Summaries here and here and here. Also this.

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Oil-related news:

Guided by American legal advisers, the Iraqi government has canceled a controversial development contract with the Russian company Lukoil for a vast oil field in Iraq’s southern desert, freeing it up for potential international investment in the future.

In response, Russian authorities have threatened to revoke a 2004 deal with creditor nations to forgive $13 billion in Iraqi debt, a senior Iraqi official said. Article

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Perhaps just a grab to take credit for the handwriting on the tinderbox wall?

Iran has urged Iraq to postpone a divisive referendum to decide the fate of Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city that sits on giant oil fields, as part of a series of measures to stabilize the country.

The plan was presented on Saturday by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at a meeting of Iraq’s neighbors in Istanbul but was little noticed amid the frantic diplomacy to avert a Turkish incursion into Iraq to hunt down separatist rebels. Iran’s official IRNA news agency said Mottaki proposed a two-year delay for the referendum, due by Dec. 31, which will decide whether the city is incorporated into Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdistan region. An Iranian official familiar with the plan said Tehran believed Baghdad was already juggling too many divisive political issues, including how to share oil revenues equitably. Kirkuk was seen as one hot potato too many.

[snip]

Under the constitution, the referendum is due to be held by the end of the year, but the government has made no preparations, including holding a census. While everyone agrees it is now too late to hold the referendum by Dec. 31, the government has yet to make an announcement postponing it and setting a new date.

But, asked whether the referendum would be held on time, Dabbagh said: “I don’t expect that. Because of the security situation in Kirkuk we have not done a census, which needs to be done before a referendum.” Senior Kurdish politician Najat Hasan, from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said a delay of a month or two was acceptable, but any longer would be a “gross violation of the constitution.” Article

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Zakho: On edge; first in the line of fire.

Analysis du jour.

Of course the push for tougher sanctions shortens the distance to war, and make it more likely, for a simple reason: Those pushing for them see the sanctions as a “last hope” for something they curiously dub “diplomacy”, failing which force becomes the “only alternative.” But there won’t be tougher sanctions, and not because of the commercial interests of those like Russia and China that oppose them. The reason there won’t be tougher sanctions is that most of the international community recognizes two things: The balance of power in the region is such that Iran is unlikely to respond to pressure and ultimatums over its nuclear program (nor, for that matter, is it likely to be deterred by air strikes, for which it will surely retaliate and extract a heavy price from the U.S. and its allies). Second, and, even more important, most of the international community rejects the very premise that Iran’s nuclear program represents an imminent threat that can only be dealt with by tougher sanctions or military action.

[snip]

Whereas the mainstream media appears to have taken as read largely unsubstantiated claims about Iran’s nuclear program representing an existential threat to Israel and others, and similarly unsubstantiated claims about Iran’s role in Iraq (which has lately become the Bush Administration’s fallacy d’jour in explaining its failures there), more sober heads begin the discussion by asking whether Iran’s nuclear program actually represent a threat, and if so, is it a threat of sufficient magnitude to justify the risk of potentially catastrophic consequences that military action would carry. And if not, are there options besides war and sanctions for responding to Iran’s undoubted growth as a regional power in the wake of – and as a result of – the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, has acknowledged behind closed doors that even if Iran had nuclear weapons, they would not, repeat NOT, pose an existential threat to Israel. Other top Israeli security officials have said the same thing. Yet Bush and the neocons are left unchallenged when they spin this line.

In an outstanding column in Newsweek two weeks ago, Zakaria did what few mainstream media figures are prepared to do when the President glibly tells Americans that the sky will fall unless they do his bidding – eschewing the deference that so often characterizes the media corps’ approach to the Bush Administration, Zakaria leaves his readers in no doubt that he thinks the President of the United States is a bullsh**ter, and a dangerous one at that. …

[snip]…Tehran insists it has no intention of building nuclear weapons, and the IAEA has repeatedly made clear that it has seen no evidence that Iran’s program is intended for weaponization. (The issue between the IAEA, and then the UN Security Council, and Iran is its failure to comply properly with transparency requirements over its past activities. Although the Security Council has demanded that Iran cease uranium enrichment until those concerns are resolved, it has not demanded that Iran abandon its right to enrich uranium, because that would contradict the NPT.) So the issue, really, is that the U.S. and its allies don’t trust Iran enough to allow it a full-cycle nuclear energy program, because this gives it the potential to build nuclear weapons if it opted out of the NPT. In its own negotiating efforts via the Europeans, Tehran has previously sought to find a formula under which it would abrogate its right to opt out of the NPT, although those negotiations are going nowhere right now.

Still, assume for a moment Iran did actually use its nuclear energy infrastructure to build a weapon – which it could potentially do, although it would probably take more than five years from now – even then, is Iran really a doomsday threat?

Zakaria has systematically demolished the claims by the war lobby that Iran is beyond negotiation and deterrence, because it is somehow driven by nutty apocalyptic religious zeal, and pointed out that it is the U.S. that has actually refused to negotiate when the Iranians have made decent offers.…

[snip]

…it’s the absence of real diplomacy by the Administration, not some false choice between sanctions or air strikes, that should be the focus of the media’s – and the Democratic presidential candidates’ – discussion of Iran. Article

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Shining light on the not so hidden hand of the promulgators of brutality as primacy.

Vice President Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative allies in the George W Bush administration only began agitating for the use of military force against Iran once they had finally given up the illusion that regime change in Iran would happen without it.

And they did not give up the illusion until late 2005, according to a former high-level Foreign Service officer who participated in United States discussions with Iran from 2001 until late 2005.

Hillary Mann, who was the director for Persian Gulf and Afghanistan Affairs on the National Security Council (NSC) staff in 2003 and later on the State Department’s Policy Planning staff, observes that the key to neo-conservative policy views on Iran until 2006 was the firm belief that one of the consequences of a successful display of US military force in Iraq would be to shake the foundations of the Iranian regime.

[snip]

In November 2001, General Wesley Clark, who had recently retired from his post as head of the US Southern Command, learned from a general he knew in the Pentagon that a memo had just come down from the office of the secretary of defense outlining the objective of the “take down” of seven Middle Eastern regimes over five years.

The plan would start with the invasion of Iraq, and then go after Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan, according to an account in Clark’s 2003 book, Winning Modern Wars. The memo indicated the plan was to “come back and get Iran in five years”.

[snip]

By the end of 2005, however, the neo-cons had finally accepted the reality of the failure of the Bush administration’s military intervention in Iraq, according to Mann. She also notes that the electoral victory of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, representing a new breed of nationalist conservative with a base of popular support, in the June 2005 presidential election, spelled the “death knell” for neo-con optimism about regime change in Iran.

Mann observes that the neo-cons had never given up the idea of using force against Iran, but they had argued that less force would be needed in Iran than had been used in Iraq. By early 2006, however, that assumption was being discarded by prominent neo-conservatives.

[snip]

Neo-conservatives aligned with Cheney argued that Iran was now threatening US dominance in the region, through its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territory and its nuclear program. They insisted that the administration had to push back by targeting Iran’s Quds Force personnel in Iraq, increasing the naval presence in the Gulf and accusing Iran of supporting the killing of US troops. Article

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Noted FYI:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said here on Sunday that the increase of U.S. spy plane flights over Iran’s southern borders is a clear violation of international law and the Islamic Republic’s territorial integrity. Article

What’s up.

Lots going on.

#1 — not yet opening Pandora’s box, but removing its wrapping paper.

Turkish warplanes and troops attacked Kurdish rebels inside Iraq this week, security sources said on Wednesday, but Ankara wants to hold back from any major incursion for now to give diplomacy a chance.

Turkey moved more troops to the mountainous Iraqi border, keeping up pressure on Baghdad to honour promises to crack down on an estimated 3 000 rebels of Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who use northern Iraq as a base.

Security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a series of sorties between Sunday and Tuesday evening in which Turkish warplanes flew 20km into Iraq and some 300 ground troops advanced about 10km.

[snip]

The Turkish official described as a “final chance” for diplomacy a planned visit by an Iraqi delegation to Ankara on Thursday. At Turkey’s request, the team will be headed by Iraqi Defence Minister General Abdel Qader Jassim. It will also include Iraqi National Security Minister Shirwan al Waeli.

[snip]

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday she had told Erdogan on Sunday that she took the situation “extremely seriously”.

“Iraq should not be a place where terrorism can hurt Turkey,” she said. “We have a list of things that we believe, if they are undertaken, will help to deal with this situation,” she added, citing Iraq’s pledge to close PKK offices there. [Pants on fire, Condi, and not even a barely credible bluff. Where was this mysterious “list” and any — even partial — discussion or implementation of it over the past 4½ years? — voxd] Article

A bit more here, and also some info here and here.

