Russia, Iran and Syria respond to Trump’s Threats

By | Apr. 13, 2018 |
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

The UK-based Arabic language daily, al-Arabi al-Jadid (a secular, left-leaning newspaper helmed by Azmi Bishara from Qatar) reports on the responses of Syria and its allies to sabre-rattling from Trump and from the UK and France.

A key advisor to Ali Khamenei, Iran’s clerical leader, is in Syria to take stock after the military success in retaking the East Ghouta neighborhood near Damascus from Salafi Jihadi rebels. The latter part of that campaign, last Saturday, allegedly involved the use by the Bashar al-Assad government of a barrel bomb loaded with chlorine and a nerve agent, which killed some 70 persons, mostly noncombatants and including children. The gas attack has provoked Donald Trump and the governments of Theresa May in the UK and Emmanuel Macron in France to plan for a possible punitive set of air strikes on Syrian air force facilities.

The Iranian adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, said in a news conference with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad that Syria is more prepared than in the past to face what is coming. He charged that the United States directed the launching of the civil war in Syria and took part in it extensively. (The first part of this allegation is not true; the Syrian uprising of 2011 was indigenous, not a CIA covert operation. Once the regime turned it into a civil war by using massive military force on civilian, peaceful protesters, the US did give some billions in aid via Saudi Arabia to some 40 “vetted” guerrilla groups it said were unconnected to al-Qaeda or extremism. The US role appears to have been much larger than the press reported at the time, but Russian and Iranian investments clearly outweighed it in the end in any case.) What’s left of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 is now a mere handmaiden of secular Baath dictators and neo-imperialist Russian oligarchs.

Velayati dismissed Trump, whom many in the Middle East had initially admired on his election, as having become a mere laughingstock.

Bashar al-Assad in his remarks warned that a Western strike on his country would accomplish nothing but to destabilize regional security. He complained that every victory Syria gained was met with Western cries and movements in hopes of altering the course of events. They are the ones, he said, who are harming international peace and security.

Meanwhile, a Russian spokesman confirmed that Russian and US military officers were using intensively the “deconfliction” telephone line to ensure that no step is taken that would spark conflict between the two powers.

BBC monitoring paraphrases a column by Alexander Atasuntsev and others at the liberal business daily RBC . He quotes retired Col. Andrei Payusov as predicting that any US strikes on Syria would be “superficial” and affect only “minor” targets announced in advance. He complained that this sort of US showboating aims at trying to reverse its weakening position in the Middle East brought about by Russian successes. He said that the US would choose targets and bases where there was no chance of hitting Russian troops. Other Russian experts quoted in the article, however, could not rule out the possibility of a clash between the United States and the Russian Federation in Syria.

Now that’s scary.

——

Bonus video:

Sky News: “Russia warns it will protect its people in Syria”

Posted in Featured,Syria | 1 Response | Print |

Why Trump can’t reverse Syrian regime dirty win in Ghouta & why Iran is Gloating

By | Apr. 12, 2018 |
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

The Trump administration and the May government in the UK seem poised to launch missile strikes on Syria in the near future. It probably won’t matter.

The Syrian regime figures it can take the punishment, which is likely to consist of another set of one-off missile strikes similar to those launched on the Shuayrat Base in spring of 2017 after a chemical weapons attack by the regime in Khan Sheykhoun. Syrian and Iranian troops are said to be quietly deserting major air force bases, temporarily relocating outside them, in anticipation of the strikes.

The Syrian regime has all but won the civil war. It has all the major cities–Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia, Homs, and even Hama. It controls what the French colonialists used to call “useful Syria,” the band of fertile land stretching from Damascus to the north in the west of the country. While it has lost the ten percent of the population that is Kurds in the northeast, the Syrian Kurds are not regime enemies and likely will be forced into an alliance with Damascus over time in the face of attacks by Turkey and by fundamentalist Arab militias backed by Turkey.

ISIL has been largely defeated as a territorial force, though it holds out in some small pockets in the east.

h/t Al Jazeera

There were three remaining significant enclaves of resistance to the regime in Arab Syria. They were Idlib (a province in the northwest) and the area north of Aleppo; East Ghouta, a set of suburbs of Damascus of some 350,000 inhabitants just east of the capital; and the far south and southwest of the country (Deraa and the Golan Heights). There are a few other minor rebel outposts, for instance in the Qalamoun mountains on the Lebanese border or outside Hama. They are not militarily important and more an annoyance for the regime than anything else.

Although Russia has offered the rebels “de-escalation zones,” a sort of temporary cease-fire, these turn out to be a way to nurse regime strength while preparing for further assaults on the rebels. East Ghouta was such a zone. The government of Bashar al-Assad maintains that Damascus took regular mortar fire from the Salafi Jihadi militias that had come to control the three major districts of East Ghouta. In any case, during the past two months the Syrian Arab Army, with air support from the Russian Aerospace Forces, began a brutal battle of conquest against East Ghouta. Two the the districts and their guerrillas surrendered, agreeing to go north to Idlib. About half the population of East Ghouta appears by now to have gone with them.

