Free Iran:  The Obama administration’s decision to back off from its previous wise decision to ratchet up the pressure on President Hamid Karzai to fight his government’s corruption is a big mistake and a typical short term, tactical band-aid at the expense of a permanent, strategic  solution.  This cynical, myopic approach has a history of unintended consequences, i.e. Kyrgyzstan now as well as the shah of Iran and South Vietnam in the past.  At the end of this “realpolitik”strategy, the Obama administration will find neither stability nor reliable allies.  And guess who will be ultimate beneficiary of this misguided approach, the regime in Tehran. You reap what you sow.

Warlords and government corruption may destabilize the country even more than the Taliban, say Afghan and NATO officials. The city of Kandahar reflects this central problem of the Afghanistan war.

Over the past month in Kandahar City, Taliban death squads have killed dozens of people in drive-by shootings. Yet many living in this southern Afghan city say the insurgents are the least of their worries. Far more pernicious is the murky nexus of warlords and corrupt government officials whose rule some compare to mob bosses.

Indeed, the fear and corruption they perpetuate undermine efforts to build a stable government and help the Taliban win support among locals, say Afghan and NATO officials, private citizens, analysts, and local journalists. The trend echoes a pattern from the 1990s, when violence among competing warlords gave rise to the Taliban and their brutal ways of imposing law and order.

The concern was repeated in more than a dozen recent interviews: The biggest problem is not the Taliban; it is the gangster oligarchs looming over the city.

When it comes to Kandahar city politics, “I’m not sure whether I’m watching Godfather Part 2 or Godfather Part 3,” says Mark Sedwill, NATO’s top civilian official in Afghanistan, referring to the popular movie series about an American mafia family. “It’s very difficult to untangle, but what’s really fueling the insurgency is groups being disenfranchised, feeling oppressed by the institutions of state and criminal syndicates.”

Go to CS Monitor.

Free Iran:  Like many, many  times in the history of the US foreign policy, today in Afghanistan, we are thinking and acting based on short term tactics and not long term strategic vision.  So long as the regime’s money and agents which are backed up by its money flow to Afghanistan, most of the US efforts would be for naught.  Afghanistan’s problems won’t be solved till Iran becomes democratic. Again, this is a cart before the horse policy.

NYT:  Afghan President Rebukes West and U.N.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, delivered extraordinarily harsh criticism on Thursday of the Western governments fighting in his country, the United Nations, and the British and American news media, accusing them of perpetrating the fraud that denied him an outright victory in last summer’s presidential elections.

Just days after meeting with President Obama, Mr. Karzai, who has increasingly tried to distance himself from his American backers, said the coalition troops risked being seen as invaders rather than saviors of the country.

The speech, later broadcast on local television, seemed a measure of Mr. Karzai’s mood in the wake of Mr. Obama’s visit, in which Mr. Obama rebuked the Afghan president for his failure to reform election rules and crack down on corruption. At points in the speech, Mr. Karzai used inflammatory language about the West.

“There is no doubt that the fraud was very widespread, but this fraud was not committed by Afghans, it was committed by foreigners,” Mr. Karzai said. “This fraud was committed by Galbraith, this fraud was committed by Morillon and this fraud was committed by embassies.” Mr. Karzai was referring to Peter W. Galbraith, the deputy United Nations special representative to Afghanistan at the time of the election and the person who helped reveal the fraud, and Philippe Morillon, the chief election observer for the European Union.

Later in the speech he accused the Western coalition fighting against the Taliban of being on the verge of becoming invaders — a term usually used by insurgents to refer to American, British and other NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan.

“In this situation there is a thin curtain between invasion and cooperation-assistance,” said Mr. Karzai, adding that if the perception spread that Western forces were invaders and the Afghan government their mercenaries, the insurgency “could become a national resistance.”

WSJ:  Karzai Rails Against West, Claims U.N. Fraud

KABUL—Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in a rambling speech Thursday, charged Western officials and embassies with fraud in last summer’s presidential election, singling out two officials who were most outspoken about ballot-stuffing on the president’s behalf.

Mr. Karzai accused “foreign embassies” of trying to bribe members of Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission with offers of cash and armored vehicles if they delayed results of the vote to give Western diplomats time to force the president into a coalition with rivals.