#2 — veritable tons of chaff; little if any wheat

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on Wednesday denied telling Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan that Baghdad might agree to hand over Kurdish rebel leaders hiding out in northern Iraq to Ankara.

[snip]

Earlier a senior Turkish Foreign Ministry official in Ankara said Talabani had made the offer to Babacan. Talabani has previously said Iraq would never hand over any Kurds to Turkey. Article

#3 — a government at odds with itself.

Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman described on Wednesday the Iraqi government’s stance on the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) crisis as weak and “irresponsible” and denied Turkish accusations of financing the party’s activities in northern Iraq.

“We express our great regret at the government’s stance on the PKK,” Othman, a Kurdistan Coalition (KC) member of parliament, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI), adding “The government’s labeling of the PKK as a terrorist party is far from reality.”

[snip]

According to Othman, the Turkish and U.S. governments agreed that a military incursion into northern Iraq to track down PKK separatists is the solution to the crisis. “The Turkish foreign minister’s visit to Iraq yesterday was part of a diplomatic protocol…It does not necessary indicate peace or a desire to initiate dialogue on controversial points,” Othman indicated.

[snip]

Claiming that the decision was made “behind closed doors,” the Kurdish parliamentarian said “the United States is a primary driver in the decision.”

“We warn against any military action because it will add to the complexity of the situation and create more enemies for the United States and Turkey. They have to reconsider their policies,” Othman explained. Article

#4:

In Baghdad, politicians acknowledged that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki lacked the political and military muscle needed to fulfill his pledge to crack down on rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, who last week killed 12 Turkish soldiers and captured eight in an ambush in Turkey.

Iraqi Kurdish officials indicated that they were unlikely to help in any crackdown, with the regional government’s spokesman denying that there are PKK bases in northern Iraq.

“We believe that the statements of Mr. Maliki about closing the centers of the PKK don’t apply to us because we do not have any centers,” the spokesman, Jamal Abdullah, said.

“If Mr. Maliki knows about any centers of the PKK in areas under the control of the central government, let him close these centers and we will encourage and support him. But in areas under our control, there is not a single center.”

[snip]

Wednesday’s raids were the first time Turkey has sent planes into Iraqi airspace since its parliament last week authorized an invasion of Iraq to stop PKK attacks, which have claimed hundreds of lives in Turkey.

The raids came a day after Maliki sought to defuse tensions by publicly calling the PKK as a terrorist organization and banning it from operating in Iraq.

But politicians said that Maliki has no means to enforce the ban in Iraq’s Kurdish region, which operates virtually as an independent country, flying its own flag and signing its own deals with foreign investors. In recent interviews with McClatchy Newspapers, regional officials have said that they have little interest in tangling with the PKK.

“He (Maliki) really can’t do anything about it,” said Mahmud Ali Othman, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi parliament. “I think it’s just words he’s using to satisfy the Turks. He hasn’t thought about how he’s going to implement it.”

Othman said he believed that Maliki’s ban on the PKK will only create tension between Iraq’s central government and the Kurdish region. “It will create problems,” Othman said. “It was a mistake to give promises when, really, he can’t do anything.”

The spokesman for the Kurdish region’s security force, the peshmerga militia, emphasized that local Kurdish officials, not the government in Baghdad, would decide whether to go after the PKK.

“The peshmerga gets its orders from the presidency of the Kurdistan region, not the Iraqi minister of defense,” Maj. Gen. Jabbar Yawir said. He rejected placing the regional army under the direct command of the central government. Article

#5 — adding a cold shoulder to hot pursuit.

Turkey is considering economic sanctions against Kurd groups which are backing the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels based in northern Iraq. Turkey’s powerful National Security Council (MGK) made the suggestion in a statement issued late Wednesday after a six-hour meeting of the country’s powerful security body.

“It has been decided to recommend to the government that they take economic measures against the Kurds who support, directly or indirectly, the separatist organization (PKK),” said the statement. However, the MGK statement did not say what measures should betaken or which groups would be targeted. Article

A tad more:

The MGK statement followed a six-hour meeting, chaired by President Abdullah Gul. Erdogan and General and Yasar Buyukanit also attended the meeting. Article

Also:

Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Hilmi Guler said on Wednesday that Turkey has not yet decided to cut power supply to Iraq, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.

Asked if Turkey would cut electricity to north of Iraq as a retaliatory measure for Iraq, which has hitherto failed to effectively stop cross-border attacks launched by the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) based in north Iraq, Guler said Turkey supplies electricity to Iraq, not north of Iraq.

“Electricity is supplied to Iraq in accordance with Turkish foreign policy and it is not cheaper than the electricity sold in Turkey,” Guler was quoted by Anatolia as saying.

“Our power supply to Iraq is considered as a favor to north of Iraq. I would like to correct this mistake. We do not supply electricity to terrorist organization PKK,” the minister underlined.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday during his visit in London that Turkey may impose “some sanctions with respect to some goods we export to Iraq.

He did not specify what might be embargoed but mentioned Turkey had been helping Iraq with water, power, fuel and food. Article

#6 — Misleading as it ignores or chooses not to mention the joint security agreement regarding Kurdish cross-border affairs in and out of northern Iraq which by direct action impact either country’s soil, signed by Turkey and Iran some time ago. Other than that, some decent info.

Iran’s radical Islamic government, eager to expand its regional influence and resist U.S. efforts to isolate it, is wooing the Turks by showcasing its bombardment of the camps of Kurdish fighters along its border, according to experts on the region.

The Iranians draw a pointed contrast between their willingness to act and what Turks see as a failure by the U.S. and its Iraqi partners to move against other Kurdish camps in northern Iraq.

[snip]

“If the Turks make a serious incursion into northern Iraq, a fairly deep penetration, it would be very serious,” said retired Army General Jay Garner, who headed U.S. relief efforts for Kurds in northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War and served as the first U.S. occupation administrator in Baghdad in 2003. “It’s an incredibly difficult situation we’re all in.”

While the impact of the crisis on Iranian-Turkish relations has received relatively little attention in the U.S., it represents a serious challenge to Bush’s policy of reining in Iran, experts say.

[snip]

The Iranians are bombing Kurdish camps for their own reasons: The fighters based there — members of a PKK offshoot called the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK — often attack Iranian forces.

Still, the Iranians don’t hesitate to play up their actions with the Turks, said Barkey, who now heads the international relations department at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. “You see the Iranian ambassador giving interviews to Turkish journalists, saying that they go after the PKK and the Americans, who control Iraq, do not,” he said.

A senior U.S. defense official agreed that Iran has sought to capitalize on Turkish anger over the PKK attacks to expand its influence in Turkey.

The official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, added that there were many inherent limits on how much sway Iran would be able to gain in Turkey. The official said Turkish leaders share U.S. concerns about Iran’s nuclear program and its record on human rights.

Iran’s foreign ministry said Oct. 21 that “security cooperation” was essential to confronting the threat of cross- border Kurdish terrorism, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

Turkey is pursuing major energy deals with Iran over U.S. objections. It reached an accord with Iran in July to transport Iranian gas to Europe and to develop and extract gas from Iran’s South Pars field.

[snip]

The U.S. is studying alternative ways to move supplies in case its normal methods are hampered, the operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Carter Ham, said last week.

Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said one likely option would be to fly more supplies from U.S. bases in Germany.

Cordesman said Turkish officials aren’t eager to send forces into the rugged mountainous terrain of northern Iraq and prefer that the U.S. and Iraq act instead.

“Turkey has no great desire to go inside Iraq to fight a guerrilla war and perhaps get stuck there,” Cordesman said. “But Turkey is not a country that stands by if there is no response, and it is not famous for its patience.” Article

#7:

As Turks nationwide continue rushing to the streets on Wednesday to protest the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK)’s weekend attacks against the Turkisharmy, carrying and waving national flags of various sizes, flag vendors enjoy good business.

Along the streets of the Turkish capital, besides groceries and shops, vendors selling the red Turkish flags studded with a white moon and star can be seen almost everywhere.

[snip]

“Yes, it (business) is good,” was his simple answer when he was asked about his business, as he was still busy counting the money while unfolding more flags and hanging them on a string tied between two trees as the old ones are sold.

[snip]

From the biggest city of Istanbul to the southeastern province of Hakkari, tens of thousands of people took to the streets for the fourth day since Sunday’s attack, as was shown by local TV.

The processions looked like a flowing red river because of the Turkish flags carried by the protestors.

Two girls, Belily and Lale, from Anatolia high school in Ankaratold Xinhua that they hated the PKK, saying that it is an evil force and they support the government to take immediate actions to crack down on them though they call themselves the dissidents of the government.

