TRUTH ABOUT WHY IRAN CONVICTS AMERICAN JOURNALIST FOR SPYING

Well, on a follow up to Abu G's post about a thawing U.S.-Iran relationship, I offer some more evidence that his conclusion is probably acurate. That is, no thawing is coming anytime soon. But I wanted to offer another perspective to a headline story about American Journalist Roxana Saberi's conviction by Iranian courts.

Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen, was arrested in late January and initially accused of working without press credentials. But earlier this month, an Iranian judge leveled a far more serious allegation, charging her with spying for the United States.

The journalist's Iranian-born father, Reza Saberi, told NPR that his daughter was convicted Wednesday, two days after she appeared before an Iranian court in an unusually swift one-day closed-door trial. The court waited until Saturday to announce its decision to the lawyers, he said. Saberi's conviction comes about two months ahead of key presidential elections in June that are pitting hard-liners against reformists who support better relations with the United States. Ahmadinejad is seeking re-election, but the hard-liner's popularity has waned as Iran's economy struggles with high-inflation and unemployment.

Some conservative Iranian lawmakers played down Saberi's conviction, saying the verdict would not affect any ongoing efforts to build trust between the United States and Iran, but I disagree.

So, what's the real reason Roxana Saberi was convicted to eight years in prison on a false spying charge? Well, listen up:

Saberi's father has said his daughter, who was Miss North Dakota in 1997, had been working on a book about the culture and people of Iran, and hoped to finish it and return to the United States this year. Is it possible that Iran was worried about the contents of the book? Or perhaps they are using her research materials as evidence for the case against her? I just might offer this up as a possibility.

Or maybe she really was spying for the U.S. and the book was her cover...naaaaw, she is way too hot to be a spy! Well, it's true, she is really hot!

FREE ROXANA SABERI NOW!!!!

See what Abu Muqawama has to say about this.

The ice thins...

We have a lot of stuff in the news right now: Somali pirates, a defiant North Korea and Thai protests in Bangkok. So why is Abu bringing this non-Middle Eastern stuff up? Because it has taken the front-page away from the unprecedented overtures of a thawing U.S.-Iranian relationship!

Lets just quickly review:

1. President Obama recorded a sincere You Tube video to congratulate the Iranians on the Persian holiday of Noruz. This video wasn’t just sent to the Iranian people—as many U.S. policies makers have unsuccessfully tried before—but to the Islamic government, saying that it sees it as the legitimate government of Iran.

2. Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, said in short that this gesture was simply not good enough. Obama's charm and magical middle name is not policy.

3. U.S. policy makers, i.e. Obama, drop the Bush Administrations "pre-condition" that states that Iran must halt enriching uranium in order to engage in “nuclear talks.” (AKA: A policy shift that the Ayatollah was talking about.)

4. Ayatollahs in Iran welcome this move and "welcome negotiations on their controversial nuclear program."

So I know what your thinking, "Whats with all the sly moves?" I’d start by saying that these overtures not only weaken the "conservative elements" in both counties, but they also are likely to play a role in the upcoming Iranian presidential election on June 12. (Abu's birthday!)

But hold on, does this really mean that after 30 years of ice, the U.S. and Iran are about to thaw relations? Probably not.

But hey, you gotta start somewhere.

UPDATE ON SOMALI PIRATE PLAN

Ok, so scroll down and read my post on the solution for the somalia piracy "crisis". Well, I have a new idea. Some of you military buffs may remember the report the U.S. issued regarding the possibility that the Chinese were developing a legitimate aircraft carrier, in which it stated that the possibility of a Chinese carrier would not be a reality before 2015. Boy were we wrong, hmmm, not the first time eh?

Recent reports confim that China has taken a strong interest in building and completing their two 60,000 ton carriers on or before 2015. Yes, it's true, they can and most likely will make this happen. Scary? Nope, not if you do what I want to do....send it to Somalia. That's right people, send the Chinese Navy to the horn of Africa to guard the commercial shiiping lanes from the scallywags that want to extort the people traveling through their waters dumping trash and sewage into their ocean which gets into their fish and washes up on their shores. But, hey, it's the best idea yet, I mean, who wants to f*ck with the Chinese. Not me.

Check out this article and video, looks like the Chinese are already patrolling the Somali coast anyway.

Quote of the day

"Flying planes into buildings was a faith based initiative." -Bill Maher

Iran is, is, is NOT getting those Ruski S-300's

"And there goes Abu, off on his old Russian defense system crusade. I mean seriously guys, has he been drinking that fermented camels milk again?"