At one point, Mr. Karzai claimed, the then-deputy chief of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, threatened to kill a member of the IEC, telling the man he would “dig his grave with his own hands.” The IEC declined to comment.

…While Mr. Karzai has seen his popularity and credibility suffer in the wake of the vote, there is also widespread disenchantment among Afghans with the West, which many view as enabling the government’s corruption and doing little to rebuild the country.

Free Iran:  The US can’t even get the countries that it has troops in, Iraq and Afghanistan, to break away from this regime, let alone the regime’s allies.  The US needs to concentrate its resources and efforts on helping the Iranian people.  Cut off the power of the regime at its source.  Forget about the tentacles for now.  Again, the cart before the horse problem.

WSJ:  Kerry Trip To Syria Signals U.S. Push

WSJ:  U.S. Ex-Officials Engage With Hamas

Free Iran:  Is this why American soldiers are fighting and dying for?  Is this why America is spending hundreds of billions of dollars for?  Another corrupt, incompetent despot?  When will we recognize that we need an Iranian-people centric Middle East policy?  Please see this story as well about the disaster that is Afghanistan.

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG

KABUL—Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in a rambling speech Thursday, charged Western officials and embassies with fraud in last summer’s presidential election, singling out two officials who were most outspoken about ballot-stuffing on the president’s behalf.

Mr. Karzai accused “foreign embassies” of trying to bribe members of Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission with offers of cash and armored vehicles if they delayed results of the vote to give Western diplomats time to force the president to form a coalition with his rivals.

At one point, Mr. Karzai claimed, the then-deputy chief of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, threatened to kill a member of the IEC, telling the man he would “dig his grave with his own hands.”

Mr. Galbraith couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. The IEC declined to comment.

A U.N.-led watchdog threw out nearly a million votes cast for Mr. Karzai as fraudulent last year, ordering a runoff election. The runoff didn’t take place because the runner-up candidate withdrew from the race, saying he couldn’t trust the IEC, which was appointed by Mr. Karzai. The Afghan president has since issued a decree stripping the U.N. of its power to supervise elections here.

Mr. Karzai’s remarks, in a meeting with IEC workers ahead of a parliamentary election slated for September, were the latest outburst from a leader who over the past nine years has earned a reputation among his Western backers as deeply unpredictable.

As a Western diplomat put it: “One moment he’s playing the statesman,” as he did earlier in the week when President Barack Obama visited Kabul. “Then he turns around and he starts playing to the crowd.”

While Mr. Karzai has seen his popularity and credibility suffer in the wake of the vote, there is also widespread disenchantment among Afghans with the West, which many view as enabling the government’s corruption and doing little to rebuild Afghanistan.

Also Read:

Daily Star: Afghanistan will be lost without more honest governance

…Since his London speech, Karzai has actively opposed efforts to attack official corruption, sought to appoint warlords to his Cabinet, failed to promote civil society, and weakened processes aimed at increasing the representation of women in Parliament.

To make matters worse, Karzai issued a decree on February 13 permitting him to appoint all of the ECC’s members. The measure was clearly designed to strengthen the patronage system and weaken opposition movements’ prospects in future elections. It was also a strong demonstration that his administration is not serious about establishing greater government accountability.

NATO and the international community must do everything possible to foster accountable government at all levels in Afghanistan. Although Afghanistan’s government does not need to be fully centralized, Afghanistan cannot succeed if the central government fails. For this reason, unless the Karzai government changes course there is no justification for NATO member countries to risk the lives of their soldiers and commit other valuable resources to the struggle in Afghanistan if the Afghan government’s corruption and legitimacy deficit make current progress unsustainable and achievement of NATO’s goals impossible.

Hamid Karzai is free to lead his country as he pleases, but the United States and its allies cannot and should not maintain their current levels of commitment unless his government can establish itself as a viable partner. The 18-month clock is ticking.

Jamie F. Metzl, who served in US President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council, is executive vice president of the Asia Society and served as an election monitor in the August 2009 Afghan elections.

Go to WSJ.

Free Iran:  It’s amazing the extraordinary money the US is spending on the periphery issues, Iraq & Afghanistan, and how little on the main the issue – Iran.  Again, it’s the cart-before-the-horse problem.

