Full circle

Part of the Iranian "revolutionary" regime's claim to righteous legitimacy is that, in the 1980s, Iran was the victim of chemical weapons usage by Saddam Hussein, with western connivance, and the US Navy shot down an Iranian civilian passenger plane. Iran the victim in a world not interested in accountability.

Now they have connived in Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons usage in Syria, and shot down a civilian airliner.

They've become what they defined themselves against. 

Emoji condolence guy

Davos starts in 10 days. Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif is apparently attending -- a favourite forum for light touch media interviews.

Can one of the interviewers ask him why he thinks a broken heart emoji is an appropriate element of a condolence tweet (no link, intentionally) to the bereaved from Ukrainian International Airlines PS752, shot down by Iran?

UPDATE 20 January: For whatever reason, Zarif became a hot potato at Davos and he is not attending. 

Overnight scrubbing likely

Look to the Twitter feed of Russia UN Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy for how the Ukrainian flight (PS752) tragedy was already being sucked into a Russian information operation just like their denial of the truth on MH17.

UPDATE: The Iranian leadership were told on Wednesday that a missile had caused the disaster. Everyone working on MH17-style disinformation about the attack was working on an already known lie. 

When they was fab

Queen Elizabeth takes a photograph as Sultan Qaboos of Oman and Prince Philip look on, during her visit to Oman in 1979.

A planned leg of the trip to Iran was cancelled after the Iranian revolution.

The Sultan's death was announced late Friday evening in Muscat.

Photo via Flickr.

Neil Peart RIP

Adding to the theories

The facts about the Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 will be slow to emerge, but they will emerge. Commercial airline catastrophes are extremely rare, but we now seem to have two events (the other being MH17) pointing to the need for more diligence by Russia in who they provide with their anti-aircraft systems.

Anyway, the mystery of why this particular flight when there others in the air around the same time. Maybe completely random. Or maybe the Russian anti-aircraft system being used by the Iranians perceived that there was another hostile aircraft using the same vector as the Ukrainian plane to camouflage its presence. This was the tactic that led the Syrian Baathist military to shoot down a Russian plane when an Israeli fighter was using its approach as a screen. Now there are several problems with this theory, beginning with the fact that the Ukrainian plane was on an outbound, not inbound path (the latter being the more likely screened approach for an attack). But this is a situation where the weird has to be considered as possible. 

Trump is not the only problem

John Kerry in the New York Times --

We were working with allies to deepen sanctions on Iran for its involvement in Yemen, its transfer of weapons to Hezbollah and its actions in Syria, its human rights violations, its threats against Israel and its ballistic missile program. The nuclear agreement would have been justified if it did nothing more than prevent Iran from building a bomb. But it also created opportunities for the United States to bring pressure on Iran on other issues.

What is the evidence that the nuclear agreement had any positive impact on Iran's "actions" in Syria? Like Susan Rice a few days ago, Obama-era senior officials are being permitted a massive blind spot on the carnage in Syria which continues to this day. 

The Ballad Of Harry And Meghan

You can't get there from here

Donald Trump --

For far too long — all the way back to 1979, to be exact — nations have tolerated Iran’s destructive and destabilizing behavior in the Middle East and beyond.

The one nation that didn't tolerate Iran's behaviour back in those early days was ... Saddam Hussein's Iraq!

Sources and methods

Donald Trump, during a wide ranging Q and A with Greek PM Mitsotakis --

But we had tremendous information [on Soleimani]. We’ve been following him for a long time. And we followed his path for those three days. And they were not good stops. We didn’t like where he was stopping. They were not good stops. We saved a lot of lives.

The known stops during those 3 days are Beirut (as Hassan Nasrallah was happy to discuss) and Damascus. But Trump appears to indicate that the entire Soleimani trip was under US surveillance.

Incidentally, it's also worth mentioning that despite the infinite hot takes on the situation, the media appears to have missed the significance of Mike Pompeo's postponed trip to Ukraine and Central Asia, even when the State Department keeps reminding everyone that it was postponed!

