The cycle time for the US wiping its collective memory and re-starting a training program for troops aimed against the enemy du jour seems to be getting shorter. While the covert CIA plan to train “moderate” rebels to fight in Syria has not even ended, the new $500 million Obama just got approved by Congress for the military to train rebels is being described almost as if it is the only program around:

Even if the training goes as planned, the rebels will be outnumbered. While the United States has proposed to train and equip 5,000 rebels, the Central Intelligence Agency has said it believes that the Islamic State has between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters in Iraq and Syria.

Elsewhere in that article we do see “This scaled-up training program would be overseen by the Defense Department, unlike the current covert program here and a similar program in Jordan, both overseen by the C.I.A.”, but since the number of fighters trained by the CIA isn’t added to those we plan to train using the military, it would appear that those “fighters” are in the process of fading into the sunset.

With David Petraeus still unavailable to run this PR training program, we are actually seeing hints this time that at least a few of our Congresscritters may be learning that our history of training isn’t exactly stellar and could bode poorly for this effort:

Some lawmakers who voted against Wednesday’s measure argued the administration was moving too fast and did not yet have a feasible plan to arm the Syrian rebels. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) said it was “pretty disturbing” that Thursday’s hearing was occurring after the House had voted.

“I don’t think the plan that I have seen was detailed enough to make me believe that your plan will work,” Sanchez said. “I hope I am wrong. I hoped the same thing when I voted against the Iraq war that I was wrong, but I don’t believe I was wrong on that.”

Still, the larger focus of Thursday’s hearing shifted from the push for Congress to approve arming and training the Syrian rebels to the future of the U.S. military campaign against ISIL.

Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) said she had doubts about the plan and asked Hagel to explain the endgame against ISIL. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-Hawaii) asked about the vetting of forces in Iraq — and not just Syria. And Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) wanted more details about potential airstrikes in Syria.

Remarkably, the press also is noticing that this effort is ill-fated. From the same NYTimes article linked above:

While the House approved an aid package for the rebels on Wednesday and the Senate followed on Thursday, at present the rebels are a beleaguered lot, far from becoming a force that can take on the fanatical and seasoned fighters of the Islamic State.

What’s more, the Times acknowledges that the “moderates” have different priorities from US goals in Syria:

Short of arms, they are struggling to hold their own against both the military of President Bashar al-Assad and the jihadists of the Islamic State. Their leaders have been the targets of assassination attempts. And some acknowledge that battlefield necessity has put them in the trenches with the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, an issue of obvious concern for the United States.

While they long for greater international support and hate the Islamic State, sometimes called ISIS or ISIL, ousting Mr. Assad remains their primary goal, putting them at odds with their American patrons.

As Marcy noted earlier this week, small amounts of recognition of the perverse role of Saudi Arabia in funding global terrorism is also finally creeping into general awareness. Former Florida Governor and Senator Bob Graham has been quite active lately in pushing on that front. In addition to the quote Marcy presented from a Tampa news outlet, there is this from a Patrick Cockburn interview:

Senator Graham, a distinguished elder statesmen who was twice Democratic governor of Florida before spending 18 years in the US Senate, believes that ignoring what Saudi Arabia was doing and treating it as a reliable American ally contributed to the US intelligence services’ failure to identify Isis as a rising power until after it captured Mosul on 10 June. He says that “one reason I think that our intelligence has been less than stellar” is that not enough attention was given to Saudi Arabia’s fostering of al-Qaeda-type jihadi movements, of which Isis is the most notorious and successful. So far the CIA and other intelligence services have faced little criticism in the US for their apparent failure to foresee the explosive expansion of Isis, which now controls an area larger than Great Britain in northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

/snip/

Senator Graham does not suggest that the Saudis are directly running Isis, but that their support for Sunni extremists in Iraq and Syria opened the door to jihadis including Isis. Similar points were made by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, and MI6, who said in a lecture at the Royal United Services Institute in London in July that the Saudi government is “deeply attracted towards any militancy which effectively challenges Shiadom”. He said that rulers of the Kingdom tended to oppose jihadis at home as enemies of the House of Saud, but promote them abroad in the interests of Saudi foreign policy. Anti-Shi’ism has always been at the centre of the Saudi world view, and he quoted Prince Bandar, the ambassador in Washington at the time of 9/11 and later head of Saudi intelligence, as saying to him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunni have simply had enough of them.”

So the long-term position of the Saudis is to promote Sunni jihadists against Shia forces globally. But part of how they avoid US ire is that they play both sides. From the Times article:

So far, the program has focused on a small number of vetted rebel groups from the hundreds that are fighting across Syria, providing them with military and financial help, according to rebel commanders who have received support.

The process is run by intelligence officials from a number of countries. The United States provides overall guidance, while Turkey manages the border, and Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia provide much of the funding.

Despite fostering the conditions that led to the formation of ISIS, the Saudis also are helping to fund what can only be described as a doomed before it starts effort to combat ISIS. In the world of terrorism, the Saudis are behaving like a hedge fund, betting on both sides of the ISIS issue. Despite their small position against ISIS in the short term, there is no doubt their long term position is one of radical Sunni jihadism. In fact, since the training is doomed, by helping to fund it, the Saudis are increasing the overall stature of their long term jihadist investment. No matter how much money the US throws at this effort or how many “moderate rebels” it trains, only a fool would believe the Saudis would allow the Syrian rebels and Iraq to defeat a Sunni jihadist movement.

