Geopolitics Weekly

It is only natural for Israel not to accept Fatah's platform, just as the Palestinian leadership objects to Likud's platform. But Fatah's approach to the peace process refutes the right-wing argument that "there is no Palestinian peace partner."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Thursday called Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman a "mafia boss," hitting back at Israel's top diplomat over accusations that Caracas has allowed Hezbollah to establish militant cells in its territory.

Israeli officials also have expressed concern at Iran's growing ties with leftist-led nations in Latin America. Iranian companies are building apartments, cars, tractors and bicycles in Venezuela and the two countries' leaders have exchanged visits.

Iran has opened new embassies in Bolivia and Nicaragua and a secret Israeli report recently suggested that Bolivia and Venezuela were supplying uranium to Iran for its nuclear program - an allegation sharply denied by both Latin American countries.

Moscow welcomes the work of EU monitors in Georgia, deployed in the Caucasus state a year ago after the Russian invasion, but is opposed to the United States having a role, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

Under a peace deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the European Union has sent 240 unarmed monitors to Georgia to oversee a fragile ceasefire. Georgia now wants the United States to join the monitoring. "The presence of EU monitors on Georgian territories bordering South Ossetia and Abkhazia is an important stabilizing factor and we support such a presence," Lavrov told state-run television channel Vesti-24.

Georgia, keen to get Western support in its stand-off with Russia, asked the United States last month to join the EU monitoring mission -- although the EU itself has not made any such request to Washington. Lavrov said the Georgian request was part of a plan to drag the United States into a confrontation. "The idea is absolutely clear and we honestly told this to our U.S. colleagues," Lavrov said. "This is all about dragging Americans into Georgia and pitching them against the Russian military." "After that, the Georgian masters of provocation... will try doing their traditional job," he added. "The risks of this are clear, Europe and the United States understand them."

When the European Union and Russia held their most recent summit meeting in May, the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, stunned European diplomats when he passed out copies of his book denouncing the fight against global warming — a central policy of the 27-nation bloc he was supposed to lead.

He declined to display its gold-starred flag in his office during his nation’s presidential term.

In November, Mr. Klaus set the stage for the Czech presidency when he visited Ireland’s leading activist against the Lisbon Treaty. He praised him as a “dissident” akin to Czechoslovak rebels like Vaclav Havel who had languished in prison during the communist era.

The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, has amassed evidence of a sophisticated Iranian nuclear weapons program that continued beyond 2003. This usually classified information comes courtesy of Germany's highest state-security court. In a 30-page legal opinion on March 26 and a May 27 press release in a case about possible illegal trading with Iran, a special national security panel of the Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe cites from a May 2008 BND report, saying the agency "showed comprehensively" that "development work on nuclear weapons can be observed in Iran even after 2003."

According to the judges, the BND supplemented its findings on August 28, 2008, showing "the development of a new missile launcher and the similarities between Iran's acquisition efforts and those of countries with already known nuclear weapons programs, such as Pakistan and North Korea."

It's important to point out that this was no ordinary agency report, the kind that often consists just of open source material, hearsay and speculation. Rather, the BND submitted an "office testimony," which consists of factual statements about the Iranian program that can be proved in a court of law. This is why, in their March 26 opinion, the judges wrote that "a preliminary assessment of the available evidence suggests that at the time of the crime [April to November 2007] nuclear weapons were being developed in Iran." In their May press release, the judges come out even more clear, stating unequivocally that "Iran in 2007 worked on the development of nuclear weapons."

We argue that engagement with Hamas is essential, and possible. To understand how, it is necessary to take into account that many of Hamas's statements and actions are governed and limited by its understanding of Islamic religious law (sharia), a comprehensive code relevant to all aspects of life for believing Muslims, very much including politics. We maintain that Hamas cannot be understood without understanding the sharia background of many of its policies.

