August 28
Iran Could Reap Benefits of U.S.-Russian Tensions
Analysis by Jim Lobe*
Commentary by William O. Beeman:
The controversy over Russian actions in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia has placed Iran in a stronger position. Certainly Russia is not going to support the idea that an attack against Iran could be launched by the United States or Israel from anywhere in the Caucasus, and Russian cooperation for more sanctions against Iran are also unlikely unless the United States cuts a very serious bargain with Moscow. For example, sacrificing Georgian President Saakashvili for Russian cooperation on tough actions against Iran. In light of this, and their historical experience dealing with Russia for more than 200 years, Iranians area also distrustful of Moscow and its intensions. The long term benefit for Iran may be a relaxation of pressure on its nuclear program, but the short term benefit is that Iran now has an increased market for its natural gas, which it is ready to sell to Europeans. If Moscow gets testy, and the BTC Pipeline remains closed, Europeans will soften on Iranian sanctions. Dick Cheney is traveling to the Caucasus in the next week to make sure that U.S. and Israeli military operations to threaten Iran are still in place, but the world can see that U.S. foreign and military policy in this region is crumbling. Jim Lobe's excellent analysis fills in the details below.
WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (IPS) - Iran could emerge as a big winner, at least in the short term, from the rapidly escalating tensions between the United States and Russia over Moscow's intervention in Georgia, according to analysts here.
Whatever waning chances remained of a U.S. military attack on Iran before President George W. Bush leaves office next January have all but vanished, given the still-uncertain outcome of the Georgia crisis, according to most of these observers.
Similarly, the likelihood that Moscow will cooperate with U.S. and European efforts to impose additional sanctions on Tehran through the U.N. Security Council, where Russia holds a veto, for not complying with the Council's demands to halt its uranium enrichment programme has been sharply reduced.
Not only has Washington's confrontation with its old superpower rival displaced Tehran at the top of the administration's and U.S. media foreign policy agenda, but Tehran's geo-political leverage -- both as a potential partner for the West in containing Russia and as a potential ally of Moscow's in warding off western pressure -- has also risen sharply as an incidental result of the crisis.
"When the U.S. invaded Iraq, it didn't do so to improve Iran's power position in the region, but that was the result," noted Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University who served on the National Security Council staff of former Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. "That wasn't the purpose of the Russian invasion of Georgia either, but it, too, may be the result."
So far, Tehran's response to the Georgia crisis has been measured. Despite calls by some right-wing voices to side with Moscow, according to Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars here, the government, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has expressed disapproval of the Russian action, particularly its recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia.
"The reason is on grounds of principle -- if Iran is going to start supporting the secession of territories that are unhappy with the central government, then Iran itself has some similar issues with ethnic dissatisfaction," Farhi, who also teaches at the University of Hawaii, told IPS.
In addition, she said, most of Tehran's foreign policy establishment "don't view Russia as a reliable partner. They understand that Russia may support Iran on the nuclear file depending on its own security or policy interests, but Russia has also been quite clever in using Iran as a bargaining chip in terms of its relationship with the United States."
"The Iranians are being very clever here; they're not likely to rush to Russia's defence unless Russia comes to them and ask for their help, and then they can ask for something in return," Farhi added.
The latter may include anything from the accelerated completion of the long-delayed Bushehr nuclear plant, to providing advanced anti-aircraft systems (something that Tehran's ally Syria has already asked Moscow to provide in the wake of Damascus' public support for the Russian intervention), to full membership in the Sino-Russian-sponsored Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a defence group that is coincidentally holding its annual summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, this week.
Teheran's leverage is not just confined to its status, along with Turkey's, as the most powerful nation in a strategically critical neighbourhood inhabited by relatively weak U.S.-backed buffer states like Georgia. During the Cold War and until the 1979 Revolution, after all, Iran served as Washington's most important bulwark against Soviet influence in the Gulf.