	The New York Times

…In trying to speed 30,000 reinforcements into Afghanistan while reducing American forces in Iraq by 50,000, American commanders are orchestrating one of the largest movements of troops and matériel since World War II. Military officials say that transporting so many people and billions of dollars’ worth of equipment, weapons, housing, fuel and food in and out of both countries between now and an August deadline is as critical and difficult as what is occurring on the battlefield.

…The military says there are 3.1 million pieces of equipment in Iraq, from tanks to coffee makers, two-thirds of which are to leave the country. Of that, about half will go on to Afghanistan, where there are already severe strains on the system.

Overcrowding at Bagram Air Base, the military’s main flight hub in Afghanistan, is so severe that beds are at a premium and troops are jammed into tents alongside runways. Cargo planes, bombers, jet fighters, helicopters and drones are stacked up in the skies, waiting to land.

All lethal supplies — weapons, armored trucks, eight-wheeled Stryker troop carriers — come in by air to avoid attacks, but everything else goes by sea and land. The standard route from Iraq to Afghanistan is south from Baghdad and down through Kuwait, by ship through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz to Karachi, Pakistan, then overland once again. The “fob in a box” went on an experimental and potentially less expensive journey through Turkey to link up with a new northern route through Central Asia, which was opened last year for supplies going to Afghanistan from Europe and the United States as an alternative to the risky trip through Pakistan.

Both routes circle Iran, by far the most direct way to get from Baghdad to Kabul, but off limits because of the country’s hostile relationship with the United States. “These are the cards that we’re dealt,” said Gen. Duncan J. McNabb, who oversees all military logistics as the leader of the United States Transportation Command at Scott Air Force Base, Ill.

…Food shipments alone are enough to feed an army. The Defense Logistics Agency, which provides meals for 415,000 troops, contractors and American civilians each day in both wars, shipped 1.1 million frozen hamburger patties to Afghanistan in March alone, compared with 663,000 burgers in March 2009. The agency also supplied 27 million gallons of fuel to forces in Afghanistan this month, compared with 15 million gallons a year ago.

Go to NY Times.

(Reuters) – Iran is having a growing, negative influence in its neighbor Afghanistan, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said on Wednesday, citing what he said was a shipment of Iranian arms to fighters.

The United States has frequently accused Iran of providing some assistance to insurgents in Afghanistan, although Washington says it has not been nearly as important a factor as in Iraq, Iran’s other neighbor where U.S. troops are waging war.

“Iran is working to increase its influence in the area. On the one hand, that’s not surprising, she is a neighbor state, a neighbor country. On the other hand, the influence I see is all too often negative,” Mullen told a news conference during a visit to Kabul, in response to a question about Tehran’s influence.

“I was advised last night about a significant shipment of weapons from Iran into Kandahar, for example,” Mullen said.

“I have seen them over the last several years — the last couple of years anyway, certainly be more than just interested, provide some capabilities,” Mullen added. “I am also concerned that that desire to be influential is increasing.”

Go to Reuters.

This newspaper carried a very troubling article on the front page on Monday. It detailed how President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan had invited Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Kabul — in order to stick a thumb in the eye of the Obama administration — after the White House had rescinded an invitation to Mr. Karzai to come to Washington because the Afghan president had gutted an independent panel that had discovered widespread fraud in his re-election last year.

The article, written by two of our best reporters, Dexter Filkins and Mark Landler, noted that “according to Afghan associates, Mr. Karzai recently told lunch guests at the presidential palace that he believes the Americans are in Afghanistan because they want to dominate his country and the region, and that they pose an obstacle to striking a peace deal with the Taliban.”

The article added about Karzai: “ ‘He has developed a complete theory of American power,’ said an Afghan who attended the lunch and who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. ‘He believes that America is trying to dominate the region, and that he is the only one who can stand up to them.’ ”

That is what we’re getting for risking thousands of U.S. soldiers and having spent $200 billion already. This news is a flashing red light, warning that the Obama team is violating at least three cardinal rules of Middle East diplomacy.

See Also:

NPR:  Afghan Militant Leader’s Motives Under Scrutiny

Go to NY Times.

Iran has been hosting regional leaders, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to celebrate the Persian New Year, or Nowruz (a spring festival whose equivalent in Pakistan, incidentally, is frowned upon by its own religious conservatives).

