http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-endless-war-saudi-arabia-goes-offensive-against-iran
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/27/2012 20:06 -0400
Few people paid any attention to this pact, although it has much broader implications than for these Afghan traders. For the past 10 years, the Indian government has been working with the Iranians to upgrade the Chabahar port, with the expectation that eventually Indian ships will dock there and unload cargo destined not only for the Iranian market, but crucially for the Afghan and Central Asian markets.
The Chabahar port would make the land route across Pakistan unnecessary for Indian trade bound for the lucrative Central Asian market. In 2003, Afghanistan, India and Iran signed their first agreement regarding this project. Iran was to build a road from Chabahar to the Afghan border, and India was then to build a road from there to Zarang/Delaram, which is on the Kandahar-Herat highway. In other words, Chabahar would be linked to Kabul and to points north. The roads are now ready, and Chabahar is prepared to be the main transit point for Indian goods.
Chabahar comes from the words char (four) and bahar (Spring), suggesting that the port has four seasons of springtime. It is a major warm water port and will allow goods to travel into Central Asia throughout the year.
In 1992, the Iranian government designated Chabahar as a special economic zone to allow potential investment, mainly from Southeast Asia. Ten years ago, the Indians expressed interest and they are now the leading players here. The Iranian government is eager to sign an addition memorandum with the Indian government that would attract substantial investment into the port. Apart from the major highway to link Chabahar and the Kandahar-Herat highway, two rail projects are also in the works. The first, run by the Indians, plans to link Chabahar by rail to the mineral rich area of Hajigak (its mineral assets are estimated at US$1-$3 trillion). The second, run by the Iranians, produces a freight line from Herat to Iran's northeastern city of Mashhad (and then onward to Turkey). This rail project will not be complete for another decade.
Half of Afghanistan's oil comes from Iran. To bring it from elsewhere makes no sense. Iran is a major oil producer and it shares a 936 kilometer border with Afghanistan. Despite the US occupation of that country, it has been impossible to reduce Afghanistan's dependence on Iranian oil. Afghanistan is a landlocked state, and relies upon its neighbors for its trade.
NATO has already had its supply lines through Pakistan closed by Islamabad, and it has faced problems in Central Asia as the governments there have cleverly bargained up the prices for base rentals and use of their land routes. It has been impossible to insist that the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul join the blockade against Iran - the adverse effects on an already crisis-prone Afghanistan, and therefore on the fragile occupation, would only intensify.
The US has put considerable pressure on India to cut back on its oil purchases. India now imports between 10% and 15% of its oil needs from Iran, a figure much reduced from five years previously. For the past two decades, India has cultivated close ties with the US. It was willing to pay a stiff price (voting against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005 and 2009) to come out of the nuclear cold (through the 2008 US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement).
Nonetheless, India remains a major trading partner with its near neighbor, even crafting an interesting payment vehicle to help circumvent the harsh European and US sanctions regime against Iran (Iran will accept 45% of its oil payments in Indian rupees, which will help bolster Indian exports into Iran). The opportunity of Chabahar has now put India in a mini-bind: should it invest more in this major project and gain access to Central Asian trade or should it make Washington happy and snub Iran? Afghanistan remains under US occupation. India seeks a close equation with the US. Iran and the US are hostile powers. Yet, these three countries, with very different relations with the US, now find that geography is their destiny. A pragmatic foreign policy built on the urgency of economic development draws these states together. Afghanistan needs access to a port and oil, as well as manufactured goods. Iran needs to sell its oil. India wants to find markets for its manufactured goods, and to find a ready supply of oil. Such linkages are hard to ignore.
These maneuvers disturb the US and Pakistan, two unlikely allies. The US is unhappy that the regional powers do not wish to join its economic and political embargo of Iran (that the 16th NAM is happening in Tehran, with two thirds of the world's states in attendance, is a great disappointment to Washington).
But there is recognition in Washington that little can be done to block this trilateral linkage. The US cannot possibly provide the Karzai government with the entirety of its needs via air delivery. It has not been able to break India's reliance on Iran, even though the Saudis have been asked and have promised to open more of their spigots to make up for any loss to the Indians.
Pakistan, sadly, is also threatened by this new arrangement. It had built the Gwadar port with Chinese help as a counterpoint to Chabahar. However, relations between Islamabad and Kabul have soured, with the Karzai government worried that the Pakistanis are once more going to back the Taliban as a wedge to maintain their forward policy into Afghanistan.
It is worth recalling that when Pakistan was founded in 1947, Afghanistan did not recognize it. They have a long-standing border dispute on the 1893 Durand Line ("a line of hatred that raised a wall between the two brothers," as Hamid Karzai called it). The Afghan government's antipathy to Pakistani aims through the Taliban have drawn it closer to India and Iran, both of whom have a long-standing hostile relationship with the Taliban. Pakistan has for a long time felt India has tried to encircle it through its friendship with Afghanistan. This simmering enmity has meant that no rational foreign policy has been possible in the region. A long-standing natural gas pipeline that was planned to run from Iran to India via Pakistan has died a slow death because of this distrust.
Contradictory US aims in the region have befuddled the geopolitics. It wants to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, but it cannot do so without engagement from Iran and India, as well as Pakistan. It wants to isolate Iran, but it cannot do so fully for fear of an economic implosion in Afghanistan.
Absent the US power projections in the region, policies could be implemented to reduce tension and increase the mutual reliance amongst the populations of the region. Afghanistan, India and Iran could begin to work on Pakistan to build trust and goodwill through small trade projects that would grow to larger interrelationships. The trilateral meeting at the side of the 16th NAM is a small step toward a more robust union in southern Asia. It is a rebuff to the politics of war.
With the arrival of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in the past few years, the mood has lifted. The much more assertive presence of the BRICS inside the NAM and in the United Nations has raised hopes that US and European intransigence will no longer determine the destiny of the world. At the 14th NAM summit in Cuba (2006), the world seemed lighter. Hugo Chavez' jokes went down well; Fidel Castro was greeted as a titan. This seemed like the old days, or at least Delhi in 1983.
NAM summits typically go by without fanfare. The Atlantic media rarely notice the movement's presence. But this year, because the summit is to be held in Tehran, eyebrows have been raised.
The US State Department's Victoria Nuland hastened to condemn the location as "a strange place and an inappropriate place for this meeting ... Our point is simply that Tehran, given its number of grave violations of international law and UN obligations, does not seem to be the appropriate place" for the NAM summit.
The US government is particularly chafed that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is making his pilgrimage to the NAM (he has attended every NAM summit since 1961, when Dag Hammarskjold left Belgrade to his death over African skies). Nuland notes that the US has expressed its "concern" to Ban. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was plainer: "Mr Secretary General, your place is not in Tehran." Bombs over Tehran
Israel has been playing a peculiar game these past few months. Netanyahu and his coterie are the mirror image of the clownish behavior of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Both have a fulsome sense of themselves, preening before cameras with bluster. Sensational bulletins come from their mouths.
