Persian Gulf & Middle East Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

muddie said:

View attachment 8013

This picture shows pro-Assad militiamen carrying a Chinese M99 .50 cal sniper rifle and an Iranian Sayad 2(?) sniper rifle.

Seems like Chinese weapons appearing frequently on both sides of the Syrian Civil war.

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New York Times/Reuters said:

BEIRUT — Foreign forces destroyed advanced Russian anti-ship missiles in Syria last week, rebels said on Tuesday - a disclosure that appeared to point to an Israeli raid.

Qassem Saadeddine, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army's Supreme Military Council, said a pre-dawn strike on Friday hit a Syrian navy barracks at Safira, near the port of Latakia. He said that the rebel forces' intelligence network had identified newly supplied Yakhont missiles being stored there.

"It was not the FSA that targeted this," Saadeddine told Reuters. "It is not an attack that was carried out by rebels.

"This attack was either by air raid or long-range missiles fired from boats in the Mediterranean," he said.

Rebels described huge blasts - the ferocity of which, they said, was beyond the firepower available to them but consistent with that of a modern military like Israel's.

Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement. The Syrian government has not commented on the incident, beyond a state television report noting a "series of explosions" at the site.

Such weaponry, Israeli officials have made clear, would include the long-range Yakhonts, which could help Hezbollah repel Israel's navy and endanger its offshore gas rigs. In May, Israel and its U.S. ally complained about Moscow sending the missiles to Syria. Israel said they would likely end up with Hezbollah. The Lebanese group has said it does not need them.

Asked about the Latakia blasts, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon told reporters: "We have set red lines in regards to our own interests, and we keep them. There is an attack here, an explosion there, various versions - in any event, in the Middle East it is usually we who are blamed for most."

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THE ROVING EYE

The China-US 'Brotherhood'

By Pepe Escobar

The fifth round of the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue began this Thursday in Washington. This China-US "Brotherhood" does involve a lot of talk - with no perceptible action. US Think Tankland is trying to convey the impression that Beijing is now in a more fragile position relative to Washington compared with the post-financial crisis environment in 2009. Nonsense.

It's as if the ongoing NSA (global) scandal never happened; Edward Snowden exposed how the US government has turned against its own citizens even while it keeps spying on virtually the whole planet. Then there's the meme of the Chinese economy being "in trouble", when in fact Beijing is launching a long-reaching, complex strategy to calibrate the effects of a relative economic slowdown.

Finally, the supposed "aggressive Chinese behavior" in terms of Asian security is just spin. Beijing is building up its navy, of course - yet at the same time both China and selected members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are fine-tuning their tactics ahead of multilateral talks about a code of conduct for any serious problems in the South China Sea. Beijing would be foolish to go for diplomacy of the gunboat variety - which would certainly attract a US countercoup.

Bogged down, all over
Beijing has clearly interpreted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's "liberation" of Libya - now reverted into failed state status; US support for the destruction of Syria; and the "pivoting" to Asia as all interlinked, targeting China's ascension and devised to rattle the complex Chinese strategy of an Eurasian energy corridor.

Yet it does not seem to be working. As Asia Times Online reported, the Iran-Pakistan (IP) pipeline may well end up as IPC, "C" being an extension to Xinjiang in western China. Beijing also knows very well how the proposed Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline has been a key reason for the emphatic attack on Syria orchestrated by actors such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Beijing calculates that if Bashar al-Assad stays and the US$10 billion pipeline ever gets completed (certainly with Chinese and Russian financial help) the top client may end up being Beijing itself, and not Western Europe.

Considering its strategic relationship with Islamabad, Beijing is also very much aware of any US moves to stir up trouble in geo-strategically crucial Balochistan in Pakistan - with a possible overspill to neighboring Sistan-Balochistan province in Iran. In parallel, Beijing interprets US bluster and intransigence about Iran's nuclear program as a cover story to upset its solid energy security partnership with Tehran.

Regarding Afghanistan, the corridors at the Zhongnanhai in Beijing must be echoing with laughter as Washington backtracks no less than 16 years, to the second Bill Clinton administration - an eternity in politics - to talk to the Taliban in Doha essentially about one of the oldest Pipelinestan gambits. "We want a pipeline" (the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India, TAPI), says Washington. "We want our cut", the Taliban reply. This is politics as Groundhog Day.

