This morning I suggested that yesterday’s deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was an Al Qaeda operation in revenge of the killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi by a U.S. drone in Pakistan. The protests in Benghazi and Cairo against an anti-Islam film were used as cover for this operation. Al-Libi’s death was confirmed in yesterday’s video message by the current Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. That al-Zawahiri message, the attack in Benghazi and the rising of the AQ flag in front of the embassy in Cairo all came on the same 9/11 anniversary day is unlikely to be a coincidence. Recent news seem to confirm my take:

U.S. sources told CNN on Wednesday that the Benghazi attack was planned, and the attackers used the protest outside the consulate as a diversion. The sources could not say whether the attackers instigated the protest or merely took advantage of it, and they say they don’t believe Stevens was specifically targeted.

The protests in Cairo and in Benghazi were primarily against an anti-Islam movie. But that was likely just a pretext and a helpful diversion for the attack. The spectrum of Salafists in Egypt and Libya is wide but the few violent ones do have little problem to get some otherwise peaceful ones up for some loud protest against this or that perceived injustice. The U.S. support to the Benghazi radicals against Gaddhafi also brought former militant radical Islamists into official positions in Libya. They may well have helped in the creation of the incident.

That anti-Islam movie, of which a trailer was launched a few days ago, came just in time. That “Sam Bacile”, who told the Wall Street Journal that he is a Jew from Israel and that Jews financed his hate-speech movie, does not seem to exist at all. It is not yet known what islamophobic nut is behind this information operation. The movies dubious origin and that it came out just in time for the attack will be the base for many interesting conspiracy theories. I don’t want to add one here but will look at the U.S. response to the attack.

The important people in Washington DC will feel the usual urge to “do something” about the death of ambassador Chris Stevens. The ongoing election campaigns will create the necessity for a revenge operation.

The Libyan government is in the hand of U.S. proxies. It has already apologized for the attack and will allow the U.S. to take any necessary action. The preferred tool of the Obama administration’s foreign policy is the weaponized drone. I therefore expect that drones will soon start to fly of Cyreanica to look for signs of those who killed the ambassadors. They will find many a “militants”, i.e. male person of the age ten and above, and will kill a rather random sample of them. The following outrage and radicalization will later lead to attacks on the Libyan government and the country will go down from there. Another Somalia in the making.

The situation in Egypt is different. President Mursi has yet to condemn the breach of the embassy perimeter and the rising of the al-Qaeda flag on its flagpole. For him and his Muslim Brotherhood the Salafists are the political competition. He has to protect his right flank and is therefore unlikely to punish any of the demonstrators nor will he act forcefully to prevent another attack on the embassy. The Brotherhood has already called for more protests against the film. Further serious trouble in Egypt can thereby be expected.

The U.S. on the other side has no good instrument to make Mursi compliant to its will. If it stops the money flow the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt will be in danger. The Egyptian control of the Suez canal is also an issue the U.S. can not ignore. Any threat to Egypt may end up in a blockade of the canal for U.S. warships. The relation between the U.S. and Egypt is therefore likely to deteriorate.

The protests against that stupid movie and the now established examples of storming U.S. embassies will likely proliferate. By Friday night Beirut, Amman, Kabul, Sanaa and other capitols will have followed the pattern.

The only place where we can expect no protest against that idiotic movie is Syria. No one there has time for such a nonsense. After yesterday’s sobering experience in Libya the U.S. support for the radical insurgents in Syria there will likely become smaller or even stop. That would then be the only valuable thing those movie makers, whoever they are, would have achieved.

This news is still developing but we can already say that it will have consequences for the further U.S. involvement in Syria and elsewhere:

The US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, has died from smoke inhalation in an attack on the US consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, security sources have said.

An armed mob attacked and set fire to the building in a protest against an amateur film deemed offensive to Islam's Prophet Muhammad, after similar protests in Egypt's capital.

Three other members of Stevens' staff were killed together with Chris Stevens and the circumstances of their death are still a bit murky. There are unconfirmed pictures floating around that could be consistent with a public lynching.

Last year Chris Stevens was very active in helping the Salafist rabble from Benghazi to overthrow the Libyan government:

Chris Stevens, a former U.S. Embassy official in Tripoli and the highest-ranking U.S. representative to travel to Libya since the uprising began, will explore ways to open the funding spigots for an opposition movement that is desperately short of cash and supplies, a State Department spokesman said Tuesday.

“We’re well aware that there’s an urgency,” spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. “The Transitional National Council does need funding if it’s to survive, and we’re looking for ways to assist them.”