Hamas maintains that accepting Israel's legitimacy necessarily renounces the Palestinian narrative, which defines Palestine as Arab and Muslim, in contrast to the Jewish narrative, which defines the Land of Israel as Jewish by God's promise, by legal right, and by history. Can these two worldviews be reconciled? Absolutely not. Can Hamas and Israel co­exist peacefully? We believe they can. Reconciliation is much harder than coexistence.

Hamas has repeatedly offered to end its violent resistance against Israel by means of various sharia-based mechanisms, such as a hudna (time-limited truce) or a tahadiyya (cease-fire). It has also advocated the principle of "Palestinian legitimacy," whereby it would accept as binding the decision of the Palestinian people to accept peace with Israel -- even if Hamas, as a Muslim religious organization, could not reconcile that outcome with sharia and preserve its Muslim beliefs.

If Turkey's EU accession had been stalled in the pre–September 11 world, I would have said that was a real shame. Back then, there was room for Turkey to be outside the EU but still part of Europe and the West. Now, with the EU pushing its boundaries into the Balkans up to Turkey, and with Al Qaeda clamoring that there is a war between the "Muslim world" and the West, there is no longer a gray area in which Turkey can position itself: it must become an EU member and part of the West, or else fold into the Muslim world, as per Al Qaeda's vision. Sarkozy should be alarmed about an alienated Turkey on Europe's eastern borders.

Originally the constitution allowed for the selection of either a single individual to the post of Supreme Leader or a council of appropriate individuals to run the post. The selection process of the Assembly of Experts would be done by continuously reviewing his/their performance (Articles 108 and 111). Later revisions to the constitution removed the potential for a council of individuals, making it so only a single individual could be elected by the Assembly as Supreme Leader.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was elected the chairman of the Assembly of Experts during its morning session on 04 September 2007 [Shahrivar 13, 1386]. Rafsanjani’s election is significant because prior to the meeting of the Assembly of Experts, the conservative supporters of the president tried to advance their own candidates Mohammad Taghi, Mesbah Yazdi, and Ahmad Jannati for the head of the assembly with deliberate and sometimes hidden attacks on Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Despite these attempts and the positioning of Ahmad Jannati, chairman of the guardian council, as a rival candidate to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the conservatives failed to achieve their goal.

According to a well-placed source in the holy city of Qom, Rafsanjani is working furiously behind the scenes to call for an emergency meeting of the Khobregan, or Assembly of Experts--the elite all-cleric body that can unseat the Supreme Leader or dilute his prerogatives. The juridical case against Khamenei would involve several counts. First, he would be charged with countenancing a coup d'état--albeit a bloodless one--without consulting with the Khobregan. Second, he would stand accused of deceitfully plotting to oust Rafsanjani--who is the Khobregan chairman and nominally the country's third-most-important authority--from his positions of power. Third, he would be said to have threatened the very stability of the republic with his ambition and recklessness.

Rafsanjani's purported plan is to replace Khamenei's one-person dictatorship with a Leadership Council composed of three or more high-ranking clerics; this formula was proposed and then abandoned in 1989 by several prominent clerics. Rafsanjani will likely recommend giving a seat to Khamenei on the council to prevent a violent backlash by his fanatic loyalists. It is not clear if Rafsanjani will have the backing of the two-thirds of the chamber members needed for such a change, though the balance of forces within the Khobregan could be tipped by the events unfolding in the streets. As a symbolic gesture, Rafsanjani is said to favor holding the meeting in Qom--the nation's religious center, which Khamenei has diminished--rather than in Tehran, where it has been held before.

A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.

According to current and former government officials, the agency spent money on planning and possibly some training. It was acting on a 2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts. The initiative hadn't become fully operational at the time Mr. Panetta ended it.

In 2001, the CIA also examined the subject of targeted assassinations of al Qaeda leaders, according to three former intelligence officials. It appears that those discussions tapered off within six months. It isn't clear whether they were an early part of the CIA initiative that Mr. Panetta stopped.

Palestinians reject any deal between Israel and the United States that would allow even limited Jewish settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, a top Palestinian negotiator said Sunday.

