El avispero de oriente

[Dan]

Ojo, noticia relevante: tropas turcas entran en Aleppo con el pretexto de evacuar a la guardia de la tumba de un sultan.

http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/f1674baf-a33c-49a4-85c6-23804c4231f9

Syria says Turkish incursion a 'flagrant aggression'​
By: Al-Araby al-Jadeed/Agencies Date of publication 22 February, 2015
Tags
Turkey, Syria, Aleppo, Suleyman Shah
Syria responds angrily to a raid by Turkish troops to evacuate an historic tomb inside Syria and the soldiers guarding it saying it was an act of "aggression", as tensions between Ankara and Damascus escalate.
The Syrian government attacked Turkey on Sunday for what it called "flagrant aggression", after almost 600 Turkish troops, along with tanks and armoured vehicles, entered Syria to evacuate the guards of the tomb of Suleyman Shah in Aleppo province, transferring the remains to Turkey before a later reburial within Syria.

"Turkey is not satisfied with merely giving all kinds of support to its puppets Daesh [IS], [al-Qaeda affiliate] the al-Nusra Front and other terrorist groups," said a foreign ministry statement carried by the official SANA news agency.

The foreign ministry said that it had been informed of the plans beforehand, but that it had not given its consent.

"The remains of [Suleyman Shah] have been temporarily repatriated and will be reburied inside Syria at a later date," Ahmet Davutoglu had earlier said.

Suleyman Shah is the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, and his mausoleum in Syria, on the Euphrates River some 30 kilometres (18 miles) inside Syrian territory, is considered sovereign Turkish territory under a 1920s treaty.

40 soldiers had been guarding the tomb, which was in an area controlled by the Islamic State group (IS, formerly ISIS).

Turkish authorities denied press reports last week suggesting that one of the guards may have been kidnapped by IS.

The remains will be reburied in Ashma, Syria, and area that has been placed under the control of the Turkish army. The Turkish flag has been raised in preparation for the relocation. 
- See more at: http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/f1674baf-a33c-49a4-85c6-23804c4231f9#sthash.bItMkPYs.dpuf

[Reiter]

Nuevo capítulo en el culebrón entre Irán y Rusia acerca de la entrega del sistema de defensa aérea S-300

Russian offers Iran latest anti-aircraft missiles: TASS

(Reuters) - Russia has offered Iran its latest Antey-2500 missiles, the head of Russian state defense conglomerate Rostec said on Monday according to media reports, after a deal to supply less powerful S-300 missiles was dropped under Western pressure.

Sergei Chemezov said Tehran was now considering the offer, TASS news agency reported.

Russia scrapped a contract to supply Iran with S-300 surface-to-air missiles under Western pressure in 2010, and Iran later filed a $4-billion international arbitration suit against Russia in Geneva, but the two countries remain allies.

The United States and Israel lobbied Russia to block the missile sale, saying it could be used to shield Iran's nuclear facilities from possible future air strikes.

There was no immediate response to Chemezov's comments from Iran, Israel or the United States.

"As far as Iran is concerned, we offered Antey-2500 instead of S-300. They are thinking. No decision has been made yet," Chemezov was quoted as saying.

Rostec includes state-owned arms exporting monopoly Rosoboronexport, which has the sole right to export and import arms in Russia.

The Antey-2500 was developed from the 1980s-generation S-300V system (SA-12A Gladiator and SA-12B Giant). It can engage missiles traveling at 4,500 meters per second, with a range of 2,500 km (1,500 miles), according to the company that makes it, Almaz-Antey.

The S-300 missiles have a 125-mile range and Russia has stoked tensions with the West by trying to sell them to Syria and other Middle Eastern countries.

Chemezov told reporters conflicts in the Middle East had helped boost Russian arm sales, according to TASS.

"I don't conceal it, and everyone understands this, the more conflicts there are, the more they buy off weapon from us. Volumes are continuing to grow despite sanctions. Mainly, it's Latin America and the Middle East," he was quoted as saying.

Last year, Russian foreign arm sales totaled $13 billion, he added.

Chemezov was sanctioned by the U.S. government in April over Russia's role in the Ukraine crisis.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/23/us-iran-nuclear-russia-missiles-idUSKBN0LR0MZ20150223

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

Opinión Rey de Jordania

[Lego]

Interesante, pero trata a EEUU como actor externo en una guerra interna dentro del Islam.

Premisa endeble si uno tiene "sospechas" de que esos bandidos han sido creados por EEUU, que será "externo" en lo geográfico, pero sin duda alguna es parte nuclear del conflicto. Más aún, podría considerarse  a EEUU (mejor dicho, algunos intereses occidentales) la fuente del conflicto. Su origen, o al menos su catalizador y multiplicador.

Es un artículo políticamente correcto, divulgable en EEUU sin ganarse la oposición de los auténticos bandidos.

[Lego]

 

A Kerry lo traiciona el subconsciente en Egipto: "Trabajemos por el futuro de Israel"





El secretario de Estado estadounidense, John Kerry, tuvo un lapsus apenas compareció en una conferencia sobre economía internacional en Egipto. En un desayuno para invitados de honor el jefe de la diplomacia de Estados Unidos instó a los presentes a trabajar por el bien "de Israel".

Cuando en su intervención abordó el papel de Estados Unidos en apoyo a la inversión y al Gobierno egipcio, John Kerry dijo: "Todos debemos luchar por el futuro de Israel". Entonces, al darse cuenta de su error, el Secretario de Estado se disculpó y dijo: "Por el futuro de Egipto", lo que terminó generando risas entre los asistentes, informa 'Lenta.ru'.

El foro económico dedicado al desarrollo económico y la inversión en Egipto, que comienzó este viernes en la ciudad turística de Sharm el-Sheij, durará hasta el 15 de marzo y, según espera el Gobierno egipcio, contribuirá a la restauración después de la crisis política que socavó la economía del país árabe más poblado.

