Congratulations, President Ahmadinejad!

It couldn't happen to a more deserving sort of guy. Kisses, bright blooms in yellow, big smiles--and empty seats in the audience. What a start for the second term as President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Wow!

Making Ahmadinejad's inauguration even sweeter must have been the White House's official media flack, Robert Gibbs, calling the Orator-in-Chief, "the elected leader." This is more than previous administrations have done when perversions of election have been employed to sanitize the assumption of public office. This is definitely an honor for Mr Ahmadinejad.

And, to really start off the Ahmadinejad second term in fine style, Iran has three, count them, three honest-to-Allah American hostages. This out performs North Korea, which only managed to snatch two of the highly desirable bargaining commodity.

Perhaps the re-elected(?) president hopes to emulate Kim Jong-il. Mayhaps he entertains happy visions of "private citizen" Bill Clinton jetting in to have a few hours happy talk and then depart with the "pardoned" US spies.

What a way to start off the old second term: Fantasies of secret high-level, back channel talks with senior US diplomats leading to an agreement. You send us one former American president and we give you three captives.

Great photo op. Great chance to create speculation that this shake-grin-and-pardon dynamic will lead to further diplomatic exchanges. Great way to buy more time as the centrifuges spin merrily along.

Even if the dream does not become reality, President Ahmadinejad has one thing going for him. Iran is probably close enough to having break out capacity that there is no need to worry about the very remote possibility of the US orchestrating the ever-rumored "crippling" sanctions.

The highest probability is that Iran will possess a rudimentary but diplomatically effective nuclear arsenal by this time next year. The Hillary Clinton "defense umbrella" statement is virtual confirmation that the US National Intelligence Estimate of 2007 was based on a false predicate.

The correct predicate as has been hinted at by recent European estimates is that the Iranian technicians developed and tested (without fissionable materials) the "physics package" for an implosion type uranium bomb by the time the US invaded Iraq. That, more than fear of the US doing the same to Iran, caused the suspension of the active R&D effort pending the availability of sufficient weapons grade uranium.

Since there is no indication the Obama administration is willing to run the risks which attend automatically upon the employment of the "military option," there is no reason to believe that Iran is going to remain a nuclear-free zone much longer. With sanctions irrelevant and the use of force unrealistic, the only remaining option is the acceptance of Iran as a very junior member of the Global Nuke Club. Kind of gives the shivers, doesn't it?

Of course, Mr Ahmadinejad has ambitions beyond presiding over the creation of the "Mahdi" bomb. He is possessed of global ambition. On Ahmadinejad's first watch Iran made strenuous efforts to penetrate the Horn of Africa from Djibouti to Tanzania. Not content with outflanking the Gulf States, Statesman Ahmadinejad has pursued a love match with Hugo Chavez too well known to deserve comment. This (perhaps) folie a deux has been complemented with flirtation directed at Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

One must never overlook the blushing successes of Ahmadinejad's version of diplomacy in the heart of the Mideast. The relation with Syria. The proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. The prongs of subversion in the Gulf. And on, and on. It has been a sort of mirror image of the "pactomania" which typified the days of John Foster Dulles fifty years and more ago.

Then there has been the big event, backroom relations with China and, to a slightly lesser extent, Russia. These, in turn, have protected Iran's connection with fellow rogue state, North Korea, which has so often served so well as a stalking horse for Tehran.

All in all, Mr Ahmadinejad has crafted a lofty inverted pyramid of diplomatic and economic relations balanced on the thin point of revolutionary Islamist ideology buttressed by terror, subversion, oil revenues, and case hardened intransigence. A magnificent edifice of threat and bluster with little to support it beyond a will and ability to go nuclear, risk civilian lives, employ terror without end, and sheer effrontery.

So much for the upside of the Years of Ahmadinejad and his patron, protector, and soulmate, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei. Now for the termite riddled foundation.

Ahmadinejad may not last his second term. The population of Iran in large part is both restive and sullen, freighted with distrust and disillusion. The opposition has been inefficiently and incompletely suppressed. Fear, not affection nor widely perceived legitimacy sustains the reactionary mullahs and their secular kinsmen in power.

The mullahs themselves are more openly and deeply split between pro- and anti-Khamenei factions than has been the case previously. Not even the Revolutionary Guard is immune to the effects of both the split and the dynamics of personalism which color so much of Shia Iranian institutions. Certainly the Iranian regular army and police have already shown the effects of the divisions within; the Revolutionary Guard is not far behind.

