WarSclerotic

Syria passes legislation to revoke emergency law.

  Syria’s government passed a bill on Tuesday lifting emergency law in the country, the official state news agency said.

A senior lawyer said Syrian President Bashar Assad has to sign the legislation for it to take effect but that the his signature was a formality.

Repeal of the country’s emergency law has been a major demand of those behind unrest that has shaken the ruling government and caught the world’s attention in recent weeks.

Particularly relevant to the current protests is a provision in the emergency law that prohibits gatherings of more five Syrians. An Interior Ministry statement Tuesday called on Syrians “to avoid taking part in any marches or demonstrations or protests.”

Earlier Tuesday, Syrian forces opened fire to disperse protesters in Homs, activists said, the latest city to be swept by the tide of unrest against President Bashar  Assad’s authoritarian rule.

By midday on Tuesday they said the center of Homs resembled a ghost town, with shops, markets and schools all closed in the city of around 700,000 people, where 17 protesters were killed on Sunday night.

Security forces including Assad’s irregular “shabbiha” militia “chased people in the streets of Homs until 6 a.m. (0300 GMT),” one activist in the city said. “The streets are empty.”

Another said that 25 wounded people were in hospital.

Rights groups say more than 200 people have been killed in the protests which swept across Syria after demonstrations first broke out in the southern city of Deraa a month ago, inspired by the Arab uprisings which toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia.

The protests, the first such revolt since an Islamist uprising was ruthlessly put down in 1982, comprise all shades of society, including ordinary Syrians, secularists, leftists, tribals, Islamists and students.

The rallying cry in the protests has been “Freedom, Freedom. God, Syria and Freedom only. Some shouts of Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest) resonated after Friday prayers.

Assad, who has ruled for 11 years since assuming power on the death of his father Hafez Assad, has responded with a combination of limited concessions and fierce crackdowns.

In a sign that authorities would offer no ground to protesters, the Interior Ministry on Monday night described the unrest as an insurrection by “armed groups belonging to Salafist organizations” trying to terrorize the population.

Salafism is a strict form of Sunni Islam which many Arab governments equate with terror groups like al Qaida. Assad and most of his inner circle are from Syria’s minority Alawite community, adherents to an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

The government says Syria is the target of a conspiracy and authorities blame the violence on armed gangs and infiltrators supplied with weapons from Lebanon and Iraq, a charge opposition groups say is unfounded.

State news agency SANA said on Tuesday that an army brigadier and three family members were ambushed and killed on Sunday by “armed criminal groups” in Homs. Two other officers were also killed in the city on the same day, it said.

Assad said on Saturday he would end nearly half a century of emergency rule with legislation that should be in place by next week, but his pledge did little to appease protesters calling for political freedoms.

Dozens of medical students demonstrated at Damascus University’s college of medicine on Tuesday chanting “Stop the massacres. Syria is free. Syria is dignity”, two rights campaigners in contact with the students said. They said security forces beat the students to break up the protest.

In Deraa, where the protests first broke out and which has seen most bloodshed, residents said on Tuesday that security forces who stayed off the streets in recent days were being reinforced, possibly ahead of a move to reassert full control over the restive Sunni Muslim town.

No independent media is allowed into Homs or other cities witnessing unprecedented pro-democracy demonstrations. Several international journalists have been expelled or arrested.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report April 19, 2011, 1:58 PM (GMT+02:00)

Iranian “students” rampage in Tehran

After giving up on US and Israel ever confronting Iran, Saudi Arabia has gone out on a limb against the Obama administration to place itself at the forefront of an independent Gulf campaign for cutting down the Islamic Republic’s drive for a nuclear bomb and its expansionist meddling in Arab countries, debkafile‘s Middle East sources report.
Two US emissaries sent to intercede with Saudi King Abdullah – US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on April 6 and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, who arrived in Riyadh six days later – were told that Saudi Arabia had reached a parting-of-the ways with Washington, followed actively by Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.

Abdullah said he could not forgive the Americans for throwing former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to the wolves in Cairo and for the unrest they were promoting against Arab regimes.

Saudi Arabia was therefore determined to lead the Gulf region on the road to a confrontation with Iran – up to and including military action if necessary – to defend the oil emirates against Iranian conspiracies in the pursuit of which the king accused US-led diplomacy of giving Tehran a clear field.