The third district, Douma, was dominated by the Saudi Arabian proxy, the Army of Islam. It had a problem with going to Idlib since it is at war not only with the regime but with the other hard line Salafi guerrillas who dominate that northern province, especially the Levantine Liberation Council (HTS), the core of which is the old Nusra Front with its ties to al-Qaeda and 9/11 mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The Army of Islam was inflicting substantial casualties on the elite Panther Brigade (Syrian Arab Army special operations forces) who led the invasion of Douma last week. The Army of Islam refused to surrender and said they wanted to work out a deal to remain in Douma. This was a non-starter for Bashar al-Assad, who wanted all the rebel bases near the capital completely gone. But my hypothesis is that he could not risk losing more troops from the crack Panther Brigades.

So he decided to send down a barrel bomb of mixed chlorine and sarin gas on Douma. Perhaps he just meant to kill a dozen or two dozen Army of Islam fighters. Instead, the gas killed around 70 people, including mostly civilians and some children, and the relief workers in the enclave got video and blew the whistle on the regime. Al-Assad brazenly committed a war crime, confident that the Russian Federation would protect him from its consequences.

While the focus of the Western press has been on the response from Trump, who considers chemical use a red line that requires a US military response, it has been little noted that al-Assad’s ploy worked.

The Army of Islam leaders abruptly surrendered, perhaps under severe pressure from Douma’s terrified civilian population, who did not want to be further gassed so that the Saudi-backed Salafis could go on trying to save face.

Late Wednesday, a Russian spokesman at Latakia announced that as they departed Douma, the 8,000 Army of Islam fighters surrendered four hundred pieces of military equipment, light and heavy. Some 41,000 people have left Douma this spring through Russian checkpoints, 12,000 of them in April alone. They seem to be heading not to Idlib but to Jarabulus in the Aleppo governorate near the Turkish border and there are some reports of Turkey settling them in Afrin as part of its ethnic cleansing campaign against leftist Kurds there.

The Syrian flag now flies over Douma. Russian military police have flooded into the enclave to establish law and order. (I can only imagine that this step was negotiated by Douma municipal leaders fearful that Syrian Arab Army troops might commit reprisals against them.) Those Army of Islam guerrillas who did not want to leave were offered a six-month amnesty if they laid down their arms, during which time they are not liable to conscription. (One way some rebels have surrendered without facing dire consequences has been to agree to switch sides and join the Syrian Arab Army.)

Adding insult to injury, Ali Akbbar Velayati, the special adviser to Iran’s clerical Leader Ali Khamenei, made a tour of east Ghouta on Wednesday!

Saudi Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman must have been doing a slow burn to see Velayeti strutting around territory that had once been a promising base for the takeover of Damascus and from which Saudi strategists had planned bombings of regime facilities in the capital.

Velayati covered himself and Khamenei in indelible shame, however, inasmuch as he implicitly gave his imprimatur to the gas attack that had sealed the regime victory. Iran suffered mustard gas attacks at the hands of Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, and had previously taken a principled stance against the use of chemical warfare.

Velayati said that the upcoming US strike on Syria would offer no hope to the defeated rebels. In that pronouncement, at least, he likely is right. And it reveals Syrian, Russian and Iranian thinking. The war aim has been achieved and the lives of Syrian special operations forces (who are limited in number) were preserved. The little kids with white foam around their mouths, eyes staring lifelessly, were collateral damage.

——–

Bonus video:

CGTN: “Rebels and their families flee Douma under Russia backed deal”

Posted in Featured | 15 Responses | Print |

Protests won’t stop Trump derailing Mueller Inquiry; Putting the Left in Congress Will

By | Apr. 11, 2018 |
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

The broad hints Trump gave Monday that the search of his personal attorney’s offices on a tip from Robert Mueller might lead him to fire deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has galvanized the American left, which is pledging massive public rallies in response.

Public protests and rallies are great if they get people involved, but in and of themselves they are not enough. There were massive anti-war protests in spring of 2003, perhaps the biggest in American history, but they did not stop the invasion and occupation of Iraq by Bush-Cheney and their Big Oil backers. The beginning of the end of the US occupation of Iraq came only in 2006, when the Republicans lost the midterms and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield (ripe for investigatory Congressional hearings) was forced from office. The nail in the coffin of the occupation came in 2008 when the Blue Wave turned the GOP into a rump regional party of the Old Confederacy.

The lesson is that protests in and of themselves do not alter the course of affairs. Electing decision-makers does.

If you think Trump should be impeached, you have to work to have the Democratic Party take over both chambers of Congress. Moreover, you have to use primaries to weed out the Establishment dead wood and put in the Democratic Socialists of America caucus within the Democratic Party. Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi are not going to impeach Trump.