Netanyahu said Palestinians "must finally abandon the demand" to resettle families of hundreds of thousands of refugees of a 1948 war over Israel's establishment, which he said could "undermine" the Jewish state's existence. Addressing a memorial to the founder of Zionism, Netanyahu reiterated demands for Palestinians to explicitly recognize Israel as a Jewish state, calling this "the key to peace."

Western officials said the United States was moving in the direction of making allowances so Israel could finish off at least some existing projects which are close to completion.

Obama administration officials said Friday they had no grounds to investigate the 2001 deaths of Taliban prisoners of war who human rights groups allege were killed by U.S.-backed forces. The mass deaths were brought up anew Friday in a report by The New York Times on its Web site. It quoted government and human rights officials accusing the Bush administration of failing to investigate the executions of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of prisoners.

U.S. officials said Friday they did not have legal grounds to investigate the deaths because only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country. The Times cited U.S. military and CIA ties to Afghan Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, whom human rights groups accuse of ordering the killings. The newspaper said the Defense Department and FBI never fully investigated the incident.

Asked about the report, Marine Corps Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said that since U.S. military forces were not involved in the killings, there is nothing the Defense Department could investigate. "There is no indication that U.S. military forces were there, or involved, or had any knowledge of this," Lapan said. "So there was not a full investigation conducted because there was no evidence that there was anything from a DoD (Department of Defense) perspective to investigate."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that the United States was now seeking “amnesty” for two American journalists imprisoned in North Korea, a remark that suggests that the Obama administration was admitting the women’s culpability in a bid to secure their freedom.

“The two journalists and their families have expressed great remorse for this incident, and I think everyone is very sorry that it happened,” Mrs. Clinton said Friday morning during a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with State Department employees. “What we hope for now is that these two young women would be granted amnesty through the North Korean system and be allowed to return home to their families as soon as possible.”

The two journalists, Laura Ling, 36, and Euna Lee, 32, both reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor after a trial in which they were accused of entering the country illegally and committing “hostile acts.”

A new book published by the Islamist group al-Qaeda reveals the group is paranoid and faltering under international pressure and in "deathly fear" of United States counter terrorism measures in Pakistan, analysts said Friday. Al-Qaeda's 'Guide to the Laws Regarding Muslim Spies', a 150-page book written by al-Qaeda senior commander Abu Yahya al-Lini and recently posted on jihadist websites, accused "Muslim spies" within its own ranks of spying for the U.S. forces and providing them with information on al-Qaeda camps and safe houses.

Analysts in the U.S. said the book revealed a shift in al-Qaeda's well known triumphant tone to a more worried and paranoid one that signaled a weakening among its ranks. "In general, Al Qaeda speaks in a very triumphant tone but in the new book Al-Libi speaks of the group's dire straits and serious problems," said Daniel Lev, who works for MEMRI. "I haven't ever seen this kind of language from senior Al Qaeda commanders before," he added.

Analysts also said that a deep seated paranoia of hidden enemies was the main preoccupation of Lini's book which claimed that spying knows no bounds and could be the occupation of even the imam of a mosque. "The danger of these spies lies not only in the ability of these hidden 'brigades' to infiltrate and reach to the depths," Lini wrote, but "include the decrepit, hunchbacked old man who can hardly walk two steps; the strong young man who can cover the length and breadth of the land; the infirm woman sitting in the depths of her house."

Israel will not withdraw from the entire Golan Heights in return for a peace deal with Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top policy adviser said in an interview published Friday, rejecting Syria's key demand for an agreement with Israel.

The two countries could split the territory, suggested Uzi Arad, Netanyahu's national security adviser and the aide widely seen as closest to Netanyahu. But in the comments in the daily Haaretz newspaper, he said Israel must remain on the Golan Heights to a depth of several miles and cannot withdraw in full even in return for a peace agreement.

The area is also home to crucial water sources, a profitable Israeli winery, and Israeli settlements with about 18,000 residents. About 17,000 Druse Arabs loyal to Syria also live there.