There’s nothing terrifically insightful about Tom Friedman’s observation that the Saudis have fostered the extremist ideology that fuels ISIS.

The al-Sauds get to rule and live how they like behind walls, and the Wahhabis get to propagate Salafist Islam both inside Saudi Arabia and across the Muslim world, using Saudi oil wealth. Saudi Arabia is, in effect, helping to fund both the war against ISIS and the Islamist ideology that creates ISIS members (some 1,000 Saudis are believed to be fighting with jihadist groups in Syria), through Salafist mosques in Europe, Pakistan, Central Asia and the Arab world.

This game has reached its limit. First, because ISIS presents a challenge to Saudi Arabia. ISIS says it is the “caliphate,” the center of Islam. Saudi Arabia believes it is the center. And, second, ISIS is threatening Muslims everywhere.

But the fact that one of the chosen clerics of mushy conventional wisdom now feels it’s safe (admittedly in the second half of his column) to call out the Saudis for their extremism that has been ignored for over a decade is notable.

This comes against the background of renewed attention on the 28 pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry George Bush suppressed 13 years ago to hide the Saudi role in 9/11.

Former Senate Intelligence Chair Bob Graham has been tireless at calling to have these pages — which he co-authored — released publicly.

Presidents Bush and Obama have both refused to release 28 pages of those classified records. Though Graham cannot reveal the specific contents, he accuses the Saudi government of working against us behind the scenes, and he accuses the U.S. government of keeping it a secret (possibly to protect our oil interests or alliance with the Saudi Arabia).

“For 13 years, that information has been denied to the American people,” said Graham. “The pot is going to break soon.”

He says only a few members of congress have seen the information.

“Without exception, when they have put down the 28 pages, their reaction has been, ‘Oh God, I can’t believe this has really happened!”

Lawrence Wright points to several unreliable sources — Bandar bin Sultan, Philip Zelikow — suggesting it would not reveal anything alarming.

The Saudis have also publicly demanded that the material be released. “Twenty-eight blanked-out pages are being used by some to malign our country and our people,” Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was the Saudi Ambassador to the United States at the time of the 9/11 attacks, has declared. “Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide. We can deal with questions in public, but we cannot respond to blank pages.”

[snip]

The questions raised by the twenty-eight pages were an important part of the commission’s agenda; indeed, its director, Philip Zelikow, hired staffers who had worked for the Joint Inquiry on that very section to follow up on the material. According to Zelikow, what they found does not substantiate the arguments made by the Joint Inquiry and by the 9/11 families in the lawsuit against the Saudis. He characterized the twenty-eight pages as “an agglomeration of preliminary, unvetted reports” concerning Saudi involvement. “They were wild accusations that needed to be checked out,” he said.

Zelikow and his staff were ultimately unable to prove any official Saudi complicity in the attacks.

One of Zelikow’s staffers (I suppose it could be Zelikow himself) reveals the real issue: reading these pages will make it harder for us to remain cozy with Saudi Arabia.

A former staff member of the 9/11 Commission who is intimately familiar with the material in the twenty-eight pages recommends against their declassification, warning that the release of inflammatory and speculative information could “ramp up passions” and damage U.S.-Saudi relations.

But given that the Saudis were far more closely tied to 9/11 (and, probably, some other attacks) than any other country, don’t we deserve to know that to act accordingly, especially as we prepare to fight a terrorist group strengthened by Bandar?

Matt Stoller calls all this censorship — and notes how it has prevented us from having the discussion we really need to have to resolve the underlying problems in the Middle East.

But the other part of the 9/11 narrative, aside from propaganda, was censorship. In America it’s not popular to talk about censorship, because it’s presumed that we don’t have it, as such. There are no rooms full of censors who choose what goes into newspapers, and what doesn’t. Our press is free. It’s right there in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law… prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..”

Somehow, though, Senators, Congressmen, and intelligence officials are not supposed to talk about those 28 pages in the 9/11 Commission report which are classified. And why not? Well because according to President Bush (and now President Obama), doing so would compromise “national security”. But what, exactly, is censorship, if it’s not a prohibition on individuals to speak about certain topics? Traditionally, First Amendment law gives the highest protection to political speech, allowing for certain restrictions on commercial speech (like false advertising). But there is no higher form of speech than political speech, and there is more important form of political speech than the exposition of wrongdoing by the government. So how is this not censorship?

It clearly is. In other words, explicit government censorship combined with propaganda helped prevent the public from having a full discussion of what 9/11 meant, and what this event implied for our government’s policies. Explicit censorship, under the guise of national security, continues today. While there are people in the U.S. government who know which Saudis financed and organized 9/11, the public at large does not. No government official can say ‘this person funded Al Qaeda in 2001, he might be funding ISIS now’, because that would reveal classified information.

[snip]

Unwinding the classified state, and beginning the adult conversation put off for seventy years about the nature of American power, is the predicate for building a global order that can drain the swampy brutal corners of the world that allow groups like ISIS to grow and thrive. To make that unwinding happen, we need to start demanding the truth, not what ‘national security’ tells us we need to know. The Constitution does not mention the words ‘national security’, it says ‘common defense.’ And that means that Americans should be getting accurate information about what exactly we are defending.

