A Tangle in the Loom: WikiLeaks and Iran

The recent thread of WikiLeaks sheds light on a foreign policy problem of nuclear proportions.

In the past week, thousands of important documents and information have been leaked from various U.S. government agencies on WikiLeaks. The leaks are controversial, not only for their sheer number, but for release of cables and conversations between U.S. and very high-ranking officials from other countries. The leaks even prompted Barack Obama to enact new sanctions on Iran today. These sanctions blacklist 10 Iranian businesses connected to the Islamic Republic’s national bank and shipping lines, as well as five executives of these businesses.

On Monday, November 29, 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad referred to the leaked documents as “American psychological warfare that would not affect his country’s relations with other nations.” While Ahmadinejad and his administration might be crediting the U.S. bureaucracy with a bit too undeserved organizational skills by calling the leaks “organized to be released on a regular basis,” the leaked documents definitely confirm prevalent theories about the relations between Iran and its Arab gulf state neighbors and its aspirations for regional hegemony.

It is well-known that Saudi Arabia and Iran are vying for regional hegemony, with Iran’s relative conventional military power and sphere of influence giving it a strong edge over the Saudi kingdom. Not only does this allow Iran to influence the trajectories of Iraq and Afghanistan, thus extending its regional influence, its status as a regional hegemon tips the regional balance of power away from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states that have alliances with the United States. Feeling threatened by such expanding Iranian influence even in the face of decades of sanctions, it is hardly surprising that the Saudi regime harbors strong animosity for the Khamenei’s. However, it was previously unknown that the Saudi-Iranian enmity went so far that Saudi Arabian King Abdullah repeatedly begged the United States to “‘cut off the head of the snake’ by launching military strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear program,” one of the final pieces of Iranian policy that would enable it to secure the role of an undisputed regional hegemonic power. In order to curb Iranian influence, the United States announced in October of 2010 that it will sell $60 billion worth of military aircraft to the Saudi regime.

Saudi Arabia is not the only gulf state feeling pressure to eliminate Iranian challenges to the current balance of power. King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain argued in favor of forceful action by any means necessary to eliminate the Iranian nuclear program. Bahrain, a tiny kingdom on the Persian Gulf that is home to the American Fifth Fleet’s naval base, has been feeling Iranian pressure and influence for years. In July of 2007, Iranian advisor to Khamenei Hossein Shariatmadari stated that “The public demand in Bahrain is the reunification of this province with its motherland, the Islamic Iran.” An unnamed senior Omani military official (Oman being the country that helped secure the release of American Sarah Shourd from Evin Prison), is cited in a correspondence as unable to decide which would be worse – “a strike against Iran’s nuclear capability and the resulting turmoil it would cause in the Gulf, or inaction and having to live with a nuclear-capable Iran.” In a December 2005 meeting with American military commanders, United Arab Emirates defense chief and crown prince Mohammad bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi lobbied for American military action against Iran either “this year or the next.” Bin Zayed also expressed fears of a nuclear Iranian state, declaring that “any culture that is patient and focused enough to spend years working on a single carpet is capable of waiting years and even decades to achieve even greater goals.”

While Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, on MSNBC Live is not the best interviewer, the answers provided by Doctors Juan Cole and Trita Parsi in this brief interview are very informative and discuss the fears of changing regional balances of power.

Meanwhile, tensions in the region build as Israeli public opinion and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu perceive a growing, intolerable Iranian nuclear threat. Ehud Barak and prominent members of the Israeli intelligence community argue that Iran is not an existential threat nor is Israel the primary target of Iranian ambitions. Even Syrian president Bashar al-Assad argues that Iran will not use a nuclear weapon against Israel, stating that “an Iranian nuclear strike against Israel would result in massive Palestinian casualties, which Iran would never risk.” However, Iranian weapons purchases from North Korea does little to convince the public and Israeli politicians writ large of this understanding. Netanyahu views the WikiLeaks as something positive for Israel, confirming his suspicions about Iranian nuclear ambitions and showing the extent to which Israel and Arab states share a strong mutual interest in preventing Iranian hegemonic aspirations.

