China Confidential
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Iran's Allies Share Hatred of US, Not Love of Islam
While U.S. President Barack Obama reaches out and apologizes to "the Muslim world" in the context of his so-called engagement of nuclear-arming, Islamist Iran, not one member of the adoring liberal medioacracy has observed that the countries that are closest to Iran are those that are the most anti-religious: Communist Party-ruled China (which is actively suppressing its own restive Muslim minority); China's nuclear-armed, Nazi-like vassal, North Korea, which has elevated a bizarre, Stalinist/Kimist political ideology to the level of a state religion; Syria, a pseudo-socialist, secular Arab dictatorship that has long been threatened by Islamists; Cuba, which has fused a Castro personality cult with Stalinism and traditional Latin American despotism; and Venezuela, a predominantly Catholic country ruled by a left-wing, tropical Mussolini.
None of which matters, apparently, to the liberal media. For the pundits who hang on every Obama utterance and gesture, the "root cause" of America's problem with Islamist Iran and Islamism in general is alleged U.S. disrespect of Islam.Syrians May Have Attended N. Korean Missile Test
Analysts in Japan and South Korea believe that representatives from Syria may have attended North Korea's April 5 ballistic missile test, in addition to expert observers from Iran and China, the North's most important ally.
Syria possesses the biggest missile arsenal and the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the Middle East, built up over the last two decades with arms from North Korea.
In September 2007, the Israeli AIr Force obliterated a secret nuclear reactor at al-Kibar, Syria, which North Korea helped build in order to produce weapons-grade plutonium. The project resulted from 10 years of nuclear cooperation between Syria and North Korea.
North Koreans have increasingly been seen in Syria's capital, Damascus.
In an interview published on Friday, Syria's President Bashar Assad said his country supports Hezbollah because "it fights Israel." The Syrian dictator also described relations with Iran as "strategic."
Assad's bellicose comments contradict his recent statements indicating an interest in arriving at a peace agreement with israel--and a decided effort by Syrian diplomats in Washington to signal a renewed willingness to recover the disputed Golan Heights, which Syria lost to Israel in the Six-Day War of June 1967, at the negotiating table instead of on the battlefield.
WIll Syria Fight for Iran?
Israeli defense planners hope Syria will sit out a future Israel-Iran conflict--now regarded as a virtual certainty in view of America's attempts to appease the nuclear-arming Islamist nation, which has repeatedly vowed to annihilate Israel.
China Confidential analysts believe the key to keeping Syria out of the war is a swift, crushing, preemptive attack that will wipe out Iran's most important nuclear and missile installations in a matter of hours, thereby limiting its capabilities for military retaliation. Iran could still order its proxy, Hezbollah, to bombard Israel with rockets; and the Lebanese Islamist Shiite group is likely to obey owing to the fact that its stranglehold on Israel's northern neighbor could be ended if the Iranian threat to Israel's existence is suddenly removed.
Syria, although it is allied with Iran, would not be inclined to intervene on the losing side. Damascus also knows that rocket and chemical attacks on Israeli population centers would trigger a merciless response by the Jewish State. Translation: the country that was reborn against all odds in the aftermath of the Holocaust will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons to defend its citizens against any attempt by its enemies to pick up where Hitler left off. Israelis mean it when they say: "Masada shall not fall again!"Diplomatic Sources: China's Mideast Envoy Likely to Help Iran Draw Attention to Israeli Nuclear Arsenal
Diplomatic sources say China's special Mideast envoy, Wu Sike, is likely to work behind the scenes to help Iran to focus world attention on Israel's presumed arsenal of nuclear weapons--a deterrent that is critical to Israel's survival in a sea of implacable, increasingly powerful enemies.
Wu, a former Chinese ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who replaced Sun Bigan as China's top diplomat for the Middle East, is said to agree with his predecessor that criticism of Israeli nuclear weapons can serve as a useful propaganda diversion for Iran and strengthen its diplomatic position ahead of negotiating with world powers over Iran's development of nuclear power--which China officially supports as long as it is for peaceful purposes. The anti-Israel propaganda push can benefit from U.S. President Barack Obama's call for a nuclear-free world and Turkish President Abdullah Gul's call for turning the Middle East into "a zone free of weapons of mass destruction."
