Israel's Dangerous Game with Iran

The NYT has a must-read that examines the dangerous game that the US and Israel are playing with Iran, but shines perhaps the brightest spotlight on Israel's resort to one of its most-used tactics, historically: assassination.  In this instance, we're talking about assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.


As Glenn Greenwald has pointed it, what the Israelis are doing is terrorism.


And as two US experts point out in the NYT piece, the consequences down the line - for both Israel and the US - may be extremely dangerous.

William C. Banks, an expert on national security law at Syracuse University, said he believed that for the United States even to provide specific intelligence to Israel to help kill an Iranian scientist would violate a longstanding executive order banning assassinations. The legal rationale for drone strikes against terrorist suspects — that the United States is at war with Al Qaeda and its allies — would not apply, he said.

“Under international law, aiding and abetting would be the same as pulling the trigger,” Mr. Banks said. He added, “We would be in a precarious position morally, and the entire world is watching, especially China and Russia.”

Gary Sick, a specialist on Iran at Columbia, said he believed that the covert campaign, combined with sanctions, would not persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear work.

“It’s important to turn around and ask how the U.S. would feel if our revenue was being cut off, our scientists were being killed and we were under cyberattack,” Mr. Sick said. “Would we give in, or would we double down? I think we’d fight back, and Iran will, too.”

More perspectives on the danger - and stupidity - of the US+Israel current tactics are here.  And Juan Cole speculates (with some evidence to back it up, to some extent) that the latest assassination might have been a combined production of the Mossad and the anti-Iranian-regime group known as the MEK (Mujahedin e-Khalq), both of which have an established track record of terrorist assassinations.


At least the US has condemned the most recent assassination.  (It remains to be seen if the Israelis will get the message, but in an election season, don't expect Obama or Clinton to call them out on this.)


Doesn't it make sense that, at some point, the Iranians will find a way to retaliate?  The Iranian press is already calling for vengeance against Israel.

The US's "Clean" Exit from Iraq

As reported in the NYT.
We're closing down "Camp Victory" - and none too soon.
But please begrudge me an observation on a rather myopic comments by an Army "historian" (whose impartiality about the US adventure in Iraq will, I'm so sure, be impeccable).  The man is quoted as saying:

“We’re not taking anything that the Iraqis had. We are only taking stuff that we put in, we utilized, and when we didn’t need it anymore, we took it home.”

Well, golly, Mr. Army Historian, before we went in, at least 100,000 Iraqis (some say closer to a million) still had their lives, and thousands more had all their limbs, both eyes, and a measure of sanity.  They also had homes, and even livelihoods.
They also had a lot more of the remnants and records of their history.  But, that's OK.  Being the swell people that we are, we've boxed a lot of it up - like the records of its Jewish community, and the records of the Saddam era - and we're keeping it in storage for them.  (Well, on the other hand, there are all those ancient cylinder seals that keep popping up on eBay.)
But, hey, other than that, it's all good, right.  Like they always told us in that paramilitary organization known as the BSA (Boy Scouts of America), our job is to leave it better than we found it.
And I'm so sure the people of Iraq would agree that we did that.
Aren't you?

On Knee-Jerk Bomb-Iran-ers . . .

There are not that many commentators whose stuff I make a point of reading and bookmarking - but Paul Pillar is one of them.  His latest essay at The National Interest spotlights the useful idiots who seize upon virtually any incident as pretext to call for harsh measures against Iran.  And as he notes, this latest incident - of the US's alleged discovery of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US - as well as bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies - is such a botched piece of work as to call into question the nature of any Iranian involvement in it.

Another salient feature of the plot as detailed by the Justice Department is that it appears to have been designed with the intention of being discovered. This is related to the overall inept tradecraft but in particular to the sending of traceable quantities of money into the United States and the spilling of beans about supposed Iranian government involvement in open telephone calls to untrustworthy foreigners. If the plot was intended to be discovered, then presumably the motive of whoever concocted it was to escalate further the tension between Iran and the United States. A couple of possible instigators outside Iran come to mind; the most plausible ones inside Iran would be rogue elements. Whoever the instigator was, for the United States to respond by pressuring Iran more, and thus raising further the tension in the relationship, would be playing right into the intentions of whoever put the plot together.

