Among previous dispatches on Fisk on this list:

* Osama Bin Laden praises Robert Fisk (& other items) (November 4, 2004)

* “The dangers of Fisking” (November 14, 2003)

* UK paper fires anti-Israel writer for supporting London riots (August 11, 2011)

 

* There is another dispatch today, which you can read here: No Woman, No Drive: First stirrings of Saudi democracy?

HOW CIVIL WARS END

The four things we know about how civil wars end (and what this tells us about Syria)
By Barbara F. Walter
Political violence at a glance Blog
October 18, 2013

The Obama Administration continues to insist that it would like to see a diplomatic solution to the civil war in Syria. But this desire flies in the face of everything we’ve learned about how civil wars have ended over the last 70+ years. Here are four things that President Obama should keep in mind as he considers the feasibility of pushing for a negotiated settlement in Syria.

Civil wars don’t end quickly. The average length of civil wars since 1945 have been about 10 years. This suggests that the civil war in Syria is in its early stages, and not in the later stages that tend to encourage combatants to negotiate a settlement.

The greater the number of factions, the longer a civil war tends to last. Syria’s civil war is being fought between the Assad government and at least 13 major rebel groups whose alliances are relatively fluid. This suggests that Syria’s civil war is likely to last longer than the average civil war.

Most civil wars end in decisive military victories, not negotiated settlements. Of these wars governments have won about 40% of the time, rebels about 35% of the time. The remainder tend to end in negotiated settlements. This suggests that the civil war in Syria will not end in a negotiated settlement but will rather end on the battlefield.

Finally, the civil wars that end in successfully negotiated settlements tend to have two things in common. First, they tend to divide political power amongst the combatants based on their position on the battlefield. This means that any negotiated settlement in Syria will need to include both the Assad regime and the Islamists, neither of whom is particularly interested in working with the other. Second, successful settlements all enjoy the help of a third party willing to ensure the safety of combatants as they demobilize.

This means that even if all sides eventually agree to negotiate (i.e., due to a military stalemate or increasingly heavy costs), it’s unlikely that any country or the U.N. will be willing to send the peacekeepers necessary to help implement the peace. The likelihood of a successful negotiated settlement in Syria? Probably close to zero.

 

SYRIA SNIPERS TARGETED PREGNANT WOMEN, SAYS BRITISH SURGEON

Syria snipers targeted pregnant women, says British surgeon
Al Arabiya
October 20, 2013

english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2013/10/19/Syria-snipers-targeted-pregnant-women-says-British-surgeon.html

Syrian snipers targeted pregnant women on more than one occasion, a British surgeon said Saturday after returning from a five-week stint in the conflict zone.

According to an interview with The Times newspaper David Nott, who spent five weeks volunteering at a Syrian hospital, said he treated more than half a dozen shot pregnant women on one day in a Syrian city.

He did not identify the city for security reasons but said that he regularly treated gunshot wounds that indicated that bored snipers were targeting particular parts of civilians’ bodies in a bid to entertain themselves, reported Agence France-Presse.

“One day it would be shots to the groin. The next, it would only be the left chest,” he told the newspaper.

“From the first patients that came in in the morning, you could almost tell what you would see for the rest of the day. It was a game.”

On one day, two consecutive gunshot patients were heavily pregnant women, both of whom lost their babies.

“The women were all shot through the uterus, so that must have been where they were aiming for,” he told The Times.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how awful it was. Usually, civilians are caught in the crossfire. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this. This was deliberate. It was hell beyond hell.”

Nott is a prominent surgeon in the UK who counts former Prime Minister Tony Blair as an ex-patient and has volunteered as an emergency surgeon in warzones for 20 years.
He usually works as a vascular surgeon at London’s Westminster and Chelsea hospital but has served in warzones in countries including Bosnia, Libya and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

 

IS THIS THE MOST SICKENING IMAGE OF THE WAR IN SYRIA SO FAR?

Is this the most sickening image of the war in Syria so far? Snipers ‘target unborn children in chilling competition to win cigarettes’
By Sara Malm
The Daily Mail (London)
October 18, 2013

The unborn children of Syrian women are the targets of a sickening war game where a shooter who murders a foetus in its mother’s womb is awarded with cigarettes, a British surgeon has revealed.

Dr David Nott witnessed evidence of fighters using civilians as target practice and on several occasions shooting pregnant women in the stomach, killing their unborn babies.

Dr Nott, recently returned from volunteering at a Syrian hospital, said there are local rumours the snipers are sell swords, working for the Assad regime, awarded when they ‘hit the correct targets’.

Dr Nott, a vascular surgeon at Chelsea and Westminster hospital in London, has told of the horrors suffered by civilians caught between government troops and rebels, describing it as ‘hell beyond hell’.

As women and children cross through the unnamed city where he was stationed, they would be shot by snipers – and their wounds followed disturbing patterns

‘From the first patients that came in in the morning, you could almost tell what you would see for the rest of the day. It was a game,’ he told The Times.

‘One day it would be shots to the groin. The next, it would only be the left chest. The day after, we would see no chest wounds; they were all neck [wounds].’

Dr Nott told the newspaper that in his 20 years volunteering in war zones, this is the first time he had witnessed pregnant women being targeted.

He described the day two consecutive patients arrived at his clinic, heavily pregnant with their babies shot to death in their stomachs.

‘The women were all shot through the uterus, so that must have been where they were aiming for. I can’t even begin to tell you how awful it was.

‘Usually, civilians are caught in the crossfire. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this. This was deliberate. It was hell beyond hell.’

Dr Nott, who counts Tony Blair among his former patients, has returned to London after five weeks in Syria to reveal abysmal conditions in the local hospitals with little to no evidence of aid.

The civil war in Syria show no evidence of slowing down today as government air force jets bombarded the eastern city of Deir al-Zor on Friday.

Heavy overnight clashes saw the killing of dozens of rebels and pro-Assad forces, including one of the president’s top military intelligence officers, activists said.

General Jama’a Jama’a was shot dead on Thursday by snipers in the midst of a battle with rebels including forces linked to al Qaeda, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

His death, celebrated by rebels and opposition activists, marked a significant setback for Assad’s bid to retain a hold over the city, capital of the eastern oil-producing province.
Funeral held for top Syrian military officer killed by snipers

Syria’s civil war has killed more than 100,000 people and divided the Middle East between Sunni Gulf states and Turkey which mostly support the rebels, and Shi’ite Iran and Hezbollah which have backed Assad.

International efforts are growing to convene peace talks in Geneva next month, encouraged by rare agreement among global powers over the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons after sarin gas attacks near Damascus in August.

But the United States and Russia, responding to Syria’s announcement that the talks would go ahead in Geneva on Nov. 23-24, said on Thursday that no date had yet been set.
The international envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, is due to hold talks in the Middle East next week to try to prepare for the negotiations, his spokeswoman said.

 

EAT CATS AND DOGS, IMAM TELLS STARVING SYRIANS

Eat cats and dogs, imam tells starving Syrians
By Ruth Sherlock, Beirut (London)
The Daily Telegraph
Oct 15, 2013

An imam in a rebel-held district of Damascus has issued a fatwa allowing residents to eat cats and dogs, in a desperate bid to ward off starvation after months under siege by the Assad regime.

Salah al-Khatib, the cleric who issued the edict, said he had been left with no choice but to lift the usual restrictions under Islamic law, after government forces and pro-regime militias choked off food and medical supplies to three rebel-held suburbs of Damascus and to a camp housing Palestinian refugees.

This is “not because it is religiously permitted, but because it is a reflection of the reality we are suffering”, Mr Khatib told AFP on Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in these areas, some of them living under siege for more than a year. Residents have told The Telegraph that as food has run out, they have been forced in recent weeks to survive on stray dogs, rotting animal carcasses, tree leaves and weeds.

“I have watched the poorer families eat stray dogs because they have nothing else,” said Ehab, a resident of the Yarmouk camp, speaking to The Telegraph via Skype. “There is no food here now.”

Shops in the camps were “completely bare” and the tight siege was preventing any movement in or out of the camp, Ehab said. The only proper food remaining was small quantities of rice.

As he spoke, Syrian state television was broadcasting footage of President Bashar al-Assad, dressed in a sharp suit, attending prayers to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha feast in a mosque just a few miles away. Meanwhile Asma al-Assad Syria’s first lady, was shown on state television planting olive trees with children.

Their appearance during the festival of Eid al-Adha, when Muslims would normally visit relatives and friends and celebrate with bountiful food, was in stark contrast with the starving rebel areas, where some residents interviewed by The Telegraph broke down and begged for help.

“Please, this is an SOS,” said one activist who asked not to be named. “Today I have eaten nothing. Yesterday I had a small bowl of rice. We are down to one small meal per day.”

Over the last 10 months Syrian government troops have been steadily reducing the amount of supplies allowed into these areas.

Mohammed and Alaa, two residents of Yarmouk, told The Telegraph that initially women and elderly men had been allowed out of the camp to shop for supplies.
“Women were allowed to bring in a small amount of bread, no more than 12 pieces each,” said Mohammed. “Then, in February, this stopped and soldiers only allowed in essentials - grain and sugar - in tiny quantities. Now even that has finished.”

Ehab said: “This has been so bad for five months. There is no food. We had five roads out of here but the regime closed them with sniper and tanks.”

The situation is causing chronic malnutrition that residents say has already resulted in the deaths of a number of babies, a claim that cannot be independently verified.

“Mothers are so malnourished that they cannot produce any milk, and there is almost no baby formula left,” said Omar speaking from the southern suburb of Darayya.