The problem is Washington has absolutely nothing to offer the Taliban. The Taliban, on the other hand, will keep their summer offensive schedule, knowing full well they will be free to do whatever they please after President Hamid Karzai slides into oblivion. As for the Washington notion that Islamabad will be able to keep the Afghan Taliban in check, even the goats in the Hindu Kush are laughing about it.

It's all about Syria
Syria, though, remains the key story - as the pivot of a spreading cancer, a Sunni/Shi'ite sectarian war largely encouraged by the House of Saud and other Gulf Cooperation Council actors, and bought hook, line and sinker by the Obama administration.

It took a courageous diplomat to leak it, plus translations from Russian to Arabic and then English, for the world to have an idea of what politicians actually discuss in those largely vacuous, photo-opportunity summits. What Russian President Vladimir Putin told Obama, Britain's David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande face-to-face at the recent Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland is nothing less than gripping. Examples:

Putin addressing the table: "You want President Bashar al-Assad to step down? Look at the leaders you've made in the Middle East in the course of what you have dubbed the 'Arab Spring'."

Putin addressing Obama, Cameron and Hollande: "You want Russia to abandon Assad and his regime and go along with an opposition whose leaders don't know anything except issuing fatwas declaring people heretics, and whose members - who come from a bunch of different countries and have multiple orientations - don't know anything except how to slaughter people and eat human flesh."

Putin addressing Obama directly: "Your country sent its army to Afghanistan in the year 2001 on the excuse that you are fighting the Taliban and the al-Qaeda organization and other fundamentalist terrorists whom your government accused of carrying out the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington. And here you are today making an alliance with them in Syria. And you and your allies are declaring your desire to send them weapons. And here you have Qatar in which you [the US] have your biggest base in the region and in the territory of that country the Taliban are opening a representative office."

The best part is that German Chancellor Angela Merkel then corroborated Putin's every word. And Chinese President Xi Jinping certainly would have done the same.

Keep weaving that net, brother
Even if the Obama administration's bright idea of selecting the "good" rebels to be presented with light weapons would work (and it won't; in a war theatre the real hardcore fighting forces - as in the Jabhat al-Nusra-style gangs - end up laying their hands on the best weapons), there's no evidence that Bashar al-Assad's forces will fold.

On the contrary. There will be a push to reconquer all of Aleppo - already in progress, as well as a push southward to Daraa to secure the border with Jordan; petro-monarchy-fueled weapons to "rebels" in southern Syria go through Jordan. Rumors of "overextension" are greatly exaggerated; this can be accomplished in stages.

Russia, meanwhile, will keep playing a very clever game; ensuring essential weapons to the Syrian government while ready to deliver even more lethal stuff in case Washington decides to step up its weaponizing.

And then there's the whole Muslim Brotherhood-wide mess. Al-Akhbar has deliciously detailed how the House of Saud virtually destroyed Qatar in Egypt - as well as in Syria. It's never enough to remember that the House of Saud supports backward Salafi parties in Egypt and weaponizes backward Salafi fighters in Syria.

In Egypt, meet the new boss - Saudis and Emiratis - same as the old boss - Qataris. Before he recently decided to self-depose, Emir al-Thani spent as much as $17 billion on assorted Arab Springers, most of it for Morsi in Egypt. Now the House of Saud has already offered $5 billion, and the Emirates $3 billion. None of them have obviously been reading on this site the views of Spengler - who has proved that Egypt, much to the regret of their wonderful people, will remain a banana republic - without the bananas (see Islam's civil war moves to Egypt , Asia Times Online, July 8, 2013.)

The bottom line: Beijing is betting it will win in Pakistan, in Iran, in Syria (it's already winning in Iraq), in Pipelineistan, not to mention in the South China Sea, while Washington will be entangled in its own Brotherhood net. "Fragile"? You wish.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at [email protected].

(Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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asif iqbal said:

Naa they are both copy's you can tell by the telescope

50 cal is a very powerful gun, its armourd piercing round a penetrate through a concrete wall, a well trained sniper and spotter can snipe targets at 1 mile away using 0.5 round, that's 1,600 metres!

