November 2014
Vol 14, No.11
THE TOP 1% OWN HALF THE WORLD ASSETS By Jon Queally The top one percent of the wealthiest people on the planet own nearly fifty percent of the world’s assets while the bottom fifty percent of the global population combined own less than one percent of the world’s wealth.
has been particularly fast over the last year—the fastest annual growth recorded since the pre-crisis year of 2007—the report notes that the benefits of this overall growth have flowed disproportionately to the
Those are the findings of an annual report by the investment firm Credit Suisse released Tuesday—the 2014 Global Wealth Report (pdf)—which shows that global economic inequality has surged since the financial collapse of 2008. According to the report, “global wealth has grown to a new record, rising by $20.1 trillion between mid-2013 and mid2014, an increase of 8.3%, to reach $263 trillion – more than twice the $117 trillion recorded for the year 2000.” Though the rate of this wealth creation
already wealthy. And the report reveals that as of mid-2014, “the bottom half of the global population own less than 1% of total wealth. In sharp contrast, the richest decile hold 87% of the world’s wealth, and the top percentile
alone account for 48.2% of global assets.” Campaigners at Oxfam International, which earlier this year put out their own report on global inequality (pdf), said the Credit Suisse report, though generally serving separate aims, confirms what they also found in terms of global inequality. “These figures give more evidence that inequality is extreme and growing, and that economic recovery following the financial crisis has been skewed in favour of the wealthiest. In poor countries, rising inequality means the difference between children getting the chance to go to school and sick people getting life saving medicines,” Turn to next page
STATEMENTS . B ANGLADESH T HE T RAVESTY
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CONTINUES BYJUST EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE...........................P3
ARTICLES . SUSPICIONS OVER MH 370
BY NEW.COM.AU..............................................P 3 . PEACE AND SECURITY IN EUROPE AND ASIA IN THE
CONTECT OF AMERICAN POWER BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR...............................P 5 . THE EXCITING POTENTIAL OF THE RHODES FORUM:
BRIEF THOUGHTS OF A MUSLIM ON THE EMERGE OF SERIOUS COUNTER-HEGEMONY BY JUNAID S. AHMAD.....................................P 6
. THE HIDDEN STORY OF HOW AMERICA AND BRITAIN
OVERTHREW THE GOVERNMENT OF THEIR ‘ALLY’ AUSTRALIA BY JOHN PILGER.............................................P 8 . UPHEAVAL IN WANA: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR...............................P 9
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Oxfam’s head of inequality Emma Seery, told the Guardian in response to the latest study.
contribution to the inequality debate.”
In addition to giving an overall view of trends in global wealth, the authors of the Credit Suisse gave special attention to the issue of inequality in this year’s report, noting the increasing level of concern surrounding the topic. “The changing distribution of wealth is now one of the most widely discussed and controversial of topics,” they write, “Not least owing to [French economist] Thomas Piketty’s recent account of long-term trends around inequality. We are confident that the depth of our data will make a valuable
In almost all countries, the mean wealth of the top decile (i.e. the wealthiest 10% of adults) is more than ten times median wealth. For the top percentile (i.e. the wealthiest 1% of adults), mean wealth exceeds 100 times the median wealth in many countries and can approach 1000 times the median in the most unequal nations. This has been the case throughout most of human history, with wealth ownership often equating with land holdings, and wealth more often acquired via inheritance or conquest rather than talent or hard
According to the report:
work. However, a combination of factors caused wealth inequality to trend downwards in high income countries during much of the 20th century, suggesting that a new era had emerged. That downward trend now appears to have stalled, and posssibly gone into reverse. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License 14 October, 2014 Jon Queally is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Source : CommonDreams.org
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By Just Executive Committee The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) strongly condemns the lynching and murder of a Pakistani Christian couple last week. Under the false pretext of committing ‘blasphemy’ for desecrating the Quran, for which there was no evidence, the couple was accused and brutally killed, all in one day. All of the evidence, on the other hand, suggests that this was principally an issue of exploited bonded labor attempting to escape their horrible plight. The couple’s virtual enslavement in the brick kiln industry and their efforts to secure a better livelihood aroused the fear and wrath of their ruthless boss, who decided to concoct a false accusation of blasphemous conduct on the couple’s part. The mobilization of religious passions was engineered by the exploitative boss and the powerful friends he relied upon, and the terrible
atrocity then ensued. The Blasphemy Law in Pakistan has been routinely abused to settle interpersonal disputes pertaining to land and other matters, and to disproportionately target religious minorities. While the law’s intention is merely to criminalize defamation and slander of the Prophet Muhammad, most of the time it is deployed as a weapon to entrench power, wealth, and the privileged position of various oppressive classes and individuals in the country. Indeed, all of the victims killed because of the accusation of blasphemy have been through vigilante action of some mob. The Pakistani Supreme Court has never permitted anyone to be put to death for the crime of blasphemy, since it has recognized that most cases were deeply flawed and the evidence was weak or nonexistent.
It is also important to note that many senior and well-respected religious leaders, in addition to all political parties, including the Islamic ones, have condemned the incident. The leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the leading Islamic political party in Pakistan, has personally visited the Christian victims’ families. This simply reflects popular opinion in Pakistan, which is fictitiously portrayed as extremist and barbaric — when in fact it is as outraged at what happened as others throughout the world. In addition, credit must also be given to the Pakistani government which has been very efficient in rounding up and arresting all the killers and suspects, and ensuring justice is served and the victims’ families are duly compensated. The government is also setting a noteworthy precedent of zero tolerance toward continued next page
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such mob violence in the name of religion. Nonetheless, increasing Islamophobia in the West is making Muslims throughout the world more sensitive to attacks, real or imagined, against their faith. Western warmongers and their pundits have tried to portray venomous discourse on Islam and Muslims as expressions of ‘free speech.’ The intellectual deception being used as a weapon against the Muslim world involves
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confusing ‘blasphemy’ and critiques of religion with the type of bigotry and hatred that comes out of the Islamophobia industry in the West. The latter has become the ideological justification for Western wars, invasions, occupations, and massacres of Muslims and the oppressed. Hence, while the abuse of the Blasphemy Law in a country such as Pakistan must be condemned loudly, so should we denounce the hateful rhetoric against Islam, as well as Western foreign policies towards Muslim
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states and movements that resist Western hegemonic power. Ultimately, imperial and Zionist criminal behavior in the Muslim world is the single most important factor in aggravating the already troubled predicament that religious minorities face in several Muslimmajority countries. 12 November 2014 The Executive Committee, International Movement for a Just World (JUST).