A number of other expert commentators have weighed in with similar misgivings.  

• Juan Cole (at Informed Comment), who also cites former CIA agent Robert Baer in support, finds that the whole thing "makes no sense."
• Patrick Cockburn of The Independent claims that "This bizarre plot goes against all that is known of Iran's intelligence service."
• The WaPo's David Ignatius is - characteristically - more willing to accept the official US version and assignation of blame, but his essay about "those Keystone Iranians" suggests that he finds the entire episode rather cockamamie. (And for those not of a certain age, the "keystone" reference is to the prat-falling "Keystone Cops" of the silent-movie era; yes, kids, there was a time when movies had no sound.  Would that some actors took note.)
• Even Vali Nasr, who always plays his cards close to the vest when addressing a topic might incur the ire of the White House, hedges his remarks about the big mistake the Iranians might have made with the proviso, "If true."

As usual, Tony Karon nails down some of the colder realities of the situation:

The plot allegations . . . are unlikely to be a game changer in the long-running effort by the U.S. and its closest allies to isolate and pressure Iran over its nuclear program: Those already on board with that effort -- such as Britain and France -- are backing U.S. calls for action on the embassy plot; those skeptical or opposed to that effort appear less certain of just what the evidence presented thus far by the Administration actually means. 

It should come as no surprise that a scheme whose spectacular hokeyness is difficult to square with everything that is known about Iran's well-established methods for staging terror attacks -- and for which it's hard to provide a rational motive even in the context of Iran's intense regional power struggle with Saudi Arabia -- is proving difficult to pin on the Iranian government's decision makers. 

But, in need of some red meat to feed those (like Rick Perry) who find him weak in confronting "terror" and US enemies - and in backing Israel to the hilt - Mr. Obama is hardly about to look this gift horse in the mouth.  Karon again:

Obama's rhetoric was tough, insisting that Iran be made to "pay a price" the plot and warning that "no option would be taken off the table" in responding, which is code for the threat of military action.  Washington certainly seems to be scooping up everything it can find on alleged Iranian malfeasance to throw into the p.r. battle. U.S. and Saudi intelligence officials told the Washington Post that they believe that Iran was behind the May 16 killing of a Saudi diplomat in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Saudi officials are even taking the opportunity to blame Iran's Quds force for instigating the Bahrain democratic uprising -- a claim that is more likely to undermine the credibility of the p.r. effort than it is to enhance it, with the Saudi-led crackdown in Bahrain enjoying limited sympathy beyond those who support Riyadh's role as sectarian pugilist and enforcer of Arab autocracy.
U.S. military officials also told the New York Times that Quds-forced trained and funded militants had fired rockets at an American position in Iraq, Wednesday, wounding three G.I.s. Perhaps that's just coincidence, but a case seems to be being made that Iran is on the offensive, requiring a response.

And the usual AIPAC-bought, Israel-at-all-costs suspects are piling in.  Thus, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee:

“On October 11th, 2011, the United States approach to the Iranian regime should have undergone a major change,” yet “the administration does not plan to alter its course of pressure and persuasive engagement with the Iranian regime.”
“Let me be blunt,” Ros-Lehtinen added. “This planned murder-for-hire must serve as a wakeup call regarding the determination and capability of the Iranian regime.”

Chiming in, Islamophobe New York Congressman Peter King, who

 "called the Iranians’ alleged scheme to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington “an act of war” against the United States and Saudi Arabia." 

