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Obama’s Benghazi moment

The “Benghazi moment” is likely engendering a rethink in the United States’ regional strategies in the Middle East. One is inclined to agree with the Time magazine’s assessment that a Libya-style intervention by the US in Syria now becomes highly unlikely. A curious aspect of Tony Karon’s analysis is that he tosses the Syrian ball into the court of the Arab governments.

This is also in sync with the White House “readout” of President Barack Obama’s latest telecon with Turkish PM Recep Erdogan. The tone is restrained despite Erdogan’s deep frustration (which he openly voiced in a recent interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour) that the regime change in Syria may not come anytime soon and in the meanwhile he has been left holding a can of worms, with Obama in to mood to accept the can into his hands.
The White House said Obama and Erdogan “pledged to advance this important work” and left things delightfully vague at that. Meanwhile, there is a furious assault being mounted on Obama by the US’ allies who are disenchanted with his manifest reticence in getting America involved in a potentially debilitating Syrian quagmire.
The Saudi lobby in the US is indeed hitting out at Obama: “Syria burns and calls for help, but the call goes unanswered. The civil war there has become a great Sunni-Shiite schism. Lebanon teeters on the edge. More important, trouble has spilled into Turkey. The Turks have come to resent the American abdication and the heavy burden the Syrian struggle has imposed on them. In contrast, the mullahs in Iran have read the landscape well and are determined to sustain the Assad dictatorship.” Yes, Saudis are indeed turning up the heat.
But what can Obama do? The Benghazi moment underscores that the US read the tea leaves wrongly regarding the “right side of history” when the Arab Spring arrived. The People’s Daily is right: Contrary to what Fouad Ajami says, what is needed today is less US intervention in the Muslim world, not more.
The Saudi regime is fighting an existential battle. They are frightened like kitten that the Muslim Brothers are coming for them. The latest twist to the Saudi tale is that the Brothers are the uncles of all the Salafists and al-Qaeda guys operating on the planet. Such is their fear that the Arab Spring may soon begin to blow into Saudi Arabia and the Brothers who have been active in the underground for decades would demolish the “ancien regime”, as has happened in Egypt.
Woven into these atavistic fears is Egypt’s return to the centre stage of Arab politics. The Saudi regime has no intention to abdicate and let Egypt’s Brothers reclaim Cairo’s traditional role as the fountainhead of Arabism. On the other hand, as Prince Turki has written, Saudi regime intends to retain its “leadership role in the region… [as] the preeminent Sunni Muslim power.” Turki writes:
“By providing much needed aid and backing of various Muslim and Arab causes, the Saudi leadership has earned wide Muslim and Arab support. The mandate for the Saudi leadership now is to consolidate Saudi Arabia’s regional standing on the world stage.”
Enter the Brothers. In a stunning interview with the New York Times on Saturday, Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi has reset the compass of Middle Eastern politics. And, the curious part is that there is no trace whatsoever that he even cared to consult Saudi Arabia before doing so. Yet, he speaks on behalf of the Arab nations!
Not only that, alongside, Morsi also gave his first interview on Saturday to the Egyptian state TV after coming to power, in which he harped on the importance of keeping a “strong relationship” with Iran. which he called a “vital” player in the region. And, come to think of it, all this in a matter of past 10 days that shook the Middle East.
Obama is right if he chooses to be circumspect; the US has completely missed the plot in the Middle East. The US has been led up the garden path by Riyadh and Ankara that Salafism and Muslim Brotherhood could be the antidote to the Bashar Al-Assad regime (and to “Shiite Iran”). The Benghazi moment comes as rude awakening. When Morsi walks across the Sunni-Shiite divide so very nonchalantly and holds the Iranian hand, it becomes apparent that the entire US (and Saudi) regional strategy lies in shambles.
Posted in Politics.

Tagged with Mohamed Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood, Recep Erdogan, Salafism, Syria.

By M K Bhadrakumar – September 24, 2012

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Egypt's Morsi resets ties with US
By M K Bhadrakumar

The confusion in the American mind about Egypt ended this past weekend, a mere nine days since President Barack Obama made the famous remark in a television interview that he wasn't sure of post-Hosni Mubarak Egypt being the United States' ally.

The confusion actually arose when US National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor scrambled to clarify that "ally" is a "legal term of art", whereas Egypt is a "long-standing and close partner" of the United States, and, thereupon, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland butted in to contradict both Obama and Vietor by insisting Egypt was indeed a "major non-NATO ally".

In an interview with The New York Times on Saturday, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi offered to clear up the confusion. Asked whether Egypt was an ally, Morsi smilingly remarked: "It depends on your definition of an ally." He then helpfully suggested that the two countries were "real friends".

Growing up with the Brothers
Now, as Morsi probably intended, the thing about "real friends" is that they don't expect either side to fawn, as a poodle might do by wagging its tail. Thus when he travels to the US to address the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, Morsi doesn't have to meet with Obama. Yet they will remain "real friends" - although they've never met.

According to The New York Times, Obama cold-shouldered Morsi's request for a meeting. Cairo maintains that it is all a scheduling problem and the planning of a visit by Morsi to Washington was work in progress. Meanwhile, Morsi has "quite a busy schedule" in New York and Obama too happens to have a "tight schedule" - this according to Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr.

In fact, Morsi's only meeting with US officials during this week's visit to that country may be at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (which, by the way, Obama also is attending).

There is hardly any excuse left now for the American mind to remain confused about the bitter harvest of the Arab Spring on Tahrir Square. The spin doctors who prophesied that Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood would ipso facto pursue the Mubarak track on foreign policies have scurried away.

This is especially so after watching Morsi's astounding televised interview on Saturday, his first to the Egyptian state TV since his election in June. He spoke at some length on the Iran question, which has somehow come to be the litmus test to estimate where exactly Egypt stands as a regional power.

Morsi affirmed that it is important for Egypt to have a "strong relationship" with Iran. He described Iran as "a major player in the region that could have an active and supportive role in solving the Syrian problem". Morsi explained his decision to include Iran in the four-member contact group that Egypt has formed - along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia - on the Syrian crisis.

Dismissing the Western opposition to engaging Iran, he said: "I don't see the presence of Iran in this quartet as a problem, but it is a part of solving the [Syrian] problem." He said Iran's close proximity to Syria and Tehran's strong ties Damascus made it "vital" in resolving the Syrian crisis.

Morsi added: "And we [Egypt] do not have a significant problem with Iran, it [Egypt-Iran relationship] is normal like with the rest of the world's states."