In yesterday’s SASC hearing on ISIS, Joint Chiefs Chair Martin Dempsey said there is not military solution to ISIS (though he later, at the prodding of Carl Levin, modified that comment). But the non-military things we’d do — to combat the sources of and funding for ISIS’ ideology — all point in one direction, and it’s not Iraq or Syria.

Just as an example, the Obama Administration has repeatedly suggested that because the Iraqi government now has an “inclusive” government, it will mitigate the impetus behind terrorism. If that’s true, then why don’t we demand the same from the Sauds before we fight another war for them?

Whether or not you believe military involvement is wise or will be effective, it seems critical to do the other things to fight the treat of extremism. And for 13 years, we’ve been lying to ourselves about where that fight needs to start.

Disclaimer: There is a very good chance that my thinking here is so off-target as to make it total bullshit, but it is still a fun exercise in trying to make sense of recent events. –JW

Long-time readers will be familiar with my strange hobby of noting interesting events taking place along the border between Pakistan and Iran. We have a new entry in that category, and this time the information we have is quite cryptic. The initial report came from IRNA, dated September 8:

Minister of the Interior Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said here on Monday Afghan and Pakistan nationals, who were trying to cross Iranian borderlines to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (also known as Daesh) terrorists in Iraq, have been arrested.

Speaking in a local gathering, Rahmani Fazli underscored that the Iranian military forces and residents of the border areas are fully vigilant against Daesh plots to counter potential threats.

He added that Iranian forces are on full alert, as the Daesh terrorist group is failing in Iraq.

Note that Fazli does not state where or when these arrests took place. Mehr News expanded slightly on the IRNA story:

Iran’s Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli in a meeting of the country’s deputy governors for political, social and security affairs said that a number of Afghans and Pakistanis who were passing through Iran seeking to join ISIL in Iraq were arrested.

Rahmani Fazli added that the country had already prevented some other Afghans and Pakistanis to enter Iran.

“ISIL terrorists have not succeeded in recruitment of fans inside the country; however, this is not to deny they promote their ideology, since they are active in the cyberspace, connecting to the possible candidates for recruitment,” the minister said.

He asserted that there is no fear of any danger of this terrorist group for the country because the residents of Iranian border provinces are smart enough and the security forces are completely dominant over the borders.

Hmm. Last October those security forces weren’t exactly “completely dominant” when fourteen Iranian border guards were killed. But mostly, it does seem to me that Sunni fighters wishing to make their way to the front lines to aid ISIS in Iraq or Syria would be ill-advised to try to make their way across the longest part of Shia-controlled Iran from Pakistan.

News outlets in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have noted Iran’s announcement of the arrests but add no new information on how many militants were arrested or the loacation or date of the arrests.

This event stood out to me because I had been intrigued by Friday’s strange episode where a plane transporting coalition military contractors from Kabul to Dubai made an unscheduled landing in Iran:

A charter airplane carrying American military contractors through Iranian airspace was instructed to land in Iran on Friday, but the United States attributed the episode to an easily corrected bureaucratic issue and not a larger political incident between two countries with a long history of hostility.

The airplane, chartered by the international military coalition in Afghanistan, was flying from Bagram Air Base north of Kabul to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates when it ran into trouble with Iranian air traffic controllers over its flight plan.

The plane was rerouted to the coastal Iranian city of Bandar Abbas, where it landed pending a resolution of the issue. It was later allowed to depart Iran, and by Friday night, the plane had landed in Dubai, officials said.“This is nothing to get alarmed over,” said an Obama administration official, who like other American officials insisted on anonymity to discuss a potentially delicate diplomatic situation. “This is a bureaucratic problem with the flight plan, and it’s going to be resolved shortly. This is not a political statement.”

The official story on the flight plan is that the plane was delayed several hours on its takeoff from Bagram and Iranian flight controllers considered the flight plan to have expired. They instructed the plane to return to Bagram and file a new flight plan. The crew of the plane responded that they didn’t have sufficient fuel for that return flight and so the plane was informed to land at Bandar Abbas. From the map above, it is clear that by the time the plane would have entered Iranian air space, it would have been more than halfway along the direct route from Kabul to Dubai, so it likely didn’t have sufficient fuel to return to Bagram.

It is strange that the flight would be told to land at Bandar Abbas, since it would have nearly completed its traverse of Iran by the time it got there. Although the eastern side of Iran is moderately remote, there are airports at Kerman and Zahedan that would not have been very far off the flight path and seem large enough for the flight to have landed, so the reasoning behind the choice of Bandar Abbas is obscure.

At any rate, when I first heard of the flight from Bagram landing in Iran, I immediately began to wonder whether there might be some sort of prisoner exchange taking place. After all, the US still has a number of international prisoners housed at Bagram. With the situation on the ground in Afghanistan looking increasingly shaky, the disposition of these prisoners could be one of the most difficult aspects of a hasty retreat from Afghanistan should the US decide not to leave a small force there after the end of this year.

So, is it possible that the landing in Bandar Abbas was actually staged so that some of these prisoners could be dropped off? If so, the cryptic announcement of new fighters being arrested in Iran could fit pretty closely with that event. It is a bit more difficult to account for the announcement saying that Afghans as well as Pakistanis were part of the arrests. The official story is that the US no longer holds any Afghan prisoners at Bagram, but the US has long played shell games with prisoners there, so they would be motivated to make any actual Afghan prisoners disappear quietly. [And note this report by Spencer Ackerman where it seems that the foreign prisoners held by the US at Bagram seem to have at least some communications with Afghan prisoners so that hunger strikes spread between the two populations.]