Private Osman, who is now in charge of guarding the Anit Kabir Mausoleum, the resting place of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered founding father of the Turkish republic, said that he is anxiously waiting for his term here to end, which has 20 more days to go, so that he could sign up to go to the front and fight the PKK.

“It is a honor to guard our country and people and I am not afraid of death,” said the young soldier, a native from the central-western province of Eskisehir. Article

What’s up.

Any way you alice it, a major reshuffle (and a possible realignment).

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani has resigned, officials said Saturday, fuelling fears Tehran will take an even tougher line in the crisis with the West on its contested nuclear drive.

Analysts said the resignation of Larijani — a conservative but by no means a political ally of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — would help the Iranian president further consolidate his grip on policy-making.

Larijani is to be replaced by deputy foreign minister Saeed Jalili, the government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham announced. Jalili is seen, by contrast, as a close confidant of the president,

“Larijani had resigned several times and finally the president accepted his resignation,” state news agency IRNA quoted Elham as saying.

Jalili will take up his post, whose official title is secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, on Sunday, Ahmadinejad’s senior advisor Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi told IRNA.

However Larijani is to join his successor to participate in talks on Iran’s nuclear programme with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Rome on Tuesday, Elham said.

Rumours have been circulating in Iran for months that Larijani was at odds with Ahmadinejad over the hardline president’s confrontational style of presenting nuclear policy and had offered to resign.

[snip]

Larijani, who took on his post after Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005, has led two years of sensitive talks with EU officials over Iran’s nuclear programme.

He replaced the moderate negotiating team which had served under reformist president Mohammad Khatami and reversed the suspension of uranium enrichment that had been agreed with EU powers.

But Larijani’s wordy and relatively moderate rhetoric always contrasted starkly with the populist president’s confrontational and sometimes provocative statements on the nuclear standoff.

The resignation came a day after Ahmadinejad flatly contradicted a statement by Larijani that Russian President Vladimir Putin had made a proposal to Tehran over its nuclear programme during his landmark visit to Iran last week. Article

More — quickie overview and analysis:

Since his election in August 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has failed to keep most of his promises, especially in the economic field.

The firebrand leader has at all costs however clung to his political showpiece - Iran’s decisive and unanimously-backed atomic policy, which has set the Islamic republic on a collision course with the West owing to suspicion it is aimed at developing nuclear arms.

Therefore the resignations of six of his cabinet members - the central bank chief, the ministers for cooperatives, mines and metals, oil and social affairs as well as the vice-president and head of the planning and budget organization - attracted little international attention.

The resignation of his national security chief and top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani is however a major development, both at home and abroad, and looks set to harm the momentum of his atomic policies.

‘How can Ahmadinejad claim that the nuclear matter is a national issue and unanimously supported by 70 million Iranians if his top nuclear negotiator resigns?’ said a Western diplomat in Tehran.

Despite attracting global interest, state Iranian television only carried Larijani’s resignation as its third-ranked news item, indicating perhaps the government’s wish to play down its significance domestically.

[snip]

Little is known about Jalili except that he is one of the new faces in the foreign ministry and has a promising diplomatic career. Even local photographers had difficulty finding a file picture of the new man, whose job might even be more sensitive than that of the foreign minister.

Jalili is expected to lead the Iranian delegation in the talks with Solana on October 23 in Rome, although the National Security Council has not yet confirmed this. An alternative would be Larijani’s deputy, Javad Vaeidi, who also leads Iran in the talks with the IAEA.

‘Larijani’s resignation and Jalili’s appointment will have more internal rather than external impact as the nuclear issue is a state matter and therefore decided within a collective led by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,’ a political observer in Tehran said.

‘More important is how Ahmadinejad wants to explain to the public at home why his one of his most important men quit the president’s administration and a why political newcomer is taking charge of one of the country’s most sensitive jobs,’ he added.

Observers believe that Jalili is expected to adopt the same line with Solana as his predecessor, but many question whether he will have the same charisma and diplomatic skills as Larijani. Article

Petro-rubles flowing freely, Putin’s Russia flexes dormant muscles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin put forward a proposal to break the deadlock over Iran’s nuclear programme during his landmark visit to the Islamic republic, Iranian officials said on Wednesday.

The announcement came as Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani revealed he would be holding his latest round of talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to find a solution to the atomic standoff on Tuesday in Rome.

No further details were given on Putin’s proposal, which was made during his talks on Tuesday with Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Putin put forward a special suggestion during his meeting with the supreme leader,” said Larijani, adding the details would be given at a later date.

[snip]

Russia — which is helping to build Tehran’s first nuclear power plant — has a long-standing proposal to carry out Iran’s controversial uranium enrichment activities on its soil, something that Tehran has rejected.

It was not clear if the new proposal was linked to this.

[snip]

Meanwhile, Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency are to hold new talks next week as part of their agreement to clarify the agency’s technical questions about the Iranian nuclear drive. Article

A little more:

Iran is serious about its program of enriching uranium but will cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog and avoid adventurism, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told the visiting Russian president.

Khamenei made the comments during a meeting late Tuesday with President Vladimir Putin who presented the Iranian leader a proposal to solve the international standoff over Iran’s nuclear program which the U.S. and its allies believe is aimed at producing nuclear weapons.

[snip]

There are no official reports available on the contents of Putin’s message but officials close to hard-liners within the Iranian ruling Islamic establishment said the proposal could have been a “time-out” on sanctions if Tehran suspends uranium enrichment. Aticle

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Looking at the near abroad from a regional perspective, this piece offers a reminder of Iran’s satus as a novice in public international relations.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has experienced profound geopolitical changes in its regional neighbors during a short period of time. Five new countries were created on its northern borders after the fall of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s. The occupation of Afghanistan in 2001 on its eastern borders and the following occupation of Iraq on its western borders in 2003 led to radical changes in the structure of the regional system surrounding Iran.

Despite these violent transformations on its borders and its ability to exploit contradictions in the region to enhance its national interests, Iran’s negotiating experience after the revolution - despite all of this - numbers only two instances.

The first took place through intermediaries, with Washington, after the 1980 Iranian hostage crisis in Tehran, while the second occurred in the negotiations with the former Iraqi regime after the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988.

Thus, negotiations with the European troika (Germany, France and the UK) represent the most important negotiation experience in history of revolutionary Iran, which for the first time experienced very complex negotiations that had interrelated political and legal dimensions, along with technical and security dimensions. At the time, there were differences between the Foreign Ministry and the Iranian Nuclear Energy Agency over three basic items: responsibility for managing the negotiations, policies to be carried out during various phases of the negotiations, and setting negotiating priorities.

The former chief Iranian negotiator, Hassan Rouhani, revealed that these differences grew when the International Atomic Energy Agency asked for permission to inspect nuclear facilities. The Iranian Atomic Energy Agency did not give much importance to the request, while the Foreign Ministry felt the matter involved considerably more danger.

In short, Tehran realized that the complexity and importance of the negotiations required high-level official representation, and not allowing the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency to handle the negotiations alone. Since then, the center of Iranian decision-making on the nuclear issue has not been limited to the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency on Karkar street (Tehran’s biggest street, which extends from the metro station at the south to the north, in Amirabad).

In the middle of 2003, for the first time in the history of Iran’s nuclear program, responsibility for negotiations were transferred to Iran’s National Security Council and saw Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency become a mere junior partner in a process that featured interconnected technical and legal dimensions, behind the political and security considerations.

The National Security Council inherited the prerogatives of its predecessor, the Higher Council for National Defense, which was established in 1979, by virtue of Article 110 of the Iranian Constitution that followed the revolution. At the time it was made up of seven people: the president of the Republic, the prime minister, the minister of defense, the chief of staff, the general commander of the Republican Guards, and two advisors to the spiritual guide of the Republic. After the Constitution was amended in 1989 to match the change at the top after the death of Imam Khomeini and his succession by Sayyed Ali Khameini, the Council’s situation changed as well. This was because the spiritual guide of the Republic sits atop the head of power in the Islamic Republic of Iran, enjoying constitutional and executive powers that are too many to count. Thus, not only was the name of the body changed, to become the National Security Council, but its prerogatives and number of members were increased as well. Since then, the following members have been added: the head of the judicial authority, the head of the Council for Safeguarding the Constitution, the foreign minister, the minister of intelligence, the minister of interior, and the finance minister (chairman of the Budget and Planning Committee).

The spiritual guide of the republic dominates the NSC through constitutional prerogatives that give him the right to appoint the NSC’s secretary, giving him control over the majority of members. The spiritual guide is also the only party that grants the NSC the ability to implement the decisions it takes; the Iranian Constitution stipulates his approval of the NSC’s decisions for them to take effect.