Monday, April 18, the foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council, GCC, asked the UN Security Council to take action for stopping Iran’s “provocative interference in their countries’ domestic affairs.”  This “flagrant interference” posed a “grave security to, and risked flaring up sectarian strike, in the GCC countries.”
The resolution went on to state: “The GCC will not hesitate to adopt whatever measures and policies they deem necessary vis-à-vis the foreign interferences in their internal affairs.”

The phrase “measures and policies deemed necessary” is diplomatic parlance for a military threat. It implies that Saudi Arabia and the rest of the regional group are confident that together, they command the strategic resources and assets necessary for a military strike against Iran. Our military sources report that the Saudis are convinced that their combined missile, air force and naval strength is fully capable of inflicting in-depth damage on mainland Iran. Their message to Washington is that the Gulf nations are now making their own decisions.

Iran has taken two steps in response to the Saudi-led Gulf challenge: Thousands of Iranian students, mobilized by the Revolutionary Guards and Basijj voluntary corps have laid the Saudi embassy in Tehran to siege for most of the past week, launching stone and firebomb assaults from time to time, but so far making no attempt to invade the building.
Then, Saturday, April 16, the Iranian foreign ministry summoned the Pakistani chargé d’affaires to warn him sternly against allowing Saud Arabia and Bahrain to continue conscripting Pakistani military personnel. Tehran claims that by offering exorbitant paychecks, Riyadh has raised 1,000 Pakistani recruits for its military operation in support of the Bahraini king and another 1,500 are on their way to the Gulf.
Iran also beefed up its strength along the Pakistani border to warn Islamabad that if it matters come to a clash with Saudi Arabia, Pakistani and its military will not escape punishment.
King Abdullah first defied the Obama administration’s policy of support for popular uprisings against autocratic Arab regimes on March 14 by sending Saudi troops into Bahrain to prop up the king against the Shiite-led disturbances organized by Tehran’s Lebanese surrogate, Hizballah.

This force has been expanded continuously, split now between units suppressing the uprising and the bulk deployed on the island’s coast, 320 kilometers from the shore of Iran. Saudi ground-to-ground and anti-air missiles have been transferred to the Bahraini capital of Manama and naval units, including missile vessels, positioned in its harbor.

Monday, April 18, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa announced that Saudi and allied GCC troops would stay in the kingdom until Iran no longer poses a menace. “Gulf force is needed to counter a sustained campaign by Iran in Bahrain,” he said.

Tehran-Riyadh tensions are rippling into other arenas: On April 11-12, the chronically disaffected Sunni Arabs of Ahwaz in the western Iranian province of Khuzestan (1.2 million inhabitants) staged a two-day uprising against the Iranian government.  In their first crackdown, government forces killed at least 15 demonstrators before cutting off Ahwaz’s links with the outside world. Since incoming flights were cancelled, roads to the town blocked and telephone and Internet communications discontinued, no independent information is coming out of the province.

Tehran accuses Saudi and United Arab Emirate undercover agencies of fomenting the unrest in one of its oil centers.
So too does Syrian president Bashar Assad, who claims the spreading revolt against his regime, now entering its second month, was instigated from Riyadh.
debkafile‘s Gulf sources report that King Abdullah has placed himself at the head of the Saudi-GCC political and military campaign against Iran. His team consists of Interior Minister, second-in-line to the throne Prince Nayef; Director of General Intelligence Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz; National Security Adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan; Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khaled bin Sultan; and the king’s son, Commander of the National Guard Prince Muttab.

According to our sources, Riyadh has not just given up on American action against Iran but also despaired of Israel and its passive acceptance of a nuclear-armed Iran and the hostile military noose the Islamic Republic is drawing around its borders from Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and Syria.

In the view of Saudi policy-makers, the effect of the Stuxnet cyber war on Iran’s nuclear facilities and the targeted assassination of some of the program’s key executives has been overrated. They characterize the two covert campaigns as causing limited damage at first and then acting as a fillip for accelerating Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb.

So far, Iran is winning – Sacramento Living – Sacramento Food and Wine, Home, Health | Sacramento Bee.

Ha’aretz: Bibi, Barak, Lean Toward Confronting Iran; Mossad More Skeptical – Jeffrey Goldberg – International – The Atlantic.