The economy is in the tank. Inflation and unemployment are in a neck-to-neck race to see which can reach lunar orbit heights first. Un- and underemployment have hit the educated urban youth the hardest. No future and a lot of time to think about it on the part of people young enough not to be risk averse has been the ruination of previous centralised regimes. Iran is not immune to this.

Much of Ahmadinejad's base of support is bought and paid for. His version of Islamist populism does not come free--or even cheap. If the promised goodies do not keep flowing, the ranks of the discontented, disaffiliated, and potentially violent will grow.

Further growth of unrest will necessitate further repression. Repression must finally be bloody. Given the martyrdom oriented values which permeate Shia generally and recent Iran in specific, the dynamic is martyrdom breeds more martyrdom. In short, the regime may find itself killing its way not to victory but to defeat.

Ahmadinejad may be able to crow about Iran's "Mahdi" bomb within the next twelve months, but the Iranian people will discover an unpleasant truth or two. They will find out that money spent on bombs and delivery systems is money not spent on economic development. They will discover that atomic bombs do not provide nourishment, jobs, longer lives, better lives, international respect, or even absence of fear.

Most of all, the Iranians, the whole long-suffering lot of them, will be hit in the face with the hard fact that the ambitions of True Believers--of Khamenei, of Ahmadinejad, of those who circle around the center of power--are based upon the misery, fear, and blood of the people in general. They will find out the leaders--from the Grand Ayatollah on down--do not give a dessicated camel turd for the commonweal of the common Iranian.

When that happens, no matter how many the Basji and Revolutionary Guard might kill, the edifice Ahmadinejad and Khamenei built will fall. And fall fast. And fall hard.

It will be like what happened in the Democratic Republic of Germany when the hoi polloi discovered how the leaders lived, how they exploited faith and folk. Here, seemingly secure in power now and forever. A day later, gone, dead, buried in the rubble of the Wall.

ForMin Lieberman Sez "Go To Hell, Syria!"

The Geek has posted a number of times regarding the cruciality of the Golan Heights to a comprehensive Mideast peace. For Syria there is only one real requirement for peace with Israel. That is the return of the Golan to Syria.

Syrian president Bashar Assad made that requirement clear again last Friday in an Army Day Speech. He implied that other matters could be negotiated, but not the status of the Golan.

The embattled, very hardline Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, rejected the Syrian position with a strangely worded statement today. He said that Israel was willing to start negotiations with Syria "without preconditions." Then he went on to add, perversely, that in "any agreement," the Golan Heights "must remain under Israeli control."

Whether the Israeli ForMin was speaking in English or Hebrew, the Geek knowest not. But in either language, the second part of the statement renders the first part (in the words of Nixon's Press Secretary, Ron Zeigler) "inoperative." The overly muscular (in the cranium at least) Lieberman might just as well have said, "Give peace a chance? No way!"

If the Obama administration had the sense necessary to get out of the rain it would be putting pressure on Israel to abandon its Golan land grab rather than insist on a zero expansion in the "settlements" on the disputed West Bank territory. The Palestinians--and the Arabs generally--will not accept a settlement halt as a reason for reciprocal movements. No, they will simply have another set of requirements which must be fulfilled before responding in kind.

Bashar Assad and the Syrian government are, in comparison, rational. Get the Golan back and peace is just jake with them. It would probably be enough to convince the Syrian regime to go ahead with a real peace treaty rather than the Egyptian style "cold peace."

Lieberman has promised to resign if he is indicted for his various alleged mal- and mis-feasances. Those who want to see more of a semblance of peace in the Mideast must be hoping that the Israeli Attorney General will do so without delay. Then, perhaps, just maybe, the US can lean on the Netenyahu government to start working on a deal which sees the Golan back under Syrian control even if that implies some sort of dual authority to protect in the near- and mid-term the interests of both Arabs and Jews living in the region and an equitable sharing of the water resources of the place.

At the moment all that can be said of the Israeli ForMin is that his views on the Golan are (in the fine phrase of George Kennan,) "primitive and unconstructive." To put it mildly.

(Stay) Out Of Africa

The human race started in Africa. A few tens of thousands of years ago, the smart ones left.

Now, before you call the Geek a racist and similar unkind things, consider the growth of the human population when it left behind the continent of its origin. Then, think about the slow growth of the population descended from those who chose to stay behind.