JUSTICE CONTINUES
By Just Executive Committee Key figures in Bangladesh’s main religious opposition party, Jamaat-eIslami, have been sentenced to death for crimes against humanity committed during the country’s War of Independence from Pakistan in 1971. Courts have recently found guilty leaders Motiur Rahman Nizami and Quasem Ali. There are growing concerns that the charges are political motivated and the convictions grossly unjust. The allegation of war crimes has been raised against Jamaat leaders after almost 40 years, long after suspected figures had previously been pardoned. Several individuals on the list were
under 10 years old during the War. The Bangladesh Awami League, the ruling party, released a list of 36 individuals from the Jamaat-e-Islami party who were guilty of war crimes before the trial even commenced. The International Movement for a JUST World (JUST) reiterates its earlier stand that recent trials— like past trials — should have been conducted in accordance with international norms and standards. If the accused are charged without concrete evidence against them, the already widespread perception that the trials against Jamaat leaders are political in nature will get even
stronger. The Judiciary would be seen as a political tool of the ruling government to target opposition parties. The government should demonstrate that it is sensitive to negative views about the trials expressed by individuals and groups in so many countries by at least applying to the courts to commute all the death sentences meted out so far to life imprisonments. 3 November 2014 The Executive Committee, International Movement for a Just World (JUST).
ARTICLES SUSPICIONS OVER MH 370 By news.com.au Emirates chief Tim Clark reveals suspicions over true fate of missing flight MH370
president and CEO told Aviation Week in July: “Something is not right here and we need to get to the bottom of it.”
TIM Clark is no MH370 conspiracy theory crackpot.
Now, seven months after the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, Sir Tim has cast doubt on the official version of
As the recently knighted Emirates
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Ocean on autopilot for five hours until it ran out of fuel and fell out of the sky, forcing 239 passengers into a watery grave. Instead, Sir Tim believes it is far more likely that “MH370 was under control, probably until the very end”, questions the veracity of the “so-called electronic satellite ‘handshake’” used by analysts to pinpoint the probable crash site and insists the mysterious cargo in the hold (removed from the manifest by Malaysian authorities) is a crucial clue to the puzzle.
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for more information. I do not subscribe to the view that the Boeing 777, which is one of the most advanced in the world and has the most advanced communication platforms, needs to be improved with the introduction of some kind of additional tracking system. MH 370 should never have been allowed to enter a non-trackable situation. What do you mean by that? Clark: The transponders are under the
That an aircraft the size of MH370 can simply disappear without a trace, “not even a seat cushion” was downright “suspicious”, he said. The executive has vowed that he will not rest until the truth is known, declaring: “I will continue to ask questions and make a nuisance of myself, even as others would like to bury it.” And as the head of the largest operator of the Boeing 777 in the world (Emirates has a fleet of 127), “I need to know how anybody could interdict our systems”. Investigators have said the plane’s tracking systems were deliberately disabled by somebody with extensive aviation knowledge in order to take it off radar. Here are the highlights from the controversial Der Spiegel interview: What do you think happened? Clark: My own view is that probably control was taken of that airplane. It’s anybody’s guess who did what. We need to know who was on the plane in the detail that obviously some people do know. We need to know what was in the hold of the aircraft. And we need to continue to press all those who were involved in the analysis of what happened
A R T I C L E S disable that tracking system? Clark: Disabling it is no simple thing and our pilots are not trained to do so. But on flight MH 370, this thing was somehow disabled, to the degree that the ground tracking capability was eliminated. We must find systems to allow ACARS to continue uninterrupted, irrespective of who is controlling the aircraft. If you have that, with the satellite constellations that we have today even in remote ocean regions, we still have monitoring capability. So you don’t have to introduce additional tracking systems. What, then, are you proposing?