The fear is that Netanyahu is playing chicken with the US. He wants either to bait President Barack Obama to ratchet up the sanctions and fire off one or two missiles, or else to let loose his own hawks, flying twice the distance that they flew to Osirak in 1982 to bomb Bushehr now. Netanyahu's pressure startled his own president, Shimon Peres, who hastened to note, "It is clear that we cannot do this single-handedly and that we must coordinate with America." All this is a game of Chinese whispers, with so little clarity about what anyone is actually saying, and a great deal of anxiety about the exaggerations that have overwhelmed any capacity for mature discussion.
The US seems to want time for the new sanctions regime to take effect. In March, Iranian banks were disconnected from the SWIFT network that enables electronic financial transactions. Pressure on countries that import Iranian oil were stepped up, as the US and the Europeans threatened to take action against those who did not follow their own sanctions regime (which are much harsher than the various UN resolutions that run from 1696, from 2006, to 1929, from 2010).
Iran's central bank has pointed to a deep decline in the share of Iranian exports - and concomitantly, a perilous position for its population. What seems not to be on the radar of those who create these sanctions regimes is that they rarely turn the population against its government. In Iran, it might actually be detrimental to the reform movement. Washington fulminates about autocracy in Iran and the bomb, but it does not realize that for most Iranians (44% of whom live in slums), the core problem is of livelihood and well-being. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be in Tehran. He will meet with Ahmadinejad, and talk to him about India's attempt to circumvent the sanctions regime. Between 10% and 12% of India's oil needs are furnished by Iran. There has been an attempt to switch to the Saudi supply, but this is much easier to talk about than to do. The problem for India and Iran has been over payments, since India cannot pay Iran for the oil. Iran has therefore agreed to accept 45% of its oil receipts in rupees, within India, and to use this money to buy Indian goods to import into Iran. Delegations from the business sector have gone back and forth to find things to sell the Iranians. But problems persist: The sanctions regime has made it nearly impossible for Indian tankers to get insurance for their journey to Iran. Nonetheless, the Indian business lobby estimates that bilateral trade between the two countries will rise from US$13.5 billion to $30 billion by 2015.
The tete-a-tete between Manmohan Singh and Ahmadinejad will also touch on the Indian investments at the Chabahar port in southeastern Iran, which has been used to bring Indian goods into Iran and to bring 100,000 tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan. India and Iran have invested heavily in Afghanistan, and both have a common interest in making sure that the Taliban do not return to power in Kabul.
Here one would imagine that the US might see eye-to-eye with these old allies, but Washington's obsessive blinkers make it impossible for its officials to be proper diplomats. It has been a long-standing US aim to break the link between India and Iran, two stalwarts in the NAM.
Next week, New Delhi and Tehran will reinforce their fragile ties. Manmohan Singh will not make any grand gesture. This is not his temperament. Nonetheless, economic realities and the accidents of geography make the relationship necessary. This is unfathomable to Washington. Blood of Syria
The last time the NAM suffered a major political split was when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The bulk of the members wanted to condemn the invasion, while a few of the more influential (Algeria, India, Iraq) refused to go along. It damaged the NAM's credibility. This year, it is Syria that poses the dilemma.
In May, at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, within sight of Hosni Mubarak's hospital incarceration, the NAM coordinating bureau's ministerial meeting tried to put together a resolution on Syria. The Saudis and Qataris wanted a strong condemnation of the regime, but the Syrians, who remain NAM members, took exception to the draft. The final document was anodyne, calling for the success of former UN secretary general Kofi Annan's Six Point Plan.
Annan has quit. In his place has come the seasoned Algerian diplomat and UN bureaucrat Lakhdar Brahimi, who is no stranger to the NAM circuit. Brahimi knows a lot about conflict, having recently been the UN's man in Afghanistan and Iraq, and having been the broker to the Taif Agreement (1989) that suspended the Lebanese Civil War.
Brahimi's role will be difficult. Cynicism tears at Syria's future. Most discussion on Syria comes at it from its geopolitics: What will be the impact of the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime for US power or Gulf Arab power in the region? Will this have a detrimental impact on Hezbollah, on the Palestinians, on the Iranians? These are valuable questions, but they obscure the much more basic class question posed by the uprising in Syria: What is best for the Syrian people?
There is little argument that Assad's regime governs with one hand clothed in the military's iron and the other morphed into a credit card for the kleptocratic neoliberal elite. There is also little argument that the Assad regime's brutality toward its population has a long history, most notably during the first 11 months of the 2011 uprising when the people in their coordination committees chanted silmiyyeh, silmiyyeh (peaceful, peaceful) as Assad's tanks roared into their midst. The correct handling of the contradictions should lead one to full support for the freedom of the Syrian people, which has come to mean two things: the end of the Assad regime and the retraction of the hand of the US, the Gulf Arabs and the Russians. But Brahimi will not be able to move an agenda as long as the Syrian people's needs are not at the center of things.
It is also why the NAM will not be able to act effectively vis-a-vis Syria. One NAM delegation to Moscow and another to Riyadh-Doha asking for a suspension of weaponry and a cooling down of the rhetoric would have a marked impact on Assad and his beleaguered circle. This is not in the cards.
Leadership has now fallen on Egypt's new president, Mohamed Morsi. At the Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Mecca this month, its 57 states expelled Syria. This followed a resolution put forward by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Only Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi cautioned the group not to act in haste. He tried to take shelter in Assad's pronouncements about elections and reforms, none of this meaningful any longer. Salehi and the Iranians are plainly worried about the dynamic of history shifting to the advantage of the Gulf Arabs. This has colored their view of the Syrian conflict.
Egypt built a small bridge to Tehran at the OIC meeting. Morsi proposed the creation of a Contact Group, which would include Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This was welcomed by all sides. A few days later at a ministerial meeting in Jeddah, Salehi met with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Amr to draw out the implications of this Contact Group. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Rahim Mehmanparast said the Contact Group would be a mechanism to "review and follow up on [regional] issues so that peace would be established in the region". Nothing concrete has been achieved so far, but all indications are that Egypt will use the NAM process to find a way between the hard lines on both sides. Egypt and Iran broke their ties after the 1979 Islamic Republic was formed. But after the ouster of Mubarak, small gestures brought the countries into communication. The Egyptians allowed an Iranian frigate to go through the Suez Canal (the first since 1978). Iran welcomed the Arab Spring in North Africa as an "Islamic Awakening", and hoped for a rapprochement with the new Muslim Brotherhood politicians of the region.
The Qataris and Saudis also had such hopes, and these are antagonistic to Iran. Emir Hamad bin Khalifa of Qatar met with Morsi for dinner last week, where the Qataris pledged $2 billion in assistance to Egypt (a rumor floated around that the Qataris wanted to lease the Suez Canal, perhaps to prevent passage to those Iranian frigates).
