As a UN observer working in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon in the mid 1990s I was often told by Israelis that their sometimes abrupt attitude towards people working for the UN was because they were similar to spiky fruit — rough on the outside but sweet on the inside.

At the time I thought many of the people I dealt with would have been well served by perusing a copy of Emily Post's book on etiquette, or perhaps given their British mandatory heritage Debrett's Etiquette and Modern Manners may have been more appropriate.

I recount this because I thought that the treatment accorded me was a result of the fact that local Israelis felt the UN wasn't effectively contributing to security in South Lebanon. But recent events at a much higher political level would appear to reinforce the need for some etiquette teachers in Israel ASAP.

First there was the treatment of the Turkish ambassador by the Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon who seated him at a lower chair than him, dispensed with the Turkish flag at the meeting and told the accompanying cameraman in Hebrew that this treatment was a deliberate snub.

Not to be outdone, the Interior Minister Eli Yishai has had to apologise to the visiting American vice-president read more

I'm sorry to be so critical lately of others' posts, but if I disagree with a post on the blog about which I think I know something, I feel the need to speak out (hence my silence on economics, climate change, Asia etc). And so it is with Nick Floyd's post about the motivations driving your average Afghan to join the security forces.

For all the sadness of any soldier's death, the truth is that soldiers join armies for a range of reasons: the pay, a sense of adventure, hopes of learning transferable skills, as well as notions of patriotism. But to say that Afghans joining the security forces and government are doing so in order to revolutionise their society is to ascribe a motivation that does not necessarily exist.

The military desertion rate (9% by some accounts) and high turnover as a consequence of volunteers failing to re-enlist indicate that many are not such committed 'freedom fighters' as the author of the letter featured in Nick's post would have us believe. The endemic corruption in the police force is a further blow to the supposed selflessness of all Afghans in government service.

Far from 'dancing around' Chris Kenny's point that the surge set the military conditions for the orderly withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, I agree with him. My post had nothing to do with the merits of the surge, the success of which (along with other tactical and strategic levers that were employed) is self-evident.

Rather, my argument was that Chris' piece spoke in absolutes such as '(US) victory and a functioning (Iraqi) democracy', or in uncontrasted relativities such as 'relatively peaceful'. It spoke of the Iraq war in terms of its impact on the US, and equated victory with an orderly departure of its troops. 

In the same vein, Jim Molan says the counterinsurgency is finally, as wars go, a success. But when hundreds of Iraqis are routinely being killed (and more injured) every month by insurgents, I would argue that the counterinsurgency has been successful in relative but not absolute terms. And the latter is what we should be looking at more closely, because only Iraqi security forces will be able to achieve absolute success. 

My point is that the political measure of success appears to be the ability to withdraw US troops, not the security of the Iraqi population. By adopting this measure, Western commentators tend to conflate withdrawal with success, with little regard for the circumstances for the Iraqis left behind.

I don't think I have seen the words 'victory' and 'Iraq' used in the same sentence since President Bush declared in 2003 that the 'Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror...' But having read Sam's link yesterday to a piece by Chris Kenny I was a bit taken aback to find out that the US is going to be victorious a second time:

Even those who opposed the Iraq war should recognise that America leaving the country victorious, with a relatively peaceful and functioning democracy in place, is far preferable to the war having been lost.

I nearly coughed up my falafel when I read this because there is so much to contest about it. I won't go into the meaning of 'victorious' because that's an essay in itself. But when you have lost nearly 4,500 dead and over 30,000 wounded, spent untold billions of dollars, but did not achieve the aim of the invasion (finding WMD, I think — it was so long ago), calling it a victory is 'interesting'.

But leaving aside the notion of a victorious US triumphantly ceasing combat operations seven years later than it thought it had, and only having to leave behind a skeleton force of 50,000, I do take some exception to his view of Iraq as relatively peaceful. Relativity is a funny thing, and if Kenny's intent was to compare Iraq with, say, Afghanistan or Somalia then he may have a point.

But to say that a country in which 253 civilians were killed in December, 118 in January and 80 in the first week of this month is relatively peaceful is drawing a (relatively) long bow. And that's not to mention the Iraqi security forces, or the numbers wounded. Space precludes me from arguing the toss about a 'functioning democracy' (or is that a 'relatively' functioning democracy?).

But the best line from this 'we showed 'em' view of foreign relations comes after the Iraq section:

This leaves Afghanistan. And it is here that there are signs Obama may be learning about the audacity of strength.