control of the flight deck. These are tracking devices, aircraft identifiers that work in the secondary radar regime. If you turn off that transponder in a secondary radar regime, that particular airplane disappears from the radar screen. That should never be allowed to happen. Irrespective of when the pilot decides to disable the transponder, the aircraft should be able to be tracked. What about other monitoring methods? Clark: The other means of constantly monitoring the progress of an aircraft is ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System). It is designed primarily for companies to monitor what its planes are doing. We use it to monitor aircraft systems and engine performance. At Emirates, we track every single aircraft from the ground, every component and engine of the aircraft at any point on the planet. Very often, we are able to track systemic faults before the pilots do. How might it have been possible to
Clark: My recommendation to aircraft manufacturers that they find a way to make it impossible to disable ACARS from the flight deck. And the transponder as well. I’m still struggling to come up with a reason why a pilot should be able to put the transponder into standby or to switch it off. MH 370 was, in my opinion, under control, probably until the very end. If that is the case, then why would the pilots spend five hours heading straight towards Antarctica? Clark: If they did! I am saying that all the “facts” of this particular incident must be challenged and examined with full transparency. We are nowhere near that. There is plenty of information out there, which we need to be far more forthright, transparent and candid about. Every single second of that flight needs to be examined up until it, theoretically, ended up in the Indian Ocean — for which they still haven’t found a trace, not even a seat cushion. Does that surprise you? The possible crash area west of Australia is vast and the search there only began following considerable delays. continued next page
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Clark: Our experience tells us that in water incidents, where the aircraft has gone down, there is always something. We have not seen a single thing that suggests categorically that this aircraft is where they say it is, apart from this so-called electronic satellite “handshake,” which I question as well. At what point on the presumed flight path of MH370 do your doubts begin? Clark: There hasn’t been one overwater incident in the history of civil aviation — apart from Amelia Earhart in 1939
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— that has not been at least five or 10 per cent trackable. But MH 370 has simply disappeared. For me, that raises a degree of suspicion. I’m totally dissatisfied with what has been coming out of all of this. What can be done to improve the investigation’s transparency? Clark: I’m not in a position to do it; I’m essentially an airline manager. But I will continue to ask questions and make a nuisance of myself, even as others would like to bury it. We have an obligation to the passengers and crew of MH 370 and their families. We have an obligation to
A R T I C L E S not sweep this under the carpet, but to sort it out and do better than we have done. MH 370 remains one of the great aviation mysteries. Personally, I have the concern that we will treat it as such and move on. At the most, it might then make an appearance on National Geographic as one of aviation’s great mysteries. We mustn’t allow this to happen. We must know what caused that airplane to disappear. 10 October 2014 Source: news.com.au
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By Chandra Muzaffar We carry below a report on the above topic which was discussed in a plenary session at the 12th Rhodes Forum organized by the World Public Forum in Rhodes, Greece from the 25th to the 29th of September 2014. -Editor The plenary was moderated by Chandra Muzaffar from Malaysia The seven keynote speakers were Phyllis Bennis,( activist, US) Kumiko Haba,( academic, Japan) Fred Dallmayr,( political philosopher, US) Junaid Ahmad,( academiccum-activist, Pakistan) Sara Flounders,( activist, US) Tao Xie ( academic, China) and Valentina Fedotova.( academic, Russia) The moderator opened discussions with observations on why the question of peace and security in Europe and Asia has become so significant at this point in time. In both continents it is the desire of the US elite to perpetuate its hegemonic power that has provoked reactions
that have led to tension and conflict. Phyllis Bennis described how the US elite was attempting to pursue its superpower role in a changing global scenario. She was of the view that instead of resorting to force and violence, there should have been a vigorous attempt to resolve conflicts
in West Asia in particular through robust, sustained diplomacy. Kumiko Haba focused upon how longstanding animosities in Europe had been overcome through the politics of reconciliation in the post second world war decades. For a variety of reasons this was not
happening in Asia where different motives and agendas on the part of the US and other actors have created a more complex situation. Fred Dallmayr analyzed the Ukraine conflict from the perspective of the NATO drive for enlargement since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was important for Europe to wake up and come to grips with the emerging geopolitical realities in the continent. Junaid Ahmad looked at conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the inter-play between domestic, regional and international forces. He showed how in these conflicts certain views of Islam and Muslims rooted in colonial, orientalist thinking continue to persist and undermine efforts to seek just and amicable solutions.
Sara Flounders covered a wide variety of issues ranging from the continued next page
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crisis in the capitalist system and the US drive for global hegemony to the economic woes in Greece and the lack of peace and security for ordinary citizens in the US itself. She underscored the imperative need for resistance to global capitalism and global hegemony at this juncture of history. Tao Xie offered comparisons of hard power and soft power between the US and NATO, on the one hand, and China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, (SC0) on the other. If conflict is to be replaced by
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harmony, and if harmony is a goal of certain emerging powers in the present era, it is crucial to ask what one means by harmony and how that harmony would express itself in the national and global arenas. Valentina Fedotova reflected on the long-term implications of the Ukraine conflict on relations between Russia, on the one hand, and the US and Europe, on the other. She also examined critically the demonization of certain political leaders in the conflict and the consequences of the rise of ethnonationalism upon international relations.
A R T I C L E S Two interactive sessions were woven into the Plenary. Seven questions and comments were raised. They enhanced the quality of the discourse. In making his concluding remarks, the moderator noted that though the speakers addressed varying aspects of the theme, their presentations were rich in insights. They had contributed to a deeper understanding of the challenge to peace and security in Europe and Asia in the face of US power. 27 September 2014. Rhodes Forum.
THE EXCITING POTENTIAL OF THE RHODES FORUM: BRIEF THOUGHTS OF A MUSLIM ON THE EMERGE OF SERIOUS COUNTERHEGEMONY By Junaid S. Ahmad The recently concluded Rhodes World Public Forum that took place on the Greek island of Rhodes did not merely impress me because of the dreamlike natural beauty of the setting. Though that may have contributed to it, the real reason for the intense feeling of joy and hope I take from Rhodes is grounded in the unashamed liberationist political commitments that were reflected in our conversations and dialogues. Though of course the Forum is a platform for a “Dialogue of Civilizations,” which certainly implies – and should imply — respectful disagreement and differences as well, there was nevertheless an underlying resolve to forcefully confront the forces which militate against equality, justice, peace, and ecological sustainability in the world. The details of our tactics and strategies of realizing our vision for a transformed world may indeed be important, and
may denote differences in approaches – but about the larger moral-ethical aims there was no serious doubt or disagreement. My own participation in the Forum entailed making a modest contribution to the discussion about threats to peace and security in Asia, as well as speaking about the larger subject of the Muslim world/Islam/ political Islam. My dear mentor – and perhaps the leading Muslim public intellectual confronting the forces of imperial hegemony and global injustice – Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, was gracious enough to provide me this platform to share my views on how intellectuals, activists, and global justice movements ought to be approaching the variety of phenomena arising in the Muslim world. In brief, I believe that our highly dedicated gathering of intellectuals and activists were able
to grasp how the rise of groups such as ISIS, or the various Islamist political formations in West and Southwest Asia in general, are due to historical and political factors deeply connected to imperial militarism, not due to some Muslim genetic predisposition toward jihadism. Though solid intellectual rigor is indispensable for our analyses, so that our strategies for change are more coherent, conceptually grounded, and indeed successful, sometimes it is important to state simple facts as clearly and honestly as one can, such as: the nurturing, support, funding, and arming of a specific orientation of resistance/rebel forces in both Aghanistan in the 1980s and Syria over the past few years, i.e. essentially proxy jihadi ‘wars of liberation,’ will virtually guarantee the outcomes we have continued next page
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seen and are seeing right now. And, as I pointed out in my presentation, there is no military solution to these profoundly political and social problems for which Empire bears incredible responsibility. The humiliating withdrawal of the USNATO from the ‘Af-Pak’ theatre of the ‘Global War on Terrorism,” the longest war ever in US history, against one of the poorest and most defenseless populations on the planet, demonstrates this clearly.