Morsi had welcomed Iranian Vice-President Hamed Baqai a few weeks before the Qatari visit, accepting the invitation to come to Tehran for the NAM meeting and hand over the chair from Egypt to Iran in person. At the OIC meeting, Morsi and Ahmadinejad were seen to speak for a considerable period. It is likely that Morsi would like to fashion himself as the non-aligned voice between Iran and the Gulf Arabs, and to provide Brahimi with the kind of policy space he will require.
Morsi has a complex itinerary. He will go to Tehran via Beijing. Between a conclave with Hu Jintao and then later with Manmohan Singh, between discussions with the Gulf Arabs and the Iranians, Morsi's gestures suggest an affinity with the kind of multipolar foreign policy developed by the BRICS countries.
The tea leaves are hard to read. The top issues on the NAM agenda are Iran and Syria. One is about a war that Israel itches to start, and the other is about a war that the Assad regime is conducting against the Syrian people. The very fact that the NAM summit is taking place in Tehran shows that there remains support for Iran against any precipitous action. If Morsi's Contact Group can be pressured within the NAM to take a strong class position on Syria and not hide behind the cynicism of geopolitics, then this will be seen as a historic summit.
Tehran has called for a serious discussion of the Syrian conflict on the summit's sideline, in light of the participation of Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi, who has proposed a Syria contact group consisting of Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Instead of welcoming this opportunity, the Turkish leadership has chosen to ignore it and, instead, focus on its "regime change" strategy vis-a-vis Damascus that is inching closer to the "no-fly" option by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Ankara's decision will be viewed negatively by both Tehran and even Cairo, which unlike Turkey's desire to toe NATO's policy in the Middle East, is eager to play an independent role that mandates conflict mediation in a fellow Arab country. The latest report from Egypt indicates that Cairo was hoping to hold a meeting on Syria with the quartet (ie Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt), but that is a long shot given Turkey's non-cooperative behavior.
The trouble with Turkey's Syria policy is that it is short-sighted and incapable of factoring in the likely ramifications of a no-fly zone in exacerbating its problems with the regime in Damascus and Syria's regional allies such as Iran and Russia - for example, it risks becoming the recipient of much greater heat on its Kurdish problem, in light of Damascus' decision to play the "Kurdish card" against Ankara.
A prudent Turkish approach would have been to endorse Morsi's above-mentioned plan, which was unveiled at the recent Mecca meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and thus agree to work with Iran to support the United Nations' renewed effort at creating a dialogue between the government and the opposition in Syria. By participating at a high level at the Tehran summit, Turkey could have taken a timely proactive step toward a regional approach on the conflict. Its decision to opt instead for NATO's militaristic solution-in-making, among other consequences, widens the political rift at home between the government and the political opposition, which favors a more independent Turkish foreign policy.
If the present pattern of Turkish foreign policy continues, then we are likely to witness a qualitative deepening of Turkey's problems with its neighbors (and near neighbors) in the near future, including Iraq, Russia and Iran. This is particularly unfortunate for Davutoglu, who told this author at a conference in Istanbul last year that he was "very optimistic" about the future of Turkey's relations with Iran.
It is impossible to ignore a thickening air of cynicism, even doom and gloom, now surrounding Iran-Turkey relations, particularly since Ankara stubbornly refused to admit a role for Iran in the diplomatic efforts regarding Syria (see Missteps in Turkey's neighborly ties", Asia Times Online, October 12, 2011).
According to a Tehran University political science professor who spoke with the author on the condition of anonymity, the mere chance that Syria's President Bashar al-Assad may participate at the NAM summit must have contributed to the Turkish leaders' collective decision to stay away "simply because they have completely written him [Assad] off and therefore they cannot reconcile themselves with the fact that Assad has survived and will be around no matter how much they dislike him."
As of writing, the Iranian authorities were tight-lipped about Assad's participation at the Tehran summit, saying only that a Syrian "higher than the foreign minister" will be coming to Tehran along with Foreign Minister Walid Muallem. In the event that Assad does show up, it is a small gamble by Tehran, hoping that he will be able to present his case to the NAM nations and thus shore up international support. At any rate, Damascus is not about to fall, and all the vital signs indicate the likelihood of an ongoing political stalemate in Syria that requires mediation effort by regional players.
Ankara's refusal to accept this simple fact is costly to Turkey itself, since it reflects the country's substitution of political realism with the wish list on Syria, indicating a deep identity gap in the Turkish political system and its contradictory existence as a nodal point between East and West.
Yet, in many ways Turkey is just another Middle Eastern developing nation, not an advanced European nation, and this in turn gives plenty of stimulus for Turkey to join or become an observer at the NAM. Maybe then the Turkish leaders would begin cherishing NAM's core principles in terms of independent foreign policy.
Note:
1. Gathering Hope in Tehran, The New York Times, August 23, 2012.
An explosion hit the Turkish-Iraqi pipeline overnight Sunday, causing a fire and stopping oil flow to Turkey, local security sources told AFP on Monday.
The cause of the fire was not immediately clear but suspicions are running high that Kurdish militants, who have in the past targeted the pipeline, or oil smugglers may have sabotaged it.
An unidentified female body was found near the blast site the next morning with a backpack and an automatic gun. The body was taken immediately to Sinopi State Hospital near by.
The fire started in the Silopi and Cizre districts of Şırnak province following the blast on the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, said the security sources, adding that firefighters were trying to put out the flames.
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and the international community, have sabotaged the pipeline several times in the past.
The 970-kilometre (600-mile) pipeline runs from Iraq's northern oil hub of Kirkuk to the port of Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, pumping 450,000 to 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Iraq depends on oil sales for the vast majority of government income. The oil-rich nation exported some 2.515 million barrels per day in July, earning about $7.535 billion in revenues.
The PKK has several times proposed peaceful solutions regarding Kurdish problem, Turkey has always refused saying that it will not negotiate with “terrorists”.
Since it was established in 1984, the PKK has been fighting the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to establish a Kurdish state in the south east of the country.
But now its aim is the creation an autonomous region and more cultural rights for ethnic Kurds who constitute the greatest minority in Turkey, numbering more than 20 million. A large Turkey's Kurdish community openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK rebels.
The PKK wants constitutional recognition for the Kurds, regional self-governance and Kurdish-language education in schools.
PKK's demands included releasing PKK detainees, lifting the ban on education in Kurdish, paving the way for an autonomous democrat Kurdish system within Turkey, reducing pressure on the detained PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, stopping military action against the Kurdish party and recomposing the Turkish constitution.
Turkey refuses to recognize its Kurdish population as a distinct minority. It has allowed some cultural rights such as limited broadcasts in the Kurdish language and private Kurdish language courses with the prodding of the European Union, but Kurdish politicians say the measures fall short of their expectations.