Surely after the tragedy of the Iraqi adventure, armchair pundits should be more attuned to the limitations, rather than the audacity, of strength in campaigns in complex environments.

Photo by Flickr user mashroms, used under a Creative Commons license.

Part one here; part two here; part three here.

And finally, to the Levant. Hopes were high following the pro-West coalition's 'victory' in the June 2009 elections that Lebanon would stay in the Western camp and cease to be hostage to external actors, but most realistic observers of Lebanon understand that elections are one thing and influence another.

On that score, the departure of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt from the coalition in August and the inability to form a 'national unity' government under Sa'ad Hariri until November (as portfolio distribution was incessantly debated) showed how little Lebanon was in control of its destiny. As if to confirm that Syria was a main player in Lebanon again, Sa'ad Hariri visited Damascus in December. But despite the political infighting and shaky security, Beirut is still Beirut and so Lebanon enjoyed its most successful tourism season ever in 2009.
 
While the new year began with the normal sabre-rattling involving Hizbullah, this year international conflict involving Lebanon may take place not on its border with Israel, but in New York as it takes up its place for the next two years as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. With votes likely this year on sanctions against Iran and the Hariri tribunal, there are fears that Lebanon's voting patterns may favour Syria and Iran, and place it in conflict with many of the Government's Western aid donors.  
 
Over the mountains, things are looking up for Syria in 2010. It is being wooed heavily to distance itself from Iran, it has enjoyed increased influence in Lebanon, a reciprocal visit from Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, and the US announcement of its first ambassador to Damascus for nearly five years. Not bad for doing nothing.

Part one here; part two here.

Iraq (remember that place? It used to be in the news quite a bit) is the one country in the Middle East which could see significant developments in 2010, but I'm not sure whether the net effect will be particularly good.

Politically, the good news is that the electoral law was passed last year, allowing elections to go ahead in March, and holding the promise of a more established Arab democracy emerging. Unfortunately, some of the characteristics of functioning democracies, such as the impartiality and independence of electoral bodies, are yet to develop, if the actions of the rather Orwellian Accountability and Justice Commission are anything to go by.   

The Accountability and Justice Law (very good and detailed analysis here) appears to have done little other than to stir up the sectarian hornet's nest that is post-Saddam Iraqi politics. General Petraeus, head of US Central Command, highlighted the damage this body could do to sectarian reconciliation in an interview with The Times last week.

My colleague Jenny Hayward-Jones and I have written previously about Iran's attempts to influence and reward the Solomon Islands for its UN votes. But Pacific micro-states' voting patterns are of equal if not greater interest to Israel.

This week the presidents, foreign ministers and ambassadors of the Federated States of Micronesia and Nauru are enjoying a week-long state visit to Israel. The Presidents of Palau and the Marshall Islands were unable to make the trip, unfortunately. All are noted supporters of Israel in the UN, even if the average Israeli is not sure why. Still, a vote's a vote. 

The Solomon Islands wasn't invited, likely because of the Government's decision to vote in the UN in favour of accepting the Goldstone Report, which was critical of Israeli actions during the conduct of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

Photo by Flickr user thejcgerm, used under a Creative Commons license.

The unsuccessful bombing plot against an American airliner at Christmas, a plot which had its origins in Yemen, did what my posts on The Interpreter and my Lowy paper (co-authored with a real Yemen expert, Sarah Phillips from Sydney Uni) could not do — focus the media's attention on Yemen. 

It also appears to have focused the mind of the Yemeni Government (which has multiple security issues to worry about), and it has had significant success against al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), if its own statements can be believed. The problem is that not many of them can be verified, let alone believed, so it's pretty difficult to judge fact from fiction.  

Yemeni Government sources claimed a 17 December air strike killed 34 militants in Abyan province, while locals claimed that many civilians were victims of the raid, and that alleged AQAP members conducted a rally at the site the next day. On 24 December another air raid reportedly claimed the lives of AQAP's emir, Nassir al-Wahayshi, along with the Yemeni/American cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi, though this has been challenged in other media reports.  

Six months ago Sam wrote a post about Qatar's decision to purchase two C-17 cargo aircraft and how they would provide a good national advertisement in times of humanitarian crisis. 

The Haiti earthquake has provided the Qatari Government with its first opportunity to dispatch aid in the very recognisable livery of a Qatar Airways C-17. 

