Obama to Seek Further Iran Sanctions; Amiri Defected to US, seems to deny active nuclear weapons program

President Obama is pressing for new United Nations Security Council sanctions within weeks. Although Russia and China oppose 'crippling' sanctions such as cutting off Iran's access to imported gasoline, they may agree to the watered-down US plan of imposing restrictions on companies owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (a major economic force in Iran). China is said by Reuters to be weakening in its opposition to new Iran sanctions, but perhaps this is only because it would not be affected by Western measures narrowly targeting the Revolutionary Guards.

On the other hand, the Reuters piece, which appears to be based on interviews with US officials, may be overly optimistic. Russian President Medvedev said just a few days ago that increased sanctions on Iran are "not optimal." I.e. he does not rule them out but they aren't his first choice. And China is even more opposed than Russia. Obama still has a hard path ahead.

Iran sanctions are in any case merely symbolic. The regime cannot be forced to change course in this way. Indeed, this regime likes being isolated.

This Reuters article also misinterprets the stance of the International Atomic Energy Agency of the UN, which continues to certify that none of Iran's nuclear material, being enriched for civilian purposes, has been diverted to military uses. The IAEA has all along said it cannot give 100% assurance that Iran has no weapons program, because it is not being given complete access. But nagging doubt is not the same as an affirmation. We should learn a lesson from the Iraq debacle.

Meanwhile, ABC News's Brian Ross got the scoop on the defection to the US of Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri. US intelligence continues to maintain that Iran has not committed to having a nuclear weapons program. Presumably this information came from Amiri and is fresh and solid, since he is a consummate insider.

Yet you get headlines like, "Iran moves closer to nukes."

Somehow American hawks can't seem to get their minds around the obvious conclusion from the CIA diction, which is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program at the moment. It can't move closer to nukes if it doesn't have a weapons program! Moreover, that it does not have such a program is no longer a considered opinion or educated guess, but is based on the best kind of intelligence. It is the conclusion that the 16 US intelligence agencies came to in 2007, and there is apparently still no evidence that Iran has changed its mind about the undesirability and even evil of nuclear warheads (though there are no doubt hard liners who disagree with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's fatwas against nukes as un-Islamic.)

As long as the US does not object to the actual nuclear weapons of Israel, India and Pakistan (none of which signed the NPT), its obsession with Iran's civilian energy program will strike people in the region as unfair.

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Singer: The pro-Israel lobby’s curious defense of an alleged Somali war criminal.

Sam Singer writes in a guest editorial for Informed Comment entitled: 'A strange alliance at the Supreme Court: The pro-Israel lobby’s curious defense of an alleged Somali war criminal: A Shared Interest in Sovereign Immunity' :

Mohammed Ali Samantar is the only living vestige of the Barre regime, the last government in two decades to exercise central control over Somalia and, not coincidentally, the last that was impudent enough to try. When Siad Barre was finally overthrown in 1991, Samantar, who had served as defense minister and prime minister, fled, in a storm of bullets, to Italy. He eventually made his way to Fairfax, Virginia, where he lived in suburban obscurity until a group of Somali nationals discovered him, hired a lawyer, and sued for damages. According to his accusers, the Barre regime committed unforgivable acts of violence against them and their families, offenses spanning a range of brutality from arbitrary detention, to torture, rape and extrajudicial killing. Samantar was allegedly aware of the crimes being perpetrated against civilians and yet failed to stop them. The suit was dismissed by a federal district court and then reinstated by the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. It is now pending before the Supreme Court, where a peculiar coalition of defenders is urging reversal. Among them, to the confusion of some observers, are five prominent pro-Israel organizations, each with a professed interest in keeping Samantar out of court. In joint amicus briefs, the groups insist that as a former government official, Samantar should be immune from suit. To hold otherwise, they warn, would violate international law and set an inviting precedent for Israel’s enemies and their supporters in the human rights community.

The arrival of the Israel lobby adds geopolitical intrigue to a case that already read like a Ludlum thriller. And because it speaks to real and immediate consequences, it lends concreteness to a discussion that would have otherwise carried on in the abstract. It is one thing for a lawyer to appeal to legal authority for the proposition that the courts of one nation ought not sit in judgment of the acts of another; it is quite another for five groups purporting to represent the interests of the Israeli government to advise that doing so in this case would be to declare open season on Israeli officials in US courts.

It is not without some irony that organizations claiming to represent Israel, a state conceived in the wake of unprecedented state-sponsored violence, find their wagon hitched to the cause of an alleged war criminal. Nor does the position square, at least not at first glance, with less expansive interpretations of sovereign immunity advanced by the lobby’s constituents in the past. Just this year, Israeli victims of rocket fire on the Lebanese border sued the Iranian government, by way of its central banks, on the theory that it provided material support to Hezbollah, the source of the rockets. Last December, a pro-Israel group in Europe sued leaders of Hamas in a Belgium court, invoking what it described as the court’s “universal” jurisdiction over cases arising from war crimes. In both cases, sovereign immunity was an obstacle standing between Israeli interests and a favorable judgment; here, in Samantar’s case, supporters of Israel invoke it as a shield.

In fact, Israel is far more likely to find itself on the receiving end of a human rights suit. According to one report, nearly 1,000 suits have been filed globally against Israeli officials and military personnel alleging war crimes and other abuses. The defense ministry expects some 1,500 more will follow, many stemming from military operations in the coastal territories, but also some taking aim at the less violent aspects of Israeli anti-terror strategy, including one suit describing the security fence as a “crime against humanity.” An Israeli newspaper published a “wanted” list of current and former officials who are among the common named defendants. The list, which was republished in briefs to the Court, reads like a who’s who in Israeli political and military history. The forums for these suits vary, but they commonly feature developed Western countries that have lowered the drawbridge for human rights litigants. Steering many of the cases are nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), some based in the Middle East with ties to the Palestinian government, others based in the West and backed by the likes of the Center for Constitutional Rights and George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

In these suits supporters of Israel see pretext. They describe a more sinister objective, a coordinated effort to bring Israeli officials into federal courtrooms. The idea is to delegitimize Israel, but not before dragging officials through an invasive and costly discovery process. Do it enough and Israeli officials will start thinking twice before traveling to the United States, or, worse yet, before assuming roles that could expose them to suit. Defense experts believe the strategy fits the definition of “lawfare,” think-tank speak for the use of legal methods to achieve military goals.

In the immediate term, the briefs warn, relations between the US and Israel will suffer. Like any partnership, the US/Israeli alliance benefits from a rich and ongoing exchange of people and ideas. For the exchange to thrive, current and former Israeli officials must be able to travel to and within the United States without fear of being served with a lawsuit. By way of illustration, the American Jewish Congress recounts the story of Moshe Ya’alon, a retired Israeli general who was recently summoned to court upon arriving in Washington, D.C. for a think tank forum. The complaint, which sought damages for civilian deaths resulting from a battle on the Lebanese border between Israel and Hezbollah, was perfunctory. With respect to Ya’alon, it alleged only that he served in the army chain-of-command during the relevant period. The district court dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds and the D.C. Circuit affirmed, concluding that the immunity of a foreign state extends to its former officials. Ya’alon never had to step foot in a courtroom. Now suppose that instead of Washington, he had been served with the suit 15 minutes away, in Arlington, Virginia. In that event the dismissal of his suit would have been appealed to the Fourth Circuit, which, as we learned in Samantar’s case, does not share the D.C. Circuit’s view on official immunity. In other words, had Ya’alon booked a hotel across the river, he might well still be there today.

A Statutory Nightmare

Naturally, US-Israeli relations didn’t figure into the Supreme Court’s questioning at oral arguments. The justices had assembled to resolve a disagreement among the federal circuit courts over whether sovereign immunity extends to officials. Accordingly, they trained their focus on Samantar and his theory of the case, which rests on the off-stated maxim that one equal has no dominion over another equal. That this saying, which encapsulates the principle of sovereign immunity, is most commonly recited in Latin suggests something about its vintage. It is as close to a truism as a proposition can come in a foggy discipline like international law, and it is an animating principle of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA). That law changed the way US courts process suits against foreign governments. Before 1976, a court needed the go-ahead from the State Department before docketing such cases. When this approach proved unwieldy, Congress vested gate-keeping authority in the federal courts and then cabined it by stripping them of jurisdiction over suits against foreign states that don’t fit within a narrow set of exceptions.

Until recently it was generally accepted that these same protections applied to foreign officials. After all, a suit against a foreign official acting on behalf of a state is effectively a suit against the state. True, the caption may list the Minister of Defense rather than the Ministry of Defense, and the plaintiff may have his sights set on a personal bank account rather than the national treasury, but in either case the court is sitting in judgment of the state’s actions. It has intuitive appeal, this idea. It also has the support of the majority of the federal circuits.