When you have compared the numbers, consider the differences--and the reasons. The world outside of Africa presented a myriad of challenges, of opportunities, of new and different niches in which H. sap could make a living. Pace that misguided, agenda driven perversions of scholarship called the "Afro-centrists," the human race stretched its collective wings and flew once some folks went for the far horizons.

The ones who stayed in the birthing room expanded slowly, painfully. Geology and geography conspired against the fulmination of population, social complexity, technological innovation, economic advance, and political evolution which characterised those descended from the adventurous sorts who shook the dust of Africa off their (initially) bare feet.

Geology conferred upon Africa a plethora of natural resources, primarily those of a mineral sort, which were of no use to the locals until those who left had invented means of extraction, exploitation, and fabrication into useful implements. Balancing the abundance of sub-soil resources, geology provided little arable land, little opportunity to farm in quantities which would support urban centers, an expanding population, and provide the excess that leads to the division of labor and all that arises from that.

Geography, or more precisely, climate, made the agricultural base even weaker. And, it added factors of endemic disease such as malaria which are absent in much of the rest of the world. The deck was environmentally stacked against the Africans from the get-go. The basics which allowed, no, demanded change--advances in technology, organisational complexity, and, never forget, more population--were simply not present in Africa.

Consider that evolution did not even produce a suitable draft animal anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa. No horses. No replacements for the ox, the ass, the camel, the llama. Not until the many times grandchildren of those who left came back, first from the Mideast and then from Europe, were these lacks remedied even in part.

Not until the much maligned Europeans returned searching for resources, global advantage, or simply glory and slaves, were any of the fruits of the human diaspora made available to the stay-behinds. Not all these fruits were sweet, pleasant to be sure. The colonisers and their successors brought many fruits which were bitter and some which were poisoned, but, on balance, the sweet and good over matched the bitter and poisoned.

The foundation of that contention can be seen in the explosive growth of the African population in the Twentieth Century as the agricultural, public health, and infrastructure innovations carried in the packs of the colonisers took hold. Birth rates soared. Infant mortality dropped. Longevity increased.

The availability of food was greatly increased. And, the average cost dropped. Education in the new means of production, of social and political organisation became available with the result that today's Africa has many who are completely at home with the latest gizmos and ideas.

Yes, the Africans paid for the benefits. They were enslaved not only by their own but by Arabs and, later, Europeans and Americans. The resources both of and below the ground were exploited with little reward to those who did the dirty work but much to those locals and foreigners who directed and were enriched by the exploitation.

There are people and organisations who argue that the rest of the world, particularly that part of the world occupied by Western Europe and the US still owe Africa much. There is particular hyperventilation regarding the way in which the "rich" countries of the "north" are stockpiling vaccines and therapeutic drugs against the new flu, A-H1N1. Ban Ki-moon, the World Health Organisation, and a host of non-governmental organisations are demanding that the same countries which are seeking to protect their citizens against a disease which may--or may not--be a global killer send billions of dollars to Africa to fight malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV infection.

These diseases are killers. There is no doubt about that. Malaria, even when it does not kill--and most forms are not all that lethal--has the capacity to enervate the body, the mind, the will. The Geek is personally acquainted with that aspect of malaria. TB has been called the "white plague" for centuries. Historically it has been the leading cause of death by infection in every continent on the globe. And, AIDS has hit Africa like a bio-weapon, wiping out the younger, more productive adults, leaving families and villages empty save for children and grandparents.

It is easy, very easy to invoke that most important of human characteristics--altruism--in the service of fighting deadly diseases in Africa. And elsewhere. Altruism is a good. But, it is not an absolute good.

Consider that Africa now has a population which far outstrips the agricultural carrying capacity of the land. Countries which were formerly either self-sufficient in food or even net exporters are now dependent upon imports, often provided gratis by donor governments including the US.

Additionally, the population of much, if not most, of Africa now vastly exceeds what might be termed the economic carrying capacity of each state and the region as a whole. Poorly considered development schemes coupled with inherent and endemic corruption and governmental inefficiency to assure that opportunities for proper, sustainable development went by without effect on the population beyond the most transient. Some countries have no real economic reason to exist.

Had these places been bypassed by the wave of colonisation, they would have slouched on as they had for tens of centuries with a base of nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralism and hand tool agriculture. The population limitation techniques practiced by women for hundreds of generations would have kept the population within the limits of sustainability.

