By Jonas Parello-Plesner*

Vladimir Putin’s strategy of generating frozen conflicts is now well-understood. From Georgia to Ukraine, Putin supports insurgencies which flare up and wind down but never go away, ensuring long-term influence. By dialing up and down the violence with precision, Putin turns the insurgencies into tools for gaining leverage over his neighbors and the international system more broadly.

His recent diplomacy in Syria suggests that he may be preparing to use the aspiration of the Syrian Kurds in a comparable manner—in order to achieve permanent influence over Ankara, and to drive a wedge between Turkey and NATO to the detriment to US strategic posture.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s top priority in Syria is to weaken the Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG). Erdogan sees the YPG, correctly, as a direct extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which he is battling inside Turkey. Due to the strong ethnic and linguistic ties between the Kurds of Syria and Turkey, Erdogan fears the YPG’s dominant aspiration, namely, establishing an independent Kurdish statelet in Syria, which it calls Rojava. If Rojava stands up, he assumes, it will excite the imagination of Turkish Kurds, while providing the PKK with strategic depth, a base from which to launch cross border raids into Turkey.

By 2016, the YPG was well on the way to creating a contiguous area of political control along Turkey’s southern border, when the Turkish military acted. Its intervention in Syria, dubbed Euphrates Shield, cut the emerging Kurdish region in two. Meanwhile, Turkey has been very vocal in demanding from the United States not to work with the YPG. The Americans, however, have largely turned a deaf ear. The YPG offered Washington a means of destroying the Islamic State in Raqqa without having to deploy large amount of American ‘boots on the ground’.

But the Americans have not been entirely unsympathetic to Erdogan’s concerns. They promised Erdogan that their collaboration with YPG would be only transactional and temporary, not lasting beyond the campaign against ISIS. The short-term relationship, they assured him, posed no threat to the long-lasting alliance with Turkey through NATO. As if to make good on that promise, Trump recently signaled to Erdogan that, now that Raqqa had fallen, the United States was preparing to scale down its military cooperation with the Syrian Kurds.

If Trump indeed follows through, he may soothe relations with Erdogan, but he will also offer new opportunities for Putin. For several years now, Moscow has been reaching out to Turkey and the YPG simultaneously, hoping to establish itself, in the wake of an American withdrawal, as the primary arbiter between the Syrian Kurds and Ankara. Indeed, firm support for Syrian Kurdish aspirations has been a little-noticed but significant aspect of Putin’s policy. The YPG’s political arm, PYD, has an office in Moscow, its sole international presence. Moreover, Russia has worked to provide it with a seat at the negotiation table in the talks about Syria’s future—this, despite staunch opposition of Ankara. Expectedly, Russia will pull this off in Sochi for a National Dialogue on Syria slated for February where Syrian Kurds will be included through a larger grouping to make it palatable for Turkey.

This strategy is for Russia to become the political arbiter of the status of Kurdish autonomy inside Syria which will make the regime in Damascus as well as Ankara dependent on Russian intervention to dial down these aspirations. In line with that strategy, Russia recently penned their own draft constitution for Syria with large-scale autonomy for the Kurds included.

To prevent such an outcome, Erdogan will have no choice but to allow Putin to mediate between him and the PYD. He may seek to improve the military balance by further invading Syria. No matter what, however, he cannot make the Syrian Kurdish problem go away. Any use of force will simply push the PYD further into the arms of the Russians, which will seek to exploit the new relationship accordingly.

President Obama believed that Russia’s military intervention in Syria would end in a quagmire. Instead, it has led to success on multiple fronts. Significant players in the Trump administration are showing similar signs of misreading Putin. They assume that he has achieved his key goals in Syria, and is now looking for a graceful exit. They fail to realize that the chaos in Syria is still providing him with many new and exciting options. The real end goal is to show the impotence of Washington and make Russia great again in the Middle East and beyond.

By far the greatest of these is an opportunity to weaken NATO. Russia’s recent overtures to Turkey, including the possible sale of air defense systems incompatible with Turkey’s NATO obligations, are a sign of things to come. In return for containing the aspirations of Syria’s Kurds, Putin will insist that Turkey reduce its reliance on the Western alliance. Recent polls in Turkey show that he may soon be pushing on an open door. Turks who see strategic cooperation with Russia as preferable to EU membership now represent 27.6% percent of the population. While this number is still low, it represents a dramatic increase over last year’s 14.8 . Similarly, the perception of Russia as a threat has dropped from 34.9 in 2016 to 18.5% this year

Right now, the Trump administration is wrestling with these questions while reviewing its Syria strategy. What can then be done to counter Putin and such outcomes? Paradoxically, the US should double down on maintaining relations with the Syrian Kurds. The relationship will be a continued irritant to the Turks, however, if handled deftly, the Americans could demonstrate to Ankara that having them as a mediator is far preferable to Putin. The key, of course, is to placate the Turks while still working with the Kurds. How might this be achieved? As a first step, the US should foster the conditions for bottom-up governance in Raqqa and other nearby IS-liberated areas, so that resident Sunni Arabs with their majority can gradually take control of the city and environs, thus reducing the geographical expanse of Kurdish-controlled territory. In addition, it would prevent the PYD from using the future status of Raqqa as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with the Assad regime (and Russia).

At the same time, the United States should demand from the PYD that it sever links with PKK, and that it engage in direct talks with Ankara over confidence building measures. In the short-term, this will be a tall order indeed, but if American pressure is applied firmly and consistently over time, and if the alternative is a Turkish invasion of Syria, one might see surprising results. The relatively warm relations between the Turks and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq demonstrate that Kurdish-Turkish enmity is not set in stone.

If the Americans recede from the scene, the Syrian Kurds will immediately fall into the arms of Putin, who, overnight, will become the primary arbiter of the Turkish-Kurdish relationship. If he is permitted to adopt this role, it will spell strategic disaster for the West. Europe has sufficient of Russia-style frozen conflicts. There is no reason to create the conditions for a new one, especially when it would likely result in the severe weakening of NATO.

About the article:
*Jonas Parello-Plesner, Senior Fellow

Source:
This article was published by the Hudson Institute

By J C Suresh

Cofounder of the organization Global Zero, and a former Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile launch officer has called for major changes to prevent a U.S. President from ordering the use of nuclear weapons.

In a new article published in the forthcoming issue of Arms Control Today, Bruce Blair, who is also a member of the Princeton University research faculty, provides an authoritative summary of current U.S. nuclear launch protocol and its dangerous liabilities. The article includes new information about the process, including who is involved and how a nuclear use order would be executed.

Blair also offers several possible reforms to the current protocol to provide the president with more warning and decision time and reduce the risks of faulty decision-making.

The backdrop to the article are bipartisan concerns about President Donald Trump’s temperament, loose talk about nuclear weapons, and bellicose rhetoric toward North Korea.

These have prompted renewed interest in and questioning of U.S. nuclear launch protocol, which gives the president the sole authority to order the use of nuclear weapons, hundreds of which are available for prompt launch, says the Arms Control Association in a press release.

In November 2017, for the first time in over 40 years, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the subject of nuclear weapons launch authority.

The article comes after Trump reacted to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s annual new year’s day address by tweeting: “Will someone from his [Kim Jong-Un’s] depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but that it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works.”

In the article, titled “Strengthening Checks on Presidential Nuclear Launch Authority,” Blair writes that “[m]ajor changes are needed to constrain a president who would seek to initiate the first use of nuclear weapons without apparent cause and to prevent him or her from being pushed into making nuclear retaliatory decisions in haste.”

“No single reform suffices,” writes Blair. “A combination of reforms is needed to reduce the risk.”

The reforms proposed by Blair include altering the current prompt-launch posture, adding more people to the chain of command, greater congressional involvement, and re-evaluating the legality of nuclear war plans.

Blair’s article will appear in the January/February 2018 issue of Arms Control Today.

The Arms Control Association is an independent, membership-based organization dedicated to providing authoritative information and practical policy solutions to address the threats posed by the world’s most dangerous weapons. Arms Control Today is a publication of the Arms Control Association

By John Feffer*

The last time Iranians went out onto the streets in large numbers, they were protesting what they thought was a stolen election.

It was 2009, and hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had convincingly won the presidency with roughly 63 percent to reformer Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s approximately 34 percent. Adopting their campaign’s green color, Mousavi’s supporters thronged the streets in protest.

These Green Movement adherents were mostly middle class and concentrated in the major cities. Ahmadinejad, by contrast, attracted the support of the more religious, the less well-off and the rural—a sizable constituency that the Green Movement routinely underestimated.