When the job to overthrow and kill Gaddhafi was done Stevens was named U.S. ambassador to Libya.

Last night he was killed by exactly those lunatics, who are a disgrace to Islam, Gaddhafi had warned of and had kept under tight control.

Such riots do not come out of nowhere. Allegedly these people were incited by the deeds of some other murky lunatic, now in hiding, who is working to create a "clash of civilizations" in the hope that his tribe will benefit from it:

In Benghazi, Libya, several dozen gunmen from an Islamist group, Ansar al Sharia, attacked the consulate with rocket-propelled grenades to protest the film, a deputy interior minister for the Benghazi region told the Al-Jazeera network.
…
The film's 52-year-old writer, director and producer, Sam Bacile, said that he wanted to showcase his view of Islam as a hateful religion. "Islam is a cancer," he said in a telephone interview from his home. "The movie is a political movie. It's not a religious movie."

Mr. Bacile said he raised $5 million from about 100 Jewish donors, whom he declined to identify.

But that stupid hate-speech movie was likely only the pretext for yesterday's riots and the attacks on U.S. embassies and consulates.

The real reason, though unmentioned yet in the media, was likely this:

Cont. reading: U.S. Ambo in Benghazi Killed In AQ Operation

There was some sort of 9/11 remembrance at the U.S. embassy in Cairo today.

As the U.S. in its war against Libya and Syria is again allied with those folks who rally under this flag, rising it in front of the embassy can even be seen as appropriate.

Cont. reading: 9/11 Remembrance At The U.S. Embassy In Cairo

The French journalist Mani embedded with the insurgents of the insurgent Farouq brigade near Talbiseh in Syria. The British Channel 4 has his video report which is quite interesting. It reveals that the brigade has large support from the outside.

Some of the fighters obviously had sniper training (1:15) and are teaching their comrades in that trade. They use M-16 automatic rifles with scopes.

Two different anti-aircraft guns are shown. A ZU-23-2 twin 23 mm gun mounted on a blue truck. As the truck lacks the weight to give the gun some stability its only possible use is in a "spray and pray" mode. A white truck is mounted with a ZPU-1 14.5mm machine gun. This is stability wise a more effective arrangement. As the continuous shooting for the camera shows there seems to be no lack of ammunition for these guns (3:00).

The fighters themselves explain that they see the conflict as a sectarian one. For them it is not about the Syrian army or about Assad but, as they say, about fighting Shia and Alawite (3:50).

For planing the insurgents use fresh high-resolution satellite imagery color printed on large glossy paper sheets. (5:00). But for lack of coordination with other brigades a planed attack on a Syrian army checkpoint was called off.

Two pickups are shown with mounted SPG-9 73mm recoilless guns (6:10). These are seemingly new and again there is no lack of ammunition for these.

Next comes an interesting weapons. At 6:40 the insurgents are loading a brand new Chinese QLZ-89 35mm automatic grenade launcher in the "light" bipod version but with the large "heavy" 15 rounds magazine. This launcher is a rarther rare item and a relative new Chinese development. It is a serious weapon for light infantry with a good range and lots of fire power.  It is very unlikely to be available from your friendly Lebanese next-door AK-47 and RPG dealer.

The insurgents are show as they are handling bricks of money, allegedly $110,000, for ammunition and other supplies (7:05).

The members of the Farouq brigade seem to be mostly Salafists. At 7:50 one of them laments that this is the reason they allegedly get no support from the "free world". He is asking why the "freedom" construct does not include his freedom to be Salafist.

Well, it does. But "freedom" is not about your freedom. It is about the freedom of everyone else to be what s/he wants to be. Is that the understanding Salafists have? This is just as "democracy" is not about the rule of the majority but about the protection of the minorities. Islamists seem to have a problem with such this inherent inclusiveness of these concepts. Sectarianism and freedom ain't compatible.

At 8:40 a fighter who was caught by a tank round while sniping at the Syrian army and has lost a leg and several other wounds is getting patched up. He is conscious, has a drip-bag and as he shows no pain must be under effective medication.

The insurgents have been at least partially trained. They do have quite modern and new weapons and no lack of ammunition. Their weapons are very unlikely to have been bought from the black market as the report claims. The recoilless guns and grenade launchers and their ammunitions are definitely not usual black market items. There must be some serious state sponsor behind the delivery of these. Likewise with the current satellite photos, the large amounts of money and the medical and communication equipment.