The brutal fact which must be gripped is that a country without an economic reason to exist particularly if it contains a population which cannot be supported effectively by the agricultural carrying capacity of its land has no claim on others to keep it on life support in perpetuity. The actual nature of humanitarian aid in any of its many forms is one of never-ending life support unless the recipient has the means and will to adjust its population level to that which can be maintained in decency by the local economy and agriculture.

Secretary of State Clinton is off to Africa. Her tour has been widely touted by the White House, even to the extent of a text message from President Obama. Her eleven day jaunt is the longest she has taken since becoming SecState.

Highlighting her trip will be meetings with the leaders of three African "powers": South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria. All three of these are regionally important. South Africa is the largest economy in the Sub-Sahara. Nigeria is the most populous in Africa. And, Kenya is Kenya.

All three are politically, socially, and economically in the deep kim chee.

Since the Anglo-Dutch minority surrendered total power to the indigenous majority, a combination of very bad economic decision making and political unrest has wreaked a species of havoc which has reached the level that electrical power supplies have become unreliable.

Nigeria has a deep split between Christians and Muslims, which recently left more than seven hundred dead. It also has a festering insurgency in the Niger Delta, which has crippled its number one foreign exchange earner: oil.

In Kenya, the fissures opened in last year's election and the consequent violence have been addressed cosmetically but remain wide and unhealed. Additionally, Kenya is under pressure from the refugee hordes crossing from Somalia. And, the Islamist jihadist threat is both real and growing. At the same time the global economic crisis has hit Kenya's foreign exchange position.

SecState Clinton will also meet with leaders from the (sorry, but it is the official name) Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and Liberia. The flacks at the White House describe each of these as being recovering from war.

That description is more or less true regarding Angola and Liberia. It is false regarding the Congo. The fighting hasn't even paused in that resource rich, pathetically misgoverned country. Nor is likely to end simply to comfort the Nice Minded Ms Clinton.

The US has no direct national or strategic interests in play in any of the featured countries. That is other than access to natural resources, some of which have a great economic and military importance. The reason for Ms Clinton's extensive trip might be found in the Chinese diplomatic penetration of Africa in recent years.

That rational explanation has been explicitly rejected by Johnnie Carson, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa as "a Cold War paradigm." There is no rivalry, ASS Carson maintains between the US and its "colleagues from Asia."

Holy lost in space!! What has the ASS-A been smoking? What is the name of his dealer?

Of course, it really doesn't matter if China gets an even firmer grip on Africa. It will cost them money and energy without any great reward. The Chinese have tried the African gambit before. Once was roughly five hundred years ago. The next emperor called it off. More recently the Lads in Beijing tried with a massive set of aid projects which brought new railroads to Tanzania but nothing in return.

The emphasis placed upon women's rights and the travails of rape victims seems to indicate that there is little in the real, substantial goal department involved in the upcoming trip. Yes, the rights of just over half the population of Africa is important. And, rape is a real problem--particularly on the fringes of the endless wars within the less well governed, less socially and politically cohesive states (which is most of them.)

In the last analysis women's rights, rape, human rights, and the rest of the humanitarian concerns are simply the farthest edges of Africa's problems. The centrality is simply that there are too many people today for the economic and agricultural carrying capacity of the region and its many, many diverse states. The next ring out from the center of the problem is that the majority of the governments and their supporting elites are both inefficient and corrupt without any pervasive cultural or intellectual imperative to serve and benefit the commonweal.

Unless and until the SecState and the President can get a grip on these ground truths, there is no reason to go to Africa. We--and they--will be better off without the combination of photo-op and unrealistic expectations.

And, that's a fact, Jack.

The World Gets More "Nuclear" By The Day

About two years ago the US intelligence community issued a special national intelligence estimate which asserted the Iranians had stopped their nuclear weapons R&D effort in 2003 due to fear of an American invasion. The Deep Thinkers of Intelland concluded the mullahs would not be able to get their long desired "Mahdi" bomb for a comfortable number of years. Time to stop worrying, folks. Plenty of time for the diplomats to end the nuisance.

There were dissenters. These were lead by Israel. As usual the Israeli views were tossed off by many as the result of the nation's paranoia and an over reliance on force. So, let's give peace a chance.

There was another option for assessing the halt in the warhead development efforts to which the American NIE made reference. It was the road not taken, perhaps because CIA and other components of the intell community had been burned so badly by the WMD contretemps after the invasion of Iraq. It is also a much less pleasant option to contemplate.