Kerry tiene la intención de discutir con el presidente egipcio, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, la cooperación bilateral y asuntos regionales, entre ellos la lucha contra el grupo extremista Estado Islámico, la situación en Libia y la crisis siria.

http://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/169009-kerry-error-egipto-israel-confunde

Lo curioso es que buscando en google news sólo aparece una referencia al gazapo en un medio turco, pero el link de google falla. Sólo he encontrado una nota en un periódico de El Cairo, diciendo que la empabajada USA achacaba el error al largo viaje en avión.

No es justo, con Bush al menos podíamos reírnos de sus meteduras de pata épicas, ahora hasta nos privan de ese malsano consuelo.

Edit:

Y este es el ministro de defensa polaco

Minister obrony nie odróżnia mikrofonu od lampki

Cómo está el patio...

[saturno]

En v/Fr : punto de vista sobre el conflicto sirio, por parte de una monja cristiana de la region de Homs.

http://www.legrandsoir.info/Au-crible-des-informations-tendancieuses-la-situation-en-Syrie.html

Es interesante la descripcion de los medios, combinada con la activacion de manifestaciones desde el interior.

Pero lo es más su reflexión acerca de la "destruccion creativa" entendida como estrategia geopolitica.

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

Arabia Saudia, Yemen:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-25/another-middle-east-war-breaks-out-saudi-arabia-begins-bombing-yemen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthis

Update: y el presidente de Yemen sale por patas

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-25/armed-us-weapons-yemen-rebels-advance-president-saudi-arabia-prepares-war

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

De STRATFOR:

Who controls Yemen?

While the al-Houthi movement struggles to manage multiple regional challenges in northern Yemen, its rise to power is a setback for Saudi Arabia. After the fall of the Yemeni government, Riyadh will have to capitalize on the al-Houthis' need for political and financial support to re-establish its influence in the country. But because Iran is trying to fill that support gap, too, Yemen has become another battlefront for the two sectarian rivals.

Since Yemen's president was driven from the capital of Sanaa in September, Yemen's government has been at war with itself. President Abd Rabboh Mansour Hadi issued a statement March 19 denouncing the airstrikes on his compound in the southern port city of Aden as an attempted military coup by forces loyal to his predecessor and onetime ally, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Earlier that day, soldiers and militiamen loyal to Hadi battled their way into Aden's airport and stormed a nearby military base, both of which were under the control of Gen. Abdel-Hafez al-Saqqaf, a Saleh loyalist.

The al-Houthis represent a change in the balance of power in Yemen that has opened the door for Iran to become a major player in what was the exclusive domain of Saudi Arabia not long ago. While Saudi Arabia has long meddled in Yemen, Riyadh lost sight of developments in the country while focusing on other regional fights. It was not that Saudi Arabia was not paying attention to Yemen, it just was not expecting Iran to gain ground on its southern frontier via a movement that is not traditionally Shiite and, in fact, is theologically closer to Sunni Islam.

The Saudis see the al-Houthis as a possible threat from Iran. How the Saudis engage with the group and try to distance it from Iran will be a key factor to watch. Meanwhile, Yemen's deteriorating security situation has created another Saudi-Iranian geopolitical struggle that will last into the foreseeable future.

Respuesta de forero Paveway IV:

Here's the 30-second spiel for what you need to know about Yemen:

The corrupt U.S. puppet president, Hadi, was put in place in an Arab Spring uprising to ensure the U.S. had Yemeni permission to drone AQAP in Yemen. The Houthis were infuriated by this because so many Yemeni civilians were being killed in U.S. drone strikes on AQAP targets. Yes, even though Houthis and al Qaeda are mortal enemies.

I'll repeat it because its important - the truth is opposite the central lie, i.e, the Western MSM narrative/lie of Sunni/Shia conflict:

Shi'ite Houthis are pissed off because so many Sunni civilians are dying as a result of U.S. airstrikes. The Houthis don't want to rule Yemen, they just don't want the current U.S. puppet Hadi to keep getting rich from U.S. bribes while he permits U.S. drones in to kill Sunni civilians with impunity. Get it?

Shi'ites protecting Sunnis or at least protesting their unjust deaths at the hands of the U.S.

Houthis would love if the U.S. was doing what it said and taking out AQAP, but the U.S. are bumbling, incompetent fools that think nothing of trading a few dozen dead Sunnis for the opportunity to take out one maybe/kinda al Qaeda guy that was sort of suppose to be somewhere (they think) at around a certain time BUT THE DON'T KNOW ANY OF THIS FOR SURE. Hadi pretty much told the U.S. "Kill as many Yemeni Sunnis as you feel is necessary (or simply cause through incompetence) on a hunch if you think there might be an AQAP guy somewhere in the area."

Iran has nothing to do with the Houthis or why they're pissed off at their U.S. puppet president. Houthis are Zaydi Shia - completely different than Iranian Shia. In fact, Iran is also in favor of the U.S. taking out AQAP but not at the expense of innocent Yemenis. Iran might be pissed that the U.S. staged another coup d'etat (under the guise of the Yemeni Arab Spring) to put in a drone-free-for-all approving president, but they have no interest in getting involved militarily in Yemen. There is no secret Shia pact between Yemenis and Iranians - that's not how it works (except on CNN).

The U.S. wants continued, unfettered access to Yemeni airspace to randomly kill Sunni civilians with the hope of smoking a few al Qaeda somewhere in the crowd. If Sunni civilians are killed, the U.S. forks over a couple thousand bucks and an apology. The U.S. figures that justifies a few 'accidents'. Sunni and Shia Yemenis DON'T AGREE. They hate their U.S. puppet Hadi for allowing drone strikes to continue. They also hate him for enforcing the IMF austerity crap, but they can deal with that - that's not why they're rebelling.