There's one thing having a gun it's another thing using it for what it was designed for

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Egypt's Sphinx casts eyes on Syria

By M K Bhadrakumar

It looks increasingly that solving the Egyptian puzzle is going to take us all to Syria. How far the army's coup in Egypt resets the geopolitics of the Middle East, or, conversely, whether the coup itself forms the commencement of a region-wide tectonic shift that is going to play out over time - this is the big question.

The cascading events this week indicate that the latter could well be the case. To be sure, even by the standards of the Middle East, the past week has been an extraordinary one.

There has been a strong expression of support from the United States and its Persian Gulf allies to the Egyptian military, which in turn is providing the political underpinning for a brutal crackdown by the junta on the Muslim Brotherhood, which has implications for the "Arab Spring" as a whole.

Russia's overture to the junta at such a point may come as quite a surprise but it is integral to the Russian strategy in Syria and the Russian skepticism of the "Arab Spring".

The isolation of Qatar, Turkey and Iran on the regional chessboard has accentuated through the past week with the junta in Cairo ticking off these countries for their pretensions of being arbiters or opinion-makers in Egypt's internal affairs. It so happens that these three countries have been deeply involved in the Syrian situation as well.

Meanwhile, Israel's openness to accept Russian peacekeepers on the Golan Heights could not have surged to the surface this week without US acquiescence - or even approval - and the timing of the leadership changes both in Syria's ruling Ba'ath Party and the Syrian National Coalition could be more than a coincidence.

There is a background to all this, lest it be forgotten amidst the cacophony of the coup in Egypt - Hassan Rouhani's thumping victory in the Iranian presidential election and the promise of an impending thaw in the Saudi-Iranian relationship.

A seminal event
If a seminal event is to be identified in this torrential flow of events in regional politics, it must be the visit by the US Secretary of State John Kerry to Saudi Arabia on June 25, which was embedded within a regional tour of the Middle East and was a diplomatic initiative on Syria.

In hindsight it becomes apparent now that the slow-motion coup in Egypt was well under way by that time in end-June and the US was already in deep consultation with the military leadership in Cairo regarding a political transition in Egypt. Without doubt, Kerry's talks with the Saudi leaders couldn't have ignored the gathering storms in Egypt.

In the event, of course, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah became the first world leader to felicitate the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government on July 2 - within hours of the coup unfolding - as if Riyadh had it all worked out in anticipation.

Again, the alacrity with which Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates simultaneously announced on Wednesday a US$8 billion aid package for Egypt suggests that a blueprint was already prepared in consultation with the US.

Washington leaked to the press immediately thereafter that it too was going ahead with a planned supply of F-16 fighter aircraft to the Egyptian military, which means that despite the Obama administration's posturing of prevarication, suspending military aid to Egypt is the last thing on its mind.

Curiously, another regional leader who promptly welcomed - alongside King Abdullah - the ouster of the Brotherhood from power in Egypt has been Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

This wasn't an isolated act, either. On Monday, Assad announced the replacement of the entire Ba'ath leadership, with all 16 members who have been in the high command since 2005, making way for new blood. A younger generation of leaders, including former diplomats, has been brought in as replacements. Parliament speaker Jihad al-Laham and Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi are among them.

In an interview with the Ba'ath party's mouthpiece, Assad sought to explain that the leaders were removed from the high command because they made mistakes while in office. "When a leader does not solve a series of errors, this leader must be held accountable," he said without elaborating. Of course, Assad continues as the party's secretary-general, being the only top leader who didn't make any mistakes.

In the same interview with the Ba'ath party's organ, Assad also renewed his criticism of the Muslim Brotherhood, saying it "takes advantage of religion and uses it as a mask ... and it thinks that if you don't agree with it politically, that means you don't stand by God."

Assad strives to convey the message to the people that he is responsive to their grievances over social problems such as inflation and worsening public security. But the fact remains that he is strengthening his control of the ruling party at a time when the Syrian situation is evolving in political terms, given the military stalemate, and all protagonists - Syrian as well as outside powers - anticipate the inevitability of a political dialogue in the next several months.

Equally, what needs to be noted is that the Ba'ath Party purge coincides with a change of leadership of the opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC). New SNC president Ahmad Jarba is a Saudi-US nominee and has the reputation of being a "secular-minded" tribal leader.

Following Jarba's election, Ghassan Hitto, the prime minister and a businessman from America, who had enjoyed the backing of Qatar, Turkey and the US when he was appointed in last March, submitted his resignation.