The Nowruz celebrations, which also included the presidents of Iraq, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, are part of Iran’s efforts to build regional ties and followed renewed debate over the kind of role Iran wants to play in Afghanistan. As discussed here, it has also been improving ties with Pakistan, and both countries may have worked together on the arrest last month of Abdolmalik Rigi, leader of the Jundollah rebel group. Go to Reuters.

…American officials play down the significance of Mr. Karzai’s symbolic embrace of Iran’s leader, describing it as the sort of thing he has to do to cope with a powerful neighbor that isn’t going away.

Still, the byplay illustrates why Iran’s nuclear program isn’t the only Iranian problem American leaders have to worry about. The broader concern is Iran’s interest in becoming a more powerful regional player able to eclipse Western interests in the area.

Indeed, Iran’s nuclear program may be most worrisome precisely because a nuclear-armed Iran would be even better able to intimidate its neighbors and expand its influence.

America’s post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have only made it easier for Iran to spread its wings in the region. Whatever else one may think of those conflicts, one of their unfortunate side effects was to eliminate nettlesome opponents on two of Iran’s borders.

…Given the current state of tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, that kind of engagement seems unlikely now. In the long run, on the Afghan question as on the nuclear question, America’s best bet may be that the internal unrest now coursing through Iran will produce a different kind of regime there that could serve as a partner rather than an adversary.

Go to WSJ.

Free Iran:  This is yet another example why the Afghanistan-Iraq centric American policy is a failure.  Without first helping Iran become democratic, the current US strategy is a bottomless pit that will continue to suck billions of dollars – not to mention countless unnecessary lives.

TALIBAN commanders have revealed that hundreds of insurgents have been trained in Iran to kill Nato forces in Afghanistan.

The commanders said they had learnt to mount complex ambushes and lay improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have been responsible for most of the deaths of British troops in Helmand province.

The accounts of two commanders, in interviews with The Sunday Times, are the first descriptions of training of the Taliban in Iran.

According to the commanders, Iranian officials paid them to attend three-month courses during the winter.

They were smuggled across the border to the city of Zahidan, in southeast Iran, an hour’s drive from training camps in the desert.

Instructors in plain clothes provided daily exercises in live firing. The first month was devoted largely to teaching the Taliban how to attack convoys and how to escape before Nato forces could respond.

During their second month they were shown how to plant IEDs in sequence so that the rescuers of soldiers wounded in one blast would be caught in further explosions.

The third month was spent on storming bases and checkpoints. A hilltop fort was among the locations used for practice by a Taliban platoon. Go to Times UK.

Newsweek:  A Third Muslim-World War?

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu would do anything to protect Israel—as long as he doesn’t have to believe in peace.

Back when Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu was elected Israel’s prime minister for the first time, in 1996, a Jordanian political scientist with a grim sense of humor said the only way to describe him was like a villain out of an old Western: “He’s a lyin’, cheatin’, deceitin’ son of a bitch!”

The Obama administration, without using quite such colorful language, might be inclined to agree. As Aluf Benn, the respected diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper wrote in these columns recently, when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel last week, he “had come to offer not just friendship, but support (and protection) against Iran—Israel’s greatest bogeyman—in exchange for a few concessions from Netanyahu. Instead, he got a finger in the eye.”

NYT:  Early Backer of War, Finally Within Grasp of Power

“I did more than anyone else in persuading the U.S. to get rid of Saddam,” said Ahmad Chalabi, sitting in the dark next to his empty swimming pool.

Soon the American troops that did so will be gone. Mr. Chalabi, as perplexing and contentious as he was in the prelude to the war, will be staying behind, perhaps finally with an official grasp on power in Iraq that has always eluded him.

He was a candidate in the recent elections, his alliance of Shiite parties with ties to the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr is running third in the balloting, and he could well claim a seat in Parliament — something he did not accomplish in the last parliamentary election, in 2005, when his party, the Iraqi National Congress, received just 30,000 votes of 12 million.

…Hazim al-Nuaimi, a political science professor in Baghdad, said Mr. Chalabi, “has very strange instincts for the winning hand in political poker.”

“He felt the American role decreasing in the country and the Middle East and he went to play another winning set of cards, which is the Iranian cards,” Mr. Nuaimi said.