Abu Mohammed, a doctor in a field clinic in the Marj area, east of the capital, said: “On any given day in the emergency room, some four out of 10 patients I see are malnourished children. Many children have very low blood pressure, fatigue, dizziness, and a reduced (disease-fighting) white blood cell count.”

For some, relief came earlier this week when the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent evacuated an estimated 3,500 people from Moadimayet al-Sham, with the agreement of the authorities. But only children, women and old men were able to leave, with the wounded left behind and aid workers prevented from entering to assist them.

“There are many more, including children, who remain in the town,” said Magne Barth, head of the ICRC delegation in Syria.

Omar said that “more than 10,000 people” were still trapped in Darayya alone. “Today the regime started blocking people from coming out again.”

***

Tom Gross adds: According to reliable sources, a major battle is brewing up in the Qalamoun mountains with the regime and Hizbullah about to launch an offensive against rebel-held areas in the coming days. Many believe this fighting will spill into Lebanon.

 

REPORT: GERMANY GAVE SYRIA INGREDIENTS FOR DEADLY GAS IN 2011

Report: Germany gave Syria ingredients for deadly gas in 2011
By Benjamin Weinthal
Jerusalem Post
October 10, 2013

German companies supplied Syria’s regime with dual-usage chemicals, which can be applied for military and civilian use, as late as 2011.

The chemicals involved – sodium fluoride, hydrofluoric acid and ammonium hydrogen fluoride – can be used to manufacture sarin, the deadly nerve gas used during the August 21 attack on the edge of Damascus, which killed more than 1,400 people, according to the US government.

The firms delivered larger volumes of these chemicals than previously disclosed in September, German broadcaster ARD reported last week.

A week before Chancellor Angela Merkel’s September 22 election victory, a Left Party deputy revealed that German companies, under successive coalition governments between 1998 and 2006, supplied Syria with chemicals.

Merkel told ARD television before her election victory, “We are of course looking into all allegations on this, but from what we can see so far the export license was for civil use.”

According to the new ARD report, German companies delivered roughly 350 tons of dual-use chemicals to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime between 1998 and 2011. The previous known total of German sold chemicals to Syria was 135 tons between 2002 and 2006.

The exports included 270 tons of fluoride, which is key in the manufacture of sarin.

Under the European Union’s legal framework, the chemicals sold to Syria were designated as dual-use goods. Germany’s export agency BAFA has a liberal permit policy and has been criticized over the years for failing to clamp down on dual-use goods sold to Iran.

The German government said two weeks ago that there was no data bank or control mechanisms available to check on a regular basis the end use of the dual-use deliveries.

Meanwhile, Israel’s ambassador to Bulgaria, Shaul Kamisa-Raz, urged the EU to help Bulgaria absorb the flow of Syrian refugees into the southeastern European country, the Sofia news agency and the BGNES news agency reported on Saturday. “Some of the refugees may integrate in the Bulgarian society, but this will be a very difficult task for the government,” Kamisa-Raz said.

BGNES quoted Kamisa-Raz saying, “Our nation and our government are sympathetic to the suffering of millions of Syrians, and especially to the over 2 million refugees who moved to various places around the world.”

Referring to treatment of injured Syrians in Israel hospitals, the ambassador continued, “There is an open door on our border for the Syrians who are wounded and seeking shelter.”

MEMBERSHIP IN THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL IS SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE A NOBEL PRIZE – NO ONE EVER TURNS IT DOWN

U.N. Insecurity Council
Saudi Arabia declines the honor of joining a body that abets mass murder.
Editorial, The Wall Street Journal
Oct. 21, 2013

Membership in the United Nations Security Council is supposed to be like a Nobel Prize – no one ever turns it down. So when Saudi Arabia declined its invitation to join the Security Council as a two-year, non-permanent member on Friday, you could hear diplomats gasping around the globe.

The decision was even more shocking because of the way the Saudis explained their decision. They essentially said the U.N. body that is supposed to enforce international order has become an abettor of rogues and mass murder.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia believes that the manner, the mechanisms of action and double standards existing in the Security Council prevent it from performing its duties and assuming its responsibilities towards preserving international peace and security as required,” the Saudi foreign ministry said in an October 18 statement, “leading to the continued disruption of peace and security, the expansion of the injustices against the peoples, the violation of rights and the spread of conflicts and wars around the world.”

Specifically, the Saudis mentioned the failure of the U.N. to settle the Palestinian conflict and rid the Middle East of nuclear weapons. But those are old stories. The proximate cause of Saudi anger is Russia’s decision, abetted by China, to veto any Security Council action against Syria.

“Allowing the ruling regime in Syria to kill and burn its people by the chemical weapons, while the world stands idly, without applying deterrent sanctions against Damascus regime, is also irrefutable evidence and proof of the inability of the Security Council to carry out its duties and responsibilities,” said the Saudi statement. Which is exactly right.

Like so many other events these days, the Saudi decision seems to have caught the U.S. by surprise. A day earlier, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power had issued a statement congratulating the Saudis and the other new non-permanent members, including Chad and Chile, on their election to the Security Council.

The Obama Administration continues to portray the U.N. as a moral arbiter and the linchpin of global security, which shows the continuing power of liberal illusions. After more than 100,000 Syrian deaths, the Saudis are unenthralled.

***

Tom Gross adds:

Saudi Arabia’s rejection of a UN Security Council seat could also have been because sitting on the council may have exposed the highly repressive kingdom to increased scrutiny over its appalling human rights record, which according to Amnesty International has grown significantly worse over the past year, with an increase in the number of people being tortured and held without trial, among other abuses.

 

THE LAST OF THE SHEIKS?

The Last of the Sheiks?
By Christopher M. Davidson
The New York Times (Opinion)
October 18, 2013

DURHAM, England -- This summer, disgruntled Saudis took their grievances online in droves, complaining of ever-growing inequality, rising poverty, corruption and unemployment. Their Twitter campaign became one of the world’s highest trending topics. It caused great alarm within elite circles in Saudi Arabia and sent ripples throughout the region. The rallying cry that “salaries are not enough” helped to prove that the monarchy’s social contract with its people is now publicly coming unstuck, and on a significant scale.

Many experts believe that the Gulf states have survived the Arab Spring because they are different. After all, they’ve weathered numerous past storms – from the Arab nationalist revolutions of the 1950s and ‘60s to Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait to an Al Qaeda terror campaign in 2003.

But they are not different in any fundamental way. They have simply bought time with petrodollars. And that time is running out.

The sheiks of the Persian Gulf might not face the fate of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya or Hosni Mubarak of Egypt next year, but the system they have created is untenable in the longer term and it could come apart even sooner than many believe.

Saudi Arabia is the kingpin of the six Gulf monarchies, so its internal stability is crucial for the region, especially since so much attention has now been turned toward these anachronistic political systems in the wake of the 2011 uprisings.

Although it’s never healthy to treat any state as exceptional, Saudi Arabia is indeed a bit different from its neighbors. Unlike Mr. Mubarak or Colonel Qaddafi, Saudi Arabia’s octogenarian king, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, has had the oil-financed means to buy off protesters. He has managed to calm the anger that has flared up in his backyard by ramping up subsidies, dramatically increasing public-sector employment and announcing huge and unprecedented government spending programs. So far, this has been a fast and effective way to keep the masses off the streets.

But this is not evidence of royal resilience, as some Western diplomats and academics have argued. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia’s resource-fueled strategy is a response to rising discontent across the region, and it is driven by a deep-seated fear that restive populations across the Arab world could incite unrest closer to home.

Moreover, spending for stability’s sake in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies will necessarily be quite short-lived. The kingdom pledged a record-breaking $500 billion for “welfare” this year – most to be spent on social security subsidies and new public sector jobs.

Such vast wealth distribution can’t be kept going for much longer. That level of public expenditure is not sustainable and it flies in the face of decades of efforts to promote better fiscal accountability in the kingdom and wean the population off handouts and public-sector entitlement.

Thus, on top of declining oil reserves, rapidly rising domestic energy consumption and increasing energy-supply diversification among its allies, the kingdom’s spiraling spending is also fast raising the break-even oil price for Saudi Arabia and all five of the other Gulf monarchies; in other words, the price of a barrel of oil that these states need in order to balance their books is getting higher and higher. In Bahrain it’s now over $115 (far higher than yesterday’s price of around $102) while in Oman it’s up to $104.

In Bahrain and Oman, dependency on a high oil price is becoming perilous, while in the small oil-rich monarchies, ministers are starting to talk openly of a break-even price. That would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. In early October, even Kuwait received a warning from the International Monetary Fund. It was told it had to rein in its spending on welfare and public sector jobs and boost non-oil income as soon as possible.

Much worse for the Gulf’s ruling families than the looming economic crisis is the fact that their repressive response to protests is now starting to have a demonstrable impact on their legitimacy as carefully honed social contracts begin to fray.

The initial slew of arrests and small number of deaths in the first half of 2011 have since been dwarfed by huge crackdowns. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have been the most brutal, with dozens dead in Bahrain and about 18 killed in Saudi Arabia. All the neighboring states have taken many political prisoners. Last year, Qatar even sentenced a poet critical of autocracies to life imprisonment, later commuted to 15 years.

These moves have caught the international community off guard – especially those institutions and governments that had bought into the myth of Gulf monarchies’ benevolence. But far more important, the rulers’ increasing heavy-handedness has not gone unnoticed by domestic populations.