Apr 18 2011, 10:22 AM ET This weekend brought us a fascinating and complicated report from Ha’aretz’s Amir Oren, who suggests that the early success of the Iron Dome missile-interception system makes it somewhat more likely that Israel would launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The argument over Iran’s nuclear program, which appears to be on track again, after being sideswiped by the Stuxnet virus, is alive on in the highest reaches of the Israeli government:

“(T)he argument about Iran’s nuclear program crosses party lines and security force branches. Neither the Defense Ministry, the IDF nor the Mossad has a consistent stance. Different people have different views. Neither Netanyahu nor Barak appear to hold consistent positions. Those who favored a shock-and-awe attack on Iraq’s supposed nuclear program are likely to oppose a similar campaign against neighboring countries in the Persian Gulf.

That being said, the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister are hawkish on the Iran question, and are more apt to seek a military solution to the nuclear threat:

Last year, two camps seemed to evolve: a hawkish alliance of Netanyahu and Barak, and a moderate camp consisting of President Shimon Peres and former IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan was considered to be aligned with Peres and Ashkenazi, while his successor, Tamir Pardo, is not known to have a strong opinion on the question. Should he veer conspicuously from his predecessor’s relatively moderate position, he will surprise many. Top IDF officers also endorse Dagan’s stance. This is not acquiescent appeasement; nor does it categorically obviate a move to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. Instead, it asks “how” and “when,” and considers establishing a regional Middle East defense network.

Read the whole thing; it’s very comprehensive. (One additional note, based on a couple of conversations I recently had: the new Israeli army chief, Benny Gantz, is not as adamantly opposed to a strike on Iran as was his predecessor, Gabi Ashkenazi, but he’s not great guns for it, either.) I recommend the Oren piece, in particular, to those who invest importance in the recent Wikileaks document dump suggesting that Israel in 2005 abandoned the idea of attacking Iran. Yes, this means I’m hoping specifically that Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now reads this and understands the depth of her naivete. We’re having a little bit of a blog war, Friedman and I, and I happen to think her clear suggestion (I don’t know if it’s Peace Now’s position) that Israel long-ago ruled out such an attack is not only naive, but factually incorrect. I invest no faith whatsoever in these 2005 cables, and most people I know who care about these things don’t think they mean anything, for a couple of reasons, the most obvious being that we know that the Israelis approached George W. Bush in 2008, three years after these documents claim Israel dropped the idea of attacking Iran, and asked both for bunker-busting bombs and permission to use them on Iran. Bush refused both requests. (Read David Sanger’s January, 2009 dispatch on this for more information).

Another obvious reason: Even if an official of the Israeli government in 2005 had told an American official that Israel ruled out an attack, this would now be completely irrelevant information for the simple reason – which Friedman should have considered — that Israel is ruled by a different government today. Imagine the following sentence appearing in a newspaper in 2011: “A 2005 White House document clearly suggests that the U.S. government is weighing the privatization of Social Security.” It might be true that the American president in 2005 was contemplating the privatization of Social Security, but since we have a different president today, this fact doesn’t have great salience.

Why Friedman thinks that Israel has ruled out a strike is beyond me. I have nothing against her — I never even heard of her before last week, and I generally admire Americans for Peace Now, a group that, on the one hand, has been eclipsed by J Street, the most important organization on the Jewish pro-Israel left, but which nevertheless does important work helping to monitor settlement growth on the West Bank, among other things. In poking around Peace Now’s website, though, I found something that suggests Friedman’s naivete is, in fact, reflective of the group’s naivete on the subject of Iran. While acknowledging that Iran poses an existential threat to Israel, American for Peace Now nevertheless endorses the idea of no-precondition talks with Iran’s thuggish theocracy:

APN believes that the longstanding past U.S. approach to Iran, consisting almost exclusively of sanctions and saber-rattling, has failed. APN strongly supports the Obama Administration’s efforts to replace this approach with a serious, results-oriented Iran policy, comprising sanctions and meaningful incentives and founded on direct, determined US and multilateral diplomacy, without preconditions.

No one in the Obama Administration, including its most dovish officials, actually believes that Iran will respond positively to yet another American overture. Any understanding of Iran today begins with the fact that anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism are two of the pillars sustaining the regime. There is a vanishingly small chance that the Iranian regime will undermine its own ideology by responding to Obama’s call for dialogue, especially now that Iran has seen what America is capable of doing to countries that have given up their nuclear programs. The story of Libya is one the Iranian leadership is studying carefully. It is safe to guess that Iran, watching Libya, is more committed than ever to crossing the nuclear threshold.

Iran Says Siemens Enabled Stuxnet Attacks.

By Stefanie Hoffman, CRN
Apr. 18, 2011    8:27 PM EST

An Iranian commander accused German engineering firm Siemens of enabling the U.S. and Israel to create the Stuxnet worm that has repeatedly attacked Iran’s nuclear power plants.