The fighters declare themselves to be Salafists and see themselves in a sectarian war against people of other believes.

The CIA is supposed to be in south Turkey to control the flow of weapons and to make sure that what gets through only goes to agreeable groups. Does the CIA think that the sectarian Salafist Farouk brigade is agreeable to western values or does it lack the control it is supposed to have?

News & views …

(I’m busy …)

Those who still downplay the role of the foreign Salafist/Jihadist insurgents in Syria should notice the reliable western witness who has experience on the ground is talking to a well known news agency:

Jacques Beres, co-founder of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, returned from Syria on Friday evening after spending two weeks working clandestinely in a hospital in the besieged northern Syrian city.

In an interview with Reuters in his central Paris apartment on Saturday, the 71-year-old said that contrary to his previous visits to Homs and Idlib earlier this year about 60 percent of those he had treated this time had been rebel fighters and that at least half of them had been non-Syrian.

"It's really something strange to see. They are directly saying that they aren't interested in Bashar al-Assad's fall, but are thinking about how to take power afterwards and set up an Islamic state with sharia law to become part of the world Emirate," the doctor said.

While many of these foreigners are paid with Saudi money they have also developed criminal ways to get money:

An epidemic of kidnappings has broken out in Syria, with rebels using ransoms to fund their military operations and common criminals taking the opportunity to cash in.
…
A student at Aleppo University who gave his name as Mohammed said that the same FSA group that was hunting down the gangs of kidnappers was also running its own operations to raise "funds for the revolution."

This unit, known as the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq brigade, kidnapped the "son of my uncle's business partner," said Mohammed, who claimed the group demanded almost $74,000 for his release.

A former Catholic clergyman said that he fled Aleppo when fighting reached his home and a number of acquaintances were kidnapped.

The Day After will be too late

It appears that after 18 months of conflict and bloodshed that led to
over 20,000 casualties, the United States and its allies in the
international community were only able to learn how to better pretend they are a constructive force. In reality, they still are working exclusively on different tactics that would allow them to defeat a number major segments of the population of Syria in favor of anyone who will help the United States and its allies install a more compliant leadership in Damascus.

People are dying in Syria because there is very little learning taking place.

A lucky shot … for the photographer.

This remark by the Turkish prime minister Erdogan is either dangerously stupid or a declaration of war against all Shia:

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a strong critic of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, drew a parallel between the bloody campaign against civilians by the Syrian government and the Battle of Karbala during a speech on Friday.

“What happened in Karbala 1,332 years ago is what is happening in Syria today,” Erdoğan said at an international conference titled “Arab Spring and Peace in the Middle East: Muslim and Christian Perspectives.”

Battle of Karbala:

On one side of the highly uneven battle were a small group of supporters and relatives of Muhammad's grandson Husain ibn Ali, and on the other was a large military detachment from the forces of Yazid I, the Umayyad caliph, whom Husain had refused to recognise as caliph. Husain and all his supporters were killed, including Husain's six months old infant son, and the women and children were taken as prisoners.

Shia

"Shia" is the short form of the historic phrase Shīʻatu ʻAlī (شيعة علي), meaning "followers", "faction", or "party" of Muhammad's son-in-law Ali, whom the Shia believe to be Muhammad's successor.

On first sight Erdogan's remark will be taken as a threat of another Karbala in the sense that the followers of Ali, the Shia and by extension the Alawites in Syria, will get killed by the caliph and his followers.

This is a very sectarian and terribly dangerous thing do say.

In March 2011 Erdogan also mentioned the Battle of Karbala in a different context but, after that led to a controversy, he suggested that he only used it do warn against all Muslim strive:

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said his recent call to prevent a repetition of a “Karbala” tragedy was meant to underline his concerns about bloodshed in Libya, underlining that the remarks had nothing to do with Sunni-Shiite divide as some interpreted his words to mean.

“I drew similar lines during my previous parliamentary group speech between Karbala and the recent violence in Libya.

But the issue in Erdogan's controversial Karbala remark back then was not Libya. When he then made the public remark it was on the topic of Bahrain where a Sunni dictatorship was, with little protest from Turkey, suppressing a Shia majority. He only later set that remark into the context of Libya and general strife between Muslims.

Erdogan is not stupid and he clearly knows that the use of Karbala as a warning against
general strife under Muslim can be easily misunderstood. He certainly knows that it has a controversial and sectarian undertone. Despite that he keeps using it.