It also derives from its being a major oil and gas producer that could also play a much more important role as a transshipment point for Central Asian and Caspian energy resources bound for Europe, whose growing dependence on Russia for its energy supplies looks more risky than ever. This is particularly so in the wake of Moscow's demonstration that it can easily reach -- and disrupt, if it wishes -- the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, the only pipeline that transports oil from the Caspian to the West without transiting either Russia or Iran.
"Oil and gas companies now must factor in a new level of uncertainty," according to Jay Stanley at Kent Moors, an expert on energy finance who writes for 'Caspian Investor'. "...Georgia is now unstable and that increases the risk of transporting hydrocarbons across it."
"If the BTC and Georgia won't be a reliable source of energy, then Iran will absolutely step up to the plate," according to Prof. William Beeman, an Iran expert at the University of Minnesota. "'You want gas? We'll sell you gas' will likely be their position," he added, noting that Switzerland signed a 25-year, 42-billion-dollar gas supply and pipeline deal with Tehran last March over strong U.S. objections. "I think the Swiss are a very good bellwether for the rest of Europe on this."
While Iran has alienated some major European energy companies -- most recently France's Total -- by demanding tough terms, it might "see the present crisis as an opportunity to go back to European colleagues and say, 'Let's take another look at this,"' said Sick. "It gives them some more leverage by going to the West and saying 'You're shooting yourselves in the foot here. When are you going to come to your senses?"'
That argument naturally becomes more compelling as tensions between Russia and the West continue to escalate and could affect internal Bush cabinet-level deliberations on whether to act on a State Department recommendation to seek Iranian approval for opening an interests section in Tehran. Such a move, at the present juncture, would likely be seen as a major move on geo-strategic chessboard. Despite reports earlier this month that Bush had approved the recommendation, the issue appears to be unresolved.
Still, some experts say Iran's advantage could be short-lived. With a Russian veto over new Iran sanctions all but assured, Washington could decide to drop the U.N. route and try to impose a "coalition-of-the-willing" sanctions regime with its allies, according to Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
Michael Klare, author of "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy", told IPS he believes that Russia's unilateral resort to military action against Georgia may actually embolden Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the leader of the administration's hawks who travels next week to Georgia and Azerbaijan.
"The question is whether Bush and Cheney will feel empowered to behave in a more belligerent fashion or not," he said.
*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy, and particularly the neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration, can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.
(END/2008)
Showing posts with label Dick Cheney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dick Cheney. Show all posts
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Gareth Porter--Bush Covered up Musharraf Ties with Al-Qaeda, Khan (Anti-war.com)
August 20, 2008
Bush Covered Up Musharraf Ties With al-Qaeda, Khan
by Gareth Porter
Commentary by William O. Beeman:
The United States Government and President Pervez Musharraf appear to have had a common interest in no doing anyting to curtail Al-Qaeda or finding Osama bin Laden. For President Bush, the continued presence of bin Laden assured that the "Global War on Terror" for which the Pentagon has been issuing war medals for the last years, would continue unabated, justifying every form of destruction of human rights and American civil liberties. For Musharraf, the fact that bin Laden was never found allowed him to milk the United States for billions of dollars of military and civilian aid, something that continues to the present day. Gareth Porter now shows us that the Bush administration was completely aware of Musharraf's ties to the Taliban and al-Qaeda and just didn't bother to tell Congress or the American public. What is astonishing is that the Bush administration seems to have made no plans for Musharraf's departure. Two warring political factions are left to wrangle over power in Islamabad, while the fate of Pakistan's nuclear bombs remains uncertain. This is about the worst political muddle perpetrated by the Bush administration since the illegal invasion of Iraq.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's resignation Monday brings to an end an extraordinarily close relationship between Musharraf and the George W. Bush administration, in which Musharraf was lavished with political and economic benefits from the United States despite policies that were in sharp conflict with U.S. security interests.
It is well known that Bush repeatedly praised Musharraf as the most loyal ally of the United States against terrorism, even though the Pakistani military was deeply compromised by its relationship with the Taliban and Pakistani Islamic militants.
