WarSclerotic

Iran’s president seeks to mend ties with Saudi Arabia | The Times of Israel.

Rouhani calls past differences with Riyadh ‘trivial tensions,’ says a more robust relationship is in ‘the Islamic world’s interest’

Iranian President Hasan Rouhani speaks during an interview with state television at the presidency in Tehran, Iran. (photo credit: AP/Presidency Office, Rouzbeh Jadidoleslam)

Iran has reached out to the long-estranged rulers Saudi Arabia, praising the Sunni kingdom as a friend of the Shiite Islamic Republic and dismissing his country’s ongoing strife with Riyadh as “trivial tensions.”

Speaking at a gathering of Hajj officials in Tehran on Thursday, new President Hasan Rouhani continued with the conciliatory tone he has adopted of late in dealing with the West, saying Saudi Arabia was a “friend and brother of Iran” and asserting that the two countries were “willing to remove trivial tensions from the path (of bilateral ties) in order to fulfill bilateral and the Islamic world’s interest,” the Iranian news agency Tasnim reported.

Rouhani, who is considered more moderate than his combative predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is reported to have assented to a scaled-back nuclear program in exchange for reduced sanctions on his country. There have also been rumors of a possible meeting between him and Obama on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, a possibility that the White House has not ruled out.

On Thursday, he said that Iran and Saudi Arabia share many common interests and should focus on upgrading diplomatic ties.

“This issue has been emphasized both in the Saudi king’s congratulatory letter to me and in my letter to thank him,” Rouhani was quoted as saying.

Saudi Arabia, a key regional ally of the US, has long pushed for action against Iran’s controversial nuclear program, cautioning that nuclear weapons would afford Iran a hegemonic position in the Middle East.

Rouhani’s tone toward Israel has been less conciliatory.

In an interview with the NBC aired Thursday, he accused Israel of doing “injustice to the people of the Middle East and… [bringing] instability to the region with its war-mongering policies.”

Asked about criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Iran’s policies and plans, Rouhani said he didn’t understand how an “occupier” nation could be in a position to lecture another country.

Rouhani said Israel “shouldn’t allow itself to give speeches about a democratically and freely elected government.”

He sidestepped a question about whether the Holocaust was real. And he said that his authority is genuine and lasting, even though Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is known to control all matters of state, including nuclear.

Asked by network correspondent Ann Curry about statements that Ahmadinejad had made questioning the Holocaust, Rouhani said only, “I’m not a historian. I’m a politician. What is important for us is that the countries of the region and the people grow closer to each other and that they are able to prevent aggression and injustice.”

“What we wish for in this region is rule by the will of the people,” he said. “We believe in the ballot box. We do not seek war with any country. We seek peace and friendship among the nations of the region.”

In the wide-ranging question-and-answer session of which the first part was aired Wednesday night, Rouhani said that Iran has “never pursued or sought a nuclear bomb and we are not going to do so.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Moscow pulls away from Kerry-Lavrov deal on Syrian chemical disarmament. Assad gets to keep his WMD.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu behind Putin’s shoulder

Russian leaders finally picked apart the Kerry-Lavrov understanding for Syria’s chemical disarmament – less than a week after it was unveiled in Geneva last Saturday. Thursday, Sept. 19, they slapped down a string of  coordinated obstructions. One knockout blow came from President Vladimir Putin, who commented dryly that he could not be 100 percent certain that the plan for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons would succeed. “But everything we have seen so far in recent days gives us confidence that this will happen. I hope so,” he said.

To dispel that hope, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu followed up with a denial of any plans to destroy the Syrian chemical stocks on Russian soil.
Then, in an interview to Fox News, Syrian President Bashar Assad, in sync with Moscow, asked mockingly: “It [the destruction of poison chemicals] is very detrimental to the environment. If the American administration is ready to pay this money and take the responsibility of bringing toxic materials to the United States, why don’t they do it?”

Since Russia and the US are the only countries with the industrial-scale capacity to destroy chemical munitions, and their import is banned under US law, Assad’s chemical arsenal is safe.

