Walking on water

“Lebanon announced yesterday that the Israeli spy cameras it had uncovered on mountaintops in the center of the country were the most advanced uncovered in Lebanon to date. The Lebanese Army said the equipment had been installed on Mount Sannine and Mount Barouk, both of which provide relatively good views of Beirut and its environs. According to footage screened last night on Lebanese television, the equipment was inserted into false stones in harsh terrain inaccessible to vehicles. If this is spy equipment, installing and operating it over an extended period far from Israel’s border would have been a complex operation……..”

As they say down in Argentina: it takes two to tango (or as one Argentine told me: it takes at least two, wtf that means). Clearly some Lebanese palms were greased, as they almost certainly still are. Some palms are always greased. Then there were reports of Israeli breaches of Lebanese telecommunications networks and attempts to breach the Hezbollah (very) private telecom system. Lebanese security must be like Swiss cheese, something that does not seem to concern many Lebanese but drives Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah to distraction, and for good reason.
Cheers
mhg

m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

“Barack Obama, the US president, has renewed economic sanctions against Syria for another year. He cited what the White House called Syria’s “extraordinary threat” to US security and foreign policy in taking the decision on Monday. Obama offered a little praise for Syria: he wrote in a message to congress that the Syrian government has made “some progress” towards reducing the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq, long a contentious issue between the two countries………”

It looks like the Syrian fish has refused to bite. Enticements from the United States, France, and the Saudis have failed to shake the Tehran-Damascus alliance. Even the inevitable differences over Iraq have so far failed to dent the enduring relationship between the two pillars of the “rejectionist” front. So far.

It looks like from often contradictory and changing US and Israeli public statements about Lebanon in recent weeks that something has happened. Either the US and Israeli intelligence are not sure of the nature of this, or they do not want the other side to know what they know.

A recent speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah seems to confirm that there has been a significant transfer of armaments in recent months to the Lebanese militia. Nasrallah warned that if Israel strikes at Lebanese infrastructure in the future, they will strike at all Israeli infrastructure. During the 2006 war, Israel struck at Lebanese infrastructure, but it spared the non-Shi’a areas. That was an Israeli message to the “other” Lebanese and to the Persian Gulf oligarchies who have invested heavily in Lebanon that their interests are safe- that they are only striking at Hezbollah and Amal and their Shi’a base. That their “interests” in Lebanon will be spared. This did create a wedge, with Arab rulers selling to their people, subtly, the idea that Israel is at some level on their side against the “Shi’a menace”.

Apparently Hezbollah and her Iranian and Syrian supporters have decided that this will not be the case the next time around. Apparently Hezbollah has new missiles that can reach the major Israeli population centers, and Nasrallah nearly said as much in his last speech. He has never exaggerated or boasted idly in the past. It means the Israelis cannot afford to spare significant parts of Lebanese infrastructure in any future war, because “all” their own infrastructure will be hit. Hezbollah is basically forcing Israel to strike at all the Lebanese in any future war. In doing so, it may be averting a war.

This tends to tie down the hands of the Likud, who are known in the region as trigger happy. Some Arab potentates undoubtedly cheered secretly when Netanyahu and his merry band of extreme rightists took over last year, assuming they will redress the imbalance in Lebanon. This is unlikely to happen now.

All this may have a silver lining: we may have reached the stage of a balance of terror between Hezbollah and Israel whereby there will be no future war in Lebanon. Except that there are unfinished issues between Israel and Syria and Iran, the allies, patrons, and suppliers of Hezbollah. The trigger may be an Israeli or Western attack on Iran. Nasrallah’s last speech was a warning from Hezbollah to Israel, but it could as well have been a warning from Iran to Israel and the West.

But then what? As the Frenchman once said : et alors?
The plot thickens.

