Geopolitics Weekly

Iran test-fired a sophisticated missile on Wednesday that was capable of striking Israel and parts of Western Europe

he solid-fuel Sejil-2 missile used a technology that Iran appeared to have tested at least once before, but the Obama administration nonetheless described the event as “significant,” largely because missiles of its kind can be relatively easily moved or hidden.

The Pentagon confirmed that the test of the missile had been a success

Alistair Darling insists the recession will be over by Christmas, despite growing doubts over his economic forecasts.In an interview with the Times, the chancellor stuck by his predictions, even though other forecasters, including the International Monetary Fund, have published a much gloomier assessment of the economy. "I am not going to change my forecasts," Darling said. "I remain confident that we will see a return to growth at the turn of the year."In last month's budget, Darling predicted the economy would shrink by 3.5% this year and surprised the City when he forecast a rapid economic recovery, with growth of 1.25% in 2010 and the year after.

Since then, government figures have shown a shock 1.9% plunge in Britain's gross domestic product in the first three months of this year - the sharpest decline in almost three decades.The IMF does not share the chancellor's optimism and believes the economy will continue to shrink next year. It has forecast falls of 4.1% in output this year and 0.4% in 2010.

The chancellor shrugged off fears that Britain could slide into a deflationary spiral after figures yesterday showed retail prices plummeting at the fastest rate since 1948. The government's benchmark consumer price index, which excludes housing costs, still stands at 2.3%, above the Bank of England's 2% target. Darling said the fall in inflation "is in line with expectations. Deflation is something quite different".

A planned U.S. missile shield to protect Europe from a possible Iranian attack would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran is likely to deploy, according to a joint analysis by top U.S. and Russian scientists.

The U.S.-Russian team also judged that it would be more than five years before Iran is capable of building both a nuclear warhead and a missile capable of carrying it over long distances. And if Iran attempted such an attack, the experts say, it would ensure its own destruction.

"The missile threat from Iran to Europe is thus not imminent," the 12-member technical panel concludes in a report produced by the EastWest Institute, an independent think tank based in Moscow, New York and Belgium.

US President Barack Obama has announced tough targets for new fuel-efficient vehicles in order to cut pollution and lower dependence on oil imports.Describing the move as "historic", Mr Obama said the country's first-ever national standards would reduce vehicle emissions by about a third by 2016.

Under the proposed standards, manufacturers would be required to begin improving fuel efficiency by 5% a year from 2012. By 2016, they would have to reach an average of 39 miles per US gallon for passenger cars, and 30 miles per gallon for light lorries.

The new targets would increase the average fuel efficiency of all US cars and light lorries to 35.5 miles per gallon, about 10 miles per gallon more than the current standard.

The head of Israel's security service has said there is no security reason for continuing construction of Israel's barrier through the West Bank.Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin told a parliamentary committee that Israel had enough capabilities to prevent attacks from the Palestinian territory.

The UN has criticised Israel, citing an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice that parts of the barrier built inside Palestinian territory in the West Bank - 90% of the route - are contrary to international law.

Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.

The unsolicited Bibles sent by a church in the United States were confiscated about a year ago at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because military rules forbid troops of any religion from proselytizing while deployed there, Lt. Col. Mark Wright said.

"The decision was made that it was a 'force protection' measure to throw them away, because, if they did get out, it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims," Wright told CNN on Tuesday.

Unwilling and unable to make a constructive contribution towards a solution and at the same time frustrated that the Americans have taken the initiative, Europeans do what they do best: warn and complain, like the viewers of a soccer game, who -- from the stands -- know they would convert every strike into a goal.

After over 40 years' occupation, there can be no return to a status quo ante, because the status quo ante itself is a subject of dispute. For most Israelis, it is Israel within its 1967 borders, while for Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, it's Palestine prior to the founding of Israel. When they talk about the end of the occupation, they don't mean Hebron, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Nablus, they mean Haifa, Beersheba, Jaffa and Tiberias.

One side insists on the expansion of settlements, the other demands their right of return -- like travellers who've taken the wrong train and getting ever farther away from their destination, but not wanting to get off because they've been travelling so long. So the Israelis play victors in a dead end and the Palestinians, heroes without any prospect of success.

A Turkish court has ruled President Abdullah Gul should stand trial for alleged embezzlement in the late 1990s.

The Welfare Party, a precursor of the governing AK Party, was accused of misappropriating funds from the state treasury after being banned in 1998.

The case will now be considered by an appeal court. But it is unclear whether Mr Gul will end up going on trial, as he could have immunity as president. Correspondents say Turkey's secular establishment has often used the courts to oppose the activities of the Islamist-rooted AKP. Last July, the Constitutional Court came close to banning the party for allegedly trying to undermine the country's secular system.

Russia and the US are holding the first of three days of talks in Moscow on a new treaty aimed at reducing their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Senior diplomats need to hammer out a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start I) which expires in December.

Mr Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev agreed last month to pursue a deal to replace the Cold War-era Start I, signed in 1991.

Mr. Obama for the first time set out a rough timeline for talks with Iran, saying that by the end of the year the U.S. should have a "fairly good sense ... whether there is a good-faith effort to resolve differences" with Iran.

he two remained divided on issues such as the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Palestinians' right to statehood, and whether the Palestinian issue should take priority over concerns about Iran developing nuclear weapons.

Mr. Netanyahu said he would engage in peace talks with the Palestinians immediately, though he refused to come out in favor of a Palestinian state, in contrast to past government agreements. But he said any peace agreement would have to include Palestinian recognition of a Jewish state. A two-state solution is a centerpiece of Mr. Obama's Mideast peace strategy.