In fact, Germany alone has offered to send a small number of chemical experts to Syria, No one else is ready to oversee the complicated dismantling and removal of an estimated 10,000 tonnes of dangerously poisonous materials, pay for the operation or accept the materials on its soil.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, seeing his understanding with Sergey Lavrov slipping away, made a desperate attempt to save it. He called a news conference at the State Department Thursday to declare that it was essential the deal be enforced with a binding resolution and that the UN Security Council act on it next week, when the UN General Assembly holds its annual meeting in New York.

Kerry did not indicate how the US administration would react if the deal fell through or whether the US military option would be revived.

But it was already clear that his deal with Lavrov was going nowhere, even to the few Obama sympathizers who had hailed the president for finally managing to get Moscow on board for a solution of the Syrian war and the removal of Assad’s chemical arsenal.

The Syrian ruler calmly told Fox meanwhile that his government was willing to get rid of its chemical weapons but it would be a very complicated operation that would take about a year or more and cost around $1 billion.

After analyzing his comments, Western intelligence experts told debkafile they had reached two conclusions:

1.  That Assad drew a distinction between his operational chemical arsenal and the stockpiles of those weapons. He is apparently willing to let the first category go, but determined to keep the stocks.

2.   His manner was confident verging on cocky, showing he felt certain that he would not be deprived of his chemical capabilities for coming out on top of the Syrian civil war.
He had no qualms about denying his forces were responsible for the Aug. 21 attack on districts east of Damascus, fully backed by the perseverance of Russian officials in pinning the blame on the rebels.
As excerpts of his Fox interview were aired, Assad received Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov in Damascus at the head of a large Russian delegation of military and intelligence officers. He used the occasion to complain that he was caught in a cruel vice between al Qaeda and US pressure and expressed the hope that Moscow would be able to “draw a new map of global balance.”

As the Kerry-Lavrov deal falls apart, it turns out to have been less an agreement and more a loose compilation of limited understandings on the Syrian chemical question, which left unresolved sharp, fundamental disagreements between Washington on Moscow on how it should be handled, particularly at the UN Security Council.

None of this has stopped President Obama from selling the proposition to the American public and the world that the US-Russian accord for the disposal of Syria’s chemical weapons was a triumphant breakthrough for his administration’s diplomacy, which opened the door to an agreement for resolving the Iranian nuclear issue as well.

Syria may miss first deadline in U.S.-Russia chemical arms deal – latimes.com.

The ambitious agreement is challenged as indications arise that the Syrian government will not submit a toxic-stockpile inventory this weekend.

WASHINGTON — The ambitious U.S.-Russian deal to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons, hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough just days ago, hit its first delay Wednesday with indications that the Syrian government will not submit an inventory of its toxic stockpiles and facilities to international inspectors by this weekend’s deadline.

The State Department signaled that it would not insist that Syrian President Bashar Assad produce the list Saturday, the end of a seven-day period spelled out in the framework deal that Washington and Moscow announced last weekend in Geneva.

Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, said Wednesday that “our goal is to see forward momentum” by Saturday, not the full list. “We’ve never said it was a hard and fast deadline.”

It wasn’t clear whether Syrian officials needed more time to complete a formal declaration of their chemical arms, or whether the disarmament deal itself was in trouble.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry had described the date as the first of several “specific timelines” that would indicate whether Syria is committed to the deal that he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had worked out.

“We agreed that Syria must submit within a week — not in 30 days, but in one week — a comprehensive listing,” Kerry said Saturday. He said the U.S. would allow “no games, no room for avoidance, or anything less than full compliance.”

Senior Obama administration officials had praised Russia for persuading Assad’s government to relinquish its lethal chemical arsenal, one of the world’s largest, by mid-2014 in a deal to avoid U.S. missile strikes in retaliation for the Aug. 21 poison gas attack that the U.S. says killed more than 1,000 people.

But Moscow’s ability or willingness to push its ally in Damascus to meet the first deadline in the deal now is being questioned.

Kerry and Lavrov sought last weekend to portray the two powers as united. The gap between them, however, has become more apparent and is threatening to snarl efforts to craft a United Nations Security Council resolution that lays out how Syria is to meet its obligations.

The resolution needs to be complete before the first steps can be taken to impound and either remove or destroy Syria’s arsenal. Diplomats said Western countries split with Russia in a meeting Tuesday over Western demands for tough enforcement of the agreement.