Equally, Morsi spoke defiantly in his interview with The New York Times regarding Egypt's ties with the US and the latter's relations with the Arab world. The overpowering message is that Cairo will no longer be bullied by Washington. He said:
"I grew up with the Muslim Brotherhood. I learned my principles in the Muslim Brotherhood. I learned how to love my country with the Muslim Brotherhood. I learned politics with the Brotherhood. I was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood."
"Successive American administrations essentially purchased with American taxpayer money the dislike, if not the hatred, of the peoples of the region."
It was up to Washington to repair relations with the Arab world and to revitalize the alliance with Egypt.
The United States must respect the Arab world's history and culture, even when that conflicts with Western values.
"If you [US] want to judge the performance of the Egyptian people by the standards of German or Chinese or American culture, then there is no room for judgment. When the Egyptians decide something, probably it is not appropriate for the US. When the Americans decide something, this, of course, is not appropriate for Egypt."
The Arabs and Americans have "a shared objective, each to live free in their own land, according to their customs and values, in a fair and democratic fashion ... [in] a harmonious, peaceful co-existence".
Americans "have a special responsibility" for the Palestinians because the United States signed the 1978 Camp David accord. "As long as peace and justice are not fulfilled for the Palestinians, then the treaty remains unfulfilled."
If Washington is asking Egypt to honor its treaty with Israel, Washington should also live up to its own Camp David commitment to Palestinian self-rule. The last bit in particular is ominous. Morsi could be hinting that Egypt intends to seek changes to the 1978 peace treaty. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman hurried to declare on Sunday that there was not the "slightest possibility" that Israel would accept any such changes. "We will not accept any modification of the Camp David Accords," Lieberman said.

A 'fast-forward'
The refrain by Western experts used to be that Egypt's Brothers depended on US and Saudi generosity to run their government in Cairo. More important, Washington spread an impression that it enjoyed a larger-than-life influence over the New Egypt. The US was supposed to have acted as a mediator between the Egyptian military and the Brothers.

But Morsi scattered the thesis. "No, no, it is not that they [military leadership] 'decided' to do it [stepping down]. This is the will of the Egyptian people through the elected president, right? The president of the Arab Republic of Egypt is the commander of the armed forces. Full stop ... We are behaving according to the Egyptian people's choice and will, nothing else - is it clear?" he asked the New York Times editors.

The picture that emerges from Morsi's stunning interview is that the US has suffered a huge setback to its regional strategy in the Middle East. The fact that Obama has shied away from meeting with Morsi this week underscores the gravity of the deep chill in the US-Egyptian ties. And Obama's snub comes after he took the initiative to invite Morsi to visit the US and insisted it should be an early visit, even sending Deputy Secretary of State William Burns to deliver the invitation letter and thereafter following up with visits by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to Cairo.

Morsi has taken a series of steps since he took over in July, which, in retrospect, had the principal objective of conveying to Washington that he resented the US diktat and intended to follow an independent foreign policy. His decision to visit China and Iran was a calculated one, intended to signal his empathy with countries that challenged US hegemony in the Middle East and to underscore that he hoped to reduce Egypt's dependence on the United States. But Washington kept pretending that it didn't take notice.

However, there has been a "fast-forward" in the past 10 days, since the anti-Islam American film, the killing of the US ambassador in Benghazi and the storming of the US Embassy in Cairo by Egyptian protesters. Morsi didn't react to the storming of the embassy for a full 36 hours. Simply put, he could sense the Arab street heaving with fury toward the US and he decided that it would be politically injudicious for him to do anything other than let the popular anger play out.

Morsi's deafening silence or inertia provoked Obama to call him up to admonish him (according to leaked US accounts), but all that Morsi would do was to send police reinforcements to protect the embassy compound. He never condemned the storming of the embassy as such.

Living with yesterday's tyrant
Things can never be the same again in the US-Egypt relationship. A 33-year slice of diplomatic history through which Cairo used to be Washington's dependable ally is breaking loose and drifting to the horizon. Uncharted waters lie ahead for the US diplomacy in the Middle East. Clearly, the axis that is pivotal to the US regional strategy in the Middle East - comprising Israel and the so-called "moderate" Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, etc - cannot hold together without Egypt, and the strategy itself is in peril.

In immediate terms, the fallout is going to be serious in Syria. A Western intervention in Syria now can be virtually ruled out. On the other hand, without an intervention, a regime change will be a long haul. In turn, Turkey is going to be in a fix, having bitten more than it could chew and with the US in no mood to step in to expedite the Arab Spring in Damascus. (Obama called up Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan last week to extend moral support.)

The good thing is that the US and its allies may now be open to the idea of a national dialogue involving the Syrian government. In fact, the most recent Russian statements on Syria hint at an air of nascent expectations. On the contrary, nervousness with a touch of bitterness is already apparent in the comment by the Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper on the weekend, while taking stock of the United States' growing difficulties with Egypt's Brothers:
Will the US president allow his legacy to bear the headline of having kept Bashar al-Assad in power? It would be a terrible legacy to leave behind, no matter how much it could be justified by such arguments as the wisdom of living with yesterday's tyrant because today's tyrant could be worse - and what is meant here is not just the tyrant of unruly mobs, but also the tyrants of Muslim extremism and its relations with moderate Islamism in power.
Not surprisingly, Saudi Arabia stayed away from the meeting of the quartet on Syria that Cairo hosted last Monday, without offering any explanation.

Simply put, Riyadh is unable to come to terms with Egypt's return to the centre stage of Arab politics after a full three decades of absence during which the Saudi regime appropriated for itself Cairo's traditional role as the throbbing heart of Arabism. Riyadh will find it painful to vacate the role as the leader of the Arab world that it got used to enjoying. Almost every single day, Saudi media connected with the regime pour calumnies on Egypt's Brothers, even alleging lately that they are the twin brothers of al-Qaeda.

Uncontrollable anger
Again, the elaborate charade that the Saudis stage-managed - propagating the Muslim sectarian discords as the core issue on the Middle East's political arena - is not sticking anymore, now that the two biggest Sunni and Shi'ite countries in the region - Egypt and Iran - are holding each other's hands, demonstrating goodwill and displaying willingness to work together to address key regional issues. The worst-case scenario for the Saudi regime will be if in the coming months the Arab Spring begins its fateful journey toward Riyadh and the Arabian Peninsula, where the Brothers have been active for decades, welcomes it as a long-awaited spring.

The heart of the matter is that on a regional plane, the Iranian viewpoint that the Arab Spring is quintessentially "Islamic" stands vindicated. In an interview with the Financial Times last week, the Speaker of Iran's parliament, Ali Larijani, made the stunning disclosure that Iranian diplomats had met members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria as well as the Salafis (who are being financed by the Saudis) to encourage them to accept "democratic reforms through peaceful behavior, not violence". This made complete mockery of the Syrian logarithm as per the Saudi (and Turkish and US) estimation - Sunni militancy as the antidote to (Shi'ite) Iran's influence in the region.