Saudi Arabia wants the drone strikes to continue because AQAP and Yemen is right next door to them. The whole al Qaeda shit-show they created with the U.S. is going to be visiting them NEXT and they're peeing in their robes at the thought. The Saudis figure that no amount of Yemeni civilian casualties are too high if the drones occasionally hit an AQAP 'suspect' and keep them the hell out of Saudi Arabia. Likewise, the Saudis will kill as many Yemenis as they need to in order to ensure the U.S. drone-approving puppet Hadi remains in power.

(AQAP = Al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula)

[saturno]

Slim or not, the countdown to another proxy war has begun. The biggest winner? These guys.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-25/armed-us-weapons-yemen-rebels-advance-president-saudi-arabia-prepares-war

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

...continuamos con Yemen...

Saudi naval blocade and troop deployment

Saudi warplanes bomb Yemen

(Y de paso, le ponen de fondo una musiquita de mierda al vídeo, WTF?)

Yemen ground invasion by Saudi & Egyptian troops

World's Oil Chokepoints: why Yemen matters

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

Arabia Saudi e Irán

[No Logo]

De Red Voltaire

Lo que usted no sabe sobre los acuerdos entre Estados Unidos e Irán
por Thierry Meyssan

Las conversaciones bilaterales secretas

Estados Unidos e Irán vienen conversando en secreto desde marzo de 2013. Esos contactos secretos se iniciaron en Omán. Ahogados por un asedio económico y monetario sin precedente en la historia, los iraníes no tenían intenciones de ceder ante el imperialismo sino de obtener varios años de tregua, un tiempo para respirar y recuperar fuerzas. Para Estados Unidos, que quiere desplazar sus tropas del Medio Oriente hacia el Lejano Oriente, esta oportunidad tenía que venir acompañada de garantías precisas de que Teherán no aprovechará ese respiro para seguir extendiendo su influencia.

Dos negociadores excepcionalmente hábiles, Jake Sullivan y William Burns, encabezaban el equipo estadounidense. Se desconoce la composición de la delegación iraní.

Sullivan había sido uno de los principales consejeros de la secretaria de Estado Hillary Clinton, con quien no compartía sin embargo ni el respaldo incondicional a Israel ni la fascinación por la Hermandad Musulmana. Organizó las guerras contra Libia y contra Siria. Cuando el presidente Obama decidió deshacerse de la señora Clinton, Sullivan se convirtió en consejero de seguridad nacional del vicepresidente Joe Biden y fue desde ese puesto que inició los contactos con Irán. William Burns, por su parte, es un diplomático de carrera, se dice que uno de los mejores de Estados Unidos, y se unió a las conversaciones a título de adjunto del secretario de Estado John Kerry.

De esos contactos salieron al menos 2 decisiones. En primer lugar, el Guía de la Revolución, ayatola Ali Khamenei, se ocuparía de excluir de la carrera presidencial a Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie –el ex responsable del servicio de inteligencia de los Guardianes de la Revolución, convertido en jefe de la oficina del entonces presidente iraní Mahmud Ahmadinejad. El objetivo era garantizar que Irán bajara el tono en las instancias internacionales. Posteriormente, Estados Unidos se ocuparía de que sus aliados anti-iraníes también bajaran el tono y desbloquearan las negociaciones con el grupo 5+1 sobre el tema nuclear para preparar el fin de las sanciones.

De hecho, para sorpresa general, el Consejo de los Guardianes de la Constitución (la mitad de sus miembros son nombrados por el ayatola Khamenei) rechazó la candidatura de Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, a quien los sondeos de opinión daban como ganador desde la primera vuelta de la elección presidencial iraní. Fue gracias a la división así creada en el campo de los revolucionarios, y hábilmente alimentada por el Guía, que el jeque Hassan Rohani ganó la elección.

Rohani era el hombre de la situación. Este religioso nacionalista había sido negociador en jefe sobre la cuestión nuclear desde 2003 hasta 2005. Había aceptado todas las exigencias europeas antes de que Mahmud Ahmadinejad, al llegar a la presidencia, decidiera sustituirlo. Rohani había estudiado derecho constitucional en Escocia y fue el primer contacto iraní de Israel y Estados Unidos en el escándalo Irángate. En 2009, durante el intento de revolución de color organizado por la CIA con ayuda de los ayatolas Rafsanjani y Khatami, Rohani se puso del lado de los pro-occidentales en contra del presidente Ahmadinejad. Y de paso, el estatus clerical de Rohani permitía a los molas reconquistar el Estado iraní de manos de los Guardianes de la Revolución.

Por su parte, Estados Unidos impartía instrucciones a sus aliados sauditas para que también bajaran el tono y aceptaran la mano tendida del nuevo gobierno iraní. Durante varios meses hubo sonrisas entre Riad y Teherán mientras que el jeque Rohani se ponía personalmente en contacto con su homólogo estadounidense.
El plan de la Casa Blanca

La idea de la Casa Blanca era tomar nota de los éxitos iraníes en Palestina, Líbano, Siria, Irak y Bahréin y permitir que Teherán goce de su influencia en esos países a cambio de que renuncie a seguir expandiendo su revolución. Después de abandonar la idea de compartir el Medio Oriente con los rusos, Washington preveía distribuirlo entre Arabia Saudita e Irán antes de retirar sus propias tropas de esa región.

El anuncio de esta posible división fortaleció abruptamente la lectura de los acontecimientos regionales como un conflicto entre sunnitas (sauditas) y chiitas (iraníes), lo cual resulta absurdo ya que la religión de los cabecillas a menudo no corresponde con la de quienes los apoyan.