The PKK is considered as 'terrorist' organization by Ankara, U.S., the PKK continues to be on the blacklist list in EU despite court ruling which overturned a decision to place the Kurdish rebel group PKK and its political wing on the European Union's terror list.
Guest Post: The Endless War: Saudi Arabia Goes On The Offensive Against Iran
Submitted by Felix Imonti of OilPrice.com,
Saudi Arabia has gone on the offensive against Iran to protect its interests. Their involvement in Syria is the first battle in what is going to be a long bloody conflict that will know no frontiers or limits.
Ongoing Disorders in the island kingdom of Bahrain since February of 2011 have set off alarm bells in Riyadh. The Saudis are convinced that Iran is directing the protests and fear that the problems will spill over the twenty-five kilometer long COSWAY into oil rich Al-Qatif, where The bulk of the two million Shia in the kingdom are concentrated. So far, the Saudis have not had to deal with demonstrations a serious as those in Bahrain, but success in the island kingdom could encourage the protestors to become more violent.
Protecting the oil is the first concern of the government. Oil is the sole source of the national wealth and it is managed by the state owned Saudi Aramco Corporation. The monopoly of political power by the members of the Saud family means that all of the wealth of the kingdom is their personal property. Saudi Arabia is a company country with the twenty-eight million citizens the responsibility of the Saud Family rulers.
The customary manner of dealing with a problem by the patriarchal regime is to bury it in money. King Abdullah announced at the height of the Arab Spring that he was increasing the national budget by 130 billion dollars to be spent over the coming five years. Government salaries and the minimum wage were raised. New housing and other benefits are to be provided. At the same time, he plans to expand the security forces by sixty thousand men.
While the Saudi king seeks to sooth the unrest among the general population by adding more government benefits, he will not grant any concessions to the eight percent of the population that is Shia. He takes seriously the warning by King Abdullah of Jordan back in 2004 of the danger of a Shia Crescent that would extend from the coast of Lebanon to Afghanistan. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad in Syria, and the Shia controlled government of Iraq form the links in the chain.
When the Arab Spring reached Syria, the leaders in Riyadh were given the weapon to break the chain. Appeals from tribal leaders under attack in Syria to kinsmen in the Gulf States for assistance could not be ignored. The various blinks between the Gulf States in several Syrian tribes means that Saudi Arabia and its close ally Qatar have connections that include at least three million people out of the Syrian populations of twenty-three million. To show how deep the bonds go, the leader of the Nijris Tribe in Syria is married to a woman from the Saud Family.
It is no wonder that Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said in February that arming the Syrian rebels was an “excellentidea." He was supported by Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani who said, "We should do whatever necessary to help [the Syrian opposition], including giving them weapons to defend themselves." The intervention has the nature of a family and tribal issue that the prominent Saudi cleric Aidh al-Qarni has turned into a Sunni-Shia War by promoting Assad’s death.
The Saudis and their Qatar and United Arab Emirate allies have pledged one hundred million dollars to pay wages to the fighters. Many of the officers of the Free Syrian Army are from tribes connected to the Gulf. In effect, the payment of wages is paying members of associated tribes.
Here, the United States is not a welcomed partner, except as a supplier of arms. Saudi Arabia sees the role of the United States limited to being a wall of steel to protect the oil wealth of the Kingdom and the Gulf States from Iranian aggression. In February of 1945, President Roosevelt at a meeting in Egypt with Abdel Aziz bin Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, pledged to defend the kingdom in exchange for a steady flow of oil.
Since those long ago days when the U.S. was establishing Pax Americana, the Saudis have lost their trust in the wisdom or the reliability of American policy makers. The Saudis urged the U.S. not to invade Iraq in 2003 only to have them ignore Saudi interests in maintaining an Iraqi buffer zone against Iran. The Saudis had asked the U.S. not to leave a Shia dominated government in Baghdad that would threaten the Northern frontier of the Kingdom, only to have the last American soldiers depart in December 2011. With revolution sweeping across the Middle East, Washington abandoned President Mubarak of Egypt, Saudi Arabia’s favorite non royal leader in the region.
Worried by the possibility of Iranian sponsored insurrections among Shia in the Gulf States, the Saudis are asserting their power in the region while they have the advantage. For thirty years, they have been engaged in a proxy war with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Syria is to be the next battlefield, but here, there is a critical difference from what were minor skirmishes in Lebanon, Yemen, and elsewhere. The Saudis with the aid of Qatar, and the UAE is striking at the core interests of Tehran; and they have through their tribal networks the advantage over an isolated Islamic Republic.
Tribal and kinship relations are being augmented by the infusion of the Salafi vision of Islam that is growing in the Gulf States. Money from the Gulf States has gone into the development of religious centers to spread the fundamentalist belief. A critical part of the ideology is to be anti-Shia.
Salafism in Saudi Arabia is promulgated by the Wahhabi School of Islam. The Wahhabi movement began in the eighteenth century and promoted a return to the fundamentalism of the early followers of the Faith.
The Sauds incorporated the religious movement into their leadership of the tribes. When the modern state of Saudi Arabia was formed, they were granted control of the educational system and much else in the society in exchange for the endorsement of the authoritarianrule.
When the Kingdom used its growing wealth in the 1970s to extend its interests far from the traditional territory in the battle against the atheistic Soviet Union, the Wahhabi clergy became missionaries in advancing their ideology through religious institutions to oppose the Soviets. More than two hundred thousand jihadists were sent into Afghanistan to fight the Soviet forces and succeeded in driving them out.
There is no longer a Soviet Union to confront. Today, the enemy is the Islamic Republic of Iran with what is described by the Wahhabis as a heretical form of Islam and its involvement in the Shia communities across the region. For thirteen centuries, the Shia have been kept under control. With the hand of Iran in the form of the Qud Force reaching into restless communities that number as many as one hundred and six million people in what is the heart of the Middle East, the Saudis see a desperate need to crush the foe before it has the means to pull down the privileged position of the Saud Family and the families of the other Gulf State rulers.
The war begins in Syria where we can expect that a successor government to Assad will be declared soon in the Saudi controlled tribal areas even before Assad is defeated. The territory is likely to adopt the more fundamentalist principals of the Salafists as it serves as a stepping stone to Iran Itself. It promises to be a bloody protracted war that will recognize no frontier and will know no limits by all of the participants.
but consider these items of interest....
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NH28Ak02.html
The Iran-India-Afghanistan riddle By Vijay Prashad
At the sidelines of the 16th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Tehran, Iran, the governments of Afghanistan, India and Iran will hold a small conclave. Commercial issues are at the top of the agenda. Not far down the list, however, are significant political matters. These are of great interest as the Israelis and the United States power up their aircraft for a bombing raid on Iran’s Fordo nuclear bunker, and as the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) begin their obligatory withdrawal from more than a decade-long occupation in Afghanistan.