It thereby seems that Erdogan is using Karbala as a dog whistle politics item, as a codeword to suggest to his partisan and sectarian Sunni followers something very specific, killing the followers of Ali, while keeping a plausible deniability in more general terms.

To do so on a Friday, the Muslim day of a congregational prayer, is reinforcing the sectarian impact and makes it thereby more dangerous. This is certainly something someone who is presumably wishing for peace should and would NOT do.

On Wednesday evening an explosion occurred at the site of a Turkish military depot and killed 21 soldiers. In the official version a group of soldiers was counting a stock of handgrenades which somehow blew off. The story is fishy. Handgrenades in storage do not have their fuse inserted. When the fuse is inserted there is still a security ring to pull. When that ring is pulled there are still several seconds to throw the grenade away. The explosion happened in darkness at 9pm. Was this a squad of soldiers really just counting a stock of handgrenades at 9pm? Were they preparing them for transfer to the insurgents in Syria? What did really happen here?

David Ignatius acknowledges that the situation in Syria today is looking quite similar to the one in Afghanistan in the 1980s:

The parallels are spooky. In Syria, as in Afghanistan, CIA officers are operating at the borders (in this case, mostly in Jordan and Turkey), helping Sunni insurgents improve their command and control and engaging in other activities. Weapons are coming from third parties (in Afghanistan, they came mostly from China and Egypt; in Syria, they’re mainly bought on the black market). And finally, a major financier for both insurgencies has been Saudi Arabia.

There’s even a colorful figure who links the two campaigns: Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who as Saudi ambassador to Washington in the 1980s worked to finance and support the CIA in Afghanistan and who now, as chief of Saudi intelligence, is encouraging operations in Syria.

In Afghanistan, Ignatius says, the Russian left but there were also bad results of the U.S. policy:

On the negative, this CIA-backed victory opened the way for decades of chaos and jihadist extremism that are still menacing Afghanistan, its neighbors and even the United States.

The same is rightly now feared for Syria.

The only plausible way to avoid that danger is to stop all support for the insurgency and instead support the Syrian government in its fight. But instead of that Ignatius only wants the U.S. to be "careful" in supporting those religious extremists. It should look for "sensible elements" within those fighters.

People from Ansar al Sharia in Yemen, which is affiliated with AlQeada, are now moving to Syria:

“The sudden withdrawal of al-Qaeda militants from the two cities of Zinjubar and Ja’ar in Abyan province is connected to a conclusive deal recently made to have groups of armed men relocated to Syria to partake in the war against the Syrian regime, al-Fadhli told the Adenalghd local news site."

We can be sure that Prince Bandar has helped with the plane ticket to Turkey and other expenses.

How will U.S. "carefulness" in supporting those fighters make a difference? Will they slaughter the Syrian people in a more careful way? Will they be "sensible" when they export their trade from a new Syrian emirate? Nonsense.

What Ignatius really says is lets create a new AlQaeda, but lets be "careful" and "sensible" in doing it. Those Ansar al Sharia terrorists, hunted by U.S. drones when in Yemen, will now be the new caressing U.S. heroes in its war on the axis of resistance.

The papers can than again headline about the Anti-Shia warrior who [puts] his army on the road to peace.

Who but war profiteers or Zionist stooges can come up with such an idiotic policy.

Michael Gordon was one of the New York Times journalists who peddled the Iraq WMD disinformation that prepared the U.S. public for the war on Iraq.

Gordon is still writing for the NYT and he he is still in the information distortion business.

In a piece about the laughable U.S. attempts to press Iraq to stop Iranian flights to Syria he is trying to cover up for some other warmongers:

Three senators who have been strong advocates of American support for Iraq — Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut; John McCain, Republican of Arizona; and Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina — also sought to reinforce the administration’s case in a closed-door meeting with Mr. Maliki in Baghdad on Tuesday.

Those three senators were in 2002 and 2003 the most belligerent of those stooges that called for bombing and invading Iraq. They are, like Gordon, directly responsible for the million people killed and maimed by the war. To say they are “strong advocates of American support for Iraq” is ridiculous.

They are still miffed that their great plan for an Iraq under U.S. control did not pass the reality test.

One wonders why Maliki even allow them to enter his country or why he did not at least invited them for a few years of recreation in Abu Graibh. That is what these people, and Michael Gordon, obviously deserve.

As the U.S. and its allies slowly retreat from Afghanistan their newest hope for the white men's cause are some local gangs that they believe are fighting the Taliban.