In essence, the changes in the SNC signify - like in Egypt - an ascendancy of Saudi influence and the eclipse of the Qatari-Turkish axis. The Brotherhood's clout within the SNC has also suffered a setback. Evidently, the US is backing the ascendancy of Saudi influence within the SNC - as is happening in Egypt.

Demise of Islamism

What is the Saudi-US game plan? Going by the Ramadan message by the Saudi King and the Crown Prince on Wednesday, Saudi Arabia "will not allow religion to be exploited by extremists who only work for their personal interests, and who harm the reputation of Islam." The message said Saudi Arabia will "with God's help, remain the defenders of Islam ... and continue on our centrist, moderate approach."

Evidently, these are barbs aimed at the Muslim Brotherhood in the prevailing context of both Egypt and Syria, and the movement's principal backers in the region; namely, Qatar and Turkey.

On the other hand, Assad would find the Saudi King's Ramadan message quite agreeable. He cannot but share the Saudi perspective (which the US and Russia also share) that the specter of radical Islamists haunting his country's destiny is the core issue today.

Without doubt, these cross currents in regional politics have not gone unnoticed in Moscow, and they have prompted the Kremlin to lose no more time in making an overture to the Egyptian junta. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday,
We hope that all initiatives [by the junta], which are designed to launch the national dialogue, to stabilize the situation and hold free elections, will be successful.
Lavrov simply ignored that he was speaking while a violent crackdown on the Brotherhood by the Egyptian military was underway. He went on to propose that it could be business as usual between Russia and Egypt and, furthermore, that Russia's priority lies in the impact of the developments in Egypt on regional stability and the politics of the Islamic world. Lavrov said,
As for cooperation projects [with Egypt], these projects are aimed at developing cooperation between the countries and peoples. Their implementation will benefit both the countries and the peoples.

We [Russia] want stability to be ensured in Egypt and in the entire region, which creates serious risks for international relations. Egypt is the region's key country. The development of events in the region and in the Islamic world will depend on the situation in Egypt.
This is realpolitik at its best. Simply put, without drawing allegations of interfering in Egypt's internal affairs, Lavrov has let it be known to the new leadership in Cairo, and an array of regional states - Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Turkey and Israel, in particular - and the "international community" as a whole that Russia is far from displeased with the turn of events in Egypt and its likely repercussions for regional security and stability.

Conceivably, Moscow, which never gave up its deep-rooted suspicions of the Muslim Brotherhood, may be feeling the winds of change to be quite conducive to the pursuit of its own interests and in harmony with its own assessments of the "Arab Spring".

Meanwhile, the Saudi establishment daily Asarq Al-Awsat reported on Wednesday that there has been a meeting between Lavrov and Israel's Justice Minister Tzipi Livni during which the latter indicated that Israel may allow Russian peacekeeping soldiers under the United Nations flag on the Golan Heights provided Moscow halted the transfer of advanced S-300 antiaircraft missiles to Syria.

President Vladimir Putin had proposed last month that Russia is ready to replace the 380-strong Austrian contingent in the 1,100-strong UN Disengagement Observer Force in Golan.

Neither Moscow nor Tel Aviv has contradicted the Saudi daily's report. If it is true, as seems likely, it not only is in sync with the broad sweep of the above-mentioned developments but it unveils a tantalizingly new pattern of regional alignments involving Israel and Syria, with the US and Russia as the stakeholders - something unthinkable until now.

Clearly, the events in Egypt are increasingly finding the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Russia on the same page. All these four major protagonists are willing to wager that the controversial coup in Egypt might eventually stabilize the situation in that country and even strengthen democratic rule.

All these protagonists would agree that political Islam turned out to be the unwelcome beneficiary of the "Arab Spring." Indeed, by the analogy of Egypt, as hinted in the Saudi King's Ramadan message, big trouble seems to lie ahead for the Islamist movements in the region as whole, including the Syrian rebel groups.

As a former Israeli ambassador to the US, Zalman Shoval summed up in an article titled "New Dawn on the Nile" in Jerusalem Post,
All things considered, the possible demise of Islamism as the major political force in at least parts of the Arab world could eventually lead to a more secular, down-to-earth and less dogmatic and intolerant attitude on the part of our [Israel's] neighbors.
All in all, the struggle that lies ahead in Egypt and the turns that the Syrian situation is poised to take in the coming months have not only some striking parallels, but could be inter-related.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

(Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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OP-ED GUEST COLUMNIST

The Story Behind Syria and Egypt

By JONATHAN TEPPERMAN
Published: July 12, 2013


In 15 years of thinking, reporting and writing about global affairs, I’ve come to the conclusion (after plenty of false starts) that often the best way to understand and explain big events is not by focusing on them directly, but by approaching them through smaller stories.


