A Tale of Two Vice Presidents: Cheney and Abdul-Mahdi, Iran Awaits High Noon
Endangered Vice Presidents:
It was not the best of times for Vice President Dick Cheney. It was an even worse time for Iraq's Adel Abdul-Mahdi
V.P Dick Cheney got some combat experience at Bagram Airbase yesterday, when the Taliban or al-Qaeda, or a combination thereof, set off some fireworks, killing American and Afghan soldiers. Hours before that, Iraqi V.P Adel Abdul-Mahdi had a more first-hand brush with combat and mortality. He was wounded, while the unflappable Cheney only heard an unpleasant explosion. These two men have more in common than yesterday's unpleasant experience. Both have come back in from the cold only in recent years. Abdul-Mahdi spent many years in exile, first in France and then in the dubious comforts of Iran: in those dark years no Arab government would give asylum to the Iraqi Shi'a opposition members- membership of some groups was punishable by death, retroactively. Cheney, perhaps because he was not welcome in Tehran for some odd reason, had a more comfortable exile in the wilderness of Halliburton.
The question now is: how did the Taliban and al-Qaeda seekers of paradise know that Cheney was at Bagram at that time?
Iraq:
The cabinet approved a draft law that would allow sharing oil revenues among the provinces. This is a necessary measure that would ensure a 'fair' dustribution of petroleum revenues. It is being hailed in the West as a possible key to ending the terrorist campaign, but this is only a Western view, for people in Iraq and the region know that the insurgents couldn't care less about oil revenues- they want to regain the whole pie. This might have more impact on the 'Kurdish' question than on Sunni-Shi'a relations within Iraq. The Shi'a and Kurdish regions have almost all of Iraq's main natural resources. The Kurds looked ready to handle their own oil resources, and this was a point of contention with the central government in Baghdad. The issue may come back to haunt Iraqi politicians in the future.
Azzaman daily, which represents the old pan-Arabist Sunni elites who ruled Iraq for decades, reports in its latest edition that the Kurds have agreed to postpone the referendum on the status of Kirkuk for two years. The referendum is scheduled for sometime this year and is widely expected to return the city to Kurdish control. The paper claims that Kurdish President Massoud Barazani, has agreed to this postponement. No other media outlet has carried this news item so far, which makes its veracity highly suspect.
The whereabouts of Muqtada al-Sadr are still unknown, but each day it looks less likely that he is in Iran or anywhere outside Iraq. But wherever he is, one thing is almost certain: like the terminator, he vill be baaack. Unless he starts sneding out video and audio messages to satellite TV stations, a la Salafi Jihadists- then we will know that he ain't coming back.
U.S military officials in Iraq showed reporters a cache of weapons they claimed proved that Iran is arming the militias. Few people doubt that Iran supplies some militia groups. But unfortunately the cache also had markings showing that they were mostly made in several Arab countries, including Iraq and the UAE.
Alrafidain, Two Rivers, Iraqi daily reports on one way for many Iraqis to earn a living in these hard times: they are doing what people conquered by American armies have done since at least World War I. It evolves around a new growing 'industry': trading in abandoned American military equipment, clothes, and scrap metal. Apparently there is some degree of specialization in this trade: there are people who sell only military uniforms, others sell equipment, etc. Others specialize in food items prepared and imported for the U.S military, presumably including MREs. It is unclear how they get hold of some of these items, thay can't all have been abandoned.
Iran:
Looks like the UN Security Council may impose new, tougher, sanctions on Iran for its continued defiance of international demands over the nuclear issue. It is not clear how far the Europeans and Russia-China will go in imposing new restrictions. Reactions in the Persian Gulf media do not seem to expect serious and crippling sanctions: that is why most of them expect some sort of military action. Any military action will almost certainly be confined to air and naval operations: nobody in his right mind expects land operations in the vast and rugged Iranian territory. The Roman triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus once attempted a land invasion of the Persian plateau: nobody knows what happened to him or to his legions. Firing a few cruise missiles won't cut it with the Iranians or with the U.S. Congress. Unless credible intelligence, really on the ground and in-country intelligence, can show that the right targets were hit.
Alquds Alarabi from London quotes both The New Yorker and the Israeli daily Ma'arev that a yet-another front has been formed against what the paper calls "the Iranian and Shi'a tide". The four main countries are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan. Other shy Arab governments also support this initiative, but secretly. Security and intelligence officials of this group are reported to meet every two weeks. Saudi Arabia is reported to finance its operations, with Prince Bandar taking the leading role. Jordan is the liaison between the group and Israeli officials. Egypt, long mired in its own political and economic stagnation, apparently serves to inflate the body count: it has the largest Arab population. Egypt was once the most influential Arab country, but that was before the era of Leonid Mubarak.