No, but thanks for the concern. I'm actually feeling ok. (Despite a little bug I picked up in Mexico about a month ago.) It's just that I've been watching the proliferation of the S-300 systems out of Russia lately. Why? Well, because the S-300 anti-aircraft system is considered one of those darn "red lines" that Iran could cross to encourage surgical strike on the part of the Israelis. (Could we think of a better word here other than "encourage?")

To tell you the truth, I almost missed it: A few days ago Haaretz reported that Alexander Fomin, first deputy director of Russia's Federal Military and Technical Cooperation Service said that the S-300 are not scheduled to be delivered to Iran.

Let me repeat: "not scheduled to be delivered to Iran!"

The Iranians acquiring some S-300 anti-aircraft systems would be the perfect excuse for a prompt Israeli attack. Though I have no idea if the Israelis will actually go through and hit Iranian nuclear facilities, I do know that if the Iranians got their hands on a few of those S-300's it just might be sensitive enough for the Israelis to....

By the way, did everyone enjoy their weekend?

How To Stop The Pirates? Well, Try Our Model.

SO, We usually only focus on the Middle East and Central Asia here at the casbah, but since this is the hot topic of late, and it has a few connections to the "war on terror", I thought we should give it some play. So here goes.

Pirates, not just any run of the mill pirates and not those skallywags from the Jack Sparrow brigade, but the turban wearing, AK-47 weilding Somali type. That's who the press is all excited about lately. But I would remind you that these guys are not breaking news, they just happened to take an American hostage this time by mistake, or out of stupidity. Either way, now that the press has had a taste of the media success, and Obama got his big win thanks to the sharp shooters of the U.S. Navy Seals, we now have a new crisis to fix.

So what to do, what to do? How about following the Sunni co-opt program from IRaq? More on that later, but first, let's bring everyone down to earth as to the "enormity" of the piracy problem: THe Truth About the Pirates (click and read people, I dare you.)

This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

So, with exceptions of course, let's be honest about the history of piracy in Somalia.

Secondly, A high ranking military official has stated that the actual amounts paid to the pirates last year in ransom was under 10% of what the shipping companies consider the "cost of doing business" off the Somali coast. They even have been quoted as referring to the ransoms paid as, "small peanuts" compared to the profits they are making. So in other words, THEY PLAN FOR IT IN THEIR BUDGETS AND PROFIT MARGINS!!

SO, how to solve the "problem":

Check out this WIRED analysis for a great solution.

It simply says:

Galrahn's solution? Help Somalia build the rudiments of coast guard. The price tag, he says, would be a mere $130 million per year. Here's how he crunches the numbers: For a 2,000-man Somali coast guard earning $10 a day, plus a 400-man officer corps making $20 a day, the estimated manpower costs would be $10.2 million annually. That's chump change, he argues, when you weigh it against ransom payouts and the cost of skyrocketing insurance premiums.
Galrahn also proposes outfitting Somali coasties with 30 experimental M-80 stealth ships at $15 million a piece; one could presumably find cheaper options than an prototype vessel. But for the sake of argument, that comes in at a total cost of around $130.2 million annually to equip and train a 30-vessel coast guard with 2,400 officers and men.

In essence, Galrahn is taking a page from the program the U.S. military used to co-opt largely Sunni insurgents in Iraq. If a Somali coast guardsman is paid a decent wage, he argues, the economics of piracy start to look a lot less attractive.

What say you readership?

UPDATE: To keep things kosher, click here for a story about those dirty scoundrels from Somalia and how they have kept these hostages for two years! Bastards.

Taliban and U.S. Forces defeated by...Al Gore?

Yep, it's true, Al Gore wins another one. Well, not really, but we can say his cause is gaining some hard evidence as a major concern, even more of a concern than those wreched Taliban insurgents. Anand Gopal wrote a great report on the state of Kabul's pollution.

Here's a few excerpts:

The biggest killer in Kabul may not be the Taliban, but air pollution. Experts consider Kabul to be one of the most polluted cities in the world, and the scale of the problem has prompted a widespread government campaign. "Air pollution is just a huge problem here," says Amanullah Hosseini, the director for environmental health in the Afghan ministry of public health. "It leads to so many diseases - respiratory diseases, allergies, miscarriages and even cancer."

