WarSclerotic

Amb. Marc Ginsberg: The Maiden Voyage of SS Kerry.

On February 24, Sec. of State John Kerry will embark on his first foreign trip as newly-minted Secretary of State. After making the obligatory stopovers in Europe to check the boxes with key allies, the real business of his mission will take him to Turkey, the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

It is a testament to the gravitational pull of the turbulent Middle East that it compelled Kerry to place the Obama administration’s vaunted pivot to Asia on the backburner. Recall that Hillary Clinton jetted off to Asia on her maiden voyage… Asia can wait.

Kerry’s trip in the Middle East is going to be more than merely courtesy calls on U.S. Arab “allies” pending President Obama’s March trip to the region, which will take both men to Jerusalem — a destination conspicuously absent from Kerry’s itinerary. Kerry’s spokesmen explained that until a post-election Israeli government is approved by the Knesset, it would be preferable to wait a tad longer for meetings with Israeli officials. Given Kerry’s close ties with Netanyahu, the bypass did not create yet another tempest in U.S.-Israeli relations.

Syria will dominate Kerry’s Middle East agenda and woven throughout his stops are visits to the key players dominating the Syrian Middle East equation. As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry developed a particular expertise on Syria, and had met several times with Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad in what was then a concerted effort by successive high-level American visitors to Damascus to wean Assad away from the dark side of Iran and implement reforms — obviously that U.S. courting had no effect on the clueless Assad.

Since his appointment, Kerry has been quietly crafting a fresh American-led plan to broker a political solution to the bloody Syrian civil war. While its elements are sketchy, it calls for a joint U.S.-Russian engagement bringing together Moaz al Katib — the elected leader of the Syrian opposition — and elements of the Syrian regime which, as demanded by the Syrian rebels, do not have “blood on their hands.” That may be like searching for Waldo. Katib already faces yet another internal rebellion within his serially divided Syrian opposition over his declared willingness to sit down with Assad’s cronies. The key stumbling block as Syria crumbles has been Syrian rebel demands that Assad must go as part of any political agreement. Whether the Russians are prepared to escort their protege to the exit as part of a settlement will be the key indicator whether this latest gambit has any chance of succeeding.

Fortuitously, Kerry will find support for a new peace initiative from, of all places, Assad’s closest ally, Russia. In a stunning about-face, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov declared last week Moscow’s support for political negotiations between Assad and the Syrian opposition — a position anathema to Assad. Kerry will meet with Lavrov in Berlin to explore the feasibility of coordinating a joint approach. Given the possibility of a joint U.S.-Russian approach on Syria, this may constitute the first credible opportunity to bring desperately needed pressure on Assad to face his inevitable swan song.

Given the Obama administration’s determination to avoid being drawn militarily into the Syrian morass, Kerry’s initiative is a way long overdue initiative given the calamitous impact Syria’s total disintegration would mean to U.S. foreign policy.

In his final stop, Kerry plans to meet with Egypt’s embattled President Morsi. Morsi is scheduled to come to Washington to meet with President Obama later this spring. Kerry will likely be delivering a firm message to Morsi that Congress is in no mood to further reward his Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government with U.S. taxpayer assistance unless he reverses course and stops trampling on Egypt’s secular opposition in his mad dash to become the Islamist Caliph of Egypt.

Of course, looming in the background on Kerry’s agenda is the last gasp of a potential diplomatic resolution over Iran’s nuclear weapons program (those talks are going to start shortly in Kazakhstan), and the ever-stagnant Palestinian-Israeli situation, which he and Obama will address when they jointly travel to Israel.

Kerry inherited quite a Middle East mess from his predecessor. He is determined to tackle it head-on, and fortunately, for his president and for the nation, he has the expertise to do so.

Hezbollah Role In Syria Crisis Looks Poised To Grow.

Posted: 02/22/2013 1:54 pm EST

WASHINGTON — In October, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, delivered a rare speech to comment on rising rumors about the Lebanese Shiite group’s involvement in Syria’s ongoing civil conflict.

For weeks, reports had circulated that the bodies of dead Hezbollah fighters had been returning from the battleground in neighboring Syria.