But as the Fourth Circuit pointed out below, the argument is without support in the one place it needs it most--the text of the FSIA. FSIA extends sovereign immunity to “foreign states” as well as their “agencies and instrumentalities”, but it remains conspicuously silent on the matter of foreign officials. For supporters of broad immunity, this omission is proof that the identity of interests between a foreign sovereign and its officials is self-evident. Congress, they argue, had no reason to split hairs, to try to distinguish the indistinguishable. Opponents, who harbor a less attenuated view, insist that if Congress wanted to extend immunity to foreign officials, it would have said so.

The theory that foreign officials are immune from suit encounters an more mystifying problem in the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), a federal law that permits victims of state-sponsored torture to bring suit in the United States against culpable foreign officials. The TVPA is one of the statutes supplying the cause of action in the suit against Samantar, but that’s not why it’s important. Rather, as Justice Kennedy pointed out during oral arguments, the text of the TVPA appears to make a mockery of the proposition that foreign officials are never amenable to suit in U.S courts. To read the law any other way would be to watch it evaporate, an entire congressional enactment rendered useless, leaving torture victims a right without a remedy. The Court, Justice Kennedy reminds, is not in the business of reading entire statutes out of existence.

Supporters of immunity for foreign officials counter that allowing the case to proceed against Samantar would be just as devastating for FSIA. As a preoccupation of Justice Breyer’s, this argument soaked up a fair amount of the Court’s time. The consensus is that opening officials to suit would allow litigants to undermine the intent of the FSIA without actually violating it. In Ya’alon’s case, instead of suing the Ministry of Defense, a lawyer with his wits about him would simply name Ya’alon, the former head of army intelligence, and the suit would survive. “What you are saying,” Breyer concluded, “is that FSIA is only good against a bad lawyer.”

Hedging, counsel for the plaintiffs reminded the Court that jurisdiction is not the only hurdle between a foreign official and liability. Once a plaintiff establishes jurisdiction, there are other age-old immunity doctrines that shield foreign officials from suit. There is the head of state doctrine, for instance, which protects current and former leaders from prosecution and civil liability, or the doctrine of diplomatic immunity, a similar, if more controversial, safeguard for diplomats and their staff. But there is no small difference between immunity from suit and immunity from liability. To have the former without the latter is to have comfort without convenience; it is, so to speak, the difference between putting up and showing up.

The Supreme Court is thus left to choose between two seemingly impossible outcomes. Extend sovereign immunity to foreign officials and the Torture Victim Protection Act is gutted, along with U.S. credibility in the human rights community. Expose them to suit and make hash of one of the core objectives of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act—saving key allies the expense and embarrassment of defending national security decisions in US courts. To the extent possible, courts generally try to read conflicting statutes in a way that gives effect to both. But even with so much hanging in the balance, coexistence between the TVPA and the FSIA appears impossible. Unimpressed and evidently undecided, the justices took the case under advisement.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sam Singer is a 2009 graduate of Emory Law School and a Staff Law Clerk for the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. His commentaries on law and politics have appeared in various publications, including The Beachwood Reporter and Culturekiosque.com. He has also reported and written articles for The Chicago Tribune and Market News International.




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Chalabi Moves to Disqualify 6 Elected MPs, Demote Allawi's Party to Runner-Up

The Justice and Accountability Commission (formerly the Debaathification Commission), headed by Ahmad Chalabi, is moving to disqualify 6 elected candidates in the March 7 election for their ties to the banned Baath Party of Saddam Hussein. Three of those to be banned are from the Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi, which would reduce his seat total from 91 to 88, making his list second in number of seats after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition, which has 89 seats. The move, by commission head Ahmad Chalabi (himself an elected MP on the fundamentalist Shiite list, the Iraqi National Alliance), will cause a lot of anger among Sunni Arabs, the main backers of Allawi's list, along with secular middle class urban Shiites.

Were the Iraqiya list to be altogether excluded from the government as a result of this move, I would worry about a resort to violence on the part of the list's voters, even though I do not think a revival of a full-scale Sunni-Shiite civil war is very likely.

This further wrinkle in the Iraqi election outcome underlines how unwise is the rush among American pundits, mainly on the political Right, to declare the election a vindication of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. Hey, warmongers: get it through your heads. You went to war on the grounds that Iraq was a grave danger to the US and might even nuke us. That was untrue and ridiculous. You don't get any mulligans in the invasion game. Nothing would vindicate Bush save proof that Saddam Hussein's regime was really dangerous to the US. It wasn't. It had bupkes in the way of WMD. Iraqis will eventually live normal lives and get rich. That won't vindicate Bush either. He lied to us repeatedly and illegally invaded another country, contravening the UN charter and a whole slew of international and even domestic US laws. There is no vindication. But the unseemly backstabbing and maneuvering of fundamentalists, ex-Baathists, Iranian double agents and CIA assets in Iraq now is certainly not it.

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic reports that commission official Ali al-Lami let it slip that one of those to be disqualified is Hamdi Najm, leader of the National Dialogue Front in Diyala Province, who is currently in prison on terrorism charges. His party forms part of the Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi. The disqualifications will be taken to court. But the courts sided with the Justice and Accountability Commission when it excluded candidates on these grounds in the lead-up to the election, so that avenue does not appear very promising.

But the move is not decisive in deciding the next prime minister, because who can form a government depends not on who has a plurality but on who can put together a governing coalition. It is true that the constitution requires the president to ask the leader of the single largest bloc to form a government. But if that person cannot, then another party leader would get the chance. The best analogy for Iraqi politics at the moment is Israel or Lebanon. In the 2009 parliamentary elections in Israel, Tzipi Livni's Kadima gained 28 seats and Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud only got 27. But you will note that Netanyahu is prime minister, because Shas, Yisrael Beitenu and others preferred to ally with him rather than with Ms. Livni. (There is no accounting for tastes.)

I admit to a good deal of frustration with the corporate media in the United States that keeps talking about Iyad Allawi having "won" the Iraqi parliamentary elections. It just is not true. Apparently even some well informed and intelligent Americans can't understand the difference between achieving a slight plurality and winning a parliamentary election. And, it is dangerous to say these things because the US press is read in Iraq and expectations are being created among Iraqis that are likely to be disappointed.

You need 163 seats to have a majority in the 325-member Iraqi parliament, so neither 91 nor 89 is a "win." Rather, 163 is a win. Allawi did not win and has not won and probably won't win.

The reason is that it is difficult to see how he gets to 163. He needs 72 more seats (or maybe 75 if the disqualifications go through). It is easier for al-Maliki's list, if not al-Maliki himself, to get to 163 seats than it is for Allawi, since the fundamentalist Shiites have 70 seats and they under normal circumstances will find it easier to ally with Maliki's Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa) than with the secular Arab nationalists and Sunnis that back Allawi.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that 'informed sources' told its reporters that Ali al-Adib, a leader of al-Maliki's State of Law coalition, recently met Muqtada al-Sadr in Qom, Iran, though they have not yet closed a deal. Al-Sadr has 38 seats in parliament and his bloc is the largest single group of seats in the Shiite fundamentalist Iraqi National Alliance, which has 70 seats. Then, al-Maliki is said to have returned to Baghdad from Tehran, accompanied by al-Adib and Abdul Hamid al-Zuhairi (both from the State of Law list) and Jalal al-Din al-Saghir and Hadi al-Amiri of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

Al-Maliki is said to have been among a big party of Iraqi officials in Tehran the day before yesterday. They went there, al-Hayat said, because there was too much danger of being listened in on in Iraq. Presumably what is actually being asserted here is that the US has sophisticated signals intelligence and has widely tapped phones, so that in Baghdad any attempt at coalition-formation would be immediately picked up by US intelligence. Since the US is widely thought to be backing Allawi's secular Iraqiya list, it would be undesirable from al-Maliki's point of view for them to overhear his negotiations with other lists. Thus, they went off to Iran.

Al-Hayat's source says that Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated flexibility, and demanded in return for dropping his objection to al-Maliki the release of all prisoners from his movement, and undertakings that al-Maliki would not attempt to rule single-handedly. He also wanted an agreement that al-Maliki would be fired if he attempted to overstep the decided-upon course of action of the party. A Sadrist leader, Qusay Suhail, refused to comment on the Iran story, but did allow as how the Sadrists had met with representatives of al-Maliki's State of Law. The source said that so far in the negotiations the Kurdistan Alliance and the Sadr Movement have declined to put forward an alternative candidate for prime minister. So far al-Maliki is the only candidate from the Shiite parties, "and we did not sense any opposition to him." In contrast, cleric Jalal al-Din Saghir of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq insisted that ISCI would definitely put forward a prime ministerial candidate. (ISCI is actually too small to follow through on Saghir's bluster.)

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, is expressing anxiety and concern over the meetings in Tehran, denouncing them as naked interference by a neighbor in Iraq's internal affairs. He is also arguing that the next president of Iraq should be an Arab and not a Kurd. Al-Hashimi is a member of Allawi's Iraqiya list, and his denunciation of the Shiites as cat's paws of Iran and his urging that the Kurds be marginalized will have the unintended effect of making it much more difficult for Allawi to form a government, since he would need pro-Iran Shiites as well as Kurds to do so.