The ministry estimates that some 3,000 people die from pollution-induced illnesses in Kabul yearly making them the biggest cause of natural death in this city of five million. And according to the National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA), a government body, nearly 80 percent of Kabul's hospital patients suffer from diseases caused by polluted air and water.

In the 1980s, Kabul was a quaint city with lush greenery and clean mountain air. But years of war, the crumbling of public services and population explosion have plunged the city to the depths of environmental pollution rarely seen elsewhere in the world.

ALSO: CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE ON POLLUTION IN AFGHANISTAN

12 drones flying to Beirut

HOT OFF THE PRESS: The U.S. is going to provide Lebanon with 12 unmanned drones.

Washington hopes a strengthened Lebanese military would extend state authority across the country, where the militant Hezbollah is gaining power with its arsenal of rockets that threaten another U.S. ally, neighboring Israel.

A strong national army could be a counter to Hezbollah's weapons and could deprive the militants of the excuse to keep their arms.

U.S. officials said their support is intended to help Lebanon maintain internal security, fight terrorism and secure its borders.

Since 2006, the U.S. has provided Lebanon with more than a billion dollars in assistance, including $410 million to support security. But the aid has largely been equipment, vehicle and supplies, drawing ridicule from critics who contrast that with the high-tech weapons provided to Israel.

The army was divided during the 1975-90 civil war along sectarian lines and rebuilt after the conflict largely as an internal security force.

I want to focus on two things:

1. The Lebanese military has been known to split along sectarian lines as the article says. This could be a reason both for and against the sale of these drones.

2. It may not be the pro-Cedar government in charge come the June elections. This could mean that Hezbollah and co. would have some really important posts, like foreign minister, like.....

I sure hope someone is keeping a really close watch on this one. Wouldn't it be ironic if these drones were to get into the wrong hands. Wouldn't it?

"Oh, it's ok guys these weapons are for the resistance."

If you've never smoked Beqaa valley hash, well, apparently your missing out. That’s right, this back valley in Lebanon is known not just for being an infamous training ground for Hezbollah guerrillas, but also for producing grade A hashish--and so I'm told, it's very good.

This post is really just a follow up from a news article I saw few days ago that reported that a few solders in the Lebanese Army were killed upon a clash with Beqaa valley drug traffickers. And so it turns out, these dudes pack some serious heat!

The truth is that there’s a lot of drug trafficking in this region. It is famous for it. And if you were to ask your average Tel Aviver where they got their dope, they'd likely say "from the Arabs." (Can anyone confirm otherwise?)

“It has always been accepted that some of the families in Beqaa will grow hashish,” Abu Ali said. “The farmers are too poor, and growing normal crops will not be enough to survive so both the army and Hizbollah allow these families to grow hashish for sale. They pay bribes to the right people and are left alone as long as they stay quiet.”

What interests me, however, is the relationship between Hezbollah, the government in Beirut and these traffickers. Perhaps the clash had something to do with the upcoming election? I'd say. So keep an eye on Beqaa, it may not just be the Armenians who can shift the Lebanese elections.

Update: The Lebanese Army has recently launched a major operation to catch these "criminal gangs."

Read alongside The Guerrilla

Ok guys, I just can't help it. The blogosphere has been on fire of late. Everything from an Israeli strike on Iran, Hassan Nasrallah, to getting a job, all have left old Abu G reading like a maniac. So here's the reading list:

1. The Age of Nasrallah, By Qifa Nabk. Wow, does this dude have a personality cult going for him or what? Hassan Nasrallah is clearly one of the best orators of his time and he has transformed Hezbollah into what it is today. Qifa Nabk is for sure the man to break it down--and a hell of a writer too.

2. Hezbollah's Mushroom Cloud, by Michael J. Totten. Over the past few weeks we have heard various reports of Hezbollah rallies with mushroom cloud posters (Hitchens?). While this may help those who would like to paint Hezbollah as a "transnational terrorist group," this whole thing falls short in that it is a contained incident. AKA--it is not being broadcasted over al-Manor. AKA--For domestic consumption only. Totten has an interesting take on the whole thing though.

3. Is grad school worth it?, by Crystal. Yup, not exactly Middle Eastern, but it is an interesting take on education in this economy. Plus, she has a monopoly on my fiscal reading.

4. Why Slate is probably wrong about Israel bombing Iran soon, by Tom Ricks. If you remember, I had my own take on this a few days ago. Both Tom and I reached similar conclusions (I think he is a closet reader of the Casbah). One thing that he missed, however, is that he said that Israeli aircraft would be weak without American refueling help. In the past few weeks, Haaretz has had a few articles suggesting that Israel would opt for missiles rather than aircraft. This would take care of the refueling problem. This would take care of the pilot safety problem. But still, as long as America is in Iraq I just can't see how Israel is going to pull it off. Sorry Bibi.