Nasrallah, speaking via a remote transmission as is his custom, vehemently denied the reports. But he also didn’t rule out the possibility of Hezbollah joining the battle in the future.

“As of now, we have not fought alongside the regime,” he said. “We don’t know about the future.”

The battle lines in Syria fall neatly along sectarian lines, with most of the Syrian rebels being Sunni Muslims supported by the Sunni countries of the Arabian Gulf, while Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime is being backed by the Shiite government of Iran and by Hezbollah. The latter has been open about its support for Assad — at least politically.

But since Nasrallah’s speech, signs have been growing that Hezbollah’s armed wing is being drawn directly into Syria’s conflict, raising the specter of the violence spilling over into Lebanon.

Lebanese newspapers reported last week that a handful of Hezbollah fighters had been killed in a battle with Syrian rebels in Al-Qusayr, a Syrian town not far from Lebanon and heavily populated with Shiites.

And on Wednesday, a group of Sunni Syrian rebels made a public threat to bring the fighting to Hezbollah, giving the group 48 hours to cease its incursions into Syria before the rebels would retaliate.

The next day, a top Free Syrian Army commander reiterated the warning. “As soon as the ultimatum ends, we will start responding to [Hezbollah] sources of fire,” Gen. Selim Idriss, chief of staff of the Free Syrian Army, told Agence France-Presse. “Hezbollah is abusing Lebanese sovereignty to shell Syrian territory and Free Syrian Army positions.”

That deadline was set to end Friday, and there have been some early, unconfirmed reports of Syrian rebels attacking Hezbollah positions.

The reports of Hezbollah’s incursions into Syria date back many months. However, in public remarks — whether by official channels or through news reports — Hezbollah party leaders and officers have always downplayed those stories and have spoken of their possible entry into the fighting as a reluctant and defensive measure. Officially, the group has called for the Lebanese government to become more involved in shaping a political settlement to the violence in Syria.

In his October address, for instance, Nasrallah denounced specific claims that a top commander with Hezbollah had died in a clash in a Syrian town not far from Lebanon, saying that the man had been killed in a weapons accident while helping guard a Lebanese border town.

“Abu Abbas is a commander of the group’s infantry unit in the Bekaa,” Nasrallah said, by way of explaining the commander’s death. “He is then responsible for the Hezbollah members in that area, and because these border towns continue until this day to be attacked [by Syrian rebels], martyrs have fallen and Abu Abbas was one of them.”

A pseudonymous Hezbollah commander undermined this claim in a recent New Yorker article, insisting that Abu Abbas had indeed perished in battle and that “a lot of bodies” have been coming back from the Syrian battleground.

But he also characterized the fight as the front line of a Shiite and Lebanese defense against a surge of Sunni Salafism pushed by the Syrian rebels and their allies in the Gulf. “You wait and see,” he said. “You’re going to have Salafists in Syria attacking the Golan Heights. What are you going to do then?”

His remarks echoed those of another unnamed Hezbollah fighter, who told McClatchy this week that while fighters had been going in and out of Syria in a supporting role, the extent of Hezbollah’s involvement in the conflict was greatly exaggerated and remained focused on defending their own country from a flood of Sunni extremists.

The Free Syrian Army is not the only group to have launched broadsides against Hezbollah since the start of the Syrian uprising. Last September, a commander with an al Qaeda offshoot in Syria posted a message to online message boards denouncing the group for its reported involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and promising retaliation.

Late last year, the United States designated another Syrian rebel faction, Jabhat al Nusra, as a terrorist group for its ties to al Qaeda in Iraq.

Iran move to speed up nuclear program troubles West | Reuters.

By Fredrik Dahl

VIENNA (Reuters) – Iran has begun installing advanced centrifuges at its main uranium enrichment plant, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday, a defiant step that will worry Western powers ahead of a resumption of talks with Tehran next week.

In a confidential report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said 180 so-called IR-2m centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings had been put in place at the facility near the central town of Natanz. They were not yet operating.

If launched successfully, such machines could enable Iran to speed up significantly its accumulation of material that the West fears could be used to devise a nuclear weapon. Iran says it is refining uranium only for peaceful energy purposes.

Iran’s installation of new-generation centrifuges would be “yet another provocative step,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington.