When I give public talks around the country, people often ask me, in some puzzlement, what they can do to change things. I tell them to get involved in politics. In midterms, it is not unusual for only a third of the population to vote. That was how the Tea Party took over Congress in 2010 and hobbled President Obama permanently from accomplishing virtually any of his legislative agenda. The Tea Party was billed as a grass roots movement, but it was a covert operation of a few far right wing billionaires, who were afraid Obama would raise their taxes to pay for universal health insurance. They have gone a good way toward reversing Obama’s steps in that direction, and managed instead to accomplish the largest give-away of wealth to the upper crust in American history, just a couple of months ago.

But if you look into it, the billionaires didn’t spend that much money on hobbling Obama and putting in Trump.

The money of a handful of cranky old white rich people is only efficacious because everybody else is playing couch potato and moaning at the television screen.

If they did not donate money to a campaign, they don’t have a right to moan.

Going to your town square and protesting will have zero effect if you don’t give money to a candidate, walk the neighborhood ringing doorbells for her, and get out the vote.

Public hopes for a Blue Wave in November could well be overblown. Most states allow partisan state legislatures to draw the electoral lines, allowing them to set up the voting districts in ways that favor the incumbent party. This skewing of electoral districts is an old practice going back to the nineteenth century, called gerrymandering because some of the districts were so complicated they looked like a salamander. The majority of the bad gerrymandering in the past couple of decades has been carried out by Republican legislators, as in Texas, where they split Democratic Austin into eight districts and attached a rural Republican majority to each, effectively disenfranchising Austin’s Democrats.

Some states, like California, have gone to a non-partisan commission system for setting districts. Get a pledge from your state representative to support such a change.

There is increasing evidence of a significant Russian trolling operation in the 2016 election, but that is unlikely to have been decisive.

What was decisive is that 38.6% of the electorate did not vote. Specifically there was a 7% decline in the African-American vote from 2012, a drop of 750,000 or so. Some of those stay-at-homes were in Detroit, and if they had come out Trump would not have won Michigan.

I am not blaming them. They clearly were not invigorated to vote by the Democratic campaign that Podesta and Clinton ran.

What I am saying is that if you want a Blue Wave in November, you can’t get it unless you bring back out those missing 750,000 African-American voters. Which means you need Democratic candidates who will address their problems.

You could argue to them that Jeff Sessions is one of their big problems.

In general, in the United States eligible voters from families of four making $40,000 a year or less have just checked out of the political system and mostly don’t vote.

This outcome is not inevitable. In India, in contrast, the poor do vote, which is why even the right wing in India often sound like Western sociaists.

Overcoming the massive GOP gerrymandering in places like Texas and Wisconsin will require reaching out to those disprivileged populations who ordinarily don’t vote. That endeavor will not happen unless you, personally, join in and give of your time, money and effort.

A march is a pleasant Saturday afternoon with friends. It is emotionally satisfying. But it is only a beginning, and unless you get political , then the Trumpies will go on getting their way.

By the way, if Trump gets rid of Rosenstein and finds someone in the DOJ to fire Mueller, then Mueller’s investigation is likely over with. Entirely. All the threads of potential wrongdoing he unraveled would just sit there in files save for the indictments he has already brought. The investigation of Trump’s private attorney, Michael Cohen, will continue, since that inquiry is being conducted by the US Attorney’s office for southern New York, ironically by a Trump appointee who replaced Preet Bharara, who was fired to stop this sort of thing from happening.

But Trump really could just deep-six the Mueller investigation.

And there would be nothing anyone could do about it as long as the GOP has both houses of Congress.

Standing in the streets chanting won’t change that outcome. Canvassing for a genuinely Left candidate this fall could.

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PS: Informed Comment is not a 501(c)3 nonprofit precisely because they are forbidden from taking partisan positions such as the one in this essay. Apparently lack of this tax deductible status hurts our annual fundraiser. If you like Informed Comment, remember to donate, since it is almost completely reader supported (the occasional ads don’t amount to much).

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

CNN: “Source: Trump considering firing Rod Rosenstein”

Posted in Democratic Party,Donald Trump,Featured | 11 Responses | Print |

Will Trump divert attention from Cohen Raid by attacking Syria?

By | Apr. 10, 2018 |
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times reports that FBI agents produced a warrant at the offices in the Rockefeller Center of Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, that allowed them to gain access and to spend hours going through and confiscating documents and equipment.

Trump lambasted the search to an audience of senior military officers as attack on our country in a true sense.” He characterized it as a “witch hunt,” “unwarranted,” conducted by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and his team of “the worst people,” and made possible only by what he said was Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ unconscionable decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Trump mused in public about firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which he said “many people” had urged him to do.