Pero esa división devolvía el Medio Oriente a la época del Pacto de Bagdad [1], o sea a los tiempos de la guerra fría, con la diferencia de que Irán ocuparía el lugar que antes tenía la URSS y que la repartición de las zonas de influencia sería diferente.

Además de que eso obligatoriamente molestaría a la actual Federación Rusa, esta nueva repartición devolvía Israel a la época en que no disponía del paraguas estadounidense. Algo inaceptable desde el punto de vista del primer ministro Benyamin Netanyahu, partidario de la expansión de Israel «desde el Nilo hasta el Éufrates». Así que Netanyahu hizo todo lo posible por sabotear la continuación del programa.

Es por eso que, a pesar de que a principios de 2014 ya se había alcanzado en Ginebra un acuerdo sobre la cuestión nuclear, la negociadora estadounidense Wendy Sherman utilizó las exigencias israelíes para tratar de obtener más concesiones y afirmó sorpresivamente que Washington no se conformaría con eliminar la posibilidad de que Irán obtuviese la bomba atómica sino que también exigía que Teherán renunciara a desarrollar sus misiles balísticos. Esta sorprendente exigencia fue rechazada por China y Rusia señalando que no tenía absolutamente nada que ver con el Tratado de No Proliferación nuclear ni entraba en el campo de competencia de los 5+1.

Eso demuestra que la bomba atómica nunca fue la preocupación de Estados Unidos en todo este asunto y que Washington sólo utilizó ese pretexto para contener a Irán imponiéndole un terrible cerco económico y monetario. Lo más interesante es que el propio presidente Obama lo reconoció implícitamente en su discurso del 2 de abril cuando mencionó la fatwa del Guía de la Revolución prohibiendo el arma atómica. En realidad, la República Islámica de Irán puso fin a su programa nuclear militar poco después de la declaración del ayatola Khomeiny contra las armas de destrucción masiva, en 1988. A partir de aquel momento, Teherán se ha limitado a la investigación nuclear de carácter civil, que en algunos casos puede tener implicaciones militares, como –por ejemplo– garantizar la fuerza motriz en navíos de guerra. La decisión del imam Khomeiny adquirió fuerza de ley con la fatwa del ayatola Khamenei, el 9 de agosto de 2005 [2].

En todo caso, como en Washington estiman que Benyamin Netanyahu es un «fanático histérico», los estadounidenses pasaron el año todo el año 2014 tratando de llegar a un acuerdo con Tsahal [las fuerzas armadas de Israel]. Poco a poco, fue imponiéndose la idea de que, en la repartición de la región entre Arabia Saudita e Irán, habría que imaginar un sistema de protección para la colonia judía. De ahí surgió el proyecto de crear una especie de nuevo Pacto de Bagdad, algo así como una OTAN regional, presidida oficialmente por los sauditas –para que fuese aceptable para los árabes– pero dirigida en realidad por Israel, como el antiguo Pacto presidido de facto por Estados Unidos a pesar de que este país no era miembro. El presidente Obama hizo público este proyecto en su Doctrina de Seguridad Nacional, el 6 de febrero de 2015 [3].

Así que el acuerdo nuclear y el fin de las sanciones fueron pospuestos. Washington organizó la rebelión de Tsahal contra Netanyahu, creyendo que al primer ministro no le quedaba mucho tiempo en el poder. Pero, a pesar de la creación de Commanders for Israel’s Security y de los llamados de casi todos los ex oficiales superiores a no votar por Netanyahu, este último logró convencer a sus electores de que él único defensor de la colonia judía y acabó siendo reelecto.

En lo tocante a Palestina, Washington y Teherán habían previsto congelar la situación de Israel y crear un Estado palestino, conforme a los acuerdos de Oslo. Netanyahu, que estaba espiando no sólo las negociaciones de los 5+1 sino también las conversaciones bilaterales secretas [4], reaccionó anunciando públicamente que mientras él esté vivo Israel nunca aceptará que se reconozca un Estado palestino. Al hacer esa declaración, Netanyahu reconocía implícitamente que Tel Aviv no tiene intenciones de respetar la firma israelí estampada en los acuerdos de Oslo y que ha venido negociando con la Autoridad Palestina durante 20 años únicamente para ganar tiempo.
La Fuerza Común Árabe

Apurados por completar su plan, Washington y Londres decidieron utilizar la rebelión yemenita para concretar todo el asunto. Los chiitas hutis aliados a los soldados fieles al ex presidente Saleh habían exigido y obtenido la renuncia del presidente Hadi, quien a última hora decidió tratar de recuperar su puesto. Aunque la verdad es que su estancia en el cargo ya no era ni legal ni legítima desde hacía mucho tiempo. Hadi se había mantenido en el poder después de terminar su mandato sin haber cumplido ninguno de los compromisos que había contraído sin intenciones de respetarlos. Ni Estados Unidos ni el Reino Unido tenían ningún tipo de simpatía por ninguno de los dos bandos, después de haberlos respaldado alternativamente en diferentes momentos. Así que permitieron que Arabia Saudita afirmara que la revolución era un golpe de Estado y que justificara así su nuevo intento de anexar Yemen. Londres montó una operación militar para respaldar a Adén desde el Estado pirata de Somalilandia. Al mismo tiempo, con el pretexto de la crisis yemenita, la Liga Árabe hizo pública la parte árabe de la nueva OTAN regional: la Fuerza Común Árabe.

Tres días más tarde, también se hacía público el acuerdo de los 5+1 negociado un año antes. Sin embargo, el secretario de Estado John Kerry y el ministro iraní de Relaciones Exteriores Mohammad Javad Zarif dedicaban todo un día a pasar revista a todos los puntos políticos en discusión. Se decidió que Washington y Teherán reducirán la tensión en Palestina, Líbano, Siria, Irak y Bahréin durante los próximos 3 meses y que el acuerdo de Ginebra no se firmaría hasta finales de junio y por 10 años si ambas partes respetaban su palabra.
Consecuencias

- Es probable que Netanyahu trate nuevamente, en los 3 próximos meses, de hacer fracasar el plan estadounidense. No sería por lo tanto sorprendente que veamos toda una serie de actos de terrorismo o de asesinatos políticos no reivindicados pero cuya responsabilidad será atribuida a Washington o a Teherán para impedir la firma prevista para el 30 de junio de 2015.

