Senate The Middle East Discussion Thread

92% voted for independence in Kurdistan...

 

As expected.

 

I don't know if STARBOB genuinely cares about women's rights or if he's just looking for an excuse to say something bad about Islam.

But to be honest, anyone who actually genuinely cares about women's rights should rightfully oppose the forced veiling of women in Saudi-Arabia. It's one of the many misogynistic parts of Wahhabistic ideology which is itself an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam.

I'm glad that Saudi-Arabian women are now allowed to drive, but there's still much to go before Saudi-Arabia finally arrives in the 21th century.

Gesendet von meinem SM-J510FN mit Tapatalk

 

Narrator: He did not

Shocking result, said nobody ever.

Turkey was interesting in all of this, as only a nation as terrible as Turkey can be. Publicly against it, privately less so because theree is no love for the PKK in this region. The PKK's been a less potent force for some time, since Apo Öcalan was arrested, but let's face it - anything for a greater swarthe of presidential power in Ankara.

 

I know, I said it would pass months ago. I just wonder what will come of it.

 

Well the rest of Iraq sure isn't happy at the moment. I wonder how much the US will actually stick up for the Kurds here, given the risk of antagonizing Iraq and Turkey further.

 

America only cares about the Kurds when they need to fight a war in Iraq. Since they're not itching for a war, they'll re-consign them to the scrap heap of humanity.

 

Reasons for independence aside, landlocked countries don't tend to do well especially if they don't have warm relations with their neighbors who have access to the sea (Iraq and Turkey being the main routes), so... good job, Kurdistan, I guess. Not content with de facto near-independence.

 

VIDEO: Syrian troops on east Euphrates bank discover unexpected items of ISIS fighters


The Ukrainian flag at 1:33. Also, before that, they examine a pack of cigarettes with Cyrillic writing on them at about 1:15.

Well, there is, or, at least, has been, ISIS recruitment and such presence in Ukraine. Their own media and national security agency SBU have admitted it: SBU says IS supporters recruiting new members in Ukraine

And Russian media, including RT, have accused Ukraine of selling arms to ISIS too, though Ukraine obviously denoes this: ISIS bought anti-aircraft missiles in Ukraine via Kuwait cell

Who knows...

Could be, there actually were Ukrainians there.

But, alternatively, the fact is, the engagement in Syria is growing less popular with the public in Russia, as their men die in battles there, and many people don't understand what for, what that whole Arab war has to do with them, it is too far from home for them: Most Russians Do Not Back Putin's Syria Operation As Death Toll Mounts

Especially as the government keeps hiding so many details from the people; like, it's just emerged that a Russian general who recently died in battle with ISIS near Deir Ezzor, actually led a unit in Assad's army: Russia says general killed in Syria held senior post in Assad's army | Article [AMP] | Reuters

Perhaps, Putin thinks one way to make Russians enthusiastic about the campaign in Syria again? Give them a familiar, hated adversary: the ****ing Ukrainians...

If they believe (however ludicrous it may seem) that the military is, in fact, battling evil Ukrainians among ISIS in Syria... Hell, certainly most of Putin's less educated, working class, TV propaganda-addicted support base would gladly cheer for that...

And yes, while this just emerged, I have no doubt it will be on every TV screen in Russia tomorrow morning, as people wake up...

Whether there were any real Ukrainians in ISIS, again, I have no idea.

I will say this: any normal Ukrainian can't live without Salo. And I don't see ISIS jihadis enjoying that particular treat lol

Also, re: Kurdistan:

More: Russia becomes Iraq Kurds' top funder, quiet about independence vote | Article [AMP] | Reuters



Since, at least, last year, Russia has also began supplying weapons to the Iraqi Kurds: Russia delivers first weapons supplies to Iraqi Kurds

Now:

More: Russia says it supports united Iraq in wake of Kurdistan independence referendum

Directly supporting the Kurds would bring Russia into conflict with Iran... That is an alliance they are not yet willing to walk away from.

But, time will tell what happens. I believe, in fact, Russia and Iran will end up clashing, over Syria AND Iraq. Their interests are FAR from mutually agreeable, in either place. And these are also not exactly nice people in charge, on either side. It will yet get nasty, between them...

 

PLEASE, don't speak for me.

Nope. Drop the name-calling.