Tensions continue to escalate between these states and power blocs in the Middle East. Yesterday, two prominent Iranian nuclear scientists, both professors at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, were attacked in different parts of Tehran. Assailents on motorcycles managed to attach and detonate magnetized car bombs to the cars of scientists Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi, the former killed and the latter injured with his wife. Shahriari was involved in a major project with Iran’s nuclear agency, and Abbasi is a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and listed as one of several involved in secret nuclear activity in a 2007 U.N. resolution. Abbasi was formerly an expert for Iran’s Defense Ministry and a top specialist in nuclear isotope separation. The Iranian regime currently blames Israel and the United States for orchestrating these attacks. Intelligence analysts blame Mossad for the 2007 death of top Esfahan uranium plant scientist Ardeshire Hassanpour. In January of 2010, Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was also killed, but it is unclear whether his death was related to his support of Mir Hossien Mousavi or an Israeli/American operation; he also died in a car bombing similar to that of Shahriari.

The WikiLeaks available thus far clearly confirm the fears of Arab gulf states and seem to perpetuate Israeli public opinion and Netanyahu’s threat perceptions of Iran. In moving forward from the latest sanctions on Iran, the United States must decide how to manage these states’ interests to balance with its own in the Middle East and avoid yet another military conflict that would have, in Barak’s words, “unacceptable collateral damage,” on all sides.

iSeeYou! Big Brother Issues iMacs

While the Harrington High School teen's story seems disturbing, it seems to be equally extreme to remove these types of tracking technologies off of computers in the event that they are stolen. In this particular instance, based on the one-sided comments of the plaintiffs, the school's actions crossed the line when, after reaching an agreement about the computer insurance fee and realizing that the computer was not in fact stolen, chose to repeatedly activate the photo-tracking technology and delete the pictures.

However, the family is also responsible for reading and understanding the terms of the agreement regarding the insurance fee and what programs will be activated. These tracking technologies, while out of place in this particular instance, are a valuable security measure for recovering a missing or stolen computer (as long as the thief is not smart enough to cover the microphone and camera) and it makes sense for the school to have such measures in place. CNN reports that "the school district installed the LANrev webcam security system for use if the laptop is reported lost, missing or stolen."

Unfortunately, this story does not make clear the response of the Lower Merion School District school district nor its current actions after the Robbins family filed their lawsuit. According to this article, "both state and federal officials are investigating the district for possible wiretap violations."

The New York Times reports that "using this surveillance capability, school officials found images that led them to believe that Blake Robbins, a 15-year-old student, was using illegal drugs. Mr. Robbins said the 'pills' he was seen consuming were Mike and Ike candies." However, if the purpose of the camera activation technology is to prevent theft or damage to the laptops, as the school states, then it is irrelevant whether or not the school thought that the student was consuming illegal drugs, as the computer was not damaged nor was it stolen. As the editorial in the New York Times pointedly argues, "If the district was really worried about losing the laptops, it could have used GPS devices to track their whereabouts or other less-intrusive methods. Whatever it did, the school had a responsibility to inform students that if they accepted the laptops, they would also accept monitoring."

Yes, the school district does bear the responsibility of informing the students about the technology with which the laptops are equipped, but in the digital age, it is also important for individuals to know and understand these technologies and their proper usage. The laptops did not belong to the students and if the students take them home under the terms of the agreement made with the school, it seems unreasonable to expect complete privacy using property belonging to a public school district. Despite all of these factors, based on the available information, the school district grossly overstepped its rights when realizing that, as the laptop was not missing, damaged, or stolen, and still chose to activate and reactivate the software.

Back to Work

President Obama gets right back to work after Inauguration festivities signing some pretty serious executive orders. The first, a salary freeze on top executive branch officials (such as the national security adviser, press secretary, and White House counsel) earning more than $100,000 per year. Says President Obama, "Families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington."

The second act declared Guantanamo Bay and other secret prisons abroad to close within a year. The act also banned harsh interrogation methods, such as waterboarding, and directed interrogators to follow the guidelines in the Army Field manual which explicitly ban threats, coercion, waterboarding, and physical abuse.