Lógicamente, Washington estimulará en Israel una evolución política que limite los poderes del primer ministro. Eso es lo que se desprende del durísimo discurso que pronunció el presidente israelí Reouven Rivlin cuando encargó a Netanyahu la formación del próximo gobierno.

- La cuestión de Yémen nunca llegó a mencionarse en las discusiones bilaterales. Si se firma el acuerdo, ese país podría mantenerse como único punto de conflicto en la región durante los próximos 10 años.

- Al concluir un acuerdo con Teherán y promover una alianza militar en torno a Arabia Saudita, Washington favorece, por un lado, una división de la región entre Estados. Por otro lado, fragmenta las sociedades utilizando para ello el terrorismo e incluso acaba de crear un sub-Estado terrorista: el Emirato Islámico, también conocido como «Daesh».

- Estados Unidos había previsto originalmente conformar la Fuerza Común Árabe con las monarquías del Golfo y Jordania, con la posibilidad de incorporar posteriormente a Marruecos. Existe en ello una coherencia entre los regímenes implicados. Sin embargo, Omán se ha mantenido al margen, a pesar de ser miembro del Consejo de Cooperación del Golfo, mientras que Arabia Saudita está tratando de utilizar su influencia para incluir a Egipto y Pakistán, a pesar de que este último no es un país árabe.

En el caso de Egipto, El Cairo no dispone de ningún margen de maniobra y tiene que plegarse a todas las presiones sin implicarse en materia de actuación. El país no dispone de medios sustanciales y sólo puede alimentar a su población gracias a la ayuda internacional, o sea gracias a Arabia Saudita, los Emiratos Árabes Unidos, Rusia y Estados Unidos. Egipto se ve implicado en la operación «Tempestad Decisiva» contra Yemen, nuevamente junto a la gente del sur, como en la guerra civil (1962-1970), con la diferencia de que en vez de estar con los comunistas ahora está del lado de los miembros de al-Qaeda y que El Cairo es ahora aliado de la monarquía saudita. Es evidente que Egipto debería tratar de salir de ese enredo lo más rápido posible.

- Más allá del Levante y del Golfo, la evolución de la situación regional planteará problemas a Rusia y a China. Para Moscú, el cese del fuego de 10 años es una buena noticia pero le resultará amargo tener que renunciar a sus esperanzas mientras que Irán se beneficia únicamente porque la dirigencia rusa tardó en reconstituir sus fuerzas después de la disolución de la URSS. Esto explica el acuerdo concluido con Siria para desarrollar el puerto militar de Tartús. La marina de guerra rusa debería implementar de forma duradera su presencia en el Mediterráneo, tanto en Siria como en Chipre.

En cuanto a China, el cese del fuego entre Estados Unidos e Irán se traducirá rápidamente en un traslado de las tropas estadounidenses hacia el Lejano Oriente. El Pentágono ya se plantea la construcción de la mayor base militar estadounidense del mundo en Brunei. Para Pekín, poner sus fuerzas armadas al nivel de esa amenaza se convierte desde ahora en una carrera contra reloj: China debe estar lista para hacer frente al Imperio estadounidense antes de que este último esté en condiciones de atacarla.
Thierry Meyssan

http://www.voltairenet.org/article187254.html

salud

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-11/proxy-war-crosses-border-houthis-reportedly-clash-saudi-troops-near-najran

[Currobena]

Los antecedentes de los problemas yemeníes: la eliminación de los árabes laicos.

