NightWatch

For the Night of 28 September 2009

North Korea-China: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will travel to North Korea next week, Beijing's Foreign Ministry and Pyongyang's state media said today. Wen will meet with North Korean leaders during the 4 to 6 October visit to discuss bilateral ties and "issues of common concern,"

China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wen will also attend celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch earlier Monday that Wen will pay an "official goodwill" visit at the North Korean government's invitation.

FOX News broadcast film clips of the first Red Cross family visits in North Korea in the past two years. The North agreed to resume the visits for family members separated by the Korean War earlier this year.

The North’s policy decision to open itself to the outside world and to show a more benign countenance continues.

Malaysia: For the record. An Islamic court has upheld a sentence of six strokes of the cane handed to a Muslim woman who was caught drinking beer in public. The court appeals panel in Pahang State ruled the sentence on 32-year-old Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno was just.

No date was set for the caning, but if it goes ahead, Shukarno will be the first Malaysian woman to be caned. She is a former model, a mother of two and insisted that her punishment be executed in public. She got what she wished for.

Women are the hope for Islam, but it will take serving a jail sentence in Sudan and caning in Malaysia before Islamic men appreciate the insanity and counter-productivity of some of their beliefs. If old Islamic men come to consider Islamic women their enemy, the men will and must lose.

Pakistan-Saudi Arabia: Two sons of an Al Qaida leader, al Alawi, were caught in the tribal areas and turned over to Saudi Arabia on 18 September, GEO TV reported 28 September. The sons, Ali and Siddiq, are under investigation for the 26 August attempt to assassinate Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef.

The significance of this item is that all roads of terrorist training lead backwards to Pakistan. The western-educated elite in Islamabad might not like it, but the facts speak for themselves. Pakistani Islamists educate; indoctrinate; train in weapons, bombs and assassinations; and facilitate the travel of terrorists all over the world, including the US, Spain, India and Saudi Arabia. Nothing the Pakistan government has done has negated the international knowledge that Pakistan is the place to go to receive training as a terrorist.

In terms of security issues, two separate Pakistans exist side by side. The western educated elite Pakistan resides in Islamabad, grapples with high-minded issues and is out of touch with the other, much larger Pakistan. The other Pakistan educates its children in Islamic academies because the public school system has failed. It looks to religious teachers for political guidance because no one trusts the elected politicians, who are members of the elite Pakistan. The “other” Pakistan does not support violence in its local neighborhoods, but does not condemn violence in support of Islamic principles.

Iran: Military authorities test-fired the long-range Shahab-3 ballistic missile, the state TV reported.

Yesterday, the Revolutionary Guards test-fired short and medium range missiles. This is the third day of exercises that include missile firings.

The Shahab-3 has a range of up to 2,000km (1,240 miles), potentially putting Israel and American bases in the Gulf within range, analysts say. Iranian media announced that the Revolutionary Guards successfully tested the Shahab 3 missile as part of several days of military war game exercises.

"Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) successfully tests Shahab 3 long-range rockets as part of Great Prophet 4 exercises," Iranian Al-Alam TV reported. "Iranian missiles are able to target any place that threatens Iran," said Abdollah Araqi, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.

The point is that the Iranian boasts are accurate, not so much because of the Shahab-3 but because of the Shahab-4, which is a North Korean derivative of the Soviet SS-N-6 submarine launched ballistic missile. This is one of the most reliable and most tested missiles ever created and the Iranians have it. It was built for the purpose of carrying a nuclear warhead. And North Korea sold a brigade of them to Iran in 2005, for those who missed the press reporting.

Iran has a missile that it seldom tests or parades that can hit Jerusalem. The missile is primarily a nuclear warhead carrier. It is not the Shahab-3 which is a knock-off NoDong from North Korea. The Shahab 4 with a nuclear warhead is the existential threat to Israel.

The noteworthy point from Iran’s missile exercises is that it wants the rest of the world to believe it has so many missiles in its arsenal that it can waste some in live firings during military training. That implies batch testing of old missiles to ensure their reliability after years in storage. But these are primarily tactical and theater missiles, not strategic weapons.

Missile shooting is not cheap and takes time to prepare. The Iranians are showing they have missiles to spare. Not even the North Koreans do that regularly.

Politics. One larger point is that none of this is new. The so-called Israeli attack threat is old hat. Iran has proven time and again that its leadership and electorate are unmoved by Western sanctions.

There is no secret sanctions formula that will achieve some epiphany in the ayatollahs whereby they will abandon weapons voluntarily. If the people must suffer, they suffer so the revolution will survive, so the religious thinking goes.

There is no sanctions regime that outside states are prepared to initiate whose effects would be so severe as to bring the Ayatollahs to compromise. The Iranian leaders have demonstrated repeatedly their willingness to maintain the nuclear programs to the last Iranian, however long he or she might survive. They have been re-elected to office repeatedly too.