"The message that we are sending the world is that the United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism and we are going to do so vigilantly and we are going to do so effectively and we are going to do so in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals," the president said.

I think little Sasha says it all.


For more information, please click here.

For information from the New York Times, please click here.

The Real Mavericks

The New York Times published an article stating the true origen of the McCain campaign's buzz word. Check it out:

Who You Callin’ a Maverick?

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: October 4, 2008

There’s that word again: maverick. In Thursday’s vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican candidate, used it to describe herself and her running mate, Senator John McCain, no fewer than six times, at one point calling him “the consummate maverick.”

But to those who know the history of the word, applying it to Mr. McCain is a bit of a stretch — and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit offensive.

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.

Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.

This Maverick’s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq.

Terrellita Maverick, sister of Maury Jr., is a member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.”

“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”

“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”

The McCain Roller Coaster

You must be at least 54" tall to ride the Straight Talk Express.

The McCain campaign has been going through some ups and downs lately, while Barack Obama is flying high on his world trip.

Last Friday, McCain submitted an op-ed about Iraq to the New York Times after Obama's was published four days before. On Monday, the Drudge Report, erm, reported that the Times asked McCain to rewrite it, as it largely criticized Obama's plan and presented no strategic vision of his own. Once this story broke, conservatives were immediately up in arms about media bias.

Two things: (1) There isn't really any bias here: The Times will gladly publish what McCain has to say, as soon as he has something substantive to say. True, Obama's op-ed criticized Bush and McCain, but it largely laid out (and made the case for) his own plan. McCain's simply tore Obama down. (2) Why didn't the Times simply avoid conservatives' grumbling about media bias, publish the editorial in the first place, and watch as others criticized McCain's criticism and lack of a coherent strategy?

The Times may have caused conservatives to rally around McCain, but now, with Obama largely succeeding abroad, Maliki supporting Obama's 16-month withdrawal timetable, and Bush negotiating with the Iranians, McCain seems to have lost his foreign-policy cred...and his temper. His comment that "Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign," is a sign of unpresidential frustration.

But McCain's foreign policy ideas have largely been ridiculous from the start: Permanent bases in Iraq? Militancy with Iran? Removing Russia from the G-8 (which is impossible, considering that the other member nations would have to agree) and establishing a "League of Democracies" that would only ostracize the Russians and freeze Russo-American relations to nearly Cold War levels?

In short: "He has appeared brittle and inflexible, slow to adapt to changes on the ground, slow to grasp the full implications not only of the improving situation in Iraq but also of the worsening situation in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan."

And that's why for all of his experience, John McCain's foreign-policy views are worse than Barack Obama's.

"War is Peace"

Leave it to the Chinese government to restrict protests, then twist events, and intensify martial law, while simultaneously denying their crimes. This time, the Chinese government has turned a week of the most intense protesting seen in Tibet and the rest of the world in decades into yet another myth. As Jim Yardley of The New York Times reports,

BEIJING — Thousands of Buddhist monks and other Tibetans clashed with the riot police in a second Chinese city on Saturday, while the authorities said they had regained control of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, a day after a rampaging mob ransacked shops and set fire to cars and storefronts in a deadly riot.

Residents in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, walked through Barkhor, an ancient part of the city where protesters had set fire to a shop and several vehicles on Friday. Conflicting reports emerged about the violence in Lhasa on Friday. The Chinese authorities denied that they had fired on protesters there, but Tibetan leaders in India told news agencies on Saturday that they had confirmed that 30 Tibetans had died and that they had unconfirmed reports that put the number at more than 100.
Chinese authorities defended their response to the violence in Lhasa. “We fired no gunshots,” said Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Government, according to state media.

But Tibetan advocacy groups and witnesses in Lhasa offered contradictory accounts. The Tibetan government in exile said at least 30 Tibetans died in the protests, according to Agence France-Presse. Witnesses told Radio Free Asia, the nonprofit news agency financed by the United States government, that numerous Tibetans were dead. A 13-year-old Tibetan boy, reached by telephone, said he watched the violence from his apartment and saw four or five Tibetans fall to the ground after military police officers fired upon them.