In sum, Morsi's friendly remarks about Iran point toward a regional strategic realignment on an epic scale subsuming the contrived air of sectarian schisms, which practically no Western (or Turkish) experts could have foreseen. It is a matter of time now before Egypt-Iran relations are fully restored, putting an end to the three-decade-old rupture.

The biggest beneficiary of this paradigm shift in Middle Eastern politics is going to be Iran. Arguably, we are probably already past the point of an Israeli attack on Iran, no matter Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tilting at the windmill. In the prevailing surcharged atmosphere, the Muslim Middle East would explode into uncontrollable violence in the event of an Israeli (or US) attack on Iran.

In the event of such an attack, Egypt's Brothers would most probably annul the peace treaty with Israel - and Jordan would be compelled to follow suit; Egypt and Jordan might sever diplomatic ties with Israel. Baghdad is seething with fury that the US and Turkey are encouraging Kurdistan to secede; Lebanon's Hezbollah has been threatening retribution if Iran is attacked.

Even more serious than all this put together would be the domino effect of region-wide mayhem on the Arab street on the fate of the oligarchies in the Persian Gulf, which lack legitimacy and are allied with the US - and where the Brothers have been clandestinely operating for decades.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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China's security boss surveys Hindu Kush
By M K Bhadrakumar

For such a high-level exchange after such a pronounced gap of nearly half a century, Beijing actually said very little indeed about the unannounced four-hour visit to Kabul on Saturday by Zhou Yongkang, the ninth ranking member of the Politburo and China's security boss - although it pointedly took note that the "last [such] visit was made by late Chinese leader Liu Shaoqi in 1966 when he was the President of China".

Zhou's senior status make Beijing's reticence seem all the more curious, particularly as the Hindu Kush and the adjoining Pamirs and the Central Asian steppes are nowadays teeming with the "foreign devils on the Silk Road".

An air of suspense hangs around Zhou's visit, especially since his itinerary originally didn't include the stop-over in Kabul. He was to have proceeded to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, following a two-day visit to Singapore, but diverted to Kabul for a four-hour halt. The detour, of course, makes the visit at once historical and topical.

The context of the visit needs to be carefully surveyed. From a long-term perspective, a joint declaration between China and Afghanistan on "the establishment of a strategic and cooperative partnership" issued in Beijing after a visit by Afghan President Hamid Karzai in June marked a new step in the development of the bilateral relations. The declaration identified security as one of the "five pillars that will underpin" the Sino-Afghan partnership and affirmed that the two countries would "intensify exchanges and cooperation" in security, including "enhancing intelligence exchanges".

No 'Apocalypse Now' …
With the "transition" in Afghanistan set to shift up a gear through 2013 - as the last residues of the United States' "surge" are pulled back from the war theater and as the 2014 deadline approaches for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to withdraw - Beijing seems destined to play a larger role. In terms of China's national priorities over the development of its eastern regions, especially Xinjiang, and the consolidation of its rapidly expanding economic investments in Afghanistan and Central Asia, Beijing has no choice but to project itself as a stakeholder in the stabilization of Afghanistan. In a brief commentary on Zhou's visit to Kabul, Global Times newspaper noted:
Within China, there is also heated debate over the role that China should play … But it is generally agreed that the deterioration of the Afghan domestic situation will benefit nobody; for China, the stability of its northwestern bordering regions will be directly influenced and overseas Chinese in the region will face greater security problems.

Historically, Afghanistan has been a nightmare for many big powers. As a neighbor of Afghanistan, China has a keen interest in the security of this region. How to help Afghanistan walk out of the shadow of long-term wartime chaos poses a big challenge to China's diplomacy.
Zhou underlined in a written statement as he arrived in Kabul, "It is in line with the fundamental interests of the two peoples for China and Afghanistan to strengthen a strategic and cooperative partnership, which is also conducive to regional peace, stability and development."

Clearly, the accent was on the bilateral cooperation with the assurance held out to any third parties concerned that Sino-Afghan cooperation would be a factor of stability for the region.

How does China view the Afghan situation? The last major statement on Afghanistan by China was made hardly a week before Zhou's visit to Kabul on Sunday, during the United Nations Security Council discussion in New York on Afghanistan. The striking aspect of the speech by Ambassador Li Baodong was its underlying tone of hope and positive expectations.

Li said, "The peace and reconstruction process in Afghanistan was achieving positive results, the transfer of security responsibilities to national forces was moving along smoothly, the Afghan economy was improving, and trade and cooperation with other countries was being scaled up."

However, Li indirectly criticized NATO's strategy in flagging that the transfer of security responsibilities must proceed slowly and saying the international community must continue to help to improve the security situation. Indeed, he put on record China's serious concerns over recent incidents of violence, especially the high number of civilian casualties, and he called on NATO forces to conduct its operations according to international law so as to ensure the safety and protection of civilians.

The most interesting part of Li's speech was in articulating China's belief that Afghanistan's stabilization needs to be sought through greater integration with the region "in line with the principle of mutual benefit and cooperation" and by "making full use of existing mechanisms" such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Evidently, Beijing doesn't subscribe to the inevitability of "Apocalypse Now" in the Hindu Kush in the post-2014 period. Suffice to say, Zhou's visit to Kabul needs to be weighed first and foremost as a strong affirmation of support for Karzai's government. From Beijing's viewpoint, Karzai has been a reliable friend who walked the extra mile to boost Sino-Afghan relations.

… nor any zero-sum game
From Karzai's perspective, support from Beijing may already have become irreplaceable, more so at the present juncture when his equations with Washington have again become problematic and uncertain. NATO has summarily suspended the training for the Afghan police force and the Afghan defense ministry has apparently scaled back NATO's involvement in joint operations with the Afghan forces below battalion level.

There have been several instances in the recent weeks indicative of the poor chemistry between Kabul and Washington. The most glaring instance was the concern voiced by Karzai about the security pacts signed with the US earlier this year. Negotiations over the long-term US military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014 are due to commence in three weeks time. At such a juncture, Zhou's visit, coming as it did on the eve of Karzai's trip to the US, most certainly helps the Afghan leader gain more negotiating space vis-a-vis Washington.

Karzai feels particularly agitated over the excessive interest that the US takes in influencing Afghan domestic politics, which is entering a delicate phase even as jockeying has begun in right earnest over the Afghan presidential elections due in end-2014. Karzai told Zhou, "China is a good and honest friend of Afghanistan … We are looking forward to a broader and strong cooperation with China."