This insight is probably not original or profound. But what started out as a rationalization for incompetence — when I first became a journalist, I knew so little about anything that even I could tell I had no business swinging for the fences — has, over the years, developed into a conviction.

It’s not that Big Ideas about the world aren’t important. The problem is that for those of us who aren’t George Kennan, coming up with them is preposterously difficult, and thus the results are usually boring and banal. Meanwhile, looking at the news through a tighter lens and trying to make unlikely connections can generate insights that might otherwise be missed. So, at least, I tell myself.

A good example of how this works can be found in the recent turmoil wracking the Arab world. After two-plus years of conflict and the spilling of so much blood (and ink), it’s hard to add value by tackling the narratives head-on. As I discovered last night at dinner trying to explain the pros and cons of the Egyptian coup to my 10-year old stepson, who ended up looking as befuddled as I felt, it’s hard enough just sussing out what to think for oneself.

But that’s precisely where those less-explored angles I mentioned can prove most useful. In this case, a valuable story-within-the-story to zoom in on is the competition for influence over the region that’s slowly emerged between two seemingly tangential players.

Back in early 2011, when the Arab uprisings first erupted, most pundits assumed the countries that would do most to shape their course from the outside would be the usual heavyweights: the United States, and maybe Turkey (the region’s one semi-functional Muslim democracy) and Iran (the neighborhood’s revolutionary spoiler).

Instead, as this newspaper’s Robert Worth pointed out this week, two oil-rich Gulf monarchies have seized the initiative and are duking it out for dominance.

The story starts in Syria. The two states — Saudi Arabia and Qatar — have both supported the uprising there from the beginning. But last Saturday their efforts to one-up each other broke into the open when the Syrian opposition picked a new, Saudi-backed leader over a more established candidate favored by Qatar.

This sub-rosa struggle became even clearer on Tuesday when, barely a week after Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s (Qatari-backed) president, was ousted by the military — and just hours after that military gunned down scores of his protesting supporters — Saudi Arabia swooped in and blessed the new regime with a $5 billion check (followed promptly by the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, which together kicked in another $7 billion).

All this is important for three reasons.

First, because the meddling is more likely to hurt than help. Syria and Egypt certainly do need outside aid, but the kind they’re getting from Doha and Riyadh seems sure to make things worse. After all, Morsi, despite his epic incompetence, managed to hold on as long as he did in large part thanks to $8 billion in aid he got from Qatar over his yearlong tenure.

Now the Saudis’ gift will similarly help his replacements stay afloat. But it will also enable more bad behavior in the process, by allowing the new government to avoid support from the International Monetary Fund, and thereby also avoid the painful but desperately needed spending reforms the I.M.F. was insisting on.

Second, the story matters because the squabble for primacy between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is itself proving toxic. In Syria, their jockeying kept the opposition leaderless for months just when government forces were making big gains and the rebels needed unity most. Now the opposition finally has a boss, yet his biggest credential seems to be his relation by marriage to the Saudi king.

Finally, just as important as what the Gulf states are up to is what their behavior reveals about what other, far more powerful countries are doing — or not doing. After all, little Saudi Arabia and tiny Qatar are only able to wield such outsize influence in Syria and Egypt today because they have the field virtually to themselves.

In other words, the big reason their adventurism is worth focusing on is because of the light it throws on an even larger story: the damage being done by the reluctance of United States and its allies to get more involved.

There are plenty of good reasons for their standoffishness, as U.S. and other officials are quick to explain. But this week’s events underscore the costs of that diffidence. In the absence of decisive action from Washington, London, Paris or Ankara, two autocratic monarchies that embrace medieval forms of Islam have grabbed the wheel and are following their own narrow interests.

And those interests — preserving authoritarian stability in Saudi Arabia’s case, and maximizing Doha’s diplomatic clout in Qatar’s — most definitely do not align with those of the West, or, for that matter, with those of the majority of the people of the Arab world.