The Iranians had stopped warhead, or, more accurately, physics package design because they had mastered both the design and the technology needed to make the design work. This was a viable base of assessment given the assistance the Iranians had received from A.Q Khan and company in Pakistan. To which may be added the possibility of assistance from China.

The second option, the option holding that the Iranians had done all that they could until amassing sufficient weapons grade uranium has come roaring back to life courtesy of the Times of London. The report, which is standard in today's journalistic practice, is meager in original source documentation, holds that Iran could have a deliverable implosion type uranium weapon within a year of Ayatollah Khamenei giving the go-ahead.

The Israelis have publicly added that Iran now has sufficient low enrichment uranium on hand to produce thirty kilograms of weapons grade final product. This is (more than) enough to make one bomb of Hiroshima level yield--particularly if the Iranians have developed a viable implosion detonation system.

It also deserves mention that the Iranians have an immediate fall back position if the implosion method does not work as advertised. Sixty pounds of highly enriched uranium is sufficient to make a very effective albeit less efficient gun-type bomb. This is what the US employed to level Hiroshima. The technology is so simple that no tests were--or are-necessary.

Golly, this just makes the Geek feel all warm, cuddly, and safe. Bet it does you too, Bucko.

Then there is the word from the antipodes (literally.) The Australians have outed the Burmese covert reactor and plutonium separation plant being built in caves not far from their open and, according to its Russian builders, Non-Proliferation Treaty compliant research reactor. The underground plant is being constructed by and with the North Koreans.

The source of the story is Australia's National University strategic expert, Desmond Ball. Professor Ball, whom the Geek has met professionally more than a few times, is a careful and highly methodical investigator. He has extensively interviewed two defectors from Burma with direct, hands-on knowledge of the covert bomb oriented work in progress. At least one of the two defectors has been debriefed by US intelligence.

This is directly confirmed by the Burmese government's touchy reaction to US unmanned aircraft overflying the North Koreans and Burmese army are beavering away. The junta running the show in Burma (OK, for the politically correct, Myanmar) are both notoriously repressive and possessed of a penchant for the sneaky side of life. This makes them ideally suited for a collaborative effort with North Korea.

Not commented upon is China. China is the T. rex at the dinner table in this matter as it is in so many. The relations between North Korea and China are too well known to deserve even minimal adumbration.

However, it deserves mention that China is both a major trading partner with Burma and its primary diplomatic protection service. Without China's complete cooperation there is no practical way of stopping the flow of men and material between North Korea and Burma. Bets. anyone?

The Ball report is preliminary, very preliminary. As the professor candidly states, it is in need of verification. Even more importantly, it is necessary to determine how far advanced the construction work is.

If one is not overly concerned with safety or the potential of worker casualties, building both a nuclear reactor oriented toward plutonium production and an attached chemical separation facility are neither complex nor long duration. It might be recalled that plutonium was being produced at the Hanford works less than eighteen months after the ground was broken for the plant during World War II.

Moving in the direction of gaining an atomic weapons capacity moves Burma from being a mere pariah state to that of a rogue. The junta has long entertained visions of regional hegemony or at least domination of Thailand and the Indo-Chinese states. A nuclear capacity, even one which is not acknowledged (the Israel option), would serve this ambition very nicely, thank you.

It appears that the nuclear-free world so delightfully outlined by President Obama not that many weeks ago is being challenged by the cold and brutal realities of a world which is and will continue to be dominated by the nation-state, no matter how much the chattering classes of the Western European and American elites decry and deny that fact. The Obama-Clinton-Biden foreign policy giants have more challenges on their plate.

Central to effectively meeting the threats of nuclear proliferation by Iran and, now, Burma, is the cooperation of Russia and China. Neither country has a dog in the fight, at least not directly. At the same time, China holds our notes and we want to press more into their hands. And, the Russians still believe that the insults hurled by Joe Biden a week back are symbolic of some sort of deep and dark plot under development in the White House and Foggy Bottom.

Now, don't you feel a whole lot more confident about the bright, peaceful, prosperous New World of the Obama Transformational Agenda?

Fatah Tries For A Comeback

Nearly a generation has passed since the once dread Fatah had its last plenary conference. The divided, demoralised, and (at least in Gaza) defenestrated group, once headed by Big Time Terrorist and Wannabe Statesman, Yasser Arafat, has fallen on hard times. The conference is scheduled to start shortly in Bethlehem. It looks to be another roadblock to peace.

