Lebanon Violence, Pakistan Violence

Four more Lebanese troops were killed in continued violence in Palestinian refugee camps. This is a continuation of a confrontation at the Nahr al-Bared camp and elsewhere earlier this month. This is all happening while the Lebanese consociational government is facing targeted assaniations of anti-Syria member. It is still unknown who is ordering these killings. Is it internal or external? But one can easily opine that “…Lebanon has become a ravaged battlefield where regional and global warriors are facing off in an increasingly brutal contest that shows no signs of abating.”

US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher was given a going away present during a visit to Pakistan in the form of an ambushed military vehicle and around 9 killed, mostly soldiers. This attack came hours after Boucher left the Balochistan region. Motive is still foggy. Was it a local call for autonomy which is typical in this region or a response to the blowing up of the minarets at the al-Askariya Shrine in Samarra, which is being blamed on the US, among others. This blame is sticking. More fiery sermons and protests are to take place in Pakistan and the greater Shi’a ME.

Holiday Roundup

As you may have noticed, I spent the holiday’s blog free. Therefore, I will now brief some of the main stories that I missed from both the media and blogs. In the likely case that I’ve missed something, please leave a comment. (note: I’m saving a separate post on Saddam Hussein’s hanging for later.)

MENA Blog Roundup (12/20/2006)

The bloggers at Foreign Policy’s passport highlight a different take on the recent elections in Iran.

Friday’s elections for Iran’s local councils and Assembly of Experts were widely reported as a “setback” for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And they were. But a more appropriate way to view them, says blogger Jonathan Edelstein, is as a crisis averted for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

As Edelstein, a lawyer in New York with a knack for analyzing Middle East politics, explains, Ahmadinejad’s faction was hoping to take control of the Assembly in order to install Ayatollah Mohammed Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi as the new Supreme Leader. With Yazdi in charge, Ahmadinejad would be free from the shackles Khamenei has placed on him in the realm of foreign policy.

The passport also points out this (via Bloomberg)

In the Tehran municipal election the president’s sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad, who is running on a list titled “the Pleasant Scent of Service,” ranks 11th from 15th candidates, state television said. She could fail to win a seat.

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Marc Lynch of Abu Aardvark looks at a new, post Baker-Hamilton study released by the International Crisis Group entitled “After Baker-Hamilton: What to do in Iraq“.

After the disappointing showing of the Iraq Study Group, the ICG makes for bracing reading – and offers a much more serious attempt to find some kind of solution. It eviscerates Washington fantasies in ways far deeper than Baker-Hamilton’s simple admission that things aren’t going well, by going straight to the heart of the political structures which have emerged from the American occupation.

Here’s more on the report.

Iranian Election Results

Note: These reports are based on partial results

The elections in Iran have been judged by some Western observers as a blow to the hard line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Conservative opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took an early lead in Iran’s local elections, according to partial results announced by the Interior Ministry on Monday.

The trend appears to be an embarrassment for Ahmadinejad whose anti-Israeli rhetoric and unyielding position on Iran’s nuclear program have provoked condemnation in the West and moves toward sanctions at the U.N. Security Council.

Partial results of Friday’s polls provided by the Interior Ministry suggested that Ahmadinejad’s allies had largely failed to win control of local councils. Instead, candidates supporting Tehran Mayor Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, a moderate conservative opposed to the president, have taken the lead.

The partial results also indicated that reformers were making a comeback, after having been suppressed in the parliamentary elections of 2004 when many of their best candidates were barred from running. [link]

The results will not affect foreign policy but may have a moderating effect on the Assembly of Experts; the body that elects the Supreme Leader. Don’t take my word on this but I believe that a change in the top of the Iranian government is imminent…

A Palestinian Civil War?

The Passport points out that things continue to simmer between the two top factions in the Palestinian territories. An Israeli intel report indicates that Iran may be training Hamas fighters.

Israeli military officials said Monday that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Hamas militants recently left the Gaza Strip to receive advanced military training in Iran.