Now it’s their turn to take to the streets: these members of the Iranian working class who live in the boonies, who have not benefited from the economic changes of the reformists. This is a group that analyst Esfandyar Batmanghelidj calls the “forgotten men and women” of modern Iran.

The current demonstrations are leaderless, and the demands are all over the map. In general, however, today’s protesters seem more concerned with economic issues than political ones, though the two are inextricably linked. For instance, unlike in 2009, the most recent demonstrations have nothing to do with election fraud. After all, the last presidential election went off without a hitch, and some of the same people who protested in 2009 returned to the streets in May 2017 to celebrate the reelection of reformer Hassan Rouhani.

On the economic side, meanwhile, the reformers around Rouhani promised a big boost as a result of the nuclear deal with the United States, the European Union and other countries. And, indeed, the economy has grown, mostly as a result of an uptick in oil exports. The growth rate in 2016 was 6.4 percent—a remarkable turnabout from the nearly 2 percent contraction in 2015. That certainly helped Rouhani win reelection in May last year.

But this wealth has not trickled down fast enough. Unemployment has been rising from around 10 percent in 2015 to over 12 percent today. The youth unemployment rate, meanwhile, hovers around 30 percent, which mirrors the conditions in a number of Middle Eastern countries on the eve of the Arab Spring. Moreover, large price increases in staples like eggs and gas have hit the poorer segments of society hard, and the population is bracing for more of the same in 2018.

Iranian society is sharply divided between haves and have-nots, its rate of economic inequality comparable to that of the Philippines. The current unrest reflects the thwarted economic ambitions of a falling working class, not the thwarted political ambitions of a rising middle class.

Iranians are also protesting corruption, which has long been a central feature of economic and political life in the country. There have been the predictable scandals associated with fraud in the oil industry. The earthquake in November toppled many houses built by the state, revealing corruption in the construction industry. The underground economy encouraged by the sanctions regime has also generated a pervasive culture of bribery. And many Iranians view the high salaries that go to some government employees as a form of corruption as well.

Initially, it seems, the protests originated not with reformists, like the Green Movement, but with hardliners hoping to focus anger on Rouhani. The protests broke out, for instance, in religious centers Qom and Mashhad. Writes Ahmad Sadri, “The right-wing powerful duo of the city of Mashhad, Ebrahim Raisi (the embittered rival of Rouhani in the recent elections) and his famously simple-minded father-in-law, Ahmad Alamolhoda, struck the first match by staging a small anti-Rouhani demonstration, blaming the high price of consumer goods on the Rouhani government.”

The conservatives opened a Pandora’s box of resentments. Protesters in other cities have subsequently denounced the Ayatollah Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard. They’ve even sung the praises of the deposed shah and called for the return of his son.

This is a protest of profound disillusionment.

Washington’s Response

The Rouhani government banked on a big dividend coming from the 2015 nuclear deal.

It needed this infusion of capital from outside because, in reality, Rouhani has rather narrow room for maneuver on economic issues. The religious establishment holds all the trump cards when it comes to governance. A large state-owned sector and extensive public services absorb a large chunk of the government budget. Wages and salaries take up around 40 percent of the budget—and social security a little over 30 percent. In a “semi-state sector” bolstered by an opaque privatization process, conservative institutions like the Revolutionary Guards hold considerable sway and are often resistant to any reform.

Rouhani needed leverage from outside the system because he controlled so few levers within the system. The nuclear deal was supposed to reduce sanctions, expand Iranian exports and attract a new wave of foreign investment. Some sanctions have been lifted (but not all). Some exports have spiked (mostly oil). But the foreign investment has been slow to materialize.

True, some European firms, such as the French energy firm Total, have dipped their toes into the Iranian market. And Boeing secured a major civilian airplane deal.

But opposition to economic engagement with Iran was strong in Washington, even during the Obama administration. In the wake of their defeat on the nuclear deal, hardliners in Congress were eager to apply new sanctions against Iran and reduce what little investment was flowing toward the country. Granted, it’s not easy to navigate the business environment inside Iran. But the United States didn’t make it any easier.

The Trump administration hasn’t been shy about voicing its opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. Even before the latest protests broke out, the administration was also exploring ways of killing the Boeing aircraft deal, as well as the Total investment. Suffice it to say, Trump is not interested in any kind of engagement with the Iranian government.

As soon as the protests broke out in Iran in December, Trump gleefully took to Twitter to support the people in the streets and castigate the Rouhani government. “The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime,” Trump tweeted. “All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their ‘pockets.’ The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!”

For Trump, the protests vindicate his argument that the government in Tehran is illegitimate. That the protests have resulted at least in part from U.S. policies to squeeze Iran is immaterial to Trump and his supporters in Congress.

This has been their strategy all along. “The policy of the United States should be regime change in Iran,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has said. “I don’t see how anyone can say America can be safe as long as you have in power a theocratic despotism.” Sanctions are not designed to extract a “better deal” from Tehran or even to dissuade it from engaging in “bad behavior” in the region. That’s a canard to make the United States appear to be playing by the rules of respecting sovereignty.

The punditocracy, meanwhile, has largely come out in support of the protests, with people on both sides of the nuclear deal laying down their differences to side with the street. Here’s Daniel Shapiro and Mark Dubowitz in Politico:

We are long-time friends who have disagreed vehemently on the wisdom of President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran; Dan is Obama’s former ambassador to Israel, and Mark is one of that agreement’s most persistent critics. But we agree with equal passion that Americans, regardless of party or position on the nuclear deal, should be supporting the aspirations of Iranians to be free from their brutal and corrupt rulers. 

But what are Shapiro and Dubowitz supporting exactly? By all means, the Iranian government should permit freedom of assembly. It should not respond to the protests with violence. And who cannot sympathize with people who are fed up with unemployment and corruption and want to exercise their right of self-determination?

But these protests are not the Green Movement. The current demonstrators don’t have a single, coherent program. They don’t appear to have rallied behind anything to replace the current government. They are, like the groundswell of support for Donald Trump, a movement defined by opposition to the status quo. It’s not immediately clear what alternative system such protesters would support, but it’s just as likely to be something religiously populist along the lines of Ahmadinejad as anything resembling secular liberalism.

Barack Obama received criticism from the Left and the Right for not throwing U.S. support behind the Green Movement. The stakes were clearer then—a hardline president with dubious legitimacy on one side versus a mass movement with leaders and a program. Today, the stakes are considerably muddier. But Trump, who cares so little about Iranians that he’s blocked them from entering the United States regardless of their affiliations, is interested only in the larger game: scoring points against Obama and the Iranian leadership and scoring points for Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Come January 13, when Trump has another opportunity to cancel U.S. participation in the nuclear agreement, he will likely do so in the name of the Iranian people, the very ones who have taken to the streets because Trump and others like him are determined to make sure that the agreement ultimately doesn’t provide any real economic benefits to the Iranian people. His supporters on the Right are already giving him the ammunition to gun down the deal in this way.

What Goes Around

Trump immediately identified the protesters as his kind of people—angry at political elites, upset that economic “reforms” have not benefited them, disgusted with the corruption of the system. Trump knows a “throw the bums out” kind of movement when he sees one.

The groundswell of anger in Iran matches the rage felt by people all over the world at the greed and cluelessness of their leaders. So far, manipulative so-called populists have managed to translate this anger into electoral success—in Hungary, Russia, the Philippines and the United States. The most likely political actor to take advantage of this anger in Iran would walk and talk like Ahmadinejad and embrace positions that are more anti-American, anti-Saudi and anti-Israel than those of the current government.

Trump should be careful when he supports a movement in Iran like that, and not just because it probably wouldn’t produce a more U.S.-friendly regime. Trump is already facing something similar. After all, the president is now undeniably a member of the political elite. He’s the one implementing economic reforms that don’t benefit the vast majority. He’s the one making gobs of money off of the system. And, as in Iran, he’s the one backed by powerful religious fanatics.

In short, Trump is now the bum that a growing movement wants to throw out of the White House. When the time comes, will Mark Dubowitz and his conservative brethren similarly defend American citizens who aspire “to be free from their brutal and corrupt rulers”?

This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and In These Times.

*John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands.

In 2018, Pakistan would move deeper into internal chaos, its relations with its neighbours would only worsen adding to tensions on both its borders.

By Harsha Kakar

December 2017 ended with confusion for Pakistan. US President Donald Trump blocked release of funds on Pakistan’s non-cooperation in reducing support to terror groups operating on its soil. The ‘humanitarian’ meeting for the family of Kulbhushan Jadhav, which was supposed to be a signal for a stand down in Pakistan’s approach, turned into a choreographed fiasco, substantiating India’s resolve in unaccepting the words of that country. A day after the meeting, India launched a cross-border operation, eliminating at least three Pakistani soldiers, in response to an earlier strike by Pakistan’s strike, ending the year with enhanced border tensions.

