Reckoning in Iran, Little Nuclear King, An Islamic Crusade

Ahmadijejad's Reckoning: Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been riding high over the past two years. The time of reckoning, however, is drawing close. He was elected on promises to improve economic conditions, and he has clearly failed to deliver. Instead, he seems to have focused on foreign policy issues, even traveling far and wide and literally meddling in various foreign issues that do not concern his people. He even managed to antagonize European leaders who are the quintessential anti-neocons, by going back in time, literally backwards, to adopt the seemy issue of holocaust denial. He has not endeared his regime or his country to those who really count nowadays in the world economy, the industrial nations that control the executive boards of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He does not have much time before the next election, and he looks set to lose. The local media and politicians are accelerating its criticism of him. If he could not fulfill his promises when petroleum prices were near $ 70 a barrel, he certainly will not be able to do so with prices near $ 50. Unless a certain major super-power makes the huge mistake of attacking his country within the next two years. That is precisely what Saddam Hussein did in 1980, thus allowing the embattled mullahs to eliminate their powerful secular and democratic opponents.

Funniest Statement of the Week: The Israeli newspaper Ma'arev quotes King Abdullah of Jordan that his country will develop nuclear energy, for peaceful purposes of course. There remains one simple question: where the hell will Jordan get the money (billions of dollars) from? Foreign aid and development assistance, major sources of Jordanian foreign exchange earnings, do not cover nuclear research- the U.S Congress will never stand for it. Then there is the issue of the brains and the knowledge needed: it is almost impossible to B.S. your way into the nuclear club. Even an Arab leader cannot get that far with pure B.S.

Iraq, Again: In discussing the Middle East, there is no escaping Iraq. It has replaced the Palestinian issue as the focus of the struggle for the region. At least, the Arab regimes, which for decades used Israel and the Palestinian plight as the excuse for continued dictatorship and corruption, have now shifted almost their total attention to Iraq. Re-instating the Sunni elites back in power in Baghdad is the goal of all Arab regimes. Except they do not know how to go about it, now that all Iraqi factions are armed to the teeth. Certainly the escalated and vicious media war being waged against the Iraqi constitution and the weak government will not lead to that. Perhaps the Jordanian Fredonian nuclear threat (look above) will help tip the balance?

Speaking of Iraq: the Turkish parliament has been discussing Iraqi matters in closed session- especially the city of Kirkuk, fomerly mainly Kurdish but ethnically-cleansed by the Ba'ath and the former Sunni rulers of Iraq. The Kurds prepare for a referendum by the end of the year that might join the city to their autonomous region. The Turks threaten intervention if that happens. In this the Turks are making common cause with the Salafi fundamentalists and former Ba'athists who are at the core of the terrorism in Iraq.

Interesting Arabia: Alarabiya TV website, when it is not carrying the Sunni-Wahabi Crusade (this is not a pun, otherwise it would be a bad one) about Iraq, does publish interesting items. It reports that a young Saudi man parked his car, a Mercedes of course, outside a butcher's shop, entered the shop and proceeded to cut his own throat on the meat machine. He succeeded. A leading Saudi shaikh (there are many over there) said that this is an unusual case, an aberration, in the Saudi Moslem society, presumably just like hypocrisy, corruption, nepotism, and embezzlement. He said suicide may be caused by mental illness (also one of the causes of political nonconformity), using illegal drugs (another cause of noncomformity), or perhaps he was exposed to some magic perhaps from the Jinn (also can cause serious political nonconformity and general anti-government views). The Shaikh, Abdulmuhsin al-Obeikan, did say, however, that the mentally ill is not responsible and will not be punished on the Day of Judgement. Even if the said mentally ill espouses unusual political views? What if the mentally ill person decides to convert from Islam to, say, espiscopalianism? Or even Catholicism (I used episcopalianism first because it has a certain ring to it)? Everybody can spell Catholic, or Moslem- but espiscopalian can be a challenge.
Cheers
Mohammed