Mike Pompeo comments on claims that Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission

Trump is not the only problem

Russian President Vladimir Putin visiting Bashar al-Assad in Syria today.

Photo via Kremlin.

Carlos Ghosn bullet train trip -- exclusive picture

Photo via Inception Wiki. [Actual Ghosn escape coverage available at Wall Street Journal].

Another option is Grecian 2000

From Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah wide-ranging speech upon the assassination of Qasim Soleimani --

This [being a martyr] is his intention since he was a young man and joined the fighting fronts in Iran, and he kept carrying this wish and this goal and this goal, who walk in this way, some of them fall in his quarter or in the middle of it before the end. And this longing dies to meet, and others do as the time progresses, the glow, the strength, the presence and the burning, the Hajj Qasim and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, were of the second type, especially in recent years, and when the person’s life spans, he sees the graying has filled his beard and his hair, and becomes afraid to die sick, or on the mattress,

Perceptions

Statement from US military Africa Command --

During an attack by al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida group in East Africa, earlier today, one (1) U.S. service member and two (2) Department of Defense contractors were killed at a Kenya Defense Force Military Base in Manda Bay, Kenya. In addition, two (2) Department of Defense members were wounded. The wounded Americans are currently in stable condition and being evacuated.

So with one attack, Al Shabaab killed more Americans than during the entire end-of-year crisis in US-Iran relations, which began with a militia rocket attack on a Kirkuk base 27 December.

But one phase of the Iran / Iraq crisis was the stunt outside the American Embassy in Baghdad on New Year's Day which (1) had a bad resonance for the Trump Administration in terms of Tehran and Benghazi precedents, and (2) caught everyone bored in front of their screens on a holiday -- it became a massive international crisis.

Al Shabaab made the mistake of striking late on a Saturday night in a fairly remote part of Kenya ... and no-one's narrative can handle it. Even with dead Americans. 

We will always have Tom Friedman

His New York Times latest:

I write these lines while flying over New Zealand,

It was already at 11

Susan Rice in the New York Times:

Iran's destabilizing activities in the region, notably in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon, have only intensified [since May 2018].

How has anything Iran has done in Syria been worse since the US left the nuclear deal? The Syrian catastrophe has been unfolding since 2011 e.g. Susan Rice in a valedictory interview, January 16, 2017

We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.

Signpost

A poster of Qasem Soleimani has been placed next to the Israel - Lebanon frontier at the so-called Shebaa Farms disputed area. The message reads "With your blood, we will cross it."

Note: it's been snowing in this part of Lebanon. Donald Trump has been known to use snow in the Middle East as evidence against climate change.

Photo via Lebanon National News Agency. 

Reunited

The photograph shows Qasem Soleimani delivering a speech at the 10th anniversary commemoration of the mysterious 2008 death of Hezbollah senior official Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus (that's Mughniyeh's image on the podium). There are certain similarities in the eventual demise of both men, and Soleimani's speech certainly had some hints that he knew he might eventually go the same way. He concluded --

"The enemy knows, but must be serious about the retribution of Imad Mughniyah not to shoot missiles and kill one, the retribution of these bloods is the destruction of the Zionist regime and the enemy knows that this is a divine promise that will surely come true."

Whether these were his final instructions to the Iranian government remains to be seen.

Photos via FARS. 

Other than that, they're OK with it

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi statement --

The two martyrs were great symbols in achieving victory against the terrorist ISIS. The assassination of an Iraqi military commander holding an official position is an aggression against Iraq, the state, the government, and the people. Carrying out liquidation operations against Iraqi leadership figures or from a brotherly country on Iraqi soil is a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, a blatant attack on the dignity of the country and a dangerous escalation that ignites a devastating war in Iraq, the region and the world.