During 2017, India culled over 200 Pak infiltrated terrorists in the valley, eliminating most of the terror group leaders, thus regaining complete control. A terrorist strike on a CRPF training camp in Pulwama on the last day of the year claimed five lives, indicating Pak sponsored militancy may be down, but not out. It would continue, however, as the Indian army successes grow, it would have lesser and lesser impact.

The marginalising of the Hurriyat and blocking hawala inflow of funds reduced anti-India violence and strife in the valley, enabling the government to appoint an interlocutor, whom many delegations, including students, who earlier led the violence, have met. With the dropping of charges against over five thousand first time stone throwers, hope is back in the hearts of the youth. Political control has been re-established in the valley. Calls for bandhs by the pro-Pak Hurriyat are being largely ignored. This has caused concern in Pakistan, as its Kashmir strategy appears to be failing.

Sharif flew into Saudi Arabia at the end of the year, seeking to resolve impending cases against him and settle the battle between him and the army, using the influence of the House of Saud. To top it all, the Pakistan army chief stated in his senate briefing and discussion that the army does not oppose improving relations with India and Afghanistan and the very next day, praised Hafiz Saeed, distancing the two countries even more. Palestine withdrew its Pakistan ambassador on his sharing a platform with Hafiz Saeed, conveying its intention of being closer to India than Pakistan.

It was a year when the Pakistan army established complete control over the country. It had the elected Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, removed from power on flimsy grounds, supported fundamentalists in seeking to establish a political party and backed a sit in by religious parties, ultimately brokering a peace deal, leading to the surrender of the state. It orchestrated the release of Hafiz Saeed from house arrest, when it found its Kashmir policy in tatters. Its permitting Saeed to rant against Pakistan’s political parties and India will add to internal and external tensions.

It ended the year only banking on China for economic aid, development as also for diplomatic backup. It has been China alone which has blocked the listing of Hafiz Saeed as a global terrorist. Though the CPEC is partially operationalised, its true costs, repayment and ultimate benefits to Pakistan remain mired in secrecy. China’s demand for the Pakistan army to be directly involved in the CPEC only raises the question of the legality and power of its polity. China has readjusted its terms of investments, details of which would only emerge later, most likely enhancing problems of repayment by Pakistan.

2018 for Pakistan is an election year, which could possibly push the country deeper into an abyss. The Pakistan army’s backing to fundamentalist and religious groups is likely to result in a mixed bag of elected members of senate, providing the army a stronger hold on the state. The army will have complete authority and control with no accountability and responsibility.

Relations between Pakistan and its neighbours, Afghanistan and India, are only likely to grow worse. The lack of trust between India and Pakistan, despite the meeting of the two NSAs, at the end of the year in Bangkok, would only increase, not decrease, especially as the internal situation in Pakistan, post the elections is likely to be more anti-peace. Therefore, the LoC would remain tense and become more active as a desperate Pakistan would seek to increase infiltration to reignite the valley, which would be strongly challenged by India. Tensions would increase with a possible decision favouring India in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case at the International Court of Justice.

Pakistan’s continued support to the Taliban and Haqqani network operating in Afghanistan will remain. This implies, there would be increased tensions between the two countries as strikes by Taliban and Haqqani network would claim additional civilian casualties. Strikes in Pakistan by anti-Pak terror groups, operating from Afghanistan, would increase Pak-Afghan tensions and lead to regular closure of borders between the two countries, ending in accusations and counter accusations.

US pressure on Pakistan to act against terror groups would increase. With no substantial action being undertaken by Pakistan, attacks on coalition forces post the launch of the Taliban Spring offensive would compel the US to launch cross border drone strikes, enhancing Pak anger and worsening relations. India’s growing proximity to Afghanistan and increased support to the country would see it playing a larger role in the country, worrying Pakistan.

Thus, at the end of 2017, Pakistan appeared to be facing more problems than at the commencement of the year. Its internal instability and rising enmity with its neighbours marks the commencement of the coming year. It has throughout the year not shown any desire to resume dialogue, mend fences with its neighbours and overcome internal chaos. The army has moved the nation away from political stability to instability by openly supporting fundamentalist and religious groups for their own greed and power.

Therefore, in 2018 Pakistan would move deeper into internal chaos, its relations with its neighbours would only worsen adding to tensions on both its borders. The elections, likely to throw up a mixed bag of politicians, including fundamentalists and religious leaders, would enhance trouble for its religious minorities, while strengthening the hold of the army. Any government formed post the elections would not have the power to even contemplate raising talks of peace and reconciliation with its neighbours.

International pressure on Pakistan would continue to grow, while India would increase its assertiveness and aggressiveness along the LoC. Kashmir would remain generally peaceful, adding to Pakistan’s discomfiture. India’s growing military power would compel Pakistan to spend beyond its budgetary capability on defence, placing its economy at risk. In short, 2018 would be a testing year for Pakistan as its internal and external challenges would increase manifold.

Fifty-seven years ago this month President Dwight D. Eisenhower presented this warning in his farewell address: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” That warning has largely fallen on deaf ears.

The United States government has in the decades since been participating, both directly and via third parties, in overt and covert military actions across the world, with very little of the violence even arguably justified as necessary to defend America. Yet, no matter the lack of defensive justification, companies and individuals in the military-industrial complex profit from the high military spending and the destruction wrought abroad.

President Donald Trump’s high-level military appointments exemplify the strong bond between the US military and companies that profit from military spending, war, and foreign intervention. As I noted in the September 2 episode of Five Minutes Five Issues, Trump chose James Mattis, who had been a board of directors member of major military contractor General Dynamics to be secretary of defense and chose Mark Esper, who over the prior 12 months had earned over 1.5 million dollars lobbying for Raytheon, another prominent military contractor, to be secretary of the Army. Esper’s nomination was since confirmed by the US Senate.

This week we saw a new example of a high-level employee at a military contractor moving over to the US Department of Defense. On Wednesday, the Senate confirmed Trump’s nomination of John Rood to be under secretary for policy at the Defense Department. Travis J. Tritten reports at the Washington Examiner that Rood’s most recent job before being confirmed for “the Pentagon’s No. 3 position” was “as a Lockheed Martin vice president in charge of growing the defense giant’s international business in about 70 countries.”

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

By Mark Thornton*

According to multiple sources, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going to revoke the Obama-era Cole Memo, which directed federal law enforcement to respect states’ marijuana legalization laws. Once revoked, federal prosecutors in states where marijuana has been legalized will independently decide how to enforce federal marijuana policy in their states. This could create chaos in the fast-growing cannabis business which has been creating large numbers of jobs and burgeoning tax revenues for state and local governments.

It is unclear how Mr. Sessions thinks that such a move would benefit Sessions or help him carry out his job, other than repealing an Obama-era rule might get him back into the graces of President Trump.

The only other option is that Session is supposed to help address the Opioid Crisis. He thinks that cannabis has somehow contributed to the crisis ala the Gateway Theory of drugs, which assumes that cannabis smokers will turn into heroin addicts. The Gateway Theory has long been debunked for many reasons. In fact, cannabis and cannabis legalization has actually reduced the crisis somewhat. Cannabis is now being successfully used to treat opioid addiction. In states that have legalized cannabis, the number of opioid overdose deaths have actually decreased.

In any case, it will be interesting to see how people react to a new crackdown on cannabis in states that have successfully repealed federal law and enjoy very positive results.

About the author:
*Mark Thornton is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute. He serves as the Book Review Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. His publications include The Economics of Prohibition (1991), Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War (2004), The Quotable Mises (2005), The Bastiat Collection (2007), An Essay on Economic Theory (2010), and The Bastiat Reader (2014).

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

A ballistic missile fired toward Saudi Arabia by Houthi rebels was intercepted and destroyed by Saudi defense forces, according to a government statement.

The missile was intercepted over Najran, a city in southwestern Saudi Arabia near the Yemen border.

“The missile was deliberately launched toward Najran to target civilian areas and population, but it was intercepted and destroyed,” according to the statement. “The scattered fragments objection of the missile caused a minor damage to private property of one citizen and no loss of life.”

The group claiming to have launched the attack said in a Twitter statement it was a “successful launch of a short range ballistic missile at a military target in Saudi Arabia,” according to a television network run by the Houthi rebels.

Houthi rebels, who represent the country’s Zaidi Shiite Muslim minority, have fought the Yemeni government periodically since 2004.

The conflict exploded in 2014 and 2015, when rebels, along with supporters of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, entered the capital of Sanaa and forced President Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee to the port city of Aden.