White House spokesman Jay Carney warned Iran that it would face further pressure and isolation if it fails to address international concerns about its nuclear program in the February 26 talks with world powers in the Kazakh city of Almaty.

Britain’s Foreign Office said the IAEA’s finding was of “serious concern”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the report “proves that Iran continues to advance swiftly towards the red line” that he laid down last year.

Netanyahu, who has strongly hinted at possible military action if sanctions and diplomacy fail to halt Iran’s nuclear drive, told the U.N. in September that Iran should not have enough higher-enriched uranium to make even a single warhead.

Iran denies Western accusations that it is seeking to develop a capability to make atomic bombs. Tehran says it is Israel’s assumed nuclear arsenal that threatens peace.

The IAEA’s report showed “no evidence of diversion of material and nuclear activities towards military purposes,” Iranian envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh told Iranian media.

U.S. lawmakers meanwhile are crafting a bill designed to stop the European Central Bank from handling business from the Iranian government, a U.S. congressional aide said on Thursday, in an attempt to keep Tehran from using euros to develop its nuclear program.

In the early stages of drafting, it would target the ECB’s cross-border payment system and impose U.S. economic penalties on entities that use the European Central Bank to do business with Iran’s government, the aide said on condition of anonymity.

The aide disclosed the new push for sanctions ahead of fresh talks on Tuesday in which major powers hope to persuade the Iranian government to rein in its atomic activities, which the West suspects may be a cover to develop a bomb capability.

RISING WESTERN PRESSURE

It was not clear how many of the new centrifuges Iran aims to install at Natanz, which is designed for tens of thousands.

An IAEA note informing member states late last month about Iran’s plans implied that it could be up to 3,000 or so.

Iran has for years been trying to develop centrifuges more efficient than the erratic 1970s IR-1 model it now uses, but their introduction for full-scale production has been dogged by delays and technical hurdles, experts and diplomats say.

The deployment of the new centrifuges underlines Iran’s continued refusal to bow to Western pressure to curb its nuclear program, and may further complicate efforts to resolve the dispute diplomatically, without a spiral into Middle East war.

Iran has also started testing two new centrifuge types, the IR-6 and IR-6s, at a research and development facility, the IAEA report said. Centrifuges spin at supersonic speed to increase the ratio of the fissile isotope in uranium.

In a more encouraging sign for the powers, however, the IAEA report said Iran in December resumed converting some of its uranium refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent to oxide powder for the production of reactor fuel.

That helped restrain the growth of Iran’s higher-grade uranium stockpile since the previous report in November, a development that could buy more time for diplomacy.

The report said Iran had increased to 167 kg (367 pounds) its stockpile of 20 percent uranium – a level it says it needs to make fuel for a Tehran research reactor but which also takes it much closer to weapons-grade material if processed further.

NEW OFFER TO IRAN

One diplomat familiar with the report said this represented a rise of about 18-19 kg since November, a notable slowdown from the previous three-month period when the stockpile jumped by nearly 50 percent after Iran halted conversion.

Israel last year gave a rough deadline of mid-2013 as the date by which Tehran could have enough higher-grade uranium to produce a single atomic bomb if processed further. Experts say about 240-250 kg of 20 percent enriched uranium would be needed.

But a resumption of conversion, experts say, means the Israeli “red line” for action could be postponed.

Refined uranium can fuel nuclear energy plants, which is Iran’s stated aim, or provide the core of an atomic bomb, which the United States and Israel suspect may be its ultimate goal.

Next week’s talks between the six powers and Iran to try again to break the impasse in the decade-old dispute are their first since mid-2012 but analysts expect no real progress toward defusing suspicions that Iran is seeking atomic bomb capability.

The United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany want Iran to halt 20 percent enrichment and shut the Fordow underground plant where this takes place.

Iran wants them to recognize what it regards as its right to refine uranium for peaceful purpose and to relax increasingly strict sanctions battering its oil-dependent economy.

In Paris, French deputy foreign ministry spokesman Vincent Floreani said the powers were ready to make a new offer to Iran with “significant new elements” and that they hoped Tehran would engage seriously in the negotiations.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich; Rachelle Younglai, Arshad Mohammed and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Paul Carrel in Frankfurt; Editing by Roger Atwood)