My brief comments here, it should be noted, do indicate a degree of ignorance of the laudable history of the Rhodes Forum, and the impressive contributions and progressive public and intellectual interventions it has already made over the past decade or so. And I believe that it is absolutely imperative at this moment that the Muslim world must be engaged more deeply with the significant role the Rhodes Forum plays in the creation of what I think is its most crucial task: the construction of a counter-hegemony. And it is very clear that the cutting edge intellectual dynamism at display at the Rhodes Forum is first and foremost at the service of ordinary people of the world suffering under – and struggling against – occupations, socio-economic injustice, state repression, and imperial violence via drones, ‘signature strikes,’ and so on. The Rhodes Forum, thus, is not merely
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trying to create a new imperial hegemony to replace the existing one. The political and intellectual project of the Rhodes Forum is vibrant, innovative, and progressive in the most principled of ways, completely independent of the machinations of global hegemony today. Our role at the Rhodes Forum is merely to be at the service of grassroots movements trying to make sense of the multiple crises – political, economic, ecological, and moral/spiritual – afflicting the world today, and to assist global thinking and activism in the direction of more justice, peace, and sustainability. And perhaps the strongest feature of the Rhodes Forum is the recognition that solidarity and cooperation of movements for global justice and peace in the world need not imply the suppression of the richness and diversity of our ‘pluriverse,’ of our movement of movements. And this, as I and others pointed out at the Forum, requires a thoroughgoing decolonizing of both our thinking and praxis. As a Muslim whose politics of liberation and justice are integrally related to my faith/religion, I appreciate the willingness of even some who come out of deeply different histories and ideological/ philosophical systems to accept and respect the differences in the way our shared politics of liberation and justice express themselves. The speakers and participants at the Rhodes Forum correctly and scathingly put the global system of imperial hegemony on trial for its numerous crimes against humanity and the planet. The Muslim world once again finds itself in the crosshairs of the political and violent shenanigans of imperial intervention and local tyranny. In response, a plethora of Muslim responses are
A R T I C L E S emerging, though the dominant ones are clearly those that have been generously fostered by the powerful
before, and have only become more militant and violent as a part of the cycle violence that Empire loves to produce and reproduce time and again. But global developments, and perhaps the most significant one being the emergence of BRICS as Dr. Chandra Muzaffar notes, create the space for the emergence of Muslim politics that adopts a principled position against imperial hegemony, against local tyranny, and for social justice, equality, and meaningful peace – the exact opposite of the sham peace promised by the Middle East ‘peace process.’ The potent and highly articulate statement of solidarity of the Rhodes Forum, coming from the most distinguished gathering of public intellectuals throughout the world, must be taken seriously as perhaps the most important intellectual and ideological corollary to the decentering of Western political, economic, and cultural hegemony. Muslims and the oppressed globally, of all faiths and traditions, have no better and more eloquent an ally in their emancipation than the courageous individuals who gather at Rhodes every year.
2 October 2014 Junaid Ahmad teaches at a leading university in Pakistan.
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THE HIDDEN STORY OF HOW AMERICA AND BRITAIN OVERTHREW THE GOVERNMENT OF THEIR ‘ALLY’ AUSTRALIA By John Pilger Across the political and media elite in Australia, a silence has descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died. His achievements are recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. But a critical reason for his extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him. Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution”. Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished Royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing. Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor Party, Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country’s resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to “buy back the farm”. In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain’s colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent’s vast natural wealth. Latin Americans will recognise the audacity and danger of this “breaking free” in a country whose establishment was welded to great, external power. Australians had served every British
imperial adventure since the Boxer rebellion was crushed in China. In the 1960s, Australia pleaded to join the US in its invasion of Vietnam, then provided “black teams” to be run by the CIA. US diplomatic cables published last year by WikiLeaks disclose the names of leading figures in both main parties, including a future prime minister and foreign minister, as Washington’s informants during the Whitlam years.
Whitlam knew the risk he was taking. The day after his election, he ordered that his staff should not be “vetted or harassed” by the Australian security organisation, ASIO – then, as now, tied to Anglo-American intelligence. When his ministers publicly condemned the US bombing of Vietnam as “corrupt and barbaric”, a CIA station officer in Saigon said: “We were told the Australians might as well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators.” Whitlam demanded to know if and why the CIA was running a spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, a giant vacuum cleaner which, as Edward Snowden revealed recently, allows the US to spy on everyone. “Try to screw us or bounce us,” the prime minister warned the US ambassador, “[and Pine Gap] will become a matter of contention”.
