Iran, Sanctions, and War: The Obama Administration Spins Out of Control

Many may perceive the message in Thursday's New York Times article --- again, even though there is no evidence that the "senior Administration official" is presenting an agreed point of view --- as one advocating military action.

That's pretty stupid, given that others in the Administration --- like the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen --- have been trying to talk down the idea of military intervention and have been reminding the Israelis that the US Government is opposed to an airstrike on Iran.

It's not even a sensible political manoeuvre. The Ahmadinejad Government is likely to seize upon this as proof of America's hypocrisy --- they talk negotiations, but they mean conflict --- and unrelenting hostility towards the Iranian people. Rather than fold to the mounting economic pressure that the Administration official envisages, the Government and the Supreme Leader will use this further sign of the "enemy" to try and rally support to offset the economic difficulties.

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Afghanistan Special: Who is Trying to Undermine Possible US-Iran Co-operation?

UPDATE 0940 GMT: President Hamid Karzai has acknowledged that his office has received cash from Iran, but insists it is a "transparent" process. Karzai said he money was not for an individual but to help run the Presidential office.

Karzai added that many countries, including the US, had given similar assistance.

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The Obama Administration has long been divided over whether to pursue a "grand settlement" with Tehran on regional issues as well as the nuclear question or to ostracise Iran (or even doing elements of both at the same time). On this occasion, it just so happens that this bureaucratic saga intersects with the mysteries of internal Afghan politics.

If the narrative of "peace talks" continues, this collision will be ongoing. That, rather than the anonymously-spun tale "Iran is Said to Give Top Karzai Aide Cash by The Bagful" in The New York Times, is the real story here.

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Afghanistan Newsflash: US & Peace Talks Far from "Victory" (Exum)

For the past two weeks, reputable U.S. and British newspapers have been filled with articles touting progress in negotiations between the government in Kabul and Afghanistan's major insurgent groups. On Oct. 20, for example, the New York Times reported that Afghan reconciliation talks "involve extensive, face-to-face discussions with Taliban commanders from the highest levels of the group's leadership." These articles have been accompanied by optimistic reports that the United States and its NATO allies have decimated the Taliban's leadership in southern Afghanistan.

As someone who has fought in Afghanistan on two occasions and served briefly as a civilian advisor to the NATO command group there in 2009, I hope the reports are true. The idea that an end to the fighting in Afghanistan and the involvement of the 100,000 U.S. troops in the country might be just around the corner is seductive. However, there is good reason to be skeptical of the reporting coming out of Kabul and Washington.

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Iran Snap Analysis: Wikileaks (and the New York Times) v. the Supreme Leader

No question about the big development in Iran yesterday. The Supreme Leader, after four days of effort, finally got a significant political and religious triumph --- as opposed to his PR victory on Tuesday with his reception by Qom's crowds --- when Grand Ayatollah Safi Golpayegani agreed to meet him. Ayatollah Khamenei's website put out a spread of photographs of the encounter, and state media --- even Press TV, which had been silent on the Supreme Leader's meetings with clerics --- posted short reports of the meeting, which also included Ayatollahs Hossein Nouri Hamedani, Naser Makarem Shirazi, Mousa Shobeiri Zanjani, Jafar Sobhani, and Abdollah Javadi Amoli. 

Still, the press coverage has been fairly muted, and the Supreme Leader faces a list of clerics who are holding out against public photographs and private talks: maraje such as Ayatollahs Mousavi Ardebili, Vahid Khorasani, Bayat Zanjani (who raised a smile with his excuse that he was attending his niece's wedding and visiting his mom in Zanjan), and Sane'i are still refusing to show allegiance.

Meanwhile, the non-Iranian press is likely to pay little or no attention today. That is because Tehran has been swept up in the high-profile release by Wikileaks on documents on the US war in Iraq since 2003.

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Afghanistan: NATO Assists "Taliban Leaders" in Talks with Government (Filkins)

Talks to end the war in Afghanistan involve extensive, face-to-face discussions with Taliban commanders from the highest levels of the group’s leadership, who are secretly leaving their sanctuaries in Pakistan with the help of NATO troops, officials here say.