Cheers
mhg

Mon Email

Another issue that rankles the Saudis is that the UAE has joined Oman in refusing to join the GCC Gulf common currency. The project is being postponed (as I expected on the site) and revised because the earlier studies were not sufficient and did not cover many economic and technical issues that are necessary to implement it. The UAE partly objected to the Saudis forcing through the selection of Riyadh as the venue for the future Gulf central bank.

The issue of sovereignty is even more important. Oman has always had an eye across the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean. My impression has always been, from interacting with them, that they were skeptic about deeper integration with the Gulf or the wider Arab world. Omanis are clearly worried now about Saudi hegemony, as is the UAE now. The Saudis have been acting as if Riyadh will be the capital of some form of a united Gulf, which raises serious political issues. For example, Kuwait has an electoral system that imposes certain checks and balances on the ruling family. There are no checks and balances in Saudi Arabia, the name of the country tells it all: it is “Saudi”, which means it belongs to the al-Saud. Politically there is no compatibility. This is not a group of democratic European countries seeking to integrate.

Look for independent Qatar to either withdraw from the common currency or to become even more active in asserting her independence. The Emir of Qatar followed the Sultan of Oman in visiting Tehran last week. He was followed this week by the Kuwaiti prime minister. The smaller states are reasserting their independence, and that is a good thing. The Iranian wolf may still be a wolf, but it is across the sea, not across a disputed border.

Cheers

mhg

Timeline

“It’s also created a remarkable bit of fury among the president’s Republican opponents. One week after conservatives were exuberant with Obama’s failure to secure the Olympics for his hometown of Chicago, they were left bitter and bemused that he was bestowed the world’s most prestigious honor. The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’” reads a statement from the Republican National Committee. ” It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain — President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action…….” HuffPost

There were 205 nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. Organizations can nominate anyone they deem deserving. French president Nicolas Sarkozy was nominated, presumably by Carla Bruni (he didn’t nominate her). Also nominated wwere Ingrid Betancourt of Colombia, Chinese dissident Hu Jia, among others. Some organizations were also nominated, and I thought that The Cluster Munitions Coalition should get the prize (it campaigned effectively against cluster bombs, which means they may not be used over the Shi’a tenements in the next Lebanon war). My second choice was Pete Seeger.

Someone had nominated King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, presumably by the Lebanese Saad Hariri or Fouad Saniora, or maybe alseyassah. For some reason Hezbullah did not nominate Ayatollah Khamenai. The Republican Party (USA), discovering that ‘Dr. No’ was dead, nominated failure.

I doubt that I was among the 205. My spouse refused to nominate me, claiming we never got an invitation from the Nobel Committee to submit nominees..
Cheers

Timeline

“Iran says it will soon inform the International Atomic Energy Agency of a timetable for inspection of its recently-announced nuclear facility. Head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi broke the news in an exclusive interview with Press TV late on Monday……..” Press TV (Iran)
Maybe this game of cat and mouse will reach a new level of intensity.
Europeans and Asians have been at it for thousands of years. The oldest recorded was the battle for Asian Troy, or was it the battle for European Helen? It has been going on since before the days of Cyrus the Great. The Greeks thought their new Macedonian king Alexander will end all that. He didn’t. He conquered Persia temporarily, but soon things were back to where they had been. Caesar had in mind to follow in Alexander’s footsteps, but he died. Before him Marcus Crassus tried to invade deep into Asia, to conquer the Persian Empire, but he and his Roman legions perished at Carrhae.

The Japanese and the Europeans resumed the Asian-European battle in the 20th century: the American opening of Tokyo Bay, the Russo-Japanese War, and World War II. Then came Chairman Mao, who used to say things that even Ahmadinejad and the fiercest ayatollahs would be too embarrassed to say about the West.