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Alleged Christian Terrorists said to Target Moderate American Muslims

FBI raids on the Hutaree Christian militia brought to light this formerly little-known group based in Adrian, Michigan.

Unlike the generally secular white supremacist organizations, Hutaree are explicitly Christians. Many seem to be millenarians, expecting the end of time to come soon. Like the so-called Patriot Movement, they are gun nuts. They are said to be organized to kill the Antichrist, and some reports say that they planned violence against American Muslims.

Polling shows that about 1/4 of members of the Republican Party believe that President Obama is the Antichrist, and one fears that Hutaree may agree.

Irregular times has a good overview of their beliefs, which include secession from the US and return to colonial times, perhaps in preparation for another revolution. (Will they have to register in South Carolina?). Some are antinomians, rejecting US laws. They fear a liberal 'new world order.'

Fox Cable News and Rupert Murdoch bear some responsibility for such groups. When Glenn Beck tosses around a charge like 'anti-Christ' at a prominent liberal, he knows that term is an incitement for militant Christians. And the years of rabid Fox promotion of hatred of US Muslims is bound to get someone among them killed-- and is therefore murder by television.

I am struck that Hutaree has a great deal in common with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq. The Hutaree militia seems to recruit from the poor or lower middle class. Michigan's real unemployment rate is said to be 17%, and for many Michigan workers there have been years of hopelessness and joblessness, inducing despair and anger. The Mahdi Army likewise drew on Iraqi unemployed and angry youth. Many Sadrists believe that the Mahdi or Muslim messiah will soon come, perhaps accompanied by the return of Christ. The Mahdi Army has sometimes targeted Christian video or liquor shops, as a symbol of the oppressive other (yes, that is unfair to Iraqi Christians but they had the misfortune to be W.'s co-religionists.). The Hutaree, a mirror image, target Muslims. The Mahdi Army considered Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the Dajjal or anti-Christ. Both have an unhealthy interest in firearms for political intimidation of others. The Hutaree fear the United Nations, as the Mahdi Army fears the US occupation. (Muslim radical groups often also hate the UN.)

Both groups are victims of a neoliberal world order that uses and discards working people, while protecting and cushioning the super-wealthy. Instead of a rational analysis of exploitatation, however, they are responding with emotion and symbol, projecting their economic and political alienation on other religious or ethnic groups (the Mahdi Army ethnically cleansed tens of thousands of Sunni Muslims from Baghdad in the name of anti-imperialism. They resort to irrational conspiracy theories, to religion and guns. Admitedly, the Mahdi Army is somewhat more rational, since they really do face foreign occupation, though their targeting of Sunnis instead of forming a nationalist front was highly dysfunctional.

The US press is saying the Hutaree people are a Christian "militia" but is avoiding calling them 'alleged Christian terrorists." Apparently only organized Muslim radicals can now be called terrorists.


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The Continuing Decline of a Self-styled Jihadi State

Christopher Anzalone writes in a guest editorial for Informed Comment entitled, "The Islamic State of Iraq’s Positions on Iraqi National Elections: The Continuing Decline of a Self-styled Jihadi State:"

On February 12, the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) released an audio message from its shadowy amir (leader), Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi, lambasting the country’s then yet-to-be-held national elections. Al-Baghdadi, who has never appeared on film, has released numerous audio messages via the ISI’s media outlet, the Al-Furqan Media Foundation. The ISI is an umbrella organization for several of the most violent jihadi-takfiri insurgent groups operating in the country, the largest of them being Al-Qa ‘ida in the Land of the Two Rivers/Iraq (AQI), which was founded by the late Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi. Founded in October 2006 as the successor to the Mujahideen Shura Council, the ISI has seen its fortunes decline since late 2007, following the United States military’s “surge” and the emergence of the so-called “Awakening Councils” from among many of Iraq’s Sunni Arab tribes. The ISI’s response to the recently-held Iraqi national elections is a further sign of its decline since the “golden age” of the Iraqi insurgency from 2003 to 2007.

In his audio message, “The Political and Religious Crime of ‘Elections’ and Our Duty Towards It,” al-Baghdadi alleges that because they are predicated on the sovereignty of the people, elections are in contradiction to Islamic law (Shari‘a). He says, “The ideology of democratic elections cannot be separated from the idea that sovereignty is for the people, while the fundamental principle of our creed and religion is that supremacy is for Islam. The sovereignty of the people in the parliamentary electorate system means that the people, each in their own respective region, are given authority every four years to delegate or choose a person who then becomes a member of the parliament…he legislates laws which pleases the people, even if they oppose Allah’s ruling in the matter.”

The ISI amir also repeats his usual litany of polemics against Shi‘i Muslims, which is characteristic of many of his messages. Al-Baghdadi says that the Iraqi national elections are only a ploy by “Crusaders” (primarily the U.S.) to empower Iraqi Shi‘is, whom he refers to as “Rafida” (Rejectionists), a popular derogatory term used by some Sunni Muslims, particularly Salafis, for Shi‘is, who they claim have rejected “true Islam.” His main target, however, are Iraqi Sunni political parties and politicians, whom he accuses of treachery because of their participation in the national government: “As for the traitors of Muslim Brotherhood, they are still as we know them. Their religion is a mix of self-benefit, lying and forgery. Here we see their leaders and figures, Tariq Al-Hashimi, Rafi Al-Isawi, Dhahir Al-Aani, Abdul-Kareem Al-Samarra’i, Salam Al-Zawbai, their tribes far distant from them!”…” The strange thing is that they all humiliatingly submitted themselves, and joined alliances led by the Rafidites! How strange that they claim to want to defend the Sunnis and their rights!”

Al-Baghdadi’s criticisms of Iraq’s elections are two-fold. First, as mentioned earlier, elections contradict Shari‘a, at least as the ISI interprets it. Second, he says that since Iraq’s Sunnis cannot possibly benefit from the elections, there is no point in participating in them. Despite the seeming absoluteness of the first, the ISI amir felt the need to also mention the more practical reason for non-participation, perhaps because he knew that a blanket rejection had less chance of succeeding.

The ISI, perhaps worrying that al-Baghdadi’s dire warning against participation was not enough to keep Iraqi Sunnis from voting, released a “very important statement” on March 5, the Friday before the March 7 elections. In it, the ISI’s “ministry of information” announced the imposition of a “curfew over all Sunni provinces” during election day, March 7, warning that those who did not abide by the curfew would bear the consequences. True to its word, the ISI carried out sporadic attacks on March 7, many of them targeting Iraqi Sunnis.

Although it remains a dangerous force, as evidenced by multiple massive attacks on government ministries and other buildings in Baghdad, the ISI is no longer able to carry out widespread insurgency. Between 2004 and the first half of 2007, AQI and its allies were able to carry out numerous attacks on a daily basis, from relatively small-scale ambushes and sniper attacks to massive car bombings and other kamikaze operations. Today, the ISI is no longer capable of carrying out attacks nearly as frequently as it could two and three years ago. Instead, it has forgone frequency for potency, focusing its efforts on planning large-scale attacks such as the ones in Baghdad during the past eight months, which the ISI has dubbed the “Expedition/Raid of the Prisoner.”

Al-Baghdadi also repeats his call for all Sunni insurgent groups to unite under the ISI’s banner. Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the chief ideologue and deputy leader of Al-Qa‘ida Central (AQC) has made similar calls, including one in a 2007 video interview, produced by AQC’s media outlet, the Al-Sahab (The Clouds) Media Foundation, to Ansar al-Islam, one of the country’s largest and most potent insurgent groups. Both al-Baghdadi and al-Zawahiri have been ignored by the majority of Iraq’s insurgent groups, including Ansar al-Islam, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, and the religious-nationalist Islamic Army in Iraq. Al-Baghdadi continues to be the “commander of the believers”, the caliph, for only a very small group of insurgents, despite the ISI’s illusions of grandeur.

Despite its rhetoric, the ISI’s handling of Iraq’s national elections is yet another sign of the group’s decreased power. Al-Baghdadi’s call for Sunnis to boycott was largely ignored. Decreased voter turnout during the March 7 elections was noticeable across central and southern Iraq, not only in Sunni Arab-majority provinces. Similarly, the ISI’s “curfew” was also largely ignored and the group carried out attacks on its own supposed support base. This clearly shows that the “golden age” of the self-styled “Islamic State” of Iraq has passed and, although it remains capable of carrying out lethal attacks, that it no longer poses a mortal threat to the Iraqi central government.

Christopher Anzalone
Graduate Program
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN



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Sadrists Pivotal Party, Vows Liberation of Iraq from Foreigners; Tehran attempts to Broker Alliance

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic on the emergence of the Sadr Movement as the largest Shiite party within the Shiite fundamentalist coalition, the Iraqi National Alliance. The Free Independent (al-Ahrar) party that represented the Sadrists won 38 seats out of the 70 that the INA garnered, making the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the Islamic Virtue Party and other Shiite religious components of the list much smaller and less weighty in the coalition's deliberations.