Misgivings or no, we can expect a full-court press from the GOP/neocon/Fox News crowd.  No chance, of course, that they'll heed - or even read - what the Leveretts have to say at CNN, in a piece titled Iranian Plots and American Hubris:

Iran's national security strategy ultimately depends on appealing to the Saudi public not to support attacks against Iran, by harnessing popular anger over Israeli actions and U.S. overreach in the war on terror.
Killing a Saudi Ambassador would have exactly the opposite effect. Whatever Mansour Ababsiar and his cousin may have talked about, it is wholly implausible that the Iranian leadership decided that this was a smart thing to do.
The Obama Administration's calls for more concerted action against Iran will ultimately backfire-because they will be seen in most of the Muslim world (outside Saudi Arabia and Gulf Arab monarchies closely linked to Saudi Arabia) as the United States yet again leveling dubious life-and-death charges as the pretext to contain or even eliminate another Muslim power.
President Obama, his advisers, and all Americans need to ask themselves if this is really the time to bring the United States even closer to another Middle East war fought in blind defiance of the region's strategic realities.

Turkey-Iran Joint Offensive vs. Kurd Resistance

As noted in the WaPo.
This surely injects into State Department thinking - and Congressional hem-twisting over Israel - even greater concern about Turkey's direction under PM Erdogan.  A country that had been both Israel's and the US's staunchest ally in the Middle East now purports to coordinate with the "mad mullahs" in military strikes against the Kurds.  And some of those strikes will undoubtedly cross into Iraqi Kurdistan, where the government has long relied on the US's backing.


And this atop Turkey's assurance to Iran that the NATO radar bases it will be hosting are no threat to Iran.

Discredited Neocons Ally with Obama on Libya War

As Barack Obama was wowing so many of us with his silver-tongued rhetoric during the 2008 election campaign, I daresay that not even the most imaginative - or crazed - Hollywood or TV script-writer could have come up with a scenario as surreal as what's now before our eyes.

The Barack Obama who campaigned against the hubris of a Bush administration that so wantonly arrogated war-fighting prerogatives to the executive branch is now - against the advice of some of his best experts - doing much the same with his ill-starred expedition to "save" Libya.   When accused by both his own liberal fellow Democrats and conservative Republicans in Congress of violating the War Powers Resolution, Obama shamelessly responded that the US - having supposedly handed off the Libya campaign to the US's NATO partners - was no longer engaged in "hostilities" in Libya.  That drew immediate condemnation from various quarters - among them, former CIA official Paul Pillar and Harvard's Stephen Walt, who asked Obama to stop insulting all of us with such a patently obvious example of legalistic sophistry.

The White House, nonetheless, stands by its version.

But word comes this evening (via the NY Times) that suggests that Obama was trying to slip one past us:

Since the United States handed control of the air war in Libya to NATO in early April, American warplanes have struck at Libyan air defenses about 60 times, and remotely operated drones have fired missiles at Libyan forces about 30 times, according to military officials.
The most recent strike from a piloted United States aircraft was on Saturday, and the most recent strike from an American drone was on Wednesday, the officials said.
While the Obama administration has regularly acknowledged that American forces have continued to take part in some of the strike sorties, few details about their scope and frequency have been made public.
The unclassified portion of material about Libya that the White House sent to Congress last week, for example, said “American strikes are limited to the suppression of enemy air defense and occasional strikes by unmanned Predator” drones, but included no numbers for such strikes.
The disclosure of such details could add texture to an unfolding debate about the merits of the Obama administration’s legal argument that it does not need Congressional authorization to continue the mission because United States forces are not engaged in “hostilities” within the meaning of the War Powers Resolution.

"Add texture"?  Gee, ya think?
And how about this for some added "texture"?

On Monday, a group that includes prominent neoconservative figures — including Liz Cheney, Robert Kagan, William Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz — sent Republicans an open letter opposing efforts to cut off funds for the mission.

That's right.  The same Robert Kagan, William Kristol, and Paul Wolfowitz who banged the war drums so ferociously during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq - the same Wolfowitz who insisted that the well-informed testimony of General  Eric Shinseki seriously over-estimated the number of US troops that would be needed to stabilize Iraq . . . . These neocon clowns who ought by now to have been thoroughly discredited and drummed out of any adult conversation on the application of US military force overseas. . . .  These are the people with whom Barack Obama now finds himself in common cause.