5. Realpolitik for Iran, Rodger Cohen. You just have to read it. One of his best for sure. Make sure to pay attention to his "normalization scenario." Not a bad idea...


Well that's about it folks. These are a strong 5 and I hope that you can get a chance to take a look. And just for old Abu G, think about if this reading was assigned for a Middle Eastern politics class--it would beat the hell out of the mundane text they have kids reading these days, eh?

The ethics of reigning in those darn insurgents

Alllll right! It's follow up time. Sgtlejeune, AKA a fan of the Casbah, wrote a comment on a post I did about a week ago that got me thinking... Click here for the post and the comment.

Just to summarize, I said that the recent violence in Baghdad is likely targeted at the Sadderists because if they break ties with Maliki's Da’wa party, it will unleash a firestorm. Additionally, it will slow the Baghdad government and give al-Qaeda in Iraq what they want: a government that doesn't work. So to summarize (and I hope that Sgtlejeune doesn’t mind me doing this):

"I don't believe there is a soldier who has served in Baghdad (myself included) that would consider Sadr a "friend". So we have Maliki (with a rather extremist past in Da’wa leadership) working with Sadr - who carries American blood on his own hands. It is easy to see who we are up against, but not who we support."

I revive this comment not because I think the Saddarists are a friend of America, but because they are an integral part of Iraq and it is in the best interest of the U.S. to have stability there. The U.S. had to engage the Saddarists--like it had to engage Sunni tribesman with the Sons of Iraq program--so it could reign in various parts of the insurgency. And like virtually all insurgencies, these insurgents had, on whatever level, a point.

So this gets me to where I really want to go with this. Can you guess? Yeah. Is the U.S. going to do a similar thing in Afghanistan? Other places?

Some say we already are, at least in Afghanistan. But I want to focus this post on morality. How is it that the U.S. can fight these insurgents’, only later to make peace with them and support them in government? On one hand this is how insurgencies' end: by absorbing the insurgents into government. Yet on the other hand, these people--as our dear friend Sgtlejeune says--carry American blood on their hands.

In Iraq we needed to engage these so-called insurgents as to quell the insurgency. We called it the surge. So, in Afghanistan, does the same policy apply? And how do our military factions of the readership feel about this?

Now they say Israel MUST attack Iran

And it's Abu G, back from a few days of camping in the mountains of Arizona. (Man, it looked like those pictures of Tora Bora.) Anyway, upon my return to my trusty computer, I noticed that a few friends have sent me the same article by David Samuels in Slate Magazine. His piece is called "Why Israel will Attack Iran." Any questions?

My first reaction after reading this piece was "Wow, this dude must have loved whatever international relations course he took in college." The article is filled with "theoretical maybes" and "would be if" scenarios regarding an Israeli attack on Iran. Nevertheless, I found his piece to be very thought provoking and provocative. Here are a few of the highlights:

"The more Israeli leaders huff and puff about their determination to stop Iran's nuclear program, the more sophisticated analysts are inclined to believe that Israel is bluffing."

"Bombing Iran's nuclear facilities is the surest way for Israel to restore the image of strength and unpredictability that made it valuable to the United States after 1967 while also eliminating Iran as a viable partner for America's favor."

It seems that David Samuels thinks that Israel has to attack Iran simply to ensure its status as the regional hegemon. He argues that if Iran were to become nuclear, it would level the Middle East in a way not seen since before the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

Another point that caught my attention was that Samuels thinks that America's interest in Israel is mostly because of its strength in the region. He cites that before the October War of 1973, the U.S. did not support Israel in the same way that it does today. The nuclear program, for example, was a result of the Suez Crisis, as provided mostly by the French. He cites AIPAC and other factors of what has been coined "the Israel lobby" as being over stretched in influence.

"While America's embrace of Israel is partially motivated both by shared values and by the lobbying power of an influential minority group, neither Israel's creaky democratic polity nor the hidden persuasive powers of AIPAC can claim much credit for the billions of dollars in American military credits that Israel enjoys—a vast corporate welfare program that benefits Pentagon defense contractors as much as it benefits Israel's military."

I'm not entirely sure that I follow Samuels’s international relations speculation on Israeli power. He paints a situation where Israel must attack Iran in order retain U.S. support.