Getting a warrant to go into an attorney’s office is highly unusual because attorney-client privilege is protected under the law. It is only typically done when the FBI has reason to suspect that a subpoena would be ignored or would result in the destruction of the requested documents. The FBI team will have had privilege experts along with it to make sure they did not exceed the authority of the warrant. Going into the office would have had to be signed off on by a judge, by Geoffrey S. Berman, the US attorney of the southern district of New York, and by someone fairly high up at the Department of Justice, likely deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, or someone just below him in rank.

The legal search, under a warrant, came about because Special Counsel Robert Mueller came across suspicious information about Cohen in the course of his investigation of possible election collusion between the Trump campaign and the government of the Russian Federation. The inquiry into Cohen seems not to be related to Russia, which is why Mueller passed it to the FBI. It likely concerns the $130,000 hush money payment Mr. Cohen made twelve days before the November, 2016, election to pornographic film performer Stephanie (“Stormy Daniels”) Clifford regarding her tryst with Donald Trump, .

My own guess is that whatever Mueller tipped the FBI about goes beyond the possible violation of electoral laws by Mr. Cohen, inasmuch as a payment to Ms. Clifford intended to influence the course of the election would technically be illegal. Such a case would be very difficult to prove. It is likely that, in addition, Mueller came across evidence of some financial transaction that was more clearly illegal and more easily prosecuted.

The Rockefeller Center search comes just as Trump is threatening a strike on Syria in response to the alleged regime use of poison gas at Douma, a district of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, on Saturday. Indeed, the meeting with military officers at which he complained about the “witch hunt” against him was held in part to consider options for Syria.

There is some danger that Mr. Trump will launch a more robust Syrian operation than initially envisioned in order to take attention off the Stormy Daniels scandal. This tactic was immortalized in the 1997 film, “Wag the Dog,” about a president who starts a war to take attention away from a sex scandal on the eve of an election.

Any attempt by Trump to get up a major military campaign in Syria, however, would run into strong Russian opposition. Russian officials are already warning with some stridency against a US strike. If all that Trump does is send down some Tomahawk missiles on some Syrian base, the way he did in 2016, then that is likely to be ineffectual with regard to the ongoing conflict in Syria. The al-Assad regime, backed by Russia and Iran, is gaining control of more and more territory and has now removed all credible threats to the capital, Damascus. It seems likely that in the absence of some dramatic change on the ground, al-Assad’s regime will reassert fragile and brutal control over virtually the entire country within a couple of years.

Trump, however, is a wild card in this issue.

—–

Bonus video:

Donald Trump: FBI Raid On Atty. Michael Cohen ‘An Attack On Our Country’ | The 11th Hour | MSNBC

Posted in Corruption,Crime,Donald Trump,Featured,Syria | 15 Responses | Print |

Peace in Islam: Qur’an 73:10 on Patience as Tolerance

By | Apr. 9, 2018 |
3

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Chapter 73 of the Qur’an, “The Robed” (Al-Muzammil), contains what is probably the earliest Islamic injunction to turn the other cheek.

8. Remember the name of your Lord and devote yourself to Him wholeheartedly–
9. the Lord of the East and the West. There is no god save He, so take Him as your defender.
10.Be patient with what they say and take your leave of them graciously.
11.Leave the affluent who impugn you to Me, giving them a respite.

Muhammad ibn Abdullah of the Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe was born, according to my calculations, around 567 CE (AD), i.e. during the reign of the Roman emperor Justin II (r. 565–574) of Constantinople.

A long distance merchant, he experienced a prophetic call in 610, while meditating on retreat at the grotto of Hira’ outside Mecca in western Arabia.

In this chapter of the Qur’an, God is depicted as addressing Muhammad as the “robed one.” Professor Uri Rubin has a detailed article on what the later commentators took this epithet to mean.

My own guess is that Meccans who went on a spiritual retreat signaled their estate by wearing a cloak.

This chapter makes an analogy (verses 15-16) between Moses’ mission to Pharaoh and Muhammad’s to the wealthy Meccan pagan elite. Both Pharaoh and the merchants of Mecca rejected their Messenger from God.

Moreover, the Meccans taunted and insulted Muhammad, according to the Qur’an, as a mere magician or fraudster.

How were the early Believers in Muhammad’s message, and the prophet himself, to deal with such attempts at belittlement?

73:10 says, “Be patient with what they say and take your leave of them graciously.”

“Graciously” here is literally “beautifully.” Obviously, you have to absent yourself from the company of people putting you down unmercifully. But the Qur’an wants the objects of derision to depart without rancor. Just excuse yourself, leaving a comely impression behind.

The sentiment here is very similar to Matthew 5:39, where Jesus says, “But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

It is worth saying something about the Qur’an’s use of “patience” (al-ṣabr) in this context. It is used in several distinct senses in the book, including to “suffer with.” But here it clearly means to show forbearance.