Victor Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me, “This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House. … a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion.” Pine Gap’s top-secret messages were de-coded by a CIA contractor, TRW. One of the de-coders was Christopher Boyce, a young man troubled by the “deception and betrayal of an ally”. Boyce revealed that the CIA had infiltrated the Australian political and trade union elite and referred to the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, as “our man Kerr”. Kerr was not only the Queen’s man, he had long-standing ties to AngloAmerican intelligence. He was an enthusiastic member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, described by Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal in his book, ‘The Crimes of Patriots‘, as, “an elite, invitation-only group… exposed in Congress as being founded, funded and generally run by the CIA”. The CIA “paid for Kerr’s travel, built his prestige… Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money”. When Whitlam was re-elected for a second term, in 1974, the White House sent Marshall Green to Canberra as ambassador. Green was an imperious, sinister figure who worked in the shadows of America’s “deep state”. Known as the “coupmaster”, he had played a central role in the 1965 coup against President Sukarno in Indonesia – which cost up to a million lives. One of his first continued next page
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speeches in Australia was to the Australian Institute of Directors – described by an alarmed member of the audience as “an incitement to the country’s business leaders to rise against the government”. The Americans and British worked together. In 1975, Whitlam discovered that Britain’s MI6 was operating against his government. “The Brits were actually de-coding secret messages coming into my foreign affairs office,” he said later. One of his ministers, Clyde Cameron, told me, “We knew MI6 was bugging Cabinet meetings for the Americans.” In the 1980s, senior CIA officers revealed that the “Whitlam problem” had been
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discussed “with urgency” by the CIA’s director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield. A deputy director of the CIA said: “Kerr did what he was told to do.” On 10 November, 1975, Whitlam was shown a top secret telex message sourced to Theodore Shackley, the notorious head of the CIA’s East Asia Division, who had helped run the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile two years earlier. Shackley’s message was read to Whitlam. It said that the prime minister of Australia was a security risk in his own country. The day before, Kerr had visited the headquarters of the Defence Signals Directorate, Australia’s NSA
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A R T I C L E S where he was briefed on the “security crisis”. On 11 November – the day Whitlam was to inform Parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia – he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal “reserve powers”, Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. The “Whitlam problem” was solved, and Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence. 23 October 2014 John Pilger’s documentaries have won academy awards in both the U.K. and the U.S. Source: johnpilger.com
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By Chandra Muzaffar WANA (West Asia and North Africa) has been engulfed in turmoil and upheaval for decades. What are the root causes of instability in this vital region of the world? An objective analysis would reveal that the elite interests of two states in WANA, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and the drive for dominance and control over the region by the United States and its allies lie at the root of the perpetual conflict and violence that has brought so much death and destruction to WANA. Elite interests in the two states and US helmed hegemony are often interwoven, though they sometimes operate along separate lines. Their total impact upon the region has been colossal. I shall begin with Israel which has been the single most de-stabilizing
force in WANA. Israel. Since its illegal creation in 1948, Israel has been obsessed with its security. Its notion of security is different from that of perhaps almost every other state on earth. It equates its security with the exercise of total dominance and power over the entire region. This is one of the reasons why it has continued to annex Arab lands, expand its territory and entrench its settlements in the last 66 years. It used its 1948-9 war with its Arab neighbors for instance to gobble up more land just as it turned the six day war in June 1967 into a massive land grab exercise annexing Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in Palestine; parts of southern Lebanon; the Golan Heights in Syria; and the
Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Since 1967, Israel has tightened its grip over the West Bank and East Jerusalem through unending expansion of settlements. In pursuit of its policy of aggrandizement, the Israeli elite invariably targets a state and its leader. In the fifties and sixties, it saw Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser as its mortal enemy not only because of Nasser’s opposition to Israel but also because of his ability to mobilize the Arab masses for a cause. This is why Israel joined hands with Britain and France in an attempt to foil Nasser ’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956. They failed partly because the American President, Dwight Eisenhower, was openly critical of the action of Israel and its friends. continued next page
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After the Suez episode, Israeli leaders and pro-Israel lobbyists in the US adopted various strategies to ensure that the US government would privilege Israeli interests over everything else. When the 1967 war occurred, the US leadership was unequivocally committed to Israel, as it has been ever since. It is a reflection of the inordinate influence that Israel and its American lobbies exercise over the US Congress and the Senate, the White House, the upper echelons of the nation’s economic and financial hierarchies, the media, academe, and the entertainment world. It was US power and influence that helped to move Egypt out of the Soviet Union’s orbit a few years after Nasser’s death in 1970, into the US’s sphere. This was a triumph for Israel. It culminated in a US brokered peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1978. The one-sided treaty weakened Arab resistance to Israel and its policies. However, the following year, Israel suffered a major setback when the Iranian people overthrew their monarch, Reza Pahlavi, who was regarded as the gendarme of the US and its allies in WANA, in one of the most popular revolutions in history. As an aside, it should be mentioned that more than two decades before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, there was another noble and courageous attempt to assert Iranian independence by a nationalist, Mohammed Mossadegh, which was crushed by British intelligence and the CIA in 1953. Back to 1979, the leader of the Islamic Revolution,
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Imam Khomeini, and the Iranian Republic now became Israel’s foe. Together with the US and various states in WANA, Israel sought to undermine the Revolution — though it was not directly involved in the eight year war imposed upon the fledgling republic by a number of Arab states led by Saddam Hussein of Iraq. The war which resulted in almost half a million deaths was manipulated by the US, abetted by Britain and a handful of other Western allies. It has now come to light that the US and Britain not only supplied chemical weapons to Saddam but also secretly built a germ weapons arsenal for the dictator.
It is ironic that after the Iraq-Iran War ended in 1988, the Western powers turned against Iraq. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 was the reason. The invasion provided the excuse to increase US control over Kuwait, a long-time US ally, and to launch an attack on Iraq. Israel, for its part, had been antagonistic towards Saddam and Iraq since the late seventies, its association with Iraq during its war against Iran notwithstanding. It will be recalled that the Israeli air force unilaterally bombed an Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak in 1981. Israel’s antagonism towards Iraq was driven by a number of factors.