In the end, of course, those same people — in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere — must determine their own fates. But they desperately need real help in the process. They’re getting precious little of that from us, and now we’re seeing the result. The West’s failure to set a clear policy in Egypt and Syria has let the Gulf sheiks set one for us. Is that really the way we want the outcome of the Arab Spring to be decided?

Now that’s a question even a 10-year old could answer on his own.

Jonathan Tepperman is the managing editor of Foreign Affairs and a guest columnist for the International Herald Tribune.

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Iran changes tack on Egypt
Iran has done a smart 180-degree turn on the developments in Egypt. After taking a forceful line at the diplomatic level that the coup was “unacceptable and disturbing” to Tehran, a complete turnaround is apparent now. The new Iranian refrain is that “Egypt’s fate should be determined by its own nation and any decision made by the Egyptian people should be respected by all.”

This was conveyed to the Egyptian FM Mohamed Kamel Amr in a phone conversation on Thursday by the Iranian FM Ali Akbar Salehi, who added in good measure that Tehran “has always sought and will seek the best relations with Egypt.”
The phone call followed a condemnation by the Egyptian foreign ministry that the initial Iranian reaction was an “unacceptable interference” and was based on a “misunderstanding” of the developments.
Evidently, Cairo rapped the Iranian knuckle hard, but then, there might also have been some genuine rethink in Tehran, where there is a political transition.
This is evident from the subsequent phone conversation between Salehi and the incoming Iranian vice-president Mohamed ElBaradei, whose balanced role as the IAEA director-general on the Iran nuclear issue was much appreciated in Tehran.
To be sure, Iranian national interests have surged. How far this “realpolitik” reflects President-elect Hassan Rouhani’s own thinking becomes important, which makes his phone conversation with the Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki earlier today rather interesting.
Rouhani is quoted as saying, “Whatever decision is made by the Egyptian people should be respected by all.” Interestingly, Rouhani said this while Marzouki (who has affinities with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood) said his government is “unhappy” with the developments in Egypt.
Meanwhile, Salehi flew down to Ankara on Saturday to meet his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu. In Ankara, of course, Salehi spoke in two voices: “The Egyptian people’s decision is respected by everyone and the democracy process which has started in Egypt will be a durable process and will be strengthened day by day.”
What does Iran aim at? The priority at this point seems to be to make as many bridges across the sectarian divide as possible when rifts have appeared amongst the Sunni countries — Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Egypt and Turkey and so on.
Curiously, while Turkey has taken an ideological stance championing political Islam as integral to Egypt’s democratic transformation, Iran chooses to remain coolly pragmatic — although at the time of the Tahrir uprising against Hosni Mubarak, Iran had made the tall claim that the Egyptian revolution is a legacy of its own 1979 Islamic revolution.
One major factor in the Iranian calculus is how the ouster of the Brotherhood in Egypt would impact on Syria, where the government forces have been scoring impressive gains.
What is of utmost importance for Iran at this crucial juncture will be any shift in the Turkish policies on Syria (which partly explains Salehi’s dash to Ankara on Saturday).
Indeed, Turkey is thinking through its regional policies. It certainly needs to break out of the regional isolation. The entire Turkish regional strategy was built on a regional axis with Egypt, Qatar and Tunisia, which has now been shattered.
The disenchantment with the Saudi-US policies may even prompt Turkey to roll back its push for regime change in Syria. Besides, Turkey’s misplaced assumption that the Syrian regime is fragile, the Obama administration’s ambivalence on Syria and the negative fallouts of the Syrian conflict on Turkey, the possibility of renewed Kurdish militancy, the eclipse of the Syrian branch of the Brotherhood (which was Turkey’s favored faction in the opposition) — all these are working on the mind of the Turkish policymakers.
Furthermore, Recep Erdogan may be sensing the need to focus on the internal scene — protests in Istanbul refuse to die down, Kurdish violence threatens to resurface, etc. Without doubt, Erdogan’s move to amend the code governing the armed forces betrays latent anxieties of another kind, too.
Nor can it be overlooked that Obama has neglected to consult Erdogan when the MIddle Eastern politics is at such a defining moment. Apart from being an affront to Turkish pride, Obama’s brusqueness underscores that Turkey is not after all the role model for the Muslim Middle East, as Washington had led Erdogan to believe until very recently.

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