In November, the Saudi government said it had intercepted a Houthi-launched missile intended to strike the international airport in its capital city of Riyadh.

Original article

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman made a series of royal decrees early Saturday easing the financial burden on the country’s citizens.

Saudi state workers and military personnel will see a rise of SR1,000 ($267) in salaries for the next 12 months, effective Jan. 1, 2018, while soldiers in combat on the Kingdom’s southern border will get a one time bonus of SR5,000.

To help with living expenses, welfare recipients and pensioners will get an extra SR500 monthly stipend for the rest of the year.

Government salaries will now be paid on the 27th of each month with all service bills to be issued a week later.

Students are also helped in the king’s decrees with a hike of 10 percent in allowances for the next 12 months.

The state will bear the impact of newly introduced VAT by absorbing it for citizens using private healthcare and education.

There is also good news for first-time home buyers with the state paying the VAT — not exceeding SR850,000 — on the purchase.

By Abdellatif El-Menawy*

The security of the Red Sea has historically been an integral part of Arab national security, because this strategic waterway was the target of all colonial powers. Given the number of Arab states that have coasts on that sea, it is no exaggeration to call it an Arabian lake. The Red Sea has three important waterways: The Suez Canal, the Straits of Tiran and the Strait of Bab El-Mandeb.

Arab coordination in the October 1973 war is a good example of the “Arabian lake” concept, because the blockade of the Strait of Bab El-Mandeb was a painful blow to Israel, turning Eilat — its only Red Sea port — into a ghost town and tightening the siege of the sea.

The blockade was part of a tactical and secret Egyptian plan in which islands controlling the Strait of Bab El-Mandeb were studied, and locations for Egypt’s navy on these islands were carefully chosen to block the strait. The plan was executed in coordination with all other Arab countries bordering the Red Sea. Israel did not know of the plan until Egypt announced the blockade of Bab El-Mandeb to Israeli ships.

The Red Sea remained peaceful until security in Somalia deteriorated as the state could no longer control the warring parties, and for the first time in the region’s history, armed pirates began intercepting international ships crossing Bab El-Mandeb.

Egypt immediately took action along with some European countries and the US, and a joint counterpiracy task force was established. Within a few months, the influence of Somali pirates was curbed and security was relatively restored in Bab El-Mandeb, although surveillance continued in the area to ensure the pirates do not return.

But as the situation deteriorates in Yemen, the Strait of Bab El-Mandeb is exposed again. Yemeni militias were smart enough not to come near Bab El-Mandeb, since they know the international community would have turned against them if they had. The strait will not be secure again until legitimate Yemeni forces take control of the area.

The entry of new parties has begun raising real questions about the Red Sea’s future. I would not be surprised if it turns into a conflict zone in which parties fight over influence or divide influence among countries on its shores.

The latest development is Turkey’s strong and public presence in the Red Sea via its recent bolstering of relations with Sudan. I would not be inclined to accuse the two parties of conspiring against Egypt, but the dispute with Qatar is impacting the sea awfully.

It would be naive to believe what Qatar’s chief of staff said about his visit to Sudan coinciding with that of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his chief of staff, so they seized the chance and held a meeting.

The problem does not solely lie in Erdogan’s announcement in Khartoum that Sudan had allocated Suakin Island in the Red Sea to Turkey for rebuilding and administration for an indefinite period of time. Suakin is Sudan’s oldest port, and is mostly used for transporting passengers and goods to the Saudi port of Jeddah. It is also Sudan’s second port after Port Sudan, which is 60 km north of it.

The Ottoman Empire used Suakin Island as a center for its navy in the Red Sea. The port also housed the seat of the Ottoman ruler in the southern Red Sea region between 1821 and 1885. Despite this, Suakin is merely a reference to a more important matter: Erdogan’s statement in Khartoum that there was a secret matter that he did not discuss with Sudan. We must not forget Turkey’s hostility toward the Egyptian regime and its announced aim to overthrow it.

• Abdellatif El-Menawy is a critically acclaimed multimedia journalist, writer and columnist who has covered war zones and conflicts worldwide.

(RFE/RL) — The White House is working with leading U.S. lawmakers on legislation designed to enable the United States to remain in the Iran nuclear deal, media are reporting, citing senior U.S. officials.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told The Associated Press in an interview on January 5 that changes to the U.S. law that codified U.S. participation the 2015 agreement could come as early as next week.

AP and Reuters reported that the White House is working on the legislation with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker and the panel’s top Democrat, Senator Ben Cardin.

The two lawmakers discussed the legislation at the White House last week with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, they reported.

President Donald Trump faces deadlines in coming days that will force him to decide how to proceed with the agreement, they reported.

Despite strongly criticizing the accord, which requires Iran to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief, Trump has not withdrawn the United States from the agreement since taking office a year ago.

AP and Reuters reported that the legislative changes being negotiated with the White House include face-saving measures that would enable the president to live with the deal, such as eliminating a requirement that the administration certify every 90 days whether Iran is in compliance.

The Trump administration certified Iran’s compliance twice last year, but in October Trump for the first time declined to certify, pointing to Iran’s ballistic missile development and other matters which he said were in violation of the “spirit” of the deal.

Despite decertifying the deal, Trump continued to waive the imposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil sector for another three months, and he left the ultimate decision on whether to stay in the deal to Congress.

Trump aides have said the president dislikes having to give a thumbs-up to Iran every three months. Another certification deadline looms next week, and Tillerson told AP that Trump hasn’t made a decision yet on what he’ll do.

Tillerson said the administration is “very active” in working with Congress on a legislative “fix.” He suggested Trump might be inclined to preserve the deal by waiving sanctions again on January 12 if there are signs Congress will act soon on the legislative changes.

But Tillerson acknowledged that getting the changes through Congress could prove difficult, and he told AP: “I don’t want to suggest we’re across the finish line on anything yet.”

“The president said he is either going to fix it or cancel it,” Tillerson said. “We are in the process of trying to deliver on the promise he made to fix it” through negotiations with Congress, he said.

AP reported that the legislation is unlikely to include any new restrictions on Iran beyond those already in the nuclear deal. But Reuters reported that it may include changes allowing the reimposition of U.S. sanctions if sunsetted provisions in the agreement expire and Iran’s nuclear program reaches certain thresholds.

The administration has sharply criticized restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities that are scheduled to expire after 10 years under the deal, and has demanded that such “sunset clauses” be abolished or renegotiated.

Tillerson told AP that the administration’s approach has been to first “fix” the U.S. law that governs how the U.S. adheres to the deal, and then work with European allies that helped broker the accord to address what Trump sees as shortcomings, such as its lack of firm restraints on Iran’s ballistic missile development.

Corker told Reuters that the negotiations have been making progress and that the protests in Iran have made it important that Washington not do anything to shift the world’s focus away from what is going on the streets of Iran.

“The last thing we need to do from my perspective would be to turn that attention to us” by once again decertifying the nuclear deal, Corker told Reuters.

By Mariyam Ahmad

Thai security forces said they arrested 25 suspected militants on Friday in raids in the troubled Deep South, including a group that allegedly killed five people and another believed to have been involved in burning a double-decker bus.

Meanwhile, citing insufficient evidence, the military said it released two men from the Deep South six days after they were arrested on Dec. 28 in Phang Nga, a province in the Thailand’s upper south, on suspicion of links to an alleged plot targeting New Year’s festivities.

On Friday, authorities arrested two batches of suspects, including five men who allegedly conspired to kill five people and injure another person in a series of attacks in Pattani province between 2010 and 2013.

“They coordinated the killings. The team included the mastermind, scout, spotter, transporter and gunman,” Maj. Gen. Jatuporn Klumpasut, who commands the Pattani Task Force, told a news conference at Fort Inkayuth Boriharn in the province.

“They met at a tea shop and plotted killings, and delivered guns at a mosque where they also changed their clothes before fleeing,” he said.

Village raid

In neighboring Yala province, security personnel rounded up a second batch of suspects, 20 men who were taken into custody on Friday in connection with the attack on the double-decker bus in Bunnang Sata, a local district, on Dec. 17.

That day, suspected insurgents stopped the bus on a highway as it was heading to Bangkok and ordered the driver and passengers to get off before torching the vehicle, police said. Previously, a 34-year-old suspect was charged on Dec. 28, officials said at the time.

A resident of Tambon Ubeng, a cluster of villages in Bunnang Sata, who identified herself only as “Ah,” said security forces arrived early Friday and took 20 people way, including her son-in-law, without any explanation.

“We thought they were looking for the attackers of the passenger bus,” she told BenarNews.