In countries that enjoy some of the highest broadband and smartphone penetration rates in the world, there is more access to information than ever before. People are now openly questioning the large numbers of political prisoners, the use of counterterrorism laws to justify mass arrests and the open assaults being made on what’s left of civil society, academia and the media.

Bahrain is a tiny island just a few miles across a causeway from Saudi Arabia and now increasingly something of a vassal state to Riyadh. The country’s pro-democracy activists have borne the brunt of state repression. Their protests, which were on the cusp of full-blown revolution in mid-2011, were repeatedly attacked by mercenaries – often from Pakistan and Jordan – while the government invited direct military interventions by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The bulk of the country’s population – who are Shiites – are unlikely to ever again accept living under a traditional Sunni monarchy.

The iconic Pearl Roundabout, which had served as a rallying point in Manama, was bulldozed in 2011, and dozens of Shiite mosques were destroyed. More dangerously, Shiites in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia have been victims of a vicious sectarian strategy, as the Saudi government has sought to persuade Sunni citizens and Western allies that they are fighting against the proxies of a dangerous, expansionist Iran, rather than the democratic vanguard of a popular revolt.

Even the U.A.E. has played this foreign boogeyman card. Lacking a substantial Shiite population of its own, the Emirati authorities have instead attacked what they claim to be the “Emirati Muslim Brotherhood” by arresting hundreds of citizens, including dozens of members of a peaceful longstanding local Islamist organization. Now, with one of the highest political prisoner per capita rates in the world, the U.A.E. has human rights lawyers, academics and students behind bars. Even a former judge and a ruling family member have been accused of “plotting to overthrow the state.”

Much like the spending strategy, these clampdowns have bought some time, but at a huge cost to rulers’ legitimacy. Divide-and-conquer measures like stoking sectarian tensions and blaming foreign meddling can keep attention away from autocratic political systems for only so long.

When the Gulf monarchies’ exceptionalism inevitably runs out of steam, and it will, their populations will be well placed to take their part in the bigger, regionwide shift in the political order that is happening at the expense of unaccountable repressive elites and in favor of a more vocal, politically conscious and better-connected youth.

 

U.S. SURGES PAST SAUDIS TO BECOME WORLD’S TOP OIL SUPPLIER

U.S. surges past Saudis to become world’s top oil supplier
Reuters
Oct 15, 2013

www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-oil-pira-idUSBRE99E0TR20131015

The United States has overtaken Saudi Arabia to become the world’s biggest oil producer as the jump in output from shale plays has led to the second biggest oil boom in history, according to leading U.S. energy consultancy PIRA.

U.S. output, which includes natural gas liquids and biofuels, has swelled 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd) since 2009, the fastest expansion in production over a four-year period since a surge in Saudi Arabia’s output from 1970-1974, PIRA said in a release on Tuesday.

It was the latest milestone for the U.S. oil sector caused by the shale revolution, which has upended global oil trade. While still the largest consumer of fuel, the rise of cheap crude available to domestic refiners has turned the United States into a significant exporter of gasoline and distillate fuels.

Last month, China surpassed the United States as the largest importer of crude, according to the U.S. government, as the rise of domestic output cuts the U.S. dependence on overseas oil.

“(The U.S.) growth rate is greater than the sum of the growth of the next nine fastest growing countries combined and has covered most of the world’s net demand growth over the past two years,” PIRA Energy Group wrote.

“The U.S. position as the largest oil supplier in the world looks to be secure for many years,” it added.

Total liquids produced by the United States, which PIRA defined broadly to include supplies such as crude oil, condensate, natural gas liquids and biofuels, should average 12.1 million bpd in 2013, pushing it ahead of last year’s No. 1 supplier, Saudi Arabia.

Output from the OPEC state also rose last year, but the gains lagged those from the United States, the consultancy said.

PIRA said the increase in oil from shale, which has been centered in areas such as Eagle Ford in Texas and the Bakken in North Dakota, has seen U.S. supply grow by 1 million bpd in 2012 and again 2013.

The United States still lagged both Saudi Arabia and Russia in production of just crude oil by abut 3 million bpd, PIRA noted. Rounding out the top 10 oil suppliers were China, Canada, UAE, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Mexico.

 

SAUDI ARABIA TO JOIN U.S. AS SHALE GAS PRODUCER

Saudi Arabia to join U.S. as shale gas producer
By Florence Tan and Meeyoung Cho
Reuters Middle East
October 14, 2013

news.yahoo.com/saudi-arabia-join-u-shale-gas-producer-112243778--business.html

DAEGU, South Korea, Oct 14 (Reuters) - OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia is preparing to be among the first countries outside North America to use shale gas for power generation and thereby save more of its crude oil for lucrative exports.

Inspired by a shale gas boom in the United States, which has transformed the country from the world’s largest gas importer to a budding exporter, Riyadh plans to take its first steps to commercialise its own large unconventional deposits.

“We are ready to start producing our own shale gas and unconventional resources in various types in the next few years and deliver them to consumers,” Saudi Aramco Chief Executive Khalid al-Falih said on Monday at the World Energy Congress in South Korea.

“Only two years after launching our own unconventional gas programme, in the northern region of Saudi Arabia, we are ready to commit gas for the development of a 1,000 megawatt power plant which will feed a massive phosphate mining and manufacturing sector,” said Falih.

The Saudi Arabian Mining Co (Maaden) plans to invest in a phosphate project which is part of a new industrial city called Waad al Shimal City for Mining Industries, with production expected to start by the end of 2016.

By unlocking its gas reserves, the world’s top oil exporter could use the fuel to power its domestic economy and allow more room for oil sales to world markets.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi has given an estimate of over 600 trillion cubic feet of unconventional gas reserves, more than double its proven conventional reserves.

That would put Saudi Arabia fifth in a 32-country shale gas reserves ranking compiled for the U.S. Energy Information Administration. China tops the list and has already signed production-sharing deals and awarded exploration blocks as it targets output of 6.5 billion cubic metres a year by 2015.

But Riyadh - hampered by scarce water and prices fixed far below production costs - is unlikely to produce much shale gas this decade.

Neighbouring Oman is likely to lead the way with development of tight gas that could start commercial production by 2017 and yield up to 30 trillion cubic feet.

Saudi Aramco meanwhile has been mapping unconventional reserves in the hope it will help meet an expected doubling of demand by 2030 in a country that bans gas imports.

It has carried out appraisal drilling and piloting of three prospective areas for unconventional gas in the northwest, in south Ghawar and for condensate-rich shale gas in the Rub’ al-Khali.

The gas will feed a proposed power plant in Jizan, which will be connected to a 400,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) refinery.

The Saudi state oil giant hopes to complete the project by early 2017, Falih said.

Industry sources have said this could be delayed by up to a year because work on associated infrastructure is running behind schedule.

The Aramco chief said Riyadh is making massive investments to maintain the world’s largest spare oil production capacity of more than 2 million bpd.

“As part of our drive to become the world’s most integrated energy company, we have increased our annual capital budget tenfold from $4 to $40 billion in the last 10 years,” the Aramco boss said.

“In the past two years alone, we have swung our production by more than 1.5 million bpd in order to address market supply imbalances,” Falih said.

Saudi Aramco is also on track to increase the average recovery rate of its conventional oil to 70 percent - more than double the current world average, he said. (Additional reporting by Jane Chung; editing by Ed Davies and Jason Neely)

 

IT IS RARE FOR SAUDI OFFICIALS TO PUBLICLY EXHIBIT THEIR FEELINGS

(Tom Gross: This article was written before the Saudi decision not to take its UN Security-Council seat – and unlike the BBC and others doesn’t dwell on the Palestinian issue, but makes clear that the Saudi displeasure with the UN is over Syria.)

Saudi Arabia: Swallowing Bitter Pills
By Abdel Bari Atwan
raialyoum.com
Oct. 9, 2013

www.raialyoum.com/?p=11565

It is rare for Saudi officials to publicly exhibit their feelings. The foreign Minister of another Gulf country told me that this is because the Saudi Royals have been brought up to exhibit self-control in diplomacy, avoiding any kind of extreme reaction or losing their tempers. So when Saudi Foreign Minister, Saud al-Faisal refused to give his tabled speech at the UN General Assembly last week in protest at US-Iran rapprochement and the US-Russian Syria initiative it came a surprise to commentators.

Saud al-Faisal has only displayed his irritation in the diplomatic context twice that I am aware of. Both over Syria. Well before September’s UN demonstration, he walked out on a meeting of the Friends of Syria in Tunisia eighteen months ago in protest at Washington’s hesitance about arming the Syrian opposition . Saud al-Faisal’s spokesperson added a second cause for the UN speech strike which was the lack of progress on Palestine.

The Saudis have faced a lot of set-backs over their Syria policy recently. They worked hard to get their own men into the top positions in the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) instead of those backed by regional rival, Qatar. They also managed to reduce the influence of the Moslem Brotherhood in the coalition. Imagine the shock waves in Riyadh, then, when the Syrian Free Army (SFA) suddenly announced that they no longer had any faith in the SNC! The newly-appointed head of the SNC, Ahmad al-Jarba, who is close to the Saudis, was the subject of a blistering attack by a SFA spokesperson who then said the army was withdrawing its recognition of the SNC as representative of the opposition.

The biggest headache for the Saudis in their Syria policy is the rise of jihadi groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and al-Nusra Brigades. There are more than 20 al-Qaeda affiliates active in Syria and they all consider Saudi Arabia to be their main enemy following the last decade’s clampdown on their confreres in the Kingdom.