Zhou reciprocated that the Chinese government fully respects the right of the Afghan people to choose their own path of development and will actively participate in Afghanistan's reconstruction.

Zhou signed three agreements on increased security and economic cooperation, including a Memorandum of Understanding on an "action plan" for the implementation of the joint declaration of June 8, an agreement with the Afghan finance ministry on a US$150 million aid package, and a deal with the Afghan Interior Ministry to "train, fund and equip Afghan police".

The Global Times said the security agreement aims to "protect the security of China's own projects" in Afghanistan. The state-owned China Metallurgical Group operates the $3 billion Aynak copper mine in the eastern Logar province in Afghanistan, which has been targeted by insurgent groups.

The three agreements as such didn't warrant a high-level visit, whose main purport seems to have been political. Zhou's visit has most probably sealed an institutional framework of intelligence liaison connecting Beijing and Kabul in real time. Needless to say, this matters a great deal for China. It is following India's example to tap into the excellent "database" of the Afghan intelligence, which has every reason, historically speaking, to be well clued in on a 24x7 basis on the militant groups operating out of Pakistan.

Without doubt, Karzai has signaled on his part Kabul's political priorities also in the post-2014 period. China's close relationship with Pakistan makes it a valuable ally for Kabul in its despairing efforts to moderate Islamabad's policies. The US used to perform such a role before, but today Washington is barely coping with its own woes involving Pakistan.

However, as a Russian commentary put it, "Hamid Karzai will have to take some pains in order to put up a good show for his Chinese partners. After all, the Americans are not going to surrender their positions to the Chinese."

This appears a motivated opinion. On the other hand, the big question is whether what is unfolding could be regarded as a zero-sum game at all - notwithstanding the entire panorama of the US' "rebalancing" in the Asia-Pacific and Beijing's wariness over it. Arguably, when it comes to the stabilization of Afghanistan, China and the US are still on the same side - and persuading Pakistan to cooperate in the search of a durable settlement will also remain a common objective for the two big powers.

The speeches made by Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin and by Chinese UN Ambassador Li Baodong at the UN Security Council last Monday present a study in contrast. Russia is incessantly taunting the US over the futility of the latter's Afghan strategy, poking fun at it, rubbishing it while constantly asking probing questions for which there are of course no easy answers.

In contrast, Li offered constructive criticism, with a clear cut and purposive political objective in view. Russia is worked up about the issue of the US bases in Afghanistan, whereas China, which could also be sharing Moscow's concerns, is going about the minefield very differently and with great diplomatic aplomb. Yet, at the end of the day, it is Russia - and not China - that is cooperating with NATO in Afghanistan at a practical level by offering efficient, dependable and open-ended transit facilities for NATO to ferry its supplies.

Actually, China is openly insisting that it isn't involved in a zero sum game with the US and that, on the contrary, the interests of China and the US and its allies mesh as regards the stabilization of Afghanistan, and there is no fundamental contradiction as such. Coincidence or not, just last week, the influential Chinese think tanker Pan Guang, vice chairman of Shanghai Center for International Studies at Shanghai Academy, made an unprecedented presentation before the American strategic community on the topic, "Understanding China's Role in Central Asia and Afghanistan." This happened just four days before Zhou's unannounced trip to Kabul.

Pan is easily recognizable for strategic analysts as an authoritative voice on Track II. But what makes things quite spicy is that he also happens to be a key adviser to Zhou's ministry in Beijing on Central Asia and Afghanistan (although his area of specialization used to be Israel).

Pan spoke for over an hour on China's role in Central Asia and Afghanistan. He focused on China's interest in fighting terrorism and extremism in the region as well as China's interests in containing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, promoting energy and economic development, and supporting Afghanistan in its post-war reconstruction. The running theme of his presentation was that like the United States, China is interested in tackling issues such as transnational crime, illegal immigration, environmental degradation, water resource shortage, and emerging public health issues.

Pan acknowledged that Beijing has different views of political reform in Central Asia, the alignment of energy pipelines in the region, and the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan. At the same time, he concluded that both China and the US are playing an increasingly crucial role in Central Asia, where they have common and divergent interests, cooperation and competition.

A profound message
Broadly echoing Pan's thought process, the Global Times summed up Zhou's visit: "China has a good opportunity to boost its global image and fulfill its international obligations. While many Western strategists stick to their mentality of dominating world politics, China is making pragmatic moves to safeguard the interests of not only itself but also the whole region."

A redeeming feature of Zhou's sudden Kabul trip that may get overlooked in the overall excitement over it but could be of pivotal importance for regional security is that it took place at a period when Afghan-Pakistan tensions have sharply escalated.

In fact, only last week, Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rassoul warned the UN Security Council that continued Pakistani shelling of Afghanistan's border provinces jeopardized bilateral relations, "with potential negative consequences for necessary bilateral cooperation for peace, security and economic development in our two countries and the wider region".

Curiously, government-owned China Daily prominently featured a Xinhua report on Sunday - even as Zhou was heading for Kabul - on the Afghan parliament's endorsement of Kabul's latest plan to lodge a formal complaint to the UN Security Council over any Pakistani border shelling.

The lengthy Xinhua report said, "Pakistan has been occasionally shelling the border areas in the eastern Kunar and Nuristan provinces, forcing locals to flee their houses for shelters, a claim rejected by Pakistan." The curious part was that China Daily highlighted the relevant excerpts of Rassoul's condemnatory references to Pakistan in his speech at the UN Security Council last week.

Now, a tantalizing question arises: How would Beijing react to a complaint by Kabul to the UN Security Council regarding Pakistan's violation of Afghanistan's territorial integrity? The point is, the Sino-Afghan joint declaration on June 8 commits Beijing and Kabul to "firmly support each other on issues concerning national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity", and, to "enhance coordination and cooperation under the United Nations ... stay in contact and coordinate positions."

It would seem that Zhou's visit to Kabul in these troubled times also holds a profound message for the "all-weather friendship" between China and Pakistan.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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Russia bridges Middle Eastern divides
By M K Bhadrakumar

A multi-billion dollar arms deal with Iraq, a summit meeting with Turkey, a fence-mending exercise with Saudi Arabia, a debut with Egypt's Sphinx-like Muslim Brothers - all this is slated to happen within the period of a turbulent month in the Middle East. And all this is to happen when the United States' "return" to the region after the hurly-burly of the November election still seems a distant dream. Simply put, Russia is suddenly all over the Middle East.