Anyhow, the strongest reason to doubt the report of Iran arresting fighters who wanted to traverse Iran to reach Iraq is just how unlikely it seems that fighters would choose such a route to the battle. Although there are many press reports of the flow of Pakistani and Afghan fighters to Iraq and Syria, few of them address the routes taken. This AP story from July offers a bit of information:

The militants are traveling to Syria by various routes, and some are taking their families. The most closely watched are secretly taking speed boats from Baluchistan’s coast to the Omani capital of Muscat and then traveling onward to Syria, Hamza said.

Others are flying from Pakistan to various countries, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan, and then making their way to Syria. The financing is coming from sources in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Hamza said.

Crossing a fairly narrow region of the Gulf or flying certainly looks like a better option for these fighters than trying to cross Iran on land.

If the US has handed off some prisoners for Iran to hold, let’s hope that the US got something, or someone, important in return.

Yesterday, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons noted another delivery of materials by Syria under the agreement calling for Syrian chemical weapons-related materials to be destroyed. Tuesday’s delivery took the current totals to 86.5% of all materials to be removed and 88.7% of the Priority 1, or most dangerous, chemicals. That leaves only “two or three” more deliveries to complete removal of all of the materials that Syria declared under the agreement and appears to have Syria on track to meet the current goal of all materials being removed later this month and destroyed by the end of June.

But, because this is Syria, significant controversy continues to swirl. The latest issue centers on the  likely use of chlorine gas. That chlorine has been used seems fairly certain, but each side in the conflict accuses the other of being the perpetrator. It should be noted from the outset that chlorine is a widely used material with many peaceful uses and is not covered by the agreement under which Syria gave up its chemical weapons. It was used by Germany in WWI, but more effective chemical agents have since taken its place.

One central question on whether it is Assad’s forces who used the chlorine hinges on whether it can be shown that the gas was released from helicopters or airplanes, since the rebel forces have no air capabilities. Numerous news outlets quote anonymous US officials suggesting that chlorine has been delivered by aircraft, but no proof has been offered (nor has Syria provided proof that the rebels are responsible for the chlorine).

Today’s New York Times article is typical of the anonymous accusations against Syria:

Nearly 90 percent of the chemicals in Syria’s arsenal have now been exported and only a few shipments remain, international monitors reported Tuesday, but the progress was overshadowed by growing concerns that the Syrian military may be dropping bombs filled with chlorine, a common industrial compound not on the list of prohibited poisons.

Disarmament experts said that if the unconfirmed reports that Syrian warplanes and helicopters have been using chlorine-filled bombs in the civil war were true, that would be a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty signed by Syria last year and could constitute a war crime.

But CNN went much further in the accusations against Syria on Monday:

The Obama administration and its allies believe the Syrian government may have used chlorine gas in a deadly attack this month on its own people, several U.S. officials and other diplomats told CNN.

The alleged assault that killed at least two and affected dozens of others occurred in the village of Kafr Zeita, a rebel-held area.

While there is no firm proof as the matter is being looked into, several U.S. officials and Western diplomats say the United States believes the regime of Bashar al-Assad is responsible because it has such chemicals and the means to deliver them.

“Our assessment is it is, at a minimum, concentrated chlorine dropped from helicopters,” a U.S. official said. “That could only be the regime.”

The official did not speak for full attribution.

As usual for accusations in Syria, attention is turning to video posted to YouTube. Today, one focus is on a chlorine canister attached to a detonator. The chlorine canister appears to have come from China:

China’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that it was investigating reports that a chlorine canister bearing the name of the country’s biggest arms maker was shown in footage believed to document a gas attack in Syria this month.

Attacks this month in several areas in Syria share characteristics that have led analysts to believe that there is a coordinated chlorine bomb campaign, with growing evidence that it is the government side dropping the weapons.

In the rebel-held village of Kfar Zeita in the central province of Hama, 125 miles north of Damascus, opposition activists uploaded video of people choking and being fed oxygen following what they said were bombs dropped from helicopters on April 11 and 12.

Further footage showed a partially exploded canister with the chemical symbol for chlorine along with the name of Chinese arms manufacturer Norinco.

But Reuters then goes on to note the danger of YouTube analysis for assigning blame in the war:

Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the videos and Norinco, also known as China North Industries Group Corporation, has not responded to requests from Reuters for comment.

The use of chlorine in these attacks is a clear war crime. With the battle in Syria still essentially a stalemate wherein Syria has regained at least some lost ground, each side stands to benefit from the other being found to be guilty of chlorine use. Because of this, all evidence presented must be evaluated carefully to guard against falsification.

Understandably, China’s Foreign Ministry urged Reuters not to jump to any conclusions regarding the chlorine canister:

In a statement later emailed to Reuters, the ministry said China “scrupulously abides by its non-proliferation obligations” and strictly controls exports of dual-use items, including sensitive chemicals.

“Chlorine is a raw material that has wide industrial uses, and it is not on any nation’s or organization’s list of controlled items,” it said.