In the world of diplomatic self-promotion, being small but rich means you don't have to be invisible. And with wealthy Gulf states seeing the provision of humanitarian aid as a way of projecting soft power, expect to see more photos of Gulf C-17s during future humanitarian crises.

Part one here. 

Ahh, the Middle East peace process. I really do think I'm on firm ground here when I predict that the MEPP will look the same at the end of 2010 as it did at the start — going nowhere. The reasons are pretty well summed up in some exchanges from last year.
 
In May 2009 Secretary of State Clinton issued a very public demand to the Israeli Government that there must be no exceptions to President Obama's call for Israel to stop its settlement activity as a precondition for peace talks with the Palestinians: 'Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions. We think it is in the best interest of the effort that we are engaged in that settlement expansion cease.'
 
This hard-line approach was followed up very quickly when, in June 2009, President Obama said in his Cairo speech that 'Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.' read more

If there is one thing I've learned from following, living in and writing about the Middle East as an Australian it is that, while many of my countrymen say they find the region fascinating, it is fair to say most Australians believe it to be of peripheral concern despite our substantial economic interests and the fact that we seem to continually send the ADF there.

So, to fit in with the average Australian's attention span for all things Middle Eastern, I'll try to write a series of short posts offering my views on what is likely to happen in certain countries in the region this year. I feel safe in offering such predictions because the opaque decision-making process of many of the actors, the number and nature of internal and external pressures facing states, and the regional rivalries and biases that often colour decision-making all mean that few if any outside observers get it right.    
 
Iran will continue to concentrate minds in the US in particular, but I can't see much policy headway being made and the situation at the end of the year will be little different from now. A sputtering domestic resistance movement may survive but will gradually lose momentum or split, but either way is not likely to threaten the regime's survival. I have said since the disputed elections last year that the election was not as pivotal as some people hoped or believed. The regime has a very tight grip on its security forces, and the opposition, while persistent, lacks a unifying vision or even a centralised leadership. This interesting post points to the challenges facing the Iranian protest movement. read more

Sam asked why a small country like the UAE needs the services of six (although other reports say four) C-17 strategic airlift aircraft. What could they possibly be used for?

In the absence of any strategic planning document such as a White Paper, besieged by international arms manufacturers seeking to recycle petrodollars back to their home economies, and always keen for the prestige of operating advanced military equipment, the equipment decisions made by Gulf military forces are not always made in a measured or logical manner.

That said, there is some justification for integral strategic lift. Since the 1990s the UAE has been quite active in deploying forces overseas. It has deployed a battalion to Somalia as part of the UN force in 1993, an armoured battle group (including Apache helicopters) to Kosovo from 1999, a military medical task force to Pakistan following the 2005 earthquake and a special forces group to Afghanistan.
 
In addition, UAE aid to regional neighbours has on occasion necessitated heavy lift. During the 2007 fighting at Nahr al-Barid refugee camp in Lebanon, the UAE donated nine Gazelle helicopters to the Lebanese Air Force that were pressed into service almost immediately on arrival. The UAE aso gifted ten Puma trooplift helicopters to Lebanon last year. 

Similar civilian or military aid missions are likely to be conducted in the future and, while the UAE is more than financially capable of contracting out such heavy lift requirements, the purchase of C-17s provides it with transport self-sufficiency and the regional status this brings.

Photo by Flickr user Ozone9999, Duke and Sarge, used under a Creative Commons license.

My attention was drawn to an opinion piece in today's Australian that portrays the Middle East as locked in a modern-day Cold War pitting an expansionist, anti-Western Iran against a bloc of regional countries trying to valiantly resist the advances of the perfidious Persians.

I agree with elements of the piece — Iran is without doubt trying to expand its regional influence (which inevitably brings it into competition with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the erstwhile regional leaders), and it sees the development of a nuclear capability as the ultimate guarantor of the regime's security.

But much of the piece falls into the familiar trap of conflating Iranian intentions with capabilities, and of ignoring the motivations of various regional actors, particularly those in receipt of Iranian financial or security assistance.
 
The so-called pro-Iranian bloc is not much of a bloc, and neither does it show much of an inclination to replicate Iran's governance model. Lebanese Hizbullah is the only organisation that could legitimately be said to look to Tehran as a political model, but the demographic realities of Lebanon mean this will remain an aspirational goal for future generations (if the Iranian regime lasts that long). 