While it is not a direct context, in the late Roman empire, the Latin patiencia was used to mean tolerance and forbearance by thinkers such as Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (c. 250-c. 325), a Christian teacher of rhetoric at Nicomedia who survived the great persecution of the early fourth century and then went on to advise the first Christian emperor, Constantine. Since the Hejaz where the Qur’an was recited was a frontier of the eastern Roman Empire, and since Muhammad may have spent a good deal of his life trading up to Roman Damascus and perhaps even residing there for months at a time, Christian Roman ideas like “patience” are not irrelevant to the Qur’an. While Latin receded in the east, some of the Latin authors’ ideas were taken up in Syriac and Greek.

As Pamela Sharp explains, in discussing Lactantius’ Institutes, Elizabeth Digeser in her The Making of a Christian Empire elucidated a difference between tolerance and concord: “Both toleration and concord involve forbearance, or an attitude of patience toward practices that one finds disagreeable, but they differ in the expected outcome. Toleration anticipates no change in the status quo; concord works toward ultimate conversion and unity.” Sharp says that Digeser thinks Lactantius was more about concord, that he urged freedom of religion but did so in anticipation that it would help people ultimately adopt Christianity.

The Qur’an verse here also recalls Paul’s Romans 12:19, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God;for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'”

The Qur’an 73:11-13 instructs Muhammad concerning the rich playboys of Mecca who were questioning his sincerity, “Leave the affluent who impugn you to Me, giving them a respite. For We possess shackles and a conflagration, and food that chokes, and a painful torment.” They are in danger of hellfire anyway.

That is, Muhammad and his followers can show forbearance toward their tormentors and even treat them “beautifully” as they depart their company, in part because they have left issues like personal honor or right and wrong doctrine in the hands of God to judge in the afterlife.

These passages are in the same moral universe as the essay of the early bishop of Carthage (today’s Tunis), Cyprian (c. 210-258 CE) on the virtue of patience:

“Let us, beloved brethren, consider His [Jesus’s] patience in our persecutions and sufferings; let us give an obedience full of expectation to His advent; and let us not hasten, servants as we are, to be defended before our Lord with irreligious and immodest eagerness . . . so that when that day of anger and vengeance shall come, we may not be punished with the impious and sinners, but may be honoured with the righteous and those that fear God.”

I don’t want to be too obvious or presentist in these commentaries on a seventh-century text, but it is worth pointing out that some contemporary followers of Muhammad don’t seem very interested in meeting ridicule of the Prophet with as much graciousness and nonviolence as he himself did.

One other thing: While the later Muslim commentary tradition often sees this chapter as very early in his ministry, I don’t agree unless they are confining themselves to the first few verses and saying that others were added later. The Muslim commentators allege that from 610 to 613 Muhammad preached secretly, making his message public only in the latter year. Since this chapter clearly contains verses referring to his Moses-like mission to the elite, and to his message being rejected and his person ridiculed, it seems to me that it must derive from around 613-614. Since lines 2-19 retain the same rhyme scheme, there is some reason to treat them as a unity. (Verse 20 was clearly added later, in the Medina era, 622-632). Of course, the story about the three-year hiatus between receiving the first revelation and going public could be incorrect; it is from Ibn Hisham/ Ibn Ishaq and much later than the events about which it speaks. But assuming it is correct, this chapter is later than usually placed.

—–

*Revised slightly about 6 hours after publication, mainly with addition of quote from Cyprian and the following para.

Posted in Islam,Nonviolence,Peace,Tolerance | 3 Responses | Print |

Syrian Regime kills dozens in Chem attack on Douma Holdout Enclave: Why?

By | Apr. 8, 2018 |
0

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

The Saudi-backed fundamentalist militia “Army of Islam” in the Douma district of East Ghouta near Damascus alleged Sunday that the al-Assad regime had dropped a barrel bomb full of chlorine and other chemicals on the rebel enclave on Saturday. Initial reports said that some 41, including non-combatants and including children, were killed, some with tell-tale signs of frothing around the mouth. Other reports spoke of some 150 dead.

The regime has conquered most of East Ghouta in a brutal campaign waged by Syrian Arab Army special forces and the Russian Aerospace Forces against guerrilla groups in the rebel stronghold. Of the roughly 350,000 inhabitants as of the beginning of this year, some reports suggest that 150,000 have fled, either to nearby refugee camps or north to the rebel-held province of Idlib.

Douma is the last holdout. Despite reports on Saturday that the Army of Islam had agreed to an evacuation, negotiations thereafter broke down. One problem is that the Army of Islam does not want to go to Idlib, which is dominated by the Levantine Liberation Organization (HTS, former Nusra Front), with which its members have a blood feud. HTS has continued links to al-Qaeda and may now be backed by Turkey, whereas the Army of Islam belongs to the pro-Saudi strand of hard line Salafism.

On Saturday, the Russian press, at least, reported that Army of Islam spokesmen boasted that the special operations Panther Forces (Quwwat al-Nimr) that had been committed against Ghouta militias were taking high numbers of casualties from Army of Islam snipers as they tried to advance into Douma. The regime has suffered a military collapse over the past 7 years, with most Sunni Arabs deserting or defecting. Alawi Shiite troops are for the most part loyal to the regime, but there may be only 35,000 or 50,000 of them left (the Syrian Arab Army had 300,000 troops in 2010).

