Iran.....
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/23/2013 21:34 -0500
http://www.debka.com/article/23461/The-US-and-Europeans-give-Iran-a-deadline-of-Saturday-night-for-concluding-a-nuclear-deal-
This point is pivotal to both sides because it is absent from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which merely specifies that countries are allowed “to pursue peaceful nuclear energy.”
On this point, therefore, both Iran and the six powers are digging in their heels.
This strategy also has a by-product: By the time they get around to the key technical clauses, the negotiators on the other side of the table are too worn down to cope with a new set of Iranian objections.
The biggest obstacle to a deal, however, is to be found in Tehran in the person of the tough, autocratic Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He will have the final word on whether the second round to talks in Geneva produce an accord – not the American or Russian presidents, and certainly not the foreign ministers assembling there.
Iran Nuclear Deal Done (20% Reduction In Enrichment For Lifted Sanctions); Obama Speaks - Live Webcast
UPDATE: Details of the deal are emerging including $4.2bn in FX
Despite earlier denials from Iran's Deputy FinMin, EU, Iran, and US officials have confirmed:
- *IRAN NUCLEAR ACCORD WITH WORLD POWERS ENDS 10-YEAR DEADLOCK
- *IRAN WILL HALT 20% ENRICHMENT FOR 6 MONTHS, FARS REPORTS
- *IRAN AGREEMENT DOESN'T FORMALLY RECOGNIZE RIGHT TO ENRICH
- *IRAN AGREEMENT WILL STILL ALLOW IRAN TO ENRICH URANIUM
- *IRAN INTERIM AGREEMENT FREEZES ADDITIONAL SANCTIONS
- *IRAN DEAL LIFTS TRANSPORT AND INSURANCE SANCTIONS ON OIL
There are no details yet - but an interim agreement has been reached to 'roll back' some of Iran's nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of some sanctions. Close U.S. ally Israel opposes the deal as too generous to an enemy it sees as a mortal threat. Israel is not a party to the talks. President Obama will address the nation at 1015ET to take a victory lap (perhaps this foreign victory will lift his domestic approval rating off record lows)...
The Iranian President seems pleased...
http://www.debka.com/article/23461/The-US-and-Europeans-give-Iran-a-deadline-of-Saturday-night-for-concluding-a-nuclear-deal-
American and European negotiators have given Iran until Saturday night, Nov. 23, the fourth day of negotiations in Geneva, to reach agreement on an interim nuclear deal, DEBKAfile’s sources report. After that deadline, those delegations plan to cut the talks short and leave. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif retorted that his government would not bow to threats. The US-EU deadline indicated that Washington, Paris, London and Berlin had reached the limit of their concessions to Iran. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said when he arrived in Geneva that the two difficulties encountered two weeks ago still remained. The Russian and Chinese foreign minister have refrained from comment.
See DEBKAfile’s earlier report on this date.
Both sides were pumping up an atmosphere of optimism as the foreign ministers of all six powers facing Iran made tracks for Geneva Saturday morning, Nov. 23, Day Four of the marathon negotiations for an accord on a six-month freeze on Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Araghchi said the six powers had agreed to respect his country’s right to enrich uranium, so removing a major hurdle in the path of an accord, whereas Foreign Minister Javad Zarif remained silent.
Sergey Lavrov was the first foreign minister to arrive Friday night, followed by Secretary of State John Kerry early Saturday. Both were said to have come to try and narrow the gaps holding up an accord. The Chinese, British, French and German foreign ministers were due in Geneva Saturday morning, after bilateral sessions between Zarif and the other six delegates failed to produce enough progress for them to adjourn to formal negotiations around the same table, least of all reach the signing stage.
This time round, the Iranian team borrowed the Western tactic of constantly maintaining that a deal is within reach. This tactic aims at weakening the resistance of the opposite side by presenting it as dragging out the nerve-wracking talkathon beyond reason. This tactic didn’t work for the Western delegations in the first round of nuclear talks on Nov. 11, which France blew up on the fourth day. The second round had reached the same touch-and-go point by Saturday morning, when none of the six delegations confirmed they had agreed to a clause respecting Iran’s right to enrich uranium as Araghchi had claimed.
This point is pivotal to both sides because it is absent from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which merely specifies that countries are allowed “to pursue peaceful nuclear energy.”
Rewording this provision to cover the right to uranium enrichment would cut the ground from under the entire treaty by throwing the door open for all its signatories to enrich uranium at will.