No sooner, the article says, than the election tallies began coming in did the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki begin gradually releasing Sadrist prisoners who had been in Iraqi penitentiaries for years. Al-Hayat's sources say that in Babil Province, orders were received from the government to release members of the Sadr Movement, in an attempt to mollify that group.

Sadrist leader Liqa' Al-Yasin said that the Sadrists have now become the spinal column of the Iraqi National Alliance. He said that the movement had demonstrated that it had a large public base, and asserted that that base is cultured, aware, and abiding by the principles both of Islamic Law and the Nation. Al-Yasin said that the Sadrists would work for the liberation of Iraq and the realization of national sovereignty. [Translation: they want US troops out of their country tout de suite.] He adds that other goals are to gain the release of prisoners and to take some of the burdens off the shoulders of ordinary citizens. Sadrist leaders said that "the next phase will concentrate on political action to end the Occupation altogether."

Another Sadrist leader said that the movement has foresworn violence and that they would not take up arms again save in situation of dire necessity.

Meanwhile,
al-Hayat is also reporting that a couple of days ago representatives of the Sadr Movement and of al-Maliki's State of Law met in Tehran in an Iranian-backed attempt quickly to form a new Shiite-dominated government. In Iran for the talks were President Jalal Talibani and his Shiite vice president, Adil Abdel Mahdi of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

This move underlines the way in which Iraq's election has geopolitical as well as local significance. Also that Iran is sitting pretty while the US prepares to withdraw.



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Iraq: National Unity Government or Return to Sectarianism? 53 Killed in Diyala Bombing

Patrick Martin of the Toronto Globe and Mail gets the diction right when he says that Iyad Allawi's list won a thin plurality. The official results of the March 7 Iraqi parliamentary elections have been announced by the Independent High Electoral Commission. Of 325 seats, 91 went to the National Iraqi List ("Iraqiya") of former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi. The State of Law grouping of incumbent Nuri al-Maliki came in at 89. The Shiite fundamentalist coalition, the Iraqi National Alliance, which includes the followers of clerics Ammar al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr, garnered 70 seats. The Kurdistan Alliance won only 43 seats.

That leaves 33 seats in the hands of smaller parties, many of them wild cards.

Shortly before the results were announced, two large bomb blasts in Khalis, in Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad, killed 53 persons. Diyala is still the site of violent struggle between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Most Sunni Arabs in Iraq have moved on from the violence and fundamentalism of groups such as the 'Islamic State of Iraq,' and most voted for the Allawi list as a way of reentering national politics.

Despite some breathless headlines, the outcome of the elections is not very different from previous elections. Allawi put together a coalition of Sunni Arabs and secular Shiites. In the December, 2005, parliamentary elections, those two groups received about 80 seats, only 11 less than Allawi's just list won. If the two major Shiite religious lists (State of Law and Iraqi National Alliance) had run on the same ticket, they would have nearly a majority, about what they won in December, 2005. The Kurdistan Alliance only has 43 seats, down from 54 in the last parliamentary election, but the overall number of Kurdish Members of Parliament is not so different from that in the last polls.

In spring-summer of 2006, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki put together a government of national unity, with the help of the US ambassador. It included Sadrists and Allawi's Iraqiya. But it gradually fell apart. This election is an opportunity for al-Maliki to attempt to repeat that feat. Indeed, a national unity government may be the first preference of the Iraqi National Alliance, which has, according to al-Sharq al-Awsat, swung into action to convince the other major lists that such a path is the only right one for Iraq at this juncture.

Although Allawi's list won the most seats, he is very unlikely to be the next prime minister. Al-Maliki's State of Law list is anti-Baathist and hasn't gotten on well with Sunni Arabs, while ex-Baathists and Sunnis are the backbone of Allawi's constituency. Likewise, the Shiite religious party, made up of Sadrists and members of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), among others, are unlikely to ally with secularist ex-Baathists. Allawi says that he is dialoguing with the parties led by Hakim and Sadr, as well as with the Kurds. But Allawi rejects a role in politics for Shiite clerics, which would make for an uneasy alliance with lists headed by clerics. Without the two big Shiite blocs, Allawi could only become prime minister by attracting the Kurdistan Alliance and all of the smaller parties and independents. Keeping such a disparate coalition together would be difficult in the extreme. Allawi is supported by Sunni Arabs who have sharp differences with the Kurds over the future of the mixed province of Kirkuk, which the Kurds covet. Allawi may therefore have a plurality that is incapable of growing into a majority.

It is also true that al-Maliki is deeply disliked by Muqtada al-Sadr and the Sadrists because he used the Iraqi Army to crush their Mahdi Army militia in Basra and East Baghdad in spring-summer of 2008. His party, however, the 'State of Law,' groups Shiite religious parties such as his own Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa), and the natural ally of Da'wa is the Sadrists and ISCI. Still, as Sadrist and ISCI officials admitted on Wednesday, their parties are natural allies with the State of Law. The easiest way to form a new government would be to dump al-Maliki and choose another leader of Da`wa as prime minister. The State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance can form a coalition of 159 at a time when only 163 is needed for a majority. By picking up just 4 independents, these two could form a strong, stable government. Al-Maliki has gathered a lot of power into his hands, however, and unseating him may prove difficult and time-consuming. In the end, the Iraqi National Alliance may decide that he is their best bet for dominating Iraq in the near to medium term.

Al-Maliki said Friday that he rejects the announced outcome and demands a manual recount of the ballots. He had earlier warned of "violence" if the votes were not recounted. The reason for his adamant stance is that if he could nose ahead of Allawi by even a single vote, he seems to feel that he would have more of a mandate to remain prime minister. The Iraqi constitution stipulates that the president ask the head of the largest single party or coalition to attempt to form the government. As it now stands, al-Maliki will not be asked, while Allawi could be.

One possibility is for his State of Law to form a coalition with the Iraqi National Alliance [Hakim and Sadr] while easing al-Maliki out in favor of some candidate more acceptable to both. Iraqi courts have ruled that post-election coalitions will be counted as legitimate for the purpose of installing a government. The Shiites are thus still in a position to remain dominant, though if they remain divided then Allawi could pick up the pieces. A Shiite electoral alliance accompanied by the elegance of the numbers would detract from the quality of life.

It seems unlikely that anyone can become prime minister without the Sadr Bloc, now the majority component inside the Iraqi National Alliance. Sadr may well demand as a quid pro quo for joining any Iraqi government that the new PM pledge to accelerate the timetable for US troop withdrawal from Iraq, and also promise to end that troop presence altogether.

The difficult road ahead is indicated by the recent denunciation of al-Maliki by both Muqtada al-Sadr and Ammar al-Hakim for his initial warning that "violence" might break out if the ballots are not recounted. Muqtada called the implied threat of violence "political terrorism," thus ironically turning the tables on al-Maliki, who had hunted down Sadr-linked Mahdi Army commanders on the grounds that they were terrorists.

The big question now in Iraqi politics is whether the new government will look like the sectarian Shiite coalition with the Kurds in 2005, or more like the national unity government forged in summer, 2006. Each proved unstable in its own way, it should be remembered, so neither is a guarantor of a good outcome for these elections. The other question is how many concessions smaller parties can wring from the majority in order to form a government. It seems to me that if the Sadrists demand with sufficient vigor, they should be able to get a faster US troop withdrawal. Their platform since 2003 has been the removal of the American military from Iraq. They may finally be in a position to effect via the ballot box what they could not by their armed paramilitary, the Mahdi Army.

--

Don't miss Tom Engelhardt's powerful meditation on how Americans see Iraq through rose-colored glasses.

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Israel-US Row to Iran's benefit; Sanctions Regime Watered Down

The far rightwing government of Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu may have a choice between expanding settlements in the West Bank or achieving a global consensus on the need to sanction and coerce Iran into giving up its nuclear enrichment program. Netanyahu is so dedicated to the settler project that he cannot see the ways in which it forestalls other, broader Israeli objectives.

The serious policy differences between Binyamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration are helping Iran,and reducing pressure on that country.

The Times of London reports that Netanyahu was put firmly in his place by President Obama during his visit to Washington earlier this week. At one point Obama is said to have left Netanyahu for dinner with Michele and the girls after urging the prime minister to contact him if anything changed.

Obama is said to have still been bristling at the slight of VP Joe Biden when the latter was in Israel (Netanyahu insisted on supporting continued colonial settlements on theWest Bank.the form of an announcement of the building of more homes on occupied Palestinian land. The Palestine Authority leadership, including President Mahmoud Abbas, refuses to restart peace negotiations as long as Netanyahu refuses to commit to a freeze of Israeli colonization efforts. Abbas had been about to set aside his objections and begin proximity talks when Netanyahu's government announced a substantial settlement expansion. And they made the announcement on the very day of Joe Biden's arrival to kick off the talks with the Palestinians. Predictably, the Palestinians pulled out of the talks.