The long and the short of it is that strongman Bashar al-Assad cannot afford to lose highly trained and highly valuable Panther Forces troops in large numbers.

Chemical weapons are used by desperate regimes that are either outnumbered by the enemy or are reluctant to take casualties in their militaries. Barrel-bombing Douma with chem seems to have appealed to the regime as a tactic for this reason. It had the potential of frightening the Douma population into deserting the Army of Islam. Guerrilla groups need favorable populations in which to operate. Mao Zedong compared such friendly locals to a guerrilla army’s ass, which allows it to sit down. Without an ass, he pointed out, guerrillas are forced to keep running around standing up, until they get exhausted. The regime is trying to deprive the Army of Islam of this fundament.

It might be asked why the regime would take this chance, given that Trump bombed the Shuaryat Air Force base last year this time in response to regime use of chemical weaponry at Khan Shikhoun. The answer is that the regime is more worried about disaffection in the ranks of its Special Forces than it is about Trump. Further, Trump’s emotional bombing was a one-off, not strategic. It did no lasting damage to the Shuayrat Base, from which fighter jets went on flying. And Trump has already announced that he wants to be out of Syria by October. Further, the barrel bomb may have been intended to kill 25 persons so that the attack might fly under the radar; this sort of weapon is unpredictable in its effects and the death toll rose to the level where it hit the headlines.

It is tiresome that one keeps having to fight against regime and Russian fake news about all this. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria has found large numbers of regime chemical weapons attacks. The rebels, in contrast, are not thought to have sarin, e.g., in their arsenal. While the Army of Islam could conceivably have chlorine, pro-regime and Putinesque trolls would have to twist themselves into pretzels to explain why it would release it in its own territory.

Here is a UN infographic on the regime’s chem use:

Posted in Featured,Syria | No Responses | Print |

Three Countries show how Near a 100% Green Grid is

By | Apr. 6, 2018 |
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

The aspiration for a 100% green electricity grid is no longer a dream. It is regularly being achieved in the real world for weeks or months on end. This development is absolutely crucial, since burning fossil fuels at the rate we are burning them is rapidly changing the climate in ways that seriously harm our quality of life.

In this past March, Portugal not only generated enough electricity from renewables to power the whole country for the whole month, it actually produced extra electricity this way. Portugal is constructing an underwater cable to export green electricity to Morocco, and hopes to strengthen the links of its grid to Spain and France. But the important thing is that Portugal, a country of over 10 million people, may soon regularly avoid burning fossil fuels for making electricity nationally. 100% renewables are becoming normal.

Portugal has an advantage in that some 30% of its electricity comes from hydro. Still, if it had not invested heavily in wind and in re-engineering its national grid, it would not have a chance of getting to 100% renewables. Portugal still has enormous untapped wind and solar potential, too, and the costs of both are falling.

Scotland, with over 5 million people, got 68.1 percent of its electricity from renewables last year. In 2016, the percentage of electricity from renewables was only 54%. Scotland’s renewables percentage is 45% higher than the United Kingdom as a whole. Scotland is now perhaps the world leader in renewables, and has innovated recently in offshore, in-the-sea wind turbines. Much of the advance in green energy, however, has been driven by onshore wind. Britain in general also greatly increased its renewables generation last year, to over 28%, a record.

Costa Rica, a country of nearly 5 million, ran on renewables for 300 days of the past year. It has hydro and geothermal as well as having put in a lot of wind turbines. Costa Rica has a great deal of untapped solar potential, as well. There does not seem much doubt that the country can generate its electricity completely from renewables in the near future (its stated goal is 2021).

When the news broke about the 300-day record, some critics pointed out that Costa Rica still burns a lot of petroleum to fuel cars and trucks. The electricity sector is only one generator of heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas. The transport sector is also key. Costa Rica’s leaders heard the criticism.

The incoming president of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, says he is going to decarbonize the transportation sector, making electric cars and trucks standard in the country. (He is a prominent journalist and novelist, and cleverly represented decarbonization as a national achievement on the scale of the 1948 abolition of the army). India has made a similar pledge, and this goal appears to be shared by more and more environmentally conscious countries.

In general, the world invested more in solar energy than in coal, gas, and nuclear combined last year. The Portuguese, Scottish and Costa Rican advances are not even very dependent on solar, which suggests that a whole new wave of further renewables implementation is around the corner.

——

Bonus video:

The Business Year: from last year: “Costa Rica – Green Energy”

Posted in Featured,Green Energy | 3 Responses | Print |

Trump wants out of Syria within 6 months, Seeks Saudi Aid: AP

By | Apr. 5, 2018 |
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

AP’s Josh Lederman reports that on Tuesday, Trump told national security aides meeting in the White House that his patience is running out with the Syria operation.