While those of you who have returned from the coast or overseas are counting the cost of your holiday, spare a thought for the poor citizens of the Gulf Arab states, some of whom are forced to get by on an average per capita GDP of a little over US$70,000.

The UAE's US$52,000 figure gives it the Arab world's second highest per capita GDP, but this figure doesn't tell the entire truth. The UAE's figure is skewed by the oil wealth of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, which had to give a lending hand to neighbouring Dubai not once but twice last year as the bottom fell out of the over-priced Dubai property market.

Which makes yesterday's opening of the world's tallest building in the emirate where the property market has crashed somewhat anomalous, although the re-naming of the tower from Burj Dubai to Burj Khalifa (after the president of the UAE and ruler of Abu Dhabi) is anything but anomalous.

 Photo by Flickr user saharsh, used under a Creative Commons license.

I argued in a previous post that sending more civilian advisors to Afghanistan and then restricting them to bases achieves little more than the rearrangement of bureaucrats' locations.

Advisors who never get to interact with the locals outside the security of coalition bases are severely restricted in both the situational awareness that will inform good decision-making, and in their ability to manage projects. If advisors are not out among the population, it is fair to question the quality of advice they can provide to locals and to their superiors back home.
 
The Government's announcement that our contribution to the US-led 'surge' would be additional police trainers is likely to replicate this risk-averse approach. So I don't share Mark O'Neill's view that the announcement was 'sound policy'.

The Swiss referendum that banned the construction of minarets will inevitably be portrayed as a further example of the European backlash against Muslim migration, following on from France's 2004 banning of Muslim headscarves from state schools.

But while the issue of European concern at (real or perceived) large-scale Muslim migration is certainly an issue, the French and Swiss cases are qualitatively different and one should be careful in linking the two.

The French case involved the banning of overtly religious symbols (of all faiths) from state schools — a reaffirmation, according to the Government, that the secular French republic should have an absolute separation of church and state. This was seen by some as an attack on Muslims, but what got no press was the fact that private religious schools (be they Christian, Muslim or any other faith) were still free to display their religious symbols. 
 
The Swiss, unburdened with a colonial history in Muslim lands and the attendant sense of obligation, are much more fearful of 'the other'. The fact that the referendum was called for by the political far right and was passed by a handsome majority against most predictions (with all but four of 23 cantons supporting the ban) is a much more blunt message to Muslims.

Am I the only one who finds it strange that the wounding of two Australian soldiers in a week is barely newsworthy whereas the recovery of a dog is international news? Perhaps it now means that if it's on a lead it leads.

Graeme Dobell's post on the lack of Australian coverage, let alone debate, about Afghanistan paraphrases a question cited by Peter Cosgrove during his Boyer lecture: 'What would be the costs of failure?'

I would be more inclined to ask about the costs of success, because success will not look much like what Joe Public thought it would when we entered Afghanistan. That is not to say that the intervention cannot ultimately be called a success. I baulk at the term 'victory' because it connotes a sense of totality and finite time. No, the mission in Afghanistan could well be successful, but I can't ever see it being called a victory. 

In reality, we are not fighting for the installation of a democratic government in Kabul, nor the eradication of opium production, nor the promotion of equal rights for women or religious or ethnic minorities. And claims that a withdrawal without the establishment of a fully functioning and transparent central government with control over its territory and a willingness to tackle endemic corruption constitutes a failure miss the point. This was never really an achievable aim, even if sufficient resources had been employed at the start.

Although in an earlier post I criticised Arab states for exaggerating Iranian activity in Yemen, Saudi security authorities nonetheless have every right to worry about the trouble emerging from its southern neighbour. After Saudi security forces effectively subdued its own al Qaeda affiliate, the group morphed with Yemeni al Qaeda and has re-emerged in Yemen as 'al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula', with a view to placing a high priority on attacking Saudi targets.

The unsuccessful suicide attack against the Deputy Interior Minister Prince Muhammad bin Naif and the more recent killing of three suspected al Qaeda members (two of whom were dressed as women) traveling in a car from Yemen with a plan to carry out attacks on undisclosed targets in the Kingdom illustrate the audacity of the planners. 

As if that weren't bad enough, one of Yemen's other troublesome security issues, the Zaydi Shi'a al-Houthi movement in the north, has spilled over into Saudi Arabia, with a short but bloody border engagement with al-Houthi members who occupied Saudi territory in and around jabal al-Dukhan after they crossed over the (unmarked) border. Saudi forces used aircraft and artillery to repel the insurgents and send an unmistakable message that any incursion into Saudi territory would not be tolerated. 