The accusations first appeared in the Islamic Republic News Service, or IRNA, Iran’s state news agency, by Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, according to Reuters.

Specifically, Jalali said that Siemens should be held accountable for the role it played when programmers from the U.S. and Israel built the sophisticated Stuxnet worm that wreaked havoc on numerous nuclear facilities over the course of the last 10 months.

“Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemies with the information about the codes of the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) software and prepared the ground for a cyber attack against us,” Jalali told the Islamic Republic News Service. “It was a hostile action which could have inflicted serious damage on the country if it had not been dealt with in a timely manner.”

Jalali went on to say that both the U.S. and Israel should be held legally responsible for the damage the worm created at Iran’s facilities.

Although it first emerged in June 2009, Stuxnet remained largely under the radar until June 2010 due to its ability to stealthily cover its tracks and hide its presence. The worm then attacked hundreds of thousands of systems over the last 10 months, spreading largely in Iran and Indonesia.

Separating the Stuxnet worm from other previous viruses are its “search and destroy” capabilities, specifically designed to target industrial facilities such as chemical manufacturing and power plants that rely on SCADA systems.

The worm possesses the ability to modify Programmable Logic Controllers — devices that control the machines at power plants — by altering critical Siemens code, which scans classified factory operations.

Researchers at Symantec (NSDQ:SYMC) discovered at the end of last year that Stuxnet was created to impact control systems containing frequency converter drives, a power supply that can increase the speed of a motor with a higher frequency. Specific frequency converter drives are found in nuclear facilities all over the world, including those in Tehran, Iran.

Like other sophisticated malware, Stuxnet initially spread by exploiting four critical Windows zero-day vulnerabilities, but subsequently proliferated with infected USB sticks and unsecure shared networks.

During the summer of 2010, Stuxnet made headlines after it was detected at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power facility. Since then, the notorious worm has infiltrated and attacked five nuclear power facilities within Iran over a 10-month period, according to Symantec security researchers.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad later confirmed that the worm had sabotaged uranium-enrichment operations at Iran’s Natanz facility, which reportedly set Iran’s nuclear program back by months and dropped its production by 30 percent.

Jalali’s remarks come three months after a New York Times investigation indicating that both the U.S. and Israel collaborated to create the code for the infamous Stuxnet worm in a joint effort to sabotage Iran’s nuclear efforts and selected power plants.

Anonymous sources said the malware was developed at Israel’s Dimona Complex in 2008 as part of a joint U.S.-Israeli effort after American intelligence agencies identified the type of controllers Iran intended to use and their weaknesses, according to the New York Times. The Siemens controllers were tested at the Idaho National Laboratory, the newspaper said.

Oops! The law of unintended consequences in the Mideast.

  The following is fascinating for a totally unexpected reason. It illustrates the law of unintended consequences, which is perhaps the most important concept to keep in mind when examining the region at the moment.

Abboud al-Zumar was a leader in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (a group now associated with al-Qaida) who was imprisoned for more than two decades for his role in killing president Anwar al-Sadat. He was pardoned by the Egyptian Armed Forces Supreme Council on March 14. Since then, al-Zumar has been giving television interviews (translated by MEMRI). He said something truly remarkable: “I’d like to apologize to the Egyptian people [for the assassination of Sadat], because we did not intend to bring Hosni Mubarak to power. Our goal was to bring about change, and to deliver the Egyptian people from the conditions it found itself in. All we wanted was to rid the people of the Sadat regime. We were hoping that a better regime would replace it, but the outcome was that a worse regime came to power. For this, we apologize. Our intentions were to benefit this society….”

Now, of course, he is partly lying. The goal of Islamic Jihad was to organize a radical Islamist revolution and turn Egypt into a local version of Iran, Gaza under Hamas, and Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban. It’s no accident that the Islamic Jihad leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is now one of the top leaders of al-Qaida.

But that aside, consider how his words apply to Egypt’s current situation and the recent revolution there: “…bring about change… deliver the Egyptian people from [bad] conditions… rid the people of the [substitute Mubarak for Sadat] regime… hoping that a better regime would replace it, but the outcome was that a worse regime came to power.”

This is the dilemma that Egypt is now facing. Some readers (and a lot more non-readers) of mine are upset that I’m a spoil sport. They point to the courage of the demonstrators, the happiness of most Egyptians (though not the Christian minority), their high hopes of freedom, and so on.