What has not been reported is that the Bush administration covered up the Musharraf regime's involvement in the activities of the A.Q. Khan nuclear technology export program and its deals with al-Qaeda's Pakistani tribal allies.
The problem faced by the Bush administration when it came into office was that the Pakistani military, over which Musharraf presided, was the real terrorist nexus with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. As Bruce Riedel, National Security Council (NSC) senior director for South Asia in the Bill Clinton administration, who stayed on the NSC staff under the Bush administration, observed in an interview with this writer last September, al-Qaeda "was a creation of the jihadist culture of the Pakistani army."
If there was a state sponsor of al-Qaeda, Riedel said, it was the Pakistani military, acting through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate.
Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservative-dominated Bush Pentagon were aware of the intimate relationship between Musharraf's regime and both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But al-Qaeda was not a high priority for the Bush administration.
After 9/11, the White House created the political myth that Musharraf, faced with a clear choice, had "joined the free world in fighting the terrorists." But as Asia expert Selig S. Harrison has pointed out, on Sept. 19, 2001, just six days after he had supposedly agreed to U.S. demands for cooperation against the Taliban regime and al-Qaeda, Musharraf gave a televised speech in Urdu in which he declared, "We are trying our best to come out of this critical situation without any damage to Afghanistan and the Taliban."
In his memoirs, published in 2006, Musharraf revealed the seven specific demands he had been given and claimed that he had refused both "blanket overflight and landing rights" and the use of Pakistan's naval ports and air bases to conduct anti-terrorism operations.
Musharraf also famously wrote that, immediately after 9/11, Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage had threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" if Musharraf didn't side with the United States against bin Laden and his Afghan hosts. But Armitage categorically denied to this writer, through his assistant, Kara Bue, that he had made any threat whatsoever, let alone a threat to retaliate militarily against Pakistan.
For the next few years, Musharraf played a complicated game. The CIA was allowed to operate in Pakistan's border provinces to pursue al-Qaeda operatives, but only as long as they had ISI units accompanying them. That restricted their ability to gather intelligence in the northwest frontier. At the same time, ISI was allowing Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders to operate freely in the tribal areas and even in Karachi.
The Bush administration also gave Musharraf and the military regime a free ride on the A.Q. Khan network's selling of nuclear technology to Libya and Iran, even though there was plenty of evidence that the generals had been fully aware of and supported Khan's activities.
Journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins wrote in their book The Nuclear Jihadist that one retired general who had worked with Khan told them there was no question that Khan had acted with the full knowledge of the military leadership. "Of course the military knew," the general said. "They helped him."
But the Bush administration chose to help Musharraf cover up that inconvenient fact. According to CIA Director George Tenet's memoirs, in September 2003, he confronted Musharraf with the evidence the CIA had gathered on Khan's operation and made it clear he was expected to end its operations and arrest Khan.
The following January and early February, Khan's house arrest, public confession of guilt and pardon by Musharraf was accompanied by an extraordinary series of statements by high-ranking Bush administration officials exonerating Musharraf and the military of any involvement in Khan's activities.
That whole scenario had been "carefully orchestrated with Musharraf," Larry Wilkerson, then a State Department official but later Colin Powell's chief of staff, told IPS in an interview last year. The deal that had been made did not require Musharraf to allow U.S. officials to interrogate Khan.
But the Bush administration apparently conveyed to the Pakistani military after that episode that it now expected the Musharraf regime to deliver high-ranking al-Qaeda officials – and to do so at a particularly advantageous moment for the administration. The New Republic magazine reported July 15, 2004, that a White House aide had told the visiting head of ISI, Ehsan ul-Haq, that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of any HVT [high value target] were announced on 26, 27, or 28 July." Those were the last three days of the Democratic National Convention.
The military source added, "If we don't find these guys by the election, they are going to stick the whole nuclear mess up our a**hole."