Mr. Chalabi says he has had close relationships with both the United States and Iran, but admitted that relations these days with Americans are “in abeyance.” But he said he was still friends with two of his former neoconservative allies in the Bush administration, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense, and Richard N. Perle, who was chairman of the Defense Policy Board.

CS Monitor:  Two to tango: Why Iran turns dance partners into enemies

On the diplomatic balance sheet, Iran and Russia should be best friends.

Russia is building Iran’s first nuclear power reactor – a $1 billion project. It signed a contract to provide S-300 air defense missiles to Tehran. And as Iran’s diplomatic isolation enters its fourth decade, Moscow stands out as a past defender of the Islamic Republic that can veto sanctions.

And yet, Iran-Russian relations have soured, with Russia now likely to support new United Nations sanctions against Iran – the latest in a string of examples of Tehran turning potential allies into enemies since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

he result in key cases has been turning off, angering, or provoking potential friends from the slim list of countries that have sought to engage Tehran. While the specifics have varied from Canada to Britain and now Russia, the pattern is familiar. To divert the attention of critics at home – a task that became nearly impossible in the wake of the disputed June 2009 election – the revolutionary state has sought to direct that anger outward.

“Revolutions need an outside enemy as a way of consolidating the power of the new regime, forcing people to rally around the flag,” says Professor Boroujerdi. “Whenever the state has failed – be it [due to] managerial ineptitude or flip-flopping on declared positions – the government uses the notion of an outside enemy.”

With Russia, trust has always been in short supply. The Kremlin’s rocky imperial history in Persia stretches back centuries, and includes occupation with British and US forces during World War II.

WP:  Israel attack on Iran could ignite Middle East: Hezbollah

NYT:  Report Claims Iran Arms Taliban (Video)

WP:  Iraqi election results pointing up the country’s deep divides

The emerging results from last week’s parliamentary elections have made clear that Iraq remains a dangerously polarized nation, with deep regional and sectarian schisms that could widen as the U.S. military draws down.

The race to become Iraq’s next prime minister is so tight that it remains unclear who will come out ahead. The country is caught between two men: Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who became the candidate of choice for Sunni Arabs, and incumbent Nouri al-Maliki, an Islamist Shiite who has recast himself as a nationalist while still promising to serve the once-oppressed Shiite majority.

No matter which man’s slate wins more seats, diplomats and Iraqi officials say the post-election jockeying to build a governing coalition could give rise to new conflicts in Iraq’s Shiite-dominated south and the Sunni-dominated west, with the potential to unravel hard-won security gains.

Telegraph:  Iraq election: Sectarianism threatens Iraq’s future

Al-Maliki is already courting potential allies, but his sectarian attitude and his close ties with the Iranian regime raises deep concerns about his ability to project himself as a leader of all Iraqis. The fact that Al-Maliki was at the centre of a pre-election campaign banning significant Sunni figures from running for election, whilst his election posters concentrated more on the de-Baathification of Iraq than on leading the nation towards freedom and prosperity under a democratic government help to underline that point.

Times:  Tehran accused of arming Taleban with weapons and explosives

The Iranian Government has been accused by Afghan and Western officials of delivering tonnes of weaponry to the Taleban, including plastic explosives, mortars, grenades and technical manuals.

Weapons and documents shown to Channel 4 News indicate that more than ten tonnes of weapons have been intercepted at Iran’s desert border with Afghanistan in the past year, with a tonne and a half recovered in the past week.

The reports come as General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Iran also provided a base for al-Qaeda operatives. Afghanistan’s intelligence agency estimates that about 60 per cent of the weaponry it has intercepted from Iran has been supplied by the Iranian Government rather than black market dealers.

In a report on Iran’s weapons smuggling to the Taleban — to be aired by Channel 4 News this evening — one Afghan Taleban commander claims that the Iranian border is assuming greater importance than that into Pakistan.

Channel 4:  Exclusive: Iran supplies weapons to Taliban

Channel 4 News can reveal the Taliban insurgency against British and American forces is being supported by Iranian weapons smuggled over the border including mines, mortars and plastic explosives.

The exclusive images and documents show, for the first time, the full extent of Iranian support for the Taliban in the shape of tonnes of weapons of the type being used against UK troops in Helmand province.