Geography is one of the greatest reasons for the trade between these countries. In May, Afghanistan's Commerce and Industries Minister Anwar al-Haq Ahady and Iran's Ambassador toAfghanistan Abolfazl Zohrevand signed an agreement to deepen the trade ties between these countries. The main issue before them was use of the Chabahar port in southeastern Iran. About 50 hectares of land beside the port have been set aside for the construction of a hub for Afghan traders.
At the sidelines of the 16th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Tehran, Iran, the governments of Afghanistan, India and Iran will hold a small conclave. Commercial issues are at the top of the agenda. Not far down the list, however, are significant political matters. These are of great interest as the Israelis and the United States power up their aircraft for a bombing raid on Iran’s Fordo nuclear bunker, and as the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) begin their obligatory withdrawal from more than a decade-long occupation in Afghanistan.
Geography is one of the greatest reasons for the trade between these countries. In May, Afghanistan's Commerce and Industries Minister Anwar al-Haq Ahady and Iran's Ambassador toAfghanistan Abolfazl Zohrevand signed an agreement to deepen the trade ties between these countries. The main issue before them was use of the Chabahar port in southeastern Iran. About 50 hectares of land beside the port have been set aside for the construction of a hub for Afghan traders.
Few people paid any attention to this pact, although it has much broader implications than for these Afghan traders. For the past 10 years, the Indian government has been working with the Iranians to upgrade the Chabahar port, with the expectation that eventually Indian ships will dock there and unload cargo destined not only for the Iranian market, but crucially for the Afghan and Central Asian markets.
The Chabahar port would make the land route across Pakistan unnecessary for Indian trade bound for the lucrative Central Asian market. In 2003, Afghanistan, India and Iran signed their first agreement regarding this project. Iran was to build a road from Chabahar to the Afghan border, and India was then to build a road from there to Zarang/Delaram, which is on the Kandahar-Herat highway. In other words, Chabahar would be linked to Kabul and to points north. The roads are now ready, and Chabahar is prepared to be the main transit point for Indian goods.
Chabahar comes from the words char (four) and bahar (Spring), suggesting that the port has four seasons of springtime. It is a major warm water port and will allow goods to travel into Central Asia throughout the year.
In 1992, the Iranian government designated Chabahar as a special economic zone to allow potential investment, mainly from Southeast Asia. Ten years ago, the Indians expressed interest and they are now the leading players here. The Iranian government is eager to sign an addition memorandum with the Indian government that would attract substantial investment into the port. Apart from the major highway to link Chabahar and the Kandahar-Herat highway, two rail projects are also in the works. The first, run by the Indians, plans to link Chabahar by rail to the mineral rich area of Hajigak (its mineral assets are estimated at US$1-$3 trillion). The second, run by the Iranians, produces a freight line from Herat to Iran's northeastern city of Mashhad (and then onward to Turkey). This rail project will not be complete for another decade.
Half of Afghanistan's oil comes from Iran. To bring it from elsewhere makes no sense. Iran is a major oil producer and it shares a 936 kilometer border with Afghanistan. Despite the US occupation of that country, it has been impossible to reduce Afghanistan's dependence on Iranian oil. Afghanistan is a landlocked state, and relies upon its neighbors for its trade.
NATO has already had its supply lines through Pakistan closed by Islamabad, and it has faced problems in Central Asia as the governments there have cleverly bargained up the prices for base rentals and use of their land routes. It has been impossible to insist that the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul join the blockade against Iran - the adverse effects on an already crisis-prone Afghanistan, and therefore on the fragile occupation, would only intensify.
The US has put considerable pressure on India to cut back on its oil purchases. India now imports between 10% and 15% of its oil needs from Iran, a figure much reduced from five years previously. For the past two decades, India has cultivated close ties with the US. It was willing to pay a stiff price (voting against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005 and 2009) to come out of the nuclear cold (through the 2008 US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement).
Nonetheless, India remains a major trading partner with its near neighbor, even crafting an interesting payment vehicle to help circumvent the harsh European and US sanctions regime against Iran (Iran will accept 45% of its oil payments in Indian rupees, which will help bolster Indian exports into Iran). The opportunity of Chabahar has now put India in a mini-bind: should it invest more in this major project and gain access to Central Asian trade or should it make Washington happy and snub Iran? Afghanistan remains under US occupation. India seeks a close equation with the US. Iran and the US are hostile powers. Yet, these three countries, with very different relations with the US, now find that geography is their destiny. A pragmatic foreign policy built on the urgency of economic development draws these states together. Afghanistan needs access to a port and oil, as well as manufactured goods. Iran needs to sell its oil. India wants to find markets for its manufactured goods, and to find a ready supply of oil. Such linkages are hard to ignore.
These maneuvers disturb the US and Pakistan, two unlikely allies. The US is unhappy that the regional powers do not wish to join its economic and political embargo of Iran (that the 16th NAM is happening in Tehran, with two thirds of the world's states in attendance, is a great disappointment to Washington).
But there is recognition in Washington that little can be done to block this trilateral linkage. The US cannot possibly provide the Karzai government with the entirety of its needs via air delivery. It has not been able to break India's reliance on Iran, even though the Saudis have been asked and have promised to open more of their spigots to make up for any loss to the Indians.
Pakistan, sadly, is also threatened by this new arrangement. It had built the Gwadar port with Chinese help as a counterpoint to Chabahar. However, relations between Islamabad and Kabul have soured, with the Karzai government worried that the Pakistanis are once more going to back the Taliban as a wedge to maintain their forward policy into Afghanistan.
It is worth recalling that when Pakistan was founded in 1947, Afghanistan did not recognize it. They have a long-standing border dispute on the 1893 Durand Line ("a line of hatred that raised a wall between the two brothers," as Hamid Karzai called it). The Afghan government's antipathy to Pakistani aims through the Taliban have drawn it closer to India and Iran, both of whom have a long-standing hostile relationship with the Taliban. Pakistan has for a long time felt India has tried to encircle it through its friendship with Afghanistan. This simmering enmity has meant that no rational foreign policy has been possible in the region. A long-standing natural gas pipeline that was planned to run from Iran to India via Pakistan has died a slow death because of this distrust.
Contradictory US aims in the region have befuddled the geopolitics. It wants to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, but it cannot do so without engagement from Iran and India, as well as Pakistan. It wants to isolate Iran, but it cannot do so fully for fear of an economic implosion in Afghanistan.
Absent the US power projections in the region, policies could be implemented to reduce tension and increase the mutual reliance amongst the populations of the region. Afghanistan, India and Iran could begin to work on Pakistan to build trust and goodwill through small trade projects that would grow to larger interrelationships. The trilateral meeting at the side of the 16th NAM is a small step toward a more robust union in southern Asia. It is a rebuff to the politics of war.
and...