The National Security Council has the power to vote on important state decisions, with many more constitutional prerogatives than those granted to the Iranian Parliament. Therefore, the Council resembles a “Higher Parliament.” This group of people is managing the Iranian nuclear issue and has the decision-making power - with a disparate share of prerogatives - and carries out the directives of the spiritual guide of the Republic in this regard.

In other words, the office of the spiritual guide of the Republic undertakes the strategic planning for decision-making related to nuclear power, while the National Security Council carries out planning related to administrative matters and implementation.

This basic foundation hasn’t changed in the two phases of negotiations carried out by Iran, in the Khatami-Rouhani and Ahmadinejad-Larijani eras. However, the mechanism of decision-making by the National Security Council has changed, keeping up with the sudden change in negotiating positions and regional and international conditions. Article

Symptoms of SNABU:

President Vladimir Putin made clear to Washington on Tuesday that Russia would not accept military action against Iran and he invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Moscow for talks.

Putin made the invitation to Ahmadinejad, shunned by the West which fears his nuclear programme is a cover for building atomic weapons, after meeting him and leaders of other Caspian Sea states who ruled out any strikes on Iran from their region.

Dates for Ahmadinejad’s visit would be arranged through diplomatic channels, RIA news agency quoted a statement by the two leaders as saying.

Earlier, in comments aimed at the United States, Putin said during his talks in Iran: “We should not even think of using force in this region.”

“We need to agree that using the territory of one Caspian Sea (state) in the event of aggression against another is impossible,” he told the presidents of Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan at a summit of Caspian Sea states.

Western nations accuse Tehran of seeking atomic weapons, a charge Tehran denies. Washington has refused to rule out the use of force if diplomacy fails to resolve the row.

Asked about Russia’s invitation to Ahmadinejad, a U.S. State Department official said: “It’s up to the Russians to determine how they want to manage their bilateral relations with Iran.” Article

Related:

Caspian Sea states declared in Tehran on Tuesday they would not let their soil be used for an attack on any of them, an apparent response to speculation the United States could resort to force in its nuclear row with Iran.

…The declaration followed a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin calling on the Caspian nations not to let any third country use their territory for an attack, a comment apparently directed at former Soviet state Azerbaijan.

The US military has inspected airfields in Azerbaijan, which has a partnership deal with NATO, amid Russian media speculation they could be planning to use the facilities in a possible strike on Iran. Azeri officials deny any such plan. Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan said under no circumstances will they allow (the use of their) territories by third countries to launch aggression or other military action against any of the member states.

Also in the final declaration, they acknowledged the rights of all signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty — which includes Iran — to develop peaceful nuclear energy.

[snip]

Putin is due to hold talks with Ahmadinejad, discussions Russian officials said would focus on Iran’s nuclear program. Moscow says it sees no evidence of a military program and is resisting Western calls for new sanctions.

We signed today a declaration which confirms the right of every nation to develop peaceful nuclear programs without restrictions, that is also something we are going to discuss, Putin said before the bilateral talks. Article

Also:

The Islamic republic has regularly hosted allies who share its antipathy towards the United States such as Belarus President Aleksander Lukashenko, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

But a visit by a statesman of Putin’s stature — his country is a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council — was a major event.

The last Kremlin chief to visit Iran was Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who attended the famous conference of the “Big Three” World War II Allied powers in Tehran in 1943 alongside Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Article

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Keeping up with the kidnappings in Nigeria’s oil region:

Gunmen struck again in Port Harcourt on Sunday night and kidnapped five year old Mares Divine Ifeanyi Emeruwa, son of Speaker of Shell Petroleum Development Company Project Engineer, Mr. Ifeanyi Obioma Emeruwa.

This came just as the father of the Deputy Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, Chief Lawrence Befii Nwile was released. Article

Going to forego (mostly) even cursory comments, as it is ye old scribe’s day off. Just a grouping of tidbits of info or stories found of interest enough to share.

#1:

…on October 2, 2007, Mohammad-Ali Khatibi, deputy head of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), in charge of the marketing announced that Iran has drastically lowered the use of the U.S. dollar in payment for its oil export by 15%. Khatibi was reported as saying that “Iran is selling about 85% of its oil in the non-dollar currencies,” nearly 65% in euro and soon 20% in yen. In July, the NIOC requested from its customers in Japan who import over 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian oil, to pay in yen. A switch in currency by Nippon Oil and other Japanese oil refiners to yen has helped Iran to achieve its goal of reducing its exposure to the dollar and as a result, in the period over the last two years it has avoided the loss emanating from the constant depreciation of the dollar. The switch from dollar to yen was not an easy decision for Japan to make, knowing that the U.S. applies all sorts of pressures on the world financial markets and threats against individual state apparatuses, wanting them to dump the idea and refrain from paying in currencies other than the dollar, although paying in their own national currency is naturally in their best interest. Article

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#2:

The Russian defense budget has grown at double-digit rates for the last five years, albeit from a very low base. New investment has gone into the development of new strategic weapons, specifically the Topol-M, designed to defeat U.S. strategic defense systems, and the S-400 anti-missile system. Defense outlays for 2007 are at a post-Soviet high of $32.4 billion, rising 23 percent in the past year and four times expenditures of 2001. Source

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#3:

The skeleton of what is believed to be a new dinosaur species - a 105-foot plant-eater that is among the largest dinosaurs ever found - has been uncovered in Argentina, scientists said Monday.

Scientists from Argentina and Brazil said the Patagonian dinosaur appears to represent a previously unknown species of Titanosaur because of the unique structure of its neck. They named it Futalognkosaurus dukei after the Mapuche Indian words for “giant” and “chief,” and for Duke Energy Argentina, which helped fund the skeleton’s excavation.

[snip]

“I’m pretty certain it’s a new species,” agreed Peter Mackovicky, associate curator for dinosaurs at Chicago’s Field Museum, who was not involved with the discovery. “I’ve seen some of the remains of Futalognkosaurus and it is truly gigantic.”

Calvo said the neck alone must have been 56 feet long, and by studying the vertebrae, they figured the tail probably measured 49 feet. The dinosaur reached over 43 feet tall, and the excavated spinal column weighed about 9 tons when excavated. One neck vertebra alone measured more than 3 feet high.

[snip]

Patagonia also was home to the other two largest dinosaur skeletons found to date - Argentinosaurus, at around 115 feet long, and Puertasaurus reuili, 115 feet to 131 feet long.

[snip]

North America’s dinosaurs don’t even compare in size, Mackovicky added in a phone interview. “Dinosaurs do get big here, but nothing near the proportions we see in South America.” Article

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#4 — Maybe more than you cared to know about splashback and dribbling.

An interesting and measured Iranian analysis cum curriculum.

The disastrous war in Iraq is the natural outcome of America’s military approach to the problems of the Middle East. In Iran, this approach is rapidly bringing the Bush administration to the brink of military confrontation with the government. But an attack against Iran would be morally and legally indefensible, and will produce calamitous results.

In saying this, I defend the nation of Iran, not the domestic or foreign policy of its current repressive, despotic government. But opposition to the current regime must not lead to a blanket endorsement of U.S. foreign policy.

What could justify military action against Iran? Under international law, governments have the right to take military action to repel an armed attack and to preempt a certain and imminent attack. But the United States has not been attacked by Iran, and is clearly not in any imminent danger of armed attack.

[snip]

…Through its official propaganda, the Iranian regime is trying to convince the world that there is consensus within Iran on its nuclear policies; in truth they are formulated by Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Nearly all leading Iranian reformists and reformist groups have expressed opposition to these policies, either through open letters or confidential letters to Khamenei himself calling for the suspension of enrichment.

[snip]

Some may want to justify an attack on Iran with the claim that the Iranian government supports terrorism. This is another double standard: the fact is that some of America’s allies in the Middle East are more likely than Iran to be secretly supporting terrorist groups, such as al Qaeda, and Islamic fundamentalist groups, such as the Taliban. [cough - Saudi Arabia - cough — voxd]

[snip]

Political change in Iran is necessary, but it must not be achieved by foreign intervention. Any U.S. military attack is likely to involve “regime change.” Iran’s rulers know this and are likely to become far more vicious, severe, and repressive if they are forced to prepare to fight to the very last breath. In the historical memory of Iranians, regime change is accompanied by killings, the seizure of property, repression, and human-rights abuses. And if the regime change occurs through U.S. intervention, it will be far more destructive than any structural political change instigated by domestic forces.

[snip]

…Iran’s largest problem is its domestic politics. I believe that a consensus exists among leading Iranian intellectuals and democrats that the current government is incapable of fulfilling Iran’s national interests and having a constructive relationship with the international community.

