Geopolitics / Middle East

• Azerbaijan's International Energy Aspirations Raise Tensions in Middle East

  Azerbaijan has been expanding its international energy aspirations further afield over the past several years, gaining assets in Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Georgia, and offering to build installations in Libya, but it wasn’t until it entered the Israeli market that anyone took much interest in these developments, with Iran particularly on edge. Last fall, a subsidiary of Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company SOCAR bought a 5 percent stake in Israel’s main oil field Med Ashdod, working alongside Israel’s Shemen Oil & Gas Resources (SMOG) consortium. It wasn’t until late April this year that this became an issue, when…

• Washington Not Equipped to Deal with Yemen

  As the US launches airstrikes on al-Qaeda targets in Yemen after a thwarted suicide bombing attempt on a US-bound flight, we are about see exactly how ill-equipped Washington is to deal with the complexities that are shaping the conflicts in Yemen. Unlike the attempted bombing of a US-bound aircraft on Christmas Day 2009, when a Nigerian man was thwarted by passengers on the plane while US intelligence agencies remained unaware of the situation, this latest bomb plot was actually (reportedly) carried out by a Saudi asset to a CIA and British MI5 operation to infiltrate Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula…

• As Yemen's Water Runs Dry, al-Qaida Runs Rampant

  We’ve talked about the internal struggle waging in Yemen to control its oil resources, the revenues from which can buy patronage for a new regime, but water is the other liquid gold informing the conflict, and as al-Qaeda steps in to wield control over a country running dry, it becomes easier to map the conflict in terms of water shortage. As a showdown with Houthi rebels ensues in the north, separatists fight government forces in the south, groups linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) step up attacks and make territorial gains, a divided military fights itself, split between…

• Why the West is Supporting an Anti-Western Solution in Syria

  A Jihadist, Anti-Western Agenda is Being Forced on Syria The international community has been blindly following a jihadist-driven agenda for Syria; a solution the majority of Syrians reject, but which Turkey and Qatar have been driving. It begs the question: why are analysts in Washington — or Paris or London — not digging more deeply into what is really happening, given that the solution they have endorsed is so profoundly anti-Western? The key test of the Annan plan and ceasefire to help end the widespread violence in Syria came on Friday, April 13, 2012, in the aftermath of the Friday…

• Intelligence Report: Why Prospects of an Israel Iran Conflict Remain Low

  Global security concerns continued, in early April 2012, to be geared around the possibility of armed conflict between Iran and Israel, an issue hedged by a range of other conflicts and issues. The actual prospect of such a conflict, however, remained extremely low, for a variety of reasons, despite the near hysteria of media, and even poorly-reasoned reporting from “professional” intelligence agencies.The ostensible cause of the potential conflict remained the nominal determination of key Western states to ensure that Iran did not acquire the capacity to build nuclear weapons, although even Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has reportedly acknowledged that…

• Syria: Assad Winning as Opposition Counts Friends

  Only a day after the Syrian regime vowed to meet a 10 April deadline to abide by an UN ceasefire resolution and had already purportedly begun to withdraw troops from populated areas, clashes have intensified between regime forces and army defectors and their opposition supporters, leaving at least a dozen people dead on 4 April. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), meaning Saudi Arabia and Qatar, advocate arming the Syrian opposition to fight the regime and for all intents and purposes escalate the conflict into a civil war. Russia warns against this, and China, too. The West, officially, is also against…

• Azerbaijan Reportedly Grants Israel "Airbase Deal" - BAD Idea

  According to a report in the British media, citing the authoritative U.S. journal “Foreign Policy,” U.S. officials have said that Israel's military may have secured access to Azeri strategic air bases that could be used in an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. If the reports are accurate, then Azerbaijan has placed virtually all of its future oil exports on the negotiating table, as its neighboring export sources, Russia and Turkey, have repeatedly stated that they oppose such an assault. Azerbaijan’s prosperity is totally dependent upon on its continued access to its main pipeline export facilities, the Baku-Novorossiisk exports via Russia’s Sea of…

• House of Saud to Meet Yemen's Oil Needs as Sana'a Internally Combusts

  Saudi Arabia has pledged to provide Yemen with 100% of its domestic fuel needs for the months of April and May as the country descends into chaos which threatens to spill over the Saudi border; but the $1.2 million petroleum package from the House of Saud is likely to be hijacked by Yemen’s battling elite as the struggle for patronage spirals out of control. Yemen is perhaps Saudi Arabia’s greatest immediate concern as it has not been able to find a viable solution for containing a dangerous power vacuum in the wake of the deal that forced President Saleh to…

• Treading Cautiously as Iran's Power Struggle Unfolds

  The intelligence “leak” game that has intentionally provided the Obama Administration a temporary way out from under Republican and Israeli pressure to strike Iran is a fortuitous one that perhaps unintentionally recognizes the wider implications of pushing the internal power struggle in Iran to a premature and dangerous end. In recapping the events of this week that saw “intelligence leaks” to the effect that there is no need to attack Iran as there is no imminent threat of it achieving nuclear weapons capabilities and that Israeli intelligence agrees with this assessment, we will bypass the mainstream musings on the obvious:…

• Game is on to Control Yemen's Oil

  Whoever manages to control Yemen’s state resources, and particularly its oil, will be able to wield control over the country’s tribes by restoring the system of patronage relied on by ex-president Saleh for decades. The game to control this system is now intensifying. The playing field in this Yemeni battle is extremely complex, and includes Houthi rebels in the north, separatists in the south, an increasingly emboldened al-Qaeda cluster, a divided military, a new government and a Saleh family network that still controls key positions.                                              A key figure in this equation is General Ali Moshen al-Ahmar, the country’s top military…