“China hopes that relevant media can objectively and fairly report this, to avoid causing misunderstanding.”

With Bandar now apparently out of the picture, but his MANPADS likely in it, Syria remains a point of significant international focus amid calls for extended US training of rebels and continuing reports of infighting among the varying Islamist factions in the rebel groups.  Meanwhile, Syrian citizens continue to suffer, with shelter destroyed and food scarce.

On Tuesday, I noted that Mutasim Agha Jan had gone missing in Dubai while attempting to work toward negotiations between the Afghan Taliban and Afghanistan’s High Peace Council. Multiple outlets now are reporting on the Peace Council having confirmed that Mutasim was indeed detained by authorities in the UAE. Here is Khaama Press on the confirmation:

The Afghan High Council has confirmed that the former Taliban leader Agha Jan Mutasim has been held in United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Agha Jan Mutasim has been missing in United Arab Emirates during the past several days. He was a senior Taliban leader and was supporting the Afghan peace process with the Taliban group.

Afghan High Peace Council following a statement said the detention of Agha Jan Mutasim clarifies that certain elements in the region are disrupting the Afghan peace talks.

The statement further added that those individuals, who are struggling to resume Afghan peace process, have been victimized.

The High Peace Council insisted that Afghan peace talks should take place inside Afghanistan and negotiations have taken place with the UAE officials to end limitations and resolve the issue of Agha Jan Mutasim.

Note that the High Peace Council accuses “certain elements in the region” of “disrupting the Afghan peace talks”. We also get a similar accusation from Karzai’s office. From today’s Washington Post, there is this:

“Known and secret enemies of peace in Afghanistan continue sabotaging our peace process,” Aimal Faizi, Karzai’s spokesman, said Thursday. He did not specify who he thought was responsible, but Afghan officials often accuse neighboring Pakistan of abetting insurgents and stymieing peace efforts.

In that regard, it is very interesting to see an opposition political figure in Pakistan speaking out today against Pakistan’s military supporting the Afghan Taliban:

Pakistan must break alleged links with any Afghan insurgents if it is to adhere to Article 40 of the Constitution, said an opposition lawmaker in the Senate on Friday.

Opposition lawmakers were expressing their views during a debate in the Senate on a motion on foreign policy moved by Senator Raza Rabbani of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

Opposition senators called for ending ‘duplicity’ in foreign policy formulation and stressed on the need to retrieve the ground lost by civilians to the security establishment over the past decades.

/snip/

Senator Farhatullah Babar said that the basis of foreign policy formulation is laid out in Article 40 of the Constitution of Pakistan.

Reading out Article 40, he said that if we have to adhere to them we must break alleged links with any Afghan insurgents and stop the ability of Afghan fighters to seek refuge in Pakistan.

“A stable and democratic civilian government leading foreign policy formulation would be welcomed by all parties, as compared to the security establishment leading it without any accountability,” he said.

So at least one opposition party (and it is in fact the party that led the previous government) now has publicly stated that Pakistan should stop supporting the Afghan Taliban and giving them refuge. It seems quite remarkable that they would also state so plainly that this policy is led by the military with no input from the civilian government.

Further complicating matters relating to Mutasim, a number of parties are working hard to emphasize that he has been formally disavowed by the Taliban. Here is Bill Roggio at Long War Journal:

While we can’t confirm or deny that Mutasim is under house arrest, we are certain that he isn’t leading negotiations for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is the official name of the Afghan Taliban.

As we’ve noted here several times at LWJ, the Taliban have denounced Mutasim two times in the past in statements published on Voice of Jihad. The last time was on Feb. 20, when the Taliban said:

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan once again declares to all parties that Agha Jan Mutasim does not hold a position in the Islamic Emirate and neither can he represent it.Also in that statement, the Taliban said that Mutasim’s actions are “detrimental” to both the Taliban and “the goals of the sacred Jihad.” [See LWJ report, Afghan Taliban denounces former senior official, denies involvement in peace talks.]

The Taliban previously disowned Mutasim in another official statement that was released on Voice of Jihad in August 2012. In that statement, the Taliban said Mutasim “was dismissed from his post by the leader of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in the year 2010 for stepping over his bounds and for lacking transparency in his work.”

“He currently does not hold any posts with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and neither can he represent the Islamic Emirate in any of his statements and actions,” the statement continued.

Significantly, very similar comments are attributed to “US officials” in the Washington Post article linked above. The officials go on to say that Mutasim was arrested for something other than his peace negotiations:

But in recent interviews, U.S. officials raised doubts about Motasim’s role as a prominent peace negotiator, saying his ties to the Taliban leadership had faded in recent years. The officials added that Motasim’s arrest was unrelated to his role as a peace negotiator. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the sensitive matter.

But the article goes further, and provides hints that he was arrested for meeting with dangerous individuals:

Afghan officials say that they have not been formally told why Motasim was arrested but that they have heard explanations from individual UAE officials.

“He was meeting certain suspicious people, and the Emiratis were worried about him,” said one Afghan official who was not authorized to speak on the record.

So we have a very conflicting set of reports here. On the one hand, both the US and the Afghan Taliban claim that Mutasim does not represent the Taliban. And yet it is clear from many of these reports that he held meetings with many figures while in Dubai, with Taliban figures said to be among them. Seeming to support that is the claim he was arrested for meeting with “suspicious people”.

