a harsh reaction from the AK Party and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan defined it as a “dirty operation” against the government. Twenty-nine senior police officials from the İstanbul and Ankara police departments who had been ordered by the prosecutor's office to conduct the investigation were immediately removed from their posts and two new prosecutors were appointed to the investigation. The removals and the appointment of new prosecutors led to comments from legal experts that efforts were under way to impede the investigation.

In addition, the graft investigation brought up questions about the government's ability to fight corruption.

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Masked Army: Jihadist Group Expands Rapidly in Syria

Masked Army: Jihadist Group Expands Rapidly in Syria

    Thursday, December 19, 2013   No comments

The sender was unidentified, but the young engineer knew who the email was from as soon as he opened the attachment. Beneath a picture of the brutally mutilated corpse of Muhannad Halaibna, a civil rights activist known throughout the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, was a single sentence: "Are you sad now about your friend?"

Mere hours later, the engineer and 20 other members of the Syrian opposition -- doctors, city council members and activists -- escaped from Raqqa into Turkey. They weren't fleeing Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, but a new and terrible power that has no face and goes by many names. The official name of this al-Qaida branch, which has broken away from Osama Bin Laden's successors, is the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS). "Daaisch" is the most common abbreviation of the group's name in Syria. "But we call them the Army of Masks," says Basil, the engineer who fled the country, "because their men rarely show their faces. They dress in black, with their faces covered."

In addition to civil rights activist Halaibna, the group's thugs have kidnapped hundreds of others in Raqqa, where Assad's army was driven out back in March. The jihadists seized the chair of the city council, the heads of the civilian opposition, an Italian Jesuit and six European journalists. Anyone who opposes the ISIS fighters, or who is simply considered an unbeliever, disappears.

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Up to 11,000 Foreign Fighters in Syria; Steep Rise Among Western Europeans

Up to 11,000 Foreign Fighters in Syria; Steep Rise Among Western Europeans

    Wednesday, December 18, 2013   No comments

The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation offers its latest assessment of how many foreigners are fighting in Syria's civil war, which countries they hail from, and other key data.

Since ICSR published its first estimate in April, the issue of foreign fighters in Syria has become a major concern for Western governments. More reports have emerged since, though few have accurately gauged the full extent and evolution of the phenomenon.

This ICSR Insight provides an update of our April estimate, offering the most comprehensive and richly resourced account of the Syrian foreign fighter phenomenon from open sources. Based on more than 1,500 sources, we estimate that up to 11,000 individuals from 74 nations have become opposition fighters in Syria -- nearly double our previous estimate. Among Western Europeans, the number has more than tripled from (up to) 600 in April to 1,900 now.

HOW MANY HAVE GONE?
We estimate that -- from late 2011 to 10 December 2013 -- between 3,300 and 11,000 individuals have gone to Syria to fight against the Assad government. These figures include those who are currently present as well as those who have since returned home, been arrested or killed.

Based on the credibility of various sources, our own judgement, and the feedback we have received since publishing our April estimate, we believe the "true" figure to be above 8,500. This would mean that the numbers have nearly doubled since April, with a particularly steep increase among non-Arabs, especially Westerners.

While Arabs and Europeans continue to represent the bulk of foreign fighters (up to 80 per cent), we have identified individuals from Southeast Asia, North America, Australia, and (non-Arab) Africa. Overall, we believe that residents and citizens from at least 74 countries have joined militant opposition groups in Syria.

(For a more detailed explanation on sources and limitations, see further below.)

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