“I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home. I want to start rebuilding our nation.” Trump is quoted as saying.

Lederman reports that Trump has told the people around him that he wants US troops out of Syria within six months, i.e. by the beginning of October, apparently in hopes that Republicans can run for Congress in part on the defeat of ISIL and the bringing of troops home. This tactic may emulate the Obama 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, which allowed Dems in 2012 to run on a platform that the wars abroad were ebbing.

Trump is therefore uninterested in rebuilding Raqqa and trying to put eastern Syria back on its feet, which many observers believe is necessary to prevent ISIL from eventually reasserting itself. He has frozen $200 million in US aid funds slated for the Raqqa area.

The Saudis appear desperately to want the US to stay in East Syria, in hopes that the Pentagon can somehow weaken Iran, keep ISIL from returning, and keep pressure on the Bashar al-Assad government to step down or open up.

The Saudis’ own project in Syria, of funding hard line Salafi guerrilla movements such as the Army of Islam and directing bombings in Damascus, has gone down in flames. One of the last AoI strongholds, in Douma near Damascus, has just fallen to a combination of regime special operations forces and the Russian Aerospace forces. Syria is a multicultural country with large religious minorities and a relatively secular-minded urban Sunni middle and upper class, so that Saudi-backed Salafism was likely always doomed to fail.

Trump appears to want $4 bn. from the Saudis for East Syria reconstruction and as a quid pro quo for a more gradual US withdrawal (over the next six months instead of immediately).

Giving East Syria to Saudi Arabia is attended with its own dangers, since the Saudis likely will appeal to Salafi Arabs there– the sort of people who had backed ISIL– with the dangers of further radicalization. Moreover, the area was conquered by the leftist YPG Kurdish militia, which now runs it, and will not exactly welcome Saudi influence. Further yet, the Russians and the al-Assad government want to restore Damascus’ control over this region, and they will likely ally with the Kurds against Arab Salafis, just as the US had done.

Trump’s determination to leave Syria contrasts with his criticism of Obama’s 2011 withdrawal from Iraq (which had been mandated by the Iraqi parliament and to which even Bush had agreed).

One possible explanation for his haste is that the Russian government wants the US out of Syria, which Moscow now views as a Russian sphere of influence. Vladimir Putin appears to have some sort of hold over Trump. The president’s demand for an early departure comes after a series of strong Russian statements and around the time Putin, Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan, and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani were meeting in Ankara to discuss Syria’s future without any American representation. Turkey and Iran both also want the US out of Syria.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov complained this week of the US presence in eastern Syria, according to Eurasia Daily :

“It is necessary to keep in mind that the United States sent its troops, its special forces, air forces and established a coalition to work in Syria unlawfully, with harsh violations of the NATO Charter that urges to respect sovereignty, territorial integrity of all member states. We have drawn attention to it not once. Our military and diplomats get in contact with the USA periodically, because we are interested in sooner overcoming the conflict, establishing peace, switching to the political process, solving humanitarian issues. In this connection, one must interact with everyone who is in Syria, but the fact that the USA is not on the legal basis there still remains.”

“They settle there [Eastern Syria] not only with the military facilities, they establish governmental bodies there that are loyal to them, that are controlled by them and will be financed by them. This all is done in the context of isolating those areas from the rest part of Syria. They were persuading us that they had no such plans. But they were not convincing. If the US president says that the US troops will be withdrawn from Syria soon, it means that he at least is committed to previous statements that after winning over the ISIS (the Islamic State [group], banned in Russia), the USA will leave the territory of Syria. We shall see.”

Posted in Donald Trump,Featured,Syria | 9 Responses | Print |

Top 5 Ways Iran is not very much like Hitler’s Germany

By | Apr. 4, 2018 |
8

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

In that interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman violated Godwin’s law and compared Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s clerical leader, to Hitler. The comparison is monstrous. Here are a few reasons why.

1. Iran has not invaded Poland. In fact, Iran hasn’t invaded another country, arguably, since 1785. Iran has supplied a small contingent of Revolutionary Guards to the governments of Iraq and Syria, at their request, to fight ISIL or other rebels against those governments, but US troops in Afghanistan play the same role for Kabul. I think the Iranian help to Iraq against ISIL was necessary and heroic. The Iranian role in Syria, in contrast, has often been counter-revolutionary and shameful. We’re not in WW II territory here, however.

In contrast, in 2015 Saudi Arabia and its allies invaded Yemen and have been making war on it ever since. Saudi Arabia also intervened in Syria, backing the equally fascist Army of Islam jihadis and ordering bombings in Damascus.

2. Iran has a small Jewish community of some 9,000 persons and Iranian Jews have a representative in parliament. Although many Iranian Jews have felt that the Islamic Republic, with its Shiite fundamentalism, reduces them to second class citizens, and tens of thousands have emigrated, there have been no pogroms. The country is full of synagogues. The hoary lie that former Iranian president Ahmadinejad threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” is just, that, a lie.