It is relevant here to mention the drone strikes on al-Qaeda targets in Southern Yemen. The drones fly from a base in Saudi Arabia near the Yemeni border and, clearly, with Saudi blessing.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar may be competing to control the Syrian opposition but they shared in a concerted media attack on Assad using the heavy weaponry of al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera. The media managed to hasten regime change in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

But these heavy weapons have become a bit rusty over the course of the two and a half years that the Syrian crisis has endured. As time goes by and the opposition fails to unseat Assad, the media – which confidently predicted the fall of the regime in every analysis and commentary – has lost its bite and its credibility.

Paradoxically, Assad – who lost the media war at the beginning of crisis – is now all over the international media looking well-groomed and statesmanlike. Recent interviews have included the prestigious US channel CBS and German magazine Der Spiegel.

At the beginning of conflict, the only outlets willing to broadcast his point of view were Iranian and Hezbollah channels (like al-Manar) and Turkish opposition channels who wanted to annoy the ferociously anti-Assad PM Recip Erdogan.

What I want to say is that, somehow, Assad has regained credibility as Syrian leader and, in doing so, has broken the media seige imposed on him and resisted the media bombardment against his regime by Saudi and Qatari satellite channels.

The Saudi regime is like a wounded tiger nowadays, not only over Syria but also because the US gave it another huge stab when President Obama – who was massing warships in the Gulf to threaten and possibly even attack Iran – suddenly performed a U-turn and started cosying up to Tehran’s new President Hassan Rouhani. Now Iran -Saudi Arabia’s regional nemesis – is America’s new best friend.

Iran will now be invited to the Geneva 2 conference intended to solve the Syrian crisis; Tehran has also been in discussions with Washington about influence-sharing initiatives in the Middle East which are extremely alarming for the Gulf states, the Saudis in particular.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the Saudi regime’s crisis may become more complicated than Assad’s because it is a strategic crisis and it is deepening. The Syrian president’s problems are military and the pressure on him – for the time being – is gradually receding because of the change in the US position occasioned by a newly friendly Iran and the cunning of the Russians.

Saudi Arabia lost its influence in Iraq, and is losing Syria because Assad did not fall quickly; as a knock-on effect, the kingdom will also lose its influence in Lebanon because Iran’s exit from the cage of American political embargo will strengthen its allies in Lebanon – Hezbollah, in particular – at the expense of the March 14th Alliance.

This does not mean that the Saudi leadership has no cards left to play for influence – it has, of course, enormous wealth ($ 500 billion annual oil revenues) and regional strong ties with the Military junta in Egypt.

But the Gulf region is riven with squabbles and conflicts – the Saudi dispute with Qatar has returned to the forefront, and the Sultan of Oman has decided to keep his options open – Qaboos visited Tehran three weeks ago where he received a very warm welcome from Rouhani.

Sectarianism continues to bubble under the surface, and other threats to the Kingdom cannot be ignored, such as the growing strength of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, turning the latter into a failed State, and strained relations with the Muslim Brotherhood – in Egypt and the rest of the region – because of its support for the Egyptian military coup led by General Al-Sisi. This has also led to a cooling of relations with Turkey.

In the cold light of day, after his protest at the UN, Prince Saud Al-Faisal can see his country’s foreign policy is in serious decline, as extent of the wounds inflicted by the American dagger become clearer. Saudi Arabia will now have to move with the times, and the shifting diplomatic relationships and international alignments they have brought.

That a new pragmatism is already colouring Saudi foreign policy is clear in the fact that they have invited new Iranian President Hassan Rohani to perform the Hajj this year. He has accepted.

 

SAUDI KING ABDULLAH’S FEMALE ADVISERS ASK HIM TO LET WOMEN DRIVE

Saudi King Abdullah’s female advisers ask him to let women drive
Members of Shura Council, which makes recommendations to the monarch, challenge conservative Islamic establishment
Reuters in Riyadh
October 9, 2013

Female members of Saudi Arabia’s influential Shura Council, which advises King Abdullah, have proposed allowing women to drive, challenging a tradition upheld by the conservative clerical establishment.

The council is the nearest the kingdom has to a parliament, though its members are not elected but appointed by the king and cannot make laws but only issue recommendations. However, these recommendations have often in the past prefigured Saudi reforms.

Conservative Saudis say letting women drive would encourage the sexes to mix in public unchaperoned and so threaten public morality. But it is an important demand of many women who rely on expensive private drivers to perform basic daily tasks.

There is no specific law to prevent women from driving in Saudi Arabia, but they cannot apply for driving licences and have previously been arrested on charges relating to public order or political protest after getting behind the wheel.

Hanan al-Ahmadi, one of 30 women appointed by King Abdullah to the council in January, said the issue of letting women drive came up on Tuesday during discussions about the transport ministry’s performance.

“Men and women members were discussing the obstacle of women’s transportation and how it’s a burden for women working with families and the lack of other options like public transport,” she said.

Then one of her female colleagues, Latifa al-Shaalan, stood and proposed that the Shura Council’s transportation committee should include a recommendation that the transport ministry make preparations to allow women to drive.

“Nobody raised their voice or opposed it. I think people were expecting it,” Ahmadi said. “I believe she received many notes of support afterwards from other members.”

The Shura Council’s transport committee must now decide whether to accept the recommendation and put it to the transport ministry, which is unlikely to happen for several weeks. If the ministry rejects it, the speaker might ask members to vote on whether to discuss the ban as a separate issue, Ahmadi said.

Women’s rights activists have called for a campaign on 26 October to push for an end to the ban. Previous campaigns in which women have defied the law to drive in public have ended with the arrests of participants.

Under Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam, women fall under the legal authority of a male relative, known as their “guardian”, who can stop them travelling abroad, getting a job or opening a bank account. The proposal on women drivers follows other cautious moves by King Abdullah aimed at giving women more say, including the decision to appoint them to the council. He has also urged the government to improve job opportunities for women.

The ban has long been debated in private circles in Saudi Arabia but rarely in public by senior figures or officials.

Religious leaders no longer argue, as some have in the past, that women are not allowed to drive under Islamic Sharia law. Opponents of change instead cite fears about public morality.

The head of the powerful morality police, Sheikh Abdulatif Al al-Sheikh, told Reuters last month there was no text in Sharia that forbade women from driving.

Ahmadi, who used to drive in the US when she lived there as a student, welcomed the recommendation but would probably not drive herself if it were permitted. “Some who are more courageous than me might do it,” she said. “But it is not an easy thing.”

“For a society that took so long to discuss this issue and has been subjected to so much preaching on the harm women driving might do, we are programmed to reject it rather than accept it.”

ISRAELI SECURITY CABINET STATEMENT ON IRAN

Israeli Security Cabinet statement on Iran
October 15, 2013

FULL TEXT:

Today, another round of negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran will begin in Geneva. Sanctions must not be eased when they are so close to achieving their intended purpose.

Adopted unanimously

Iran has been working for over 20 years to obtain nuclear weapons capabilities despite its declared commitment to pursue only civilian nuclear energy.

During this time, Iran has repeatedly deceived the international community about its nuclear program, including its efforts to conceal enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom. Iran has also systematically defied United Nations Security Council resolutions which call upon it to end its enrichment.

Brazenly violating these resolutions, Iran has increased the number of centrifuges from 164 in 2006 to over 18,000 today, and it has amassed during negotiations with the international community several tons of enriched uranium.

An Iran with military nuclear capabilities would threaten world peace and stability as well as the security of countries across the Middle East, including Israel, which it threatens to annihilate.

Iran continues to develop missiles of various ranges, including intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads. These missiles pose a threat to the Middle East, Europe, the United States and other countries.

As a result of Iran’s actions, the UN Security Council has adopted a series of resolutions. The most recent one, UNSC Resolution 1929 from June 2010, determined that Iran must:

1. Fully and sustainably suspend all enrichment, reprocessing and heavy water-related activity.

2. Refrain from any activity related to developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
In the resolution, the Security Council determined that Iran had breached previous UNSC resolutions.

Over the years, the international community has imposed on Iran sanctions to compel it to end its military nuclear program. However, Iran continues to blatantly violate Security Council resolutions and to advance its military nuclear program, even as it negotiates with the P5+1.

Today, another round of negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran will begin in Geneva. These negotiations begin at a time when the Iranian regime is under great pressure because of the sanctions and is desperately trying to have them removed. Sanctions must not be eased when they are so close to achieving their intended purpose.

Now is an opportune moment to reach a genuine diplomatic solution that peacefully ends Iran’s nuclear weapons program. However, this opportunity can be realized only if the international community continues to put pressure on Iran and does not ease the sanctions prematurely. It would be an historic mistake not to take full advantage of the sanctions, by making concessions before ensuring the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Israel will embrace a genuine diplomatic solution which would bring about the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Such a solution would require Iran to comply with Security Council resolutions and other steps which call upon it to:

* Cease all nuclear enrichment.
* Remove from its territory all the stockpiles of enriched uranium.
* Dismantle the underground facilities near Qom and Natanz, including the centrifuges inside them.
* Stop all work on the plutonium-producing heavy water reactor in Arak.

Unfortunately, we have seen no evidence that Iran is willing to accept such a solution. On the contrary, Iran continues to enrich uranium without letting up. It insists that it has the “right to enrich.” But as President Rouhani revealed in his 2011 book:

“A country that can enrich uranium to about 3.5% will also have the capability to enrich to 90%... Having fuel cycle capability virtually means that a country that possesses this capability is able to produce nuclear weapons.

