The head of US Central Command, General David Petraeus, appeared on NBC Television’s Meet the Press, first to walk viewers through the US interventions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq and then to take a tour around other issues from Iran to Guantanamo Bay to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the military.
In contrast to previous appearances, when Petraeus was fighting his own President to get his version of US foreign and military policy, this was a stay-the-course interview behind agreed approaches. The message on Afghanistan was long-haul effort to win. On Pakistan, it was supporting Pakistani forces to vanquish the Taliban. He spoke in generalities about maintaining pressure on Iran, and beyond his main agenda, on the tricky issues like Guantanamo Bay and “enhanced interrogation” (torture), he evaded any definitive statements.
MR. DAVID GREGORY: General David Petraeus joins us live from U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida.
General, welcome to MEET THE PRESS.
GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: Thanks, David. Good to be with you.
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.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to discuss Hamas, the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, sanctions on Iran, and Russian’s pending delivery of S-300 missiles to Tehran.
At the end of the day, both leaders got what they sought. Medvedev did not put himself under any commitment to punish Iran severely but maintained a “threatening” position vis-a-vis Tehran. He told Netanyahu that Russia will hold off on delivering the S-300s to Iran. A spokewoman added: “The position of Russia regarding sanctions remains unchanged. [But] if Iran remains uncooperative, no one can exclude the use of sanctions.”
Netanyahu was satisfied to return home with the “success” of the deferred delivery of the S-300s, and he ticked another box in his “efforts to exhaust every possible chance to achieve peace” before “the necessity of applying a pre-emptive strike” against Iran in the future.
Clinton Talking Iran Sanctions in Gulf: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Saudi Arabia and the Qatar this week. U.S. officials hinted Saturday that one way Saudi Arabia could help diplomatically over the Iran issu ewould be to offer guarantees that it would meet China’s oil requirements.
Senator Kerry Warns Arabs: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry said at a U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, on Saturday that “peace may never come if it is now realized now“:
The news in recent weeks about the deployment of US soldiers and advanced weapons to Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) reminds us of the central position of the Arab oil-producing monarchies in the Persian Gulf to international efforts to contain the Iranian nuclear program. Few states in the Middle East have closer links to the two chief actors in the dispute, Iran and the United States, or few would be more negatively affected if Washington attacked Tehran.
The six Arab oil-producing monarchies in the Persian Gulf region — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — are known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (or GCC) and have the largest oil and gas deposits in the world. GCC nationals and governments own significant portions of US and European corporations, while Europeans and Americans have invested heavily in the Council’s states. The US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain, and the US military maintains a large presence in Qatar and Jebel Ali (UAE), the only port deep enough to berth an aircraft carrier in the Gulf. Finally, GCC states have bought billions of dollars worth of US and European advanced weapons and technology, including French nuclear reactors.
Yemen, the state on the Arabian Peninsula which has recently exploded into the headlines as a country of concern, is little-known to most Americans. It does have a track record, however, of embroiling outside powers who decided to intervene. Sean Foley, a professor at Middle Tennessee State University and author of the forthcoming The Arab Gulf States Beyond Oil and Islam, writes for EA:
In October 1927 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, delivered an historic speech in which he explained why Turks had to abandon the Ottoman Empire and embrace his new state. Ataturk in particular focused on Yemen and the fact that the Empire’s leaders had sent millions of Turks to die in South Arabia in the name of a universal Muslim state: “Do you know,” he asked, “how many sons of Anatolia have perished in the scorching sands of Yemen?” In the future, Ataturk promised, Turks would not die in wars in Yemen—a state that had become synonymous with the plight of the Ottoman soldier in Turkish folklore.
Forty years later, Yemen made a similar entrance into Egyptian national consciousness. When Israel defeated Egypt in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, much of Egypt’s army was fighting a protracted and bloody guerilla war in Yemen.
The experience of Turkey and Egypt should give U.S. officials pause, as they contemplate intervening in Yemen and along its 1,800-kilometer border with Saudi Arabia.
On 6 January, we reported that the Netanyahu government had concerns over Washington’s sale of about $6 billion of arms to four “moderate” Arab states (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates) and Washington. We asked whether the Israelis were pursuing the complaint to argue the argument that the regional balance of power would collapse because of the arms shipments, regardless of how “moderate” the Arabs states are.
The background to the current manoeuvres lies in Israel’s concerns over a $20 billion arms deal between Saudi Arabia and the George W. Bush Administration. On that occasion, Tel Aviv used its concerns as leverage to receive advanced F-35 fighter jets and to limit American arms sales to Lebanon amidst the re-emergence of Hezbollah. So far, no arms deal with Israel have been signed under Obama, and there is the issue of shipment of higher-tech arms under the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding, which promised $30 billion to Tel Aviv over the following 10 years. Read the rest of this entry »
Dahlan added that, following intense contacts among Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and the Quartet (United Nations, Russia, European Union, and United States), Israel will accept the new proposal. He continued, “We hope the struggle of chairman Abu Mazen (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas) against the previous negotiating mechanism will bear fruit already in the coming weeks.”
When asked about demands before renewal of negotiations, Dahlan underlined the significance of a settlement freeze and the acceptance of pre-1967 borders. Dahlan said:
All we seek is a year or 10-month building freeze, during which a permanent agreement will be achieved. Palestinians will not accept any manipulation on this issue [final borders].
At the end of this “optimism”, there was also a warning. Dahlan said, “The Palestinian people prefer to be cautious when it comes to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” and he declared, “The current settlement [activity] in Jerusalem is aimed at taking it [the city's status] off the negotiating table”.
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