The protests also disprove yet another lie propagated by Chinese authorities.

The tumult also undercuts a theme regularly promoted by China’s propaganda officials — that Tibetans are a happy minority group, smoothly integrated into the country’s broader ethnic fabric.

It is sad that such a peaceful people simply desiring freedom and democracy are only noticed as endangered by a repressive government when they are provoked to lashing out in violence against an oppressor infinitely larger than themselves. As Wolf Blitzer reports,


Clearly, people across the world are calling for action to prevent the genocide China has engaged in since 1949 that has been largely ignored by the international community. The plight of the Tibetan people is one that is rooted in the minds of all people, regardless of their origin. As a promoter of democracy and a nation vowed to uphold the Geneva Conventions, the United States is in a key position of influence to encourage and persuade the Chinese government to stop its murderous campaigns and allow Tibet to uphold its culture and the democracy they desire through meaningful autonomy.

Or, better yet, independence.

For the rest of the story, click here.

For more by Jim Yardley, click here.

War and Politics

Daily Kos' Michael Clark sure draws interesting analogies. Mostly citing his support for the surge in Iraq and his deference towards President Bush at a recent press conference, John McCain is apparently Hubert Humphrey to Bush's LBJ and will thus experience the same sort of political failure in '08 that Humphrey did in '68.

Meanwhile, New York Times' Stanley Fish makes an equally interesting but opposite argument--McCain's positioning on Iraq would help him win a general against Barack Obama:

On the one hand, [McCain] voted to authorize the invasion. On the other, he consistently disagreed with the administration’s prosecution of the war in general and with the judgment of defense Secretary Rumsfeld in particular. And on the third hand, he advocated for a course of action that was at last implemented in the so-called “surge,” and with some success.

So, at any moment, he would be able to present himself as a strong patriot, and at another moment as a critic of the hard-line hawks, and at still another as a hard-line hawk with more experience and military knowledge than the others...

[Obama's stance is] inflexible and without nuance. McCain can ask, 'Don’t you see that the situation has changed in recent months, and shouldn't a responsible leader adjust his or her stance according to the facts on the ground?' And he can add, 'I too had my doubts about the conduct of the war, but now a policy I long advocated has been put in place with good results.'

I think neither Clark nor Fish are completely right. I think Iraq will definitely be a liability for McCain. Sure, he could argue that the surge has helped reduce violence in Iraq, but the main purpose of the surge was political reconciliation. The greatest achievement the Iraqi Parliament has to show for itself is adopting a new flag...that the Sunnis refuse to fly. Obama would argue that the only thing that would allow reconciliation in Iraq is the realization that American troops will not be there forever, despite McCain's rhetoric of a 10,000-year occupation.

I also believe McCain would try to paint himself as "patriot/critic/hawk," and not be yoked by Bush. But Fish overlooks one thing: I was alive in 2004; does he really expect me to believe that the American electorate would choose the flip-flopper over the resolute?

More Irony

Frank Rich's Sunday editorial, "The Audacity of Hopelessness," is amazing and worth reading in its entirety. Here are some excerpts:

It’s not just that [Hillary Clinton's] candidacy’s central premise — the priceless value of “experience” — was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco [Iraq]. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination — “It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November — she was routed by an insurgency.

The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup....

The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating....

In the last battleground, Wisconsin, the Clinton campaign was six days behind Mr. Obama in putting up ads and had only four campaign offices to his 11. Even as Mrs. Clinton clings to her latest firewall — the March 4 contests — she is still being outhustled. Last week she told reporters that she “had no idea” that the Texas primary system was “so bizarre” (it’s a primary-caucus hybrid), adding that she had “people trying to understand it as we speak.” Perhaps her people can borrow the road map from Obama’s people. In Vermont, another March 4 contest, The Burlington Free Press reported that there were four Obama offices and no Clinton offices as of five days ago. For what will no doubt be the next firewall after March 4, Pennsylvania on April 22, the Clinton campaign is sufficiently disorganized that it couldn’t file a complete slate of delegates by even an extended ballot deadline.