Cheers
Mohammed
It was not the best of times for Vice President Dick Cheney. It was an even worse time for Iraq's Adel Abdul-Mahdi
V.P Dick Cheney got some combat experience at Bagram Airbase yesterday, when the Taliban or al-Qaeda, or a combination thereof, set off some fireworks, killing American and Afghan soldiers. Hours before that, Iraqi V.P Adel Abdul-Mahdi had a more first-hand brush with combat and mortality. He was wounded, while the unflappable Cheney only heard an unpleasant explosion. These two men have more in common than yesterday's unpleasant experience. Both have come back in from the cold only in recent years. Abdul-Mahdi spent many years in exile, first in France and then in the dubious comforts of Iran: in those dark years no Arab government would give asylum to the Iraqi Shi'a opposition members- membership of some groups was punishable by death, retroactively. Cheney, perhaps because he was not welcome in Tehran for some odd reason, had a more comfortable exile in the wilderness of Halliburton.
The question now is: how did the Taliban and al-Qaeda seekers of paradise know that Cheney was at Bagram at that time?
Iraq:
The cabinet approved a draft law that would allow sharing oil revenues among the provinces. This is a necessary measure that would ensure a 'fair' dustribution of petroleum revenues. It is being hailed in the West as a possible key to ending the terrorist campaign, but this is only a Western view, for people in Iraq and the region know that the insurgents couldn't care less about oil revenues- they want to regain the whole pie. This might have more impact on the 'Kurdish' question than on Sunni-Shi'a relations within Iraq. The Shi'a and Kurdish regions have almost all of Iraq's main natural resources. The Kurds looked ready to handle their own oil resources, and this was a point of contention with the central government in Baghdad. The issue may come back to haunt Iraqi politicians in the future.
Azzaman daily, which represents the old pan-Arabist Sunni elites who ruled Iraq for decades, reports in its latest edition that the Kurds have agreed to postpone the referendum on the status of Kirkuk for two years. The referendum is scheduled for sometime this year and is widely expected to return the city to Kurdish control. The paper claims that Kurdish President Massoud Barazani, has agreed to this postponement. No other media outlet has carried this news item so far, which makes its veracity highly suspect.
The whereabouts of Muqtada al-Sadr are still unknown, but each day it looks less likely that he is in Iran or anywhere outside Iraq. But wherever he is, one thing is almost certain: like the terminator, he vill be baaack. Unless he starts sneding out video and audio messages to satellite TV stations, a la Salafi Jihadists- then we will know that he ain't coming back.
U.S military officials in Iraq showed reporters a cache of weapons they claimed proved that Iran is arming the militias. Few people doubt that Iran supplies some militia groups. But unfortunately the cache also had markings showing that they were mostly made in several Arab countries, including Iraq and the UAE.
Alrafidain, Two Rivers, Iraqi daily reports on one way for many Iraqis to earn a living in these hard times: they are doing what people conquered by American armies have done since at least World War I. It evolves around a new growing 'industry': trading in abandoned American military equipment, clothes, and scrap metal. Apparently there is some degree of specialization in this trade: there are people who sell only military uniforms, others sell equipment, etc. Others specialize in food items prepared and imported for the U.S military, presumably including MREs. It is unclear how they get hold of some of these items, thay can't all have been abandoned.
Iran:
Looks like the UN Security Council may impose new, tougher, sanctions on Iran for its continued defiance of international demands over the nuclear issue. It is not clear how far the Europeans and Russia-China will go in imposing new restrictions. Reactions in the Persian Gulf media do not seem to expect serious and crippling sanctions: that is why most of them expect some sort of military action. Any military action will almost certainly be confined to air and naval operations: nobody in his right mind expects land operations in the vast and rugged Iranian territory. The Roman triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus once attempted a land invasion of the Persian plateau: nobody knows what happened to him or to his legions. Firing a few cruise missiles won't cut it with the Iranians or with the U.S. Congress. Unless credible intelligence, really on the ground and in-country intelligence, can show that the right targets were hit.
Alquds Alarabi from London quotes both The New Yorker and the Israeli daily Ma'arev that a yet-another front has been formed against what the paper calls "the Iranian and Shi'a tide". The four main countries are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan. Other shy Arab governments also support this initiative, but secretly. Security and intelligence officials of this group are reported to meet every two weeks. Saudi Arabia is reported to finance its operations, with Prince Bandar taking the leading role. Jordan is the liaison between the group and Israeli officials. Egypt, long mired in its own political and economic stagnation, apparently serves to inflate the body count: it has the largest Arab population. Egypt was once the most influential Arab country, but that was before the era of Leonid Mubarak.
Cheers
Mohammed
Comments