ought to be familiar with the Houthi, the Shia militia that’s now conquering most of what’s worth taking in Yemen. After all, the Houthis started in Saada Province, just a few miles due south of Najran, Saudi Arabia, where I was living a few years ago. But the truth is Yemen was totally closed off to everyone in Najran, and no one except a few networks of smugglers and spies who, from what I heard, had a very high attrition rate, dared to cross that border. None of us expat goofs even knew the name of the Yemeni Province across from us. Yemen was that country from whose bournes no traveler returns, unless he’s hoping to get rich from an SUV full of weed—and what with the, you know, beheadings for drug dealing and all, we were pretty much a straight-edge crew in our time there, figuring to make up for lost time when we got home. We knew nothing about what was over the border except that every day there seemed to be a new convoy of car-carriers loaded with brand-new Land Cruisers with the logo of the Saudi Border Patrol rolling into town. The Saudi authorities were clearly nervous about that border, even back in 2011.
There was no road connecting Najran to Yemen. Instead there was a sheer, mile-high mountain wall that marked the Yemen border. The only Yemenis you met were beggars in the streets. One of them rolled up to me while I was waiting for the school van, said in English, as if we’d been chatting for ages, “My friend, eight years I Yemen…and so, you give ten riyals.” I gave him 20. In his spiel, “Yemen” summed it up, verb and noun, sufficient reason for his demand.
The only place I ever saw Yemenis who weren’t begging was the Najran Dam, the world’s most ridiculous tourist attraction. That Dam kind of sums up relations between Yemen and Saudi in a very cinematic way. You approach the dam up a canyon, through a checkpoint. They’re looking for Yemenis at the checkpoint; they wave you through, and after being stopped a few more times by nervous paramilitaries in Land Cruisers, who also check for Yemeni faces and wave, you reach the top of this huge, magnificent dam.
You walk across the little road over the top, expecting to look out on something like Lake Powell in Vegas, and see…nothing. Desert. Yemen. There’s no water except a tiny creek. There are boats marooned halfway up the rocky hillsides, but there’s no water, nobody can remember when there ever was water, and nobody expects there ever will be any water.
It’s still a tourist attraction, though, and one of the reasons is that you can see into Yemen. On one memorable occasion, we actually saw something much rarer: Yemenis, visiting Saudi with permission.
We didn’t notice them at first. We did our usual stroll across the top of the dam to the little picnic ground, where in theory you could sit, though you wouldn’t want to—and there was a huge family there. Not Saudis, but not South Asian or Western either. They didn’t look like anyone we’d seen. They were in a defensive circle, sitting on the grass. The men were on the outside of the circle, protecting the women. The women were in black, but not a Saudi-abaya black. They were thinner, shorter than Saudis, more alert—much more alert. And every single one of them was looking at us with an intensity you’d never see on a Saudi face.
We had no idea why they were staring at us like that, as if we were great white sharks instead of a gaggle of miserable TESOL mercenaries. Our van driver nodded towards them, said, “Yemen.”
There was never anything about Yemen in the Saudi press. Lots about “infiltrators” and “smugglers,” who were understood to be Yemeni, but nothing about what was actually going on on the other side of that mountain wall. Yemen equals trouble; that was the Saudi view, and all you ever got.
From this report in Al Akbar, it sounds like not much has changed since we left Najran. The Saudi authorities are still spreading hate against the Shia of the Southwest, and no one actually knows much about what’s going on south of the border:
 <blockquote>“stories…tell of criminal activity by foreigners sneaking through the Yemeni borders, harassing and attacking homes along the Assir mountain range.
“The people of the south know very little about Yemeni politics and do not really understand the Saudi political approach toward Yemen. All they know is that a threat has emerged in Yemen.”</blockquote> The Houthi are being bombed now by the Saudi AF, which is in a way the sincerest form of Saudi flattery. The Saudis are afraid of these Shia Yemeni. One of the reasons that “…people of the [Saudi] South know very little about Yemeni politics” is that the Saudi rulers make sure they don’t get any information. The last thing the Saudi authorities want is for the Shia of SW Saudi Arabia to remember that they were once part of a huge, powerful Shia kingdom that stretched south to the Indian Ocean. Najran was once part of that kingdom. It’s only been Saudi territory since 1934, when the Saud family leased the province from Yemen on a 20-year term. They kept it when the term expired, because by that time Saudi Arabia was rich and closely allied with the US and Britain, while Yemen was weak and poor.
The Saudis, with sleazy friends in Langley and unlimited cash to throw around, have incredible control over world media. They do such a good job of suppressing news about their long war with the Shia of Yemen that, until I lived there and got the story first hand, I didn’t even know that the Shia of Najran had actually risen up in armed rebellion in 2000. And it was an incredible story of a glorious, though doomed, rebellion.
In 2000, the Shia of Najran got sick of being told by their Saudi Provincial Governor (a Saudi princeling, naturally) that they were rafidii (“nay-sayers”) and takfiri (“apostates”). The Najrani grabbed their guns, scared off the Saudi national police and drove Prince Mishaal into hiding in the Najran Holiday Inn. You can still see the Holiday Inn; it’s as good as a Gettysburg monument to the locals, though the bullet holes have, unfortunately, been covered over.
That unknown rebellion ended with massive Saudi secret-police reprisals—more holes in the desert than a Joe Pesci golf tour. Once they’d killed off the ringleaders, the Saudi authorities went back to slower, less bloody methods. As I explained in 2012, they planned to neutralize the Shia threat in the southwest by buying the region a new demographic profile:
 <blockquote>“Twelve years [After the Najran revolt of 2000], the Sauds are winning in a slower, smarter way. The locals have no friends, no money; their religion is slowly being Wahhabized, just like Islam in Indonesia and all the other places the Sauds are doing their best to make a little meaner and more rule-crazy in their own image. They’re doing it with demographics now, importing Sunni settlers from Yemen to tip the balance. There are rumors of a huge new city going up in the desert near the town I worked in, supposedly a ‘campus’ for the local university, but it’s twenty times bigger than that would ever need to be. It’ll be a Sunni city, a Wahhabi city.
