Iran leads way on Sunni-Shite rapprochement

I must have read a dozen times in as many different mainstream places this week that the perpetual turmoil in the Middle East has nothing to do with the last 100 years of Western meddling in the region, but everything to do with the last thousand plus years of Sunni-Shite animosities.

That is, if nothing else, a convenient way of getting us off the hook. Insofar as that is true, one would think that the same know-nothing Western experts who put forward that argument would rejoice at the initiatives taken by Shia Iran to reach out to their Sunni cousins.



In fact, both Hamas boss Ismail Haniya and Uber-Ayatolla Ali Khamenei should be deemed Nobel Peace Prize worthy for their efforts to bring together the long-warring branches of the family of the Prophet, bless His name.

You will notice, however, that those same Western experts are not at all keen on any hint of Sunni-Shite reconciliation. Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that at every turn over the past twenty years, the Nations of Virtue, ie the West, have done whatever they could to fan the flames of the Sunni-Shia rivalry?

Could that be because virtually every Sunni-led country is in America's pocket?

Could that Sunni-Shia rivalry, now that it has reached mutually genocidal proportions, be itself the product of our meddling?

Could that explain our fixation on Iran's imaginary nukes, while the all-too-real Judeo-Christian nukes in Israel and the Sunni nukes in Pakistan give us no cause for concern whatsoever?

Could a successful rapprochement be the undoing of our divide-and-conquer strategy, a strategy that has served the West so well and condemned the people of the Middle East to perpetual horror?

No wonder our mainstream presstitutes never tire of demonizing Iran and Hamas!

Netanyahu urges caution over Iran nuke deal

When I noticed the Israeli PM was going to be on Face the Nation I immediately thought, great!.. we're going to get an update on how those peace talks are going with the Palestinians, straight from the horse's mouth!

Alas, it was not to be. Guest host Nora O'Donnell steered clear of the pesky Palestinian question and instead quizzed the PM on his thoughts about the Iranian nuclear negotiations.

As journalism goes, this was an exercise in redundancy. Is it possible than anyone on the planet does not already know Netanyahu's thinking on the question of Iran's nuclear programme? After all, Netanyahu is practically the grandfather of the Iranian nuke scare, having first raised the alarm that Iranian scientists were months away from a nuclear weapon more than twenty years ago.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu's advice to the Western negotiators in Switzerland is well worth heeding. Lets not rush into anything. Just as Israel has avoided rushing back to those pre '67 borders for over 45 years, so the NATO negotiating team should take their time easing sanctions on Iran.

While it is always drollery of the highest order to hear Netanyahu invoke the sanctity of UN resolutions, I have to say I'm with him on this one. Iran would not be the first country in history to claim its nuclear energy program is for peaceful purposes only, until one day, SURPRISE!

Netanyahu knows whereof he speaks.

Reality check for Charles Krauthammer

I was just watching Charles Krauthammer on Fox News. According to Krauthammer, Iran is the "most grave threat" facing America today.

Hmm...

Last year the US spent about 700 billion dollars on its military.

Iran spent about 7 billion.

At last count America had well over 5,000 nuclear weapons.

Iran has been months away from figuring out how to build its first one for about twenty years now.

But people watch this nonsense, and what's totally shocking, they'll tune in tomorrow to catch even more of Krauthammer's insights.

How about a nice war to take your mind off the economic collapse?

It's a time-honored strategy.

The "great depression" didn't really end till WWII.

Viet Nam masked America's industrial over-capacity and sundry other economic woes for a generation.

Time-honored, tested, and true. If the masses are getting too antsy about their declining standard of living, scare the beejeezus out of them with a war.

Or even the prospect of war.

I mean look how this strategy is panning out for Netanyahu over in the Holy Land.

Everybody in America knows that Arab Spring was sparked by that poor Tunisian fruit-vendor who had given up all hope of making a go of it in such a repressive society that he set himself on fire.

Virtually nobody in America has heard of the two Israeli Jews who have set themselves on fire in the past month in Israel because they have given up all hope of making a go of it.

All Netanyahu has to do is mention "Iran" and "nuclear" and "existential threat" and self-immolating poor people are immediately forgotten.

So that war with Iran has got to be pretty tempting for a lot of politicians.

Hillary convenes conclave of Arab dictators to plan "inclusive democracy" for Syria!

Hillary is hanging out in Riyadh today with the Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE.

What's on the agenda? Why, a good dose of democracy for America's enemies in the Middle East! First and foremost, Hillary is rallying support for arming the armed opposition in Syria. The evil dictator Assad refuses to go gently into the twilight of democratic reform, so obviously the armed opposition needs more weapons to make Assad see the error of his ways.

Also on the agenda is more democratic reform for Iran. Democratic reform in this case means crippling sanctions aimed at deterring Iran's nuclear program in the short term and affecting regime change in the long term.

Not on the agenda is democratic reform for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the UAE.

Terror networks recruiting mentally handi-capped from madrassas

It's good to be vindicated by mainstream headlines!

Twelve hours after posting about the stupidity factor among the "enemy" we learn that a supposed Iranian secret agent sent to Thailand on a terror mission only blew his legs off instead. Not only that, but the blast left his Iranian passport intact as well.

The terror bosses have to hate it when that happens.

You really have to wonder about the quality of their recruits, don't you?

The undie bomber. "Dude, your pants are on fire!"

Indeed. And the guy before that. The shoe bomber. Over-powered by fellow passengers after wasting two books of matches trying to set his Addidas trainers on fire...

Where do they get these guys?

And these are the people who are building themselves a nuclear weapon?