There may have been more to the policy differences than just the lack of a state dinner. A report at the Herald Scotland site that the US was moving bunker busting bombs to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia set off a flurry of speculation that the US was getting ready to move against Iran.

But in reality, the US may well have been sequestering the bunker busters and denying them to Israel. Netanyahu came to Washington in part to ask for jets and other materiel, including the bunker busters.

Netanyahu has called for "crippling" sanctions to be applied to Iran if it does not dismantle its civilian nuclear enrichment program. Among the sanctions Netanyahu sought was probably a gasoline embargo.

The call was immediately rejected by the Russian Federation(and probably by China behind the scenes).

The sanctions resolution being prepared by the US on behalf of the United Nations was abruptly watered down to meet Russian and Chinese objections. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded to the news, saying sanctions had no ability to harm or influence Iran. (He might have added, 'especially watered down ones'!)

That China and Russia know how tense US-Israeli ties are at the moment may also incline them to avoid the sanctions route.

Netanyahu is convinced that Iran is committed to acquiring a nuclear weapon (a proposition for which there is no firm evidence), and is further convinced that such a development would pose an existential threat to Israel. It is unclear why he reaches that conclusion, since Mutual Assured Destruction would operate to deter Iran from attacking Israel (which has 200 nuclear warheads), lest it be devastated itself. It is a ludicrous idea that the shrewd and pragmatic leadership in Tehran, which has launched no wars since coming to power and has dealt cannily with a multitude of challenges, consists of erratic madmen who would risk seeing their capital annihilated. Not to mention that there is no good evidence that they have a weapons program, and every reason to think that they are a decade or more away from a nuclear warhead even if they did. Some of the more hysterical pronouncements attributed to Netanyahu and to his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, if true, would also raise questions about the safety of the nukes in Israel's arsenal.

The long and the short of it is that Israel and the US have poor relations for the moment, and that the rest of the world is aware of it, making it harder for the two of them to pressure the UNSC.

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Sadr Emerging as Kingmaker in Iraqi Election; Will Muqtada demand Quicker US Withdrawal

The London pan-Arab daily al-Hayat [Life] reports in Arabic that that the Shiite State of Law coalition and the Shiite Iraqi National Alliance say they are prepared to make an alliance before they enter the new parliament. This move reduces the chance that current prime minister Nuri al-Maliki will get a second term.

The State of Law said it had negotiated without preconditions, considering that who fills the post of prime minister is less important that for the two parties to arrive at a common plan. The fundamentalist Iraqi National Alliance groups Muqtada al-Sadr's Free Independents with Ammar al-Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and other religious Shiite parties. The paper's contacts in that movement likewise affirmed that the National Iraqi Alliance is eager to form some sort of united front with the State of Law coalition, in accordance with 'countless political calculations.'

Sadiq al-Rikabi of the Islamic Mission Party, the core component of the State of Law List, told al-Hayat that it was important for his party to reach a common vision with the National Iraqi Alliance. He said that the two had a common notion of confronting challenges. He said it is not important at this point to name a prime minister, and that other details can be worked out first.

The Sadrists, the leading bloc within the National Iraqi Alliance, deeply dislike al-Maliki because he sent the army in after their paramilitary, the Mahdi Army, in both Basra and Sadr City in spring-summer of 2008. The State of Law may well have to sacrifice him to get an alliance with the more religious Shiite parties.

Abdul Hadi al-Hassani of the State of Law also announced talks toward merging the two blocs. He said that the two 'agree on most issues,' aside from the question of who should be prime minister and how to distribute cabinet posts by party, as well as how to run the executive branch. He said he expected the two to merge, given that they were most compatible in their platforms. He downplayed Sadrist dislike of al-Maliki and said what was important is that the two have a similar governing structure and could settle issues by a vote. He envisaged a further partnership, with the Kurdistan Alliance and with the Accord Front (Sunni fundamentalists).

It sounds as though the State of Law leadership is entirely prepared to throw al-Maliki under the bus to get the votes required to form a government.

The State of Law could end up with over 90 seats, and the National Iraqi Alliance may well get over 70. An alliance would take them very close to the 163 seats needed to govern Iraq. State of Law says it is also working on an partnership with the Kurdistan Alliance, which would be needed to elect a president on the first ballot.


A Shiite alliance plus the Kurds recalls the governing coalition of 2005 and after, which cannot be good news for the US. Al-Sadr may well make his joining the coalition conditional on al-Maliki stepping down and an acceleration of the timetable for US troop withdrawal.

Al-Sadr, whose movement may get as many as 40 seats, will be pivotal to forming a government. He is a supporter of Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas, and once called himself the right hand of Hamas. If he becomes a kingmaker, the Middle East will lurch to the Right.

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Netanyahu Humiliates Obama with another E. Jerusalem Housing Expansion; Israeli Troops allegedly used live Ammo; UK expels Mossad Chief

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sets the tone for Israeli policy-- one that is earning him few friends in the West. Three embarrassments broke for him on Tuesday. First, yet another housing expansion in East Jerusalem was announced while he was meeting President Obama. Then, the cover story of Israeli troops accused of firing live ammunition at Palestinian protesters began to unravel. Then British Foreign Minister David Miliband unceremoniously tossed the Mossad London station chief out of the country for counterfeiting British passports, to be used in an Israeli assassination of a Palestinian in Dubai recently. Netanyahu personally ordered that hit, and is responsible for the forging of real peoples' passports and their use to commit a murder. Netanyahu is the one behind these acts of arrogance, and they are emblematic of his mean brand of politics.

The far rightwing government of Binyamin Netanyahu humiliates American officials every time it meets with them. Netanyahu met Obama in Washington on Tuesday, and like clockwork Israel embarrassed Obama by announcing that same day it was going ahead with a building project (funded by an American millionaire) in East Jerusalem that the Obama administration had strictly told the Israelis to halt. What I don't understand is why the Palestinians cannot sue over this issue in American courts. If the administration's stance is that East Jerusalem does not belong to Israel, and the US is signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention, then why couldn't Palestinians with standing sue in the US when their property is usurped by an American millionaire?

Israel will investigate the shooting deaths of two Palestinian youth who were protesting (not rioting as AP puts it) against Israeli theft of water from the village well. Israeli troops claimed they were using rubber bullets, but Palestinians charge it was actually live ammunition.

Aljazeera English has the scoop, with live video of Israeli troops firing on the Palestinian youths, with what certainly sounds like live ammunition.

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British Foreign Minister David Miliband said he had compelling evidence that Israel was responsible for forging British passports with respect to the recent assassination of an alleged Hamas figure in Dubai. Miliband expelled from London a senior Israeli 'diplomat' who was likely actually a Mossad or Israeli intelligence operative. In Israel, some parliamentarians responded by calling Miliband an 'anti-Semitic dog.' The Israeli use of passports of actual persons in the assassination put at risk not only those individuals but all persons from those countries in the Middle East. Miliband complained that the forgeries represented a profound disregard for the sovereignty of Britain. He might now commiserate a little with the Palestinians, whose sovereignty was robbed by the British with their Balfour Declaration and by the Israelis, to the point where they have been demoted from a Class A League of Nations Mandate declared almost ready for nationhood to stateless refugees.

ITN has video of Miliband's decision:



Tony Karon argues that Israel will not end its expansion of settlements in the West Bank until it has to pay a cost for maintaining the status quo.

Israel is in danger of using up its previous stock of good will in the West by these acts of hubris, initiated by the petulant policies of Netanyahu.
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Empires Come and Gone in the Middle East

A propos this morning's posting, a good visual representation of all the empires coming and going in the Mideast:




[This map follows the biblical narrative, showing a united kingdom of Israel in the tenth century BC, which, as I said Tuesday morning, has been shown to be mythical by archeology; it is very odd that standard Western references haven't caught up with science here and shows that even in supposedly secular societies narratives considered scripture still have enormous sway.

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Top Ten Reasons East Jerusalem does not belong to Jewish-Israelis

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Council on Monday that "Jerusalem is not a settlement." He continued that the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel cannot be denied. He added that neither could the historical connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem. He insisted, "The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today." He said, "Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital." He told his applauding audience of 7500 that he was simply following the policies of all Israeli governments since the 1967 conquest of Jerusalem in the Six Day War.

Netanyahu mixed together Romantic-nationalist cliches with a series of historically false assertions. But even more important was everything he left out of the history, and his citation of his warped and inaccurate history instead of considering laws, rights or common human decency toward others not of his ethnic group.

So here are the reasons that Netanyahu is profoundly wrong, and East Jerusalem does not belong to him.