Bruce Crumley (at Time's Global Spin) recently pointed out that Obama's tactics have the potential to do grievous harm for years to come, not only to Obama's political fortunes but to American democracy:

the power-grab by an Obama White House seeking to avoid Congressional push-back (or even smack-down) on Libya marks an embrace of Bush administration tactics by a Democratic leader that seriously increases the likelihood such moves will become a sinister habit among future presidents of both parties. Bush may have set the precedent; Obama's move risks establishing it as an integral part of the presidential playbook. It also may have more immediate consequences. . . .  while legal history suggests the White House will be able to turn back court challenges by members of Congress complaining the War Powers Resolution is being violated, anger the move has sparked among Republicans and Democrats alike may cost Obama politically. The Libyan campaign is unpopular among public opinion, which is also seriously hacked off at seeing another war—or whatever you want to call it—sucking money from shrinking budgets as another period of economic sluggishness looks ready to set in. Seeking to ignore that displeasure by secluding the decision of prolonging the Libyan operation under a dome of presidential prerogative only seems certain to increase bubbling resentment.

Meanwhile, the US treasury hemorrhages money to cover the cost:

The Obama administration is spending almost $9.5 million every single day to blow things up in Libya because the president has determined that is in the country's national interest, this country's national interest, not Libya's. You may not have noticed the $392,542 flowing out of the national treasury every hour, day and night, since those first $1.5 million Tomahawks flashed from the launch tubes back on March 19.

At Asia Times, Victor Kotsev tells it like it is:

The stalemate can perhaps be broken by one of two developments [6]: if Gaddafi and a large part of his inner circle are physically eliminated, or if NATO sends ground forces into Libya. A number of NATO bombing raids in the last months looked very much like attempts on his life; one of them allegedly killed Gaddafi's obscure son Saif al-Arab and several of the colonel's grandchildren. . . . Even though it is hard to say how many people besides Gaddafi NATO would have to kill to bring down his regime, some NATO officials have already started to prevaricate (rather than issue denials) on whether Gaddafi is an official target of the campaign. . . . As for a ground invasion, this is an even riskier option, and a sign that NATO considers everything else to have failed. There are some indications, however, that the alliance is laying the groundwork for a potential land war in Libya, including the use of helicopters and the ratcheting up of war crimes allegations. Save for these two options, there seems to be little that can remove Gaddafi's regime from power. We should consider the colonel's tactical retreats in light of these threats. Should they fail to materialize, a stalemate in Libya seems to be practically assured down the road. Meanwhile, more chaos and confusion is in store.

Whatever his original honorable intentions in intervening in Libya, Obama is well on the way to sticking himself, his political prospects, and so much more,  to a new regime-change tar baby, just as George W. Bush did with Iraq - a military and fiscal debacles that insured Bush a place of infamy in the annals of history.  Obama needs to find a way to unstick himself, and the US, from Libya, and from the shameful new company he now keeps.

UPDATE: Tony Karon at Global Spin on what may lie ahead in Libya, especially in the wake of yesterday's botched NATO raid that killed civilians in Tripoli:

The Western powers and their regional allies can't allow themselves to lose in Libya, but they could lower the bar of what determines success: Short of a lucky "decapitation" strike that kills Gaddafi -- and perhaps even then -- the current level of NATO military commitments and the limited capabilities of the rebels point increasingly towards a stalemate in which neither the regime nor the rebels are able to deliver a knockout blow.

No surprise, then, that negotiations appear to be underway, with U.N. Secretary General reporting that he is encouraged by progress made by his envoy, former Jordanian foreign minister Abdul-Ilah al-Khatib, in brokering talks between the rebels and the regime aimed at achieving a political solution. Right now, the regime side is insisting that Gaddafi remain in power in some form, or at least remain in the country while one of his sons takes over the reins pending new elections. That's a formula that's unacceptable to the rebels -- who insist that no such talks are even underway. And NATO countries are unlikely to accept Gaddafi remaining in power. But Sunday's meeting in Cairo between the U.N., the Arab League and the European Union affirmed the urgency of finding a political solution in Libya.

