THE ROVING
EYE The
sound of Munich By Pepe
Escobar
The (geopolitical) hills are
alive with the sound of ... well, not music;
rather that post-industrial noise, more Kraftwerk
than Schubert, oozing from the recently completed
49th edition of the Munich Security Conference.
Who wouldn't give a Goldman Sachs bonus to
be briefed on what was whispered, very privately,
by a selected cocktail of
politicians, ministers, generals and spies
congregating in the gilded corridors of the Hotel
Bayerischer Hof in Munich.
At least one
knows what is on the record. And the stars of the
show are definitely not musical. It's more like
Bayern against Barcelona in a Champions League
match; call it the Biden vs Lavrov match.
What we say, goes Let's start
with US Vice President Joe Biden: "The United
States is a Pacific power. And the world's
greatest military alliance [the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization] helps make us an Atlantic
power as well. As our new defense strategy makes
clear, we will remain both a Pacific power and an
Atlantic power."
Another Goldman Sachs
bonus to hear what our friends in the Zhongnanhai
in Beijing make of all this.
Biden also
stressed that in terms of the Obama 2.0
administration's leading from behind strategy, the
"comprehensive approach" implies the use of "a
full range of tools at our disposal - including
our militaries".
He even doubled down,
praising the Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya
quagmires/disasters as models and implying the
global war on terror (GWOT) does, indeed, go on
forever, (see Asia
Times Online, January 23, 2013) as in the US
"cognizant of an evolving threat posed by
[al-Qaeda] affiliates like AQAP in Yemen,
al-Shabaab in Somalia, AQI in Iraq and Syria and
AQIM in North Africa".
And then there was
Iran. The light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel
geopolitical crowd may have stressed Biden's
acknowledgement that the Obama 2.0 administration
did not rule out a direct dialogue with Tehran,
but still he was keen to stress, "Our policy is
not containment." No wonder Iranian Foreign
Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said yes, let's talk,
but only if Washington is "serious".
"Serious", in the context, means that
Washington must lift its Himalayan-scale
preconditions - which include forbidding Tehran
any uranium enrichment, to which it is entitled
under the Non Proliferation Treaty, and keeping
sanctions ad infinitum.
Finally, on Syria,
Biden stuck to the same old script: Bashar
al-Assad is "a tyrant, hell-bent on clinging to
power", who "is no longer fit to lead the Syrian
people" and "must go". But in true
leading-from-behind form, that translates in
practice into no US intervention, to the despair
of the latest Washington-Doha-concocted Syrian
"national coalition".
What you say is
rubbish Now for Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov. He actually met Moaz al-Khatib, the
leader of the new Syrian opposition coalition, who
- something unthinkable even a while ago - also
happened to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Salehi.
On both Iran and Syria, Lavrov was
laser-like. On Iran, he stressed the need for
"incentives" so Iran is drawn to serious talks:
"We have to convince Iran that it is not about
regime change." On Syria, he stressed the
"continuing tragedy" was due to "the persistence
of those who say that priority number one is the
removal of President Assad".
So listen to
that buzzing, Kraftwerk-style sound out of Munich
of the leader of the Syrian opposition meeting
representatives of the twin top supporters of
Assad - Iran and Russia. We will only see what
this remarkable development really means in the
long run. What we know for now is that it happened
only a few days after al-Khatib said he was ready
to talk to the Assad regime - on the condition
160,000 political prisoners were freed (Where do
they keep all these people? In a huge gaol under
the Crac des Chevaliers crusader castle?)
Still, in the grand scheme of geopolitical
tectonic plates colliding in Eurasia, the future
of Syria is a detail compared to the Big One: how
to breach the Wall of Mistrust between Washington
and Tehran.
Any real negotiation must
imperatively involve Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Khamenei - or at least someone who enjoys his
unconditional trust. A first step is what everyone
will be following like the ultimate cliffhanger;
the meeting between the P5+1 (the five permanent
members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany)
and Iran, on February 25 in Kazakhstan.
Quite a few geopolitical actors are
already dreaming of a direct bilateral meeting
between Americans and Iranians, this day in
Astana, signaling the beginning of the end of an
unbelievably nasty Cold War. Not by accident there
have been rumors that Ali Larijani, the president
of the Majlis (the Iranian parliament), a surefire
presidential candidate in next June's elections,
and a protege of the Supreme Leader, has been to
the US twice in secret since the New Year, meeting
US negotiators.
Assuming this will be the
beginning of a detente - and that, realistically,
may be light years away - expect major trouble
coming from the usual suspects, Israel and those
paragons of democracy of the Gulf
Counter-revolution Club, also known as Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC).
Israel, in
Munich, has already admitted, tersely, that it has
recently
bombed Syria, and will do it again. Not to
mention the fact that the Bibi-Barak duo still
reserves itself the right to bomb Iran.
The House of Saud, for its part, will go
berserk if there is any breakthrough in
Washington-Tehran relations. The whole strategy of
the House of Saud - in terms of its
ultra-reactionary counter-revolution against the
Arab Spring - was to turn it into a Sunni-Shi'ite
war, fully corroborated by Washington, as in
"virtuous" Sunnis (and especially Wahhabis) like
themselves against an "axis of evil" of apostates
Tehran, Assad and Hezbollah.
To add to the
sandstorm the House of Saud - to put it mildly -
is in a royal mess. Check this
delicious account of what's going on behind the
nepotistic succession of King Abdullah. And then
check what passes for US "intelligence", courtesy
of Stratfor
- which is now admitting what Asia Times Online
has been reporting for over a year now about
Salafi-jihadis in Syria, and still they defend the
House of Saud.
The bottom line; even if
there is an Obama 2.0 administration real effort
to breach the Wall of Mistrust, the effort itself
may be blown up not only by Israeli and Saudi
"friends" but the enemy within.
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