Now it is Iran, again, against the West. Perhaps the inevitable eternal rivalry of Asia vs. Europe. Will Qom and Tehran be the new Troy? With the US Fleet and Israeli air force playing the Greek alliance? Will the nuclear program be the modern Helen of enriched uranium? In this new reenactment of the drama, the Likud of Netanyahu is the inevitable cuckolded King of Sparta……
Who will write the story of this saga, this chapter of the eternal saga of Asia and Europe.……
Cheers
mhg

“Gulf states should implement a monetary union and single currency in phases, Kuwait’s central bank governor said in comments published on Sunday, casting further doubt on a 2010 target date. Due to the limited progress achieved so far… I believe that the best way is to work out an administrative plan for the monetary union and single currency and implement it in stages……

“The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) plans to launch monetary union and a single currency in 2010, although many experts believe the target date is too ambitious and unrealistic…….Sheikh Salem said the administrative plan should focus on the institutional requirements of the union including financial, trade, statistical and common market policies. He also said that printing banknotes for the new currency would take three years to complete.
“The GCC states have agreed on a number of monetary union requirements but failed to reach consensus on others. They have also failed to fully implement a customs union launched at the beginning of 2003……..”
He was stating what I knew, what many have known for some time.

Finally, it is good to hear practical public statements, for a change, from GCC officials on the Gulf currency union project. Economically and politically it makes sense to do so. Without implementing some gradual preliminary steps the whole project will be a disaster. It is better, much less costly, to admit short-term failure and work on redrawing plans, than to try to force the issue and create huge problems later on.
I recall some years ago when it was impossible to get everyone in the GCC to peg their currencies to the same anchor. Some preferred the dollar, others the SDR, and one a special basket.

It was absurd to expect anything to be in place by 2010 without first ironing out the differences on such issues as trade, and without reaching the agreement on the grueling and time-consuming process of the actual issue of notes and coins. This is something that I had mentioned earlier on this site. I believe I mentioned Zollverein in Arabia more than once on this site.

It can be shocking how little interest both the GCC general public and politicians have shown in the issue of currency union. It was being treated as a ‘political’ issue that concerns only the officials. It does have political implications, of course, but its immediate impact would be to affect economic issues. Even the legislatures and what passes for legislatures in some countries have rarely ventured to
deal with the issue, most likely because they are technically incapable of doing so.

Of course, having the union confined to one large country (Saudi Arabia) and two smaller countries (Kuwait and Bahrain) does have political implications- I expected Qatar to pull out at some point. There are always concerns, valid concerns, about the loss of sovereignty and political independence. After all, the current borders of Saudi Arabia were extended when old Ibn Saud expanded out of his native Najd to swallow several smaller kingdoms and emirates of the Arabian Peninsula during the 20th century.

(Ibn Saud also expanded in another way; demographically, by marrying into almost every tribe he could get his lusty hands on; eventually filling the kingdom with thousands of princelings. But that will be a topic for another day.)
Cheers
mhg

Timeline

“For the first time….we have a glimmer of hope for a diplomatic solution to this problem — as long as we are not too diplomatic, as long as the Iranian regime is made to understand that biting economic sanctions are an absolute certainty and military force by Israel is a live possibility…..
“While real sanctions are necessary to exploit this moment, they are not sufficient. We also need to keep alive the prospect that Israel could do something crazy. I don’t favor Israeli military action against Iran and hope we’re telling Israel that privately. But I do believe that U.S. officials, particularly the secretary of defense, Robert Gates, need to stop saying that publicly. Gates is a smart power player. He knows better. If any U.S. official is asked for an opinion on whether Israel should be allowed to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, there is only one right answer: Refer them to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s 2005 comment that Israel “might well decide to act first”………”

Thomas Friedman must think Iran’s mullahs and other leaders are as gullible as some of his readers, those who buy the argument. And to have to go back to Dick Cheney for fonts of wisdom on such an issue; that is really scraping the bottom of the diplomatic barrel. Oh yes, we can rely on the man who gave us Iraq….to give us an Iran war. Brilliant.
But I call much of Friedman’s stuff ‘feel good’ analysis. He also announced ‘mission accomplished’ in Lebanon just after the last election, and I commented on it at the time. Lebanon still does not have a cabinet, nor can it have one without the Hezbullah bloc; so much for the new era.