But regime change is the duty of Iranians. And it must proceed not by military means but through a sustained, nonviolent civil campaign. The campaign must protect individuals, groups, and professions. And it must aim to bring about free elections and a constitution that recognizes basic political and civil rights and creates checks on institutional power by establishing freedom of expression, the right to form trade unions and political associations, a separation of powers, a guarantee of the political neutrality of the judiciary and the armed forces, the rule of law, and fair trials.

Three decades of experience in southern and eastern Europe and Latin America demonstrates that a democratic transition will not occur through violence. Where force during the period of transition has produced sectarian conflict, authoritarian systems have reemerged. The aim of free and fair elections is not to replace unelected despots with elected despots. Getting agreement on the rules of political activity from the start—an agreement to respect those rules in the exercise of power—is more important than holding any single election. Article

Keeping up with the kidnappings in Nigeria’s oil region:

Gunmen disguised as soldiers killed one foreign oil worker and abducted another in Nigeria on Thursday in a raid on the construction yard of oil services company Saipem, security sources said. Article

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Hmm — and hmm again. Remember that Halliburton is now based in Dubai.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier opposes French calls for European Union sanctions against Iran. He will back up his case with German Foreign Ministry data showing that leading French and American companies are conducting large amounts of business with Iran.

[snip]

Several French companies in the automobile, energy and financial sectors — including Peugeot, Renault, Total, BNP Paribas and Societé Générale — have hardly reduced the level of business they do with Iran, according to the Foreign Ministry data. German exports to Iran, in contrast, have dramatically declined.

Even more explosive is the data that reveals US hypocrisy over sanctions. The German Foreign Ministry accuses American firms of bypassing the boycott against Iran, which has been in place since 1979, by creating front companies in Dubai to carry out their business. German politicians have long internally accused the United States of knowingly tolerating the practice. Article

Summaries here and here and here.

Thousands of people in the southwestern Baghdad district of al-Sayidiya protested in front of the Baghdad provincial council on Sunday morning, urging the Iraqi government and the interior ministry to diband the al-Sahwa (Awakening) contingent formed by the U.S. forces.

“The contingent, an offshoot of the special forces the Iraqi Scorpion Brigade, has relocated more than 10,000 families in the area, set a number of houses on fire and killed civilians,” Muhammad al-Jurani, the chairman of the al-Sayidiya displaced families committee, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Article

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New wallpaper can only cover the expanding cracks temporarily.

A member of parliament from the Shiite Unified Iraqi Coalition (UIC) said on Sunday that the technocracy planned by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would cancel ten state ministries and merge two into one.

“The Iraqi Constitution ensures that no canceling or merging of ministries can take place except by virtue of a law passed by the parliament,” Abbas al-Bayyati told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

Maliki reiterated on Wednesday his plans to set up a technocratic government and trim his current one, criticizing the quota system upon which the government was based. Article

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No, it is not in any way “unexpected,” especially as the president of Iraq had already mentioned it as being the the cards:

Iraqi President Jalal al-Talabani sent a letter to the U.S. envoy to Baghdad and the U.S. top military commander, in which he said that Iran threatened to close its borders with Iraq’s Kurdistan if U.S. forces did not release a detained Iranian national, Talabani’s office said on Saturday.. Source

Iranian authorities closed on Sunday an important border crossing between its territories and northern Iraq after US forces arrested an Iranian citizen, almost causing a diplomatic rift between Iran and the autonomous Kurdish region.

Local official Omar Farag described the move as ‘unexpected,’ saying that closing the crossing would have its negative effect on the markets of the Kurdish region.

[snip]

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani sent an ‘angry’ letter to US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C Crocker and General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, demanding the release of the Iranian delegation currently detained by the US Army. Article

Related:

Mr. al-Maliki condemned the detention and said it was his understanding that the man had been invited to Iraq.

“The government of Iraq is an elected one and sovereign. When it gives a visa, it is responsible for the visa,” he said. “We consider the arrest … of this individual who holds an Iraqi visa and a (valid) passport to be unacceptable.” Article

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The festering case of Blackwater .

#1:

Traffic officer Ali Khalaf, who was on duty on Sunday last week in Al-Yarmukh, in the mainly Sunni Mansour area of west Baghdad, told AFP he had witnessed the entire incident.

“The American convoy arrived… and as usual I stopped the traffic to allow them to pass,” Khalaf said.

As they often do, guards from the US firm — the largest private security operators in Iraq — hurled water bottles at cars to stop traffic as they drove through.

“Then without reason, they opened fire. Four shots, in the air, aiming just above the cars,” Khalaf said.

“But one of the bullets struck a man in his car. I went to his aid but he was already dead, his body was slumped on the dashboard.

“His wife was then killed before my eyes by a bullet that hit her in the head.”

Khalaf said he ran to take shelter inside his little hut as the gunfire continued.

The car with the dead couple “continued to move, with its doors open and the bodies inside — like a phantom vehicle.”

“The Americans fired at everything that moved, with a machine gun and even with a grenade launcher. There was panic. Everyone tried to flee. Vehicles tried to make U-turns to escape.”

According to Khalaf, people then left their cars and tried to flee for cover, some being struck down as they ran. A car was hit by two grenades and burst into fire, engulfing its occupants in flames.

“There were dead bodies and wounded people everywhere, the road was full of blood. A bus was also hit and several of its occupants were wounded,” said the traffic officer.

Two small black helicopters that always accompany Blackwater on security missions swooped down and sprayed the scene with machine gun fire, Khalaf added.

[snip]

According to a senior policeman involved in the investigations, other witnesses are equally adamant that Blackwater opened fire without provocation.

“The Americans say that the convoy first came under small arms fire. That is totally false,” the officer told AFP, asking not to be named because he is not entitled to speak to the media.

“None of the witnesses we have interviewed speak of an attack,” he said.

“There is at least one video, shot by police using a digital camera just moments after the shooting, which shows the victims,” said the police officer. “This video is in our hands and we are examining it.”

He did not rule out the possible existence of other videos taken at the moment of the shooting, including with mobile phones, given the number of people present at the time. Article

#2:

Senior Iraqi officials repeatedly complained to U.S. officials about Blackwater USA’s alleged involvement in the deaths of numerous Iraqis, but the Americans took little action to regulate the private security firm until 11 Iraqis were shot dead last Sunday, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

[snip]

“There were no concrete results,” Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamal, the deputy interior minister who oversees the private security industry on behalf of the Iraqi government, said in an interview Saturday.

The lack of a U.S. response underscores the powerlessness of Iraqi officials to control the tens of thousands of security contractors who operate under U.S.-drafted Iraqi regulations that shield them from Iraqi laws. It also raises questions about how seriously the United States will seek to regulate Blackwater, now the subject of at least three investigations by Iraqi and U.S. authorities. Blackwater, which operates under State Department authority, protects nearly all senior U.S. politicians and civilian officials here.

[snip]

Matthew Degn, who served as a senior adviser to the Interior Ministry’s intelligence directorate until his tour in Iraq ended last month, said Kamal and other ministry officials became increasingly frustrated by their inability to persuade U.S. officials to regulate Blackwater as allegations against the company mounted.

Degn said Kamal sent a flurry of memos to company and U.S. officials in an effort to bring Blackwater into compliance. The Iraqis were concerned that the firm had refused to obtain a license to operate legally in Iraq, a process that required companies to provide sensitive personnel data and submit to weapons inspections. Blackwater also refused to answer any questions about the reported incidents.

Degn said the Iraqis were consistently rebuffed in their requests.

“Kamal went to State several times; he’s the one who’s been paying the price for this,” Degn said. “We had numerous discussions over his frustrations with Blackwater, but every time he contacted the [U.S.] government, it went nowhere.” Article

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Oil-related news:

An internal pipeline carrying crude oil to a Baghdad refinery was ruptured in a bomb attack by insurgents, police said on Sunday, the second attack on a pipeline in Iraq in five days.

Police said the pipeline connecting Baiji, 180 kilometre north of Baghdad, to the Doura refinery in the capital was hit by a suspected improvised explosive device. Rescue teams had so far been unable to reach the area. Baiji residents reported seeing flames spewing from the ruptured line. It was not clear if work at the refinery had stopped. Article

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Circular rhetoric regarding Kirkuk.

Iraq’s Kurds will not use force to reassert their rights in the northern city of Kirkuk but want immediate implementation of a constitutional article to normalize the situation in the city, their leader said on Sunday.

‘Kurds took part in elections and the political process and voted for a permanent Iraqi constitution in order to to preserve their national and political rights,’ the president of the northern Kurdish Autonomous Region, Masud Barzani.