Dependent financially and militarily on the backing of foreign countries, the rebels have limited muscle to enforce their will if it differs from that of their Western backers. Less may depend on what Benghazi is willing to accept than on what London, Paris and Brussels are willing to accept by way of an outcome. And Western powers have already made clear to the rebels that they will be expected, as a means of ending the conflict, to share power with a significant segment of those currently in the regime's camp.

So even before Sunday's "collateral damage" incident, it was becoming increasingly clear that what remains of the war "hostilities" right -- fierce as they could become in the weeks ahead -- now may be largely a matter of determining the shape of that compromise agreement under which Gaddafi is eased out.

The WSJ's Twisted Spin: Obama an "Anti-Israel President"

Bret Stephens' piece today is nothing if not over the top in its biased allegations and twisted spin in his assessment of Obama's recent pronouncements on the Arab Spring and the Israel-Palestine issue.  To wit:

it isn't often that this or any other U.S. president welcomes a foreign leader by sandbagging him with an adversarial policy speech a day before the visit.

Sandbagging?  Adversarial?  Stephens surely refers to Obama's reference to the 1967 borders as the starting point for negotiations, with appropriate swaps.  Nothing in that reference runs counter to decades of US policy concerning that issue.  Bibi and his people know that; or they have no excuse not to know it.  If Bibi felt sandbagged or picked on, that's on him, not on Barack.  In fact, one might just as easily make the case that Bibi was the more adversarial of the two with his day-after lecture, which tried to bully the US president in order to throw some rhetorical red meat to his Likudniks back home.

No U.S. president has explicitly endorsed the '67 lines as the basis for negotiating a final border, which is why the University of Michigan's Juan Cole, not exactly a shill for the Israel lobby, called it "a major turning point."

Explicitly or not, that has been US policy for many years (and that Juan Cole, for whose work I have great respect, called it a turning point mystifies me).  It explains why the US still refuses to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  It also explains the protests a few months ago when the US vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have reinforced the illegal status of Israel's settlements in the West Bank - a policy that, again, the US adheres to officially.

on Thursday Mr. Obama called for Israel to make territorial concessions to some approximation of the '67 lines before an agreement is reached on the existential issues of refugees and Jerusalem. . . .   the essence of his proposal is that Israel should cede territory, put itself into a weaker position, and then hope for the best. This doesn't even amount to a land-for-peace formula.

That Obama made no statement of US positions on refugees and Jerusalem is lamentable, but so is Stephens' use of "concessions" for an act that would put Israel on the right side of both international law and history: to return the West Bank to Arab Palestinian control.

Mr. Obama was also cheered for his references to Israel as a "Jewish state." But why then obfuscate on the question of Palestinian refugees, whose political purpose over 63 years has been to destroy Israel as a Jewish state?

No, their underlying purpose lies in their right - likewise enshrined in international law - to return to the homes and homelands from which they were driven, illegally and unjustly, beginning in 1947.

Nothing like chumming the water for Bibi's speech to Congress.  But I suppose one can't expect much different from a Wall Street Journal columnist whose previous employment was as editor at the Jerusalem Post.

I'd rather embrace the assessments of a long-time CIA official who has probably forgotten more about the history of US public diplomacy on this issue than Bret Stephens will ever know.  Paul Pillar writes at The National Interest: 

The drop-the-veil moment during this past week was the importunate lobbying by Netanyahu's government before President Obama delivered his Middle East speech [4] on Thursday at the State Department (and doesn't that say something right there—where else would one see a foreign government get in the last lobbying licks on a president's speech, even at the expense of delaying the speech?) to omit any mention of the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiating land swaps and an eventual territorial settlement. The president mentioned that anyway, and in the joint appearance on Friday Netanyahu said nothing about land swaps, instead denouncing the 1967 borders as not being a suitable basis for anything.

 

(Netanyahu, by the way, reiterated that position to AIPAC.)

More from Pillar:

 

As Mr. Obama correctly noted in his address to AIPAC [5] on Sunday, there was nothing new in his mention of 1967-borders-with-swaps. It has long been recognized as the only formula that has any hope of being the basis for a successful negotiation. It has been the basis for several official proposals, including one by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. It also has been at the center of several unofficial proposals, including ones from people whose concern for Israel cannot be doubted (such as a plan offered by David Makovsky [6] of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy).