Moscow announced on Tuesday that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was in town and the two countries signed contracts worth "more than" US$4.2 billion in an arms deal that includes Iraq's purchase of 30 Mi-28 attack helicopters and 42 Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile systems that can also be used to defend against attack jets.

The joint Russian-Iraqi statement issued in Moscow revealed that discussions had beem going on for the past five months over the arms deal and that further talks are under way for Iraq's purchase of MiG-29 jets, heavy-armored vehicles and other weaponry. A Kremlin announcement said Maliki is due to meet President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday and the focus of the discussions will be energy cooperation between Russia and Iraq.

The stunning news will send US politicians into a tizzy. Reports say the phone kept ringing in Maliki's office in Baghdad as soon as it transpired that he was to travel to Moscow and something big could be in the works. Queries were coming in from the US State Department and the National Security Council as to what warranted such a trip at this point in time.

The point is, Maliki still remains an enigma for Washington. He is no doubt a friend of the US, but he is also possibly more than a friend of Iran. Now, it seems, he is also fond of Russia - as Saddam Hussein used to be.

Washington and Ankara have annoyed him repeatedly, taking him for granted, even writing off his political future, by consorting with the northern Kurdistan over lucrative oil deals, ignoring his protests that Iraq is a sovereign state and Baghdad is its capital and that the country has a constitution under which foreign countries should not have direct dealings with its regions bypassing the capital and the central government.

Booting out Big Oil
They not only ignored Maliki's protests but also chastised him for opposing the plan for "regime change" in Syria and for robustly supporting President Bashar al-Assad. Lately, they even started needling him on providing facilities for Iran to send supplies to the embattled regime in Syria. They then exceeded all proprieties and gave asylum to an Iraqi Sunni leader who is a fugitive under Iraqi law.

They are currently endeavoring to bring together the disparate Sunni groups in Iraq in an ominous move that could lead to the balkanization of Iraq.

Kurdistan is already a de facto independent region, thanks to US and Turkish interference. The game plan is to further weaken Iraq by sponsoring the creation of a Sunni entity in central Iraq similar to Kurdistan in the north, thus confining the Iraqi Shi'ites to a moth-eaten southern region.

The Russia visit shows that Maliki is signaling he has had enough and won't take this affront to Iraqi sovereignty anymore. What is almost certain is that he will propose to Putin on Wednesday that Russian oil companies should return to Iraq in full battle cry with investment and technology and pick up the threads from where they left at the time of the US invasion in 2003.

Maliki can be expected to boot out Big Oil and the Turkish companies from Iraq's oil sector. The implications are profound for the world oil market since Iraq's fabulous oil reserves match Saudi Arabia's.

Clearly, Maliki intends to assert Iraqi sovereignty. Recently, he decided to terminate the Saddam-era agreement with Turkey, which allowed a Turkish military presence in northern Iraq to monitor the PKK separatists' activities. But Ankara balked, telling off Maliki. The Russian deal enables him now to rebuild the Iraqi armed forces and make the Turks think twice before they violate Iraqi air space or conclude that their military presence in northern Iraq could continue unchallenged.

Does this mean Iraq is on a course of strategic defiance of the US? What needs to be factored in is that the US still remains Iraq's number one arms supplier. Iraq is expecting the delivery of 30 F-16 aircraft. A strategic defiance of the US is far from Maliki's thoughts - at least, for now.

Maliki's message needs to be taken more as one of assertively stating that Iraq is an independent country. Arguably, it is not very different from the thrust of Egypt's policies under President Mohammed Morsi. Simply put, the US needs to come to terms with such happenings as Maliki's decision to revive the military ties with Russia or Morsi's decision to pay his first state visit to China. Conceivably, it could be Egypt's turn next to revive the ties with Russia. As a matter of fact, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is scheduled to visit Cairo in early November in the first high-level exchange with Morsi's leadership.

Indeed, much depends on the composure with which the US is able to adapt itself to the new realities in the Middle East. As things stand, the US has succeeded in selling $6 billion worth of arms to Iraq. It is indeed comfortably placed. The US State Department's initial reaction exuded confidence. Spokesperson Victoria Nuland said the Russian deal doesn't signify any scaling down of Iraq's "mil-to-mil" ties with the US, which are "very broad and very deep".

She revealed that discussions are going on for "some 467 foreign military sales cases" with Iraq worth more than $12 billion "if all of those go forward." Nuland said, "We're doing some $12.3 billion worth of military business with Iraq, so I don't think one needs to be concerned about that relationship being anything but the strongest."

New, untried alchemy
But the touch of anxiety in Nuland's words cannot be glossed over, either. The plain truth is, the "Russians are coming" and this time they are capitalists and globalists; they also know the Iraqi market, while the Iraqi soldier is familiar with the Russian weapon. During the Saddam era, Iraq was a major buyer of Russian weaponry and Moscow is estimated to have lost contracts worth about $8 billion due to the US-sponsored "regime change" in Baghdad in 2003.

Conceivably, Russia will do its utmost to claw its way back to the top spot in the Iraqi market and to make up for lost time. But then, arms deals invariably have political and strategic content as well. In the near term, the "unknown unknown" is going to be whether Maliki might choose to share the Iraqi capabilities with his close Iranian and Syrian allies.

Significantly, high-level Syrian and Iranian delegations have also visited Moscow in recent months. Eyebrows will be raised that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is scheduling a visit to Baghdad shortly. In fact, even as the Russian-Iraqi arms deal was signed in Moscow, the commander of the navy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards arrived on a visit to Iraq, signifying the close ties between Baghdad and Tehran. No doubt, Washington will remain on its toes on this front.

Equally, Russian experts have written in the past about the emergence of a new "bloc" in the heart of the Middle East comprising Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon with which Moscow can hope to have special ties.

However, the incipient signs as of now are that Moscow's regional diplomacy in the Middle East is shifting gear, determined to bridge the regional divide that the Syrian crisis has brought about.
Of course, the enterprise seems awesome in its sheer audacity. But then, Putin is scheduled to travel to Turkey next week; Lavrov hopes to travel to Riyadh in early November to attend the second session of Russia's Strategic Dialogue with the Gulf Cooperation Council states (which was once abruptly postponed by the Saudi regime as a snub to Moscow for its dogged support for the Assad regime in Syria); Lavrov will also make a "synchronized visit" to Cairo for meeting with the new Egyptian leadership and Arab League officials.

Disclosing Lavrov's scheduled diplomatic missions, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov added, "We [Russia] are interested in the dialogue and open partnership discussion with our Arab colleagues from the Gulf, which, in particular Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others, play a rather active and not one-meaning role in Syrian affairs. We always favor discussion of these issues, even disagreements, at the negotiating table, especially since we have the Strategic Dialogue mechanism."