The 20 suspects were arrested under martial law – which is in force in the Thai Deep South – and their names were released later in the day when the military said they were being held at an interrogation center in Pattani.

“We would not visit them there because we know we are not allowed to meet them. But an official promised they will not be tortured,” Ah said.

Following the bus attack, Lt. Gen. Piyawat Nakwanich, the army’s commander in the region, said a local village chief, other area officials as well as defense volunteers and military officials could have been at fault for failing to prevent the incident.

Lack of evidence

The arrests of the 25 suspects on Friday came after army officials ordered a crackdown in late December to safeguard year-end celebrations, including in areas outside the Deep South.

The two men who were arrested in Phang Nga, a popular tourist destination north of Phuket island, were taken for interrogation at a military facility in Pattani. At the time of their arrest, authorities said materials which could be used to build bombs – including a gas tank, nails and electronic circuits – were found during a search of their residence in Phang Nga.

The two were released on Wednesday because the gathered materials lacked key components for a bomb and the men had no criminal records linking them to Deep South insurgents, Col. Pramote Prom-in, the military’s spokesman in the Deep South, told BenarNews.

Some of the 13 other suspects who were arrested on Dec. 28 for alleged links to an insurgent plot targeting New Year’s have been released as well, Pramote said without elaborating.

Since 2004, nearly 7,000 people have been killed in violence associated with the separatist insurgency in Thailand’s predominantly Muslim and Malay-speaking southern border region.

It’s signature time for Vladimir Putin, who needs 300,000 endorsements to run as an independent in the March 18, 2018, presidential election. Five collection points opened this Friday in Moscow, where the “Victory Volunteers” movement is organizing the effort to get Putin the signatures he needs.

The movement’s press secretary, Egor Lukyanchikov, told the news agency Interfax that volunteers are simply standing outside with banners and taking signatures from anyone who wants to support the president’s re-election candidacy, without using megaphones or any sound-amplification equipment. Each station is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“Victory Volunteers” is opening signature-collection points in more than a dozen cities across Russia. The movement opened its first stations in Simferopol and Sevastopol (in Crimea).

Vladimir Putin filed his candidacy application with Russia’s Central Election Commission on December 27. The commission approved his application the next day, allowing him to begin campaign fundraising and start collecting the needed 300,000 signatures endorsing his candidacy.

On December 25, election officials refused to register Alexey Navalny’s presidential candidacy nomination on the grounds that he is still serving a felony probation sentence. According to election laws, Navalny is ineligible for elected office until at least 2028. Navalny is appealing the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the commission’s rejection. If the court rules against him again, his lawyers say he will take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights.

In an attack using heavy weapons, the Myanmar military on Thursday captured several hillside camps operated by an ethnic armed group and killed an unspecified number of enemy soldiers during hostilities in the country’s northernmost Kachin state.

The army said it killed “some” Kachin Independence Army (KIA) soldiers in the attack and seized arms and ammunition, according to a Facebook post on Friday by the office of Myanmar’s commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

The government army seized 22 outposts, four main camps, and 18 small camps belonging to the KIA between Nov. 13, 2017, and Jan. 3, and cut off a popular route that it says the rebel group had been using to smuggle timber to China.

Government soldiers conducting the military operation, which began about 25 miles southwest of the town of Namkham, found and seized camps where the KIA was engaging in smuggling natural resources, including timber, to China, the army said.

The Myanmar army confiscated buildings, vouchers used in the collection of ‘extorted money,’ and small arms and ammunition at the scene, it said.

“A main route which passes illegally through Momeik and Mabein townships and is used to smuggle Myanmar’s precious natural resources and timber to [China] could be closed and placed under [Myanmar army] control,” the Facebook post said.

“The Tatmadaw [Myanmar military] columns are in hot pursuit of fleeing terrorist insurgents and continue to expose main points [of activity], including other illegal routes,” it said.

KIA soldiers from Mangan village in Manweingyi village-tract attempted to shoot down a helicopter used by government forces for administrative affairs on Nov. 27, damaging it slightly, the Facebook post said.

Colonel Naw Bu, spokesman of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the KIA’s political wing, downplayed the Myanmar military’s account of the attacks.

“We don’t have that many camps in this area,” he told RFA’s Myanmar Service. “They [the Myanmar army] got some small posts not by fighting, but because we left them.”

Naw Bu also denied the KIA’s involvement in smuggling timber to China

“The army has talked about how the KIA is smuggling timber to other countries, and it is just to damage the KIA’s image,” he said. “We don’t have any forests in Kachin state. The timber they spoke of is coming from Mandalay and Sagaing region.”

“As far as we know, businessmen, forest officials, and [Myanmar] military officials are engaged in this business, he said, adding that the government army has not tried to stop timber smuggling in the other two areas where businessmen cut down trees, though they do so in Kachin state.

Naw Bu also siad that the fighting between the KIA and government military would not end any time soon.

“Because the government army has been conducting offensive attacks, there will be more fighting as long as it doesn’t retreat.”

Clashes since 2011

The KIA, which controls large swathes of northeastern Kachin state, has regularly engaged in clashes with the Myanmar army since a bilateral 17-year cease-fire agreement collapsed in 2011, forcing about 100,000 residents to flee to safety over the years.

Its territory includes Tanaing township’s gold and amber mining region, on whose natural resources it depends as a source of income through the levying of a five-percent tax on mine operators.

Some of the KIA’s most recent hostilities with the Myanmar military have occurred in Tanaing and in neighboring northern Shan state.

The KIA is one of several militias with which the Myanmar government is trying to end decades of ethnic separatist civil wars and forge peace in the country through a series of peace negotiations launched in August 2016 by de facto national leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Earlier this week, the KIO reshuffled its top leadership, replacing departing officers with a younger generation of leaders as hostilities between the group’s armed wing and government forces continued to flare up.

Reported by Wai Mar Tun for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Sources close to the People’s Liberation Army have confirmed to the South China Morning Post that a Chinese naval port is being built at a strategic location on Pakistan’s southern coast.

“China needs to set up another base in Gwadar for its warships because Gwadar is now a civilian port,” Zhou Chenming, a Chinese military analyst, told the South China Morning Post on Friday. “Gwadar port can’t provide specific services for warships,” Zhou said; hence the need for a new base.

Gwadar is less than 50 miles east of the Pakistan-Iran border and sits in Balochistan Province, where fiercely independent Baloch nationalists have waged guerrilla wars against both the Pakistani and Iranian governments. “Public order there is a mess,” Zhou said.

“China and Pakistan have found common ground in terms of maritime interest in the region,” Pakistani analyst Sheikh Fahad says. “Gwadar port can be used for joint naval patrols in the Indian Ocean, further increasing the naval outreach of China and Pakistan in the region. Gwadar port will increase the countries’ naval movements and further expand defense cooperation, especially in the naval field,” Fahad noted.

In mid-December, Lawrence Sellin, a retired US Army Reserve colonel, reported for the Daily Caller that high-ranking Chinese and Pakistani officials had met in Beijing to discuss future projects.

Last June, a Pakistani diplomat said China’s help was needed as an “equalizer,” pointing to the naval base as all-but-inevitable. “Previously it was the US and Saudi Arabia… Now it’s China,” the diplomat told NBC. A Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman later dismissed the report as “pure guesswork,” but now it seems the port will, in fact, be built.

Experts have noted that India is keeping a close eye on the development of China-Pakistan relations. “China finds it very useful to use Pakistan against India and ignore India’s concerns, particularly on terrorism issues. That has created a lot of stress in the relationship between Beijing and Delhi,” Rajeev Ranan Chaturvedy, a researcher at the National University of Singapore, told SCMP.

But “Indian naval capabilities and experience in the Indian Ocean region are fairly good — much better than Pakistan and China,” Chaturvedy said.

The world’s reefs are under siege from global warming, according to a novel study published in the prestigious journal Science.

For the first time, an international team of researchers has measured the escalating rate of coral bleaching at locations throughout the tropics over the past four decades. The study documents a dramatic shortening of the gap between pairs of bleaching events, threatening the future existence of these iconic ecosystems and the livelihoods of many millions of people.

“The time between bleaching events at each location has diminished five-fold in the past 3-4 decades, from once every 25-30 years in the early 1980s to an average of just once every six years since 2010,” said lead author Prof Terry Hughes, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE).

“Before the 1980s, mass bleaching of corals was unheard of, even during strong El Niño conditions, but now repeated bouts of regional-scale bleaching and mass mortality of corals has become the new normal around the world as temperatures continue to rise.”

The study establishes a transition from a period before the 1980s when bleaching only occurred locally, to an intermediate stage in the 1980s and 1990s when mass bleaching was first recorded during warmer than average El Niño conditions, and finally to the current era when climate-driven bleaching is now occurring throughout ENSO cycles.