“Meanwhile the local Ismaili Shi’ites try to stay alive and maybe even get a tiny piece of the tsunami of money that’s flowing over the rest of the country. They get very, very little of it, and most of what comes to the province goes for mosques—Wahhabi mosques, naturally. But they fought back when their beliefs were directly insulted, and to them, that still means a lot. In the meantime, they do what people in their position always do: they grovel when they have to, fight when there’s no choice, and have a lot of kids.”</blockquote> Yeah, but that was in 2012, when the Saudis thought they had a lid on this thing. It’s all changed now, thanks to the Houthi victory in Yemen.
And it all began just a few miles south of that dam—in Saada Province, home of Hussein al Houthi, founder and martyr of the “eponymous” movement. (When did it become socially acceptable to use the word “eponymous”? I feel dirty.)
Houthi was of the Fiver Shia sect called Zaydi, theologically moderate but fierce when committed to war. The Southwestern wedge of the Arabian Peninsula has always been largely Shia. The east, which spreads northeast toward Oman like a sun-baked brick, is almost uninhabited inland toward the Saudi border, but what population there is is Sunni, and chronically in conflict with the Shia wedge to the west.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is powerful there, helped and betrayed by turns by the Saudi security police, trying to hide from the American drones that occasionally drop a Hellfire missile on any AQAP pickup truck they can identify on the road.
The Shia have always been stronger and more numerous than the Sunni Yemenis in the east, but the last century wasn’t a good one for them. The Saudis, who were once “the ignorant Arabs,” got the oil, and Yemen got smaller and poorer.
Saudi Shia are barely tolerated, and consistently ignored by the Saudi media. The only way I found out that Najran was a Shia city was that none of my students showed up one day. Empty classrooms. I asked a colleague who looked around very carefully, then whispered, “Ashura.” Ashura is not mentioned in Saudi Arabia. They’re religious fascists and not shy about it.
And that’s what led to the forgotten rebellion in Najran, which was part of the long, slow struggle between the Shia of Yemen (Greater Yemen, which used to include Najran and everything up to Abha) and the other power in the Peninsula, the Wahhabi of the Najd.
The Saudis’ strength comes from three provinces , Al Qassim, Ha’il, and Riyadh—that make up the Najd, the uplands, the turtle-back of the Arabian Peninsula. What’s happening now, as Saudi planes bomb Houthi bases, is the latest of a long, chronic war between the Najd and Yemen.
Oil made the Najd strong in the 20^th century, but even before it was discovered, Yemen was weakened by invasions, first the Ottomans and then the British. The Sunni of the Najd were lucky enough to be ignored—what did they have that was worth taking, before the oil was found?—whereas the Yemeni had two very valuable, stealable assets: coffee, and ports along the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.
There was a time when Yemen was the world’s only coffee exporter (Mocha is a town in Yemen, on the Red Sea) and though coffee was banned as a dangerous drug by Murad IV, he couldn’t make that Prohibition work, because the Turks were addicts from their first sip. They needed that caffeine buzz to help them look over maps and think about new provinces to conquer. And when they looked at Yemen, they saw a 2,000 km long coastline that could be dotted with Ottoman naval outposts, and they drooled—probably drooled coffee grounds all over the map. They wanted the coast. That was them all over; show them a landscape painting and they were calculating how many Janissaries it’d take to conquer it, how many new taxes they could squeeze out of their kaffir subjects to raise a new army and seize whatever your hotel-room artwork showed.
And they didn’t mind casualties. You can rank armies by their aversion to KIA; the IDF clearly goes at the top (it’s their great, fatal har-har weakness), and the Soviets and Ottoman rank near the bottom for sensitivity to body bags coming home. The Pashas started ordering their unlucky Egyptian lieutenants to make grabs for Yemen in the early 1500s. They made the classic mistake in judging the odds of going into Yemen, thinking that because it was localized and anarchic that it must be weak. Early in the 16th century a half-smart Ottoman pasha made this “cakewalk” prediction:
 <blockquote>“Yemen is a land with no lord, an empty province. It would be not only possible but easy to capture, and should it be captured, it would be master of the lands of India and send every year a great amount of gold and jewels to Constantinople.”</blockquote> Wrong on all counts. In the first half of the 16^th century, the Empire sent 80,000 troops to Yemen. Only 7,000 of them ever came home.
The Ottomans had their own 16^th-century version of the US Army’s “lessons learned” ritual after a failure, and their review of this debacle was brutal:
 <blockquote>“We have seen no foundry like Yemen for our soldiers. Each time we have sent an expeditionary force there, it has melted away like salt dissolved in water.”</blockquote> Army prose was a little more literary back then.
The Ottomans kept trying, sending one doomed army out from Egypt after another. They always were a land-hungry, over-extended empire, jerking off to maps rather than consolidating what really mattered.
Yemen wasn’t nearly as easy to take as it must’ve looked to the Ottoman policy-pasha wonks looking over a map of the Peninsula in Constantinople.
By 1634, the last Ottoman forces were permitted—“permitted,” you’ll note—to leave Mocha, the Yemeni coffee-packing port they’d coveted for almost a century. The Shia of Yemen, who seemed so leaderless and weak, had defeated them completely, though the endless wars with the Turks had also weakened the Yemenis.
What the Turks never got was that the Shia highlands of Yemen weren’t a “land with no lord,” but a land with a hereditary Imamate, a theocratic military leader like Hassan Nasrullah of Hezbollah. Nasrullah is a perfect modern Imam, a sectarian icon, which may be why he looks like Gerry Adams after six months on an all-donut diet.  Moqtada al Sadr in Iraq has a similar role.
An Imam isn’t supposed to interfere too much in clan business in normal times. His most important job is to unite the sect when it’s under threat. The Imam is a mobilizer above all, which the US found out the hard way when they messed with Moqtada in Baghdad.
When the Shia of northern Yemen mobilize, like they have now, they always move outward from their stronghold in Saaba Province in the same directions: either North toward Najran and Abha, or West to the Red Sea (Jizan), or South to Aden.
As long as they stick together under a strong Imam, they’re hard to beat. But after the Turks left in the mid-17^th century, the Yemenis faced a much smarter empire: the British. Very few countries held off that Empire for long. Between the Americans’ victory in 1783 and Irish independence in 1922, not one country was able to eject the Empire. Tens of millions died trying — brave, brilliant empires like the Sikhs and the Zulus; no one succeeded. We forget that now, because . . . well, you know that amnesia flash device from Men in Black? It was actually the British Empire that invented that thing, and asked the world to smile and say cheese when it decided to dissolve itself around 1960. And like Tommy Lee Jones in that movie, their last act was to use the flash on themselves, so they could say in all truth, “Empire? What Empire?”