So for Netanyahu, not only is the land allotted to the Jewish state in the UN partition plan of the 1940s not enough, and not only is the larger territory that became the State of Israel with what we call the 1967 borders not enough. Even with land swaps that would extend Israel farther into the West Bank and include the large majority of the settlements Israel has constructed on land seized in the 1967 war, that would still not be enough for him. How much would be enough? One can speculate on what crumbs of land would be left to the Palestinians, but speculation is not required to have an idea based on Netanyahu's own statements of what such a “state” would entail: Israeli control of the airspace, no military of its own [7], and, as the prime minister mentioned on Friday, a “long-term” Israeli military presence along the Jordan River. It sounds like a bantustan that would make Bophuthatswana look like a paragon of sovereignty. But trying to envision the details of such an entity is pointless because it is a non-starter very likely intended to be rejected. . . .

Dishonesty in his professed desire for a peace settlement and a Palestinian state was only one part of the deception Netanyahu has displayed this past week. Another part concerned his reasons for coveting all that land. This part of the duplicity derives from the nature of U.S. interests involving Israel. The United States has an interest in assuring the security of Israel. In his AIPAC speech, President Obama properly referred to this aspect of U.S.-Israeli relations as “ironclad.” But the United States has no positive interest in either party to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict acquiring title to land not because it is needed for security but instead for historical or religious reasons, or simply to acquire living space. The only U.S. interest is the negative one of being associated in the minds of much of the rest of the world with the Israeli occupation. So Netanyahu couched his denunciation of the 1967 boundary in security terms, saying (again ignoring what President Obama said about land swaps) that the boundary was “indefensible.”

Let's see—even if we ignore, as Netanyahu has, what would be needed for the Palestinians' security—how has that boundary figured into Israeli security in the past? In the one war that was fought across the boundary—the one in 1967—the Israeli Defense Forces conquered the entire West Bank in less than a week (while they also were taking the Golan Heights away from Syria and the Sinai away from Egypt). Since that war, the differential between Israel's military capability and that of its Arab neighbors has become if anything even greater (even just at the conventional level, without considering Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons beginning in the 1970s). Who would threaten Israel across that 1967 border? A demilitarized Palestinian “state”? Some rusty post-Cold War army from some other Arab country that somehow made it into the West Bank? For many years the biggest threat to Israelis' security has come not across a border beyond which Israel lacked control but instead from angry Palestinians in land that Israel does control. The idea of the 1967 border as indefensible is—given military realities in the Middle East—itself indefensible. And the notion that an Israeli-Palestinian boundary based on land swaps on either side of that border, and as part of a larger peace agreement, would threaten Israeli security is ludicrous.

Related articles

• Israel's 1967 borders 'indefensible', Netanyahu tells Aipac (guardian.co.uk)
• Netanyahu defiant on 1967 borders (bbc.co.uk)
• Bibi Caves At AIPAC: Obama Spooked Him (tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com)

Libya, Bahrain, Oil Prices - and Martian Landings

Sitting in a faculty meeting a couple of days ago, a colleague stunned all of us when he noted that when he referred to recent developments in Egypt while conversing with one of his (political science) students, the student peered at him with that glassy-eyed, deer-in-the-headlights look that so many of us know, and asked, "Huh? What are you talking about?"  You could have sworn that the student had just landed from Mars.

Segue now to local (Saginaw-Flint-Bay City, Michigan) TV news last night, with the lead story featuring 2 to 3 minutes of clumsy interviews at local gas pumps, with motorists pissing and moaning that the price per gallon had shot up as much as 30 cents in one day, but making no mention of any knowledge (or concern) as to why prices had shot up.  Only then - priorities properly established - did the news-show anchor cut in with all of 15 seconds of film from Libya, and dutifully read from the teleprompter that perhaps 300 have been killed.  

How can people with - at their fingertips, literally - so many potential avenues to be not-clueless, be so clueless?