Tehran’s goal in making this demand is more than legitimacy for its own weapons program. It is also seeks to deprive the big powers of the prerogative to determine the rights of smaller nations.
On this point, therefore, both Iran and the six powers are digging in their heels.
The other major hurdle facing a deal is the Arak heavy water reactor Iran is building. Tehran refuses to halt construction of this reactor arguing that like any other nation, Iran is entitled to build nuclear reactors for peaceful purposes. They shoot back at any suggestion that the Arak reactor is designed to produce plutonium as fuel for nuclear weapon, along with enriched uranium, with a charge of discrimination, and declare, “Tehran is not going to sign an agreement that permanently put Iran in an outcast category,”
The Iranians have adopted a negotiating strategy of relegating the vital technical aspects of the draft accord to a lower priority while hammering away at issues pertinent to national respect. Iran is fighting in Geneva for international respect as a legitimate and equal nuclear power on the world stage.
This strategy also has a by-product: By the time they get around to the key technical clauses, the negotiators on the other side of the table are too worn down to cope with a new set of Iranian objections.
The biggest obstacle to a deal, however, is to be found in Tehran in the person of the tough, autocratic Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He will have the final word on whether the second round to talks in Geneva produce an accord – not the American or Russian presidents, and certainly not the foreign ministers assembling there.
Khamenei has boosted his heft by making himself unapproachable – even to Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani. So no one can influence him or even find out where he stands until the text is ready for signing. Even then, Zarif and Araghchi may be told at the last moment to withhold their signatures over some point and return home for further consultations. The six powers will then have to decide whether it is worth taking the negotiations to a third round, as the Congress in Washington fights back by enacting tighter sanctions against Iran.
Syria ......
IDLIB PROVINCE, Syria – Concerns are rising that courts run by Islamic clerics in many of Syria’s rebel-held areas may serve as a prelude to Taliban-style justice in what was long a violently repressive but secular state.
Many on the ground counter that they are the sole viable option in the present circumstances and should not be confused with the more extreme form that the Al-Qaeda-affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham, or ISIS, attempt to impose on the areas under their control.
Former judges trained by the regime are distrusted even if they now express support for the uprising, IPS was told by residents of several small towns in the Idlib province in northwestern Syria. A large portion of the Muslim clerics running the courts, on the other hand, have served time in jail under the Assad regime or have relatives that have, a view that confers a certain degree of ‘legitimacy’ on them in the public’s and fighters’ eyes.
Leaders of many of the major rebel factions, including the Suquor Ash-Sham, Al-Tawheed and Ahrar Ash-Sham Brigades, have spent time in the notorious Sednayah prison near Damascus, known for housing mainly political and Islamist prisoners. Former imprisonment under the regime is seen as evidence of a pro-revolutionary position.
The Muslim cleric Sheikh Hamdan Khattab, who heads a local court with jurisdiction for part of the Idlib province, told IPS that he hadn’t seen his brother in over 30 years due to his suspected links with the Muslim Brotherhood. Syrian law has prescribed the death penalty for membership of the group since 1980.
Sheikh Khattab told IPS that according to sharia law, “until we have a president no rulings can be enforced,” and sentences must be suspended during times of war. This does not seem to apply to certain ‘war crimes’ in the present circumstances committed by fighters, however.
A Palestinian detained for belonging to one of the regime-linked irregular militias, the shabiha, and charged with multiple rapes and murders, has since IPS spoke to him in September been executed following a trial at a court in Bab Al-Hawa near the Turkish border.
The local Suqour al-Sham leader, Maher, whose men captured and interrogated the man before handing him over to the larger court, said most of the arrests his men made were for stealing. This came especially after he was ordered by the local sharia court to crack down on growing lawlessness and looting by thieves from an area nearby over which tribal clans hold sway.
Sentences of between six months and one year in detention are commonly given for theft, he said.
On issues of fighting between tribal clans, however, sharia courts refuse to adjudicate, much as the Assads long have, Sheikh Aid Hussein, leader of the Al-Damaalkha clan, told IPS on a recent visit to one of his homes not far from Maarret An-Nu’man, a city in rebel hands but almost entirely destroyed by government shelling.
He said that the regime had always allowed them to settle their own disputes and feuds, with the amount of blood money to be paid for murders and specific conditions of settlements decided by tribal leaders and elders.
