PREDICTIONS FOR 2011: Jennifer Rubin writes in The Washington Post:
Few would argue that in 2010 the world became less dangerous and unpredictable. … What’s ahead in 2011?
Cliff May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tells me:
I can’t predict what will happen in 2011. I can predict what won’t happen: No end to the war being waged against the West by both Shia and Sunni jihadists; no separate peace for Israel no matter how much President Obama and/or Israelis want it; no dynamic economic recovery in any nation that does not encourage entrepreneurism; no reform at the chronically corrupt and ironically named United Nations; no cure for the common cold.
Continuing with the "don’t get your hopes up" world view, Daniel Gordis, senior vice president of the Shalem Center, offers this:
Bibi Netanyahu will weather all the storms and will be in office throughout the year.
U.S.-Israel relations, at a pretty much all time low, will not improve much.
Gilad Shalit, tragically, will not be released, though we should each have a Matzah on our table every Shabbat as a symbolic reminder of his affliction.
Israel-Turkey relations will not warm in any significant way.
Israel will not attack Iran in 2011 (though I wish I were wrong), though more Iranian experts will die mysteriously and other snags will hit their system.
The U.S. will also not attack Iran, and sanctions will not be significantly toughened. The West will continue to demonstrate its moral failure and will abdicate responsibility to protect the freedoms we would not want to live without but are too cowardly to actually fight to defend.
On a more optimistic note, incoming House Foreign Affairs Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen says: "We say it every New Year’s Eve: Next year in Havana! One day, it WILL be true!"
More here.
IRAN UPDATE: Israeli officials believe Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been set back:
They now assess Iran is three years from having a nuclear weapon, owing to "technical" problems in the nuclear weapons program. …
The apparent explanation of the longer time line is the destruction caused by a worm, introduced into Iran’s nuclear-related computer system that technical experts claim has virtually destroyed parts of the system.
IT analysts say the Stuxnet worm has destroyed up to 1,000 centrifuges in a key Iranian facility. …
The IT experts claim the worm only could have been developed by cyber warriors working for national governments because of the resources involved. Some suggest that Israel and several European states pooled their knowledge of Iranian IT systems that support the nuclear program. …
The implication is that Israel successfully attacked Iran’s nuclear program without firing a shot. That is not confirmed, but the prospect is both scary and tonight’s good news.
More here.
However:
U.S. officials are worried Iran could deploy a new generation of centrifuges that would shorten the time needed to enrich uranium and reach nuclear weapon status.
More here.
FDD's Mark Dubowitz writes in The Wall Street Journal of a
major new front in the global effort to tighten the economic screws on Tehran. Under pressure from the United States, the Indian central bank last week blocked domestic buyers of Iranian oil from making payments through the Asian Clearing Union. …
The Indian government decision to shut off the ACU as a clearing-house for oil trades is only one part of a bigger effort. The Europeans have already cut tech transfers to and future investments in Iranian oil and natural gas, severely damaging Tehran’s ability to sustain current production. The Iranian energy industry is now in a slow-motion death spiral. To accelerate its demise, the Obama administration should take a number of other steps …
[S]anctions need time to work. The near-miraculous attack of the Stuxnet virus on Iran’s centrifuges and the untimely deaths of key Iranian nuclear scientists may have bought the administration that time, and further strengthened those who want to use economic sticks to beat back Iran’s nuclear aspirations.
Iranian crude oil sanctions are the next logical step -- especially after the U.S., EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Canada have targeted energy investment in, and technology transfer to, the Iranian energy industry, and Washington has cracked down on Iran’s refined petroleum imports. Companies active in the Iranian crude oil market that want to be ahead of the next sanctions curve might want to start looking for alternative suppliers.
More here.
The Journal runs an accompanying editorial noting that
Delhi is changing its tune as sanctions momentum builds. …
While it’s laudable that India is making trade with Iran more difficult in the short term, its action won’t matter much if companies simply shift their trade to other willing conduits. Iran still exports around three-quarters of its oil to Asian nations, including China, Japan and South Korea.
Yet the more countries that enact sanctions, the harder it will be for companies to justify the business. Under U.S. law, Treasury can ban companies that transact with Tehran either explicitly or through a third party. Whatever their public rhetoric, Indian companies will not want to be on such a U.S. blacklist.
More here.
Reza Kahlili asks: Is Iran About to Test a Nuclear Bomb In North Korea?
[R]eports from inside Iran indicate that a team of Iranian nuclear scientists have been sent to North Korea and that the two governments have agreed on a joint nuclear test in North Korea with a substantial financial reward for the Kim Jong-Il government.
It is no secret that Iran and North Korea are collaborating in a ballistic missile program.
More here.
The Economist reports that Iran's economy
could lead to Mr Ahmadinejad’s downfall. Many of Iran’s 76m-odd people in 2011 are going to feel a more painful pinch than at any time since the war with Iraq ended in 1988. Unemployment, according to official figures, has been rising inexorably -- and will go higher still. Given that the definition of employed includes those working only a few hours a week and that women are excluded from the figures, the official rate of 15% recorded towards the end of 2010 is surely an underestimate; the official figure for the jobless young was 29% and rising.
The production of oil, the country’s main source of income, has been steadily falling due to a lack of technology and investment. In 1978 Iran produced 6m barrels a day; in 2000, 4.5m; most recently, 3.5m. This will fall further in 2011.
The officially recorded inflation rate in late 2010 was 9%; the unofficial figure is reckoned to be at least 30%. The price of many essential items has doubled in the past four to five years.
Meanwhile, sanctions are biting. The increasing difficulty Iran has in using the international banking system is making it ever harder for the country to get credit or foreign investment.