The South gathers in Tehran
By Vijay Prashad
Tomorrow, perhaps, the future.
- W H Auden
Next week, representatives from 118 of the world's 192 states will gather in Tehran for the 16th Non-Aligned Movement summit.
Created in 1961, the NAM was a crucial platform for the Third World Project (whose history I detail in The Darker Nations). It was formed to purge the majority of the world from the toxic Cold War and from the maldevelopment pushed by the World Bank. After two decades of useful institution-building, the NAM was suffocated by the enforced debt crisis of the 1980s. It has since gasped along.
In the corners of the NAM meetings, delegates mutter about thearrogance of the North, particularly the US, whose track record over the past few decades has been pretty abysmal. Ronald Reagan's dismissal of the problems of the South at the 1981 Cancun Summit on the North-South Dialogue still raises eyebrows, and George W Bush's cowboy sensibility still earns a few chuckles. But apart from these cheap thrills, little of value comes out of the NAM. Until the last decade there have been few attempts to create an ideological and institutional alternative to neoliberalism or to unipolar imperialism.
By Vijay Prashad
Tomorrow, perhaps, the future.
- W H Auden
Next week, representatives from 118 of the world's 192 states will gather in Tehran for the 16th Non-Aligned Movement summit.
Created in 1961, the NAM was a crucial platform for the Third World Project (whose history I detail in The Darker Nations). It was formed to purge the majority of the world from the toxic Cold War and from the maldevelopment pushed by the World Bank. After two decades of useful institution-building, the NAM was suffocated by the enforced debt crisis of the 1980s. It has since gasped along.
In the corners of the NAM meetings, delegates mutter about thearrogance of the North, particularly the US, whose track record over the past few decades has been pretty abysmal. Ronald Reagan's dismissal of the problems of the South at the 1981 Cancun Summit on the North-South Dialogue still raises eyebrows, and George W Bush's cowboy sensibility still earns a few chuckles. But apart from these cheap thrills, little of value comes out of the NAM. Until the last decade there have been few attempts to create an ideological and institutional alternative to neoliberalism or to unipolar imperialism.
With the arrival of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in the past few years, the mood has lifted. The much more assertive presence of the BRICS inside the NAM and in the United Nations has raised hopes that US and European intransigence will no longer determine the destiny of the world. At the 14th NAM summit in Cuba (2006), the world seemed lighter. Hugo Chavez' jokes went down well; Fidel Castro was greeted as a titan. This seemed like the old days, or at least Delhi in 1983.
NAM summits typically go by without fanfare. The Atlantic media rarely notice the movement's presence. But this year, because the summit is to be held in Tehran, eyebrows have been raised.
The US State Department's Victoria Nuland hastened to condemn the location as "a strange place and an inappropriate place for this meeting ... Our point is simply that Tehran, given its number of grave violations of international law and UN obligations, does not seem to be the appropriate place" for the NAM summit.
The US government is particularly chafed that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is making his pilgrimage to the NAM (he has attended every NAM summit since 1961, when Dag Hammarskjold left Belgrade to his death over African skies). Nuland notes that the US has expressed its "concern" to Ban. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was plainer: "Mr Secretary General, your place is not in Tehran." Bombs over Tehran
The fear is that Netanyahu is playing chicken with the US. He wants either to bait President Barack Obama to ratchet up the sanctions and fire off one or two missiles, or else to let loose his own hawks, flying twice the distance that they flew to Osirak in 1982 to bomb Bushehr now. Netanyahu's pressure startled his own president, Shimon Peres, who hastened to note, "It is clear that we cannot do this single-handedly and that we must coordinate with America." All this is a game of Chinese whispers, with so little clarity about what anyone is actually saying, and a great deal of anxiety about the exaggerations that have overwhelmed any capacity for mature discussion.
The US seems to want time for the new sanctions regime to take effect. In March, Iranian banks were disconnected from the SWIFT network that enables electronic financial transactions. Pressure on countries that import Iranian oil were stepped up, as the US and the Europeans threatened to take action against those who did not follow their own sanctions regime (which are much harsher than the various UN resolutions that run from 1696, from 2006, to 1929, from 2010).
Iran's central bank has pointed to a deep decline in the share of Iranian exports - and concomitantly, a perilous position for its population. What seems not to be on the radar of those who create these sanctions regimes is that they rarely turn the population against its government. In Iran, it might actually be detrimental to the reform movement. Washington fulminates about autocracy in Iran and the bomb, but it does not realize that for most Iranians (44% of whom live in slums), the core problem is of livelihood and well-being. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be in Tehran. He will meet with Ahmadinejad, and talk to him about India's attempt to circumvent the sanctions regime. Between 10% and 12% of India's oil needs are furnished by Iran. There has been an attempt to switch to the Saudi supply, but this is much easier to talk about than to do. The problem for India and Iran has been over payments, since India cannot pay Iran for the oil. Iran has therefore agreed to accept 45% of its oil receipts in rupees, within India, and to use this money to buy Indian goods to import into Iran. Delegations from the business sector have gone back and forth to find things to sell the Iranians. But problems persist: The sanctions regime has made it nearly impossible for Indian tankers to get insurance for their journey to Iran. Nonetheless, the Indian business lobby estimates that bilateral trade between the two countries will rise from US$13.5 billion to $30 billion by 2015.
The tete-a-tete between Manmohan Singh and Ahmadinejad will also touch on the Indian investments at the Chabahar port in southeastern Iran, which has been used to bring Indian goods into Iran and to bring 100,000 tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan. India and Iran have invested heavily in Afghanistan, and both have a common interest in making sure that the Taliban do not return to power in Kabul.
Here one would imagine that the US might see eye-to-eye with these old allies, but Washington's obsessive blinkers make it impossible for its officials to be proper diplomats. It has been a long-standing US aim to break the link between India and Iran, two stalwarts in the NAM.
Next week, New Delhi and Tehran will reinforce their fragile ties. Manmohan Singh will not make any grand gesture. This is not his temperament. Nonetheless, economic realities and the accidents of geography make the relationship necessary. This is unfathomable to Washington. Blood of Syria
The last time the NAM suffered a major political split was when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The bulk of the members wanted to condemn the invasion, while a few of the more influential (Algeria, India, Iraq) refused to go along. It damaged the NAM's credibility. This year, it is Syria that poses the dilemma.
In May, at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, within sight of Hosni Mubarak's hospital incarceration, the NAM coordinating bureau's ministerial meeting tried to put together a resolution on Syria. The Saudis and Qataris wanted a strong condemnation of the regime, but the Syrians, who remain NAM members, took exception to the draft. The final document was anodyne, calling for the success of former UN secretary general Kofi Annan's Six Point Plan.