Without doubt, Russian alchemists are experimenting with new, untried formulations that may help heal the Syrian wounds. But, as Bogdanov sought to explain, these formulations are also broad spectrum medications that will help induce the overall metabolism of Russia's regional ties with recaltricant partners who are upset for the present over Syria. Ideally, Moscow would like to see that healing process is embedded within an overall enhancement of mutually beneficial economic ties.

Russia's ties with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, for instance, were going strong during the phase of the pre-crisis period in Syria. While the ties with Turkey lately have somewhat stagnated, Russian-Saudi ties have run into serious difficulty. Evidently, Moscow is keen to restore the status quo ante. The interesting part is the Russian diplomacy's assessment that the present juncture provides a window of opportunity to make overtures to Ankara and Riyadh, no matter the incessant blood-letting in Syria.
The backdrop to which this is happening is significant. In Moscow's assessment, evidently, there could be hopeful signs for a renewed approach to seeking a political solution to the Syrian crisis even though the skies look heavily overcast. There may be merit in making such a shrewd assessment.

As things stand, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are facing an acute predicament over the Syrian situation. Neither thought that the Syrian regime would have such a social base and political will to hang on; both are frustrated that any "regime change" in Syria is going to be a long haul fraught with uncertain consequences not only for the Syrian nation but also for the region as a whole and even for themselves.

Again, while there is no let-up in the dogged opposition to outside intervention in Syria, which Moscow and Beijing have amply displayed, a UN Security Council mandate for intervention is to be ruled out. Without a UN mandate, on the other hand, a Western intervention is unlikely, and in any case, the US remains disinterested while the European attitudes will be guided by their priorities over their economies, which, according to the latest Inernational Monetary Fund estimation, are sliding into a prolonged recession from which a near-term recovery seems highly improbable.

Sultan with a Nobel
In short, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are holding a can of worms containing the Syrian rebel elements that are not only disparate but also could prove troublesome in future. As for Turkey, with or without a UN mandate, the popular opinion is overwhelmingly against an intervention in Syria.

The Turkish people remain far from convinced that their vital national interests are at stake in Syria. Besides, the Turkish economy is also slowing, and a deep recession in Europe can play havoc with Turkey's economic fortunes. The ruling AKP's trump card so far has been that it steered Turkey to a period of unprecedented economic prosperity.

Increasingly, therefore, all this proactivism on Syria looks more like the hare-brained idea of the academic-turned Foreign Minister Ahmet Davitoglu and Prime Minister Recep Erdogan than a well-thought out foreign policy initiative. But even here, Erdogan's political priorities are going to change as he prepares for his bid to become the executive president of Turkey under a new constitution in 2014.

A Syrian quagmire can threaten his political ambitions, and already he senses rivalry from the incumbent President Abdullah Gul, whose popular ratings are manifestly far better than his own.

In sum, Erdogan wants regime change in Syria and he is still pushing for it, but he wants it now. He can't wait indefinitely, since that will upset his own political calendar. He is upset, on the other hand, that US President Barack Obama is not a man in a hurry and the Europeans are distracted by ailments.

All factors taken into consideration, therefore, it should come as no surprise that Putin has made a visit to Turkey such an urgent priority - although Erdogan visited Russia hardly two months ago. Putin has excellent personal equations with Erdogan. They were instrumental in taking Russian-Turkish relationship to such qualitatively new level in recent years.

Putin is a very focused statesman. He wants to revive the verve of the Russian-Turkish tango. In the process, the contract for building a $25 billion nuclear power plant in Turkey could be advanced to the implementation stage, and Russia may also secure contracts to sell weaponry to Turkey.

In the Russian assessment, Erdogan's underlying ideology in terms of pursuing an independent foreign policy needs to be encouraged, despite the recent deviations such as the decision to deploy the US missile defence system on Turkish soil.

Putin's expectation will be that within the framework of a revival of the Russian-Turkish bonhomie and taking advantage of Erdogan's travails and dilemma over Syria, a meaningful conversation between Moscow and Ankara might be possible leading to a purposive search for a political solution to the crisis in Syria.

This is the season of Nobel, after all. If Erdogan could be persuaded that he could be the first ever sultan - and probably the last, too, in Ottoman history - to win a Nobel prize for peace, Putin would have made a huge contribution himself to world peace.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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US detention of Imran Khan part of trend to harass anti-drone advocates
The vindictive humiliation of Pakistan's most popular politician shows the US government's intolerance for dissent

Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 October 2012 14.06 GMT

Imran Khan is, according to numerous polls, the most popular politician in Pakistan and may very well be that country's next Prime Minister. He is also a vehement critic of US drone attacks on his country, vowing to order them shot down if he is Prime Minister and leading an anti-drone protest march last month.

On Saturday, Khan boarded a flight from Canada to New York in order to appear at a fundraising lunch and other events. But before the flight could take off, US immigration officials removed him from the plane and detained him for two hours, causing him to miss the flight. On Twitter, Khan reported that he was "interrogated on [his] views on drones" and then added: "My stance is known. Drone attacks must stop." He then defiantly noted: "Missed flight and sad to miss the Fundraising lunch in NY but nothing will change my stance."

The State Department acknowledged Khan's detention and said: "The issue was resolved. Mr Khan is welcome in the United States." Customs and immigration officials refused to comment except to note that "our dual mission is to facilitate travel in the United States while we secure our borders, our people, and our visitors from those that would do us harm like terrorists and terrorist weapons, criminals, and contraband," and added that the burden is on the visitor "to demonstrate that they are admissible" and "the applicant must overcome all grounds of inadmissibility."

There are several obvious points raised by this episode. Strictly on pragmatic grounds, it seems quite ill-advised to subject the most popular leader in Pakistan - the potential next Prime Minister - to trivial, vindictive humiliations of this sort. It is also a breach of the most basic diplomatic protocol: just imagine the outrage if a US politician were removed from a plane by Pakistani officials in order to be questioned about their publicly expressed political views. And harassing prominent critics of US policy is hardly likely to dilute anti-US animosity; the exact opposite is far more likely to occur.

But the most important point here is that Khan's detention is part of a clear trend by the Obama administration to harass and intimidate critics of its drone attacks. As Marcy Wheeler notes, "this is at least the third time this year that the US has delayed or denied entry to the US for Pakistani drone critics."