 

Iraq is attacking Kurdistan to control Kirkuk, looks like Kurdish fighters have been forced to withdraw for now

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...i-forces-push-into-disputed-kirkuk/ar-AAty23j

 

The US have declared this a "misunderstanding"

 

Looks like there are machinations by some of the GCC states against Qatar to depose its ruler, and the emir of Qatar also openly made this accusation on 60 Minutes last night. According to a report by the country's former deputy PM, the UAE even planned to invade Qatar with Blackwater-linked mercenaries back in June to depose the Emir.

Below is an opinion piece by a strategic risk consultant who works for governments in the region, commenting on these events. His piece highlights some interesting findings which I have bolded:


The threat of regime change 2.0 to GCC unity
[...]
From the beginning this crisis has been an attack on the public perception of Qatar, in the Arab world and in the West alike. Built around the two bogeymen that fuel paranoias in both the Gulf and in neoconservative circles in America, namely Iran and "jihadi terrorism", the narratives advanced by Qatar's Gulf neighbours and Egypt quickly lost traction. The attempt particularly by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to build and exploit a momentum of regional and global opposition to Qatar in an effort to bring about regime change in Doha, were founded on a strategic miscalculation. The quartet expected the Trump administration to unanimously support this campaign accusing Qatar of maintaining intimate relations with both Tehran and "jihadists". Yet, although Trump made some incoherent remarks about Qatar, both US State Department and the Defence Department quickly came out to contradict the allegations against the emirate.

Two months into the crisis, it appeared as if the quartet had lost the battle of public opinion in the West. While Western leaders started to call on the blockading countries to lift the sanctions, Qatar's emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani was greeted with unprecedented levels of domestic support. At that point, if ever, it should have been clear to any strategist in Riyadh or Abu Dhabi that regime change was no longer an option. Nonetheless, the quartet’s strategic communication campaign against Qatar entered its next phase: Regime change 2.0. In late August, Saudi and Emirati media presented Abdullah bin Ali al-Thani as an allegedly legitimate heir to the Qatari throne. The apparent dissident had lived quietly in London and Saudi Arabia as a businessman without ever voicing any political ambitions. Despite being the brother of a late Qatari emir deposed in 1972, Abdullah neither has a public profile nor any public support base in Qatar. Considering his extensive business interests in the kingdom, it seems likely that he had been instrumentalised involuntarily to become the face of this new campaign. When two of his sons came out publicly pledging allegiance to Qatar’s emir, the UAE and Egypt began activating Khalid al-Hail, a Qatari businessman living in London.In 2014 he founded Qatar’s opposition movement, a two-man organisation with a dubious political agenda.

Hail’s obvious lack of tribal wasta, credibility and legitimacy both in exile and back home, made him an unsuitable candidate for regime change. A few days after Heel’s London Conference in September 2017, which almost generated a higher turnout on the panels than in the audience, Saudi and Emirati media outlets started to promote a third candidate: Sultan bin Suhaim al-Thani. Sultan, the eighth child of Qatar’s first foreign minister, had recently moved to Paris. Like Abdullah, Sultan has commercial interests in Saudi Arabia making him receptive to the kingdom's communication strategy. Based on my field research in Qatar, none of the candidates have any power base in Qatar and across the Gulf, nor any legitimate claim to rule the emirate. The majority of Qataris know that the country owes its hyper-development and tremendous wealth to the decisions and policies of Hamad bin Khalifa, the Father-Emir, and his branch of the al-Thani tribe - a tribe of more than 3,500 members.

Consequently, unlike in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or Egypt, socio-political dissidence is absent in Qatar. While the Saudis have long played the dangerous game of thrones, pitting one tribal leader against the other in a policy of divide and rule in Qatar, the times when the kingdom's soft-power sufficed to bring down regimes in the region are over. Despite the quartet having crowned obedient puppets into pseudo-governmental figureheads – e.g. Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi in Yemen or General Khalifa Haftar in Libya – these efforts are not likely to work in a country with such homogenous and inclusive socio-political relations as Qatar. [...]The overt support by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi for regime change in one of the smaller GCC member states undermines the trust particularly of Kuwait and Oman in the organisation. The silence of the GCC Secretariat has been deafening, recalling profound fears in Doha, Kuwait City and Muscat that the GCC has long been a means to advance Saudi interests. In many ways, the rise of nationalism across the Gulf might be a response to the inability of the GCC to function in light of a crisis of regional security and stability.

- Andreas Krieg is an assistant professor at the Defence Studies Department of King's College London and a strategic risk consultant working for governmental and commercial clients in the Middle East. He recently published a book called 'Socio-political order and security in the Arab World'.