Rouhani’s goal is clear. Furthermore, the “Supreme Leader” Khamenei is the true decision maker regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Khamenei has not given any indication whatsoever that he has changed his objective of attaining nuclear weapons.

Iran claims that it supposedly has the “right to enrich.” But a country that regularly deceives the international community, that violates UN Security Council resolutions, that participates in the slaughter of civilians in Syria and that promotes terror worldwide, has no such right.

Israel does not oppose Iran having a peaceful nuclear energy program. But as has been demonstrated in many countries, from Canada to Indonesia, peaceful programs do not require uranium enrichment or plutonium production. Iran’s nuclear weapons program does.

Israel calls upon the international community not to reach a partial agreement that would fail to bring about the full dismantling of the Iranian military nuclear program, and at the same time, could lead to the collapse of the sanctions regime.

Iran believes it can get by with cosmetic concessions that would not significantly impede its path to developing nuclear weapons, concessions that could be reversed in weeks. In exchange, Iran demands an easing of the sanctions, which have taken years to put in place.

The international community must reject Iran’s attempts to reach a deal that leaves it with the capability to develop nuclear weapons and must insist upon a genuine and sustainable agreement.

ARTICLE

Saudi preacher jailed over daughter’s death
By Sebastian Usher
BBC News
October 7, 2013

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24438375

A Saudi preacher accused of torturing his five-year-old daughter and beating her to death has been sentenced to eight years in prison and 600 lashes.

The case of Fayhan al-Ghamdi made headlines around the world earlier this year when it was suggested that a Saudi court might let him walk free.

Activists began a campaign named after his daughter, “I am Lama”, to press the authorities to prevent that happening.

Al-Ghamdi is not recognised as a cleric by the Saudi religious establishment.

The horrific details of the abuse that Lama al-Ghamdi suffered were revealed in medical records from the hospital where she was treated for 10 months before she died.

Her ribs were broken, a fingernail was torn off and her skull crushed. She had been beaten with a cane and electric cables. She had also suffered burns.

The abuse had happened while she was with her father, who was separated from her mother.

It was reported that al-Ghamdi had suspected his daughter of losing her virginity and had beaten her and molested her in response.

It was even suggested that he had raped her himself, although this was denied by Lama’s mother.

The outrage over the case intensified earlier this year when activists suggested that he might walk free, despite having confessed to having beaten Lama.

The judge in the case suggested that one reading of Islamic law meant a father could not be held fully accountable for the death of his children.

Activists warned that it looked like he might be released if the mother accepted blood money.

The story grabbed headlines across the world.

It shone a light on child abuse in Saudi Arabia where rights activists say strict codes of family privacy and a patriarchal tradition make it a serious problem.

The Saudi authorities set up a child abuse helpline in response.

Now, a verdict has been reached in the same court and with the same judge.

One of the activists involved in the campaign, Aziz al-Yousef, told the BBC that she was disappointed that Fayhan al-Ghamdi did not receive a life sentence.

But Lama’s mother had in the end accepted the offer of blood money, despite having once said she would never take it.

She said she needed it to help support her surviving children. That ruled out a life sentence.

Another campaigner who fought for a longer sentence, Manal al-Sharif, told the BBC that she did not believe the penalty was enough.

But she does feel that the I am Lama campaign - with the international pressure it brought to bear on the authorities - was instrumental in leading to the recent introduction of an unprecedented new Saudi law against domestic violence.

However, she added that she still has deep reservations over how effectively this will be enforced in practice.

GOOD OLD HARRY. HE HAS COME A LONG WAY SINCE FLEEING POGROMS IN UKRAINE AS A BOY...

A nightly dinner out that’s like therapy
By Corey Kilgannon
The New York Times
September 27, 2013

It never fails, Harry Rosen said on Wednesday evening as he enjoyed another fine meal by himself in another top-rated Manhattan restaurant.

“Maybe because I’m eating alone at my age, people at other tables start conversations,” he said.

Yes, he tells them, he lives alone, in a modest studio apartment on West 57th Street in Manhattan, and he always eats dinner out, always orders the fish.

“They always ask my age, and I often lie and tell them I’m 90,” he said. “If I tell them my real age, it becomes the whole subject of conversation and makes it look like I’m looking for attention, which I’m not.”

Mr. Rosen is 103 but he doesn’t look a day over 90. His mother died at 53 and his father at 70, but he says he feels fine and has had no major operations or health problems.

“I read in a newspaper column a long time ago that the key to a long life is sleeping on your back, so I always did that,” said Mr. Rosen, who often finds that his bill has been paid by those friendly diners. Not that he needs it. He made a bundle with his office supply company and is spending it — $100 a night, on average — on dinners out.

Much of his work involved wooing clients over lunch and dinner, so after retiring a few years back because of hearing loss, he continued to put on a fine work suit every afternoon, grab his satchel, and head out to hail a yellow cab to one of his favorite restaurants. Café Boulud perhaps, on East 76th Street, or Boulud Sud near Lincoln Center, or Avra Estiatorio on East 48th Street.

“I haven’t eaten dinner home in many years,” said Mr. Rosen, who tried singles groups and other activities after his wife of 70 years, Lillian, died five years ago, when she was 95.

But nothing brought him the comfort of a fine restaurant.

“It’s my therapy, it lifts my spirits,” he said Wednesday evening while examining the menu with a magnifying glass at David Burke Townhouse on East 61st Street.

Twice a week, a server there greets him, walks him to his usual corner table and brings his regular glass of chardonnay, his appetizer of raw salmon and tuna, and then the swordfish, skin removed, with vegetables specially puréed for his dentures to handle.

“The food and the ambience, it’s my therapy — it gives me energy,” he said.

Mr. Rosen has lived long enough to see New York City fill with fine restaurants. In a city of foodies, he may be the oldest.

Call it payback for the meager meals he ate growing up in Berdychiv, Russia, now a part of Ukraine, where as a boy, he recalled, he marched with protesters during the Russian Revolution. He and his family fled the pogroms, came through Ellis Island and moved into a railroad apartment on Pitt Street on the Lower East Side. By the time he was 11, young Harry’s meals improved to pickled herring sold from barrels on the street, and he worked as a delivery boy for pennies before taking a job at an office supply company.

“I knew it was the business for me, the same way you know you’re in love with a woman,” Mr. Rosen said. He started Radio Center Stationery in Midtown — back then, “you could look down Sixth Avenue and not see a single office building” — whose staff of 50 included his sons, Stan and Jerry. They regularly join him for dinner.

The deals to land clients like Walt Disney, ABC and the Hearst Corporation were made in top restaurants, Mr. Rosen said. You don’t win over the likes of Jack Linsky, the founder of Swingline staplers, by dining at dumps.

But as much as any fine meal, Mr. Rosen savors the memories of his deal making, including landing J. C. Penney with a great price on notepads, and fighting back from bankruptcy as computers encroached upon the industry.

On Wednesday, he backed up these recollections with photos and documents stored meticulously in folder boxes in his apartment.

“They’re called Pendaflex folders,” he said. “I was the first one in the industry to recognize they’d be a big seller.”

Mr. Rosen said he would like to find a regular dining companion. A recent six-month fling with a 90-year-old woman he met at synagogue did not work out.

“I’m still open to meeting someone,” he said, his eyes twinkling as he prepared to order coffee and dessert. “I still have the desire. That’s what counts.”

ARTICLES

“ROHANI AND ZARIF ARE SPOUTING THE SAME VILE ANTI-SEMITIC BILE AS THEIR UNCOUTH PREDECESSORS”

Iran’s Holocaust-denial trickery may point to nuclear duplicity as well
Despite the media’s uncritical embrace, Iranian leaders Rohani and Zarif are spouting the same vile anti-Semitic bile as their uncouth predecessors.
By Chemi Shalev
Ha’aretz
September 30, 2013

My grandmother was gassed at Auschwitz. My grandfather died of typhus in Theresienstadt. My aunts and uncles, on both my mother and father’s side, were exterminated in Sobibor, Majdanek, and Belzec, along with nine of their children, my first cousins, all under the age of seven.

I am, admittedly, one of those Jews that my Haaretz colleague Anshel Pfeffer describes as being “obsessed” with Iranian President Hassan Rohani efforts to obfuscate, bypass and sugarcoat his regime’s Holocaust denial and/or distortion. Rohani’s whitewash campaign, I confess, insults me personally.

But Iran’s ongoing Holocaust denial, absolute or partial, is much more than a personal or even collective affront. It is a telltale sign, first and foremost, of the Iranian regime’s abiding anti-Semitism, as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum makes clear: “Holocaust denial and distortion are generally motivated by hatred of Jews, and build on the claim that the Holocaust was invented or exaggerated by Jews as part of a plot to advance Jewish interests.”

Consequently, if the blatant Holocaust denial of Iran’s spiritual leader Ali Khamenei and former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a clear-cut manifestation of their “hatred of Jews,” than the more sterile version of Holocaust distortion offered by Rohani and his Foreign Minister Javad Zarif is but a refined version of the exact same odious sentiment.

And while it may not be a conclusive litmus test for evaluating their commitment to a nuclear arrangement with the West, it is certainly valid to note that they may be playing the same game with their nuclear weapons program as they are with their refusal to accept the Holocaust. That just as they are couching their anti-Semitism in more palatable terms, so they are repackaging Iran’s continued drive to produce nuclear weapons in words that spark less suspicion and elicit less scrutiny.

