In Syria, the powers play hardball

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Michael Bell

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Jul. 23 2012, 2:00 AM EDT

Last updated Monday, Jul. 23 2012, 12:00 AM EDT

Realpolitik is liberating Syria from the Assad autocracy, while the institution-based international system – most notably the United Nations – has largely failed, because it depends on agreement among the permanent members of the Security Council.

Moscow seems implacably committed to supporting the Damascus regime. Such is the Russians’ commitment to their traditional activist role that they are underwriting their Syrian ally at great cost to their own reputation as a constructive institution-based player, rendering impotent the mechanisms so ably used in Libya.

Even if the Russians were acting otherwise, it remains dubious how effective UN and North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervention could be. A no-fly zone would have limited impact, since Syria possesses an impressive array of military hardware. A severe sanctions regime, even banks running out of money, might have less impact than thought. Sanctions would be ignored by Russia, China, Iran and others. NATO boots on the ground would be a disaster, embedding outside players in a complex world where denominational identity trumps international standards of right and wrong. Indeed, the regime continues to draw on significant public support, despite falling morale over the setbacks of recent days.

Iranian gov’t pays paramilitary hackers, bloggers to bring you Islamic Revolution 2.0

Iran battles “westoxification” using, well, westoxification.

by Cyrus Farivar – June 6 2012, 9:36pm E Cyberwar

Hundreds of Iranians gathered recently for a Hizbollah Cyber conference in Tehran

Hizbullah Cyber

TALLINN, ESTONIA—Iran has significantly stepped up its use of corporate acquisitions, online propaganda, and hacking capabilities in recent years, according to an open source intelligence expert.

Jeff Bardin, the chief intelligence officer at Treadstone 71—an American company that researches publicly available materials—told a packed session at the International Conference on Cyber Conflict on Wednesday that Iran has become much more sophisticated and pervasive in its use of online tools.

He outlined the major paramilitary organizations that operate within Iran, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij, and Ashiyane. The latter is a notorious hacker group that works in conjunction with the Iranian government. All of these groups, he said, share an overarching focus on an Iranian concept used to promote the movement that became the philosophic foundation of the Islamic Revolution: westoxification. It’s the loss of Persian language, culture, and influence to Western countries.

“[Iranians'] patience is, in my view, legendary,” he told Ars. “The United States is famous for underestimating the adversary.”

The IRGC, known in Persian as the “Pasdaran,” is a massive organization that touches nearly every part of the Iranian economy, including owning or controlling major corporations. Most notably, just months after the disputed presidential election of June 2009, the Iranian government sold a majority $7.8 billion stake in the Iran Telecommunications Company, a former monopoly.

“It smacks of a communist model,” Bardin said of the uncompetitive nature of awarding contracts to the IRGC. He added that by controlling the infrastructure itself, the Iranian government’s agencies could capture even tighter control over what was being said and done online.

The Ayatollah Under the Bed(sheets)

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, all politics may not be sexual, but all sex is political.

BY KARIM SADJADPOUR | MAY/JUNE 2012

In the early years of the Iranian Revolution, an obscure cleric named Ayatollah Gilani became a sensation on state television by contemplating bizarre hypotheticals at the intersection of Islamic law and sexuality. One of his most outlandish scenarios — still mocked by Iranians three decades later — went like this:

Imagine you are a young man sleeping in your bedroom. In the bedroom directly below, your aunt lies asleep. Now imagine that an earthquake happens that collapses your floor, causing you to fall directly on top of her. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that you’re both nude, and you’re erect, and you land with such perfect precision on top of her that you unintentionally achieve intercourse. Is the child of such an encounter halalzadeh (legitimate) or haramzadeh (a bastard)?

Gulf States Consider Political and Military Union to Counter Iranian Security Threat

Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 10 Issue: 5

March 8, 2012 11:35 AM Age: 1 days

By: Elie Issa

The GCC Secretary General Abdul Latif Al Zayani (L) sits next to Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal (R) during a ministerial meeting of the six Gulf nations in Riyadh (AFP/Getty Images)

With growing talk of a political confederation of the Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister, Prince Salman Bin Abdul Aziz, has raised the possibility of transforming the existing Peninsula Shield Force [PSF] into a “unified Gulf army” able to respond to external and domestic security threats. The Saudi prince made it clear that inspiration for this suggestion was the perceived threat from Iran:  “Iran is our neighbor, but we draw a line when it comes to intervention in our internal affairs as ‘Gulf Cooperation Council’ countries. Whenever we feel that anybody is interfering in our internal affairs through internal mercenaries or people from outside, we will resist it appropriately” (Al-Seyassah [Kuwait], March 3; Arab Times, March 3). The PSF, with a permanent base in Saudi Arabia, was successfully deployed in March, 2011 to end violent street protests by Bahrain’s Shiite minority (see Terrorism Monitor Brief, March 24, 2011).