The researchers show that tropical sea temperatures are warmer today during cooler than average La Niña conditions than they were 40 years ago during El Niño periods.

“Coral bleaching is a stress response caused by exposure of coral reefs to elevated ocean temperatures. When bleaching is severe and prolonged, many of the corals die. It takes at least a decade to replace even the fastest-growing species,” explained co-author Prof Andrew Baird of Coral CoE.

“Reefs have entered a distinctive human-dominated era – the Anthropocene,” said co-author, Dr C. Mark Eakin of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, USA. “The climate has warmed rapidly in the past 50 years, first making El Niños dangerous for corals, and now we’re seeing the emergence of bleaching in every hot summer.” For example, the Great Barrier Reef has now bleached four times since 1998, including for the first time during back-to-back events in 2016 and 2017, causing unprecedented damage. Yet the Australia government continues to support fossil fuels.

“We hope our stark results will help spur on the stronger action needed to reduce greenhouse gases in Australia, the United States and elsewhere,” said Prof Hughes.

Transitioning away from a popular contraceptive shot known as DMPA could help protect women in Sub-Saharan Africa and other high-risk regions from becoming infected with HIV, according to a research review published in the Endocrine Society’s journal Endocrine Reviews.

The predominant contraceptive in Sub-Saharan Africa is depot-medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA)–a birth control shot administered every three months. Human studies suggest DMPA use may raise the risk of HIV infection by 40 percent. Other forms of contraceptive shots do not show the same correlation with HIV infection. In this article, the authors review the underlying biological mechanisms that could contribute to increased risk of HIV infection for certain hormonal contraceptives but not others.

According to UNAIDS, 36.7 million people worldwide were living with HIV as of 2016. AIDS is the most advanced stage of HIV infection.

“To protect individual and public health, it is important to ensure women in areas with high rates of HIV infection have access to affordable contraceptive options,” said the review’s first author, Prof. Janet P. Hapgood, Ph.D., of the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. “Increasing availability of contraceptives that use a different form of the female hormone progestin than the one found in DMPA could help reduce the risk of HIV transmission.”

In addition to these clinical studies, the review’s authors examined animal, cell and biochemical research on the form of progestin used in DMPA–medroxprogesterone acetate, or MPA. The analysis revealed MPA acts differently than other forms of progestin used in contraceptives. MPA behaves like the stress hormone cortisol in the cells of the genital tract that can come in contact with HIV.

“The increased rate of HIV infection among women using DMPA contraceptive shots is likely due to multiple reasons, including decreases in immune function and the protective barrier function of the female genital tract,” Hapgood said. “Studying the biology of MPA helps us understand what may be driving the increased rate of HIV infection seen in human research. These findings suggest other forms of birth control should rapidly replace DMPA shots.”

In a matter of days, Donald Trump will have the chance to scuttle the Iranian Nuclear agreement, a transaction that Trump has called “the worst deal ever.”  The future of the so called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA depends largely on whether Trump opts to reimpose economic sanctions on Iran or not. If the president does in fact reimpose sanctions, (sometime after January 13) the United States will be in “material noncompliance” with the terms of the nuclear agreement and all bets will be off.  That means there are two questions that readers should be asking themselves:

1. Will Trump reimpose sanctions and kill the Obama-era nukes deal?

2. Are the protests in Iran instigated by Washington to provide cover to Trump for scrapping the JCPOA?

Take a look at this brief summary from an article at Politico:

President Donald Trump allowed the Iran nuclear deal to survive through 2017, but the new year will offer him another chance to blow up the agreement — and critics and supporters alike believe he may take it.

By mid-January, the president will face new legal deadlines to choose whether to slap U.S. sanctions back on Tehran. Senior lawmakers and some of Trump’s top national security officials are trying to preserve the agreement. But the deal’s backers fear Trump has grown more willing to reject the counsel of his foreign policy team, as he did with his recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital….

When Trump last publicly addressed the status of the Iran agreement, in mid-October, he indicated his patience had worn thin with what he has called “the worst deal ever,” and demanded that Congress and European countries take action to address what he considers the deal’s weakness.

“[I]n the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated,” Trump said in an Oct. 13 speech.” (“How Trump could kill the Iran nuclear deal in January”, Politico)

So there it is. We do not yet know whether Trump is planning to “blow up the deal” or not. Nor do we have a clear idea of how responsible US NGOs or US agents might be in fomenting the demonstrations on the ground.  What we do know, however, is that scuttling the agreement — which took years of deliberation, collaboration and compromise– will be very costly for the United States.   Former US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew explained what the US can expect if it does walk away from JCPOA. Here’s an excerpt from an editorial that appeared in the New York Times in 2014.

…the United States does have tremendous economic influence. But it was not this influence alone that persuaded countries across Europe and Asia to join the current sanction policy, one that required them to make costly sacrifices, curtail their purchases of Iran’s oil, and put Iran’s foreign reserves in escrow. They joined us because we made the case that Iran’s nuclear program was an uncontained threat to global stability and, most important, because we offered a concrete path to address it diplomatically — which we did….Foreign governments will not continue to make costly sacrifices at our demand….

Indeed, they would more likely blame us for walking away from a credible solution to one of the world’s greatest security threats, and would continue to re-engage with Iran. Instead of toughening the sanctions, a decision by Congress to unilaterally reject the deal would end a decade of isolation of Iran and put the United States at odds with the rest of the world…

The major importers of Iranian oil — China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey … will not agree to indefinite economic sacrifices in the name of an illusory better deal. We should think very seriously before threatening to cripple the largest banks and companies in these countries….

We must remember recent history. In 1996, in the absence of any other international support for imposing sanctions on Iran, Congress tried to force the hands of foreign companies, creating secondary sanctions that threatened to penalize them for investing in Iran’s energy sector. The idea was to force international oil companies to choose between doing business with Iran or the United States, with the expectation that all would choose us.

This outraged our foreign partners, particularly the European Union, which threatened retaliatory action and referral to the World Trade Organization and passed its own law prohibiting companies from complying. The largest oil companies of Europe and Asia stayed in Iran until, more than a decade later, we built a global consensus around the threat posed by Iran and put forward a realistic diplomatic means of addressing it.

(“The High Price of Rejecting the Iran Deal”, New York Times)

The Obama administration did not sign the Iranian nukes agreement because it wanted to, it signed it because it had to. Iranian negotiators made a number of crucial concessions that not only intensified the ongoing inspections regime, but also agreed that Iran would be treated more harshly (and unfairly) then any other nation that had ever signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. “The agreement subjects Iran to greater restrictions and more intrusive monitoring than any state with nuclear programs.” Simply put, the US insisted that Iran accept a number of special protocols which in effect treat Iran like a second-class citizen. Iran accepted these terms so the US would stop its relentless economic strangulation which has persisted almost-continuously since 1979.

It is worth noting, that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program nor is there any evidence that they were trying to develop one. Like Saddam’s fictitious Weapons of Mass Destruction,  “Iran’s nukes” are largely a myth created to justify nonstop US-Israeli aggression. Check it out:

It is essential to recognize that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program, nor does it possess a nuclear weapon. On February 26, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Ayatollah Khomenei, the supreme leader of Iran, ended his country’s nuclear weapons program in 2003 and “as far as we know, he’s not made the decision to go for a nuclear weapon.”

This repeats the “high-confidence” judgement of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) that was first made in November 2007.

(Micah Zenko, “Putting Iran’s Nuclear Program in Context”, Council on Foreign Relations)

Iran has no nukes, no nuclear weapons program,  and no sinister nuclear project aimed at blowing up Israel or the United States. It’s all 100 percent bunkum conjured up by the same propagandists in the establishment media who concocted the mobile weapons labs, the yellowcake uranium, the aluminum tubes, curveball and the myriad other cockamamie fabrications that preceded the invasion of Iraq.

It’s also worth noting that “Forty-five US military bases encircle Iran, with over 125,000 troops in close proximity” and that both Republican and Democratic presidents have repeatedly expressed their support for regime change in Tehran. Moreover, the vast majority of Senators and Congressmen have frequently expressed their contempt for Iran while supporting covert activities to destabilize the government or punish the people. Ideally, Trump and his lieutenants would like to replace the Islamic clerics who currently rule Iran, with a puppet like the Shah who privatized oil production, ruled the country with an iron fist, and faithfully followed Washington’s diktats to the letter. The Shah’s reign of terror lasted a full 40 years during which time his CIA-trained secret police, the SAVAK, rounded up and tortured millions of innocent Iranians who were then systematically subjected to  “whipping and beating, electric shocks, extraction of teeth and nails, boiling water pumped into the rectum, heavy weights hung on the testicles, tying the prisoner to a metal table heated to a white heat, inserting a broken bottle into the anus, and rape.” This is how the United States brought freedom and democracy to the people of Iran under the Shah.