The draft outline platform calls for such peaceful features as "limited" violence directed against Israeli towns on the wrong side of that ancient artifact from the 1949 truce, the "Green Line," as well as the so-called "wall." The wording of the platform rules out any compromise, or even recognition of Israel--at least as a Jewish state.

The platform--and at least some Fatah leaders such as the worthy in East Jerusalem, Hatem 'Abd Al-Qadar-- demands a "strategic alliance" with Iran. Yep, that would sure be a giant step toward a peace between Arabs and Israel.

While the Likud firebrand and current Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz is over the edge calling the outline draft platform "a declaration of war," the document is neither a roadmap to peace nor a open hand for President Obama. The Men of Fatah seem bound and determined to at least equal the Saudi ForMin in sheer cussedness.

Only by outdoing the Islamist jihadists of Hamas do the Fatahites believe they can overcome both the generation gap and the odor of graft, corruption, impurity, and impiety which clog the noses of so many Palestinans. Only by outdoing the Islamist jihadists of Hamas will it be possible to reclaim the premier status Fatah enjoyed way back when ole Yasser stood at the podium at the UN General Assembly with a pistol on his hip.

Only by outdoing the Islamist jihadists of Hamas will Fatah emerge from the shadows and dominate the lackluster Palestinian Authority and successfully challenge Hamas for the status of capo. Perhaps this is why Mohammed Ghneim has returned after forty years in exile. His return is intended to have two results.

His lesser intention is to boost Mohammed Abbas who has been attacked by another alte kampfer, Farouk Kaddoumi, who accused Abbas of having poisoned Arafat. Sure is a whole lot of brotherly love and good vibes in Fatah, isn't there?

Ghneim's second goal is getting himself elected jefe grande. He sees himself as the anointed, pure successor of Arafat.

Ghneim is an intransigent. That is why he stayed in exile for nearly twenty years after Arafat returned to the West Bank. He had vowed to return only to a "Palestinian state." Now he intends to take the reins of a newly revitalised, again quite militant Fatah and outpoint Hamas so that unity again exists. This, plus a harder hard-line against Israel will make Fatah the single player bringing an (expanded) Palestinian Authority into existence.

None of these developments any more than Hamas' continued bitter opposition to Fatah can give any encouragement to any diplomatic types who vest hope for peace in the upcoming conflab. Nor can a certain Nice Young Man From Chicago currently occupying the Oval Office take any comfort in the launching of Fatah 3.0.

The aging Ghneim is a revolutionary. He still is what Arafat once was many, many years ago, a committed revolutionary coveting a totalistic goal. He is not a statesman in the making. No. The old man of Fatah knows this is his last grasp at the big gold ring. With the help of younger, more radical members of Fatah as well as those whose grudge load against the current PA and Hamas is heavy, he may claim the top job. Then the Mideast will be in for a load more of bloodshed.

After a brief flirtation with a sort of Thermidor, Fatah and the PA is poised for another round of co-option to the left, to the extreme, to more blood and gore. This is a very unpleasant prospect to contemplate. But, it is one on which a grip must be taken.

One might ask if the Obama administration, particularly the President and SecState are up to getting a firm hold on a prickly potential. One might be forgiven for dreading the response.

Iran, Like President Obama, Sucks Up To China

The American president kowtowed and played mood music for the visiting delegation from the Peoples Republic Of China because the US needs the Chinese to continue underwriting the vast expenditures needed for the "Transformation Agenda" and the lunar orbit level deficits which come with it. Iran, in pursuit of an ever increasing level of authority with the world's Muslim population, wants to be recognised as the special protector of China's Uighurs.

As the necessary first step toward gaining influence with the Mandarins of the Forbidden City, the Mullahs of Tehran had their government go on record (again) as supporting China's policy of scarfing up the "lost province" of Taiwan. So much for the "quid." Now for the "pro quo."

Tehran has called on the Chinese government to "respect" the Muslim minority. The Iranian Deputy ForMin, Hossein Sheik al-Islam, delivered the twin message to the Chinese Special Envoy to Iran. The Deputy ForMin underscored just how deeply "concerned" senior members of the Iranian clerical establishment were over the treatment of Muslims in China's restive west.

The Chinese envoy responded, if Iranian accounts are to be believed, with some of the usual diplomatic boilerplate about the "contributions" of the Uighurs to China and, blah-blah. The Chinese diplomat was kind enough not to take the customary posture of rejecting the Iranian demarche as interference in the internal affairs of China.