While that approach may work against tribesmen along a 'disputed' border area, al Qaeda is likely to be the more worrying threat to Saudi security from the south.

To say that Yemen is a country under pressure is an understatement. Battling southern secessionists, a resurgent al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a rebellion in the north from the al-Houthi movement, declining oil reserves and water tables and a growing population, the government certainly has its hands full.
 
The northern rebellion would largely go unnoticed in the West were it not for the fact that the al-Houthis are Zaydi Shi'a and, as all Arab states would have us believe, there is no Shi'a opposition movement that doesn't have the fingerprints of Tehran all over it. While there is more than a grain of truth in this assertion (Hizbullah being the prime example), Shi'a Islam, like Christianity, contains a broad range of denominations and Zaydism differs significantly from mainstream Shi'ism.

Zaydism is above all about local leadership rather than a centralised authority resident in Tehran, Qum or Najaf, so the likelihood of them dancing to Tehran's tune is remote. Still, the possibility of Iran supporting the Houthis as part of a larger anti-Saudi campaign can't be entirely discounted.
 
It suits Arab states to draw connections between the al-Houthis and Iran without providing proof because it supports the argument that Iran is an expansionist state that uses Shi'a minorities as stalking horses for Persian interests. Accusations by Sunni states of Iranian complicity in any Shi'a-led protest or uprising is also designed to internationalise the conflict by taking the focus off local grievances which are often the real reason for the conflict. read more

Which these days is about the only reason Iraq knocks Afghanistan off the front pages, as the coverage of yesterday's twin suicide bombings showed. Interestingly, General Ray Odierno, the US commander in Iraq, gave a rather prescient interview to the BBC less than a week ago urging the world not to forget Iraq and the need to finish what had been started there. 

The problem is, there's still attacks on the civilians here in Iraq, there's attacks against the government of Iraq, all aimed at destabilising the government itself, and the political process.

What Odierno highlights is the belief that, given low US monthly combat deaths, Iraq is yesterday's news. The problem is that Iraqi civilian and security death tolls are not low. A well researched website that I regularly peruse is http://icasualties.org/, which lists monthly casualty figures for Iraqi civilians and security forces.

The true measure of success in Iraq will be when the local population believes it is better off after the invasion than before it. And while Iraq may (or may not) hold democratic elections next January, when 200-300 Iraqis are still being killed every month, success is very relative term.

Not that the media cares that much, now that low US casualty rates mean that it's yesterday's war.

Events of the past week have illustrated just how difficult the political management of the Afghanistan coalition can be. As if fighting a resourceful, resolute and ruthless enemy were not enough (as the deaths of eight American soldiers and a number of civilians in a separate incident illustrate),  there was also the sacking of the UN's number two in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, over his attitude to the organisation's policy on the recent Afghanistan election, and in particular his relationship with his boss, the Special Envoy Kai Ede. 

And of course there is the dilemma faced by the Obama Administration over General Stanley McChrystal's request for more US troops. While the request itself is the objective assessment of the Commander-in-Chief's man in the field, the public manner in which it has been debated has caught the attention of the White House's National Security Adviser, who sent a distinct message to General McChrystal about exactly what level of openness was appropriate on the issue.

Robust public debates are the essence of democratic rule. But when dealing with life and death issues such as military intervention in an increasingly unpopular war, every politician knows that 'disunity is death' in the court of public opinion. If the public is expected to 'stay the course' on Afghanistan, not only will the appropriate strategy need to be adopted and resources allocated, but the political leadership will need to maintain unity of purpose, lest the public tire of the political in-fighting before it tires of the warfighting.

Photo by Flickr user Darwin Bell, used under a Creative Commons license.

Cynthia Banham's article in today's SMH about the need for more civilian aid and expertise raises some interesting points, but doesn't delve deeply enough on the real issue — how to implement an effective whole-of-government approach in an insecure environment. 

While she points out that the UK Embassy in Kabul has 300 civilians working on various areas of governance and civil society, and that Canada's civilian contribution has doubled in the past year, a more pertinent measure would have been to say how many of them are working 'outside the wire'. Civilian advisors working from an office in Kabul are not much more effective than civilian advisers working from an office in London. 