Well, as Rami Khouri now hints (in the Daily Star) - and the CFR's Michael Levi warns (in Financial Times) - Americans had better start clueing in, pronto.  If current trends do indeed persist, and popular representation takes greater hold in oil-producing Arab countries, and "the people" (rather than "the regimes") take more charge of decision-making as to the disposition of petroleum resources - if America's ties to Middle Eastern oil go from Dick Cheney's wet dream to his worst nightmare - the "We the People of the United States" may begin to find that (to channel Cheney again) the "American [oil-based] way of life" is indeed "negotiable."

Levi warns us that 

New approaches to oil market speculation are also needed. The G20 is currently overhauling rules in response to the 2008 oil price spike, which saw prices rise to $147 a barrel. However this was driven by economic factors – particularly surging Chinese demand – not a geopolitical shock. The responses have, understandably, focused on how to deal most effectively with similar circumstances in the future.

The type of speculation that would follow disruptions in Saudi Arabia or Iran, however, could be different. In such cases speculators would be responding to elusive political changes, rather than steady economic developments. Speculation is normally healthy, but their moves could add volatility as panicked traders hoard oil. It would be wise to consider and, if necessary, prepare for exceptional new restrictions on speculation during such moments of extraordinary geopolitical stress.
None of these measures replaces the need for a long-term transformation in the global energy economy. But such broader thinking must not crowd-out short-term measures to cope with present problems. We don’t know how our newly globalised economy will respond to a sharp geopolitical oil price shock. But we should prepare, before we find out the hard way.

Rami Khouri's essay again reflects the excitement and optimism about the Arab future that have been so palpable ever since Mr. Mubarak bailed out to his villa. And he looks hopefully to a future when Arab peoples - not those autocrats who have been all too content to do the West's bidding when it comes to regulating and expending their countries' oil.  He's wise enough to recognize that that day may be a while in coming. Speaking first of Libya and Bahrain (where the outcomes still hang in the balance):

If these two states that are deeply anchored in the Arab oil and energy world pursue policies that are faithful to their people’s sentiments, we could see major changes in how Arab countries work more closely together to pursue more collectively beneficial domestic, regional and global policies (as Western Europe did after World War II, for example). More democratic Arab countries with plenty of money are likely to become more sovereign countries, rather than puppets of Western powers or hostages to Israeli concerns (for example, seeing their armed forces limited by what Israel allows Western countries to sell them).
Sovereign and wealthy Arab states that think for themselves are likely to make major adjustments in their relations with the three major non-Arab regional powers, namely Israel, Turkey and Iran. This would mean being more critical of Israel, less hostile to Iran, and more inclined to associate more closely with Turkey and its impressive economic and regional policies. If the United States, Europe and others abroad deal equitably with the Arabs, and also address Israel and Iran on the basis of law and legitimacy rather than naked self-interest driven by indigenous emotionalism and pro-Israeli political blackmail, they will find themselves welcomed as valuable friends and partners across the Arab world.
The changes under way in Tunisia and Egypt point the way to a historic change in how Arab countries are governed and what policies they pursue. The transformations that have been unleashed and are spreading across the region will need years to settle into a permanent pattern of new policies and governance systems. When such changes reach the Arab countries associated with oil and energy, like Libya and Bahrain, as has been happening these weeks, the stakes suddenly become much greater.
From the perspective of the citizens of these countries, however, the process at hand is the same. Arab men and women want to be treated like human beings and citizens, with God-given human and civil rights. The advent of citizens with full rights and freedoms in Arab oil-producing states is a novelty that they and the world have never known. We should welcome it with open arms, because it may mark a very important boost to the development of the entire Arab region in a more rational, balanced, sustainable and accountable manner than has happened in the last several generations.

As Egypt and Yemen Erupt, and Tunisia Reorganizes, Baghdad Explodes . . . and Israel Worries

It is, of course, much too early to claim that a new era has begun among the "Arab moderate" autocracies, but a look at today's happenings suggests that a lot of people in a lot of Foreign Ministries (and the US DoS) are doing a lot of re-thinking.  Protests are continuing into a third day in Egypt, where young people who'd seemingly been content to talk the revolution talk over the internet are now organizing and coming onto the streets.  Thousands are marching on the streets of Sana in Yemen, demanding that the repressive regime of gerontocrat President Saleh step down.  Meanwhile, in Tunisia, violence on the streets has subsided (which likely explains why the major newspapers report little from there today), but the government is engaged in a reshuffling that will likely entail major consequences for the future of democracy there - and the extent to which Islamist parties there will be enbraced or excluded.