This is no less a credible claim, to say the least, than the opposite contention that sees the Iranian leadership carrying out a miraculous and instantaneous 180 degree reversal, both in its anti-Semitic ideology and its overall nuclear policy

And by the same token, the willingness of many in the media to isolate one or two catchphrase headlines from complex statements made in New York in recent days by both Rohani and Zarif - or even just one word, as in the spat over whether the Iranian president did or did not utter the explicit word Holocaust on CNN - in order to absolve them, more or less, of Holocaust denial, is grounds enough to suspect that Rohani may be getting a similar free pass when he protests his nuclear innocence.

After all, the headlines in many American and Israeli news outlets eagerly cited Rohani’s condemnation of the Nazis’ “reprehensible crimes against humanity” and his Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s admittedly courageous disavowal of the “faulty translation” of his Supreme Leader’s website, in which the Holocaust is labeled “a myth.” But far less attention was devoted to the intricate maze of caveats, qualifications, riders, disclaimers and fine print that the Iranian leaders attached to their denunciation of the crimes against the Jews, which, when finally navigated, continue to constitute Holocaust denial and distortion.

“I explained that we condemn the crimes by Nazis in the World War II, and regrettably those crimes were committed against many groups, many people. Many people were killed, including a group of Jewish people,” Rohani told the Asia Society and the Council of Foreign Relations on Thursday. Yes, the Nazis killed Jews, but it was nothing special: they killed a lot of people.

And Zarif, speaking on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, said that while the word “myth” was mistranslated on Khamenei’s English language website - and has miraculously survived seven years of Western protestations - the gist of the Supreme Leader’s message remains valid: “What is it that people are so upset that somebody is simply asking that we should do some studies of that?”

In other words, what other explanation can there be for the unjust denial of this burning Iranian quest for scientific freedom? Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt defines this disingenuous query as Holocaust deniers “assault on reason.” Otherwise, of course, we’re talking about a good old Jewish conspiracy, another manifestation of their stranglehold on Western society.

And then there is the issue of equivalency, another classic gambit of Holocaust deniers. “The point is,” Zarif told George Stephanopoulos, “we condemn the killing of innocent people, whether it happened in Nazi Germany or whether it’s happening in Palestine.” Which is like dispatching three of four birds with one stone: The Israelis are Nazis, the Palestinians are innocents, the Holocaust wasn’t any worse than Israel’s occupation of the territories and, concurrently, Israel’s occupation of the territories is just as horrid as the Holocaust.

And if the Holocaust wasn’t as bad as the Jews made it out to be, but was used as justification to usurp the Palestinians, what justification is there for the continued existence of Israel? And if there is no such justification, what possible objection can the West make to Iran’s wish to see Israel “uprooted from the region, like a cancerous tumor” as Khamenei said on Iranian TV in 2000, in what one assumes was yet another manifestation of that recurring Persian translation bug? Especially when that tumor is, as both Rohani and Zarif repeatedly explained, “the source of all the security and instability in the region?”

So when all the camouflaged Holocaust distortion is taken together with Rohani’s accusations that Israel is the “chief agitator” against Iran and his thinly-veiled insinuations against “war-mongering pressure groups” that are pushing the United States to a confrontation with Tehran, which Zarif described as Israel’s audacity “to lie and mislead the world” - does this not still amount, despite the sugar and spice and everything nice, to a view that “perpetuates long-standing anti-Semitic stereotypes by accusing Jews of conspiracy and world domination, hateful charges that were instrumental in laying the groundwork for the Holocaust” as the Holocaust Museum says?

Or to put it another way: even if the Holocaust didn’t really happen, there’s no reason to give up hope for the future.

All of which doesn’t mean, of course, that Iran’s promise to prove its benign intentions should not be patiently explored and, if possible, objectively ascertained.

But it does mean, at least in the eyes of the “obsessed,” that Tehran is guilty until proven innocent. That Israel has been given no reason whatsoever to “get over” the Holocaust in its wariness of Iran, as David Landau brilliantly argued here last week.

And that I would personally feel much more comfortable if so many in the American media wouldn’t be rushing so enthusiastically to embrace Rohani with open arms and with smiles on their faces, to the point that 1938 “peace in our time” Munich analogies that used to repel me don’t seem quite so preposterous anymore.

 

BETTER FOR ISRAEL TO HAVE DETERRENCE THAN POPULARITY

Israel’s Failing Strategy
The Jewish state cannot rely on the United States for its security.
By Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal
October 1, 2013

So Israel’s prime minister is now left to play the part of querulous Uncle Ben, who arrives the day after the funeral convinced his scheming siblings have already absconded with mother’s finest jewelry.

Uncle Ben’s suspicions may well be right. But he largely has himself to blame for not acting in time.

Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House on Monday and on Tuesday addresses the United Nations. It’s a predictable routine. First he obtains the stylized assurances from President Obama – still exulting from his 15 minute phone call Friday with Iran’s Hasan Rouhani – that Iran will not be allowed to get a bomb and that “all options are on the table.” Then Mr. Netanyahu denounces Iran at the U.N. and issues unspecified, and increasingly non credible, warnings that Israel may act on its own.

All hat and no cattle, as they say.

Here’s a line I never thought I’d write: I wish Ehud Olmert were Israel’s prime minister. Mr. Olmert has many flaws, some of them well known. But he also had a demonstrated capacity to act. It isn’t clear that Mr. Netanyahu does.

In May 2007 Israel disclosed to the U.S. that Syria was constructing a nuclear reactor in its eastern desert with help from North Korea. Mr. Olmert, then Israel’s prime minister, asked President Bush to bomb the facility. Mr. Bush weighed the options, said no, and proposed instead taking the matter public at the U.N.

“I told [Mr. Olmert] I had decided on a diplomatic option backed by the threat of force,” the former president recounts in his memoir, “Decision Points.”

“The prime minister was disappointed. ‘This is something that hits at the very serious nerves of this country,’ he said. He told me the threat of a nuclear weapons program in Syria was an ‘existential’ issue for Israel, and he worried diplomacy would bog down and fail. ‘I must be honest and sincere with you. Your strategy is very disturbing to me.’ That was the end of the call.”

Could Mr. Netanyahu say the same to Mr. Obama? Maybe. The Israeli prime minister infuriated the White House a couple of years ago by treating the president to a public lecture in the Oval Office.

Yet Israeli policy since then has amounted to one big kowtow to Mr. Obama’s needs, political and diplomatic. Israel apparently refrained from attacking Iran a year ago, largely out of deference to Mr. Obama’s electoral needs. Since then it has given the administration the widest possible latitude to pursue diplomatic initiatives until they prove their futility.

A year on, here is where things stand.

(1) U.S. credibility on enforcing presidential red lines and carrying through on military threats is in tatters thanks to Mr. Obama’s Syria capitulation.

(2) America’s “diplomatic option” is, for Mr. Obama, a journey not a destination: He will pursue it no matter how flimsy the pretext or the likelihood of success.

(3) Iran has enriched nearly 3,000 kilos of uranium in the last year alone, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA also notes in its most recent report that “the Agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities . . . including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

Oh, and (4): Despite this, Israel finds itself on the diplomatic back foot because Iran’s new president, unlike his predecessor, has alighted on a less-uncouth way to deny the Holocaust. Israel is now in the disastrous position of having to hope that Iranian hard-liners sabotage Mr. Rouhani’s efforts to negotiate a deal that, if honored, would leave Iran first-and-five at the nuclear goal line.

How does Mr. Netanyahu get out of this trap? Here’s another line I never thought I’d write: by downgrading relations with Washington.

That isn’t to say that Israel doesn’t benefit from good relations with the U.S. But the U.S., like Britain after World War II, is in retreat from the world, and Israelis need to adapt to a global reality in which the Americans are willing to do less, and consequently count for less. What Mr. Netanyahu has been doing instead is granting Mr. Obama a degree of leverage and a presumption of authority over the Jewish state to which he is not entitled and has done little to deserve. That needs to stop.

What also needs to stop is the guessing game over Israel’s intentions toward Iran. Mr. Obama will not – repeat, will not – conduct a military strike against Iran. Israelis who think otherwise are fooling themselves.

But Israel will soon have to decide whether to act alone. If so, Israelis must proceed without regard to Mr. Obama’s diplomatic timetable. If not, they’ll need to reconsider the concept and structure of Israeli deterrence, including nuclear ambiguity.

One last thing worth noting: Reflecting on Mr. Olmert’s decision to act against his wishes, Mr. Bush wrote this: “Prime Minister Olmert’s execution of the strike made up for the confidence I had lost in the Israelis during the Lebanon war. . . . The bombing demonstrated Israel’s willingness to act alone. Prime Minister Olmert hadn’t asked for a green light, and I hadn’t given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel.”

That is the voice of respect. Better for Israel to have that than any other mark of international approval or popularity.

 

“I’M FOR NEGOTIATIONS. BUT ONLY IF IT’S TO DO SOMETHING REAL, NOT TO RUN OUT THE CLOCK AS IRAN GOES NUCLEAR”

The Iranian ‘moderate’
By Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post
September 27, 2013

washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-iranian-moderate/2013/09/26/ecbbaffc-26e5-11e3-ad0d-b7c8d2a594b9_story.html

The search, now 30 years old, for Iranian “moderates” goes on. Amid the enthusiasm of the latest sighting, it’s worth remembering that the highlight of the Iran-contra arms-for-hostages debacle was the secret trip to Tehran taken by Robert McFarlane, President Reagan’s former national security adviser. He brought a key-shaped cake symbolizing the new relations he was opening with the “moderates.”

We know how that ended.

