Afghanistan.....
Pentagon: No ‘Zero Option’ for Afghanistan
Reiterates Plan for 'Substantial' Aid to Afghan Military Beyond 2014
by Jason Ditz, July 30, 2013
As the Obama Administration continues to try to present the “zero option,” ending the Afghan occupation at the end of 2014, as a real thing in the hopes of coaxing better terms out of President Hamid Karzai, the Pentagon seems determined to undercut them by reiterating at every opportunity that it isn’t really an option.
Pentagon officials today offered a report to Congress saying that they had entirely rejected the “zero option” and that they intend to continue to provide “substantial” long-term military support to the Afghan government.
The report centered primarily on “training” and funding for the huge Afghan military, which because of widespread attrition is constantly bursting at the seams with huge numbers of untrained recruits.
It’s clear however that the Pentagon very much envisions military operations continuing into 2015 beyond just throwing money and trainers at the problem. And while the report included its obligatory claims of “progress” on the ground it underscored that vision by reiterating the insurgents’ significant capabilities, also expected to last well beyond 2014.
Iran......
Analysts Warn of Iran’s ‘Breakout Capability’ in Effort to Move Red Line
Inspections Don't Mean Shutting Down Civilian Program
by Jason Ditz, July 30, 2013
Iran is always within a year or two of some artificial “red line” regarding their advancement of a civilian nuclear program, and related only tangentially to hypothetical weapons creation.
Today saw the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) pushing yet another hysterical warning about Iran’s “breakout capability,” which is itself a concept invented entirely to paint Iran’s civilian program as a military threat, and popularized in ISIS reports.
The “breakout capability” rests on the assumption that Iran could hypothetically transform its entire perfectly legal civilian program into a military program and produce a weapon at some sufficiently scary point in the near future.
Iran’s program is, of course, constantly being inspected by the IAEA under the terms of its safeguards agreement. ISIS complained in their report that the inspections don’t actually mean the program is stopped from civilian use, which of course isn’t what inspections are for.
To put the hysteria in proper context, however, ISIS claimed four and a half years agothat Iran had already reached breakout capability, and analysts in general have been predicting that Iran was within a few years of acquiring a nuclear weapon for over 30 years now.
Israel and the Palestinian Peace talks ......
Obama Made Secret Promises to Israel, Palestinians Over Peace Talks
Contents of 'Letters of Assurance' Will Remain Classified
by Jason Ditz, July 30, 2013
President Obama presented “letters of assurance” to the negotiating teams for both Israel and the Palestinian Authority today containing a series of promises with respect to US policy in an attempt to fuel peace talks, according to Israeli officials.
Those familiar with the Israeli letter say that it included a pledge that the US would not support the 1967 borders, that the US declares Israel a permanently “Jewish state,” and that the US opposes any right of return to Israel, believing all refugees should settle in the future Palestinian state.
All of those pledges are entirely speculative at this point, however, and what promises were included in the Palestinian letter are entirely a mystery, as the Obama Administration has declared the contents of the letters “classified” and won’t disclose what promises were actually made.
Secret letters are nothing new for the US in this seemingly endless conflict, with Israeli officials loudly throwing a secret Bush promise that Israel would get to keep major settlement blocks back in Obama’s face in recent weeks. This suggests that sooner or later we’ll here what was promised, though it may not be until after Obama’s term in office ends.
Syria .....
Kurdish Militia: All Syrian Kurds Must Resist Islamist Rebels
Faction Issues a Call to Arms After Assassination of Key Politician
by Jason Ditz, July 30, 2013
Northeastern Syria or Western Kurdistan, whichever you want to call it, has not only been sucked into the ongoing Syrian Civil War, but is now the center of another war in the area between Islamist rebels and Kurdish secessionists.
After the assassination of Kurdish opposition figure Issa Hisso yesterday, the Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People (YPG), the armed wing of the Kurdish Supreme Committee, has issued a call to arms for all able-bodied Kurds in the region to take up arms against Jabhat al-Nusra and other al-Qaeda linked factions.
Hisso was assassinated outside of his home, near the Syria-Turkish border, by a bomb planted in his car. It has been presumed that the Islamist rebels did so as part of the campaign against Kurdish resistance against their control of the region.
The fighting has erupted from time to time, but seems to have begun again in earnest in mid-July with a battle over Ras al-Ayn. The Kurdish victory in that fight has not only brought the YPG et al to the brink of full-scale war with al-Qaeda, but threatens to drag Turkey into the war as well, since Turkish officials had always backed the rebels specifically on hopes of curbing Kurdish independence bids, and the civil war seems to instead be providing a great opportunity for the Kurds to establish de facto autonomy.
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