Speaking at the opening of the conference of the Iraqi Kurdistan students’ union in Arbil, Barzani said the implementation of article 140 of the constitution has been held up by stalling, procastrination and foreign threats.

‘But we will not accept any delay in its implementation for even a minute based on a political decision,’ Barzani said.

However, he hinted at the possibility of delaying implementation on technical grounds for a brief period. But only the parliament of the Kurdish Autonomous Region would be empowered to endorse such a delay. Article

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Looking at the unprecedented weight of a score of retired officers of the highest rank and stature.

The generals acted independently, coming in their own ways to the agonizing decision to defy military tradition and publicly criticize the Bush administration over its conduct of the war in Iraq.

What might be called The Revolt of the Generals has rarely happened in the nation’s history.

In op-ed pieces, interviews and TV ads, more than 20 retired U.S. generals have broken ranks with the culture of salute and keep it in the family. Instead, they are criticizing the commander in chief and other top civilian leaders who led the nation into what the generals believe is a misbegotten and tragic war.

The active-duty generals followed procedure, sending reports up the chain of command. The retired generals beseeched old friends in powerful positions to use their influence to bring about a change.

When their warnings were ignored, some came to believe it was their patriotic duty to speak out, even if it meant terminating their careers.

It was a decision none of the men approached cavalierly. Most were political conservatives who had voted for George W. Bush and initially favored his appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary.

But they felt betrayed by Bush and his advisers.

“The ethos is: Give your advice to those in a position to make changes, not the media,” said Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, now retired. “But this administration is immune to good advice.”

[snip]

Some of Eaton’s colleagues, both active and retired, endorsed his decision to speak out. Others thought he had stepped out of bounds. He became persona non grata with ethics instructors at the U.S. Military Academy, his alma mater.

Eaton said he has no regrets.

Maj. Gen. John Batiste, former commander of the First Infantry Division in Iraq, chronicled his painful journey from stalwart soldier to outspoken critic in a post on the political Web site Think Progress this month.

Once heralded by many military observers as headed for appointment to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Batiste began his journey of introspection after he retired with two stars in 2005.

The self-described arch-conservative and lifelong Republican made the “gut-wrenching” decision to end his 31-year military career in order to “speak out on behalf of soldiers and their families.”

“I had a moral obligation and a duty to do so,” Batiste wrote. “I have been speaking out for the past 17 months and there is no turning back.”

[snip]

Gard, who retired from the military in 1981, displayed a stoicism typical of old soldiers when asked about his decision to publicly criticize the conduct of an ongoing war.

“I did some serious soul-searching,” Gard said simply.

A West Point graduate with a doctorate in politics and government from Harvard, Gard saw combat in Korea and Vietnam.

[Retired Lt. Gen. Robert] Gard’s introspection ultimately led him to conclude that patriotism means more than following orders and keeping complaints inside the military.

“When you feel the country – to its extreme detriment – is going in the wrong direction, and that your views might have some impact, you have a duty to speak out,” he said. Article

If the piece doesn’t fit firmly into the preconceived jigsaw labeled ‘Aggression/War,’ the woebegone G. Walker administration will imperiously toss it aside and attack its maker.

The United States has criticized a deal International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei has made with Iran to answer long-standing questions about its nuclear activities.

Washington and its European allies argue the IAEA moves divert attention from UN Security Council demands that Iran suspend uranium enrichment and grant broader inspections. Rice, who in June accused ElBaradei of muddying the message to Iran, voiced strong irritation with the IAEA chief, without naming him. “The IAEA is not in the business of diplomacy. The IAEA is a technical agency that has a board of governors of which the United States is a member,” Rice told reporters traveling with her to Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

“It is not up to anybody to diminish or to begin to cut back on the obligations that the Iranians have been ordered to take.”

At IAEA headquarters in Vienna, ElBaradei rebuffed requests for comment on Rice’s remarks. “A senior diplomat close to the IAEA said we should not make a big deal out of the matter. The IAEA is only doing now what the UN Security Council asked us to do — clear up outstanding questions. This is an issue of appreciating the agency’s efforts to start to get Iran to build confidence. That’s the IAEA’s job.” Article

What’s up on the Big Issue.

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Analysis du jour:

By invading Iraq, the U.S. irreversibly altered the balance of power throughout the Middle East; now, Iraq cannot be treated as a policy decision in isolation from the full spectrum of U.S. interests throughout the region – all of which will be calamitously weakened if the U.S. were to precipitously retreat. While the congressional discussion focused on the failure to achieve consensus among Iraq politicians, it may be that the absence of a consensus on Iraq between the U.S. and Iraq’s neighbors is even more dangerous. Given the weakness of the central government in Iraq, stability there is unlikely without an agreement among Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and Iran over managing the political contest there. The most powerful stakeholder among them is Iran, which has close ties to the dominant political parties returned by the Iraqi electorate. And as long as Iran believes the U.S. is pursuing a policy of regime-change in Tehran, it has little incentive to help out Washington.

[snip]

The Iranians believe the good faith they showed in Afghanistan has been met with an escalating of hostility from the U.S. side. The idea that they’ll help out the U.S. in Iraq with no quid-pro-quo is hopelessly naive, or worse, cynical (i.e. going through the motions to placate the Iraqi government).

Indeed, last week’s testimony by Petraeus and Crocker on Iraq coincided with a “rollout” of a Cheney-neocon campaign to stampede Americans to war with Iran. The idea that Iran would cooperate with the U.S. – as it did in Afghanistan – while knowing full well that the Administration is considering attacking Iran, is absurd. The Iranians certainly have a long-term interest in a stable, democratic Iraq, even one in which their Shiite allies do more to accomodate Sunni interests. But as long as they’re facing the threat of being bombed, or even a general U.S. policy of seeking the overthrow of their regime, they have no incentive to cooperate, and plenty of incentive to do whatever they can to keep the U.S. off balance and vulnerable in Iraq.

Moreover, the Iranians see the recent U.S. shift away from the Iraqi government and towards Sunni insurgent groups in Anbar as evidence of a U.S. agenda which now explicitly cites “containing Iran” as the strategic purpose of staying in Iraq. Still, if the U.S. is planning an attack, the Iranians need the U.S. to remain in Iraq.

[snip]

…its own survival is a far greater concern for the Iranian regime than the future of Iraq.

There lies the rub: The U.S. cannot stabilize Iraq without cooperation from Iran; the price of such cooperation is normalizing relations with the Tehran regime; the Bush Administration has no intention of doing that, clinging instead to fantasies of regime-change; Iraq remains a nightmare.

Actually, it gets a lot worse. If the U.S. is stupid enough to imagine that a military attack will diminish the threat from Iran, the situation in Iraq will likely get a whole lot worse than it is right now. President Bush made no bones about the fact that Iraq is a mess he plans to hand off to his successor. But if he opts to go out in a blaze of, uh, “glory” by bombing Iran, the mess he leaves in the lap of the next president will have metastasized considerably. Article

Related:

Former Iranian foreign minister Kemal Kharazi, now heading a newly formed Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, illuminated Iran’s thinking in a recent interview with the Iranian press. According to Kharazi, the US-Iran dialogue on Iraq’s security is “tactical and not-strategic” and Iran “is not prepared for comprehensive talks” with the US. Citing “serious conflicts of interests” between Iran and the US, Kharazi called for exploring “ways for exiting this environment”, and declaring Iran’s willingness to continue dialogue with the US only if the US “accepts the principle of mutual respect”.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali Hosseini, on the other hand, has stated that if the Iraqi government makes an official request for a fourth round of US-Iran dialogue, Iran will participate irrespective of its misgivings about anti-Iran provocations in Washington. Article

Summaries here and here and here.

Unknown gunmen on Sunday attacked and blew up a police station north of Baghdad, killing seven policemen and wounding two, a local police source said. Article

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Chaos abides.

The monthly food rationing system on which millions of Iraqis depend is not working properly, according to officials. They warn that delays in food deliveries will have a serious impact on those fasting during the upcoming holy Islamic month of Ramadan (beginning around 13 September), when Muslims go without food and drink from dawn to sunset.

“There are many reasons why the monthly food ration system is not working very well,” Muhammad Ala’a Jabber, director of the west Baghdad office for delivering food rations, said. “There is a shortage of food products, the available products are of bad quality and sometimes are expired and there is a delay in delivery to the distribution offices.”

According to Jabber, Iraq’s food rationing system has continued to worsen since an escalation of sectarian violence began in February 2006. But in the past four months, he said, the problem has reached critical levels.

“It is rare to find items such as baby formula among rationed food. This never happened under Saddam Hussein’s regime when it was common to see an abundance of baby formula,” Jabber said.