Wu Sike, the special envoy, was in Tehran after having stopped at several Arab States: Algeria, Qatar and Syria. Overall, the envoy's tasks were multiple as he alluded in his Tehran remarks. They included arms sales, oil purchasing, and building China's reputation as a "partner" in various regional interests. In short, China is flexing its ever developing economic, military, and diplomatic muscles in a critical region the US has long considered its particular bailiwick.

It was nice that the Iranians could take time off from their Imitation of Stalin trial of the dissidents. As the Stalin record shows, pulling off these show trials is a labor and time intensive endeavor--particularly making sure that the right defendant makes the right confession at the right time. And, sticks with it!

It's a good thing the mullahs have barred foreign media from the Great Election Dissident Trial as it does seem to show the frayed edges of haste and poor planning. Worst of all, two prime "dissidents," Moussavi and Khatami, are standing out in the lobby making dramatic accusations of, among other things, the use of torture by the mullahs to achieve the desired confessions. Really, that just won't do. As old Joe himself would have told his imitators, it is critical that there are no negative voices to be heard.

Instead of having stopped the voices before they could get on the global information highway, the mullahs have tried, without success, to drown them with accusations of treason. That is a really pathetic ploy. It is unlikely to play in the Iranian equivalent of Peoria. After all, both Moussavi and Khatami are fixtures of the revolution and senior figures in past Iranian governments. They both may be guilty of many things including a bad sense of timing, but treason to either the nation or the Islamist Revolution is not on the list.

Wu Sike, who, after all, represents a government with some experience in the production of show trials of dissidents, was probably not impressed with the Iranian ineptitude in this crucial area of crypto-totalitarian government practice. Nor would he have been favorably struck by the ongoing signs of fault lines in both the secular and clerical elites. The question of just who is in charge must never arise in a well run total regime.

Wu and his mandarin masters will shrug off the Iranian inefficiency and poorly staged trial as long as the oil flows, China is a favored foreign investor in the oilfields, and Tehran finally prefers Chinese to Russian. Wu has been around a score of years and knows how power is gained and retained in both domestic and foreign contexts.

It is for this reason that Beijing will be unimpressed with Iran's support of Chinese "national unity." It is for this reason that the mullahs of Tehran and Qom are no more likely to be the special protectors of the Muslims in China than they are to be the guardians of Emperor penguins in Antarctica.

The show trial shows something the mullahs and their ilk never suspected would be the case. The strains, contradictions and deep, long-lived rivalries within the elites are showing. And, they are showing to a degree unseen since the years 1997-1999.

Back then the reformers won a stunning victory. They were then quite undone by their own timidity and hesitancy. Torn apart by a lack of unifying vision and, more, a deficiency of instinct for the jugular. When the last gasps of the reformers were drowned in student blood with a ruthlessness of which Beijing no doubt approved but a visibility of which they no doubt disapproved, reform disappeared for a decade.

This time the reactionaries of Khemenei and company took no chances. They rigged the election. Squashed protests. And are now staging a show trial complete with high profile confessions.

Perhaps it is ironic. Perhaps not. But, the reactionaries are running the very real risk of undoing their own cause. Not because they are timid, hesitant. No. Because they have been too robust, too obvious, too heavy, and ham handed.

Special Envoy Wu is probably flying home shaking his head at the Iranian's lack of subtlety, lack of nuance. They do not know something the Chinese government now knows very well. There is a time and place for the sledgehammer. There is a time and place for a tack hammer. The art of effective government is to know the difference. The mullahs just don't get it.

The question for this day is this: Does the Obama administration have a grip on what is happening not only on but below the surface in Iran? This suggests a second question: Does the Obama administration understand that there is a time and place in international politics for the sledgehammer as well as the rubber hammer?

This in turn suggests a third question: Does the Obama administration know the difference and if so, does it care?

Right now the answers do not look good.

Clinton's Confusion--Saudi Arabia Isn't A Vassal

President Obama and SecState Clinton are practicing a foreign policy (that term is used in its loosest sense) that should be titled, "The Audacity of Arrogance." It's chief features are an equal mix of overbearing insistence for compliance and a snivelling willingness to agree with the positions of others.

The Obama administration has been ordering Israel around with a degree of imperial disdain for the locals which is breathtaking. Not even the administration of Bush/Cheney, which was scarcely known for its humility, tried that--even with Russia, the country they liked to kick. Even at the worst moments of those-who-are-not-with-us-are-against-us self-importance, the neocon ninnies seemed loath to dictate a country's internal policies.