The training is similar to that received by thousands of Hezbollah guerrillas from Lebanon over the past few years, and Israel fears it will greatly improve Hamas’ military capability in any future battle with Israel Defense Forces troops in Gaza, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
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The mass training of Hamas fighters in Iran is a new development reflecting the growing alliance between Shiite Iran and the Sunni Hamas movement, Israel warned.

This development comes as the Palestinian president has called for new elections; a move Hamas has rejected. This, in addition to other events, brings the territories closer to a civil war (if one isn’t already happening).

[2006-12-18 2:42 PM] From The Guardian (h/t John Robb) in an article entitled ‘This looks like civil war’ – Palestinians battle on the streets:

Mr Haniyeh’s trip abroad, during which he secured promises of around $350m in funding from Iran, Qatar and Sudan, was seen by many Palestinians as an endorsement of his rule. “That was a message for people here that he received legitimacy in the Arab world,” said Mr Khatib.

Despite the donations, Hamas remains far short of the approximately $600m Israel has kept from the Palestinian Authority in tax revenues. But the economic crisis does not seem to have dampened Hamas’s support. Mr Khatib said his polling research suggested Hamas would keep its majority if elections were called now.

That is, if they participate…

[2006-12-18 3:04 PM] Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan calls the call for new elections “…a ‘very negative’ move so soon after the last Palestinian elections.”

[2006-12-19 2:15 PM] Mark I Levenstein provides deeper analysis of the existing poll data between the two factions; Hamas and Fatah. Along with a brief look at the constitutionality of this possible move by Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah

Iranian Elections

Today Iranians went to the polls to vote on local councils and more importantly the Assembly of Experts. The Assembly of Experts is the body that selects and provides oversight of the Supreme Leader; the most powerful political position in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This election is being framed in the press as “the first electoral test for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies.”

Results will be provided ASAP as an update or another post…

[2006-12-15 1:20 PM] Poll’s have been kept open for at least another hour.

[2006-12-15 3:35 PM] After a 3 hour extension due to high turnout, the Iranian poll have closed. Results are said to be released on Sunday.

MENA Blog Roundup (12/13/2006)

Marc Lynch (aka the aardvark): “I want to throw this out for discussion: in the not so distant future, we may be looking at the return of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.”

Why? Lynch notes that Nouri al-Maliki has lost the confidence of the US and holds no parliamentary mandate. Abd al-Aziz Hakim (of SCIRI) is presented as the current replacement for Maliki here in the US but he is also a figure complacent in the current sectarian/civil war driving the Sunni-Shi’a divide. A Sunni sponsored nationalist alliance is in the works that proposes to unite “Salah Mutlaq, a key secular Sunni leader…” and his “Iraqi National Dialogue Front, Muqtadar Sadr’s organization, and the al-Wifaq movement headed by Allawi (who recently returned from London to Amman), in a ‘nationalist’ (wataniya) front.”

Why Allawi? He’s an ex-Baathist secular Shi’a with an existing record. And he’s more palatable to the West (and US) than anyone else mentioned above at this time and he is not an Iranian puppet.

Full disclosure: Commenter’s at Abu Aardvark rejected this idea soundly… Lynch points out Allawi’s work of late with the insurgency, pointing to recent reports:

Brushing aside the results of Iraq’s democratic elections, the insurgents proposed that an emergency government be formed under Allawi’s leadership. Non-sectarian politicians should be appointed to the crucial ministries of defence and the interior, they urged, because they would be responsible for rebuilding a strong national army and security service. Under this proposal, the newly elected Iraqi government would, in effect, have been sidelined.

We’ll have to see, for no one knows. My question is, why would an American voice pull any weight in a sovereign Iraq?

The Religious Layout of the Greater Middle East

Mark I Levenstein writing at Foreign Policy’s internal blog the Passport passes along a few pointers to incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes, who like most Americans has no idea about the MENA and it’s religious intricacies. Read the full link here, here are some of the more important details…

Israeli Nuclear Weapons

Breaking nearly 40 years of denial, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seems to have admitted that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. For some time now it was assumed, but not stated, that the Jewish state was a nuclear power.