Further complicating Mutasim’s arrest is the recent falling out among members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which seems to have been patched up this week:

Members of the Gulf Cooperation Council brokered a consensus Thursday after a rift that saw Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain withdraw their ambassadors from Qatar.

During a meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh, GCC foreign ministers conducted a “comprehensive review of measures relating to foreign and security policies,” according to a statement from the Gulf group.

“[Participants] agreed to adopt measures that ensure working at a group level and that policies of any individual state should not affect the interests, security or stability of any other member state and without affecting the sovereignty of any of its states,” the statement said.

The falling out was over perceived support for the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist movements by Qatar:

Last month, in an unprecedented split between Gulf Arab allies, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar, saying Doha had not implemented a GCC deal reached in Riyadh in November to avoid interfering in each other’s affairs.

The three countries, led by Saudi Arabia, accused Doha of interfering in the internal affairs of countries in the Gulf region by backing Islamist movements in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere. Qatar denied it interferes anywhere but vowed to stick to its foreign policy.

Did the UAE feel they had to arrest Mutasim because he was meeting with Islamists who engage in cross-border violence (namely the Afghan Taliban who live in Pakistan) and would be seen as highly hypocritical if they allowed him to operate while they were protesting Qatar’s actions? If so, it would be supremely ironic if the arrest came about from Mutasim meeting with those who have disavowed him.

It seems possible that the events that resulted in the recent ouster of Bandar bin Sultan were also involved in this fallout and patch-up of the GCC. I can’t help wondering if it somehow played a role in Mutasim’s arrest being collateral damage from the disagreement.

On September 26, 2004, the Washington Post disgraced itself by giving David Petraeus space to write an op-ed in which he spouted pure bullshit on how well his vaunted “training” program was going in Iraq. Of course, that program failed multiple times with Petraeus never being called to account. Despite clear military regulations prohibiting political activity by members of the military, Petraeus’ op-ed was seen by some as providing an endorsement which gave a significant boost to George W. Bush’s re-election campaign at a time when public opinion on the war in Iraq was beginning to sour. Just short of ten years later (and after his career got Broadwelled, I mean, broadsided), Petraeus is back on the pages of the Neocon Daily today, warning us that the “US needs to plan for the day after an Iran deal“.

The reviews of Petraeus’ newest op-ed are now in, and it has been called “Provocative!”, “Apocalyptic!” and even “Gut-Wrenching!” Oh, wait. That’s how the 1983 made for TV movie The Day After is described on its DVD cover. My mistake. But clearly Petraeus is playing off that old title. The old movie deals with life in Lawrence, Kansas after a nuclear war and Petraeus is now telling us we must prepare for life after preventing Iran getting the chance to wage nuclear war.

The central tenet of the op-ed is that Iran is “the leading state sponsor of terrorism”. Like most of what Petraeus does or says, that statement is just flat wrong. Even though the US (including the military when Petraeus was head of Central Command and the CIA when Petraeus led it) never admits it publicly, the rest of the world knows that Saudi Arabia is by far the largest state sponsor of terrorism. There are even Wikileaks cables confirming the role of Saudi money in supporting Sunni extremists. And note that the single most important organizer of state sponsored terrorism, Bandar bin Sultan, is now returning to his role after a brief interruption.

It appears that Petraeus stopped paying attention to world events when he resigned from the CIA in disgrace in November of 2012, because nowhere in his anti-Iran screed do we see any acknowledgement that in June of 2013, Hassan Rouhani was elected as Iran’s new president and has ushered in a new, more moderate outlook that is credited with providing the window for diplomatic progress toward an agreement on Iran’s nuclear technology.

Okay, so here is Petraeus (and co-author Vance Serchuk, who was Joe Lieberman’s foreign policy advisor after cutting his teeth at the American Enterprise Institute–you just can’t make this shit up!) framing the problem for us:

Largely absent from the debate, however, has been a fuller consideration of the strategic implications a nuclear agreement could have on the U.S. position in the Middle East.

Such an assessment must begin by considering the consequences of lifting the majority of sanctions on Iran — and of Iran resuming normal trade with the world’s major economies. This prospect is what provides our strongest leverage to persuade the Iranian government to abandon key elements of its nuclear program.

But lifting sanctions would also lead to the economic empowerment of a government that is the leading state sponsor of terrorism. Indeed, even under crippling sanctions, Iran has managed to provide robust support to extremist proxies as part of its broader geopolitical agenda across the Middle East and beyond — activities antithetical to U.S. interests and to those of our closest allies.

It is possible that a nuclear deal would pave the way to a broader detente in Iran’s relations with the United States and its neighbors. It is, however, more plausible that removing sanctions would strengthen Tehran’s ability to project malign influence in its near-abroad, including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, the Arabian peninsula and the Palestinian territories.

Just wow. Petraeus is actually using Syria as a primary example of Iran as a sponsor of terrorism. That’s right, the same Syria where Petraeus’s CIA started the training of CIA death squads modeled after his Iraq death squad program and that has given us “moderate” death squads who make the news by eating an opponent’s heart. Syria is one of the last places on Earth where the US should try to claim the moral high ground.

I do, however, agree with Petraeus’ point that US sanctions have devastated Iran’s economy. But given the level of suffering for most Iranian citizens, it seems that Rouhani will be under tremendous pressure make restoration of Iran’s economy the highest priority under any scenario with the sanctions mostly lifted.