A R T I C L E S Saddam, like Nasser, was staunchly pro-Palestine and anti-Israel. Iraq has huge oil reserves and was in the early years of Saddam’s rule, the second biggest oil exporter in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Some of this oil wealth was utilized by Saddam to help the families of Palestinian martyrs. Saddam had also invested heavily in arms and in building a scientific infrastructure. For Israel, a leader with such a track record was a threat to her security. This is why Israel endorsed wholeheartedly the suffocating sanctions that the US and Britain, through the UN Security Council, imposed upon the Iraqi people from 1991 onwards. They were reputedly responsible directly or indirectly for the deaths of some 650,000 children in the nineties. When the US and Britain invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, Israel understood that the security of Israel was one of the two real reasons, the other being oil. What this means is that if over three million people have died in Iraq since 1990, including the eight years of US occupation from 2003 to 2011, it was partly to protect Israel. Again, in one of the many twists in the politics of WANA, when the US introduced elections in Iraq in 2006, and the majority Shias came to power, the US, Israel and some Arab monarchies suddenly realized that the Shia-led government in Baghdad was more inclined to look towards Tehran. This was something that they did not bargain for. So they began spawning and supporting Sunni militant groups opposed to the Shia government. Thus Al-Qaeda became continued next page
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part of the Iraqi political landscape. The Machiavellian manipulation and exploitation of the Sunni-Shia dichotomy in Iraq and elsewhere intensified to the zenith. It was not just the rise of Shia power in Iraq that has created some apprehension among the Israeli elite. In Lebanon, since 2001 Shia military and political power has consolidated. It was a Shia grassroots movement, the Hezbollah that succeeded in thwarting the Israeli assault upon Lebanon in 2006. If the Israeli armed forces fear any people’s movement in WANA, it is Hezbollah. Linking Hezbollah to Iran is the Syrian leadership under Bashar AlAssad who is from an Alawite (Shia) family. These are the three elements in what Israel regards as the most formidable opposition to its power in the region. Crushing this triumvirate is at the core of Israeli policy. It is also at the center of US strategies in the region since it views the Hezbollah, the Syrian leadership and Iran as adversaries of US hegemony.
It is within this framework that one should appraise the attempt by various armed groups to oust Bashar Al-Assad since 2011. Israel has provided material assistance to some of these groups. Israel itself has
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conducted numerous military strikes against Syrian army positions. The armed insurgency, orchestrated by regional actors such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey and global players like the US, Britain and France, has drawn thousands of foreign fighters from some 80 countries who regard the ouster of Assad as a “jihad.” The three and half year insurgency has resulted in the death of tens of thousands of Syrian civilians and soldiers, apart from the insurgents themselves. For Israel, within the triumvirate it is Iran that it views as its implacable foe. The Israeli elite realizes that Iran’s military and scientific capabilities are more formidable than Iraq’s under Saddam Hussein. It is also a major oil and gas exporter. The leadership has a stronger mass base. It has enduring religious links within the region and adheres to a religious ideology that is distinguished by a high degree of personal sacrifice and collective commitment. It explains why Israel has gone all out to convince its patron and protector, the US, and European powers that Iran is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program under the guise of a peaceful nuclear energy program. Though Iran has declared that producing nuclear weapons is prohibited (haram) in Islam and has allowed extensive and intrusive inspections of its nuclear facilities over a number of years, the Israeli elite continues to peddle lies about Iran’s nuclear intentions. It has even forged a key document and presented it to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to incriminate Iran. Computers at Iran’s nuclear facilities have been hacked. Israel has launched a cyberwar
A R T I C L E S against Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian scientists have been assassinated. In a sense, all these moves by Israel merely underscore its overwhelming obsession with security — an obsession which bears no semblance to reality. It is an obsession, there is no need to emphasize, which is most aggressively expressed in Israel’s handling of the West Bank and Gaza. I have already taken note of the entrenchment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Gaza, often described as the “world’s biggest open-air prison” has been subjected to massive Israeli onslaughts on at least three occasions since 2008. In the latest, in July- August 2014, about 2,100 Palestinians were killed, a quarter of them children. Since 29 September 2000, at least 9,100 Palestinians have been killed. Almost always, Israeli leaders justify the killings in the name of Israeli security. Saudi Arabia. If security is Israel’s raison d’etre, protecting the throne of the House of Saud is the actual though unstated reason for many of the decisions and actions of the Saudi ruling class. As part of the endeavor to protect their throne, Saudi rulers have over the years taken into account some of the needs and aspirations of their own people and their neighbors while ensuring that royal power remains intact. This has been their approach towards the Palestinian cause. Formally, Saudi rulers have always supported the rights of the Palestinian people and provided financial and humanitarian assistance but they will not do anything that will jeopardize continued next page
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their relations with Washington and London who help to protect their throne — and who at the same time safeguard the interests of Israel. Perhaps the exception was King Feisal who though a close ally of the West also sought to use oil as a tool to exact some concessions from the US for the Arab cause in the 1973 War. Saudi’s peripheral role in the politics of the region changed through two events in 1979. There was much consternation in Riyadh over the Iranian Revolution for a number of reasons. The Saudi elite saw the Revolution as a challenge to feudal monarchies in the region. Its egalitarian thrust articulated through Islam was also at total odds with the type of Wahabi Islam practiced by the House of Saud. For the Saudi elite the fact that Iranian Islam is Shia was also problematic since the majority of Muslims are Sunni. It was around this time that the Saudis began to present the Sunni-Shia dichotomy as a major theological and political schism. It is worth observing that when Iran was under a monarch, before 1979, the Saudi elite who enjoyed a close relationship with the king, Reza Pahlavi, did not see his Shia affiliation as a barrier! Saudi Arabia played a critical role in the war that followed against Iran, bankrolling to some extent the Iraq helmed, US backed, coalition. The Saudis were determined to stop the spread of a pro-republican, anti-monarchical Shia Islam diametrically different from Wahabism. The other event in 1979 which evoked a response from the Saudis was actually outside WANA. This
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was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Saudis worked hand in glove with the US, especially the CIA, in helping to create a huge network of freedom fighters — the mujahideen — from a number of countries who travelled to Afghanistan to liberate the land from what was perceived as a godless invader. Pakistan’s leading intelligence service,