Despite the millions of dollars being spent by the international community to ensure cross-border security between Iran and Afghanistan, Channel 4 News has been shown vast hauls of weaponry which Afghan security services have told us are just a fraction of hardware intercepted from Iran on their way to the Taliban.

They claim it shows the true extent of direct support from the Iranian government for the insurgency.

The Afghan border with Iran is almost 1000km long and is incredibly difficult to police. The border town of Eslam Ghalah, in the Western Afghanistan province of Herat, is a key checkpoint for goods and human traffic entering and leaving Afghanistan.

Inside Iran:  Turkey’s Warm Ties with Iran: A Brief History

The 1990s were marked by hostile relations between Iran and Turkey, which was the direct outcome of Turkish foreign policy elite’s conviction that Iran was supporting the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) and had a campaign to export Islamic revolution to Turkey.

Iran was perceived as posing an existential threat to the survival of the organizing ideology of the state, secularism, and the territorial integrity of the country. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, however, there has been a notable softening in Turkey’s foreign policy vis-à-vis Iran. Since it came to power in 2002, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has adopted a new policy approach, which aims to minimize the problems in Turkey’s neighboring regions and develop political and economic relations to foster peace and stability in the region. Under the current government, the trade between Turkey and Iran has increased more than six-fold, hitting $7.5 billion in 2007.

Reuters:  Syria’s link to Hezbollah clouds honeymoon with U.S.

Emboldened by its strong ties with Iran and Turkey, Syria is ignoring U.S. demands that it stop backing Hezbollah, despite the risk that this will spoil its rapprochement with Washington and raise regional tensions.

FP:  Hezbollah’s Extreme Makeover

The fusion of leisure, religion, and politics has become an indispensable strategy for Hezbollah, particularly following its 2006 war with Israel. As the party reconstructed South Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs (known as Dahiyeh) following the conflict, it built — and encouraged investors to build — entertainment venues that cater to Shiites of all social and economic classes.

After the 2006 war, Iranian money flowed in massive quantities to Hezbollah. This was not charity: The Islamic Republic of Iran was determined to ensure that its client could solidify its standing within Lebanon’s Shiite community and reconstitute its fighting strength before the next round against Israel. Hezbollah used these funds to compensate the Shiites who lost relatives, homes, and businesses during the war.

Mohammad Ali Mokalled, a Shiite writer and a candidate who ran in opposition to Hezbollah in the party’s stronghold of Nabatiyeh in last June’s parliamentary elections, said that Hezbollah used the money coming from Iran to buy people’s allegiance — and it worked. “If you ask anyone in the south today if they are afraid of an upcoming war with Israel, they tell you yes, but they also say that they would support Hezbollah no matter what happens,” he said.

BBC:  Netanyahu’s brother-in-law calls Obama ‘anti-Semitic’

In an interview with Israel Army Radio, Mr Ben-Artzi said his brother-in-law should learn from previous Israeli prime ministers.

“Once the Americans tried to intervene in anything related to Jerusalem we told them one simple word: ‘No’,” he explained.

Mr Obama, he added, not only disliked Mr Netanyahu personally, but “dislikes the people of Israel”.

“For 20 years, Obama sat with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who is anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli, and anti-Jewish.”

He said it was clear Mr Obama agreed with Rev Wright because he had remained a member of his congregation.

“Think about it. If you had heard of someone who for 20 years sat in church and heard anti-Semitic sermons and didn’t get up to leave after two weeks, wouldn’t you think he identifies with it?” he asked.

“As a politician running for presidency he had to hide it, but it comes out every time and I think we just have to say it plainly – there is an anti-Semitic president in America,” he said.

“Unfortunately this creates a difficult situation for Israel, but we will never give up our deepest interests – Jerusalem and our ties with it.”

Economist:  Where did all the love go?

Friends have spats, but this seems to be more than that. America has not simply accepted Mr Netanyahu’s prompt apology. Opinion in the administration is said to be divided. Mr Biden himself and many State Department officials, together with George Mitchell, who was to have supervised the now-stalled proximity talks, advised cooling things down. But, whether out of rage or calculation, Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton preferred to escalate.