The only viable means of ensuring that all the training and resourcing that is poured into Afghanistan is used to good effect by the institutions or individuals it is targeted at is the mentoring model, which requires people to be out working with Afghans. ISAF sees the mentoring model as a central pillar of its eventual handover of security to the Afghan police and military. If the coalition (both civlian and military) is not 'outside the wire', ground-truthing the situation, interacting with locals and providing on-the-ground advice then are they really fulfilling General McChrystal's counter-insurgency aim of protecting the local population?

But there are significant risks involved in doing this. Which takes me to a point of divergence with a claim made in the article: that additional Australian civilian shoes on the ground 'would not involve further drain on the defence force'. If the intent is for the civilians to operate from the embassy or from base camps in Kandahar or Tarin Kowt then this may well be true. But if the intent is for the civilian experts to provide mentoring in agriculture, policing, governance and education outside the wire then there will be a massive drain on the ADF to provide protection.
 
While I agree that an integrated civlian-military approach is the only viable course of action for the Coalition, in an environment as insecure as Afghanistan the unfortunate reality is that civilian mentoring that involves interacting with locals in a meaningful way comes at a security cost. And that cost will have to be borne by the ADF at the expense of its current tasks.

Photo by Flickr user Peter Casier, used under a Creative Commons license.

Further to Sam's post concerning Amin Saikal's views about Iranian military capabilities, I must confess to thinking that he grossly overestimates Iran's abilities in event of a military confrontation. 

Iraq's military capabilities were talked up in many circles prior to their engagement with Western military forces, but once they were confronted by a technologically advanced, networked, well trained, professional force they were comprehensively defeated. It was only after coalition forces occupied Iraq that these advantages disappeared as Iraqi's nationalist, Islamist, and foreign fighter groups confounded the occupiers by avoiding decisive engagement.

No one is talking invasion and Iran in the same breath, so Iran's ability to negate the massive military-technological advantages the West holds is limited. Iran could, as Saikal suggests, 'curtail its oil production...use various militant groups in the region...block the Strait of Hormuz...blow up oil platforms in Gulf Arab states and...rocket Israel and US bases in the region.' However:

The record of sanctions regimes is mixed, to say the least. South Africa is often held up as the example of its successful implementation, whereas there are any number of unsuccessful ones, as this research illustrates. As for Iran, it would be fair to say that US sanctions to date have been annoying but obviously not effective. 

The difficulties with most sanctions regimes are threefold: (1) getting international agreement for a binding sanctions regime; (2) ensuring the sanctions cannot be bypassed through black marketeering; and (3) designing the sanctions so that they have a deep impact on the target government but don't harm to the population (which would weaken the international will for, and harden the target population's attitude against, the sanctions regime).
 
In the case of Iran, it appears the US is preparing for the failure of the 1 October talks by taking what at first glance appears a counterintuitive approach. Reports are that it is seeking to limit oil exports to Iran. This is counterintuitive because Iran is the world's fourth largest oil exporter, but sensible because it is a country with limited and ageing refinery capacity that needs to import 40% of its refined oil needs. There are already indications that oil companies are factoring this turn of events into their business plans.
 
At the same time, Russia's renewed enthusiasm for sanctions following the US withdrawal of its land-based European missile defences and claims of Gulf states' support for a harder sanctions regime shows that Iranian intrasigence may come at a significant cost this time.

Still, with long land borders, a vibrant cross-Gulf trade (including smuggling across the Strait of Hormuz) and an apparently reluctant China, it will be interesting to see how effective a sanctions regime the US is able to establish following the October meeting.

Photo by Flickr user Michael Foley Photography, used under a Creative Commons license.

Nobody ever said achieving a solution to the Palestinian issue was going to be easy, and the Obama Administration has not been disappointed. 

The US gave gave the Israelis very little wiggle room in addressing its demands for a halt to settlement growth, knowing that PM Netanyahu was holding together a rightist coalition that would likely not hold if he gave much ground on the issue. For his part, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is going to find it incredibly difficult to garner Palestinian support for talks if settlement construction continues (or at least continues beyond what will be a face-saving interim solution).

But on settlement construction, US ability to pressure Israel is limited. Holding back on loan guarantees is one possibility, but it was tried in 1991 and was incredibly difficult politically, and anyway the US in July approved loan guarantees to Israel until 2011. Offsets have been used before, and as this article points out, there is a case for their use in defence contracts as a means of applying pressure. read more

Further to Sam's recent post about US arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the creation of an Iranian bogeyman to boost US arms sales, it was interesting to note US Secretary of Defense Gates' views in a recent al-Jazeera interview that greater security cooperation between Gulf Arab states and with the US would be a good disincentive to Iranian nuclear aspirations.