Now we know why Mike Pompeo postponed his Ukraine trip

That guy has tweeted that we see Iran responsible for the events in Baghdad & we will respond to Iran.
1st: You can’t do anything.
2nd: If you were logical —which you’re not— you’d see that your crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan… have made nations hate you. https://t.co/hMGOEDwHuY

— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) January 1, 2020

History Lesson

This is the Turkish Airlines plane "Kushimoto." As the associated Turkish Airlines webpage explains, the plane is an A330 with a replica livery of a 1980s DC-10 that was used to rescue Japanese travelers stranded in Tehran during an air blockade in the Iran-Iraq war. For Turkey, that rescue was seen as returning a century-old favour, when Japanese villagers had rescued Turkish sailors whose ship was destroyed in a typhoon.

The point: Turkey takes its relations with Japan seriously. They won't be impressed at being used as a pit-stop in the Carlos Ghosn escape. 

Bad traveler

Two days ago, the US State Department was emphasizing the importance of Mike Pompeo's imminent visit to eastern Europe, including Ukraine, and Central Asia. Today, in the doldrums of New Year's Day, the visit was postponed with no new date, on the following grounds --

due to the need for the Secretary to be in Washington, D.C., to continue monitoring the ongoing situation in Iraq and ensure the safety and security of Americans in the Middle East.

This makes no sense. If nothing else, by traveling he would have been in a similar time zone to Iraq and actually better placed to monitor things.

Instead he appears to have found a convenient way out of a very awkward meeting with the Ukrainian President Zelensky, while parrying his fear that, however remote the possibility, he would be out of the office if something happened to a US diplomat abroad -- thus revealing his insecurity that his Benghazi antics against Hillary Clinton could be used against him. It's almost like he has his eye on a political campaign!

Quote of the Day

Dan Azzi on Carlos Ghosn --

For a second, he wonders to himself, is it better to be imprisoned in Japan with free cash or free in Lebanon with imprisoned cash?

Origins

Don Imus is dead. Here's his New York Times obituary. For all the "Trump country" trips that journalists do to diners in Ohio, it would be a better use of their time to study Don Imus. He wasn't from New York City, but he became integral to its political culture through his decades on radio. And whether from being lucky or good, his show was the morning anchor program on WFAN, otherwise an all-sports station, at the very beginning of the all-sports all-the-time format that now accounts for a sizable chunk of your television content. New York is of course a "liberal" city, but lots of conservatives live in the city, or its suburbs, and a visceral political culture was emerging from the mid-1980s. The timelines for Fox News and its major personalities like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity begin there. Rudy Giuliani thrived in it. And of course, the New Yorker who's now President, Donald Trump. Without Imus, it's more difficult to imagine a President Trump. 

Outrage of the Day

 They're dressed as priests and altar boys! They're mocking religion! They're saying we should worship rock and roll like Jesus! Head to Twitter immediately and denounce them!

PS: It was released in 1977.

Quote of the Day

Simon Kuper in the Financial Times --

Covering politics today often feels like covering football. There’s the same stupidity of much of the discussion, the blaming of referees and the empty slogans (“Get Brexit done”). There’s also the same abuse: many people now build their identity on blind political partisanship, whether it’s for Trump, Corbyn, Leave or Remain. Cornel Sandvoss, sociologist at Huddersfield University, calls this political fandom.

They still don't get it

House of Commons 2nd reading of the EU Withdrawal Bill -

Jim Shannon (DUP -- Strangford) 

It is clear that a number of issues will make Northern Ireland a less Unionist region of the United Kingdom. Fishermen who bring fish back to Portavogie will be subject to a tariff, and the meat sector will also face tariffs. Does my right hon. Friend agree that Northern Ireland will end up being less Unionist than Liverpool, Leicester, Manchester, Newcastle and London, and that we should be the same as, not different from, everywhere else in the United Kingdom? 

From the same debate, the maiden speech of Claire Hanna -- from the nationalist party that actually shows up in Parliament -- is here. 

Geoffrey Cox was right

House of Commons 25 September 2019

This Parliament should have the courage to face the electorate, but it won't, because so many of them are really all about preventing us from leaving the European Union at all. But the time is coming, Mr Speaker, when even these turkeys won't be able to prevent Christmas.

http://bit.ly/2n9rbO6 

There is always a line from The Godfather

The UK election result calls to mind Clemenza's reference to "pain in the ass innocent bystanders."