Last May, I wrote about the amazing case of Muhammad Danish Qasim, a Pakistani student who produced a short film entitled "The Other Side", which "revolves around the idea of assessing social, psychological and economical effects of drones on the people in tribal areas of Pakistan." As he put it, "the film takes the audience very close to the damage caused by drone attacks" by humanizing the tragedy of civilian deaths and also documenting how those deaths are exploited by actual terrorists for recruitment purposes.

Qasim and his co-producers were chosen as the winner of the Audience Award for Best International Film at the 2012 National Film Festival For Talented Youth, held annually in Seattle, Washington. He intended to travel to the US to accept his award and discuss his film, but was twice denied a visa to enter the US, and thus was barred from making any appearances in the US.

The month prior, Shahzad Akbar - a Pakistani lawyer who represents drone victims in lawsuits against the US and the co-founder of the Pakistani human rights organization, Foundation for Fundamental Rights - was scheduled to speak at a conference on drones in Washington. He, too, was denied a visa, and the Obama administration relented only once an international outcry erupted.

There are two clear dynamics driving this. First, the US is eager to impose a price for effectively challenging its policies and to prevent the public - the domestic public, that is - from hearing critics with first-hand knowledge of the impact of those policies. As Wheeler asks, "Why is the government so afraid of Pakistanis explaining to Americans what the drone attacks look like from a Pakistani perspective?"

This form of intimidation is not confined to drone critics. Last April, I reported on the serial harassment of Laura Poitras, the Oscar-nominated documentarian who produced two films - one from Iraq and the other from Yemen - that showed the views and perspectives of America's adversaries in those countries. For four years, she was detained every single time she reentered the US, often having her reporters' notebook and laptop copied and even seized. Although this all stopped once that article was published - demonstrating that there was never any legitimate purpose to it - that intimidation campaign against her imposed real limits on her work.

That is what this serial harassment of drone critics is intended to achieve. That is why a refusal to grant visas to prominent critics of US foreign policy was also a favorite tactic of the Bush administration.

Second, and probably even more insidious, this reflects the Obama administration's view that critics of its drone policies are either terrorists or, at best, sympathetic to terrorists. Recall how the New York Times earlier this year - in an article describing a new report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documenting the targeting of Pakistani rescuers and funerals with US drones - granted anonymity to a "senior American counterterrorism official" to smear the Bureau's journalists and its sources as wanting to "help al-Qaida succeed".

For years, Bush officials and their supporters equated opposition to their foreign policies with support for the terrorists and a general hatred of and desire to harm the US. During the Obama presidency, many Democratic partisans have adopted the same lowly tactic with vigor.

That mindset is a major factor in this series of harassment of drone critics: namely, those who oppose the Obama administration's use of drones are helping the terrorists and may even be terrorist sympathizers. It is that logic which would lead US officials to view Khan as some sort of national security threat by virtue of his political beliefs and perceive a need to drag him off a plane in order to detain and interrogate him about those views before allowing him entrance to the US.

What makes this most ironic is that the US loves to sermonize to the world about the need for open ideas and political debate. In April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lectured the planet on how "those societies that believe they can be closed to change, to ideas, cultures, and beliefs that are different from theirs, will find quickly that in our internet world they will be left behind,"

That she is part of the same government that seeks to punish and exclude filmmakers, students, lawyers, activists and politicians for the crime of opposing US policy is noticed and remarked upon everywhere in the world other than in the US. That demonstrates the success of these efforts: they are designed, above all else, to ensure that the American citizenry does not become exposed to effective critics of what the US is doing in the world.

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Netanyahu calls Obama's bluff
By M K Bhadrakumar

As tensions mount in the coming hours and days with the Israeli troops and tanks advancing toward Gaza menacingly, United States President Barack Obama begins to realize that he has a forked tongue.

Gaza becomes the litmus test of what he can claim to be as a statesman and what he cannot be in political reality.

For Obama, there is no running away from the reality that he has been hiding his head ostrich-like from the day he left Cairo in 2009 after making a magnificent speech there on the Palestinian problem.

The events of the past week in Gaza underscore that unless he musters the political courage - and integrity as a statesman - to address the Palestinian problem, all his talk of a transformative agenda for the Middle East remains sheer baloney.

Furthermore, his lop-sided priorities in the Middle East are getting exposure. In essence, he ends up being seen as cooking up tales about Syria and Iran and shying away from the one issue that can make all the difference for America's discourse with the Muslim world.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has exposed Obama and is forcing a reset of their mutual equations even before the US president gets started on his second term in the White House.

Obama can always take shelter behind mellifluous rhetoric and has no adverse domestic public opinion to grapple with. Nor is he being called upon by his European allies to be accountable.

The spanner in the wheel
The paradox is that the crisis in Gaza had to erupt just when things were looking up for a possible US-Egyptian reset, including a joint enterprise by the two countries to give a decisive push for "regime change" in Syria.

A technical team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been in Cairo for the past fortnight to negotiate a US$4.8 billion loan that Egypt has sought to shore up finances. Even as the Israeli jets kept pounding Gaza relentlessly and Hamas beseeched Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi for help, the IMF announced on Wednesday, "The mission will remain in Cairo for a few more days to continue work and build on the good progress already made."

The IMF usually expects that governments take actual measures as per an agreed economic reform plan before signing off on loans, but Morsi knows exceptions can always be made, and it is Washington who decides.

Equally, from Obama's viewpoint, the flare-up in Gaza comes at a most awkward moment for his best-laid scheme for Syria in the coming months. After much effort spread over five agonizing days in Doha, the former US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, and the former Syrian parliamentarian Riad Self somehow managed to cobble together a Syrian National Coalition (SNC) over the weekend.

Many a time it seemed Ford would fail to pull the rabbit out of the hat, and the Qatari hosts had to literally step in and blackmail some of the key figures in the Syrian opposition groups before they'd fall in line with the script Ford brought from Washington.

The urgency was clearly there. The formation of the SNC was a prerequisite for the forthcoming meeting of "Friends of Syria" in Tokyo where the "international community" would accord recognition to the Syrian opposition.

Morsi has been mollified, as Syria's Brothers have been given the lead role within the SNC. Also, Qatar and Turkey each extended US$2 billion as aid for Morsi's government. The game plan is to have the SNC headquartered in Cairo. The Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu visited Cairo on Wednesday and talked things over with Morsi as to what is expected of him while Obama shifts gear on his transformative agenda on Syria.

Therefore, Netanyahu has literally thrown a spanner in the wheel and is all but acting as a spoilsport. The crisis over Gaza takes the focus away from the SNC and highlights all over again that the real battle line in the Muslim Middle East ought to be not on Syria at this juncture but instead on the Palestinian problem.