The logic of this view is a bit hard to follow. Iran's nuclear push centres around its nationalist aspirations to achieve nuclear status and partly in the belief that it will provide a degree of security against external aggressors. While it has territorial disputes with some Gulf countries, they do not figure in the least in Iran's nuclear calculus, so better security cooperation between Gulf states is hardly going to influence Iran's nuclear program.

And anyway, Gulf security cooperation is something often talked about but rarely achieved, as the Peninsula Shield experiment showed. The disparity in size and capabilities between countries means that Gulf states are always wary that greater cooperation eventually means Saudi domination. Gulf states' hosting of major US land (Kuwait), air (Qatar, UAE) and naval (Bahrain) assets is in their view a much better security insurance than intra-Gulf security accords.

So why raise the issue of greater security cooperation and Iran in the same breath? The Gates logic is that, if you are wary of an Iranian missile threat, then the US has excellent anti-missile defence systems just right for you. Even better if we can have an integrated Gulf air defence system, where all countries cooperate on missile defence. But the integration can only be achieved if we are all buying systems from the one supplier that can integrate them successfully.

With aggressive French, Russian and British competitors all seeking to sell equipment to the region in tough economic climes, crying 'Iran and security cooperation' may well be just be another high-powered sales pitch. 

Photo by Flickr user Dr Akomodi, used under a Creative Commons license.

Two events on opposite sides of the world provide good examples of the central role statisticians play in developed democracies, and how hard it is for true democracy to develop where statisticians can't ply their trade.

The recent electoral redistribution that has led to the axing of long-term Labor MP Laurie Ferguson's seat provides a good case of the former. The Australian Electoral Commission relies on census data to conduct redistributions at least every seven years. The independent process is readily accepted and spares no-one, as Prime Minister John Howard found when successive redistributions eventually turned his safe seat of Bennelong into a marginal one. 

The Middle East, however, remains barren ground for political demographers. Last week's decision to postpone (indefinitely) Iraq's first census in over 22 years for fear it could inflame ethnic tensions in the north shows how far that country has to go before it can claim that national identity has developed to the point where it can function as a unified state. 

Still, at least the Iraqis intended to conduct a census. While people speak of Lebanon's democratic traditions, the absence of a census since 1932 shows how far the Lebanese also fall short of being a true secular democracy, and of how underemployed statisticians there are.

As this earlier post pointed out, reactions from Iran's Gulf Arab neighbours to the disputed 2009 presidential election were muted, to say the least. This reflects a general GCC policy of non-interference in the political affairs of neighbours, an understanding that autocracies passing judgement on the democratic processes of another would be slightly hypocritical, and an unwillingness to upset Iran for no appreciable political gain.

In the world of diplomacy there are levels of acceptance, and non-criticism or even congratulatory messages rank quite low on the recognition scale. Senior level visits signal a much broader level of support for a country's government, and it is here that real insights into the warmth of bilateral relations can be gleaned.
 
Little surprise, then, that the two GCC states with the closest relations with Iran have been the quickest off the mark. The Qatari Chief of Staff met with Iran's Defence Minister and the Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Force on 7 July, and the Sultan of Oman became the first foreign head of state to meet with Mahmoud Ahmedeijad the day after his inauguration on 4 August. read more

A feature of all Gulf states is the preponderance of foreign (normally South Asian or Filipino) guest workers who tend to the needs of local nationals and well-to-do expats. But in a regional first, reports from Saudi Arabia advise that 30 Saudi women have begun working as housemaids (or 'Saudi home arrangers', to be more correct), with another 100 Saudi women waiting to start.  If this reaction from a Qatari psychologist is anything to go by, there is little chance of this experiment being replicated in other Gulf states.
 
Unlike the other Gulf states blessed with large oil and gas reserves however, Saudi Arabia has a large population (25 million) and unemployment is officially over 11% (over 26% among women), although unofficial figures are likely much higher. The challenge of female employment and the need for high qualifications to gain prestigious jobs is also the reason why Taif University in Saudi Arabia faced a recent sit-in from prospective female students who refused to believe that they weren't accepted into university courses, despite not receiving the requisite marks.