1. In international law, East Jerusalem is occupied territory, as are the parts of the West Bank that Israel unilaterally annexed to its district of Jerusalem. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907 forbid occupying powers to alter the lifeways of civilians who are occupied, and forbid the settling of people from the occupiers' country in the occupied territory. Israel's expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, its usurpation of Palestinian property there, and its settling of Israelis on Palestinian land are all gross violations of international law. Israeli claims that they are not occupying Palestinians because the Palestinians have no state are cruel and tautological. Israeli claims that they are building on empty territory are laughable. My back yard is empty, but that does not give Netanyahu the right to put up an apartment complex on it.

2. Israeli governments have not in fact been united or consistent about what to do with East Jerusalem and the West Bank, contrary to what Netanyahu says. The Galili Plan for settlements in the West Bank was adopted only in 1973. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave undertakings as part of the Oslo Peace Process to withdraw from Palestinian territory and grant Palestinians a state, promises for which he was assassinated by the Israeli far right (elements of which are now supporting Netanyahu's government). As late as 2000, then Prime Minister Ehud Barak claims that he gave oral assurances that Palestinians could have almost all of the West Bank and could have some arrangement by which East Jerusalem could be its capital. Netanyahu tried to give the impression that far rightwing Likud policy on East Jerusalem and the West Bank has been shared by all previous Israeli governments, but this is simply not true.

3. Romantic nationalism imagines a "people" as eternal and as having an eternal connection with a specific piece of land. This way of thinking is fantastic and mythological. Peoples are formed and change and sometimes cease to be, though they might have descendants who abandoned that religion or ethnicity or language. Human beings have moved all around and are not directly tied to any territory in an exclusive way, since many groups have lived on most pieces of land. Jerusalem was not founded by Jews, i.e. adherents of the Jewish religion. It was founded between 3000 BCE and 2600 BCE by a West Semitic people or possibly the Canaanites, the common ancestors of Palestinians, Lebanese, many Syrians and Jordanians, and many Jews. But when it was founded Jews did not exist.

4. Jerusalem was founded in honor of the ancient god Shalem. It does not mean City of Peace but rather 'built-up place of Shalem."

5. The "Jewish people" were not building Jerusalem 3000 years ago, i.e. 1000 BCE. First of all, it is not clear when exactly Judaism as a religion centered on the worship of the one God took firm form. It appears to have been a late development since no evidence of worship of anything but ordinary Canaanite deities has been found in archeological sites through 1000 BCE. There was no invasion of geographical Palestine from Egypt by former slaves in the 1200s BCE. The pyramids had been built much earlier and had not used slave labor. The chronicle of the events of the reign of Ramses II on the wall in Luxor does not know about any major slave revolts or flights by same into the Sinai peninsula. Egyptian sources never heard of Moses or the 12 plagues & etc. Jews and Judaism emerged from a certain social class of Canaanites over a period of centuries inside Palestine.

6. Jerusalem not only was not being built by the likely then non-existent "Jewish people" in 1000 BCE, but Jerusalem probably was not even inhabited at that point in history. Jerusalem appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the traditional dates for the united kingdom under David and Solomon. So Jerusalem was not 'the city of David,' since there was no city when he is said to have lived. No sign of magnificent palaces or great states has been found in the archeology of this period, and the Assyrian tablets, which recorded even minor events throughout the Middle East, such as the actions of Arab queens, don't know about any great kingdom of David and Solomon in geographical Palestine.

7. Since archeology does not show the existence of a Jewish kingdom or kingdoms in the so-called First Temple Period, it is not clear when exactly the Jewish people would have ruled Jerusalem except for the Hasmonean Kingdom. The Assyrians conquered Jerusalem in 722. The Babylonians took it in 597 and ruled it until they were themselves conquered in 539 BCE by the Achaemenids of ancient Iran, who ruled Jerusalem until Alexander the Great took the Levant in the 330s BCE. Alexander's descendants, the Ptolemies ruled Jerusalem until 198 when Alexander's other descendants, the Seleucids, took the city. With the Maccabean Revolt in 168 BCE, the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom did rule Jerusalem until 37 BCE, though Antigonus II Mattathias, the last Hasmonean, only took over Jerusalem with the help of the Parthian dynasty in 40 BCE. Herod ruled 37 BCE until the Romans conquered what they called Palestine in 6 CE (CE= 'Common Era' or what Christians call AD). The Romans and then the Eastern Roman Empire of Byzantium ruled Jerusalem from 6 CE until 614 CE when the Iranian Sasanian Empire Conquered it, ruling until 629 CE when the Byzantines took it back.

The Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 638 and ruled it until 1099 when the Crusaders conquered it. The Crusaders killed or expelled Jews and Muslims from the city. The Muslims under Saladin took it back in 1187 CE and allowed Jews to return, and Muslims ruled it until the end of World War I, or altogether for about 1192 years.

Adherents of Judaism did not found Jerusalem. It existed for perhaps 2700 years before anything we might recognize as Judaism arose. Jewish rule may have been no longer than 170 years or so, i.e., the kingdom of the Hasmoneans.

8. Therefore if historical building of Jerusalem and historical connection with Jerusalem establishes sovereignty over it as Netanyahu claims, here are the groups that have the greatest claim to the city:

A. The Muslims, who ruled it and built it over 1191 years.

B. The Egyptians, who ruled it as a vassal state for several hundred years in the second millennium BCE.

C. The Italians, who ruled it about 444 years until the fall of the Roman Empire in 450 CE.

D. The Iranians, who ruled it for 205 years under the Achaemenids, for three years under the Parthians (insofar as the last Hasmonean was actually their vassal), and for 15 years under the Sasanids.

E. The Greeks, who ruled it for over 160 years if we count the Ptolemys and Seleucids as Greek. If we count them as Egyptians and Syrians, that would increase the Egyptian claim and introduce a Syrian one.

F. The successor states to the Byzantines, which could be either Greece or Turkey, who ruled it 188 years, though if we consider the heir to be Greece and add in the time the Hellenistic Greek dynasties ruled it, that would give Greece nearly 350 years as ruler of Jerusalem.

G. There is an Iraqi claim to Jerusalem based on the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, as well as perhaps the rule of the Ayyubids (Saladin's dynasty), who were Kurds from Iraq.

9. Of course, Jews are historically connected to Jerusalem by the Temple, whenever that connection is dated to. But that link mostly was pursued when Jews were not in political control of the city, under Iranian, Greek and Roman rule. It cannot therefore be deployed to make a demand for political control of the whole city.

10. The Jews of Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine did not for the most part leave after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans in 136 CE. They continued to live there and to farm in Palestine under Roman rule and then Byzantine. They gradually converted to Christianity. After 638 CE all but 10 percent gradually converted to Islam. The present-day Palestinians are the descendants of the ancient Jews and have every right to live where their ancestors have lived for centuries.

---
PS: The sources are in the hyperlinks, especially the Thompson edited volume. See also Shlomo Sands recent book.

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Maliki calls for Recount, warns of renewed bloodshed; Is Iraq slipping into Semi-Authoritarianism?

I'm all for holding elections. But the US right wing misunderstands elections as equalling democracy, which they do not. In fact, what we have seen since George W. Bush began backing neoconservative talking points is that elections in the Middle East have most often been subverted by authoritarianism and have contributed to social divisiveness.

The holding of elections in Iraq gave rise to a spate of articles on how may George W. Bush really did change the Middle East and maybe Iraq is turning out all right after all. These arguments derive not from analysis but from a desire to bolster the Republican Party and its ideology (which combines militarism abroad with Marie Antoinette-style lack of empathy with the woes of the common person domestically.)

The demand Sunday by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani of Iraq that a recount of ballots in the March 7 parliamentary election be conducted points to a different possible conclusion.

That is that pressure from Washington, combined with the ambitions of local elites, and the increasing ability of Middle Eastern publics to mobilize and express their discontents, have produced not democratization but a move to what Marina Ottaway calls semi-authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. In fact, the most marked movement from authoritarianism to multiparty democracy in the past decade in the region, that of Pakistan, took place through popular mobilization and long-established political parties in the teeth of heavy support by Washington (i.e. Dick Cheney) for military dictator Pervez Musharraf.

Ottaway argues that during the Cold War, the opposition between authoritarian regimes and democratic ones was more stark and that hybrid forms falling in neither camp were rare. "Semi-Authoritarian regimes" have political parties and NGOs, hold elections, and look on paper as though they at least have some democratic attributes. But behind the scenes the power elite makes sure it remains in power and reduces the 'democratic' activities to a shadow play for the benefit of a restless domestic public and for that of international bureaucrats.

We have seen a string of farcical or stolen elections in the Middle East in the past decade, which have been used by often Washington-backed regional elites to reinforce their power rather than to allow the peaceful succession of one government by another.

Not only are the prime minister and president of Iraq strongly implying massive ballot fraud in Iraq (an allegation that al-Maliki admits could spark a return to ethnic violence), but recent elections in the region have more often been seen as fraudulent than as fair.