My response: The U.S. lost whatever strategic asset it had in Israel when the Cold War ended vis-à-vis checking Soviet Arab states. Thus, this IR theory way of looking at it is out of date at best. Yet, the article is worth a read. Regardless of what old Abu G thinks, this article is being widely read and is going to be a serious scope that political leaders will be using in the upcoming year.

(And for a completely different article that argues that the U.S. should just give Iran some reactors, click here. Hang on guys, it's a swirling vortex of differing analysis out there.)

The Last Jew of Afghanistan

Since the first Exodus, the Jews of Babylon, the Jews of Persia, are considered to be the longest exiled community in the world. And remember, when this whole thing happened, there were no nation states. Hence, there are Jews in the land once controlled by the Persian Empire. Or at least this is how Zablon Simantov describes himself. He is the last Jew in Afghanistan.

Click here for the Video

From Eisenhower to Obama, Will They Be Similiar?

President Obama’s unscheduled visit to Iraq suggests a president determined to see a war zone first hand and draw his own conclusions. So too did Lincoln tour the South during the Civil War. Yet Jean Edward Smith of the NYTIMES, notes that, "the most pertinent example may be Dwight D. Eisenhower, who toured the battlefront in Korea shortly before his inauguration. Ike had pledged to go to Korea if elected, and most voters assumed that the supreme commander — who had so effectively defeated the German Wehrmacht — would quickly dispatch the North Koreans and their Chinese allies."

Eisenhower may have thought he could do it at first as well. Republican campaign rhetoric envisaged a unified Korea brought together by force, if necessary, to insure “the future stability of the continent of Asia.” South Korean president Syngman Rhee also shared that view, as did many in the nation’s foreign policy establishment.

Still, after touring the country, Eisenhower drew a different conclusion, recognizing that, "we could not stand forever on a static front and continue to accept casualties without any visible result." He continued to conclude, "Now either we cut out all this fooling around and make a serious bid for peace — or we forget the whole thing".

Then, in what historians regard as the most important foreign policy address of his presidency, Ike called out those who envisioned winning the cold war militarily. “Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed….” He finished with, “The war is over,” he told press secretary James Hagerty. “I hope my son is going to come home soon.”

Jean Edward Smith correctly identifies, "Like President Obama, Eisenhower was an incrementalist who preferred to move gradually, often invisibly, within an existing policy framework. But on the question of war and peace, his views were categorical. He rejected the concept of limited war, and believed that American troops should never be sent into battle unless national survival was at stake."

Ike was able to recognize a losing hand when he saw it, and he knew when to toss in the cards. I'm not sure how good of a card player President Obama is, but I hope that he knows the difference between when to raise the ante and when to fold the hand.

It is my genuine hope that all of our sons will come home soon.

U.S. FINALLY Communicates With Tribal Elders In Afghanistan

In a shift of focus from airstrikes and hut to hut searches for insurgents, the U.S. military has FINALLY decided to embrace the philosophy of "winning the hearts and minds" of the Afghan tribal leaders. How do they plan to do this you ask? Communication...who woulda thought?

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan reached out to influential Afghan tribesmen in regions where U.S. troops will soon deploy, apologizing for past mistakes and saying he is now studying the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

Gen. David McKiernan met with villagers in Helmand and Kandahar -- two of Afghanistan's most violent provinces -- in an attempt to foster good will ahead of the U.S. troop surge that will send 21,000 more forces here this summer to stem an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency.
McKiernan said he wanted to show respect to tribal elders by traveling to Kandahar on Wednesday to explain some of the mistakes U.S. forces have made in the past -- such as arresting people based on information taken from one side in a tribal fight, or killing civilians during operations.

"I'm trying to connect to the local population in a bottom-up way and try to explain what the new U.S. strategy means and why they're going to see an increased force presence where they live," McKiernan said during the trip to Kandahar aboard the seven passenger jet he flies in.

McKiernan told the Afghans that President Barack Obama's new strategy is to combat instability in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region as a whole. He said that in the future, Afghan forces will enter villagers' homes if necessary, a pledge that brought another round of applause.

"I'm reading a very good book now about this part of the world. It's written in English, but it's all about you -- it's the Quran," McKiernan said to applause. Moments later an Afghan man stood up and gave McKiernan a bright purple, red and green cloth in which to wrap the translated version of holy book. A very important gesture of good will.

Finally, we are on the right path, a journey together with the Afghans that must be a part of the process.