I would guess that the horse has already left the barn as far as Iran’s nuclear program is concerned. In fact it left the barn the day after George W Bush added Iran to his ill-conceived and sophomoric ‘Axis of Evil’ just after they had helped in Afghanistan.
Cheers
Mon Email

Timeline

“During his time as ambassador, Bandar attended games in Jones’ box at Texas Stadium and in Washington, visited the Cowboys’ Valley Ranch training facility, gave Jones a silver-and-platinum life-size Cowboys helmet after Super Bowl XXVII, accompanied Jones during at least one critical game down to the sidelines with a large entourage, and hung out post-game in the locker room so many times that many Cowboys players know him simply as “the prince.”

“Bandar flies around the world in a jet painted in the Cowboys’ silver-and-blue colors. But it’s the story behind his jet — an Airbus A-340 usually flown by airliners — that is drawing attention today.

“Anti-bribery government investigators in the United Kingdom and the U.S. Justice Department are looking into a massive arms deal between the Saudis and British-based BAE Systems that dates back to the 1980s. The deal allegedly included the gift of the Airbus to Bandar on his birthday in 1998 and $2 billion that BAE deposited in Saudi accounts in a Washington bank….Bandar representatives, including former FBI director Louis Freeh, have denied the bribery allegations. Freeh said on the PBS Frontline program “Black Money” earlier this year that the money was part of an oil-for-jets barter deal, and that the A-340 is a military aircraft registered to the Saudi Air Force and assigned for Bandar’s use.

The U.S. government is looking at the flow of funds under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which gives law enforcement broad jurisdiction over questionable payments of funds and goods to government officials. Justice Department spokesperson Laura Sweeney said that “the department has not confirmed that investigation,” but BAE itself has confirmed that it is being investigated by U.S. and British officials……..The British investigation into BAE payments to the Saudis was quashed by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair in December 2006 after Bandar complained to him that the corruption probe would damage relations, especially on counterterrorism…….”

Former FBI Director, Louis Freeh, is a Prince Bandar representative? Does this mean he is a lobbyist for the prince?…..Oy veyyyy, as they say in Riyadh.

As for Tony (Yo) Blair, he’s being rewarded as we blog: he’s got million dollar contracts from Persian Gulf oligarchs as a “consultant”, besides dabbling in the Palestine-Israel issue. To no avail, of course: his credibility is near the bottom on the Israeli side; as for the Palestinian side, who cares what they think: they just take their marching orders in Ramallah, and their money?

Cheers

mhg

Cheers

mhg

Timeline

“I get excited with recent news that says the Saudi per capita income has risen by 19% this year, to reach Riyal 70 thousand. I have no argument with the number, but dispute the mechanism of reaching it…..That would mean the average Saudi family (six members) gets Riyal 400 thousand a year…
“WE are about 3 million Saudi families, but Ministry of Social Affairs documents say that about 600 thousand families live on social welfare income. So from where did they get the amazing per capita number even if it represents an average?……” a puzzled, nay befuddled, A S al Mousa (alwatan)

“HHR Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was featured in Forbes magazine’s annual list of richest people for 10 consecutive years. The Prince was ranked one of the top 25 billionaires in the 2009 Forbes Billionaires list despite global economic challenges and still remains the wealthiest Muslim and Arab…..”
“Saudi Arabia is a kingdom of riches and opulence – for its rulers, at least – built upon a foundation of oil. For decades, Saudi wells and pipelines have fed the world’s ever-growing thirst for petroleum; and its rulers have reaped untold wealth….”
What was that question about the methodology of reaching the high per capita income?
Speaking of social welfare: do the math:
Multiply about 6, 000 princes and princesses (give or take a thousand) by whatever public stipend they get a year (there are figures of tens of thousands of US $, per month), but remember to add the free unlimited first class travel on Saudi Airlines, and the free lands they get from public property, and …….
Do the math…….
Cheers and Ramadan Kareem
mhg