From an interview with Gen. John Allen, ISAF commander in Afghanistan:

Foreign Policy: I am particularly interested in these uprisings in the east and how you view them. They are in their nascency, but I am told they may be a significant trend down the line. Are we talking "Andar Awakening"?

Gen. John Allen: They're actually calling it the Andar Awakening … to plagiarize our Anbar Awakening.

…
FP: You just returned from the east. Tell me about these uprisings against the Taliban and how you see them.

Allen: They're really an important moment, actually. And I had the conversation with [President Hamid Karzai] this morning. Each, each one is an organic movement. And they're popping up in a lot of different places. We're going to start to plot them on a map — we've actually done it already — but we're going to do some analysis as to, is it tribal? Is it ethnic? What was the particular cause? What is the potential solution?

[Andar district in Ghazni province] is the most conspicuous right now, but there's another really substantial one that's growing in Kamdesh in southern Nuristan. There's one growing in Wardak. There's one growing in Ghor. We've heard of one in Faryab.

And so what we have to do is, as I said to [Karzai] this morning, it's not just about supporting Andar in Ghazni. This is a really important moment for this campaign because the brutality of the Taliban and the desire for local communities to have security has become so, so prominent — as it was in Anbar — that they're willing to take the situation into their own hands to do this.

Isn't that great? Locals standing up to the "brutality" of the Taliban?

But here is the real story from people who are not several command layers away from the ground:

Since the end of Ramadan, it has been Taleban who have dramatically stepped up their campaign and not only in Andar, but also against government and US military targets across Ghazni province. Two notables were targeted in the outskirts of Ghazni city in different attacks within a week in late August. The first, on 24 August, on the Andar uprising’s self-proclaimed leader and a former Ghazni provincial governor, Faizanullah Faizan, failed. He suffered a wound in his leg as a suicide bomber tried to detonate his explosive-laden belt in Pashtunabad in the outskirts of Ghazni city. In the second attack, the chairman of the elected provincial council of Ghazni, Qazi Sahib Shah, an ethnic Hazara from Hezb-e Wahdat, was killed, along with his bodyguard, on the evening of 29 August, also in the outskirts of Ghazni. On the night of 30 August, using insiders in the arbakai, the Taleban raided Saheb Khan village, one of the best known Hezb strongholds during the mujahedin era and one of the first villages which had accommodated the arbakai.

It is a longer story which you can read here and here, but the short version is simply that some groups splintered away from the Taliban, made friend with the government and, after a short while, were either beaten or again changed the sides. In conclusion:

The Taleban’s thwarting of the Gero, Deh Yak and Muqur ‘revolts’ before they had even properly started (as well as the failed attempts to spread the ‘uprising’ inside Andar) suggest that the prospects for spreading Andar-style rebellions, at least in Ghazni province look difficult. The Taleban now understand the plan and are striking back quickly and decisively against any such move.

That General Allen is peddling this "model" as successful when it has already failed tells about all one needs to know about the real state of the Afghanistan campaign.

Like at the height of the war on Iraq the U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have lost it. They do not know what they are up to. They do not understand the country and its people. They do not even know how many bases they have in Afghanistan (500 or 1000 or 1500?) and are despite the pledge that "combat troops" are leaving in 2014 still building more.

It seems that the war on Afghanistan will end like the one on Iraq. Karzai, or whoever is next to bribe himself to the top, will tell the foreigners to leave in the same way the Iraqis have done so. There will be no status of force agreement and without that and without public support for the war within the U.S. electorate the U.S. will leave.

What will follow that ugly part of their history will be up to the Afghans.

Two weeks ago Obama announced that his red line on Syria would be the use of chemical weapons against the insurgency. I suggested that this was a wink to the Syrian government that it is free to do whatever is needed to get rid of the insurgents.

That view was confirmed by a report in today’s Washington Post:

Even a limited expansion of the minimal U.S. role is unlikely for the next several months and perhaps beyond, according to American and foreign officials.

“We could get dragged into this, no question, but we’re just not there yet,” said one of several senior U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the complicated internal and diplomatic debates over Syria.

The U.S. public is against an open war on Syria. That is the likely reason why the Obama administration is holding back. But that reasoning may well change when the U.S. presidential election is over. The Syrian government has thereby three more month to do what must be done.

The reports of the fighting on the ground are extremely vague. The media operations of the insurgency is filled with lies and exaggerations and the Syrian government reports are rather vague. As far as I can tell the borders to Jordan and Lebanon are mostly closed off. There seems to be a lot of fighting in Idlib near the Turkish border and that is also the way weapons and men are coming into Syria.