China's Strategic Alliance with Iran
Wu's reasoning reflects China's strategic alliance with Iran. Since the start of international negotiations with the Islamist nation over its nuclear program, China has consistently worked to dilute the effectiveness of any global response, notwithstanding its grudging support for three rounds of limited United Nations Security Council sanctions on Iran--in December 2006, September 2007, and March 200.
China is fully aware that Iran is aiming for nuclear weapons, that Chinese nationals have been involved in Iran's clandestine atomic arms program, and that China's nuclear-armed vassal, North Korea, has played a crucial role in the Iranian program. Iranian missile--and nuclear warhead--experts were present in North Korea for its illegal ballistic missile test earlier this month; and China Confidential has learned that a Chinese delegation was also on hand for the launch of the Taepodong-2 rocket that provocatively overflew Japan before plunging into the Pacific Ocean. China's technical assistance to Iran's missile program dates to the early 1980s.
Relations between the two countries are strengthening. China is one of the largest foreign investors in Iran, which supplies China with about 12% of its annual oil needs (almost a million barrels per day). As announced last month, a Chinese consortium plans to invest $3.2 billion in Iran over the next three years to to develop the huge South Pars natural gas field.
From the Silk Road to the SCO
Chinese-Iranian relations have a long and storied history. The ties can be traced to at least the second century BCE, when the Han Dynasty of China opened up the Silk Road and initiated trade with the Parthian empire.
Drawing on their shared silk road heritage, which binds China and Iran with the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, Beijing has backed Iran's bid to become a full-fledged member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). China and Russia established the security bloc, which the United States initially dismissed as a joke, to counter U.S. influence in the region. Moscow would like to see Iran remain an SCO observer; full membership implies an obligation to defend Iran if it is attacked by Israel or the U.S. over its nuclear program.
The Obama administration has ruled out military action against Iran. But the option is clearly on Israel's table.
An attack on Iran would put great stress on Sino-Israeli relations. Since recognizing China in 1992, Israel has provided Beijing with technological assistance in the areas of advanced agriculture and irrigation. More important, Israel has provided China with military assistance, expertise and technology. According to a report from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, "Israel ranks second only to Russia as a weapons system provider to China and as a conduit for sophisticated military technology, followed by France and Germany."
All of which is unlikely to matter much if Israel goes to war with Iran. When the chips are down, Iran's oil and gas will mean more to China than Israel's technology, regardless of how advanced it may be.
POSTSCRIPT: China believes that its support for Iran (and its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas) gives it a certain license, or cover, for suppression of China's own restive Muslim minority, including Islamist terrorist groups influenced by Al Qaeda.Why the White House is Revealing CIA Secrets
And ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free.
- CIA Motto (John 8:32)
There are no secrets that time does not reveal.
- Jean Racine
Time or the Obama administration?
China Confidential analysts believe the White House is intentionally revealing damaging information about the Central Intelligence Agency and encouraging exposure of brutal interrogation methods used on captured Al Qaeda terrorists in order to prepare the ground--influence Congress and condition public opinion--for the agency's radical restructuring or dismantling.
Today's article in the New York Times is part of the public relations push. The article asserts that the first use of waterboarding and other harsh treatment against Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was ordered by senior CIA officials over objections from his interrogators.
The Times story follows the Obama administration's release of U.S. government memos that reveal--in graphic and disturbing detail--some of the now-outlawed techniques CIA interrogators used on detainees. The administration has justified the extraordinary decision to release the "torture memos" --while not charging former CIA officers with crimes--by framing it as a triumph of the rule of law over national security.
Senior White House adviser David Axelrod put it that way in an interview with the AP's Pamela Hess. Axelrod confirmed that President Obama was personally involved in the decision to release the memos, to the point of leading a National Security Council meeting on the subject. Former CIA directors who were consulted in advance of the release objected and slowed it down, Axelrod said.
Critics of the administration's decision to release the secret memos contend they "hand terrorists a detailed account of what to expect under questioning, a playbook they can now defend against," as the Daily News (which this reporter used to write for) says in its Saturday morning editorial.
UPDATE: Reuters reports thatObama's decision not to prosecute CIA interrogators who used waterboarding on terrorism suspects amounts to a breach of international law, the U.N. rapporteur on torture said.
"The United States, like all other states that are part of the U.N. convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court," U.N. special rapporteur Manfred Nowak told the Austrian daily Der Standard.
Nowak did not think Obama would go as far as to seek an amnesty law for affected CIA personnel and therefore U.S. courts could still try torture suspects, he said on Saturday.
Sunday, 19 April 2009
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