What Do You MENA (Middle East, North Africa and other nearby Political Hotspots) 2019

Time for a 2019 thread. Will see what kind of year it will be in Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere.

MENA, MENA, Tekel, Parsin (Middle East, North Africa & other Geopolitical Hotspots) 2018

Last year's thread

More sizable than the number of Iranian fighters, however, is the contingent of foreign fighters Iran is training and equipping in Syria. In addition to Hezbollah and Syrian forces loyal to Assad, Tehran is backing Shi’a militias comprised of Afghan and Pakistani fighters. Tabatabai says estimates for the number of Afghans killed in Syria runs into the tens of thousands.

http://time.com/5513411/israel-iran-secret-war-syria/

holy shit it's on

Netanyahu to stand trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust, pending hearing

AG’s decision is legal bombshell ahead of April 9 elections, marks first time in Israel’s history that serving PM is told he faces criminal charges; premier to speak at 8 p.m.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-to-stand-trial-for-bribery-and-breach-of-trust-pending-hearing/

whoa

what a gift for benny gantz

i'd like to read this new matti friedman book

sounds v interesting

Looks like the mass protests paid off in Algeria. Bouteflika aka 'the frame' just announced that he won't be running again. Good riddance, although ridding the country of his clique of regents won't be easy.

BREAKING: Explosions heard in Tel Aviv minutes after sirens

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) March 14, 2019

Haaretz:Two launches from northern Gaza, no casualties or damage.

https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/blog/letter-tehran-tense-climate-iran

Protests against Hamas in Gaza, apparently there's a big effort to crack down on any reporting or filming and there's not been all that much coverage, but there's this in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/24/world/middleeast/gaza-protests-hamas.html

And some footage in this twitter thread

Thread. I’d like to talk about Gaza, where the people have been rising up against Hamas – and been brutally suppressed, including with live fire. Hamas has been suppressing the media and nobody has been talking about it. pic.twitter.com/LyQzjhkUfm

— Jake Wallis Simons (@JakeWSimons) March 23, 2019

bloody hopeless situation for the people in gaza

It's either the Israeli blockade/snipers, or Hamas, or the seawater and polluted runoff that's displacing their aquifer water supply. Egypt and Jordan don't care much, except insofar as Palestinian hardship can be used in regime propaganda, even Fatah in the West bank is happier to be rid of them. Sooner or later there's going to be a cholera or other infectious outbreak that cuts down the crowding significantly, and everyone will just point fingers.

Terrible

would listen to this podcast

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/27/rescued-migrants-hijack-merchant-ship-off-libya

State of this old fossil. Still, he's gone now.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/02/algeria-latest-news-president-abdelaziz-bouteflika-resigns

things are looking good for bibi on election day with opposition worried that low-turnout augurs poorly for their chances.

exit polls showing historically low turnout for arab voters which will help bibi too

just look at all the success arab voters have had in the past in changing Israeli policy through the ballot box

Exit poll says Gantz 39 seats, Bibi 35. (one needs to collect 61 seats to form a coalition, but this is bad news for Likud if true)

times of israel:

Channel 13’s exit poll has Blue and White and Likud tied with 36 seats each.

The right-wing bloc leads, with 66 seats, making Netanyahu better positioned to form a government, compared to 54 seats for the center-left.

wait + see - exit polls are not reliable, lots of conflicting ones atm

Netanyahu's still going to be Prime Minister though, right?

probably -- even if gantz gets more seats bibi has an easier road towards making a coalition but we'll see

lots of ppl now saying likud is gonna win most seats bibi pm again

if true, this does not say good things about Israeli politics.

Bit much to expect Israel to buck the worldwide trend for far right racist nationalism.

especially because they were so far ahead of the curve in that respect

Oh dear, the Israeli labor party are looking completely knackered.

xp otm, was thinking of the Ben Judah article “Bibi was Right” when I read your comment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/04/09/symbolism-behind-viral-photo-protesting-woman-sudan/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6967ea275d28&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1

Sudan protests against Bashir

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/.premium-pr-firm-behind-likud-s-hidden-cameras-in-arab-poll-sites-boasts-of-lowering-turnout-1.7108972

Bashir steps down in Sudan after years in power. “Transitional” military council running the country for next 2 years. There have been 4 months of protest. Bashir could face charges in the Hague for actions taken in Darfur if he leaves the country .

Although this is not the first time Mr. Trump has praised an Arab strongman, his expression of support for Mr. Hifter appears to be the first time that Mr. Trump has embraced an aspiring authoritarian who is not yet in power and may never get there.