However, where Netanyahu would have intentionally hit Obama hardest is in terms of the latter's credibility to enter into one-on-one negotiations with the Iranian leadership. In his very first press conference on Wednesday after his magnificent election victory, Obama declared that he intended to "make a push in the coming months to see if we can open up a dialogue" with Tehran "to see if we can get this thing [nuclear issue] resolved."

Obama was manifestly conciliatory and claimed he wouldn't stand on "diplomatic niceties or protocol" and "if Iran is serious about wanting to resolve this, they'll be in a position to resolve it."

Now, if the Israeli troops march into Gaza, Obama will be seen in the entire Arab world as someone who makes empty promises. It suits Netanyahu at this point to be seen as calling the shots in the Middle East, since his alliance with Yisrael Beiteinu (Avigdor Lieberman's party) stands to gain in January's parliamentary elections. The hardline grouping panders to the prevailing popular mood in Israel in its championing of "Greater Israel".

An engrossing duel
Clearly, Obama has been compelled to fall back on the one-sided US policy of putting all the blame on Hamas for triggering the present crisis and by justifying Israel's "right to defend".

More fundamentally, however, this also has the potential to become an Obama-Netanyahu duel, which will impact the uncertain alchemy of their relationship through the US president's second term.

Obama may not like it that Netanyahu has hustled him, but then, as a realist he also has to factor in that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in the US Congress will not brook anything other than 100% support to Israel in the present crisis.

Obama might as well say goodbye to his hopes to forge a consensus in the United States Congress to advance a second-term agenda that would go into the making of his presidential legacy - fiscal cliff, tax reform, immigration, energy and climate change, disarmament, etc - if he fails to pass the litmus test on support to Israel.

But this is exactly where he is going to run into a serious problem with Tehran. The point is, the centrality of the Palestinian problem in the regional policies of the Islamic regime in Tehran is not often fully grasped when facile conclusions are drawn that what motivates that country would be solely its (legitimate) claim to be accommodated as a regional power.

The regime in Tehran, like most of the Muslim world, has great sympathy for the Palestinians and finds the suppression in Gaza appalling and genuinely unacceptable.

Yet, all that Obama can do today is to urge Morsi to rein in Hamas. Suffice to say, Obama is making a grievous error by once again instinctively taking the pragmatic route of being seen walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel.

Influential sections within the Iranian establishment all along alleged that Obama is far too weak to negotiate meaningfully with Tehran on the nuclear issue. Besides, Tehran also harbors the suspicion that the real US agenda is to weaken Iran by imposing a Taif-model accord (as in Lebanon and Iraq) on Syria (which also enables Israel to regain its regional dominance.)

That is to say, Netanyahu may have smothered for the present whatever degree of optimism Obama generated regarding direct talks between the US and Iran. All in all, therefore, Obama finds himself on a spot even before his second term gets under way. Netanyahu has turned the tables on him for the slights administered by Washington in recent months.

There is no doubt that in one brilliant swipe Netanyahu has brought to the surface the profound contradictions in the US strategy on the Middle East question.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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US lurching toward Middle East quagmire

Barack Obama’s second term as president hasn’t yet begun, but it is going to be a tumultuous one as far as his Middle East policy is concerned. Whether he could disengage the US from the Greater Middle East with the ease that was hoped for in order to “rebalance” in Asia seems increasingly doubtful. To be sure, Asian countries are also watching the Middle Eastern events and the quagmire the US is getting into.

Hardly has the Gaza conflict been halted in an uncertain ceasefire that may or may not hold, Egypt’s president Mohamed Morsi has walked into the eye of a storm that has been brewing for some time, which pits the Muslim Brotherhood against the rest on the domestic political arena.

And Morsi happened to be Obama’s main interlocutor during the Gaza crisis. The two statesmen apparently held several long, unpublicized telephone conversations and Obama has warmed up to the “moderate” Islamist leader. However, the Saudi establishment daily Asharq Alawsat has featured a sarcastic report on Obama’s dalliance with Morsi, which Riyadh thoroughly disapproves.
The Saudi apprehension is that Obama is going too far, too fast with the Muslim Brotherhood, whereas the ground reality is that the US is indeed unable to decide whether to back Morsi to the hilt in the present upheaval on Tahrir square or to dump him or to mark time and simply go by the “wind factor”.
The White House is not saying anything, the state department has said the minimum necessary, the benevolent American media strives to project Morsi as a reasonable man while the American embassy in Cairo tweets in sympathy with the protestors on Tahrir Square. Is it a fair division of labour or is it a matter of running with the hare and hunting with the hound? Time will tell.

But all this may turn out to be a picnic if the tidings from Saudi Arabia are taken into account. For all purposes, it seems, King Abdullah is “clinically dead” and a formal announcement may follow in a couple of days. This is, again, according to Asharq Alawsat, which should know what it is reporting.

So, the Saudi succession story is about to commence. In the opinion of most experts, this is not going to be an orderly succession since the ground rules are unclear and it is virgin territory, and if so, it is anybody’s guess what may happen if and when some three or four thousand princes plunge into palace intrigues.

For all purposes, Saudi Arabia is going to be deeply immersed in its domestic issues for a while. What happens now to the Saudi drive for a “regime change” in Syria? And the Sunni-Shi’ite schism that the Saudis have been promoting? Or, the Saudi strategy of “containment” of Iran? Or, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan where the stirrings of democratic empowerment are already apparent? There are no easy answers. Earlier today, a Saudi diplomat was murdered in Yemen.

The paradox is that Obama is on the right track in contemplating a transformative Middle East policy for the US. Turning and turning in the old groove, US policy is at a dead end and its regional influence in this strategically vital region is on the decline.

But the US’ so-called allies aren’t going to let Obama have an easy time if he begins to talk with Iran or to accept the Muslim Brotherhood as the US’ legitimate interlocutor. (To my mind, he is hundred percent right in doing so.) Not only the Saudis, even the Emirates is upset. The oligarchs of the Persian Gulf are plain worried about their future — caught between (Shi’ite) Iran and (Sunni) Islamism and Obama giving primacy to the US’ long term interests.

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asif iqbal said:

Reports have been coming out in the last few days that the Syrian rebels have now been delivered shoulder fired surface to air missiles and many indications have suggested that it may be the Stinger, if true then Syrian Air Force has its days numbered

They have downed a helo and a fighter aircraft in a space of just 3 days at this rate there might be not be a Air Force left

Turkey has lost of Stinger missiles, they can provide training to small groups and then also recover them after the war

Th Stinger missile is a formidable weapon which turned the tide of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s, in its first ever engagement in Afghanistan 3 missiles downed 3 Soviet gunships in a single attack it record was 80%+ hit rate

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