 

well then..

http://news.sky.com/story/ballistic-missile-intercepted-near-riyadh-saudi-state-media-11113802

A ballistic missile has been intercepted by air defence forces northeast of the Saudi capital Riyadh, the country's state media is reporting.
Al Arabiya TV reported the missile was fired from Yemen and was brought down close to the capital by Saudi air defence forces.

​

Saudi Arabia's Al Ekhbariya TV said it was brought down north of King Khaled Airport.

 

Yemen is claiming it detonated and damaged the airport. It supposedly didn’t, but either way, this is really disturbing.

 

Yes. The missile is supposedly from Iran. Will be interesting how Saudi Arabia responds.

Plus, the Lebanese PM has resigned and suggested there was an Iranian plot to have him assassinated. In his resignation statement he calls for Israel, and others in the region, to deal with Iran. Hmmm.

 

I think it's much more disturbing that Saudi Arabia is bombing the country to hell, starving the population and exposing them to huge outbreaks of diseases such as cholera.

 

Saudi Arabia gets a free pass, apparently.

 

All preludes to an invasion of Iran. The pieces are being put into place. I sensed it from the day Trump went to Saudi Arabia and 1) his speech essentially copy-pasted the Saudi talking point that anything and everything bad that happens in the Middle East is Iran's doing, 2) had the gall to stand next to the king of Saudi Arabia and speak of Human Rights and Iran's poor record thereof, and 3) topped it all off with a ceremonial sword dance.

Within the next 2-3 months, Iran will be doing something that is supposedly the last straw, and we won't know whether it was real or staged until it is declassified about 50 years from now.

 

Presuming we all survive the nuclear fallout that long.

 

This would be suicide. Like, incredibly ****ing insane thing to do.

 

I doubt that they will try an invasion. That would be a much bigger undertaking than the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq-- who had less sophisticated armed forces and less political power-- and would probably require a much bigger commitment of forces. A bombing campaign? Sure, I could see the Trump administration being stupid enough for that. But I don't think the U.S. will stage an invasion because it's simply not possible for them to succeed with what they have at their disposal.

 

It doesn't need to be staged...you can just redefine what constitutes a "last straw" and move the goalposts to wherever you like it.

 

Considering that the rhetoric has gone back to considering the Iranian regime as illegitimate (I think most Iranians would agree, but that's not the point), as opposed to the Obama era policy of tacitly accepting that it's a regional player, I think some policy of regime change is under consideration, in one form or another. Fomenting internal unrest is one possibility, though the groups that would be the most likely candidates in that case would be either Sunni fanatics (who, to be fair, are discriminated against by the state) or ethnic separatists.

And how sophisticated is Iran's armed forces anyway? From what I've heard, they are outspent in military expenditure by each one of their GCC neighbours. What are all those GCC arms purchases good for if you're not gonna put them to use? Iran has had to make its own spare parts for its pre-revolution fleet of F-14s. Its air force fleet is aging, perhaps a lot of it not even operational and during the Iran-Iraq war, it suffered more casualties than Iraq, which had Western material and logistical aid. I'm no expert, but I think you might be overestimating the sophistication of Iran's military.

Besides, if Saudi Arabia and the GCC are as eager as they appear to be to "cut the head off the snake", it's conceivable that they'll contribute in the effort; only they are less concerned with pesky things like Geneva conventions and whatnot. Their way of waging war would be more akin to carpet bombing if Yemen is any indication, and in that case victory is easier, no?

 

Speaking of disposal, there’s always the draft. I bet Kelly, Bannon and their ilk have talked about it as a way to get minorities “back in line”. Especially with Congress being run by white guys.

And don’t forget Israel. Netanyahu would love a crack at Iran. Trump just might give him the chance.

 

The only thing we need to do with respect to Iran is contain them, and one day the Iranian people will decide they've had enough of the regime and get rid of it. But no, that's not as emotionally gratifying to those numbskull Republicans as watching F-15E's flying off to bomb Tehran (and they'd have to admit that Obama was correct and they themselves are full of s---). The Iranian people might not like their regime much, but that doesn't mean they want to see America doing the regime changing for them. If Trump tries to pull this stupid crap to provoke a war with Iran, Iranians will rally around the flag and there's going to be tons of blood shed...all because Republicans think they have the right to speak for other people and have a hard-on for war porn.

 

Saudi Arabia seems to be in full-purge mode, with the former crown prince killed in a helicopter crash, days after 40 other princes and ministers were arrested in an anti-corruption probe.