A former general under Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and also a former C.I.A. client, Mr. Hifter had been living in exile in the United States but returned to Libya during the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. He first declared his intention to seize power in 2014, when Libya’s nascent transitional government was struggling to establish its authority over freewheeling militias around the country —from NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/world/middleeast/trump-libya-khalifa-haftar.html

Something about this HIfter fellow Trump really lkes, also

Muffolini
Pol Pof
Idi Amif
Josel Stafin

haha yes, I was going to say it was probably just a typo by Trump

would like "Moffe growing vpon the skull of a man" but 77

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/04/saudi-arabia-37-put-to-death-in-shocking-execution-spree/

among those executed is Abdulkareem al-Hawaj – a young Shi’a man who was arrested at the age of 16 and convicted of offences related to his involvement in anti-government protests. Under international law, the use of the death penalty against people who were under the age of 18 at the time of the crime is strictly prohibited.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2019/04/23/saudi-arabia-beheadings-executions-mujtaba-al-sweikat/3552679002/

A Saudi Arabian man who was arrested as a teenager as he was getting ready to fly to America to begin his studies at Western Michigan University was beheaded by the government Tuesday, according to a report from an official press agency.

Mujtaba al-Sweikat was 17 when he was detained at King Fahd International Airport in 2012. Earlier that year, Al-Sweikat allegedly attended a pro-democracy rally in the midst of the Arab Spring, which led to his arrest. He was intending to visit Western Michigan, where he had been accepted as a student, the university confirmed to the Free Press in 2017.

jesus christ

Kingdom of nightmares.

Are we really not gonna talk about the massive political clusterfuck unfolding in Israel right now? Not at all clear Netanyahu can form a government and he's (quite possibly successfully) inducing the Knesset to dissolve itself 6 weeks after it was elected in order to keep anyone but Bibi from having a chance to form a coalition. Meanwhile, Likud is merging with Kulanu against its own constitutional rules. And this may all end with Netanyahu caving to his chief adversaries in the farther-right-than-Netanyahu wing.

Or is Bibi just using the threat of dissolution to get Liberman to cave to the ultra-Orthodox and in the end there'll be a last-minute coalition deal? Who in this mess wants a new election?

Meanwhile, Sara Netanyahu pled guilty to corruption charges today and will reimburse the government $15,000. With three hours to go Netanhayu is still stuck one short of a majority. Reports are that he reached out to his bitter enemies in Labor and was rejected. I don't really understand what the deal is with the dissolution of the Knesset, when the deadline for that is. Netanyahu could still easily walk out of this with something he can call a win, as he so often does.

if the knesset is dissolved there's another election

3 options are: bibi is able to form government, bibi is able to pass bill to dissolve knesset and new election happens, bibi doesn't form government and knesset isn't dissolved, president rivlin will ask another member of the knesset to try and form a government

I guess what I'm wondering is does Rivlin immediately ask another MK to form a government two hours from now, or does the Knesset still have time to dissolve even if Netanyahu misses his deadline?

Latest report is that Knesset will vote on dissolution in about an hour and a half so I guess the answer is, Knesset has to break up now if it's going to keep a non-Bibi from getting a shot.

yeah it's a mess, but I relish any diminishment of Bibi's power tbh

removing Bibi from the center of power limits the damage he can do. even if it's only temporary, that's still good.

prob good for israel to just not have functioning govt for a year

Anyone have a sense of how much personal animosity to Netanyahu is contributing to this impasse? Is Likud thinking of electing Yuli-Yoel Edelstein or Israel Katz as party leader?

to me (hardly an expert in israeli politics) the issue seems to be avigdor lieberman. if he supported bibi then the impasse would be finished - they could have formed a government in may even. they've been in government before, they don't have huge political differences that are readily apparent. but he's taken this "secularist" turn so he can't go into government with netanyahu, as that would mean going into government with the ultra-orthodox. this seems to be simply a wedge issue he's created because he knows that if he goes into government with netanyahu again he'll get some nice ministerial appointment as in the past but bibi will pull the strings. changing of the guard and king-making with gantz would perhaps open new vistas to him

(on the other hand the chance of lieberman wanting to go into a coalition with benny gantz which would include the arab parties - and vice versa, seems hard to imagine)

oh yeah also no one in likud looks like they want to dethrone netanyahu rn. he's too popular with the party's supporters it seems

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/world/middleeast/global-protests.html

Protests in Lebanon

i have no idea how this is measured, but this is interesting:

But as protest movements grow, their success rates are plunging. Only 20 years ago, 70 percent of protests demanding systemic political change achieved it — a figure that had been growing steadily since the 1950s, according to a study by Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard University political scientist.

In the mid-2000s, that trend reversed. Success rates now stand at 30 percent, the study said, a decline that Professor Chenoweth called staggering.