Diplomats hope to complete the resolution by Friday, but if they fall short the work may be delayed further next week because of the meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international body based in The Hague, is expected to take several days to complete its analysis of the Syrian “initial declaration,” and then will submit its report to the United Nations.

Gary Samore, who was President Obama’s top arms control advisor until February, said the declaration is key because “it will provide an early test of whether this process is ever going to get off the ground.”

Samore, now research chief for the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said he believes Russia is pushing Syria to comply. He also said, “Assad is going to try to hide some portion — maybe 10%, maybe 30% — whatever he thinks he can get away with.”

Western diplomats close to the deliberations at the U.N. are wary that the Syrians may try to “cheat and retreat,” as Saddam Hussein’s government did for years in Iraq, to stymie U.N. weapons inspections.

“We’re not going to lose a lot of faith in the Syrians, because we’re not starting out with a lot,” said one diplomat, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Western diplomats said they wanted to avoid a mistake of the U.N.’s battle with Hussein by starting out with an enforcement mechanism strong enough to prevent the Syrians from avoiding their obligations.

The Russians and Americans are sharply split over the use of the U.N.’s Chapter 7, which authorizes punitive actions, in any resolution. Russia has argued that it should be included only as a possible avenue for future action, while the United States, Britain and France want it conveyed automatically if there is noncompliance.

Russia also amplified its claims that rebels seeking to overthrow Assad, not the Syrian government, fired rockets filled with deadly sarin gas Aug. 21, and described a U.N. report on the incident as “politicized” and “one-sided.”

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky defended the report Wednesday, calling it “indisputable” and “thoroughly objective.” Independent groups have analyzed data in the report and concluded that the rockets were fired from government-controlled areas into territory held or contested by rebels.

U.S. officials say they have seen no evidence that chemical weapons are stored or being used in areas held by the opposition.

Some experts argued that the one-week timeline was too generous. Robert M. Gates, former Defense secretary under George W. Bush and Obama, said this week that Assad should have been given a 48-hour ultimatum.

“It should be an easier task on the part of the Syrians compared to the Iraqis,” said Charles Duelfer, who led the U.S. search for weapons of mass destruction after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Netanyahu: Don’t be Fooled by Rouhani – Middle East – News – Israel National News.

“The Iranians are creating spin in the press in order to keep the centrifuges spinning,” says Prime Minister.

PM Netanyahu Warns Syria

From PMO video

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reacted Thursday to Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s latest interview, in which he sounded a moderate tone, and said – “Let us not be fooled by the Iranian president’s words of deception.”

“The Iranians are creating media spin in order to keep the centrifuges spinning,” a statement from Netanyahu’s bureau said. “The test is not in Rouhani’s words, but in the deeds of the Iranian regime, which continues to vigorously pursue its nuclear program at the same time that Rouhani grants interviews.”

Rouhani said on Wednesday that Iran will never develop nuclear weapons.

Speaking to NBC News in his first interview with a U.S. news outlet since his election, Rouhani also said he has full authority to make a deal with the West on the disputed atomic program.

“I believe the leaders in all countries could think in their national interest and they should not be under the influence of pressure groups,” he said. “I hope to witness such an atmosphere in the future.”

With Syria’s opposition fragmenting, it’s no wonder Obama didn’t want to attack Assad | The Times of Israel.

Over half of the fighters battling the butcher of Damascus are linked to Islamic extremist groups, and they’re now increasingly at war with the rest of the rebels

In this July 29, 2012, file photo, Free Syrian Army soldiers gather at the border town of Azaz, some 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Aleppo, Syria. Al-Qaida-linked gunmen in northern Syria captured a town near the Turkish border Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013, following heavy clashes with mainstream, Western-backed rebels in the area, prompting Turkey to close a nearby crossing, activists and Turkish officials said. (photo credit: AP Photo/Turkpix, File)

If it weren’t so sad it might almost be amusing. On Monday, the special UN inspection team that was dispatched to Syria to determine whether chemical weapons were used, dramatically declared that hundreds of people were indeed victims of sarin gas used east of Damascus on August 21. This, however, was the sole contribution of this special investigation committee.

The entire world had no doubt that Syrian citizens had been attacked with chemical weapons that day, and the UN delegation managed to determine the precise type of gas that was used to kill hundreds of Syrians. The problem is that, as expected, the report avoided establishing which side used the poisonous gas.

