The Metrojet Airbus and the New Cold War

What we get when we read the news is not what is really going on. We get a general picture, almost like clip art, and then a large, elaborate, well-constructed frame to adorn the picture and shape how we perceive it.

If you read the news every day, attempt to follow the presentation of the clip art, you develop a kind of sixth sense when something is awry. And something is definitely awry when it comes to the story of the Russian charter jet that blew apart the weekend before last over the Sinai, killing all 224 on board.

At first, all officials -- from Russia, Egypt, the United States, Britain -- denied that the Airbus A321-200 could have been downed by a terrorist attack. Why? Because Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, Islamic State's affiliate in the Sinai, allegedly doesn't possess surface-to air missiles capable of reaching the altitude of an Airbus jetliner.

But the weakness of that argument is the assumption that the only way a terrorist can strike is with a missile.

Then there were several-days worth of stories chock full of MacGuffins about the structural integrity of the Metrojet Airbus, its previously repaired tail section, the shoddy nature of Russian commercial aviation, etc.

During this time you had the Pentagon interjecting anonymously -- why? -- that it had satellite imagery showing a flash emanating from the plane which pointed to an explosion; meanwhile Russian and Egyptian officials maintained their ludicrous denials of foul play.

Finally the dam broke when the U.K. suspended flights to the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh after concluding a bomb blew apart the Russian charter jet. The Brits started shuttling their nationals out of the Sinai peninsula with the plane cargo holds empty. What does that tell you?

Obama performed an about-face and said terrorism could very well have brought down the Metrojet. Over the weekend the storyline shifted to a "those wacky Egyptians and their lax security" theme. Now it is broadly acknowledged that a bomb smuggled aboard the Airbus, as Michael Schmidt reports in "Consensus Grows for Bomb as Cause of Russian Jet Crash, Officials Say," was the cause of the crash.

Where most regular news consumers immediately assumed foul play, the mainstream media at the behest of their official minders in government took their readers, listeners and viewers on a week-long wild goose chase. Why?

Because something is happening here. Tectonic plates are shifting and realigning. I am of the opinion that Western-style democracy in the industrial core is getting harder for the power brokers to manage (look at the U.S. presidential campaign). Watching the NFL games yesterday, I have never seen such a mixing of the military with popular sports. Coaches and players wore camouflage gear on the sidelines. It is an homage to Veterans Day, but it runs far deeper than that, as the report, "Tackling Paid Patriotism," of Arizona senators John McCain and Jeff Flake makes clear. The Pentagon pays millions to have sports teams honor the military. This is fascism of course.

But the Pentagon needs to spend that money in order to maintain support for all its foreign interventions, such as bolstering its troop presence in Europe.

Russia is making its own play, and not just with its forceful intervention in Syria. Pepe Escobar makes the case in "What’s the Big Deal Between Russia and the Saudis?" that Russia is negotiating with its enemies al-Saud and Turkey on oil and pipelines. While Mike Whitney argues in "Turkey Goes to War" that a post-landslide-election Erdogan is still aiming to establish a buffer zone in northern Syria with Turkish troops.

When everything appears to be in flux -- the G20 meeting in Turkey this weekend should be interesting -- stick with the obvious. The Russian charter jet was obviously brought down by a terrorist attack. The jihadis have not been successful  in bringing down commercial jets with on-board bombs, as Michael Schmidt points out:

If the Islamic State was behind the crash, it was able to mount the kind of attack that Al Qaeda has found difficult to carry out in recent years. At least three times since 2009, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen has come close but failed to bring down an airliner using bombs that were designed to be undetectable. 

Western intelligence officials have feared that the Islamic State has larger ambitions for attacks outside Syria and Iraq — where it seized large stretches of land in 2014 — especially after the United States and Russia began separate military operations against the group.

Why now? And why didn't the jihadis go after the United States? The U.S. has purportedly been bombing ISIS longer than Russia.

Bombs in cargo holds reek of spy craft, double agents and intelligence agencies. If the British were able to make a determination of terrorism because they intercepted chatter about the Metrojet explosion, they either knew that it was going to happen or knew that an ally agency was running the operation. This was definitely a tit-for-tat attack in the New Cold War.

Iran Nuclear Deal No Chickenshit

From my perch in the early morning dark of a 100-plus-year-old apartment building, located in a city by the sound that used to be known for its jets and now is synonymous with an online retail giant, the tectonic plates of global governance seem to be grinding into motion. A slight realignment is in the offing. What are the signs?

To begin with let's start with the ridiculous, the "chickenshit" feud between USG and Israel over anonymous disparaging comments made by an Obama official to Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic magazine about Bibi Netanyahu's manliness. As Jodi Rudoren summarized in a story the other day, "Israel Jabs Back After U.S. Official Calls Netanyahu a Coward," the barroom beer-muscle persiflage is all about a deal with Iran over its nuclear program:

Israeli politicians spent most of Wednesday responding with outrage and concern to an article in The Atlantic quoting a senior American official calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “coward” — and also using a more colorful but vulgar synonym that starts with “chicken.” Mr. Netanyahu and his allies denounced such a personal attack as inappropriate, while his critics declared it evidence of the dangerous deterioration of the state’s most treasured alliance that Mr. Netanyahu has caused.