These two trends are closely linked. As protests become more frequent but likelier to flounder, they stretch on and on, becoming more contentious, more visible — and more apt to return to the streets when their demands go unmet. The result may be a world where popular uprisings lose their prominence, becoming simply part of the landscape.

Interesting and depressing.

In Lebanon, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri survived recent embarrassing revelations about a $16 million gift to a bikini model whom he met at a luxury resort in the Seychelles in 2013, a move that, for some critics, epitomized Lebanon’s ruling class. Then last week he announced the tax on WhatsApp calls, setting off a revolt.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/27/us-reportedly-carries-out-operation-against-isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi

No word yet on exactly what has happened.

More info available now.

Meanwhile in Lebanon, Hezbollah supporters are not happy with protestors or even folks selling food near protest site. So they’re knocking everything down and chasing out protesters

https://apple.news/AENL-FDeFMcavqKHQUFL6UA

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/29/middleeast/lebanon-saad-hariri-resigns-intl/index.html

Lebanon Prime Minister resigns

"It's a good first step but we're still going to stay in the streets," Pierre Mouzannar, a 21-year old filmmaker told Al Jazeera in central Beirut. "Hariri is part of the problem but he's not all of the problem … I don't think anyone thinks we're done."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/lebanese-protesters-celebrate-hariri-resignation-191029203414584.html

The Trump administration has frozen all military aid to the Lebanese army, including a package worth $105 million that both the State Department and Congress approved in September, congressional officials said Friday.

The halt to American funding of the Lebanese Armed Forces, an important multisectarian group, comes at a critical time for Lebanon, as officials are grappling with the country’s largest street protests since its independence in 1943 and a change in leadership forced by the demonstrations. A freeze on the assistance could give Iran and Russia an opening to exert greater influence over the Lebanese military, analysts say, and perhaps even allow the Islamic State and Al Qaeda to gain greater footholds in the country.

That’s The NY Times take

Which is the globalist-imperialist perspective, straight, no chaser. Lebanon is seen as just a pawn of much bigger powers and what matters is how this might affect the players who really count.

It seems the protestors are angering everyone- Hezbollah isn't happy, Lebanese officials and army, & Iran, Russia, US supporters of status quo who just don't want Hezbollah to get stronger. Not sure what Trump's motive is in Lebanon and whether his broken clock approach will help or hinder the protestors

Lebanon is a deeply corrupt state, and my understanding is this outcome is perpetuated by the provisions of the Taif Agreement of 1989.

Taif essentially prevents successful popular parties that cut across sectarian lines, so the nation is locked into a set of sectarian fiefdoms, and individual voters are limited to (at best) selecting between leaders of the sect they were born into/assigned. Only a small minority residing in Beirut can vote for local leadership, most are assigned to vote at their place of birth.

Definitely a country that needs a constitutional assembly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/world/middleeast/russia-libya-mercenaries.html?module=inline

Russian Snipers, Missiles and Warplanes Try to Tilt Libyan War
Moscow is plunging deeper into a war of armed drones in a strategic hot spot rich with oil, teeming with migrants and riddled with militants.

The snipers are among about 200 Russian fighters who have arrived in Libya in the last six weeks, part of a broad campaign by the Kremlin to reassert its influence across the Middle East and Africa.

After four years of behind-the-scenes financial and tactical support for a would-be Libyan strongman, Russia is now pushing far more directly to shape the outcome of Libya’s messy civil war. It has introduced advanced Sukhoi jets, coordinated missile strikes, and precision-guided artillery, as well as the snipers — the same playbook that made Moscow a kingmaker in the Syrian civil war.

The Russians have intervened on behalf of the militia leader Khalifa Hifter, who is based in eastern Libya and is also backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and, at times, France. His backers have embraced him as their best hope to check the influence of political Islam, crack down on militants and restore an authoritarian order.

Mr. Hifter has been at war for more than five years with a coalition of militias from western Libya who back the authorities in Tripoli. The Tripoli government was set up by the United Nations in 2015 and is officially supported by the United States and other Western powers. But in practical terms, Turkey is its only patron.

The new intervention of private Russian mercenaries, who are closely tied to the Kremlin, is just one of the parallels with the Syrian civil war.

The conflict has become a bipolar combination of the primitive and futuristic. Turkey and the Emirates have turned Libya into the first war fought primarily by clashing fleets of armed drones. The United Nations estimates that during the past six months, the two sides have conducted more than 900 drone missions.

But on the ground, the war is between militias with fewer than 400 fighters typically engaged on both sides at any time. The fighting happens almost exclusively in a handful of deserted districts on the southern outskirts of Tripoli, while in neighborhoods just a few miles away, streets are clogged with civilian traffic and espresso bars bustle amid heaps of uncollected garbage.