“The rice which is available is of bad quality and the beans might require hours to cook. The quantity of flour and tea given to each family has decreased and at least 20 percent of families in search of food rations return home empty handed,” he added.

The Ministry of Trade, which is responsible for the delivery of food rations, said insecurity has been the main reason for the shortages in food ration items.

[snip]

“All items remaining in the ration have been reduced in quantity by nearly 35 percent,” Professor Muhammad Ezidin, an analyst at Baghdad University, said. “The programme has seriously deteriorated and with the increase in the number of displaced families, each day they face more difficulties to get their food ration, bringing starvation closer to Iraqi families.”

Sinan Youssef, a senior official in the strategy department at the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, said that about five million Iraqis depend on the monthly food ration programme but only 60 percent of this number is able to avail of it, leaving two million people in dire poverty.

“These people are mostly displaced families or those who are living in tense zones where the distribution programme is hard to implement,” Youssef added. Article

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Refresher for what is to play out on Capitol Hill re: Iraq this week. (See also the What Have We Become section, below.)

Related: A Paul Krugman piece.

Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.

Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it.

There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

[snip]

In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that sets a “goal” for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to sound moderate — but who always vote with the Bush administration when it matters — political cover.

And six or seven months from now it will be the same thing all over again. Mr. Bush will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the Marine nickname for the giant air base he never left on his recent visit to Iraq. The administration will move the goal posts again, and the military will come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success. Article

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Thanks for coming; now take the blame.

Iraq on Sunday lashed out at its neighbours for interfering in its internal affairs and warned that violence they were stoking in the war-ravaged country could engulf the entire region.

“Many countries say they support Iraq’s stability and integrity, but at the same time are interfering in a number of different ways,” Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said at the end of the high-profile Baghdad Conference.

[snip]

The Baghdad Conference was attended by Iraq’s neighbours, including Iran, and delegates from the G8 countries as well as the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

It was called to thrash out common strategies to end Iraq’s sectarian violence, to find ways to fuel the country’s energy needs and to address the refugee crisis triggered by the volatile security situation.

The meeting comes a day before leading US officials in Iraq begin testifying before Congress in Washington on progress in the war-torn country.

[snip]

After the opening session, delegates split into…three working groups… — dealing with security, the plight of four million Iraqis displaced internally or who have fled to Jordan and Syria, and Iraq’s energy crisis.

The committees came up with firm proposals and these would be put before the next ministerial-level meeting, slated for Istanbul on October 31 and November 1, foreign minister Zebari said. Article

Related:

Iraqi security forces on Sunday blocked the main roads in the capital Baghdad as a precautionary measure to secure the areas where a conference for Iraq’s neighbors is to kick off later on the day.

“Iraqi security forces closed most of the main roads in western Baghdad and the Alawwi main bus station near the area where the conference is expected to be held, leading most workers and civil-servants to return home,” an eyewitness told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Article

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Something must be lost in translation here.

Iraqi President Jalal al-Talabani expressed hope that the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will turn the Mahdi army into a social and cultural institution, stressing the need to set free the non-guilty Sadr’s followers who were detained by security forces following the clashes that erupted in Karbala three weeks ago.

“President Talabani highly appreciated the move by Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr to freeze the armed activities of his Mahdi amry and his decision to restructure its fighters,” Talabani’s office said in a statement following a meeting between Talabani and the Sadrist MP Baha al-Aaraji.

The statement added “President Talabani expressed hope that the Mahdi army restructure will turn it into a social and cultural institution.” Article

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Shorter version … U.S. to Maliki and Shi’a: if you won;t move to disband militias, we’ll form our own.

Safa is a bent soda straw of a kid – 16 years old, tops, with a wisp of hair above his upper lip. He’s wearing a light blue shirt, and an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. The shirt means he’s a member of the local neighborhood watch in Fallujah – the eyes and ears of the police and the Marines here. And that entitles him to the automatic weapon.

But Safa wants more. He’s hoping soon to go to a police academy, so he can become one of the cops here, too. “Shoot gun!” he squeals and smiles, pointing his weapon in the air. Safa swears, just swears, that he’s 20, making him ready to be “I.P.,” an Iraqi policeman. But he can’t seem to get a badge saying so, just yet. For now, he takes chai orders at this concrete schoolhouse-turned-precinct-headquarters, AK in hand.

Three months ago, Am’r was driving a cab. Today, he’s an officer at the precinct house, in Fallujah’s Askeri district, on the northeast corner of town. A’mr served as an infantryman in Saddam’s army, he explains, combing his eyebrows and mustache. But, like Safa, he’s had no formal police training, Some of the other officers here call him “captain.”

[snip]

Not that long ago, the 2-6 were working to prop up the Iraqi Army. And they were having fun doing it. The units stationed here were relatively disciplined, and eager to learn from their American counterparts. Plus, they spoke English.

But these soldiers were mostly Shi’ite. So they were viewed as outsiders, even “Persians,” by the Sunni locals. And the troops weren’t really trained to walk a beat. “It’s just not a normal group to sit on a city,” Major George Benson, 2-6’s executive officer, explains. “So you’d get: Sweep area. Celebratory gunfire. Go back to JSS [joint security station]. Drink chai.”

Which wasn’t exactly a winning approach. In April, a dump truck, loaded with explosives, detonated in the middle of town, shooting a mushroom cloud into the sky. Through dumb luck – they happened to be on the right side of a seven-ton truck – a dozen Marines got out alive. Another, up in a security tower, did not.

So, in consultation with local officials, the Marines decided to switch teams, to work with guys that knew the neighborhoods – and might be able to use their tribal and family ties to keep tabs on the bomb-planters. Enter the I.P.s. and their friends, the neighborhood watchmen.

[snip]

…The goal was to get 125 watchmen today. They’ve barely hit half of that. Which is a problem. Because commanders from General David Petraeus on down have declared these these “alligators” (named for their Izod shirts, and for their roles as the scaley boots on the ground for the local police commander) as cornerstones of Iraq’s security. With a light blue shirt on, an alligator is authorized to carry a weapon — if he already has one –- and man checkpoints for the I.P.s. With his shirt off, an alligator can go to the café, to the mosque, and listen to what potential insurgents might be saying.

The idea is for the gator to be hyperlocal, to know exactly what’s going on in his few-blocks radius. Think of him as part informer, part rent-a-cop, part sheriff’s deputy. And sometimes, part restaurateur. Some of the alligators have opened a little chai-and-chicken shop inside the police station here.

The idea, at first, was to enlist 200 alligators in each of the city’s ten precincts, pay ‘em $50 a month, and fast track the best ones for police training. A cop makes ten times that amount. But $50 is a pittance, even in Iraq. So the numbers have been dwindling. What recruits they have seem to spend a whole lot of their time milling around the police house, smoking cigarettes, holding hands. And upgrading the ‘gators to the police academy has been more complex than originally planned. (Blame the bureaucracy at pretty much every level.) The Marines say they’ll be stepping up the pay, shortly, to $150. Lt. Muhammad says he’ll reach out to his neighbors and relatives for more recruits. (Already, most of his senior staff is kin.) He thinks he’ll get another 60 gators. Or maybe 25. Or maybe 35. Article

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A last favor from Blair?

Britain was prepared to withdraw its forces from the southern Iraqi city of Basra in April, but held off for five months after the United States asked it to stay, Britain’s military commander in Iraq has said.

Speaking to Britain’s The Daily Telegraph, Brigadier James Bashall, commander of 1 Mechanised Brigade, said that he wanted to leave Britain’s Basra Palace base in April, which he said would have been “the right thing to do”.

“In April we could have come out and done the transition completely and that would have been the right thing to do, but politics prevented that,” Brig Bashall, 44, told the paper.

“The Americans asked us to stay for longer,” he said.

The decision to stay in the city was a result of “political strategy being played out at highest level”. Article

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4½ years later, this speaks volumes.

…far from home, the most visible war effort for the Coast Guard has been the protection of the Iraqi Khawr al-Amaya Oil Terminal and al-Basrah Oil Terminal, where they have maintained a presence of five to six cutters to help enforce the security zones around the platforms.

The protection of the two platforms, which were captured by US Navy SEALs and Polish special forces during the opening hours of the Iraq invasion in March 2003, remains one of the most critical missions for the coalition forces four years after they ousted Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad.

The oil production of the two fields account today for more than 80 per cent of Iraq’s revenues, and while Iraqis control the production from the platforms, the coalition remains responsible for their security. Article

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Noted, but the dichotomy of it coming from a peace institute is also not to be ignored.