Many Muslim clerics say they make recourse to the Unified Arab Code, a sharia-inspired code agreed upon by Arab League justice ministers in 1996. They say those trained solely in sharia law are often flanked by lawyers acting as legal advisors in rebel-held areas.
Islamic fiqh is cited as the main source of legislation in both of the constitutions introduced by the Assad family, in 1973 and 2012. However, secular penal and commercial codes have long been used under the Baath regime, leaving only civil (personal status) law based on sharia.
Women have long suffered unequal status under Syrian law, and what remains of Islamic norms in regime law books typically weighs most heavily on them. If a rapist marries his victim then no crime has officially been committed, for example. Sentences are reduced for ‘honor killings’ of female family members. Syrian law considers women legal dependents of their fathers and husbands.
In both the tribal and sharia systems and in most of the civil administration councils, women are entirely excluded from decision-making.
Though discriminated against under the regime, there were active women lawyers across the country prior to the uprising. Heba, a lawyer involved in documenting the torture of women and girls in regime detention and the reported chemical attack in Saraqeb, a city in the northwestern part of the country, told IPS that “women were just never promoted; they stayed in the same entry-level position for decades, while men moved up.”
But “we don’t need a new legal system,” she said.
Currently staying in southern Turkey’s Hatay region out of concerns for her safety, Heba – wearing a hijab and a threadbare coat she hugs around herself in the crisp autumn air – said that “the problem was never the legal system. It was the arbitrary arrests, the systematic torture used by the regime, the corruption.”
What the international community fails to recognize– she implied in discussing the case of a girl who reportedly had had both legs amputated and been raped repeatedly in detention – was that ‘sharia justice’ had not been behind the many atrocities etched in Syrians’ collective memory.
Islam is also viewed by many of the fighters as more egalitarian, as in theory all are supposed to be “equal before god” under it.
“I just want to be treated with dignity,” one rebel fighter told IPS.
“And Islam is democracy. Under the regime, everything was about money. You could just pay to get a murder ruled to be ‘in self-defense’,” he said.
The group doesn’t include either al-Qaeda faction operating in Syria, but says they are open to cooperation with them. Combined, they amount to the largest rebel fighting force in northern Syria, as well as the largest in metro Damascus.
The biggest such incident came when Nusra fighters attempted to attack a military checkpoint on a Damascus highway, with reports of 23 rebels killed and 60 wounded. Tolls from the Syrian military were not released, and such figures are often hotly disputed by both sides.
Many on the ground counter that they are the sole viable option in the present circumstances and should not be confused with the more extreme form that the Al-Qaeda-affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham, or ISIS, attempt to impose on the areas under their control.
Former judges trained by the regime are distrusted even if they now express support for the uprising, IPS was told by residents of several small towns in the Idlib province in northwestern Syria. A large portion of the Muslim clerics running the courts, on the other hand, have served time in jail under the Assad regime or have relatives that have, a view that confers a certain degree of ‘legitimacy’ on them in the public’s and fighters’ eyes.
Leaders of many of the major rebel factions, including the Suquor Ash-Sham, Al-Tawheed and Ahrar Ash-Sham Brigades, have spent time in the notorious Sednayah prison near Damascus, known for housing mainly political and Islamist prisoners. Former imprisonment under the regime is seen as evidence of a pro-revolutionary position.
The Muslim cleric Sheikh Hamdan Khattab, who heads a local court with jurisdiction for part of the Idlib province, told IPS that he hadn’t seen his brother in over 30 years due to his suspected links with the Muslim Brotherhood. Syrian law has prescribed the death penalty for membership of the group since 1980.
Sheikh Khattab told IPS that according to sharia law, “until we have a president no rulings can be enforced,” and sentences must be suspended during times of war. This does not seem to apply to certain ‘war crimes’ in the present circumstances committed by fighters, however.
A Palestinian detained for belonging to one of the regime-linked irregular militias, the shabiha, and charged with multiple rapes and murders, has since IPS spoke to him in September been executed following a trial at a court in Bab Al-Hawa near the Turkish border.
The local Suqour al-Sham leader, Maher, whose men captured and interrogated the man before handing him over to the larger court, said most of the arrests his men made were for stealing. This came especially after he was ordered by the local sharia court to crack down on growing lawlessness and looting by thieves from an area nearby over which tribal clans hold sway.