But Egypt is getting a huge percentage of the attention, for good reason.  It is the most populous of the Arab countries; it has been (with Iraq) one of the two traditional political and cultural capitals of the Middle East; it has been widely regarded as perhaps the most important of the US's "moderate" Arab allies, for which it has received billions of US $$; and it is one of only two Arab countries (along with Jordan, another "moderate" autocracy) to have concluded a peace treaty with Israel - something to which both Israel and the US have pointed with pride for more than 30 years.


But the great fear now is that that may be in jeopardy.  Though officially at peace, Israel-Egypt relations have been mostly cold.  The treaty Sadat signed 30+ years ago has never been warmly embraced by most of Egypt's people (although it did get the Sinai back for Egypt), in part because it has helped give political cover to the Mubarak regime's collusion with Israel to keep undermine Hamas in Gaza. (Hamas, remember, is a Palestinian affiliate of the Egyptian-founded Muslim Brotherhood, the single most popular organized - and outlawed - opposition group that threatens Mubarak's regime.)  If Mubarak tumbles (which is the oft-expressed wish and intention of the protesters), the treaty with Israel may be put back on the table by a new government.  As the NYT reported a couple of days ago, Israel is worried, but can't do much about it except look on from the sidelines, and hope that Mubarak crushes the protesters and restores (here's that word again) "stability."  The US wants that stability restored at least as much as the Israelis do.  The WaPo today is slapping Obama and Clinton on the back for, in their spin, coming out in favor of the protesters.  But what Hillary wants is more engagement between Mubarak's regime and the pro-democracy forces; the pro-democracy forces want Mubarak and his cronies - and his hyper-repressive security forces - out.  There's a real disconnect there.  As Egyptian democracy advocate Muhammad el-Baradei noted yesterday, Obama-Clinton seem more concerned about "stability" than anything else:

 “ ‘Stability’ is a very pernicious word . . . . Stability at the expense of 30 years of martial law, rigged elections?” He added, “If they come later and say, as they did in Tunis, ‘We respect the will of the Tunisian people,’ it will be a little late in the day.”

And don't look now, but it may be getting very much later in the day for Mr. al-Maliki in Iraq.  Another car bomb went off at a Shiite funeral in Baghdad today, with at least 48 killed and 120+ wounded.  Even more ominously for al-Maliki's fledgling new regime government, the massacre occurred in an area of Baghdad that is a stronghold of popular support for Muqtada al-Sadr, who only days ago - in his triumphal, though abbreviated, return to Iraq - publicly proclaimed what amounted to very conditional support for Maliki.  (He declared, "We're watching.")  As the WaPO report also notes, the area also happens to have recently fallen under the influence of a radical and violent breakaway Shiite group, Asaib al-Haq.  The AP (via NPR) reported:

 Associated Press Television News footage showed broken plastic chairs overturned inside the tent, while broken tea cups and other debris covered the patterned rugs on the floor. A mourner held up a torn, blood-soaked dishdasha, traditional dress worn by Iraqi men. . . .

Young men furious over the lack of security began pelting Iraqi security forces at the scene with stones. Anger was still high three hours later, and Iraqi troops fired in the air to disperse a crowd of residents gathering elsewhere in the neighborhood for a demonstration against the failure to prevent the bombings. Police said some in the crowd fired back as Iraqi helicopters buzzed overhead.

A witness who identified himself as Abu Ahmed al-Saiedi said mourners had been allowed to park near the funeral tent because most people in the neighborhood knew each other.  "I blame the neighborhood security officials for letting this car bomb enter the area without being checked," said al-Saiedi, who was hit in the arm with shrapnel. "When I saw people hurling stones at security men, I said to myself, 'They deserve that.'"