The conclusion does little to satisfy Syrian President Bashar Assad’s opponents who, at the very least, hoped the UN would hold the regime accountable for the chemical warfare attack in the Damascus suburbs, especially after it became clear that the US government has no intention of attacking Syria.

But then, the past days have brought plenty of grim tidings to the Syrian opposition, particularly the moderate groups – some secular and others that are considered “light” Islamists. They feel that they have been abandoned by the international community. The world not only failed to punish Assad for his crimes, but went as far as to draft the Russian-American agreement which they believe will empower radical factions, such as al-Qaeda affiliated movements, in Syria.

While the agreement reached by foreign ministers John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov is potentially good news for Israel and may prevent Assad’s forces from using chemical weapons in the future, it allows the butcher of Damascus to continue killing his people as he wishes using conventional weapons and even constitutes a degree of recognition for Assad’s leadership. And this is not the only problem that the Syrian president’s opponents face.

The opposition’s structural-organizational status has been steadily deteriorating. While the Syrian army has managed to maintain relative order and kept its hierarchy, Assad’s opponents suffer from a lack of leadership and from considerable internal strife and contention, making it increasingly unlikely that an alternative to his leadership will arise in Syria in the foreseeable future.

Infighting among the rebels reached a peak this week, when al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters “liberated” Azaz, a Syrian town near the Turkish frontier — not from Assad’s army, but from the rebel Free Syrian Army.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that monitors the violence, said members of the al-Qaida offshoot stormed the town in the northern Aleppo province on Wednesday evening, forcing the opposition fighters from the Western-backed bloc to pull out, AP reported.

There has also been infighting among rebel groups in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, which borders Iraq, and in the north where al-Qaeda fighters and their allies have been battling Kurdish anti-government rebels for months, AP said. The infighting has left hundreds dead.

This week, Jane’s Intelligence Review published a promo article in the Daily Telegraph for a major analysis of the Syrian opposition. The conclusion it emphasized was that Assad’s opposition has broken down into a multitude of different groups, some collaborating with each other and others in conflict. According to the same article, there are approximately 1,000 — yes, one thousand — anti-Assad groups throughout Syria. And what is even more troubling for Western countries is Jane’s conclusion that approximately half of the Syrian opposition is affiliated with Islamist organizations.

This article was published just as the first groups of CIA-trained opposition fighters begin to enter Syria, armed with advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons from the American agency. Their activity has already made an impact as increasing numbers of Assad’s tanks are being destroyed by the fighters, equipped and trained by Americans in Jordan and elsewhere. Nevertheless, the Jane’s summations are deeply discouraging. It would plainly now take a miracle to transform the Syrian opposition into a suitable alternative to Assad’s rule.

According to the British investigation, the armed opposition forces in Syria total 100,000, of whom 10,000 are considered Jihadists who actively support al-Qaeda’s ideology. (Israel’s security experts estimate that number as closer to 20,000). Another 30,000-35,000 activists are members of extreme Islamist groups that believe in the need for a Sharia state, but limit their aspirations to within Syria instead of aspiring to instill Islamic rule worldwide. In total, over half of the Syrian opposition is guided by radical Islamic ideology, in addition to another 30,000 members of “moderate” Islamist groups.

This means that only a fraction of the anti-Assad activists are affiliated with nationalist-secular organizations. The British consider only about a third of the opposition’s forces legitimate and acceptable, while the Americans are willing to accept even fewer.

And if these numbers do not suffice to explain why President Barack Obama was so unenthusiastic about attacking the Syrian regime, Jane’s analyst Charles Lister explains that the two most dominant groups among the hundreds of opposition movements are affiliated with al-Qaeda: Al-Nusra Front and The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shām.

But even those who fight to promote al-Qaeda’s ideology have failed to work together, contrary to what we have been led to believe in recent months. They too have been unable to avoid strife and contention.

Aaron Zelin, an analyst at the Washington Institute, described the history of the rift in a document he published last week. It all began with an organization called the Islamic State of Iraq, which succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Zarqawi’s successor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was the first to understand the underlying potential for al-Qaeda in Syria, as soon as the protests there began. He sent the first Islamic State activists to Syria as early as late summer of 2011 in order to establish an organization there bearing the same name.