Non-proliferation is a moot point in Iran. Internal regime change is a wistful policy because the internal issues generating unrest do not concern national security or even the nature of the Islamic Republic. On those issues, no group disagrees.

In other words, a kinder, gentler and friendlier Iran is likely to be an Islamic Republic that seeks to dominate the Gulf region and will still have a nuclear weapons and missile delivery programs.

Thus it is not clear just what the West expects from the 1 October talks, but an end to a nuclear power and to a clandestine nuclear weapons program is not attainable. Nothing on the agenda is new and nothing has been achieved in years of Western confrontation. Iran’s programs are more advanced now than ever and the West has nothing to show for its sanctions and huffing and puffing during the past 20 years.

Whatever the West thought it was doing, it did not work. Phenomenologically, what appears to be taking place is the exhaustion of diplomatic options. That usually means that discussion of military options is far advanced.

Readers should keep in mind that there is no unilateral Israeli military option. That is a hoax of official propaganda. Israeli forces might be the spear point of an attack against Iran next year, but only the US can defend Israel from the inevitable Iranian counterattack and defend the US from Iranian attacks that would include suicide bombings in the US, Africa and Latin America by Iranian agents.

To repeat, there exists no such thing as a unilateral Israeli attack option against Iran that does not require US military support … including large scale logistics and missile defense support. In this instance, FOX news has it right.

Russia-Iran: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said following a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the United Nations 28 September that Moscow is concerned about Iran's launch of missiles while the country's nuclear program remains an unresolved issue, RIA Novosti reported.

Lavrov said Iran should show restraint, and that it should cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency leading up to the P-5+1 talks scheduled for 1 October.

The Russians appear to be getting the message. The Iranian missile exercises did not help the Russians find a reason to support Iran. The Chinese have said nothing.

Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel on 29 September said negotiations would begin between her Christian Democratic Union party and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) to form a coalition within the next week, DPA reported. FDP leader Dirk Niebel said his party would continue to push for "a real structural tax reform, a simplification and relief in the tax system."

The Chancellor’s comments reinforce the evidence that the election was decided on domestic issues, not foreign policy. Merkel’s Coalition will stay the course in Afghanistan … until the next German casualties.

Honduras: Today, soldiers shut down Tegucigalpa-based radio station Radio Globo, loyal to ousted President Manuel Zelaya, because it was inciting Zelaya supporters to commit violent acts, Interior Minister Oscar Matute said, America Economia reported. The closure of the station followed the suspension of several civil liberties by the interim government yesterday.

Government leaders suspended key civil liberties and empowered police and soldiers to break up unauthorized public meetings, arrest people without warrants and restrict the news media, The Associated Press reported 28 September.

The government's decree empowered police and soldiers to arrest without a warrant any person who posed a danger to his own life or to others, requiring offenders to be turned over to civilian prosecutors. Authorities are also able to temporarily close news media outlets that attack peace and public order.

The government orders are in response to calls for insurrection by ousted President Manuel Zelaya, from the Brazilian Embassy. To clarify, Zelaya has been abusing the hospitality of Brazil to call for the overthrow of the interim government of Honduras.

Zelaya’s actions, not to mention Brazil’s complicity in his return, raise serious questions of international law. That is the reason the Marcheletti government has issued a ten-day ultimatum to Brazil to clarify the international legal status of Zelaya or risk closure of the embassy and revocation of its credentials.

Thanks for the Feedback. NightWatch deliberately is edgy and provocative. Most readers understand that. Thus, most of the feedback from last week’s items has been supportive. Thank you. For those few who disagreed, NW served its purpose, reflected in your critical feedback.

A point of clarification on Afghanistan is in order, based on Feedback. In reading and tracking the fighting reports, Taliban appear to be attacking in no new districts, meaning no fights have occurred in districts that are not already in the list of 201 under Taliban domination that NW compiled though the end of June. In this measurement, they have reached the end of their tether. In other words, they have culminated.

The legitimacy of Karzai or the prospect of more US soldiers are immaterial to this condition. The Pashtuns have no more room to expand, no matter what else happens. Conversely, without hundreds of thousands of occupation troops and more relevant government, the Coalition cannot root the Pashtun rebels and Taliban from the 201 districts they dominate or control. That is where the Afghan standoff now is, give or take a few districts.

More relevant government does not mean less corrupt, only that the benefits of corruption are more widely shared. In countries as poor as Afghanistan, corruption is a socio-political term of status, not a crime.

Only Americans, Europeans and westernized Afghans would think legitimacy of an election was more important than clean water and public health in every district in Afghanistan.

End of NightWatch for 28 September.