Annan has quit. In his place has come the seasoned Algerian diplomat and UN bureaucrat Lakhdar Brahimi, who is no stranger to the NAM circuit. Brahimi knows a lot about conflict, having recently been the UN's man in Afghanistan and Iraq, and having been the broker to the Taif Agreement (1989) that suspended the Lebanese Civil War.
Brahimi's role will be difficult. Cynicism tears at Syria's future. Most discussion on Syria comes at it from its geopolitics: What will be the impact of the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime for US power or Gulf Arab power in the region? Will this have a detrimental impact on Hezbollah, on the Palestinians, on the Iranians? These are valuable questions, but they obscure the much more basic class question posed by the uprising in Syria: What is best for the Syrian people?
There is little argument that Assad's regime governs with one hand clothed in the military's iron and the other morphed into a credit card for the kleptocratic neoliberal elite. There is also little argument that the Assad regime's brutality toward its population has a long history, most notably during the first 11 months of the 2011 uprising when the people in their coordination committees chanted silmiyyeh, silmiyyeh (peaceful, peaceful) as Assad's tanks roared into their midst. The correct handling of the contradictions should lead one to full support for the freedom of the Syrian people, which has come to mean two things: the end of the Assad regime and the retraction of the hand of the US, the Gulf Arabs and the Russians. But Brahimi will not be able to move an agenda as long as the Syrian people's needs are not at the center of things.
It is also why the NAM will not be able to act effectively vis-a-vis Syria. One NAM delegation to Moscow and another to Riyadh-Doha asking for a suspension of weaponry and a cooling down of the rhetoric would have a marked impact on Assad and his beleaguered circle. This is not in the cards.
Leadership has now fallen on Egypt's new president, Mohamed Morsi. At the Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Mecca this month, its 57 states expelled Syria. This followed a resolution put forward by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Only Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi cautioned the group not to act in haste. He tried to take shelter in Assad's pronouncements about elections and reforms, none of this meaningful any longer. Salehi and the Iranians are plainly worried about the dynamic of history shifting to the advantage of the Gulf Arabs. This has colored their view of the Syrian conflict.
Egypt built a small bridge to Tehran at the OIC meeting. Morsi proposed the creation of a Contact Group, which would include Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This was welcomed by all sides. A few days later at a ministerial meeting in Jeddah, Salehi met with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Amr to draw out the implications of this Contact Group. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Rahim Mehmanparast said the Contact Group would be a mechanism to "review and follow up on [regional] issues so that peace would be established in the region". Nothing concrete has been achieved so far, but all indications are that Egypt will use the NAM process to find a way between the hard lines on both sides. Egypt and Iran broke their ties after the 1979 Islamic Republic was formed. But after the ouster of Mubarak, small gestures brought the countries into communication. The Egyptians allowed an Iranian frigate to go through the Suez Canal (the first since 1978). Iran welcomed the Arab Spring in North Africa as an "Islamic Awakening", and hoped for a rapprochement with the new Muslim Brotherhood politicians of the region.
The Qataris and Saudis also had such hopes, and these are antagonistic to Iran. Emir Hamad bin Khalifa of Qatar met with Morsi for dinner last week, where the Qataris pledged $2 billion in assistance to Egypt (a rumor floated around that the Qataris wanted to lease the Suez Canal, perhaps to prevent passage to those Iranian frigates).
Morsi had welcomed Iranian Vice-President Hamed Baqai a few weeks before the Qatari visit, accepting the invitation to come to Tehran for the NAM meeting and hand over the chair from Egypt to Iran in person. At the OIC meeting, Morsi and Ahmadinejad were seen to speak for a considerable period. It is likely that Morsi would like to fashion himself as the non-aligned voice between Iran and the Gulf Arabs, and to provide Brahimi with the kind of policy space he will require.
Morsi has a complex itinerary. He will go to Tehran via Beijing. Between a conclave with Hu Jintao and then later with Manmohan Singh, between discussions with the Gulf Arabs and the Iranians, Morsi's gestures suggest an affinity with the kind of multipolar foreign policy developed by the BRICS countries.
The tea leaves are hard to read. The top issues on the NAM agenda are Iran and Syria. One is about a war that Israel itches to start, and the other is about a war that the Assad regime is conducting against the Syrian people. The very fact that the NAM summit is taking place in Tehran shows that there remains support for Iran against any precipitous action. If Morsi's Contact Group can be pressured within the NAM to take a strong class position on Syria and not hide behind the cynicism of geopolitics, then this will be seen as a historic summit.
****
Rather than Iran and the Saudis , is the real country on the outside looking in Turkey ?
Turkey peculiarly absent from TehranBy Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Ankara has decided to boycott this week's Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran, which has been much maligned in the Western media despite the summit's potential to contribute to mediation efforts on the conflict in Syria. By all indications, this decision reflects a low point in Turkish foreign policy.
Despite a personal invitation by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Turkish President Abdullah Gul has cited personal health and scheduling conflict. Even the resourceful Foreignminister Ahmet Davutoglu has baulked at the idea of attending the summit, which brings dozens of leaders from the South to discuss their issues, including regional conflicts such as Syria. [1]
Ankara has decided to boycott this week's Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran, which has been much maligned in the Western media despite the summit's potential to contribute to mediation efforts on the conflict in Syria. By all indications, this decision reflects a low point in Turkish foreign policy.
Despite a personal invitation by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Turkish President Abdullah Gul has cited personal health and scheduling conflict. Even the resourceful Foreignminister Ahmet Davutoglu has baulked at the idea of attending the summit, which brings dozens of leaders from the South to discuss their issues, including regional conflicts such as Syria. [1]
Tehran has called for a serious discussion of the Syrian conflict on the summit's sideline, in light of the participation of Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi, who has proposed a Syria contact group consisting of Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Instead of welcoming this opportunity, the Turkish leadership has chosen to ignore it and, instead, focus on its "regime change" strategy vis-a-vis Damascus that is inching closer to the "no-fly" option by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Ankara's decision will be viewed negatively by both Tehran and even Cairo, which unlike Turkey's desire to toe NATO's policy in the Middle East, is eager to play an independent role that mandates conflict mediation in a fellow Arab country. The latest report from Egypt indicates that Cairo was hoping to hold a meeting on Syria with the quartet (ie Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt), but that is a long shot given Turkey's non-cooperative behavior.
The trouble with Turkey's Syria policy is that it is short-sighted and incapable of factoring in the likely ramifications of a no-fly zone in exacerbating its problems with the regime in Damascus and Syria's regional allies such as Iran and Russia - for example, it risks becoming the recipient of much greater heat on its Kurdish problem, in light of Damascus' decision to play the "Kurdish card" against Ankara.