the ISI, was also involved in this exercise. The significance of the entire Afghan episode for this analysis lies in the fact that some of the militant groups that emerged out of the conflict such as Al-Qaeda appear to have strong links to Saudi Arabia. The late Osama bin Laden for instance was a Saudi national with close ties to the Saudi elite. Fifteen out of the nineteen 9-11 hijackers were Saudi. It is alleged that established Saudi personalities helped fund the 9-11 operation. Sunni militants in Iraq fighting a Shia government are said to be supported by Saudi money. This money need not be from the State. It could be private individuals. And since the crisis in Syria erupted in March 2011, state and non-state actors from Saudi Arabia have been heavily involved in not only funding militants but also in arranging for the flow of arms and fighters to the country. Religious preachers from Saudi have been
A R T I C L E S among the most vocal in mobilizing youths to go to Syria to fight an “infidel” Shia government allegedly oppressing the Sunni majority. It is the rhetoric of these Saudis conveyed through You Tube and Face Book that has had a huge impact upon Muslim youths from Kuala Lumpur and Karachi to Birmingham and Berlin. In other words, Saudi money and Saudi preachers have been a crucial factor in the world-wide mobilization of Sunnis against Shias in the context of the Syrian turmoil. What this means is that the Saudis and some other groups in WANA, both Arab and non-Arab, bear some responsibility at least for the growth of terrorist outfits such as the Islamic State (IS). One should add that a lot of the sermons of IS and other preachers of the same ilk are not only blatant distortions of religious teachings but also deceitful misrepresentations of the actual situation in Syria. What is really tragic is that these perversions of truth and reality have led to the death of thousands of mainly young people from so many different parts of the world. When we reflect on how Saudi Arabia has contributed to the upheaval in WANA and compare it to the role of Israel, we will discover that the most significant point of intersection is in their common opposition to Iran. 1979 was in a sense the trigger. For Israel it has been Iran’s challenge to its security in the form of its non-existent nuclear weapons program. For Saudi Arabia it is Iran and the alleged rise of Shia power in the region. It conceals to an extent intra-regional rivalry between two states for power and continued next page
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influence. This brings us to the role of the US. The United States of America My analysis so far has provided numerous instances of how the US maintains its hegemony over WANA. This is a goal that has become more pronounced since the sixties though the US began to develop an interest in the region from the twenties. Oil was the starting-point. It explains why two oil rich monarchies in WANA, Saudi Arabia and Iran, were courted by the US at that time. US oil barons in fact were following in the footsteps of the British who had forged ties with the palace in both countries. There is no need to emphasize that the nation that has served longest as a conduit for the perpetuation of US hegemony in WANA is Saudi Arabia. Immediately after the second world war, a victorious US, through its control over Saudi oil, was able to shape the direction of the rise of Europe from the ashes of the war because Europe was so dependent upon Saudi and other oil exporting states in WANA. The US invariably seeks control over the production and sale of oil. The desire for control is what makes the US an hegemonic power. This has to be distinguished from seeking access to oil which is what most states do. It is partly because they want control over oil that Britain and the US chose to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003. It was also because of the desire for control that the US and other Western powers ousted Muammar Gaddafi and attempted to install proxies to rule oil-rich Libya in 2011.
Invasion and ouster are perhaps extreme examples of the drive towards hegemony. As I have hinted, most of the time, US control over oil — the life-blood of contemporary civilization — within WANA is achieved through the cooperation and collusion of states like Saudi Arabia and the other oil-exporting Arab monarchies. Nearly all these monarchies — it is only too apparent —— are puppet regimes which are only too willing to help the US maintain a tight grip on the region’s oil taps. Saudi Arabia in particular is
especially important to the US because it is the world’s biggest exporter of oil and the leading member of OPEC. To put it differently, the US exercises indirect control over OPEC. Since Saudi Arabia is also in some ways the de facto leader of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the US also has some influence over this 57 member inter-state organization. The significance of the US-Saudi nexus in perpetuating US hegemony has come to the fore again through a recent deal between the two which has resulted in the Saudis flooding the world market with cheap oil with the underlying motive of weakening Iran and Russia, nations which are heavily
A R T I C L E S dependent upon oil and gas as their principal sources of revenue. According to the well-known analyst, William Engdahl, this Saudi operation “is by all appearance being coordinated with a US Treasury financial warfare operation, via its Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, in cooperation with a handful of inside players on Wall Street who control oil derivatives trading.” Saudi Arabia is not the only state in WANA that serves US hegemony. Nearly all of them facilitate US and Western hegemony in different ways and through different arrangements. There are well-equipped US military bases in a number of states, including Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain. Bahrain for instance is home to the US’s Fifth Fleet. Turkey is a longstanding member of NATO. Western economic interests in the form of its multi-national corporations and its financial hubs and instruments dominate the region. Because US hegemony is overwhelming, any attempt on the part of a government or a movement in WANA to strike out on its own is bound to evoke a negative response from countries in the region and the US itself. This has happened on a few occasions. One of the more recent ones would be the gas pipeline agreement signed between the governments of Syria, Iran and Iraq in July 2011 which would have witnessed the construction of a pipeline that would have carried gas from an Iranian port near the huge South Pars gas field to Damascus via Iraq and eventually to Lebanon and from there to Europe. Qatar which continued next page
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has its own pipeline plan and was intending to supply gas to Europe was piqued by the agreement. This, it is alleged, was one of the reasons why it joined Saudi in a concerted effort to overthrow Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad through funding terrorists and recruiting so-called Jihadists. Certain influential lobbies in Washington provided moral and material support to this effort since Assad was and is an opponent of US hegemony. Washington, it should be observed, also did something else which I have alluded to: it played Shias against Sunnis and Sunnis against Shias. Dividing and ruling or dividing and dominating their targets is what hegemonic or imperial powers have indulged in right through history. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and some other states, are partners of the US in this diabolical game but with their own agenda. Israel is in the same category. Exploiting the Sunni-Shia divide is one of the many facets of hegemony which Israel and the US pursue together. It can be argued that since the sixties they have been partners in hegemony in the suppression and oppression of the Palestinian people, in the conquest of Iraq, in the drive to oust Assad in Syria and in the targeting of Iran. The convergence of US-Israeli interests in these hegemonic adventures conceals a deeper, symbiotic relationship between the two nations. I have already discussed how this relationship developed over time through the influence exerted by powerful Israeli Zionist lobbies in the US.