It is not until the halfway point in this grossly belligerent piece that Petraeus finally, grudgingly, admits that a negotiated deal with Iran on its nuclear technology is actually better than military action against sites where Iran carries out the work. And yet, the rest of the piece is devoted to keeping the attitude relating to Iran as close to a war footing as possible.

Finally, Petraeus gives us a five point plan on how we can prepare for that day after an agreement with Iran is signed. I won’t bother with working through all of them, but the middle one circles back to the issue of Syria:

Third, the United States needs to look hard at its position on Syria, arguably now the central front in a broader struggle for primacy in the Middle East. Recent reports that the Obama administration has been considering various forms of increased support to the Syrian opposition — including providing a limited number of strategically significant weapons systems — are encouraging. These reports, if true, would reflect recognition that a much more robust, focused and well-resourced effort is required to reverse the Assad regime’s current battlefield momentum, which it has achieved in large part due to Iranian help.

Petraeus can hardly contain his excitement about providing MANPADS, presumably through Bandar, for those “moderate” rebels in Syria to unleash new levels of hell in a region where civilians are starving while suffering atrocities at the hands of both sides in this conflict with no sign of ending.

With Petraeus appearing yet again in the Post, we can only wonder if there is yet another movement underway to launder his image and get him ready for a political run. Recall that in 2011, there was an ill-fated push by political groups to get Petraeus a fifth star to burnish his credentials for a potential presidential run in 2012. One would think that his spectacular failures in the Broadwell affair would have doomed him politically forever, or even that his role in holding back intelligence on the Benghazi attack for political reasons would keep him out of politics, but I can’t help wondering if I’m still going to have the ass-kissing little chickenshit around to bash for many more years to come.

I freely admit to being the oddest of the quadruplets in the Emptywheel sensory deprivation pool, producing the quirky minority report from time to time.

Which may explain the following graphic with regard to current geopolitical tensions.

 As you can see, not every trending burp in the news about either Venezuela or Ukraine produced a corresponding bump in the fossil fuel market. Some trend-inducing news may have nothing at all to do with energy. It’s quite possible I may not have captured other key businesses as some of them don’t trade publicly, or are don’t trade in a manner readily captured by Google Finance.

But there are a few interesting relationships between news and price spikes, enough to make one wonder what other values may spike with increased volatility in places like Venezuela (which has the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the western hemisphere), and Ukraine (which lies between the EU and the largest natural gas deposits in the world, and the world’s eighth largest oil reserves).

Of course there’s an additional link between these two disparate countries. Both of them have already seen similar upheavals in which the U.S. played a role — Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, and the 2002 attempted coup in Venezuela.

When someone made noise about an Afghan Muslim being a key locus of the latest unrest in Ukraine, I couldn’t help but think of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline for natural gas which has yet to be realized, primarily for a lack of adequate political will among nation-states with a vested interest in its success.

It also made me think of news reports from this past summer when Turkmenistan, sitting on the fourth largest natural gas reserves in the world, expressed a readiness to export gas to Europe. This would cut into Russia’s sales, but not for a few years, requiring continuation of existing relationships for the next three to five years. Note the pipelines, existing and planned on the following U.S. State Department map (date unclear, believed to be post-2006).*

This in turn led me to revisit the rather interesting +30% break in natural gas pricing Russia offered Ukraine in December as well. This seemed like a rather odd move at the time considering global consumption is expected to increase, not decrease. Was this a chit to ensure continued natural gas pipeline cooperation? Or was this, in concert with a $15 billion loan, merely a means to decrease volatility by easing a neighbor’s economic pressures?

[Sidebar: the pipeline map above also puts Stuxnet and related cyberweapons in a different light. Stuxnet’s original target may have been Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, but another related malware, W.32.Flamer also attacked oil pipelines at Iran’s Kharg Island, through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports are handled. Flamer hit in April 2012; in December 2012, another attack attributed to Stuxnet targeted the Bandar Abbas electricity plant. Bandar Abbas supplied power to neighboring provinces, which may have included Kharg Island.]

I’ll leave it to you to make your own assessment as to what this all means.

I do think that a country like Ukraine, composed of so many easily fragmented factions, tetchy from a history of repeated tug-of-war, is easily gamed by the parties who have the most to gain from doing so. I also don’t think all the parties actively pursuing fragmentation are nation-states, which may also be sucked in and gamed hard, spreading more fragmentation.

Further, Ukraine as well as Venezuela half a world away are both rather large pieces in a globe-sized “game.” Tweaking either of them on this massive board creates ripples affecting far more than their immediate neighbors or their obvious military bedmates.

The only moves that might remove fossil fuels as a possible factor in tensions like that of Ukraine and Venezuela are a dramatic reduction in consumption based on conservation and radically increased investment in renewable alternative energy resources.

Which is pretty much what the U.S. Department of State and Department of Defense implied in their 2010 quadrennial reports.