Three decades later, the mirage reappears in the form of Hassan Rouhani. Strange résumé for a moderate: 35 years of unswervingly loyal service to the Islamic Republic as a close aide to Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei. Moreover, Rouhani was one of only six presidential candidates, another 678 having been disqualified by the regime as ideologically unsound. That puts him in the 99th centile for fealty.

Rouhani is Khamenei’s agent but, with a smile and style, he’s now hailed as the face of Iranian moderation. Why? Because Rouhani wants better relations with the West.

Well, what leader would not want relief from Western sanctions that have sunk Iran’s economy, devalued its currency and caused widespread hardship? The test of moderation is not what you want but what you’re willing to give. After all, sanctions were not slapped on Iran for amusement. It was to enforce multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding a halt to uranium enrichment.

Yet in his lovey-dovey Post op-ed, his U.N. speech and various interviews, Rouhani gives not an inch on uranium enrichment. Indeed, he has repeatedly denied that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons at all. Or ever has. Such a transparent falsehood – what country swimming in oil would sacrifice its economy just to produce nuclear electricity that advanced countries such as Germany are already abandoning? – is hardly the basis for a successful negotiation.

But successful negotiation is not what the mullahs are seeking. They want sanctions relief. And more than anything, they want to buy time.

It takes about 250 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in August that Iran already has 186 kilograms. That leaves the Iranians on the threshold of going nuclear. They are adding 3,000 new high-speed centrifuges. They need just a bit more talking, stalling, smiling and stringing along of a gullible West.

Rouhani is the man to do exactly that. As Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator between 2003 and 2005, he boasted in a 2004 speech to the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, “While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the [uranium conversion] facility in Isfahan. . . . In fact, by creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work in Isfahan.”

Such is their contempt for us that they don’t even hide their strategy: Spin the centrifuges while spinning the West.

And when the president of the world’s sole superpower asks for a photo-op handshake with the president of a regime that, in President Obama’s own words, kills and kidnaps and terrorizes Americans, the killer-kidnapper does not even deign to accept the homage. Rouhani rebuffed him.

Who can blame Rouhani? Offer a few pleasant words in an op-ed hailing a new era of non-zero-sum foreign relations, and watch the media and the administration immediately swoon with visions of detente.

Detente is difficult with a regime whose favorite refrain, fed to frenzied mass rallies, is “Death to America.” Detente is difficult with a regime officially committed, as a matter of both national policy and religious duty, to the eradication of a U.N. member state, namely Israel. It doesn’t get more zero-sum than that.

But at least we have to talk, say the enthusiasts. As if we haven’t been talking. For a decade. Strung along in negotiations of every manner – the EU3, the P5+1, then the final, very final, last-chance 2012 negotiations held in Istanbul, Baghdad and Moscow at which the Iranians refused to even consider the nuclear issue, declaring the dossier closed. Plus two more useless rounds this year.

I’m for negotiations. But only if it’s to do something real, not to run out the clock as Iran goes nuclear. The administration says it wants actions, not words. Fine. Demand one simple proof of good faith: Honor the U.N. resolutions. Suspend uranium enrichment and we will talk.

At least that stops the clock. Anything else amounts to being played.

And about the Khamenei agent who charms but declares enrichment an inalienable right, who smiles but refuses to shake the president’s hand. When asked by NBC News whether the Holocaust was a myth, Rouhani replied: “I’m not a historian. I’m a politician.”

Iranian moderation in action.

And, by the way, do you know who was one of the three Iranian “moderates” the cake-bearing McFarlane dealt with at that fateful arms-for-hostage meeting in Tehran 27 years ago? Hassan Rouhani.

We never learn.

 

“ER, NOT EXACTLY, CHRISTIANE”

CNN’s Tehran Translation
Wall Street Journal (editorial)
September 28, 2013

Our friends at the Cable News Network are objecting to our Thursday editorial (“Holocaust Denial in Translation”) that noted subtle but significant discrepancies between what Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, speaking in Persian, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, and what CNN’s viewers heard in the English translation of his remarks. In a Twitter post, Ms. Amanpour insists that “CNN reported exactly what Rouhani said.”

Er, not exactly, Christiane.

Ms. Amanpour’s interview is gaining notice because it seemed to have Mr. Rouhani denouncing the Holocaust. CNN’s English transcript of the interview quotes the Iranian leader as “speaking of the dimensions of the Holocaust” (our emphasis), while adding that “whatever criminality they [the Nazis] committed against the Jews, we condemn.”

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani takes questions from journalists during a news conference in New York on Friday.

But as we pointed out in the editorial, Mr. Rouhani never uses the word “Holocaust.” He merely speaks of “aspects of historical events.” Our independent translation of Mr. Rouhani’s remarks confirms this, as does Arash Karami of the Iran Pulse website, as does the transcript provided by Mr. Rouhani’s office, as does the semi-official Fars news agency, which is demanding its own correction from CNN.

The point may seem small to Western ears, but it’s significant in the context of a regime for which Holocaust denial is an article of ideological faith. Ditto for the second comment: Mr. Rouhani did not speak narrowly of Nazi crimes against Jews, but more broadly of crimes “against the Jews and the non-Jews.” This distinction is also important, because central to the claims of Holocaust revisionists is the lie that Jews were not the deliberate and principal target of Nazi genocide.

Lest there be any doubt about Mr. Rouhani’s careful word play, he also weighed in on the subject during an appearance this week at the Council on Foreign Relations. “We condemn the crimes by Nazis in the World War II,” he said, again without speaking of a Holocaust. “And regrettably those crimes were committed against many groups, many people, many people were killed including a group of Jewish people.”

As the New York Sun points out, “a group of Jewish people” is a telling way to describe the six million murdered by the Nazis. Maybe Mr. Rouhani has to be so rhetorically evasive because Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has denounced “the myth of the massacre of Jews known as the holocaust” – a statement you can find on his official, English-language website.

Meantime, we note with amusement that Ms. Amanpour objects to our agreeing with the accuracy of the Fars translation, as opposed to CNN’s: “Stunned by willingness of [Wall Street Journal editorial] page and others to jump into bed with Iranian extremist mouthpiece like FARS.” Which is funny, because the interpreter on whom CNN relied for its mistranslation was part of Mr. Rouhani’s Iranian government entourage.

So we will not be offering an apology to CNN, though we will be happy to accept theirs.

 

THE U.S. ADMINISTRATION SWALLOWS THE LIE ABOUT KHAMENEI’S ‘FATWA’ AGAINST NUCLEAR ARMS

The U.S. Administration Swallows The Lie About Khamenei’s ‘Fatwa’ Against Nuclear Arms
MEMRI
September 29, 2013

www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/7432.htm

In his address to the U.N. General Assembly (September 24, 2013), U.S. President Barack Obama stated: “The Supreme Leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons.”[1] In fact, such a fatwa was never issued by Supreme Leader Khamenei and does not exist; neither the Iranian regime nor anybody else can present it.

The deception regarding “Khamenei’s fatwa” has been promoted by the Iranian regime and its spokesmen for several years. Each time it was mentioned, the “fatwa” was given a different year of issue – for example, 2005, 2007, or 2012 – but the text of the “fatwa” was never presented.

MEMRI has conducted in-depth research with regard to this “fatwa” and has published reports demonstrating that it is a fiction. See MEMRI reports:

Renewed Iran-West Nuclear Talks – Part II: Tehran Attempts to Deceive U.S. President Obama, Sec’y of State Clinton With Nonexistent Anti-Nuclear Weapons Fatwa By Supreme Leader Khamenei
www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/6291.htm

Release Of Compilation Of Newest Fatwas By Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei – Without Alleged Fatwa About Nuclear Bomb
www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/108/0/7348.htm

The Iranian regime apparently believe that their frequent repetition of the “fatwa” lie will make it accepted as truth. To date, the Europeans refuse to accept it. According to unofficial sources, the legal advisors of the EU3 made an official request to the Iranian regime in 2005 to provide a copy of the “fatwa,” but in vain.

[1] gadebate.un.org/sites/default/files/gastatements/68/US_en_0.pdf.

 

DID IRAN’S LEADER KHAMENEI REALLY ISSUE A FATWA AGAINST NUCLEAR WEAPONS? SEEMS NOT

Release Of Compilation Of Newest Fatwas By Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei – Without Alleged Fatwa About Nuclear Bomb
MEMRI
August 13, 2013

On July 30, 2013, the Iranian Tasnimnews website, which is close to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), published a compilation of 493 of the “newest” fatwas issued by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. These fatwas cover a wide range of issues, from political and cultural to religious, and include such topics as the treatment of Baha’is, trade with Israeli companies, religious purity and uncleanness, the status of women, and more.

MEMRI’s examination of the compilation shows that it also includes several previously released fatwas, dating back to 2004.

It is notable that a much-discussed fatwa, which regime officials claim was issued by Khamenei and prohibits the development, possession, or use of a nuclear bomb, is not included in this compilation. The conspicuous absence of such a fatwa by Khamenei from such a compilation confirms MEMRI’s argument that it does not exist; see MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 825, Renewed Iran-West Nuclear Talks – Part II: Tehran Attempts to Deceive U.S. President Obama, Sec’y of State Clinton With Nonexistent Anti-Nuclear Weapons Fatwa By Supreme Leader Khamenei, April 19, 2013.

The following are some examples of the fatwas in the compilation on Tasnimnews:[1]

New Fatwas

“23: [What is the religious law concerning] a medication that contains alcohol?
“If someone knows that the medication contains alcohol of a type that is for [human] consumption, and it is originally liquid and intoxicating, then this medication is unclean; if he does not know [that it contains alcohol] it is pure...”

