We’ve been trying to get our heads around the significance of Saturday’s announcement that one of Iraq’s largest Sunni political parties is going to boycott the forthcoming national elections. The New York Times plays down the story. Juan Cole also thinks that the effect on the election will not be devastating, but he considers the longer-term maneouvres and probable benefits to the leading Shi’a factions:
The Los Angeles Times reports that the National Dialogue Front, a secular party led by Salih Mutlak, is calling for a boycott of the March 7 parliamentary elections in Iraq. The NDF has 11 seats in parliament, but Mutlak and another prominent party member were among over 500 candidates (out of over 6000) for parliament disqualified as too close to the prohibited Baath Party. Many of those excluded from running had openly criticized the provision in the Iraqi constitution that bans members of the Baath Party from public life. The purge of Mutlak has been widely condemned in Iraq as unfair, since he left the party in the late 1970s.
Is French President Nicolas Sarkozy stepping in as the “honest broker” for Israel-Syria talks? In Saudi Arabia for a two-day visit, Sarkozy — who has just met with Syrian President Bashir al-Assad and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu in separate meetings — said: “The deadlock that we find ourselves in today is very worrying. I told both Assad and Netanyahu that France is ready to facilitate a restart of the talks if both parties thought we could help in this effort.”
Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was in Amman on Tuesday for talks with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. On Wednesday, he is going to Israel to hold a meeting on the prospect of peace talks.
Enduring America regrets that it has to bring the sad news that the US President has once more bowed down to a foreign, unelected ruler.
Readers may recall that, when Obama lowered himself in a meeting with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia earlier this year, our favourite on-line encyclopedia of eternal truth (and no liberal lies), Conservapedia, were a bit slow off the mark to portray Obama as a “secret Muslim”.
Yes! Conservapedia made amends for their past delinquency, calling Obama’s gesture a “bowfest” and posting a YouTube video showing that he “bobbed his head like a pigeon!”:
Kudos to the right-wing defenders of all things encyclopedic if sad news, indeed, to see such abasement of the Leader of the Free World.
Returning Syrian President Bashar Assad’s visit to Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah held talks with Assad in Damascus. Thetwo talked about the Middle East , exchanged national medals, and signed an agreement to regulate taxation. Buthaina Shaaban, an adviser to Assad, described the talks as productive, “strengthening the Arab Islamic position” in the face of Israeli intransigence.
Although Abdullah’s visit, his first as King, is not expected to bring a fundamental change in the region, it is a positive sign of the continuation of “engagement” by the Obama Administration with Damascus. At the same time, Syria is not willing to sacrifice its “alliance” with Iran and will portray this meeting as a part of a solid front facing Israel. As Shaaban said, “Syria’s ties with Iran and Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia, would help create an effective Islamic bloc.”
Last Saturday, the Saudi Arabian newspaper Al-Watan reported the statement of Saudi Arabia’s minister of water and electricity, Abdullah bin Abdul-Rahman al-Husayen, that Riyadh was looking at building its first nuclear power plant. The announcement follows a May 2008 US-Saudi Memorandum of Understanding on civil nuclear energy cooperation.
This all seems fairly straightforward. The Saudis, while sitting on oil reserves, diversify their energy production. The US bolsters a strategic alliance.
Except that, of course, in today’s framing of the Middle East, everything has to be connected to Iran. Israeli defense officials immediately said that Saudi interest in nuclear power was connected to Tehran’s continued quest for The Bomb: “The Saudis are genuinely scared of what will happen if Iran turns nuclear. This is part of their response.”
Now Tel Aviv’s defense officials probably know that the civilian nuclear programme of Saudi Arabia has been established jointly with the United States, since a Memorandum of Understanding isn’t exactly secret, and has been developed within the framework of International Atomic Energy Agency regulations. But why pass up a pretext for showing the Iran-inspired “danger of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East”? After all, you can convert not only Saudi Arabia’s interest but that of the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Yemen, Morocco, Libya, Jordan, and Egypt into a fear-induced response to the bad boys in the Iranian capital.
Fun Fact 1: Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel has not.
Fun Fact 2: Iran has 0 nuclear weapons. Israel has (estimated) 150.
Yesterday, as we were focused on events in Iran, news came through of the deadliest attack in Iraq this year, with 80 people dying in a suicide truck bombing in Kirkuk.
That incident may put into perspective the appearance on the US Ambassador to Iraq, Christopher R. Hill, in Washington two days earlier. Hill confirmed the interests of Iran and Syria in Iraq while striking a delicate balance: the two countries contributed to Iraq’s insecurity, but dialogue with them was important to an Iraqi future.
Meanwhile, thanks to the engagement policy of the US, Hill said, the dialogue among different factions in Iraq had played a significant role in the overall downward trend of violence. Hill added, though, “But I don’t want to sound Pollyannish about that because these are trends that are fragile and ones that need to be nurtured every day.”
AMBASSADOR HILL: It’s a pleasure to be here and not talking about North Korea. (Laughter.) That was a preemptive strike. But I’m back for a few days of consultations and some personal travel, and I will be getting back to Baghdad next week. Read the rest of this entry »
Thank goodness, then, that “mesbahihamza” has made the ultimate discovery. Why have Osama bin Laden and Barack Hussein Obama never been photographed together? Because….
Perhaps the great unnoticed paradox of Barack Obama’s Middle Eastern trip came before his Cairo speech, when he stopped in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia has kept a low public profile over the post-Inauguration discussions on Israel and Palestine, yet here was the US President making it clear that the Saudi rulers still have a major part in the ongoing drama.
We’ve been trying to get our heads around the significance of Saturday’s announcement that one of Iraq’s largest Sunni political parties is going to boycott the forthcoming national elections. The New York Times plays down the story. Juan Cole also thinks that the effect on the election will not be devastating, but he considers the longer-term maneouvres and probable benefits to the leading Shi’a factions:
Is 
Returning Syrian President Bashar Assad’s visit to Saudi Arabia, 
Last Saturday, the Saudi Arabian newspaper Al-Watan reported the statement of Saudi Arabia’s minister of water and electricity, Abdullah bin Abdul-Rahman al-Husayen, that 
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