President Obama said Monday that he expected to know by the end of the year whether Iran was making “a good-faith effort to resolve differences” in talks aimed at ending its nuclear program, signaling to Israel as well as Iran that his willingness to engage in diplomacy over the issue has its limits.

“We’re not going to have talks forever,” Mr. Obama told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel after a two-hour session in the Oval Office.

Mr. Netanyahu, for his part, told Mr. Obama that he was ready to resume peace talks with the Palestinians immediately, but only if the Palestinians recognized Israel as a Jewish state.

Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been accused of using quotes from the Bible in his briefings to George W Bush during the Iraq War.

The quotes were placed on the cover of the briefings alongside images of US soldiers, GQ magazine has reported.

The decision to put the biblical quotations on the cover pages was taken by Maj Gen Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence serving both Mr Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to GQ.

Ethiopian military forces have crossed back into Somalia, barely three months after leaving, witnesses told the BBC.Their reported return comes as Islamist militants like al-Shabab continue to seize towns from the fragile Western-back transitional government.

The Ethiopian army withdrew in January after UN-backed peace talks. Its troops entered Somalia in 2006 to help oust Islamist forces from the capital Mogadishu.

On Sunday, Islamist militias took the key town of Jowhar from government forces. This is the home town of President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and now that the country's rainy season has arrived, the town is also the only passable route into central Somalia from the capital.

Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, met President Barack Obama yesterday and said that he wants to begin immediate peace talks with the Palestinians aimed at self-government, but he stopped short of explicitly committing Israel to Palestinian independence.

Obama said he told Netanyahu that the goal of "an extraordinary opportunity" for peace must be "allowing the Palestinians to govern themselves as an independent state".

"I want to start peace negotiations with the Palestinians immediately," he said. "I want to make it clear that we don't want to govern the Palestinians. We want to live in peace with them, we want them to govern themselves without [control over] a handful of powers that could endanger Israel. There'll have to be compromises by Israelis and Palestinians alike."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be prepared to endorse a peace process leading to an independent Palestinian state, his defence minister has said.Ehud Barak, a long-time rival now part of Israel's governing coalition, spoke ahead of Mr Netanyahu's first meeting with US President Obama in Washington. He told Israeli TV a regional deal could be struck within three years.

"Netanyahu will tell Obama: We're willing to engage in a process whose end is a regional peace accord," he told Channel 2 TV.

"The Arabs say 'two states,' [and] I don't see a reason why Netanyahu would not say that at the end of an accord... there will be two peoples living side by side in peace and mutual respect," he said.

David Miliband today described China as the 21st century's "indispensable power" with a decisive say on the future of the global economy, climate change and world trade.The foreign secretary predicted that over the next few decades China would become one of the two "powers that count", along with the US, and Europe could emerge as a third only if it learned to speak with one voice.

Miliband said a pivotal moment in China's rise came at the G20 summit last month in London. Hu Jintao, China's president, arrived as the head of the only major power still enjoying strong growth (expected to be 8% this year), backed by substantial financial reserves."The G20 was a very significant coming of economic age in an international forum for China. If you looked around the 20 ­people sitting at the table … what was striking was that when China spoke everybody listened," Miliband said.

"Historians will look back at 2009 and see that China played an incredibly important role in stabilising global capitalism. That is very significant and sort of ironic," Miliband said. "There's a joke that goes: 'After 1989, capitalism saved China. After 2009, China saved capitalism.'"

Members of Congress have been told in confidential briefings that Pakistan is rapidly adding to its nuclear arsenal even while racked by insurgency, raising questions on Capitol Hill about whether billions of dollars in proposed military aid might be diverted to Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed the assessment of the expanded arsenal in a one-word answer to a question on Thursday in the midst of lengthy Senate testimony. Sitting beside Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, he was asked whether he had seen evidence of an increase in the size of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

Bruce Riedel, the Brookings Institution scholar who served as the co-author of Mr. Obama’s review of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, reflected the administration’s concern in a recent interview, saying that Pakistan “has more terrorists per square mile than anyplace else on earth, and it has a nuclear weapons program that is growing faster than anyplace else on earth.”

Members of al-Shabab, a group fighting government forces in Somalia, seized the town of Jowhar on Sunday morning.

Jowhar was in 2005 chosen as the temporary location for the country's transitional government.

The Somali government has been losing ground in recent weeks and now controls little more than the centre of the capital, with the support of African Union troops.

As a state senator in Chicago, Mr. Obama cultivated friendships with Arab-Americans, including Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American scholar and a critic of Israel. Mr. Obama and Mr. Khalidi had many dinners together, friends said, in which they discussed Palestinian issues.

Mr. Obama’s predecessors, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, came of age politically with the American-Israeli viewpoint of the Middle East conflict as their primary tutor, said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator. While each often expressed concern and empathy for the Palestinians — with Mr. Clinton, in particular, pushing hard for Middle East peace during the last months of his presidency — their early perspectives were shaped more by Israelis and American Jews than by Muslims, Mr. Levy said. “I think that Barack Obama, on this issue as well as many other issues, brings a fresh approach and a fresh background,” Mr. Levy said. “He’s certainly familiar with Israel’s concerns and with the closeness of the Israel-America relationship and with that narrative. But what I think might be different is a familiarity that I think President Obama almost certainly has with where the Palestinian grievance narrative is coming from.”

None of this necessarily means that Mr. Obama will chart a course that is different from his predecessors’. During the campaign he struck a position on Israel that was indistinguishable from those of his rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, going so far as to say in 2008 that he supported Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. (He later attributed that statement to “poor phrasing in the speech,” telling Fareed Zakaria of CNN that he meant to say he did not want barbed wire running through Jerusalem.)