“32: [What is the religious law concerning what to do when] a sacred object falls into the toilet?

“If for example Koran chapters or an amulet containing a Koran falls into the toilet, using that toilet is forbidden [but] only to those who know for sure according to religious law [that it fell in], and he must wait until it is certain that the amulet has been effaced or destroyed [down the toilet] However, this obligation does not apply to anyone who does not know [that it fell in] and the person who dropped the amulet does not need to tell others about it, and if it this is difficult, there is no need to empty the toilet...”

“44: How should the purity prior to prayer be maintained?

“Anyone who breaks wind regularly – if he cannot preserve his purity from before prayers to after prayers, and if it is very difficult for him to re-purify himself during prayer – it is sufficient for him to purify himself once for each prayer...”

“112: [What is the religious law concerning] laughing during prayers?

“Laughing out loud [during prayer] – if it is intentional, it cancels out the prayer...”

“245: [Is it permitted] to defraud a non-Muslim in commerce?

“Telling a lie or committing fraud or forgery in commercial relations are forbidden, even if the other party is not a Muslim...”

“260: [On] associating with Baha’is:

“One should refrain from any kind of association with this misguided and misleading cult.”

Some Fatwas Were Released Previously

MEMRI’s examination of the compilation of fatwas shows that some of them were released previously, for example:

“7: What must be done in the event that scholars’ opinions contradict each other? (This fatwa was published previously on June 6, 2009, on Khamenei’s website.[2])

“If several qualified scholars do not agree regarding a certain fatwa, caution dictates that the most learned [of them] be imitated.”

“472: [Is it permitted] for a woman to dance before her husband? (This fatwa was published previously, but with no date, on Khamenei’s website; however, an Iranian website quoted from it on January 16, 2011.[3])

“A woman may dance before her husband provided it is not accompanied by prohibited activity [that is, forbidden music or singing].”

“473: [Is it permitted] to establish centers for learning dances? (This fatwa was published previously, but with no date, on Khamenei’s website; it was quoted by the Parto-e Sokhan weekly, which is identified with Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Taqi Yazdi on October 14, 2004.[4])

“Establishing centers for the learning and the spreading of dances contradicts the aims of the Islamic regime, and is forbidden.”

Endnotes:

[1] Tasnimnews.com, July 30, 2013.
[2] http://farsi.khamenei.ir, June 6, 2009.
[3] http://www.leader.ir; http://zanan.mihanblog.com, January 16, 2011.
[4] http://www.leader.ir; Partosokhan.ir, October 14, 2004.

 

IRANIAN TERRORISM UNDER ‘MODERATE’ PRESIDENTS

Iranian Terrorism Under ‘Moderate’ Presidents
By Matthew Levitt
The Washington Institute
June 25, 2013

www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/iranian-terrorism-under-moderate-presidents

The Islamic Republic’s history suggests that the new president-elect will have neither the inclination nor the authority to curb the regime’s sponsorship of terrorism.

Hassan Rouhani’s victory in Iran’s presidential election has been widely heralded as a protest vote against the hardliners and a window of opportunity for diplomatic breakthrough with Western powers. But such assumptions beg the question: just how much moderation should be expected from a “moderate” Iranian president, particularly with regard to state sponsorship of terrorism? Past precedent suggests that expectations should be tempered.

RAFSANJANI’S TERRORISM REPORT CARD

Rouhani is not the first Iranian “moderate” to win the presidency. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, elected in 1989, was frequently described as a moderate as well. According to U.S. intelligence, however, he oversaw a long string of terrorist plots during his eight years in office.

The CIA linked Rafsanjani to terrorist plots as early as 1985, when he was serving as speaker of parliament. In a February 15, 1985, memo, the agency assessed that “Iranian-sponsored terrorism is the greatest threat to US personnel and facilities in the Middle East...Iranian-backed attacks increased by 30 percent in 1984, and the numbers killed in Iranian-sponsored attacks outpace fatalities in strikes by all other terrorist sponsors. Senior Iranian leaders such as Ayatollah Montazeri,...Prime Minister [Mir Hossein Mousavi], and Consultative Assembly speaker Rafsanjani are implicated in Iranian terrorism.”

In August 1990, the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence authored a more in-depth assessment titled “Iranian Support for Terrorism: Rafsanjani’s Report Card.” According to the agency, the regime’s sponsorship of terrorist activities had continued unabated since the death of Ayatollah Khomeini the previous June: “Although Rafsanjani has sought to improve relations with some Western nations since directly assuming the presidency last August, events of the past year prove that Tehran continues to view the selective use of terrorism as a legitimate tool.” Iranian terrorist attacks targeting “enemies of the regime” over the previous year “were probably approved in advance by President Rafsanjani and other senior leaders,” the report assessed, but “the planning and implementation of these operations are...probably managed by other senior officials, most of whom are Rafsanjani’s appointees or allies.” The CIA concluded that “Rafsanjani and [Supreme Leader] Khamenei would closely monitor and approve planning for an attack against the US or Western interests.”

Looking forward, CIA analysts assessed in 1990 that “Rafsanjani and other Iranian leaders will continue selectively using terrorism as a foreign policy tool to intimidate regime opponents, punish enemies of Islam, and influence Western political decisions.” Two years later, such assessments appeared prescient. In 1992, the CIA recorded a long list of Iranian terrorist activities, from attacks targeting Israeli, Saudi, and American officials in Turkey, to plots targeting Jewish emigres from the former Soviet Union and antiregime dissidents abroad. Most spectacular, however, were the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires (conducted with help from the regime’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah) and the public assassination of four Iranian dissidents at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin that same year.

Germany’s highest criminal court would later reject claims that the Mykonos attack was executed by “mavericks,” concluding in a 1997 ruling that “the assassination [was] put into action much more through the powers in Iran.” By identifying Rafsanjani and the Supreme Leader himself as the orchestrators of the plot, the court found that “Iranian powers not only allow terrorist attacks abroad...they themselves set in action such attacks.” Whenever the regime encountered political opposition, the court determined, its solution was simply to have the opponents “liquidated.”

Iran and Hezbollah soon struck again in Argentina. According to local investigators, a subgroup of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (the Committee for Special Operations) made the final decision to approve the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. That meeting reportedly included Khamenei, Rafsanjani, Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian, and Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati. Also present were Iranian intelligence agents Mohsen Rabbani and Ahmad Asghari, who had firsthand knowledge of Argentina and advised the committee about target selection, the local logistical and intelligence support networks that could be used to facilitate the attack, and the country’s political and security environment at the time.

KHOBAR TOWERS: A CASE IN POINT

Seventeen years ago this week, Iranian agents teamed up with Lebanese and Saudi Hezbollah operatives to bomb the Khobar Towers military housing complex in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. The bombing, the largest nonnuclear explosion then on record (it was felt twenty miles away in Bahrain), killed 19 U.S. Air Force personnel and wounded 372 more, along with numerous Saudi civilians and other nationals.

The Khobar plot took place while Rafsanjani was president and Rouhani was secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. Following a massive FBI investigation, a U.S. federal court eventually indicted thirteen members of the Iranian-sponsored Saudi Hezbollah and an unidentified Lebanese Hezbollah operative referred to as John Doe.

Intelligence, forensics, and statements by detained suspects all pointed to Iran. According to FBI director Louis Freeh, “The bombers admitted they had been trained by the Iranian external security service (IRGC) in the Beka Valley, and received their passports at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, along with $250,000 cash for the operation from IRGC Gen. Ahmad Sharifi.” Freeh would later testify that “the attack was planned, funded and sponsored by senior leadership in the government of the Republic of Iran, that the IRGC principally had the responsibility of putting that plan into operation,” and that it was implemented “with the use of the Saudi Hezbollah organization and its members.”

TERROR SPONSORSHIP CONTINUES UNDER KHATAMI

In May 1997, Muhammad Khatami was elected as Iran’s fifth president after running on a distinctly reformist platform. Supporters of Iranian radicalism, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, had strongly supported Khatami’s more overtly revolutionary opponent, Ali Akbar Nateq Nuri.

In a December 1997 memo, the CIA asserted that Hezbollah leaders were shocked by Khatami’s victory and “scrambled to ensure that his election would not diminish Iran’s support” for the group. Their concerns would prove unfounded, however -- when Nasrallah visited Tehran in October 1997, Khatami and other officials pledged their continued support, emphasizing that the regime had not changed its position regarding the group or its operations against Israel. According to the CIA memo, Khatami “probably joins other Iranian leaders who maintain that support to Hezbollah is an essential aspect of Tehran’s effort to promote itself as leader of the Muslim world and champion of the oppressed.”

More important, the CIA assessed that Khatami would have been unable to withdraw Iran’s sponsorship of Hezbollah even if he had wanted to. As the memo put it, Khatami “probably does not have the authority to make such a change without the approval of Khamenei, who has long been one of the group’s foremost supporters.”

CONCLUSION

The fact that the least radical candidate won Iran’s latest presidential election has many observers excited about the prospect of more moderate policymaking in Tehran. Yet regardless of how Rouhani’s election might affect the nuclear impasse, the Islamic Republic’s history indicates that “moderate” or “reformist” presidents do not translate into moderation of Iran’s terrorism sponsorship. Even if Rouhani were inclined to curb such policies, there is no evidence that he has the authority to do so without the Supreme Leader’s approval, which seems highly unlikely at present.