I'm guessing they'll accidentally blow up their own nuclear program long before they're a threat to anyone else.

Let's all relax a little.

Iran's secret agents even dumber than their nuclear scientists

And we know the pathetic state of their nuclear scientist pool.

For at least twenty years now these imbeciles have been months away from a nuclear weapon. And guess what?

They're still months away!

Turns out their black ops guys graduated from the same schools. Rember a couple of months ago when they had the plot to kill the Saudi ambassador? How lame was that?

Now they've spread their terror tentacles to Georgia and India. Didn't succeed in taking anybody out, although in India they managed to injure a couple of people who are of absolutely no consequence to Israeli security.

Meanwhile, their top nuclear scientists keep exploding in mysterious spontaneous combustion incidents.

Coincidence? I think not, folks, and I wouldn't lose too much sleep worrying about any Iranian threat.

Seems to me the threat is pretty well contained.

Barak hoists war flag in Davos but nobody salutes

Ehud Barak was in Switzerland yesterday, doing his best to instill a little towel-o-phobia in the assembled worthies at Davos.

If we don't act soon, it may be too late, claimed Barak. In mere months the Ayatollahs could have nukes.

Too late for what?

Why, too late for the infamous "surgical strike" that is much beloved by Israeli and American war apologists. You know, like the surgical strike on Falluja, or the mother of all surgical strikes, Operation Cast Lead.

Presumably it won't be too late for a massive carpet nuking of the entire country. That'll slow up their nuke program.

Alas, the Davos crowd did not seem unduly alarmed by Barak's news. That could be because Davos is well beyond the range of Iranian missiles.

Or it could be that they've been listening to the same shrill warnings about the Ayatollahs being months away from a nuclear weapon for at least twenty years now.

Or maybe they're just a little more sophisticated than the Florida Republicans who are lapping up every fear-mongering ant-Iranian cliche that Newt and Mitt toss their way. Hell, when you watch the debates you'd almost think Iran's nuclear ambitions were the single most important issue facing Florida voters.

There's something to be said for MAD

As we bid a bittersweet farewell to all the unfulfilled promise of the year now gone, I find myself getting a little nostalgic for the good old days of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Those were the good old days, were they not? We had the big nuke hardware, they had the big nuke hardware, everybody knew that nobody was going to do anything stupid. Mutually Assured Destruction.

Even in the darkest days of Nixon's downfall, when Tricky Dick was stumbling around the White House in an alcoholic stupor, nothing bad happened.

Same with the last days of Brezhnev. Senility and cirrhosis may have had him firmly in hand, but somehow, that threat of mutual destruction prevented anyone from taking advantage.

One of the biggest stories of the year gone by and the year ahead is the story of the mythical Iranian nuke.

Do they have one?

Are they working on one?

If so, how far are they from having one?

You know the rest of it. It's the number one foreign policy obsession with every GOP candidate. Talking tough on Iran is the caucus cajone test. They're tripping over each other to make the most bellicose statements about the imaginary Iranian nuke.

I personally have taken the worst-case scenario to heart. Let's assume they have a nuclear weapons program. Lets assume they actually build a bomb.

Then what?

Then nothing. There is only one country that has ever used an atomic weapon. Everybody else holds them for their deterrent value.

That deterrent value has worked. It'll work for Iran too.

The Persian Peril: armchair generals wetting trousers in haste to have at Iran

As predicted here, the Beltway Brigadiers have been soiling their seat cushions since the IAEA report came out the other day. Bet you can't watch an hour of Fox news without seeing three or four talking heads talking their heads off about how we need to deal with the Persian Peril RIGHT NOW!

This is in spite of the fact that the IAEA report reveals absolutely nothing. There's a lot of maybe this and maybe that and maybes and ifs and nothing much concrete. But the news networks are ramping up the booga-booga. We'll be treating those Iranians to a good dose of shock and awe sooner rather than later. The whole thing smells a lot like the build up to the shock and awe we unleashed on Iraq not that long ago.

How did that adventure work out for us? Thousands of Americans dead. Tens of thousands of Americans grievously maimed. A health care bill for those tens of thousand that we can't comprehend let alone pay. The nation bankrupt. To say nothing of the devastation we have visited on the Iraqi people.

The net result? The people we "saved" from Sadam are cosying up to Iran as never before.

In case you haven't noticed, the same gang of cretins think taking on Iran would be a good idea.

World's dumbest nuclear engineers have been "months away" from nuclear bomb for thirty years.

No way around it. Those Iranians are really stupid. The first reports of an Iranian nuclear weapon came out in the early 1980's.

They've been coming out with numbing predictability ever since.

Every couple of years there's another very scary news bulletin:  " Iran mere months away from nuclear bomb".

A few months go by.

The towelheads-with-nukes story fades away, pushed off the front page by more important stuff.

Michael Jackson's bedtime buddies.

Pamela Anderson's breast implants.

Bill Clinton's cigar tricks.

The riff and the raff of American popular culture, or the "pinnacle of Western civilization" as we like to think of it.

Then, out of the blue, those damn Persians are at it again.

Mere months from a nuclear weapon.

This cycle has been repeating itself for well over thirty years now, and if the latest IAEA report is to be believed, they still don't have a nuclear weapon!

How is such a thing even possible?

Where are they recruiting their nuclear engineers?

The South Africans had nuclear weapons, for heaven's sakes, back in the apartheid days, a time when they were being embargoed and boycotted half to death.

The Hindus managed it years ago.

The Paks have done it.

Even North Korea, where the people eat grass while the leaders piss in urinals of gold have done it!

What's the matter with those Iranians?

They've either got to be really stupid, or they're just not trying very hard.