Is it any wonder why the Iranians are skeptical of Trump’s so called “supportive” tweets (such as):

“The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime…..The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food and freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!”  Donald Trump

Trump’s outspoken support for the protestors has many critics believing that Washington might be orchestrating events on the ground, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.  In an excellent article at the World Socialist Web Site, Keith Jones, explains that the massive demonstrations are reaction to neoliberal policies that have exacerbated inequality while fueling social tensions. “Liberal reforms” and austerity have negatively impacted living standards in Iran just as they have everywhere else they’ve been implemented. In other words, the social explosion we are seeing unfold in Iran is not a Washington-engineered color revolution, but a the emerging signs of a class war. Here’s an excerpt from the WSWS article:

Since Dec. 28, tens of thousands have defied the Islamic Republic’s repressive apparatus and taken to the streets in cities and towns across the county. They have done so to voice their anger over food price rises, mass unemployment, gaping social inequality, years of sweeping social spending cuts and a pseudo-democratic political system that is rigged on behalf of the ruling elite and utterly impervious to the needs of working people.

The scope and intensity of this movement and its rapid embrace of slogans challenging the government and the entire autocratic political system have stunned Iranian authorities and western observers alike. Yet, it was preceded by months of worker protests against job cuts and plant closures and unpaid wages and benefits…..

The trigger for this explosion of popular discontent was the government’s latest austerity budget. It will further slash income support for ordinary Iranians, raise gas prices by as much as 50 percent, and curtail development spending, while increasing the already huge sums under the control of the Shia clergy…

The claim that the current protests are akin to those mounted by the Green Movement in 2009 is a base slander meant to justify a bigger crime. The Green challenge to the results of the 2009 Iranian presidential election was a long-prepared political operation that followed the script of similar US-orchestrated “color revolutions” in the Ukraine, Georgia, Lebanon and elsewhere. It was aimed at bringing to power those elements of the Iranian elite most eager to reach a quick rapprochement with US and European imperialism. It drew its popular support almost exclusively from the most privileged layers of the upper middle class, who were mobilized on the basis of neoliberal denunciations of the populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for “squandering” money on the poor….

The current challenge to the Iranian regime is of an entirely different character. It is rooted in the working class, including in smaller industrial cities and district towns; draws its greatest support from young people who face an unemployment rate of 40 percent or more; and is driven by opposition to social inequality and capitalist austerity….The period in which the class struggle could be suppressed is coming to an end.

(“Working class opposition erupts in Iran: A harbinger for the world in 2018″”, World Socialist Web Site)

Iran’s protests are not the result of US meddling (although the US does undoubtedly have agents on the ground) Nor is there any real chance of regime change, in fact, from Trump’s point of view, that’s not even the main objective. In our opinion, the Trump administration is looking for a way to terminate the nuclear agreement without abrogating the deal itself.  My guess is that the administration plans to use Iran’s crackdown on protestors as a justification for rescinding the nukes deal, thus, providing cover for the allies to join Washington without fear of incurring the attendant penalties.

Trump’s recent tweets, all of which emphasize human rights, suggest the plan is already underway.

“Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!”  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017

Iran is failing at every level despite the terrible deal made with them by the Obama Administration. The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food & for freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!   Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2018

The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their “pockets.” The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018

Iran, the Number One State of Sponsored Terror with numerous violations of Human Rights occurring on an hourly basis, has now closed down the Internet so that peaceful demonstrators cannot communicate. Not good!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017

Trump’s sudden interest in human rights is suspicious, but is it really a sign of a plan to kill the nukes deal?

We’ll see.

I was in the grocery store a while back when, after my items were tabulated, the checkout clerk asked, “Would you like to contribute to the Wounded Warriors fund?”

I glanced at the line of people to my left — a little cross-section of America — and feeling a little skeptical about how they’d respond, I said, “No I don’t think so. I’d rather put my money towards some anti-war organization working to try and make sure that there are no more wounded soldiers, and to relief organizations that are supporting the hundreds of thousands of victims of America’s illegal wars abroad.”

The clerk looked a little taken aback and muttered “okay,” but to my surprise, nobody spoke up in the line. I was expecting at least one person to call me out as a “terrorist supporter” or a “commie” or who knows what, but instead there was just silence.

Maybe people were thinking about it. Maybe they just didn’t know how to react.

But in any case I think it’s past time that we on the anti-war left started making it clear that this glorification of American wars, the thanking of people in uniform for their “service,” and the blind acceptance of the prevailing argument that everyone in the military is “defending our freedom,” has to be challenged at every opportunity.

Look at the map of the globe. According to Nick Turse, writing in the Nation magazine and quoting information from Ken McGraw, a spokesman for troops are fighting in the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, US Special Forces are stationed in 177 countries, and on any given day are conducting missions — actual or training missions — in 80-90 of them. As we saw recently with the deaths of several Green Berets in Niger, even members of Congress with a need-to-know responsibility, like those on the Intelligence Committees and Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate, don’t know (or claim they don’t know) where all those operations and those Special Forces are.

As well, US troops are fighting hot wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria, most of them completely illegal, like most of the Special Operations actions, and the drone wars in a host of other countries from Pakistan and Yemen to Somalia, Sudan and, of course, Syria again.

Not a single one of those operations involve anything that remotely threatens the security of the United States, nor are those troops — regular or Special Forces — in any way “defending our freedom,” which is not under serious threat by any country in the world which cannot be addressed by foreign and domestic police and the FBI.

There are terrorist groups that might like to blow something up in the US, but actually, the threat of terrorism has only grown exponentially the more war-making the US has engaged in. Even many military experts say that the US drone killings and the special ops attacks abroad, which tend to kill more innocent people than actual “terrorists,” only produce more angry people willing to try to take revenge on Americans within their reach, so that approach is clearly doing nothing to “defend” our freedom or our safety.

Meanwhile, many of the people deemed to be terrorists are actually more accurately described as “freedom fighters” themselves. Take the Taliban. We may not agree with their medieval religious views, particularly about women, but the fact is that they have never sought to attack America as terrorists, foreign and especially domestic, have done, but have been fighting to drive foreign fighters — primarily American, out of their country. (While the US refers to Taliban attacks on US forces and private contractors in Afghanistan as “terrorism” they are actually acts of war by an armed national resistance.) Indeed the Taliban more closely resemble our own celebrated anti-colonial rebels of 1776 than they do the terrorists of Al Qaeda.

Furthermore, if the truth be told, the US, through the Pentagon and the CIA, has long been providing arms and training to Al Qaeda-linked groups in both Libya and Syria for years, and actually created or helped create Al Qaeda in the first place. How is that “defending our freedom”?

National security is a lot of things. The intermediate range nuclear missile treaty negotiated by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 represented a huge improvement in the national security of both the US and the USSR, and didn’t involve any fighting at all. The same could be said about the recent agreement negotiated by the Obama administration and the government of Iran, guaranteeing as it does (at least so far despite opposition and threats by the Trump administration not to honor its commitments), that Iran will not seek to develop nuclear weapons for at least a decade.

The evidence clearly shows that national security is far better achieved by intelligent diplomacy than by war.

The current Korea crisis provides a good example. The fact is that over half a century of overt and aggressive hostility by the US towards the mere existence of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea to Americans) has led not to more security for either the US or its client state, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), but rather to the DPRK’s long and ultimately successful effort to protect itself by becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, with both nuclear bombs and missiles capable of delivering them across the Pacific to US targets. How’s that for “defending our freedom”?

Had the US, years or decades ago, agreed to finally negotiate an end to the Korean War, instead of leaving it in an unstable limbo with no formal conclusion, all the while calling for an end to the government in the north, the government in Pyongyang would never have felt it necessary to achieve nuclear power status.

If we had wanted to convince Kim Jong-un of the urgency of the DPRK’s becoming a nuclear power, we couldn’t have done it better than by launching an undeclared war to oust the leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafy, from power, brutally killing him in the process—a campaign that destroyed one of the most modern states in Africa or the Middle East and left it in a state of bloody chaos, spreading deadly weapons all across the Middle East.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s conciliatory gestures towards South Korea are a welcome move. But they should not belie the high possibility that it will continue ballistic missile and warhead testing in 2018.