Just hours before Democratic candidate John Kerry's acceptance speech, Pakistan announced the capture of an alleged al-Qaeda leader.
Meanwhile, Musharraf was making a political pact with a five-party Islamic alliance in 2004 to ensure victory in state elections in the two border provinces where Islamic extremist influence was strongest. This explicit political accommodation, followed by a military withdrawal from South Waziristan, gave the pro-Taliban forces allied with al-Qaeda in the region a free hand to recruit and train militants for war in Afghanistan.
Yet another deal with the Islamic extremists in 2006 strengthened the pro-Taliban forces even further.
But Bush chose to reward Musharraf by designating Pakistan a "Major Non-NATO Ally" in 2004 and by agreeing to sell the Pakistani Air Force 36 advanced F-16 fighter planes. Prior to that, Pakistan had been denied U.S. military technology for a decade.
In July 2007, a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that al-Qaeda's new "safe haven" was in Pakistan's tribal areas and that the terrorist organization had reconstituted its "homeland attack capability" there. That estimate ended the fiction that the Musharraf regime was firmly committed to combating al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
Had the Bush administration accurately portrayed Musharraf's policies rather than hiding them, it would not have avoided the al-Qaeda safe haven there. But it would have facilitated a more realistic debate about the real options available for U.S. policy.
(Inter Press Service)
Bush Covered Up Musharraf Ties With al-Qaeda, Khan
by Gareth Porter
Commentary by William O. Beeman:
The United States Government and President Pervez Musharraf appear to have had a common interest in no doing anyting to curtail Al-Qaeda or finding Osama bin Laden. For President Bush, the continued presence of bin Laden assured that the "Global War on Terror" for which the Pentagon has been issuing war medals for the last years, would continue unabated, justifying every form of destruction of human rights and American civil liberties. For Musharraf, the fact that bin Laden was never found allowed him to milk the United States for billions of dollars of military and civilian aid, something that continues to the present day. Gareth Porter now shows us that the Bush administration was completely aware of Musharraf's ties to the Taliban and al-Qaeda and just didn't bother to tell Congress or the American public. What is astonishing is that the Bush administration seems to have made no plans for Musharraf's departure. Two warring political factions are left to wrangle over power in Islamabad, while the fate of Pakistan's nuclear bombs remains uncertain. This is about the worst political muddle perpetrated by the Bush administration since the illegal invasion of Iraq.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's resignation Monday brings to an end an extraordinarily close relationship between Musharraf and the George W. Bush administration, in which Musharraf was lavished with political and economic benefits from the United States despite policies that were in sharp conflict with U.S. security interests.
It is well known that Bush repeatedly praised Musharraf as the most loyal ally of the United States against terrorism, even though the Pakistani military was deeply compromised by its relationship with the Taliban and Pakistani Islamic militants.
What has not been reported is that the Bush administration covered up the Musharraf regime's involvement in the activities of the A.Q. Khan nuclear technology export program and its deals with al-Qaeda's Pakistani tribal allies.
The problem faced by the Bush administration when it came into office was that the Pakistani military, over which Musharraf presided, was the real terrorist nexus with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. As Bruce Riedel, National Security Council (NSC) senior director for South Asia in the Bill Clinton administration, who stayed on the NSC staff under the Bush administration, observed in an interview with this writer last September, al-Qaeda "was a creation of the jihadist culture of the Pakistani army."
If there was a state sponsor of al-Qaeda, Riedel said, it was the Pakistani military, acting through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate.
Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservative-dominated Bush Pentagon were aware of the intimate relationship between Musharraf's regime and both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But al-Qaeda was not a high priority for the Bush administration.
After 9/11, the White House created the political myth that Musharraf, faced with a clear choice, had "joined the free world in fighting the terrorists." But as Asia expert Selig S. Harrison has pointed out, on Sept. 19, 2001, just six days after he had supposedly agreed to U.S. demands for cooperation against the Taliban regime and al-Qaeda, Musharraf gave a televised speech in Urdu in which he declared, "We are trying our best to come out of this critical situation without any damage to Afghanistan and the Taliban."