But the trickiest issue for Mr Ahmadinejad in 2011 is his proclaimed policy of gradually removing subsidies that have enabled poor Iranians to get essential goods and utilities, including petrol, gas, electricity, cooking oil and bread, for very little money. The president seems determined to reduce subsidies, alongside a complex compensation scheme to soften the blow to the poor. If he retreats, his authority will be weakened. If he presses ahead, he could provoke another bout of anger in the streets.
More here.
However:
Most of Iran’s biggest crude buyers in Asia are finding ways around difficulties in financing oil trade and see little disruption in 2011 flows after cuts this year, even as a dispute over payment methods threatens to stall sales to India.
Iran is OPEC’s second-largest exporter, and around three-quarters of its 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of exports flow to Asia.
International sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme have tightened this year, but United Nations measures do not forbid the purchase of Iranian crude. Only the United States prohibits oil firms from buying Iran’s oil.
Still, sanctions on the financial sector have made all transactions including in oil more difficult, and the United States has put pressure on countries trading with the Islamic Republic to abandon dealings.
More here.
Reuters reports:
Iran’s day-to-day business is being affected by tighter international, U.S. and European Union sanctions imposed in response to Western fears the country’s nuclear activities are aimed at developing bombs. …
Following are details on firms that have been moving away from Iran in the last six months and on others still dealing with the country:
More here.
FYI: FDD provided the USG (and in some cases the Europeans) detailed information on many of these companies and publicly identified them in FDD reports and articles.
David Feith says that HSBC (formerly the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is shilling for Iran. The details are here.
WHY MAHMOUD DON’T READ SO GOODLY: The Washington Post reports:
Iran is overhauling its education system to rid it of Western influence, the latest attempt by the government to fortify Islamic values …
Dozens of professors have already retired or been fired on the grounds that they did not sufficiently support the new policy.
The changes are aimed at offsetting the growing influence of a middle class that increasingly embraces individualism and shares modern aspirations. …
Many students, professors and parents voice the fear that the plans will only undermine Iran’s traditionally high academic standards. The three years of academic and curricular purges that followed the revolution, they say, stalled the intellectual development of Iranian youths. …
"The Program for Fundamental Evolution in Education and Training," envisages schools becoming "neighborhood cultural bases," where teachers will provide "life" guidance, assisted by selected clerics and members of the paramilitary Basij force.
More here.
AFTER NEW START: In my column this week, I note:
National-security hawks lost a battle last week when 71 members of the Senate -- not all of them Democrats -- voted to ratify New START. The treaty limits America’s non-nuclear long-range weapons. Its verification provisions are not as rigorous as those negotiated in the 1991 START treaty. And, perhaps most troubling, the Russians have made clear that they view the agreement as limiting America’s deployment of a comprehensive system of defenses against missile attacks.
President Obama insists that the treaty does not mandate such constraints. What’s more, he has gone on record, for the first time, unambiguously supporting missile defense. National-security hawks -- not all of them Republicans -- should now ask him to back that up with funds for the development, testing, and deployment of missile defenses. …
Were we to deploy a comprehensive missile-defense system, it would be senseless for most nations to invest in offensive nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Such weapons would become obsolete. Those who hope to rid the world of nuclear weapons entirely should think of missile defense as a means toward that end -- a better means than reducing our own nuclear arsenal in the hope that foreign despots will be moved to emulate us rather than seek advantages over us.
More here.
IBD opines:
The U.S. may have ended Russia’s superpower status, but in speeding through the New START treaty we are letting its gangster successors threaten our own superpower status.
More here.
THE AF-PAK THEATER: FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht writes:
We shouldn’t fool ourselves: If we take away American troops on the ground, our ability to wage war against Al Qaeda-affiliated forces in Afghanistan will cease to exist. …
The Taliban–Al Qaeda fusion, which is already advanced (it’s much more intertwined now than it was on September 11, 2001), will continue on both sides of the Durand Line. Pakistan is today a headache. But it could get a lot worse. This may seem like an abstract scenario to many on the left and the "realist" right (September 11 is, in American years, a long time ago), but to the CIA, which remains the vanguard in our battle against Islamic militancy, it might not be. And in that, there is hope. As much as Langley may now despise the Pakistanis, we are still wedded to them. And a bad marriage here is much, much better than an acrimonious divorce.
More here.
I debated the Af-Pak conflict on CNN's Parker Spitzer last week. The clip is here.
SAUDI UPDATE: Actually, there’s not much to update. Saudi textbooks continue to convey hateful, intolerant, and extremist content and to sanction the killing of "unbelievers." Jennifer Rubin writes:
We’ve done nothing to cajole the Saudis into cleaning up their textbooks, which find their way into Muslim schools around the globe.
More here.
IRAQ UPDATE: The oil is flowing:
Iraq’s new oil minister says production has hit the highest level in two decades as Baghdad drives to challenge Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil producer. But the going is going to be tough.
Oil Minister Abdul-Karim Elaibi claimed Monday that output had increased 100,000 barrels a day to 2.6 million bpd and will hit higher targets "sooner than expected."
Iraq plans to boost production to as much as 12 million bpd by 2017, which would put the Iraqis more or less alongside Saudi Arabia’s current capacity.
But that’s a target many in the global energy industry say is far too ambitious and unlikely to be met.
More here.
HALF A LOAF? A joint survey conducted by the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah found that a majority of Palestinians oppose compromise on key core issues.
More here.
This corroborates the findings of “Palestinian Pulse,” an FDD social media study. More on that study here.
ISRAEL/TURKEY UPDATE: Netanyahu rules out apology to Turks over flotilla.
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