One of these activists was Abu Muhammad al-Julani, who in January 2012 announced the establishment of the Al-Nusra Front, an organization that has since managed to carry out a substantial number of successful attacks against the Syrian regime, recruit volunteers and take over land all over the country. Al-Julani’s success apparently made al-Baghdadi, the “godfather,” jealous, because five months ago, last April, al-Baghdadi announced that the members of the Al-Nusra Front would operate along with his own organization from that day on, and renamed the new organization The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shām.

A defiant Al-Julani, however, promptly announced that the Al-Nusra Front would continue to operate independently. He began to work directly with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the worldwide leader of al-Qaeda, but the damage to the Al-Nusra Front had been done. Increasing numbers of activists crossed the lines and joined al-Baghdadi’s organization, making it the more dominant of the two. According to Zelin, it is the Islamic State, not the Al-Nusra Front, which has succeeded in recruiting a majority of local Syrian activists to its lines instead of foreign ones.

The Syrian opposition in general, and the Islamist groups in particular, bring to mind the scenes from Monty Python’s Life of Brian in which the protagonists bicker over whether they are members of, or avowed opponents of, the “Judean’s People’s Front” and “The People’s Front of Judea.” Watched from across the border in Israel, the not dissimilar situation among the Syrian opposition groups can look ridiculous. The citizens of Syrian are doubtless less amused.

UN’s Ban praises Iran for promoting dialogue following

White House: Obama open to talks with Iran, but only if Tehran serious about giving up nuclear weapons program.

UNITED NATIONS – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday commended efforts by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s government to engage with the international community and praised Tehran for releasing several prominent prisoners.

Ban met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif earlier on Thursday and said he plans to meet with Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next week. Rouhani is due to address the United Nations on Tuesday.

Since Rouhani was elected president in June, the centrist cleric has called for “constructive interaction” with the world, a dramatic shift in tone from the strident anti-Western rhetoric of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“I told Minister Zarif that I commend the efforts of the new government in Iran in promoting dialogue with the international community,” Ban told reporters. “I’m going to meet President Rouhani next week … (to) discuss all the matters of regional concern very closely.”

The United States and its allies suspect Iran is seeking nuclear bomb-making capability despite Tehran’s insistence that its atomic program has only peaceful aims.

Tough sanctions imposed by Washington and the United Nations over the issue have taken a severe toll on Iran’s economy.

Rouhani vowed on Wednesday that his government would never develop nuclear weapons, his strongest signal yet that he may be seeking a diplomatic thaw with the West after decades of acrimony.

Also on Thursday, the White House said President Barack Obama is open to direct talks between Iran and the United States but only if Tehran is serious about getting rid of its nuclear weapons program.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani delivered some positive-sounding rhetoric on Thursday but “actions are more important than words.”

When Obama first ran for president in 2008, he said he would hold direct negotiations with Iran under certain conditions. Carney said Obama still holds that position.

Obama, according to Carney, would be willing to have bilateral negotiations provided the Iranians were serious about addressing the international community’s insistence that Tehran give up its nuclear weapons program.

“That is the position we hold today,” Carney said.

With both Rouhani and Obama attending the UN General Assembly next week, speculation has grown that the two leaders might have an encounter of some type. Carney said no meeting is scheduled.

Ban Praises release of political prisoners

Ban said he had also praised the Iranian government for releasing 12 political prisoners, including human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and a number of women’s rights activists, political activists and journalists.

“When I visited Iran last year I raised this issue and discussed it with them and urged them to release all these people. I am glad they have finally taken action,” Ban said.

In a tentative sign that hardline policies are being eased in Iran, authorities freed Sotoudeh and at least 10 other prominent prisoners on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to reports on opposition websites.

Iranian parliament’s Jewish MP to join Rouhani at the UN | JPost | Israel News.

Rouhani urges world leaders to engage with Iran | JPost | Israel News.

( I wouldn’t be surprised if he addresses the General Assembly wearing a red suit and smoking a pipe. “Ho, ho, ho…..” – JW )

Iranian president continues his “charm offensive” in an op-ed for the Washington Post, offering to facilitate talks between Syrian government and opposition; calling on world leaders to turn “threats into opportunities.”