Afghanistan's presidential election of August, 2009, was repeatedly denounced as having been marred by electoral fraud to the benefit of incumbent Hamid Karzai. Karzai remained in power, but at the cost of losing legitimacy in the eyes of some Afghans, especially Tajik supporters of his rival, Abdullah Abdullah. The US response has been to back Karzai unreservedly and to attempt to bestow on him hundreds of thousands of new troops and police so that he can exercise stronger control in the country.

Iran's presidential election of June, 2009, provoked massive demonstrations in summer of that year on the part of those who believed that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had stolen it, leading to the establishment of the dissident Green Movement around presidential challengers Mir Hosain Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. In the aftermath, the regime became more authoritarian and the military and security forces came to wield more power than before.

The January 2006 election in the Palestine Authority produced a Hamas-led government, much to the dismay of Israel and the US. Those two worked to undermine the Hamas government and ultimately backed a successful coup against it in the West Bank, but failed to dislodge the elected government from Gaza. President Mahmoud Abbas is now acting extra-judically and extra-constitutionally, since further elections have not been held and there has been no judgment rendered by any competent legal authority as to the legitimacy of his government vis-a-vis that of Hamas.

In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak reacted to pressure from then secretary of state Condi Rice to open up the presidential elections by allowing his main rival to leave prison and run. After Mubarak trounced him, he was sent back to jail. And, some 88 Muslim Brothers (a group the US abhors) gained seats in the lower house of parliament. Some thought that for the Mubarak regime to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to do so well was itself a warning to Washington. It said that pressure for democratization will backfire and lead to Muslim Brotherhood regimes.

Even Israel elected its most rightwing government ever in February, 2009, and persons that might formerly have been shunned because of their extreme political views, such as Avigdor Lieberman, were allowed to serve in the government. Lieberman wants to administer loyalty tests to Palestinian-Israelis and would very much like to strip the latter of their Israeli citizenship and expel all 1.5 million of them from the country. For a man of Lieberman's views to become Israeli foreign minister is a step toward semi-authoritarianism in that country. Likewise, the Israeli state has been cracking down on peace groups such as B'tselem and other NGOs, with methods more familiar in Egypt or Syria than in the freewheeling Israel of earlier decades.

So some authoritarian regimes are moving to put up democratic facades and so becoming semi-authoritarian. And the few regimes that seemed earlier to make a place for more democratic governance--Israel, post-2001 Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, post-2003 Iraq-- seem to be moving toward semi-authoritarianism and slipping back from democracy.

Ironically, the most genuine steps toward democratization have taken place in Turkey and in Pakistan. But Bush and the neoconservatives had backed the Turkish and Pakistani militaries, so this heroic story of the little people attaining their rights was never celebrated by the US mass media. Democracies are unpredictable and hard to control (as Bush found out when US allies like France and Turkey declined to line up behind the invasion of Iraq), and so Turkey and Pakistan are disturbing the world status quo. That is the real reason for which some Obama administration officials have talked about Pakistan as the most dangerous country in the world. They did not speak that way when Gen. Pervez Musharraf was in control of the country. You have to wonder how committed most Washington elites really are to democratization, and have to wonder whether semi-authoritarianism in Middle Eastern allies might not be perceived as holding benefits for the US.

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Khamenei Blames Obama for post-election Disturbances Demands non-intervention as prerequisite to improved ties

The USG Open Source Center summarizes the address of Leader Ali Khamenei of Iran on the occasion of the Persian New Year, in which he replies to President Barack Obama's offer of direct negotiations and an opportunity for Iran to end its diplomatic isolation. Khamenei blamed Obama for the protests that shook the regime last summer and fall, and said that such subversion made improved relations with the US a non-starter. Actually, the Green Movement is indigenous and took Washington by surprise. Khamenei, in rejecting its legitimacy and sincerity and turning it into an American plot, not only injures a significant group in the Iranian body politic but also stupidly pushes away the first sincere overtures from Washington in decades. Sometimes good policy making falters because potential diplomatic partners are paranoid and unable to escape their own mental cramp.

FYI -- Iran: Khamene'i Says 'Fate of the Enemy is Failure' in New Year Address
Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN)
Sunday, March 21, 2010 ...
Document Type: OSC Summary

Tehran Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN) in Persian

at 1300 GMT on 21 March carried live an address by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i's to pilgrims and the people of Mashhad at the Shrine of the eighth Shiite imam, Reza, in Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi Province. . .

He then referred to President Obama's hand of friendship message and said: "In my last year's message on the first day of the new year at a huge gathering here I talked to you about the new American President's message where he said 'we stretch a hand of friendship.' I said that we will follow up the issue with vigilance. We will watch out to see if it really is a hand of friendship and whether intentions are friendly or they are hostile intentions in the form of deceiving words. This is very important to us. I said last year that if underneath your velvet gloves lie iron fists we will not stretch out our hands and will not accept your friendship. We are careful to make sure that a dagger is not hiding behind your smiles.

"Unfortunately, what happened was exactly what was expected. The American Government and the new establishment and president with their interest in just and appropriate relations -- about which they wrote a letter and sent a message and announced over loudspeakers and repeated at private parties -- said that we want to normalize our relations with the Islamic Republic. Unfortunately they did the opposite. In the eight months after the elections they adopted the worst possible stance. The American President introduced the street rioters as a civil movement."

He said: "You cannot talk about friendship but at the same time hatch plots and try to harm the Islamic Republic."
Khamene'i said the action of the enemy should not be hidden from the eyes of the Iranian officials. He concluded that Iran will continue its path and is sure that will succeed as it has done in the past. He said the fate of Iran is success and the fate of the enemy is failure.

Khamene'i concluded his speech with prayers.

The broadcast ended at 1412 GMT.. .

(Description of Source: Tehran Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN) in Persian -- 24-hour news channel of state-run television, officially controlled by the office of the supreme leader)


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Can US catch up to Iran in Providing Health Care to Least Privileged?

Proponents of unregulated capitalism, or if you will, the 'free market,' maintain that it provides a better life for all than do other systems. This allegation is demonstrably untrue if the question is public health across the board. In Iran, under the hyper-capitalist Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, infant mortality was 122 per 1,000 in 1970. Today, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is 28.6 per 1,000, an incredible decrease. Some 94% of the population has access to health services, and around the same percentage have access to affordable medicine. The state is authoritarian and controlling, but it cares about the welfare of even the poor among its citizens in a way that the US-backed, capitalist Pahlevis clearly did not. In the last year of George W. Bush's presidency, at a time when he had drastically limited Federal support for stem cell research, Iran committed $2.8 billion to such high-powered medical research.

It is to the point where Mississippi, which has among the worst health statistics in the US, and where 20% of the population lacks health insurance, is looking to Iran for a model of how techniques pioneered in a third-world society could improve health care for Americans living in third-world conditions.

So maybe the urgency of Americans resorting to Iranian help will decline today if the US Congress does the right thing and enacts health care reform. It won't be perfect, but it will extend coverage to some 30 million who now have none, and will stop outrageous abuses like the dropping of sick patients and exclusions for pre-existing conditions.


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Jenkins: Bible Far More Violent than Qur'an

Philip Jenkins studied violence in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and found that the Bible is 'far more violent.'

This conclusion is obvious to anyone who seriously studies the two scriptures. The NPR article quotes someone named Bostom who claims that violence in the Bible has a context but in Qur'an is commanded to be ongoing. This is an extremely ignorant comment and completely untrue.

The passages in the Qur'an that command fighting pertain to the early Muslims' struggle with the militant pagans (kafirun, kuffar) of ancient Mecca. The mercantile Meccan elite dominate lower Red Sea trade and worshipped star goddesses; they determined to wipe out the new religion of Islam as it gathered converts through the 610s and set up as a city-state in Yathrib/ Medina in the 620s CE. As I have pointed out before, a careful study of the word kafir or infidel in the Qur'an will show that it never is used in an unadorned way to refer to non-Muslims in general. It implies paganism, or alliance with paganism, and often has overtones of militant hostility to Muslims and Islam. In contrast, the Christians are called 'closest in love' to the Muslims, and the Children of Israel are repeatedly praised. There is a passage referring to those who commit kufr or infidelity from among the people of the book (i.e. Jews and Christians) [2:105]. But this diction demonstrates that the word for infidel does not ordinarily extend to those groups. The ones condemned probably had allied with the pagans who were trying to destroy Islam and kill all Muslims, against whom the Qur'an advises believers to wage defensive war ("kill them wherever you find them" [2:191]-- i.e. defend yourself against the fanatic pagans trying to kill you).

There are fundamentalist Muslims who use the word 'kafir' to refer to all non-Muslims, but the Qur'an does not support this usage. Anti-Muslim bigots in the US use these simplistic ideas of fundamentalists to condemn Islam and all Muslims.

All you have to do is look at the fate of the conquered Canaanites under Joshua (who were to be wiped out in a biblical genocide) and the fate of the Meccans when the Muslims overcame them (almost none were killed and they went on to flourish in the Islamic empire despite their earlier attempt at mass murder aimed at the prophet and his followers), to see the difference between the two.