But in 1840, at their peak, the British were beautiful to watch. They were masters at handling a complicated, clannish country like Yemen. They never made the mistake of rolling in and claiming the whole place as the Turks had. That only united the locals. Instead, they did what they were good at: using proxies, fomenting divisions, creating distractions—the original force multipliers. And even when they lost battles or campaigns, they left their enemies weakened, often for good.
In 1840, they realized they could use Aden as a coaling port for the fleets that kept their Indian operation, the big money-maker, in business. And that was that; they needed Yemen, and they were going to get it. They landed at Mocha almost exactly two centuries after the Turks evacuated it.
The British used another Imperial strategy now forgotten: forced immigration by subject peoples. Aden, the focus of their ambitions in Yemen, became a “world town” in the 19^th century, with about a thousand Arabs swamped by South Asian, SE Asian, and African immigrants. Those were the perfect inhabitants, with no links to the locals and entirely dependent on the Empire’s protection to avoid being killed by the angry Yemenis.
Aden stayed fairly quiet, in Yemeni terms, until the 1960s, when Britain, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia fought a dirty, complicated Yemeni war. Aden blew up, with grenade attacks on British officials, who had a witty riposte in the form of torture centers that pioneered many of the techniques you’ll remember from Abu Ghraib, with emphasis on sexual degradation and nakedness.
The British got called on these torture centers—they were a little sloppy, not in form, during the 1960s—and left in 1967. The real action moved up north to Houthi territory, where Nasser, hope of the Arab world in the 1960s, decided that a modern, Arab-nationalist regime in Yemen would be a big move for him, Egypt, and the Arabs.
Arabs were getting very “modern” at that time. It’s important to remember that. You know why they stopped getting modern, and started getting interested in reactionary, Islamist repression?
Because the modernizing Arabs were all killed by the US, Britain, Israel, and the Saudis.
That was what happened in the North Yemen Civil War, from 1962-1967. After a coup, Nasser backed modernist Yemeni officers against the new Shia ruler. The Saudis might not have liked Shia, but they hated secularist, modernizing nationalists much more. At least the Northern Shia kings ruled by divine right and invoked Allah after their heretical fashion. That was much better, to the Saudi view, than a secular Yemen.
And the west agreed. To the Americans of that time, “secular” sounded a little bit commie. To the British, it sounded anti-colonial and unprofitable. To the Israelis, it raised the horrible specter of an Arab world ruled by effective 20^th-century executives. States like that might become dangerous enemies, while an Arab world stuck in religious wars, dynastic feuds, and poverty sounded wonderful.
Why do you think the IDF has not attacked Islamic State or Jabhat Al Nusra even once?
So all the factions we call “The West” jumped in to destroy these Yemeni officers: British commandos and pilots, Israeli military advisors, CIA bagmen, NSA geeks, and mercenaries from all over the world.
That was the all-star lineup fighting “for Allah and the Emir,” as the idiots at Time Magazine enthused in a 1963 article.
And of course that lineup won easily, against a clique of officers and a half-trained Egyptian expeditionary force. Egypt lost something like 25,000 soldiers in Yemen; you don’t fight a British/Saudi/American/Israeli/Islamist/Royalist coalition like the one they were facing without losing big. After the Six-Day War in 1967, when it lost the Sinai, Egypt had no interest in bothering about Yemen and called its surviving troops home.
If you look at a control map of Northern Yemen in 1967, when the war ended with Egypt’s total defeat, you see that the Egyptian forces and their Yemeni allies still controlled some of the southern areas around Taiz (which was just taken by the Houthi last week), while the Royalists, the conservatives, controlled all of Saada Province and the north, the areas across from Najran.
So the Houthi, whose core strength perfectly maps the Royalists’ areas of control in 1967, draw their strength from these same conservative areas. As for the modernist, secular Yemenis, they’re just gone. Emigrated, or died, or saw their children seduced by the madrassi.
That scenario was repeated all over the Middle East during the Cold War, and it has a lot to do with how messed up the place is now. “For Allah and the Emir”; when Time ran that headline in 1963, that slogan sounded quaint and kind of touching. . . . It sounded like a nice alternative to Nasser, nationalism (and its much more dangerous corollary, nationalization) or, worse yet, Communism.
So the West put its weapons and its money in on the side of “Allah and the Emir” over and over again, against every single faction trying to make a modern, secular Arab world, whether on the Nasserite, Ba’athist, Socialist, Communist, or other model.
It worked very well . . . or badly, if you prefer. It left Yemen festering, like most of the Arab world, with a weak royalist regime in the north and an even weaker socialist state in Aden. In 1990, after the collapse of the USSR, that southern Yemen state dissolved, taking the last of its fading “socialist” posters and slogans with it. Yemen was reunited, in theory; a poor, sectarian, anti-modern nightmare state.
By that time, “For Allah and the Emir” was pretty much the only slogan anywhere in the Arab countries. It had gone from quaint and quirky to universal. The only option left was to choose which version of Allah, and which corresponding emir, you were going to back.
The Houthi are as conservative and devout as the Saudis who are using every plane they’ve got to bomb them at the moment.
In fact, their favorite poster is a devoutly blood-thirsty souvenir of Tehran in the Khomeini years:
 <blockquote>God is great.
Death to America.
Death to Israel.
A curse upon the Jews.
Victory to Islam.</blockquote> Of course, the Houthi, as Shia, worship the wrong version of Allah, from the Saudi perspective. But that didn’t bother the Saudis, or the Americans, or the British, or the Israelis, back in the 1960s when they all joined hands (in a very non-peace-and-love way) to wipe out the modernizing Yemeni.
Arabs are reduced to choosing which Allah and which Emir to support because a half-century alliance between the worst oligarchies in the West and the most reactionary elements in their countries wiped out the alternative. That’s why it’s so grotesque to hear right-wingers blaming the Arabs for the lack of commitment to democracy and even more ridiculous that Leftists demand respect for fascist thugs like Islamic State, as if they were the voice of the Muslim people.
These sectarian wars are what’s left when you’ve killed everybody else who was attempting to provide Arabs with an effective, secular, modern existence.

http://pando.com/2015/03/28/the-war-nerd-a-brief-history-of-the-yemen-clusterfck/

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

El Premio Nobel de la pazzz moviliza la Navy para taponar a los iraníes y ayudar a los saudíes, nuestros hamijos:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-20/navy-confirms-us-warship-intercepts-iranian-weapons-shipments-yemeni-waters