In his memoirs, published in 2006, Musharraf revealed the seven specific demands he had been given and claimed that he had refused both "blanket overflight and landing rights" and the use of Pakistan's naval ports and air bases to conduct anti-terrorism operations.
Musharraf also famously wrote that, immediately after 9/11, Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage had threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" if Musharraf didn't side with the United States against bin Laden and his Afghan hosts. But Armitage categorically denied to this writer, through his assistant, Kara Bue, that he had made any threat whatsoever, let alone a threat to retaliate militarily against Pakistan.
For the next few years, Musharraf played a complicated game. The CIA was allowed to operate in Pakistan's border provinces to pursue al-Qaeda operatives, but only as long as they had ISI units accompanying them. That restricted their ability to gather intelligence in the northwest frontier. At the same time, ISI was allowing Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders to operate freely in the tribal areas and even in Karachi.
The Bush administration also gave Musharraf and the military regime a free ride on the A.Q. Khan network's selling of nuclear technology to Libya and Iran, even though there was plenty of evidence that the generals had been fully aware of and supported Khan's activities.
Journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins wrote in their book The Nuclear Jihadist that one retired general who had worked with Khan told them there was no question that Khan had acted with the full knowledge of the military leadership. "Of course the military knew," the general said. "They helped him."
But the Bush administration chose to help Musharraf cover up that inconvenient fact. According to CIA Director George Tenet's memoirs, in September 2003, he confronted Musharraf with the evidence the CIA had gathered on Khan's operation and made it clear he was expected to end its operations and arrest Khan.
The following January and early February, Khan's house arrest, public confession of guilt and pardon by Musharraf was accompanied by an extraordinary series of statements by high-ranking Bush administration officials exonerating Musharraf and the military of any involvement in Khan's activities.
That whole scenario had been "carefully orchestrated with Musharraf," Larry Wilkerson, then a State Department official but later Colin Powell's chief of staff, told IPS in an interview last year. The deal that had been made did not require Musharraf to allow U.S. officials to interrogate Khan.
But the Bush administration apparently conveyed to the Pakistani military after that episode that it now expected the Musharraf regime to deliver high-ranking al-Qaeda officials – and to do so at a particularly advantageous moment for the administration. The New Republic magazine reported July 15, 2004, that a White House aide had told the visiting head of ISI, Ehsan ul-Haq, that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of any HVT [high value target] were announced on 26, 27, or 28 July." Those were the last three days of the Democratic National Convention.
The military source added, "If we don't find these guys by the election, they are going to stick the whole nuclear mess up our a**hole."
Just hours before Democratic candidate John Kerry's acceptance speech, Pakistan announced the capture of an alleged al-Qaeda leader.
Meanwhile, Musharraf was making a political pact with a five-party Islamic alliance in 2004 to ensure victory in state elections in the two border provinces where Islamic extremist influence was strongest. This explicit political accommodation, followed by a military withdrawal from South Waziristan, gave the pro-Taliban forces allied with al-Qaeda in the region a free hand to recruit and train militants for war in Afghanistan.
Yet another deal with the Islamic extremists in 2006 strengthened the pro-Taliban forces even further.
But Bush chose to reward Musharraf by designating Pakistan a "Major Non-NATO Ally" in 2004 and by agreeing to sell the Pakistani Air Force 36 advanced F-16 fighter planes. Prior to that, Pakistan had been denied U.S. military technology for a decade.
In July 2007, a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that al-Qaeda's new "safe haven" was in Pakistan's tribal areas and that the terrorist organization had reconstituted its "homeland attack capability" there. That estimate ended the fiction that the Musharraf regime was firmly committed to combating al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
Had the Bush administration accurately portrayed Musharraf's policies rather than hiding them, it would not have avoided the al-Qaeda safe haven there. But it would have facilitated a more realistic debate about the real options available for U.S. policy.
(Inter Press Service)
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