On television last Sunday David Axelrod, the president’s chief policy adviser, called Israel’s announcement an “affront” and an “insult”—extraordinary language in exchanges with an ally. And notwithstanding that “unshakeable bond”, Mrs Clinton is insisting that Mr Netanyahu must comply with a string of fresh demands. These reportedly include shelving the building plans, avoiding new provocations, agreeing to talk about “core issues” such as Jerusalem in the proximity talks, and offering a new concession, the details of which are not yet clear, to the Palestinian side.

…In testimony to a Senate committee this week, General David Petraeus, hero of Iraq and America’s commander in the wider Middle East, said the unsolved conflict in Palestine was fomenting anti-Americanism in the wider region. An obvious point, perhaps; but yet another reason why the love is draining out of a special relationship.

CFR:  Enemies Into Friends: How the United States Can Court Its Adversaries

NPR:  Foreign Policy: Changing Views Of Arab Youth

Haaretz:  Report: U.S. positioning ‘bunker-busters’ for possible Iran strike

The United States is transporting 387 “bunker-buster” bombs to its air base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean as part of preparations for a possible strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to a report in Scotland’s Sunday Herald.

The U.S. government signed a contract in January with Superior Maritime Services to transport 10 ammunition containers to Diego Garcia from Concord, California. The shipment includes 195 smart, guided Blu-110 bombs and 192 Blu-117 2,000lb bombs.

Both types of bombs could be used against reinforced or underground facilities.

Reuters:  Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad best of enemies?

As adversaries go, Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are oddly well-suited.

The hardline Israeli prime minister and the fiery Iranian president seem to feed each other rhetorical ammunition to whip up fears that bolster them in domestic politics and beyond.

Between them, they are stubbornly testing the limits of U.S. power in the Middle East and undermining the “new beginning” in relations between America and Muslims that President Barack Obama proposed in an eloquent Cairo speech nine months ago.

Netanyahu contends that Iran is seeking a nuclear bomb to fulfill Ahmadinejad’s declared wish for Israel’s destruction. Confronting it, he argues, eclipses the importance of U.S.-led attempts to revive peacemaking with Palestinians and Arabs.

For Ahmadinejad, who says Iran’s nuclear ambitions are purely peaceful, any breakdown of U.S. mediation backs up his doctrine that armed resistance, not negotiations, is the only way to regain Israeli-occupied land, especially Jerusalem.

CS Monitor:  Why Iran smiles on Jerusalem clashes

The Jerusalem clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians that injured more than 100 today, together with an unfolding crisis between the US and Israel, give beleaguered Iran an opportunity to boost its clout.

NYT:  Let’s Fight Over a Big Plan

Underlying the latest U.S.-Israel spat over settlements is the deeper — real — problem: There are five key actors in the Israeli-Palestinian equation today. Two of them — the Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and the alliance of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah — have clear strategies. These two are actually opposed, but one of them will shape Israeli-Palestinian relations in the coming years; indeed, their showdown is nearing. I hope Fayyad wins. It would be good for Israel, America and the moderate Arabs. But those three need their own strategy to make it happen.

WP:  Why the U.S. must talk to the Taliban

Afghanistan and its neighbors are convinced, despite President Obama’s references to a gradual withdrawal, that U.S. and NATO forces will begin a total pullout next summer.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently visited Kabul, making clear that Tehran will jockey for influence after the Western withdrawal. Russia and the Central Asian republics are making themselves visible in wanting to discuss the eventual future of Afghanistan. But the most dangerous signal of instability on the subcontinent is the dramatic escalation of the proxy war between India and Pakistan in the past few weeks.

CNN:  Allawi edges ahead of al-Maliki in Iraq vote count

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s bloc has edged ahead of the coalition led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq’s parliamentary vote, election officials announced.

NYT:  Christian Soldiers

The “overture” — the missionary’s initial bonding with Muslims via discussion of the Koran — is precision-engineered to undermine their allegiance to Islam.

These missionaries start out by noting that the Koran depicts Jesus and his mother, Mary, in a favorable light. Indeed, they point out, the Koran depicts Jesus as a great prophet and a miracle worker who can even raise the dead. In contrast, the Koran doesn’t show Muhammad himself doing that sort of thing. Hmmm … kind of makes you wonder who the top prophet is, doesn’t it?