A prudent Turkish approach would have been to endorse Morsi's above-mentioned plan, which was unveiled at the recent Mecca meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and thus agree to work with Iran to support the United Nations' renewed effort at creating a dialogue between the government and the opposition in Syria. By participating at a high level at the Tehran summit, Turkey could have taken a timely proactive step toward a regional approach on the conflict. Its decision to opt instead for NATO's militaristic solution-in-making, among other consequences, widens the political rift at home between the government and the political opposition, which favors a more independent Turkish foreign policy.
If the present pattern of Turkish foreign policy continues, then we are likely to witness a qualitative deepening of Turkey's problems with its neighbors (and near neighbors) in the near future, including Iraq, Russia and Iran. This is particularly unfortunate for Davutoglu, who told this author at a conference in Istanbul last year that he was "very optimistic" about the future of Turkey's relations with Iran.
It is impossible to ignore a thickening air of cynicism, even doom and gloom, now surrounding Iran-Turkey relations, particularly since Ankara stubbornly refused to admit a role for Iran in the diplomatic efforts regarding Syria (see Missteps in Turkey's neighborly ties", Asia Times Online, October 12, 2011).
According to a Tehran University political science professor who spoke with the author on the condition of anonymity, the mere chance that Syria's President Bashar al-Assad may participate at the NAM summit must have contributed to the Turkish leaders' collective decision to stay away "simply because they have completely written him [Assad] off and therefore they cannot reconcile themselves with the fact that Assad has survived and will be around no matter how much they dislike him."
As of writing, the Iranian authorities were tight-lipped about Assad's participation at the Tehran summit, saying only that a Syrian "higher than the foreign minister" will be coming to Tehran along with Foreign Minister Walid Muallem. In the event that Assad does show up, it is a small gamble by Tehran, hoping that he will be able to present his case to the NAM nations and thus shore up international support. At any rate, Damascus is not about to fall, and all the vital signs indicate the likelihood of an ongoing political stalemate in Syria that requires mediation effort by regional players.
Ankara's refusal to accept this simple fact is costly to Turkey itself, since it reflects the country's substitution of political realism with the wish list on Syria, indicating a deep identity gap in the Turkish political system and its contradictory existence as a nodal point between East and West.
Yet, in many ways Turkey is just another Middle Eastern developing nation, not an advanced European nation, and this in turn gives plenty of stimulus for Turkey to join or become an observer at the NAM. Maybe then the Turkish leaders would begin cherishing NAM's core principles in terms of independent foreign policy.
Note:
1. Gathering Hope in Tehran, The New York Times, August 23, 2012.
and interesting to notice how Turkey's problems with the Kurds have spiked lately....
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/blast-halts-oil-flow-from-turkish-iraqi-pipeline-sources.aspx?pageID=238&nID=28707&NewsCatID=341
Blast halts oil flow from Turkish-Iraqi pipeline: sources
DHA Photo
The cause of the fire was not immediately clear but suspicions are running high that Kurdish militants, who have in the past targeted the pipeline, or oil smugglers may have sabotaged it.
An unidentified female body was found near the blast site the next morning with a backpack and an automatic gun. The body was taken immediately to Sinopi State Hospital near by.
The fire started in the Silopi and Cizre districts of Şırnak province following the blast on the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, said the security sources, adding that firefighters were trying to put out the flames.
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and the international community, have sabotaged the pipeline several times in the past.
The 970-kilometre (600-mile) pipeline runs from Iraq's northern oil hub of Kirkuk to the port of Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, pumping 450,000 to 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Iraq depends on oil sales for the vast majority of government income. The oil-rich nation exported some 2.515 million barrels per day in July, earning about $7.535 billion in revenues.
and....
Explosion on Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline interrupts Iraq's oil flow to Turkey 6.8.2012
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 The blast hit the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline in Kurdish Mardin province in Turkey Kurdistan close to Turkey's border with Syrian Kurdistan. The PKK demanded Turkey's recognition of the Kurds' identity in its constitution and of their language as a native language along with Turkish in the country's Kurdish areas, the party also demanded an end to ethnic discrimination in Turkish laws and constitution against Kurds, ranting them full political freedoms. . Photo: EPA • See Related Links ANKARA,— An overnight blast in Turkey's Kurdish region in southeastern of the country interrupted oil flow from Iraq, with Kurdish PKK rebels suspected to be behind the explosions, Turkish authorities said Monday. The blast hit the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline in Kurdish Mardin province in Turkey Kurdistan close to Turkey's border with Syrian Kurdistan and repairs are expected to take up to 10 days, an energy ministry official said on customary condition of anonymity. The incident, believed to be an act of sabotage by the Kurdish rebels, also sparked a fire that was brought under control on Monday, according to another source from the ministry. PKK have sabotaged the pipeline several times in the past as part of an armed campaign against the Ankara government. The pipeline has also been repeatedly attacked by Sunni Arab insurgents inside Iraq since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003. The oil flow was again cut last month when a fire erupted in the same Mardin province after a rebel attack. On July 20, 2012, a blast put out a fire on a Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline carrying about a quarter of Iraq's oil exports. They blamed sabotage by Kurdish separatists for the explosion. On July 1, 2012, the PKK claims responsibility for Baku-Tbilisi gas pipeline sabotage: The PKK claimed responsibility for the explosion on the pipeline in Sarıkamış district of Kars in the Kurdish region in southeastern Turkey near the Armenian border on 29 May On April 4, 2012, PKK claims responsibility for bombing pipeline in Turkey: The blasts in southeastern Turkey on April 3, temporarily shut down a pipeline pumping oil from Iraq,www.ekurd.net with Kurdish rebels suspected to be behind the explosions, Turkish authorities said. Three blasts hit the section of the pipeline running near the border city of Idil in the Kurdish Sirnak province, sparking a fire, said a statement by the Sirnak regional government. The 970-kilometre (600-mile) pipeline runs from Iraq's northern oil hub of Kirkuk to the port of Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, pumping 450,000 to 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day. |
Since it was established in 1984, the PKK has been fighting the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to establish a Kurdish state in the south east of the country.
But now its aim is the creation an autonomous region and more cultural rights for ethnic Kurds who constitute the greatest minority in Turkey, numbering more than 20 million. A large Turkey's Kurdish community openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK rebels.
The PKK wants constitutional recognition for the Kurds, regional self-governance and Kurdish-language education in schools.
PKK's demands included releasing PKK detainees, lifting the ban on education in Kurdish, paving the way for an autonomous democrat Kurdish system within Turkey, reducing pressure on the detained PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, stopping military action against the Kurdish party and recomposing the Turkish constitution.
Turkey refuses to recognize its Kurdish population as a distinct minority. It has allowed some cultural rights such as limited broadcasts in the Kurdish language and private Kurdish language courses with the prodding of the European Union, but Kurdish politicians say the measures fall short of their expectations.
The PKK is considered as 'terrorist' organization by Ankara, U.S., the PKK continues to be on the blacklist list in EU despite court ruling which overturned a decision to place the Kurdish rebel group PKK and its political wing on the European Union's terror list.
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