The Turkish government is in serious domestic policy trouble. Over the weekend another ten Turkish soldiers, those are draftees, got killed in fights with the Kurdish PKK which has renewed its fight for Kurdish independence since the insurgency in Syria started. Many Turkish people and opinion writers relate the PKK incidents to Turkey’s support for the Syrian insurgents and want that to end. There have also been pro-Assad rallies in Turkey and the economic loss of Turkish middle east traders is piling up. With the pressure on Erdogan growing Murat Yetkin of Hurriyet detects some change in the government’s stand:

Damascus was shaken by a new wave of attacks on Sunday, as the Turkish government began to show some indications that it would fine tune of its Syria policy. That would not amount to a revision regarding the refugees in the humanitarian context, but could be a revision of the support given to rebel groups.

…
It is a fact that not only the international political atmosphere, but also the Turkish media and the opposition, is forcing the government to be more cautious on its Syria policy.

This Al Jazeerah insurgency propaganda piece includes an interesting detail (@1:55). The insurgents say they have trouble to get their wounded into Turkish hospitals. “Before Turkey used to help us. They no longer help us,” says on fighter.It is not clear how true that statement is.

For the Syrian government to win within the next few months the border with Turkey has to be closed as much as possible. This is difficult as long as Turkey actively supports the insurgents. The pressure on Turkey to stop that support must continue to grow. Iranian military maneuvers near the Turkish border are helpful diversions but not enough. Turkey depends on natural gas from Iran and Russia for heating and electricity. With the winter reaching the Anatolian plateau any supply problems could quickly become a really important issue.

Finally:

The U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, has always cautioned against a go-it-alone approach, but he appeared to up the ante this week by saying Washington did not want to be blamed for any Israeli initiative.

"I don't want to be complicit if they (Israel) choose to do it," Dempsey was quoted as saying by Britain's Guardian newspaper on Friday, suggesting that he would view an Israeli attack as reprehensible or illegal.

Thanks to General Dempsey for making this point.

An attack on Iran, by Israel alone or by some U.S. led gang, would indeed be highly illegal. It would a war of aggression and thereby a supreme crime.

Most countries of this world would certainly point this out. The 120 members of the Non-Aligned Movement, which are currently holding a huge conference in Tehran, have given their unanimous backing to Iran's nuclear program:

[T]he final result of the Nonaligned Movement’s meeting, the biggest international gathering in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, amounted to the strongest expression of support for Iran’s nuclear energy rights in its showdown with the West. The unanimous backing of the final document undercut the American argument that Iran was an isolated outlier nation.

The Tehran Declaration document not only emphasizes Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy but acknowledges the right to ownership of a full nuclear fuel cycle, which means uranium enrichment — a matter of deep dispute.

There is no "deep dispute" about Iran's right to a full nuclear fuel cycle. The wide majority of the countries in this world stand fully behind that. Only the U.S. and a handful of its allies see this different.

As we said the isolation of Iran is a myth.

With the backing of all these countries Iran will also keep enough economic connections to evade any of the unilateral sanctions the U.S. and its stooges try to strong-arm against it. Indeed these sanctions are now incentives for the majority of states to permanently circumvent the global institutions the west has under control and is using against Iran.

When the global financial SWIFT system is used to prevent money transfers to Iran the countries who will keep working with Iran will create new systems. Once those are established SWIFT will never again have the standing it had before. Instead of buying Iranian oil in US dollars more and more countries will use other currencies. Once they have worked out how to do this they will never return to the dollar.

With the sanctions on Iran the U.S. and the west are hurting themselves. Therein lies a danger. In 2000 the sanctions on Iraq were on the verge of breaking down. The damage they did on the Iraqi population had become too visible. But instead of lowering the sanction regime or negotiate a peaceful outcome the U.S. attacked Iraq. A somewhat similar mechanism might come into play should the sanction regime on Iran, as can be expected, turn out to be ineffective while creating damage to the global role of the United States.

It is unlikely that the U.S. would then climb down. But an open attack on Iran, which even under attack can control the oil flow from the Gulf, carries, besides being completely illegal, too much economic risk. I find it therefore likely that U.S. will rather try something different to bring down the Iranian state. One not yet tried option would be to incite and support some violent ethnic insurgencies within Iran. The Azeris in the north, supported by an Israel friendly Azerbaijan, and the Balochs in the south east of Iran are prime candidates for such a scheme.

When that will turn out to not have the wished for effects all options may again be on the table.