Yet that isn’t the issue, is it? My task is to point out the dangers and skewer the naïve wishful thinking that has so overwhelmed the West.

Al-Zumar also said one other thing that bears repeating.

He justified the assassination by saying that clerics had issued a fatwa to get rid of Sadat, “We were not religious scholars ourselves, but we followed the religious scholars.”

This is how the Muslim Brotherhood and even more extreme Islamists promote violence – not by implementing it, but by issuing fatwas which are to Islamists what ordering a “hit” is to organized crime.

And why did they put a price on Sadat’s head? Al- Zumar explains, because he was “attacking” Islam, opposed as he was to having Egypt governed by Sharia law, campaigning to let women dress as they pleased, and agreeing to peace with Israel at Camp David.

Now, if anyone takes such stances in post-Mubarak Egypt, there will be clerics calling for their murder.

When Islamists contest elections, they do not dispense with the option of murdering their opponents. This is precisely what happened in Lebanon, where Hezbollah whittled away the moderates’ parliamentary majority by assassinating members of parliament.

Al-Zumar wasn’t a pro-democratic idealist, but set out to bring about change and, from his standpoint, made things worse. He might not be the last one to face such a situation. Will others be apologizing in 20 years? One of the things they’ll be apologizing for is the failure to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

It’s becoming an open secret that the US-led sanctions on Iran are having no serious effect.

The reasons are clear: 1. To get the sanctions through the UN, the US government basically told Russia, China, and Turkey that it would ignore their violations.

2. Iran has shifted its trade patterns eastward and southward.

3. The price of oil has skyrocketed, in no small part due to mistaken US foreign and energy policies, putting more money into the pocket of the Iranian regime.

And, of course, regional developments and US policies – including coddling Syria, distancing itself from Israel, and supporting the downfall of relatively moderate Arab regimes – also make the Iranian leaders feel they are winning and thus should stay the course.

Meanwhile, the US government persists in seeing the current Turkish regime as an ally, despite far more evidence that it is an ally of Iran. In the midst of a sanctions’ regime, Iran-Turkey trade has increased by almost 44% over last year. In the month of February alone, the trade volume was almost $1.5 billion. Last year it was $10 billion. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the two countries are about to sign a preferential trade agreement that he believes will triple trade.

Yet the US government has not criticized the Turkish regime, despite such developments as its opposition to sanctions, its violation of sanctions, and even the announcement that the Turkish army will now train the Syrian army.

If this government is reelected on June 11, it will be a major defeat for Western interests, whether or not anyone notices.

The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center (www.gloria-center.org) and editor of Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal and Turkish Studies. He blogs at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com

‘Iran appoints first ambassador to Egypt in 30 years’.

  Iran appointed its first ambassador to Egypt in over thirty years, Iranian TV network PressTV reported Monday. According to the report, the appointment comes amid a thawing of relations between the two countries, which were strained since just after the Iranian revolution in 1979.

The new ambassador’s appointment reportedly came after negotiations between Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and his Egyptian counterpart Nabil al-Arabi.

Relations between the two countries became strained after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran when Iran cut ties with Egypt. Iran’s move at the time was based on Egypt’s participation in the 1978 Camp David Accords, and remained cold throughout the 1980s due to Egyptian support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War.

Relations stayed strained throughout much of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s nearly 30-year rule. The Iranian government dedicated a street in Tehran to Khaled al-Islambouli, the man who assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. In 2001, BBC reported that Iran had for the second time honored Islambouli in a large mural with the words “I killed Egypt’s Pharaoh.” These public dedications of Sadat’s assassin were reportedly why Mubarak had refused a 2004 invitation to Tehran.

February 2011, however, saw Mubarak ousted following a wave of protests across Egypt. Since then, relations between the two countries have begun to warm.  Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said soon after the uprisings in Egypt saw Mubarak deposed that protests there and in Tunisia are a sign of “Islamic awareness” across the region.

In late February, Egypt allowed two Iranian naval vessels to pass through the Suez Canal en route to Syria which, according to Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, was the first time Iran had requested such passage in 30 years.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil el-Arabi has stated publicly his desire to improve the two countries’ ties, stating in his first new conference following his appointment that Egypt was willing to resume relations with Tehran, no longer viewed as an enemy state, Al-Ahram reported. Arabi said that “Iran is an important country and we are bound by historic ties with it.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

Syrian forces fire at thousand of protesters in Homs.