Tehran can afford war, but only so long as it stays secret
A series of Frankensteins
Compensating the late terrorist, Qasem Soliemeni, was part of the Iran nuclear deal. According to the Daily Beast:
Among the big winners in the agreement to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, count a notorious and shadowy Iranian general who helped Shiite militias in Iraq kill American soldiers and who has come to the rescue of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
You’ll find his name, Qasem Soleimani, buried in an annex (PDF) of the unremittingly dense Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, along with some of his colleagues from the senior ranks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as its various divisions and corporate fronts. They’ll all be granted some sanctions relief as part of the U.S.-brokered deal to curtail Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.
For those who don’t trust the Daily Beast, here’s AEI:
Buried on page 95 of the draft of the nuclear agreement released by the Russians is the fact that sanctions will be lifted on Qassem Soleimani, head of the Qods Force, the elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps charged with export of revolution. In short, Soleimani is responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any living terrorist, and perhaps any dead one as well. Lifting sanctions on Soleimani is like agreeing to do business with Osama Bin Laden on September 12, 2001.
Imagine we could dturn back the calendar to the Arab Spring. There’s an apparent opportunity to overthrow Assad by arming his enemies. The fallen Khadaffy’s arsenal is available. What could be more natural than using these to arm anti-Assad forces?
But things don’t go exactly to plan as it turns out that many of those armed go on to form the core of an emergent group called ISIS. At first it seems like a JV team. Then the Europeans get worried it could become a problem.
In fact it becomes a catastrophe.
The big US battalions have just been withdrawn from Iraq, the focus being shifted to Afghanistan and there’s nothing available to suppress the ISIS frankenstein. But wait! There’s Iran, a natural enemy of Sunni militants and pretty competent too. The problem with using them vs ISIS is all the legacy sanctions dating back to Carter and exacerbated by its killing of hundreds of Americans in Iraq.
Suddenly like a flash of genius comes the inspiration to reach a nuclear deal with Tehran. But it’s not really primarily about nukes but normalizing relations with Tehran. To sell the proposal the deal is cast as a UN agreement and never submitted for formal treaty ratification to the Senate.
The JCPOA is born. Even Soleimani gets a sanctions break. His proxy forces help stem ISIS but the results are inconclusive. Eventually America has to make other alliances, as with the Kurds, to finish ISIS off. With ISIS dead, the successor Frankenstein, Iran, becomes a problem.
It comes under scrutiny from a hostile administration. Things really start to go wrong when JCPOA unravels. Frankenstein goes off his meds and starts killing American troops again. It even threatens to seize the US embassy, like it did before. So America belts it one and it runs off into the night, headless for now with Soleimani dead. But it’ll be back.
The law of unintended consequences, of successive monsters, still haunts the region. Worse it haunts Washington. There are enough secret fiascos to sink a dozen careers. For the nth time the problem is: what now?
Don’t take the calender for granted
You could lose it you know.
Ten years later
Looking back at the Belmont Club’s assessment of Obama’s War of Necessity in Afghanistan.
Inquisitors in a world of glass houses
How the death of privacy has disrupted our social contract
Looking for the off ramp on the road to hell
Washington, city poisoned by secrets.
The sky isn’t falling
Even though the news might make you think so.
The age of control is ending
What the UK election says about the 21st century.
Unintended consequences
Have the attempts to restore the status quo ante — go back to 2016 — damaged the political DNA?
Homo narrans and the loss of certitude
A long, best effort attempt to put the different pieces on the troubled state of civilization at PJMedia VIP.
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/the-future-is-coming-at-the-elites-like-a-freight-train/
Rebels without a cause
Unrest is sweeping the world. Can the centuries old categories of Left vs Right, Reactionary vs Progressive still explain it?
Creating a narrative
The reliance on classified briefings and special knowledge for news is one way to bring back the vanished age of Cronkite.
No prisoners
The perverse incentives of well intentioned policy.
Can you ever regain control of your data
Or are you doomed to lose it both to those would steal it and those who would protect you?
The coming upheaval
The old world order is giving way to something new. But what?
The declaration of war
One small part of Barr’s broadside
We are now in a crazy position that, if we identify a terrorist enemy on the battlefield, such as ISIS, we can kill them with drone or any other weapon. But if we capture them and want to hold them at Guantanamo or in the United States, the military is tied down in developing evidence for an adversarial process and must spend resources in interminable litigation.
The Barr declaration suggests the attempt to restrict the rebellion to one man has failed. It is now a cause of it’s own. I don’t think this is Trump anymore. This is a post Trump challenge to the Left.
Epstein guards refuse deal
The alternative to doing time was unappealing.
https://apnews.com/11ae6142bbb84af49daae80b94f1b4e2?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP
The lost “old normal”
Maybe the way back to stability is to start from scratch.
Things you ought to know
According to a quick survey of videos of people introducing her, American and British pronunciations are roughly the same (Maxwell was the founder of an environmental nonprofit, a philanthropic job that often took her to conferences and TedTalks, and before the U.N.). These people, who I assume confirmed how to pronounce the name before saying it in front of others, say “Gee-lane,” with a hard g. For the second syllable, some hit the “–ane” pretty hard, as in “Gee-lane,” or “G’lane.” Others go with “-ahn,” as in “Gee-lahn”. It depends on regional accent (this guy sounds like he’s saying “Glen” when introducing her at a conference some years ago). But regardless of accent, the g is a hard one and the s is silent. “Gee-lane.”
Big Brother
“The data involved in the initiative encompasses lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories, and amounts to a complete health history, including patient names and dates of birth.”