Jenkins goes on to caution that Jews and Christians are not more violent than Muslims, despite the differences in scripture.

Actually I figure Europeans polished off a good 70 million people in the 20th century, whereas Muslims probably killed no more than 2 million (mainly in the Iran-Iraq War and Afghanistan, the latter of which a European power provoked). But this vast difference is not because Christian-heritage Europeans are such worse human beings than Muslim Middle Easterners. Rather, Europe industrialized warfare first, and also had the political independence to launch wars.

My experience is, people are people. They're all equally capable of the same good and evil, across religions and cultures, and how much of each they commit has to do with both their opportunities and their character at any point in history.

The amazing thing is that the West has managed to convince itself that all its wars and killing were someone else's fault (even though it was mainly elements of the West fighting other elements of the West that produced the charnel houses of the twentieth century).


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Public left Cold by GOP opposition to Health Care Reform

Daily Kos analyzes a Kaiser poll showing that a majority of Americans does not care one way or another that the Republican Party opposes heath care reform. Among those who in the public have feelings on the matter, the opposition drives more to support it than to reject it.

Public support for the bill is also firming up, though it should be remembered that when pollsters explain to respondents what exactly is in the bill, support skyrockets-- many of its provisions get around two-thirds support.

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Obama Addresses Iran Again on Persian New Year; Mousavi pledges to fight on; Call for Release of Derakhshan, 'Blogfather'

Today Iranians mark Now Ruz, their ancient New Year's day, celebrated on the vernal equinox (which most often falls on March 21 but sometimes, as today, on the 20th). Now Ruz literally means "New Day." Persian is an Indo-European language ultimately related to English, and "now" (pronounced "no") and "new" are cognates.

As he did last year, President Barack Obama addressed Iran in a Now Ruz message. He renewed his offer of comprehensive diplomatic contacts with Tehran, decrying what he called the Iranian government's determination to isolate itself.

ITN has the video of the speech:



Obama pledged to allow more Iranian students to study in the United States, and noted the recent decision to lift obstacles to US internet firms supplying the Iranian market, including Facebook.

Obama's Iran outreach was stymied by the outbreak of massive protests in Iran after last June's presidential elections, which the opposition maintains were stolen by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It also ran into difficulties when the apparent deal struck at Geneva on October 1, and tentatively agreed to by the representative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was rejected on his return to Iran by hardliners, presumably in the Revolutionary Guards.

Obama's dogged determination to engage Iran and his decisions on exchange students and internet openness are far more likely to bear fruit than his predecessor's dismissive and belligerent policies. The resistance of the White House to a campaign by the Israel lobbies for crippling sanctions and even military action against Iran is one element in the tense relations between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi praised the Green protest movement in the past year and pledged to continue to work for a more open press and the right to assemble and protest (pro forma already in the Iranian constitution).

Human rights and internet activists called upon the regime to release Iran's "blogfather," Hosain Derakhshan, from prison. Derakhshan, then living in Canada, pioneered techniques for blogging in Persian and sparked a communications revolution in Iran.


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Cole on Aljazeera English re: Iraq

For the seventh anniversary of the launching of the Iraq War, Jasim al-Azzawi interviews Juergen Todenhoefer and myself:






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Jon Stewart on Weeping Beck

Jon Stewart uses satire to point to the real dangers of Glenn Beck's demagoguery (brought to you by the world's most evil billionaire, Rupert Murdoch)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Intro - Progressivism Is Cancer
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

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Jund Rocket Kills Thai Farm Worker in Israel; Israeli Jets Retaliate; Lady Ashton of EU calls for Resumption of Talks

The visit to Gaza of Lady Ashton, the head of foreign policy in the European Union, was marred Thursday when a small fringe militant group calling itself Jund Ansar al-Sunnah fired a homemade rocket at a nearby Israeli farm collective, killing a Thai immigrant farm laborer.

Aljazeera English reports on the rocket attack, the first to produce a fatality in over a year.



Lady Ashton said she was "extremely shocked" by the loss of life. But she said the right thing to do now is to quickly restart peace negotiations.

Israel has the civilian population of Gaza under a blockade, and has increasingly refused admission to foreign dignitaries and human rights workers.

Ashton herself had had to lobby vigorously and for some time to be allowed to enter Gaza. Relations between Israel and and Europe have been strained, inasmuch as the European parliament has pressured Israel to cease its blockade of Gaza, which harms civilians and constitutes a form of collective punishment-- illegal in the international law of occupations. The European parliament has also backed the Goldstone Report on Israeli atrocities and crimes during the Gaza War, and has urged EU member states actively to monitor Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. (This European assertiveness is new, since Europe had in the past deferred to the US and Israel on Mideast Policy. The Gaza War provoked public anger throughout Europe for its obvious use of disproportionate force and targeting of civilian infrastructure, as well as wilful disregard of civilian life).

FT says that since the end of the Gaza War, in which the Israeli military destroyed thousands of buildings, most of them civilian in character, left 1 in 8 families homeless, and killed 1400 Palestinians (14 Israeli troops were killed), there have been few such rocket attacks. Israel holds Hamas responsible for any that are launched, even if it is not responsible for them.

In response, on Friday morning Israeli fighter-jets bombed four targets in Gaza, including a tunnel and a metal foundry.

The violence comes in the wake of a diplomatic crisis between the US and Israel over the colonization of Palestinian territory annexed to East Jerusalem, which is analyzed by U of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer in the London Review of Books.

The Thai farmworker's death is, as Lady Ashton said, shocking and most lamentable. That it was a Thai who was killed, however, puts the spotlight on the plight of guest workers in Israel, many of whom are fighting deportation because Israeli policy is to offer permanent residency only to Jews.

Israel's population is about 7.5 million, with 5.6 million Jews. But there are some 800,000 Israelis residing outside Israel if one counts the second generation, and it is not clear whether they are counted in the census. Israel has a million and a half Arabs, and some 300,000 other non-Jewish citizens (many of them Russians).

Jewish-Israeli population growth has fallen to only 1.7 percent a year, while Palestinian-Israeli growth is 2.6 percent a year, suggesting that the latter will be a third of the population by 2030. Since the Rabbinate is resisting allowing conversions among the 300,000 classified as non-Jews, their proportion of the population may also grow.

The irony of Israel importing Thai and Filipino labor on a rotating basis while imposing a 45% unemployment rate on Gaza, is hard to miss.



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Jeffrey Goldberg: The Movie

Here is the video version of Jeffrey Goldberg's punditry on the Middle East.




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Panetta: Al-Qaeda Effectively Disrupted; Yemeni Killed in Drone Strike; Nearly 6,000 Pakistanis Killed in Terrorist Incidents since 9/11

CIA director Leon Panetta said Wednesday that US strikes against targets in northern Pakistan have left al-Qaeda in disarray and without the command and control necessary to plan and carry out major operations.

The US is claiming a big success in a precision strike on the town of Miranshah in North Waziristan, saying that it killed Husain Yemeni. Yemeni is said to be a liaison between al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Arabs holed up in North Waziristan, north Pakistan. He is also said to have been involved in the bombing of a CIA forward base in Afghanistan in late December, which killed several CIA operatives along with some contractors.

The News reports that: since 9/11 (102 months), Pakistan has suffered a major terrorist bombing roughly once every 10 days. Over these years, there were 332 'terrorism-related incidents,' which killed 5,704 persons (substantially more than died in the September 11 attacks). By city, terrorist bombings clustered this way:

Peshawar: 58 terrorist incidents
Rawalpindi/Islamabad: 46
Karachi: 37
Lahore: 21
Swat Valley: 21
Karachi: 21

In the troubled Northwest of the country, the Taliban of Miranshah in North Waziristan on Wednesday affirmed their commitment to an ongoing truce with the government. The truce is observed by Pakistan as it campaigns in South Waziristan, so as to be able to concentrate on one tribal area at a time. The truce is shaky, and was annulled last summer briefly by the Taliban.

Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus cautioned Pakistan that another terrorist attack on India such as Lashkar-e Tayyiba carried out on Mumbai could spark severe conflict in South Asia. Radicalism in Punjab of the Lashkar sort is an increasing concern among Pakistanis, as this Dawn editorial shows.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's two big rival parties, the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PMLN), have been roiled over comments earlier this week by Shahbaz Sharif, the Chief Minister of Punjab Province, who said that Taliban should not hit the Punjab, since Punjabis had been more or less on the same page in their opposition to military dictator Pervez Musharraf. On Wednesday, the Taliban showed interest in a truce with Sharif. The Pakistani public is outraged at the remarks, seen as cowardly and/or collaborationist.

Female member of parliament Nighat Orakzai (PML-Q) taunted Sharif that if he is so afraid of the Taliban, he can borrow her neck scarf (dupatta), which many Pakistani women wear on their shoulders instead of covering their faces. She dropped hers on the floor of Parliament.

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