The discussions, some of which have taken place in Kabul, are unfolding between the inner circle of President Hamid Karzai and members of the Quetta shura, the leadership group that oversees the Taliban war effort inside Afghanistan. Afghan leaders have also held discussions with leaders of the Haqqani network, considered to be one of the most hard-line guerrilla factions fighting here; and members of the Peshawar shura, whose fighters are based in eastern Afghanistan.

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America's "Sons of Iraq" Returning to the Insurgency? (Williams/Adnan)

One of the heralded features of the US "surge" in Iraq in 2007-8, which purported brought stability and checked violence in the country, was the creation of Sunni militias, known as the "Sons of Iraq" or Awakening Councils. The units were to rally the population against the threat of "foreign" insurgencies such as Al Qa'eda in Iraq.

With the official pull-back of the US military under the December 2008 Status of Forces Agreement, the theory was that the Iraqi Government --- even if it was predominantly Shi'a --- would integrate the Awakening Councils into the national military and security services. In practice, however, that has proved problematic.

Timothy Williams and Duraid Adnan of The New York Times pick up the story:

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Bombing Our Way to Peace? Afghanistan 2010 and Vietnam 1972

Airstrikes on Taliban insurgents have risen sharply here over the past four months, the latest piece in what appears to be a coordinated effort by American commanders to bleed the insurgency and pressure its leaders to negotiate an end to the war.

American pilots pounded the Taliban with 2,100 bombs or missiles from June through September, with 700 in September alone, Air Force officers here said Thursday. That is an increase of nearly 50 percent over the same period last year, the records show.

The stepped-up air campaign is part of what appears to be an intensifying American effort, orchestrated by Gen. David H. Petraeus, to break the military stalemate here as pressure intensifies at home to bring the nine-year-old war to an end....

Operation Linebacker II ordered by President Nixon, lasted 11 days (18-29 December 1972). The primary objective of the operation was to coerce North Vietnam to re-enter into purposeful negotiations concerning a peace agreement that helped end the war in terms acceptable to the US.

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Afghanistan: Kunduz Governor Among 12 Killed in Mosque Bombing (Rubin)

In an audacious attack, insurgents assassinated the governor of Kunduz Province on Friday by bombing the mosque where he attended the weekly Friday Prayer, according to Afghan officials.

The bomb blast killed 12 people and wounded 33 at the main mosque in Taliqan, the capital of Takhar Province, which borders Kunduz.

[AFP puts the death toll at 20.]

The slain governor was Muhammad Omar, a Takhar native who returned there regularly for the Muslim weekend and Friday worship. Mr. Omar, who had survived one other assassination attempt, was believed to have been the target of the attack, said Faiz Muhammad Tawhidi, the spokesman for the Takhar governor.

The assassination underscored the growing capability of the insurgency in northern Afghanistan, which has become increasingly unstable over the past year. Mr. Omar was the third government official in the past two months to be assassinated in the region. In August and September, district governors were killed in Kunduz and Baghlan Provinces.

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Afghanistan: Guards at US Military Bases Linked to Taliban (Risen)

Afghan private security forces with ties to the Taliban, criminal networks and Iranian intelligence have been hired to guard American military bases in Afghanistan, exposing United States soldiers to surprise attack and confounding the fight against insurgents, according to a Senate investigation.

The Pentagon’s oversight of the Afghan guards is virtually nonexistent, allowing local security deals among American military commanders, Western contracting companies and Afghan warlords who are closely connected to the violent insurgency, according to the report by investigators on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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The Latest from Iran (7 October): "We Have No Political Prisoners"

1935 GMT: Clash in Kurdistan. According to Iranian state media, five people, including four policemen, were killed and nine others wounded when two gunmen opened fire on a police patrol in Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan.

Deputy provincial police commander Ebrahim Kazeminejad said,"At 5:10 pm two assailants from anti-revolutionary groups fired on a patrol and passers-by in Azadi Square of Sanandaj in which four policemen and a passer-by were martyred. In this terrorist act also five policemen and four passers-by were wounded."

1930 GMT: Academic Corner. According to Rah-e-Sabz, Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Hosseini has told pro-government academics, "Hopefully all universities will be purged."

1920 GMT: Breaking the Reformists (cont.). Another voice challenging the supposed ban on the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front: Ayatollah Mousavi Tabrizi has said the dissolution of the party is illegal and cannot be done without a full court hearing and appeal.

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