In some cases even the “camel’s nose” image doesn’t do justice to missionary wiliness. “Trojan Camel” might be better; some Christian missionaries call themselves Muslims — or at least muslims — because, after all, “muslim” literally means one who surrenders to God. A few have gone way undercover, growing beards and abstaining from pork.

Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. Suppose you were a Christian parent in America and you heard that someone who called himself a Christian had bonded with your son via genial Bible talk and then tried to convert him to Islam. That would be annoying, right? Might even lead to some blowback?

AEI:  Iran News Roundup March 16, 2010

Under the deal, 750 million cubic feet of gas will be pumped to Pakistan daily from Iran by mid-2015.

Gates arrived in Afghanistan on the same day that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was supposed to have visited. Iranian state-run media reported Monday that Ahmadinejad’s trip had been postponed until mid-March.

“Iran is playing a double game in Afghanistan,” Gates told reporters on the flight to Afghanistan. “They want to maintain a good relationship with the Afghan government. They also want to do everything they possibly can to hurt us, or for us not to be successful.”

Gates said the Tehran government “will help the Taliban, whether they are providing money” or “some low level of support.”

NYT: Mr. Gates is visiting Kabul during the same week that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is expected in the Afghan capital to meet with Mr. Karzai. Mr. Gates told reporters that Iran was “playing a double game in Afghanistan — they want to maintain a good relationship with the Afghan government, they also want to do everything they possibly to can to hurt us, or for us not to be successful. And they’re trying to thread that.”

Mr. Gates said he believed that Iran was providing money and “some low level of support” to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and that “they also understand that our reaction, should they get too aggressive in this, is not one they would want to think about.”

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, swiftly amended Mr. Gates’s comments on Iran and said that the defense secretary meant to say that any American reaction would occur within Afghanistan, not elsewhere. As Iran has continued its nuclear program despite American and international pressure to curtail it, there has been speculation for years that the United States or Israel might bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Go to CNN.

IND:  This article highlights how bleak the situation in Afghanistan really is; it is also yet another reminder that the trouble spots in the Middle East are interconnected. We are not connecting the dots, and are miserably failing to solve them individually.    We need a more holistic approach, starting with helping Iran become democratic.

The United States ambassador in Kabul warned his superiors here in November that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan “is not an adequate strategic partner” and “continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden,” according to a classified cable that offers a much bleaker accounting of the risks of sending additional American troops to Afghanistan than was previously known.

The broad outlines of two cables from the ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, became public within days after he sent them, and they were portrayed as having been the source of significant discussion in the White House, heightening tensions between diplomats and senior military officers, who supported an increase of 30,000 American troops.

But the full cables, [Click on this link] obtained by The New York Times, show for the first time just how strongly the current ambassador felt about the leadership of the Afghan government, the state of its military and the chances that a troop buildup would actually hurt the war effort by making the Karzai government too dependent on the United States.

They show that Mr. Eikenberry, a retired Army lieutenant general who once was the top American commander in Afghanistan, repeatedly cautioned that deploying sizable American reinforcements would result in “astronomical costs” — tens of billions of dollars — and would only deepen the dependence of the Afghan government on the United States.

“Sending additional forces will delay the day when Afghans will take over, and make it difficult, if not impossible, to bring our people home on a reasonable timetable,” he wrote Nov. 6. “An increased U.S. and foreign role in security and governance will increase Afghan dependence, at least in the short-term.”

In his memos, Mr. Eikenberry raised other concerns. He said he had serious doubts about the ability of the Afghan police and military forces to take over security duties in the country by 2013. “The Army’s high attrition and low recruitment rates for Pashtuns in the south are crippling,” he wrote. “Simply keeping the force at current levels requires tens of thousands of new recruits every year to replace attrition losses and battlefield casualties.”

He also noted worries that the success of Mr. Obama’s Afghanistan policy hinged on Pakistani forces’ eliminating militants’ havens in the mountainous region near the Afghan border.

“Pakistan will remain the single greatest source of Afghan instability so long as the border sanctuaries remain,” he wrote. “Until this sanctuary problem is fully addressed, the gains from sending additional forces may be fleeting.”

“As we contemplate greatly expanding our presence in Afghanistan, the better answer to our difficulties could well be to further ratchet up our engagement in Pakistan,” he wrote without elaboration. Go to NY Times.