Sidenote #1: From Time magazine's Swampland blog:

"While [the Clinton campaign advisers] were busy 'discovering' the rules, however, the Obama campaign had people on the ground in Texas explaining the system, organizing precincts, and making Powerpoints. I know because I went to one of these meetings a week ago. I should have invited [Clinton's chief strategist] Mark Penn I suppose."

Rich continues:

This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid....

As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country.

Sidenote #2: Mark Penn's tendency to marginalize states where Obama won was labelled the "insult 40 states strategy" by Daily Kos, but I prefer "Is Your State Insignificant According to Hillary?":

#1. States that have a lot of black people are insignificant and are not quality. (sorry Alabama, DC, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland and South Carolina).

#2. Small states are insignificant and are not quality. (sorry Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, North Dakota and Utah).

#3. States in the middle of the country are insignificant and are not quality. (sorry Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and North Dakota).

#4. States that have a lot of Mormons are insignificant and are not quality. (sorry Utah)

#5. States that run caucuses are insignificant and are not quality. (sorry Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, North Dakota and Washington)

It's All in the Paradigm

I have to give a shout out to the Drudge Report (http://www.drudgereport.com/) for this one.

Anybody with at least slight misgivings about all the fuss regarding global warming might be interested to know that, according to a column by Lorne Gunter in the NationalPost.com on February 25th (http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=332289), the northern hemisphere is currently experiencing an uncharacteristically cold winter. The article reports that based on data from the US National Climatic Data Center, the average temperature for American cities in January '08 was three tenths of a degree Fahrenheit cooler than the average of that month for the twentieth century.

Whats more, Toronto was smashed with seventy centimeters of snow two weeks into this month, breaking the record of 66.6 cm. That record dates back to 1950, and was the total for the entire month - not just the first half.

Asia has been hit hard, as well. China is experiencing the worst winter there in a century, and the article says cities there have been brought to a standstill. Power lines were brought down by snow and ice, and conditions were too harsh to hazard any repairs, leaving residents with out power for as long as several weeks. According to the article, with all things considered, Siberia, Mongolia, China, in addition to northern North America, are covered in more snow than those continents had been since 1966.

Finally, the most notable and important tidbit concerns that arctic sea ice that we hear so much about. Records indicate that substantial amounts of that ice have been lost due to global-warming-induced melting. In fact, melting has caused the reduction of the ice to the lowest point on record. However, you might be intrigued to learn that these records only date back to 1972. Surely, thirty-six years is nowhere near an adequate amount of time to determine a trend for as grand a system as global climate.

Of course, somebody is going to tell me that after the warming, there's going to be cooling. After all, that's how it happened in The Day After Tomorrow. But according to Bernard Goldberg, author of Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right (HarperCollins, 2007), the debate over global warming hasn't always been about global warming. In fact, in regards to the "global climate change" debate, as you may have noticed it is increasingly called as of late, a study by the Business and Media Institute shows that the New York Times and Time magazine have interchangeably run stories about global cooling and global warming for more than a century, beginning with cooling in 1895, warming in 1933, back to cooling as late as 1975, and back to the warming paradigm, which we are currently hearing about (see pages 67-69). In short, they don't know what they are talking about, and there is no way for anyone to be sure. Earth's weather makes up such a complicated system that it is folly to believe that any trends could be identified in a thirty-year sample, despite the argument from some.

My point isn't that we're about to tumble head first into an ice age. It's that Mother Nature has far more up her sleeve than we can correctly evaluate in such a short time span. Before we make stupid decisions regarding the need to reduce our carbon footprint (and how to do so), following the example of a man who buys "carbon credits" from his own company, we need to realize that there are much larger natural forces at work. Surely, it would be egotistical folly to say that our understanding of said forces can be derived from slivers of time, taken as samples that are supposedly representative of the entire climatic history of our planet.