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It is largely because of this relationship that Israel has been able to secure what it wants from the wars it has fought and the assaults it has conducted in the region. No other nation on earth has been protected by hegemonic power to this extent. And the protected nation has been able to use and exploit the hegemon to such a degree that one wonders whether it is the US or Israel that sets US foreign policy in WANA. For many observers, it is a clear case of the tail wagging the dog.
Israel and Saudi Arabia help to perpetuate US hegemony over WANA. The US in turn protects Israeli and Saudi interests. From all accounts, their relationship is solid and strong. And yet, cracks have appeared in their relationship of late. Why? What does it portend for the future? Conclusion. The Israeli and Saudi elites are annoyed and angry that the US and other western powers, together with Russia and China have entered into talks with Iran on its nuclear program. The aim is to reach a comprehensive agreement that will ensure that Iran will never acquire nuclear weapons while continuing nuclear research for peaceful purposes which is the right of every
A R T I C L E S sovereign state. Both sides are hoping to achieve agreement by November 24 2014. Once an agreement is forged, the Iranian leadership would want the US and Europe to lift all the unjust sanctions imposed upon Iran over many years. The sanctions have had an adverse impact upon the Iranian economy though it should be emphasized that even before the present round of harsh sanctions, the Iranian government had been open to negotiations on its nuclear program. In fact, the present President, Hassan Rouhani, was Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator under Muhammad Khatami when the latter was President from 1997 to 2005. This willingness to negotiate, to seek an amicable solution, to end the sort of confrontation which may lead to war and violence, on the part of Iranian leaders such as Rouhani, Khatami and another former President, Rafsanjani, would be one of the reasons why there is a serious endeavor now (with the ascension of Rouhani) to resolve the nuclear issue once and for all. The Iranian people on the whole have always been inclined towards the peaceful resolution of disputes, as reflected in their political culture. For certain important reasons the present US leadership too may be a little more inclined towards a peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue than say George Bush Junior was. A couple of these reasons may have something to do with Israel and Saudi Arabia. continued next page
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Israel’s cruel and callous treatment of Palestinians borne out by its systematic and periodic massacres of the poor and powerless inhabitants of Gaza since 2008 has begun to create some revulsion among Americans themselves. It is significant in this regard that a recent Google Consumer Survey in the US shows that 6 out of 10 Americans believe that the US gives too much aid to Israel. President Barack Obama himself has been less than enthusiastic about endorsing all the policies and actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank would be among those actions which has alienated many of his supporters in the US and more so in Europe. It is because of this that Obama and some others in Washington are now seeking some
balance in the US’s approach to politics in WANA. Reaching out to Iran may be part of that shift. At the same time, there may also be some disillusionment in the corridors of power in Washington with the Saudi elites arising from their direct and oblique involvement with the brutal and barbaric violence of militant Wahabi oriented jihadi groups in Iraq and Syria. Of course, the US itself, as this analysis has revealed, has been
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colluding with these militant groups. Nonetheless, since their violence has become an acute embarrassment to all those who have been hobnobbing with the militants, US leaders now appear to be distancing themselves from the more obvious funders and sponsors of terror like the Saudi rulers. Besides, more Americans and Europeans today are aware of how retrogressive and atavistic the Saudi ruling class is on matters pertaining to women, human rights, and relations with non-Muslims and even other Muslim groups. The changing attitudes of US elites to Israeli and Saudi elites which are still in their nascent stage should be viewed against the backdrop of declining US and Western power itself. It is partly because the US and the West are no longer as dominant in the global economy as they once were, and are less capable of calling the shots on international issues of political and strategic import that their approach to political actors in WANA may also be changing somewhat. The US in particular has witnessed how in spite of all the attempts to emasculate Iran, it remains resilient. Tehran’s solid ties with Russia and China have enhanced its resilience and the US is aware of this. It is quite conceivable that some quarters in Washington realize the importance of coming to terms with a nation like Iran within this changing global landscape. To all these factors, one should also perhaps add the quiet, behindthe-scenes role of various individuals on both sides of the divide who are determined to lessen
A R T I C L E S tensions and misunderstandings between the US and Iran. Some of these men and women are former diplomats. Their “track 2”dialogue over a few years has paved the way
for the talks between Iran and the US and other powers which are now in their final stage. There is no guarantee that an agreement will be clinched. The obstacles are formidable. Israeli and Saudi opposition remains uncompromising. But if an agreement is finalized and it respects Iran’s right to pursue its peaceful nuclear program and at the same time leads to the elimination of sanctions against the country, it would have a huge impact upon WANA and the world. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia will have to adjust to a new political reality where their interests will not be assured any more of unequivocal endorsement from the US. This could well induce changes in their policies and politics towards their WANA neighbors. A new balance of power within WANA and between WANA and the US may have a salutary impact upon regional and world politics. 2 November 2014 Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just World
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