In contrast, the Saudi Arabian government permits no synagogues and does not allow any organized Jewish community to live in the country.

3. Iran has a military budget of $15.9 billion a year, about the same as that menacing military powerhouse, Canada (which has less than half Iran’s population). (Israel’s military budget, for a population about 10% of that of Iran, is $17 bn.; in the same range is that of the United Arab Emirates, with 1.5 million citizens.)

4. Iran has no air force to speak of, with 130 old fighter jets, and has 1600 old tanks. It has no navy to speak of, either. Israel, with 8 million people to Iran’s 82 million, has 243 fighter jets of the latest models and 2600 sophisticated tanks. Saudi Arabia, with 20 mn citizens, is making $110 bn new arms purchases, and already has nearly as many as and much better weapons than Iran.

5. Iran is not a democracy, and carefully vets the candidates allowed to run. It is not, however, a one-party state. There are surprises in its elections and parliament has on occasion shown an independent streak.

Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship, with no parliament or national elections.

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Bonus video:

Euronews: Saudi Arabian crown prince courts Israel in deepening rift with Iran

Posted in Featured,Iran,Saudi Arabia | 8 Responses | Print |

Is Saudi Crown Prince’s ‘Recognition’ of Israel anything New or Positive?

By | Apr. 3, 2018 |
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Former Israeli prison guard at the notorious Ktzi’ot Prison camp for Palestinians and now editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Cpl. Jeffrey Goldberg, breathlessly reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman told him that both the Jews and the Palestinians have a right to their own state.

Goldberg parsed the phrase “have a right” with regard to Jews as unprecedented in an “Arab” leader. He completely ignored the Palestinian right.

Goldberg sniffed that Arab leaders have “tired” of the Palestinians and so don’t give a fig about Israel shooting down unarmed protesters at the Gaza border. This is blaming the victims on a Himalayan scale. Israeli intransigence, land-grabbing and vindictiveness have made everyone tired of the Palestinian plight, which is the intended effect— just as Nazi tratment of the Jews in the 1930s was intended to turn Jews into inconvenient flotsam that no one would care about, so that in the end a ‘solution’ could be implemented (the comparison is only to this tactic of making people stateless and unwanted).

But although Bin Salman may be stating it more baldly than usual, there is nothing unprecedented about what he said except in Goldberg’s feverish Jewish-nationalist imagination. The Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel accord Israel a right to exist (you can’t have a long-term treaty with a non-entity), and the same implication is there in the Jordanian-Israeli Peace Treaty. The PLO recognized Israel in the 1990s.

In 2002, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia put forward a plan adopted by the Arab League that would recognize Israel inside pre-1967 borders in return for an Israeli recognition of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza. Then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, an expansionist who tried to grab Sinai and had his eye on Jordan’s Ghor Valley, pissed all over the proposal. His successors have put little Gaza under permanent blockade and have grabbed up more and more of the Palestinian West Bank, flooding 800,000 Israeli squatters onto it in direct violation of the international law of military Occupation. The Arab League plan has been reaffirmed twice, most recently in 2017.

The Israeli myth of Arab intransigence is a smokescreen for determined Israeli expansionism. Goldberg and his ilk still hate Lebanon’s Hizbullah because it forced an Israeli withdrawal from its 18-year occupation of South Lebanon and could not be crushed by a 2006 massive Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon, which wiped out all of the country’s economic progress since 1989.

The difference between Bin Salman and his late uncle King Abdullah is that the uncle was a cannier negotiator. He wanted something for admitting Israel’s right to exist, to wit, a decent life for the stateless, occupied Palestinians in their Apartheid limbo.

Bin Salman shows no such spine and is worldly enough to know that the Israelis are not going to let the Palestinians have a state and are going to keep them in a stateless condition of near chattel for as long as the world will put up with it (apparently for a very long time). Goldberg says he is for a 2-state solution, but people who glibly take that position are just holding a fig leaf before the nakedness of their cynicism. There is no longer a possibility of a two state solution.

So what is really being reported is that Bin Salman is happy enough to work with the Likud government in Israel and to ignore its slow ongoing crushing of the Palestinians, as long as Saudi Arabia gets Israeli and international Jewish cooperation on its finances, diplomacy toward the US, and attempts to isolate Iran and its allies.

This self-serving position is just harsh Realism and is light years away from King Abdullah’s peace plan, which genuinely had a shot of resulting in peace. What MbS is promising is more war, more belligerence. He is planning to do to the rest of the Middle East what he has done to Yemen, and is inviting the Israelis to join with him in the carnage. Goldberg, who was positively gleeful about the destruction of Iraq, is watering in the mouth.

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Bonus Video

TYT: Is That Jared Kushner In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy to Lock Up Dissidents?

Posted in Featured,Israel/ Palestine | 10 Responses | Print |