By Graham Ong-Webb*

In a televised New Year speech, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un delivered a two-prong message of trepidation and hope. He warned the United States of the “reality” of North Korea’s nuclear deterrent. He also called for peace on the Korean peninsula, adding that his representatives should start talks with their South Korean counterparts “as soon as possible”. The purpose would be to discuss sending a delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics, to be hosted in South Korea next month.

In less than a day, South Korean President Moon Jae-in welcomed Kim Jong- Un’s offer of what is being perceived as an olive branch. In calling for swift measures to help North Korea (DPRK) participate in discussions, the South Korean Government has already suggested that high-level talks be held on 9 January 2018, in the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

Geopolitical Game?

Yet, there is no innocence in geopolitics. In heeding Machiavellian caution, the Korean peninsula crisis is yet another geopolitical game where we must treat every move as deliberate and calibrated on the part of its players.

We must also follow the most tangible trail in this saga—the science and technology of a nuclear-armed ICBM development programme. Factoring this into the larger scheme leads us to conclude the following: Kim Jong-Un is not only buying time for the next ballistic missile or warhead test, but is attempting to shape a more amenable context for North Korea to come away from testing without triggering pre-emptive strikes from the US.

To achieve this, Kim Jong-Un is using his olive branch to draw a line in the sand, dividing South Korea and the US. The end-state is that Seoul can be expected to have become more dovish while Washington remains unchangingly hawkish. He needs to win over the Moon administration in order to have them dampen the prospects for American pre-emption. Any bellicosity from the US, even in rhetorical terms, frames the Americans as the aggressor, giving North Korea the impetus to resume testing.

Follow the Science

To begin with, we must not lose sight of North Korea’s next objective in producing viable nuclear-armed ICBMs. There is a two-step goal: The first is to technically succeed at testing a nuclear warhead design that can survive the demands of atmospheric re-entry after the space phase of intercontinental flight. The second is to avoid pre-emption during the final window of vulnerability while it manufactures a few warheads based on the winning design.

The stark reality regarding North Korea’s nuclear-armed ICBMs is that there is no demonstrable indication—based on what we have seen in previous tests—that this class of nuclear warheads can survive atmospheric re-entry from much higher altitudes. In contrast, North Korea’s nuclear-armed short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) and intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), used to threaten US military bases in South Korea, Japan, and Guam, have likely met the lower-altitude demands of re-entry for these other classes of warheads. This explains why North Korea is now focusing on the testing of its ICBMs.

North’s Nuclear Deterrent Complete?

Despite previously lauding that his country’s strategic nuclear deterrent is “complete”, Kim Jong-Un knows—as the American nuclear planners know—that until North Korea’s nuclear warheads are truly survivable, the credibility of its nuclear threat against the US homeland remains an open question. It must therefore be answered through actual testing.

However, missile and warhead testing do not occur in the vacuum of a laboratory but in a geopolitical environment. Missile launches and warhead explosions are inescapably detected by radars and seismographs. Testing comes with diplomatic, strategic, and economic costs. The most significant strategic cost is the risk of pre-emptive military strikes by the US, which some observers opine is increasing by the day.

With all the testing that has gone on in 2017, the DPRK knows whatever little cache it had has run dry, especially after the last ICBM test on 29 November 2017. In drawing the last straw, Kim Jong-Un knows that any further testing at this lowest point in the crisis certainly risks American military pre-emption.

Therefore, the decision point to execute a warhead re-entry test is a matter of context and timing. Time may also matter more than we think because the level of international tolerance will always be relatively low, and the DPRK understands that the ideal outcome is to get a singular re-entry test right.

One can only imagine a flurry of computer-simulated warhead testing within North Korea’s engineering labs. However, there is no running away from an actual test and right now North Korea is shaping a context on its terms.

Unpacking the Psychology

Psychology is clearly a key tool in shaping an amenable context. What Kim Jong-Un has done through his conciliatory gestures towards South Korea is to lift the mood considerably, both within South Korea and internationally, from its lowest levels to a newfound high. Indeed, one could say that the effect has been almost euphoric after what has been a difficult past year in this crisis.

Picturing a barometer graph, what Kim Jong-Un may have effectively done is to plot a point that is much higher than we are now at in the current state of tensions.

If he follows this psychological rationale through to its conclusion, then it is quite unlikely that Kim Jong-Un will renege on his proposals to South Korea. Doing so will make any subsequent rhetoric on his part completely unbelievable.

In the end, having gone this far in its nuclear weapons development, North Korea must rationally see its programme to its conclusion in order to credibly threaten the US homeland and therefore achieve mutual nuclear deterrence between both countries at the strategic level. The art here is about how to intelligently set the stage for North Korea to attain this capability without risking war itself.

*Graham Ong-Webb is a Research Fellow with Future Issues & Technology at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. An earlier version appeared in The Straits Times.

By Abhijit Iyer Mitra*

On Friday, 29 December 2017, the Government of India faced a major public embarrassment, one that provides some insights into the failure of intelligence. What it shows is one of three things: a failure of gathering, collation and transmission of intelligence; a failure to archive, collate and assess foreign policy; or, possibly, a serial failure of both intelligence and foreign policy fronts and a diagnostics problem within the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

Background

On 21 December, India voted for a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), condemning the US’ decision to shift its embassy to Jerusalem (a move thus supportive of the Palestinian position and condemnatory of the Israeli and US position). On 29 December, pictures started circulating on the Internet of a meeting between the Palestinian ambassador to Pakistan, Walid Abu Ali, and wanted terrorist, head of the Jamaat ud-Dawa (JuD), and founder of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Hafiz Saeed. By the time India lodged a diplomatic protest and Palestine formally recalled Abu Ali, documentary and photographic evidence emerged of at least two previous meetings (August 2014 and December 2014). While knowledge of these meetings may not have changed India’s vote, the Ministry of External Affairs’ (MEA) actions in dealing with the snafu seems to indicate no prior knowledge of the meetings, which was particularly galling in the backdrop of the 21 December vote.

Implications

Hafiz Saeed is one of India’s most wanted men, responsible for masterminding the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2006 Mumbai train bombings, and as such a prime target for 24/7 surveillance by India. Given his accessibility to the public, keeping tabs on him is not particularly challenging, complemented by the Difa-e-Pakistan Twitter handle and coverage by Pakistani newspapers. This points to one of two possibilities. Either Indian intelligence is not equipped to perform such basic OSINT activities as what Indian Twitter users can. Or, such intelligence existed but was buried deep in the system and could not be archived for efficient extraction when required to make policy decisions, either on 21 December when the UN vote happened, or indeed on 29 December when pictures of the December 2017 meeting surfaced.

What is however known for a fact is that even after the situation blew up publicly, the diplomatic protest note sent to the Palestinians referred only to the December 2017 meeting, which indicates that the MEA had no knowledge of the previous meetings (by this time, the open source verification of previous meetings had not emerged). This is particularly worrying as it implies that either the MEA did not seek intelligence inputs on previous meetings, or that despite requests such inputs were not provided, that there was no intelligence on the subject to provide, or that the MEA decision was taken despite knowing the scale and extent of links between the Palestinian Authority and Hafiz Saeed.

While the last option points to questionable policymaking, the previous three possibilities beg the question, why has the MEA not invested in public source intelligence gathering or outsourcing the work to a think-tank? This is all the more jarring given the minister-in-charge’s penchant for playing twitter agony-aunt. If it is assumed that the MEA has in fact invested in such open source intelligence gathering, then clearly the archiving and retrieval systems were not in place for such intelligence to be used rapidly and in a policy-relevant manner.

What is most indicative of systemic failure on the MEA’s part is the Palestinian explanation, which was accepted without demur by South Block. First, it made the Palestinian state’s regret over its ambassador’s actions conditional, dependent on India’s continuing support to the Palestinian position. Second, it claimed the meeting was a mistake, ignoring the fact that there were several meetings. Incredulously this would also lead on to accept that Walid Abu Ali, a former Palestinian Intelligence official, did not know who he was deep in conversation with, given the fact that the LeT was co-founded by a Palestinian, Abdullah Azzam, who for a while had cooperated with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) against Israel.

Finally, the PMO’s functioning must be examined. By all accounts this is a prime minister who takes a great deal of interest in foreign policy. That the PM has not been able to diagnose and institute rectifying measures since the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) debacle (where official statements emanating from Delhi were in significant variance from ground reports from Vienna and Seoul) does not instil confidence in his stewardship of intelligence matters. Depending on preferences and biases, it can be concluded that either intelligence or the MEA have been tried and found wanting, or that all have failed in equal measure, as there were no redundancies in place to damage control the situation. What is however undeniable is the PMO has neither diagnosed the problem over the last three years, or taken corrective action.

* Abhijit Iyer Mitra
Senior Research Fellow, IPCS