Then, in late afternoon, a senior Israeli official offered a new spin. “It appears that someone in the administration is trying to pre-empt Prime Minister Netanyahu’s criticism of an imminent and highly problematic deal with Iran,” said the official, speaking on the condition that he not be named, since that is how this game is played. “It is a transparent attempt to discredit the messenger instead of dealing with the substance of his criticism.”

It would be easy to write all this off as what Aaron David Miller, a veteran Washington observer on all things Middle East, called “the nanny-nanny-boo-boo kindergarten school,” where “they call each other names.” But there are serious underlying differences in Israel and the United States regarding the fate of Iran’s nuclear program, and the downward dip between their leaders comes at a critical juncture. 

With a Nov. 24 deadline looming, Israelis have watched, with rising concern, signs of an international deal that would allow Iran to preserve at least some of its nuclear program and would bring about the lifting of crippling economic sanctions. Worse for Jerusalem, President Obama’s aides have indicated that they will try to bypass a vote on the deal in Congress, where Israel’s support is strongest and Mr. Netanyahu has occasionally made direct appeals. 

Mr. Netanyahu, who has spent much of his career arguing that a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel, insists that allowing Iran to continue to enrich uranium at any level leaves it on the threshold of producing a bomb, and that a flawed deal is worse than no deal. 

“There is no way to bridge this gap, because whatever is acceptable to America is not acceptable to us,” said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser. “So there could be some kind of deliberate attempt to put Netanyahu in some kind of uncomfortable position, so when he says whatever he says in a month, it will be less relevant or attract less attention.”

The magisterial Gareth Porter outlines the deal taking shape between Iran and the P5+1 (the UN Security Council permanent five members plus Germany) in an article that appeared yesterday on the Counterpunch web site, "Is an Iranian Nuclear Deal in the Works? A Compromise on Enrichment":

US and Iranian negotiators are working on a compromise approach to the issue of Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities, which the Barack Obama administration has said in the past Iran was refusing to make concessions on. 

The compromise now being seriously discussed would meet the Obama administration’s original requirement for limiting Iran’s “breakout capability” by a combination of limits on centrifuge numbers and reduction of Iran’s stockpile of low enriched uranium, rather than by cutting centrifuges alone. 

That approach might permit Iran to maintain something close to its present level of operational centrifuges. 

The key to the new approach is Iran’s willingness to send both its existing stockpile of low enriched uranium (LEU) as well as newly enriched uranium to Russia for conversion into fuel for power plants for an agreed period of years. 

In the first official indication of the new turn in the negotiations, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Marzieh Afkham acknowledged in a briefing for the Iranian press October 22 that new proposals combining a limit on centrifuges and the transfer of Iran’s LEU stockpile to Russia were under discussion in the nuclear negotiations. 

The briefing was translated by BBC’s monitoring service but not reported in the Western press. 

Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, who heads the US delegation to the talks, has not referred publicly to the compromise approach, but she appeared to be hinting at it when she said on October 25 that the two sides had “made impressive progress on issues that originally seemed intractable”. 

Despite the new opening to a resolution of what had been cited for months as the main obstacle to a comprehensive agreement, the negotiations could nevertheless stall in the final weeks over the timing of sanctions removal. 

Iran’s willingness to negotiate such arrangements with the US delegation will depend on Russia’s agreement to take the Iranian enriched uranium. 

The beginning of discussions on the new approach was reported in September – just days after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Russian President Vladimir Putin had met to discuss key issues in Iranian-Russian cooperation on the building of two nuclear power plants and fuel supply for Bushehr.

Russia is the key to any successful bargain over Iran's nuclear program. But what about the New Cold War? Isn't this an impediment to securing Russia's help? As James Kanter reports, "Ukraine and Russia Reach Accord on Natural Gas Deliveries," one of the main casus belli of the New Cold War, Europe's vulnerability vis-a-vis its dependence on Russian natural gas, has been resolved, at least nominally:

BRUSSELS — Russian and Ukrainian officials reached an agreement on Thursday night to resume Russian deliveries of natural gas to prevent shortages over the winter. 

The deal caps months of laborious talks under the aegis of European Union authorities on how much, and how soon, Ukraine needed to pay Russia for gas it has already consumed, and on the terms for future deliveries. 

The standoff between Moscow and Kiev also prompted concerns in Europe that Russian gas piped across Ukraine, a former Soviet state, could be interrupted.

The particulars of the deal are as follows:

• Ukraine will pay $3.1 billion by the end of the year to cover its outstanding debts. These payments are based on a price of $268.50 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas.