Sentences of between six months and one year in detention are commonly given for theft, he said.
On issues of fighting between tribal clans, however, sharia courts refuse to adjudicate, much as the Assads long have, Sheikh Aid Hussein, leader of the Al-Damaalkha clan, told IPS on a recent visit to one of his homes not far from Maarret An-Nu’man, a city in rebel hands but almost entirely destroyed by government shelling.
He said that the regime had always allowed them to settle their own disputes and feuds, with the amount of blood money to be paid for murders and specific conditions of settlements decided by tribal leaders and elders.
Many Muslim clerics say they make recourse to the Unified Arab Code, a sharia-inspired code agreed upon by Arab League justice ministers in 1996. They say those trained solely in sharia law are often flanked by lawyers acting as legal advisors in rebel-held areas.
Islamic fiqh is cited as the main source of legislation in both of the constitutions introduced by the Assad family, in 1973 and 2012. However, secular penal and commercial codes have long been used under the Baath regime, leaving only civil (personal status) law based on sharia.
Women have long suffered unequal status under Syrian law, and what remains of Islamic norms in regime law books typically weighs most heavily on them. If a rapist marries his victim then no crime has officially been committed, for example. Sentences are reduced for ‘honor killings’ of female family members. Syrian law considers women legal dependents of their fathers and husbands.
In both the tribal and sharia systems and in most of the civil administration councils, women are entirely excluded from decision-making.
Though discriminated against under the regime, there were active women lawyers across the country prior to the uprising. Heba, a lawyer involved in documenting the torture of women and girls in regime detention and the reported chemical attack in Saraqeb, a city in the northwestern part of the country, told IPS that “women were just never promoted; they stayed in the same entry-level position for decades, while men moved up.”
But “we don’t need a new legal system,” she said.
Currently staying in southern Turkey’s Hatay region out of concerns for her safety, Heba – wearing a hijab and a threadbare coat she hugs around herself in the crisp autumn air – said that “the problem was never the legal system. It was the arbitrary arrests, the systematic torture used by the regime, the corruption.”
What the international community fails to recognize– she implied in discussing the case of a girl who reportedly had had both legs amputated and been raped repeatedly in detention – was that ‘sharia justice’ had not been behind the many atrocities etched in Syrians’ collective memory.
Islam is also viewed by many of the fighters as more egalitarian, as in theory all are supposed to be “equal before god” under it.
“I just want to be treated with dignity,” one rebel fighter told IPS.
“And Islam is democracy. Under the regime, everything was about money. You could just pay to get a murder ruled to be ‘in self-defense’,” he said.
Syrian Rebel Factions Unite as ‘Islamic Front’
Group Includes Major Non-al-Qaeda Islamist Blocs
by Jason Ditz, November 22, 2013
Following up on a call by al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra for other Islamist factions to unite under their banner, several Syrian rebel groups have announced a separate Islamist leadership umbrella called the Islamic Front.
The group doesn’t include either al-Qaeda faction operating in Syria, but says they are open to cooperation with them. Combined, they amount to the largest rebel fighting force in northern Syria, as well as the largest in metro Damascus.
While on the surface it is just the latest in a growing number of would-be umbrella groups claiming to be the true representatives of a splintered rebellion, the group’s focus on fighting forces makes it more credible than most, and potentially more influential.
The group says that the long term goal of their movement is to replace Syrian President Bashar Assad, and form an Islamic state in the territory. It is unclear how much territory the group’s factions control outright.
Syrian Troops Kill 54 al-Qaeda Fighters in Clashes
Gains Against Nusra, But AQI Seizes a Border Town
by Jason Ditz, November 22, 2013
The latest reports on the ground in Syria suggest the military has made some gains against al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, with claims of 54 of their fighters being killed in various clashes in Aleppo Province and Metro Damascus.
The biggest such incident came when Nusra fighters attempted to attack a military checkpoint on a Damascus highway, with reports of 23 rebels killed and 60 wounded. Tolls from the Syrian military were not released, and such figures are often hotly disputed by both sides.
The other al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), had a somewhat better day, as reports have them capturing the strategic town of Atama along the Turkish border.
Atama has served as a crossing for weapons and Islamist fighters entering Syria to join the rebellion, and had been under the control of another Islamist faction, but they were chased out of the area by AQI. Control over border towns is often a major source of influence for rebel factions, and a way to get a “cut” of arms being smuggled in by other groups.
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