The Obama-Clinton attitude of unchallenged and unchallengeable superiority is seen as well in our "policy" regarding Honduras. When even the Nicaraguan Vice President, Jaime Morales, has advised Sr Zelaya to pack it in, that he ain't going back as prez, the Obama-Clinton Axis of Arrogance insists that the Hondurans take back their constitutionally valid act of presidential removal.

But, what the heck, Honduras, like Israel is heavily dependent upon us, so we ought to be able to order them around. And, have those ingrates obey, damn it!

At the polar opposite, the Obama-Clinton foreign policy duo cringes in the best servile way before the Chinese. The administration is quite willing to accept "affirmative action" in the Great Climate Change Charade. Both Mr Obama and Ms Clinton believe in liberal guilt. They feel it. They both believe that penance is necessary--for Americans, that is. China can go on spewing carbon atoms beyond count. That's OK. We Americans are guilty. We must pay the price by doing with less and paying more. By losing jobs and industries.

Of course, those filled with liberal guilt will not pay as much as the rest of us. Nor will they suffer the other consequences of penance.

Now the real deal is simply that China holds 800 billion dollars of our Treasury Notes and Bills as well as other securities. The expansive agenda of the Obama administration and its colleagues of the Progressive Caucus demands the Chinese keep on buying our IOUs.

So, China is not a vassal state. It will not do what we order it to do. Rather, it is us who must comply with the new realities, accommodate ourselves to the altered nature of the US-PRC relation. That is just jake with Mr Obama and Ms Clinton both of whom believe to the depths of their left ventricle enhanced hearts that nationalism, national interest, national sovereignty are deadly evil relics of the past--as far as the US is concerned.

It's OK for China to be nationalist, to act in its national interest, to defend its national sovereignty against creeping globalism. But not the US.

Comes now Saudi Arabia in the person of the Kingdom's ForMin, Prince Saud al-Faisal. With the Secretary of State right there by his side, the Prince gave an absolute, firm, complete, total, final, utterly without compromise, nyet to the mild, not to say, meek, American suggestion that maybe, perhaps, the Saudis might lead off in symbolic gestures to Israel such as overflight rights for the Israeli national airline. The Geek used the Russian form of "no" as the Saudi prince had the same grim, set, obdurate expression and manner of the old Soviet diplomats of the most frozen days of the Cold War.

When pressed very hard and repeatedly as to whether the ForMin's attitude made the administration's task tougher, SecState Clinton said that it did not. She said it with what appeared to be a straight face and earnest tome.

Poppy-freakin'-cock!

Of course the stance of the House and Kingdom Built On Sand And Oil makes the job of finding a comprehensive peace settlement far more difficult. For sheer cussed obstinacy and intransigence, the Saudis have few (if any) peers. Israel is difficult. The Arabs, particularly those of the Saudi state, are quite impossible.

The Kingdom and all those Arab/Muslim states which fall in line behind the Keeper of the Two Holy Places will not be satisfied until and unless Israel gives up all the fruits of the Six Day War. They will not give the slightest compromise unless and until the Israelis withdraw all 300,000 of its citizens from the towns built since 1967. Unless and until the physical plant is turned over lock, stock, and barrel to the Arabs of Palestine and the last Jew high tails it to the other side of that artifice of 1949, the Green Line.

While that stance is not palatable to the 224 Congresswallahs who recently sent a letter to the king of Saudi Land pointing out the reality that compromise is a two-way street, it is just fine with Ms Clinton and Mr Obama. After all, the US needs the oil. More than that, the grand plans of the Agenda For Transformation needs the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and other oil shiekdoms to buy T-Notes and Bills.

This means that Saudi Arabia is not a vassal state. Like China it is OK for the House of Saud to pursue self-defined national interest and act like a sovereign state.

Israel and Honduras are vassals in the Obama-Clinton view. Saudi Arabia and China are not. It is justified to order the vassals around. But, it is not possible to do the same with those whose money is central to the progressive agenda.

Or, to err on the side of accuracy, the Obama-Clinton post-modernist view holds that nationalism, national interest, and national sovereignty are bad, very bad for the US. And, for the vassals of the US. These same features are simply wonderful when exhibited by China, Saudi Arabia, and perhaps some other countries which will be identified over time.

It is enough to induce projectile vomit. And, that's a fact, Jack.