I was in New Delhi earlier this year at the same time MBS was there, and received a very light-touch in-person warning from Saudi intelligence within an hour for saying something rude about them on my anonymous Twitter account https://t.co/hvJJsWqWY2

— 🦃🦃 gracious goat 🦃🦃 (@marxatfarpoint) November 6, 2019

State intelligence and security forces are the premium upgrade from mere high-powered multi-national PR firms.

Talking of state intelligence and security forces:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/11/europe/syria-white-helmets-backer-james-le-mesurier-intl/index.html

huge leak from iran in the intercept and NYT today - some of the links here. mostly about how they took power in iraq. i haven't read much of it yet but looks like a significant publication:

Good morning, here's our series of stories based on 700 pages of top secret documents from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. This has never happened before: https://t.co/AiDfviY14I

— Murtaza Mohammad Hussain (@MazMHussain) November 18, 2019

The importance of these Iranian cables seems more to provide confirmation and details to what could be reasonable inferred from the power dynamics in the region and the visible 'hot' conflicts. Iran and Saudi Arabia are both pushing hard to accumulate and consolidate regional influence, through every means available to them and the situation is very fluid and constantly shifting.

yes it's a world of difference between vague inferences + real information as "through every means available to them and the situation is very fluid and constantly shifting" is practically meaningless in content whereas these 700 pages help fill in the gaps of what those means include and how they actually look

Iran is a land of contrasts

Just stunning work by the Bush administration. Spend a couple trillion dollars and kill a couple hundred thousand civilians so that Iraq can become a client state of Iran.

Experts on the Ian Masters news program were talking about this as early as 2002. Iraq is a majority Shi'a country, many of whose leaders had spent years in Iranian exile; and Iran a neighboring hedgemon that has taken the indirect/subterfuge approach to regional politics for centuries. Installing Ahmad Chalabi and other Western affiliated INC exiles to govern was always a fantasy that only neocons were indoctrinated enough to believe.

no gov't for Benny. Time for yet another election!

Not necessarily - indictment coming down tomorrow supposedly which could mean Likud minus Bibi aka potential gov as minor partner

indictment meaning Bibi would step aside? or would he have to be removed/challenged from within the party?

Either potentially I imagine depends on whether Bibi and Likud think he can beat it?

Bibi is getting all Trumpy like in his criticisms re attorney general he appointed. Bibi's status could get get ruled upon by Israel Supreme Court

so sick of this left wing anti semitism from uh Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit

"Channel 13 News reported that Hollywood producer Milchan, the central figure in Case 1000, told police that he attended a dinner at the Prime Minister's Residence in which Netanyahu's wife lashed at the Adelsons, telling them, 'You are spilling my blood, you are all spilling my blood.” Sheldon Adelson reportedly responded: "Calm down, we're doing the best we can. I lose 40 to 50 million dollars a year [on Israel Hayom]. … We regularly write in your favor and you keep shouting at me."

Another report from Channel 12 involving testimony from Case 2000 quoted Miriam Adelson as saying that Sara Netanyahu “once told me that if Iran gets nuclear weapons and Israel is wiped out, I’ll be to blame, because I’m not defending Bibi.”

Both the prime minister and his wife complained about their coverage with the Adelson newspaper’s former editor in chief, Amos Regev, both in person and in “screaming phone calls.”

Eventually, Miriam Adelson said, she and her husband got fed up and stopped visiting the Netanyahus."

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-netanyahu-israel-indictment-cases-charges-1.8160019

Still think they should name the US Embassy after Adelson, who effectively paid for it with his own money

warming up to bibi and sara reading that anecdote

does any other asshole world leader have such an affectionate nickname that both his supporters and haters use?

refuse to call this piece of shit "Bibi"

my dad (a chilean exile from the pinochet dictatorship) and i sometimes jokingly refer to pinochet as "el tata" (grampa) so i don't mind calling netanyahu bibi

Dubya?

This thread is not getting used that much. Do we start a 2020 one, anyway?

We can discuss>

Netanyahu wants temporary immunity

Predicting how Iran will respond to the US action.

Complexity of knowing that Soleimani was responsible also for crushing Iranian and Syrian opponents of dictators in addition to Americans who never should have been in Iraq, but determining that if an outside force takes action against him without authority, that end result may still not help poor folks who were suffering in those countries, or help Western powers either

i think a new thread makes sense. it got over 200 posts and i definitely used it last year for things i'd otherwise be bumping this thread to post

Any new title ideas for thread? I see an older Iranian thread is getting use now

We're talking about sand and death

"We're talking about sand and death-- Middle East, North Africa and other nearby Political Hotspots 2020 " works for me

"We're talking about sand and death"-- Middle East, North Africa (MENA) and other nearby Political Hotspots 2020

New thread started