• Going forward Ukraine will purchase "Russian gas at a cost of $378 per 1,000 cubic meters until the end of the year, and at a cost of $365 per 1,000 cubic meters from January to March next year."

Of course, this assumes a lot. To begin with, can Ukraine come up with the loot? Secondly, is the government in Kiev stable enough to last until March?

In any event, the deal signed is significant. The health of Gazprom is inseparable from the rise of Russia under Putin; hence, Moscow has always been preoccupied with making sure the crisis in Ukraine doesn't impact the long-term soundness of the energy giant's operations.

There is one more development that augurs a global tectonic shift is underway -- Egyptian bulldozing of homes in the Sinai along the Gaza border. According to a story yesterday by the superb reporter Kareem Fahim written in tandem with Merna Thomas, "Egypt Flattens Neighborhoods to Create a Buffer With Gaza":

CAIRO — With bulldozers and dynamite, the Egyptian Army on Wednesday began demolishing hundreds of houses, displacing thousands of people, along the border with Gazain a panicked effort to establish a buffer zone that officials hope will stop the influx of militants and weapons across the frontier. 

The demolitions, cutting through crowded neighborhoods in the border town of Rafah, began with orders to evacuate on Tuesday and were part of a sweeping security response by the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to months of deadly militant attacks on Egyptian security personnel in the Sinai Peninsula, including the massacre of at least 31 soldiers last Friday.

That assault was the deadliest on the Egyptian military in years, and a blow to the government, which has claimed to be winning the battle against insurgents. The resort to a harsh counterinsurgency tactic — destroying as many as 800 houses and displacing up to 10,000 people to eliminate “terrorist hotbeds,” as Mr. Sisi’s spokesman put it — highlighted the difficulties the military has faced in breaking the militants as well as the anger that operations like Wednesday’s inevitably arouse.

*** 

The border clearing came as the authorities have signaled a growing determination to expand their security reach throughout Egypt, to counter militants, they say, but also to crush outbreaks of ordinary dissent, rights advocates say. It was also the latest instance of the government using the overwhelming force of its security apparatus to confront what it sees as a threat to Egypt’s existence, whether the growing strength of militants or the demonstrations by thousands of Islamists during the overthrow of the government of Mohamed Morsi. 

Some of the recent measures, including a crackdown on university protests and a presidential decree issued Monday putting public facilities like power stations and roads under the protection of the military, were “confirmation of a conviction we have had for months,” said Gamal Eid, the head of the Cairo-based Arab Network for Human Rights Information. “Egypt is solidifying the rule of the police and the military,” he said.

There have been two responses to the Arab Spring by the U.S. chaos-inducing unipolar system of global governance. One, is co-optation by means of Wahhabi-exported Salafists. This is on display in Libya and Syria. The other, in states to be maintained whole and not cracked into pieces, there is the Sisi option, a massive police state crackdown on any dissent. Egypt is leading the way on this with fulsome support from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and, regardless of a bit of meek pro forma mewling, the United States.

Israel cannot pursue another Operation Protective Edge-type genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. One more and the BDS Movement will reach critical mass. Now what appears to be in the offing is a plan by Israel to create a "Greater Gaza." As Jonathan reported in September, "Is there a plan to force Palestinians into Sinai?"

Desperately overcrowded, short on basic resources like fresh water, blockaded for eight years by Israel, with its infrastructure intermittently destroyed by Israeli bombing campaigns, Gaza looks like a giant pressure cooker waiting to explode. 

It is difficult to imagine that sooner or later Israel will not face a massive upheaval on its doorstep. So how does Israel propose to avert a scenario in which it must either savagely repress a mass uprising by Palestinians in Gaza or sit by and watch them tear down their prison walls? 

Reports in the Arab and Israeli media – in part corroborated by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas – suggest that Egypt may be at the heart of plans to solve the problem on Israel’s behalf. 

This month Israeli media reported claims – apparently leaked by Israeli officials – that Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, had offered the Palestinian leadership the chance to annex to Gaza an area of 1,600 sq km in Sinai. The donated territory would expand Gaza fivefold. 

The scheme is said to have received the blessing of the United States. 

‘Greater Gaza’ plan 

According to the reports, the territory in Sinai would become a demilitarised Palestinian state – dubbed “Greater Gaza” – to which returning Palestinian refugees would be assigned. The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas would have autonomous rule over the cities in the West Bank, comprising about a fifth of that territory. In return, Abbas would have to give up the right to a state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

The plan, which would most likely result in significant numbers of Palestinians moving outside the borders of historic Palestine, was quickly dismissed as “fabricated and baseless” by Egyptian and Palestinian officials.

It could be that what we are looking at here is an elaborate game of musical chairs. Peace with Iran will be achieved at the price of a Greater Gaza solution to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. The future of the caliphate in all this seems to be in the form of Sunnistan, which the odious Thomas Friedman riffed on this week in the disinformation manifesto, "ISIS and Vietnam." Sunnistan, so the thinking goes, is to balance Kurdistan and Shiastan.