A panel of U.S. experts is releasing a report that calls for cutting U.S. forces in Iraq by half within three years and a total withdrawal in five years, U.S. media reported on Sunday.

[snip]

The panel was assembled by the U.S. Institute of Peace and includes many of the experts that advised the Iraq Study Group panel led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Democratic congressman Lee H. Hamilton, which issued its report last December. Article

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Get ready to be razzle-dazzled with flashy charts and dueling figures this week.

In vertical bars of blue, green, gray and red, a briefing chart prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency says what Gen. David Petraeus won’t.

Insurgent attacks against Iraqi civilians, their security forces and U.S. troops remain high, according to the document obtained by The Associated Press. It is a conclusion that the well-regarded Army officer who is the top U.S. commander in Iraq is expected to try to counter when he and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, testify before Congress on Monday and Tuesday.

More than four years into a conflict initially thought to be a cakewalk, the war has become a battle of statistics, graphs and conflicting assessments of progress in a country of more than 27 million people.

The defense intelligence chart makes the point, with figures from Petraeus’ command in Baghdad, the Multinational Force-Iraq. Congressional auditors used the same numbers to conclude that Iraqis are as unsafe now as they were six months ago; the Bush administration and military officials also using those figures say that finding is flawed.

[snip]

Gordon Adams, a former Clinton administration official who specializes in defense issues, said all the statistics coming from Iraq need to be questioned.

“When you really care about something, you’re really tempted to use the numbers that look best to you,” said Adams, a professor at American University’s School of International Service.

Adams drew a parallel to Vietnam, when body counts became a measure of success.

“There have been too many claims of victory. Too many claims of progress. No one trusts it anymore,” he said. Article

Related:

Some Republican aides are upset the White House has declined to brief them on this week’s congressional testimony on Iraq, it was reported.

“It would sure make things easier if we could get a heads-up on what the testimony will be,” one Senate aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Washington Times in a story published Sunday.

Republican leadership aides said the White House failed to provide even a brief account of the proposed testimony by Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, the Times reported. Article

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Analysis du jour:

In Iraq today, civil war is under way. The cities and countryside are being carved up into sectarian, tribal, or militia-dominated fiefdoms, aided and abetted by Iranian support, while in the south, British forces have tried to maintain the veneer of control while training local authorities. Iran obviously has mounted an intense effort spanning the political, economic, and military areas, to gain influence and prepare for dominance following the US and UK departures. In the central and northern regions, the US has expended much of four years finishing Iran’s agenda by fighting against Sunni insurgents, including al-Qa’ida in Iraq, and has only lately begun to focus episodically on the Shiite militia supported by Iran.

Rumour in the region says the recent US-Sunni alliances in al-Anbar Province, of which President Bush made a great deal on his recent visit, are more the result of financial emoluments of outside Sunni powers than US activities, and are in preparation not for support of the central government, but rather for blocking Iranian-Shiite consolidation when the Americans depart.

[snip]

But the surge cannot be the lasting answer – it has just bought time for all sides: for President Bush, who doesn’t want to confront the imminence of strategic failure; for the Iranians, who aren’t ready to go for broke on their nuclear and regional ambitions; and for the Iraqi factions, struggling among themselves for survival and dominance. And time for the UK and other allies to struggle with US policy and political processes – trying to be supportive and, at the same time, make the right decisions for their troops and their publics. No one can say for certain that the Iraqis will not resolve their political differences in the midst of all this, but it is certainly unlikely.

[snip]

…. Unless and until the US and its allies deal effectively with Iran and its ambitions, there is likely to be no stability, no end to conflict in Iraq and no solution. Keeping troops in Iraq preserves options – that is all.

The isolating of Iran and occasional sabre-rattling is not an adequate response. Nor is the febrile, repeated efforts at diplomatic sanctions. Instead, the US will have to take the lead, with its allies in support. An effective strategic response must begin with an intensified dialogue within the region, and real, sustained and in-depth conversations with the Iranian leadership at multiple levels. Regional allies such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan must be included, not just informed. Principles must be developed, and consequences made plain, both positive and negative. The way ahead will be tortuous. There will be threats and counterthreats, blandishments and promises, crises and imminent conflict. Economic pressures will intensify.

But this is the path to be followed if we want to try to avoid conflict with Iran and at the same time head off its nuclear capability. The time remaining is short. There are alternatives to war, far better alternatives. But if all we can discuss is troop strength in Iraq, we won’t find them. Article

A whole raft of stories which demonstrate the rationality of treating “terrorism” as a criminal and police matter, not primarily or exclusively as a military one.

#1:

Prosecutors arrested three men and are searching for five more suspects who are accused of planning “massive” terrorist attacks. Investigators suggested that US military facilities in Germany could have been the targets.

German Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms said the three men arrested Tuesday were two German converts to Islam and a Turkish Muslim, all in their 20s. The men are being held on charges of membership in a terrorist organization and preparing a bomb attack.

Harms said the men were members of the Islamic Jihad Union, which has its origins in Uzbekistan. The three suspects attended a militant training camp in Pakistan last year, she said at a press conference Wednesday in Karlsruhe.

Prosecutors also said investigators were still looking for another five suspects.

[snip]

Jörg Ziercke, head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), said the Islamic Jihad Union had ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network and that the men accused of planning the attacks in Germany were “driven by a hatred of US citizens.”

Ziercke said security forces decided to move in on the suspects Tuesday when it became clear the three had begun creating bombs. Harms added that the suspects were taken into custody before making a functioning explosive.

[snip]

Refering to the terror suspects’ aims, Deputy Interior Minister August Hanning told journalists in Berlin: “There were no concrete targets.”

“But the German police are speculating that Frankfurt airport was one of these targets,” he added.

Harms also did not specify the exact targets of the planned terror attacks, but said US military facilities in Germany were to have been hit. The suspects were apparently planning to detonate a series of car bombs simultaneously, she said.

“As possible targets … the suspects named discotheques and pubs and airports frequented by Americans with a view to detonating explosives loaded in cars and killing or injuring many people,” Harms said.

Earlier Wednesday, SWR public radio had reported that the US military base at Ramstein was a possible target.

US military authorities at the Ramstein air base, one of the largest US military facilities in Europe, could not confirm those speculations.

Ziercke said over 300 police officers had been monitoring the suspects over six months, and that it was one of the largest police operations of its kind in Germany. Article

Related stories here and here and here

#2:

The trial of four young Muslims charged with planning terrorist bombings in Denmark or abroad began here Wednesday and is due to last more than two months, court officials said. The four men were charged in March of acquiring chemicals and laboratory instruments to make triacetone triperoxide (TATP) explosives, often used by suicide bombers.…It was the third time in two years that Danish police conducted operations resulting in arrests on suspicion of terrorism. Article

#3:

Three men have been indicted on charges connected with an attack on an Oslo synagogue or plotting to attack the U.S. or Israeli embassies in the Norwegian capital, the national prosecutor said Tuesday.

All charges related to the cases were dropped against a fourth man, said prosecutor Kristine Rise. He had been identified in earlier court rulings as 29-year-old Mohammed Adnan Nabi.

[snip]

The charges were in part based on recordings from an electronic bug police planted in one suspect’s car, in which some suspects allegedly discussed blowing up the embassies. Article

#4:

The same day that German authorities foiled a “massive” attack with the arrest of three Islamic extremists allegedly planning to bomb US military facilities in Germany, EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini in Brussels unveiled a new package of proposals to tackle terrorism.

“All sources indicate that the threat of new terrorist attacks continues to be high,” Frattini said. “There is no room for complacency or letting our guard down.”

Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Frattini stressed that it was crucial to “strike the right balance between the fundamental right to security of citizens, which is first, right to life, and the other fundamental rights of individuals, including privacy and procedural rights.” Article

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Hmm. First impression is that there is more here than is being let on.

Seven Iranian policemen were killed in an overnight clash with bandits in Kermanshah province bordering Iraq, the ISNA news agency reported on Wednesday.

Two bandits and a passenger in a passing car were also killed in the fighting, ISNA said.

It said police had not yet identified the gunmen, but quoted one official as saying they were “definitely related to anti-revolutionary groups.”

Kermanshah, which has a large Iranian Kurdish population, lies south of the province of Kurdistan, where there have been occasional clashes with separatist guerrillas. Smugglers of fuel and other contraband operate in the area. Article

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Pay no attention to the demonstrated instability and unrest.

Yeah, right.

Nigerian Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe berated foreign diplomats on Wednesday over what he said were excessive concerns voiced by their countries about insecurity in the oil-producing Niger Delta.

More than 200 foreigners, including a three-year-old girl, have been kidnapped in the Niger Delta since the start of last year. Most were released unharmed in exchange for money, although one British hostage died in a bot