The last time I checked in on Syria, there was much consternation over the delays in getting Syria’s chemical weapons precursors sent to the staging area in Latakia so that they can be moved on to the next steps in the process that will eventually result in destruction of the chemicals at sea aboard the Cape Ray. I had noted that stories covering the delay had put all of the blame on Syria for not moving the chemicals (even though they were said already to be at “marshaling” spots) while ignoring that the US was over a month late in making the Cape Ray ready. There has now been a third batch of chemicals sent to Latakia by Syria, but the amount shipped represents a small fraction of the materials to be removed. Despite this, Syria still maintains that the the June deadline for full destruction of the materials will be met.

Going further back, recall that back in September, we were hearing about how wonderful General Salim Idriss is. We were told that he was a moderate (well, that is if we ignore the fellow from his forces who eat hearts of dead foes) and that he had a foolproof plan for maintaining control of arms we shipped to him. It turns out that Idriss wasn’t much of a leader after all. Idriss now has been removed:

The sudden replacement of the Free Syrian Army commander is the strongest sign yet that the rebel group is restructuring to address concerns of its Western backers that it fight both the regime and extremist opposition factions.

Gen. Salim Idriss, the public face of the FSA for the past 14 months, leaves ahead of an expected delivery of new and more sophisticated weapons from Gulf Arab states to rebels aligned with his group.

Complaints against Gen. Idriss have been mounting for some time. His critics said his forces were ineffective and he was too slow to deliver weapons to fighters.

It’s all about the weapons when it comes to “aid” for the Syrian rebels. And Idriss’ control of those weapons? How about this in The Guardian’s coverage of Idriss’ sacking:

The Islamic Front recently seized weapons warehouses from the FSA.

Gosh, I sure hope Idriss got the Islmaic Front to give him a handwritten receipt for those weapons.

But did you notice that bit in the quote above from the Wall Street Journal article, where we learn that Idriss’ removal comes “ahead of an expected delivery of new and more sophisticated weapons from Gulf Arab states”? Iran explains to us in a Fars News article that this really means the weapons will come from Saudi Arabia:

Saudi Arabia is reportedly to provide more than 3,000 tons of heavy arms to the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The Saudi government has agreed to do so following a decision by the FSA governing body, the Supreme Military Command, to replace the forces’ overall commander Selim Idriss, the DPA reported on Tuesday.

The kingdom had reportedly suspended its military aid to the Free Syrian Army in November 2013 to protest the way that Idriss had distributed arms from western countries and Persian Gulf Arab states.

“Idriss was identified as someone we could not work with and we made the strategic decision to suspend all support to the Free Syrian Army until it changed its leadership,” Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic liaison to the FSA said.

“Now we can resume arms supplies in full and as fast as possible,” said the official, who did not wish to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the press.

It’s not just Iran that sees the hand of Saudi Arabia in this move. From the Washington Post (after referring to the breakdown, yet again, of peace talks):

Even before the talks were suspended Saturday, Syrian opposition leader Ahmad al-Jarba, who has close ties to Saudi Arabia, had been signaling his intent to refocus on the military struggle against Assad by visiting the front line and promising rebel leaders that new weapons are on the way.

“You will get weapons, including quality weapons,” he said during a videotaped visit on Friday to Jamal Maarouf, an increasingly powerful rebel commander in the northern province of Idlib.

Several rebel commanders at Sunday’s meeting said Idriss had been replaced at the insistence of Jarba, who wanted to see a more effective leader in place ahead of the arms supply, which the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday will include antiaircraft weapons.

Perhaps Bandar saw his opportunity in the spate of bad press on Syria’s horrific behavior in Homs, where there were attacks on UN relief convoys (although each side blames the other for the attacks, the fact that people are starving in Homs is undoubtedly the fault of Assad’s regime) trying to get into Homs. Then, Syria arrested hundreds of military age males who were attempting to evacuate, even though there were claims they were civilians and not fighters:

During the six-day mission that began Friday and ended Wednesday night, Syrian authorities arrested several hundred men aged 16 to 54 as soon as they were taken out of the old quarter of Homs. They were among some 1,500 people evacuated, many of them frail and starving after more than 18 months under a government siege that prevented food from going into the zone.

All the detainees were presumed by the regime to be rebel combatants. But about 70 of them were freed after signing a pledge never to bear arms against the state.

/snip/

Fighters and activists inside the old quarter reached by Skype said most of the men who left were civilians trapped by the siege and none of them was a full-time combatant.

Gosh, I wonder where Assad could have gotten the barbaric idea that all military aged males in an area must be enemy combatants?

And so the US conundrum continues. In Syria, we are aligned with Saudi Arabia against Iranian (and Russian) support of Assad. This latest move there looks to be a loosening of the reins on Saudi support of the rebels to push back against apparent strategic gains by Assad’s forces. But when it comes to the P5+1 talks with Iran, the US (and with Russia on its side this time) seeks agreement with Iran while Saudi Arabia is stridently opposed to any agreement. It looks as though peaceful outcomes on both these fronts will require a nearly miraculous level of diplomacy.

The last time we checked in on the ongoing incidents along the Iran-Pakistan border, fourteen Iranian border guards had been killed on October 25 in an attack and Iran had promptly executed sixteen prisoners the next day in retaliation. A subgroup within Jundallah, Jeish Al-Adl, was credited for the attack, and Iran made veiled accusations about what countries might be backing the group.

A bit later, on November 5, an Iranian legislator (who seems to make mostly hard-liner pronouncements) publicly accused the United States and Pakistan’s ISI of being behind Jeish Al-Adl’s actions:

An Iranian lawmaker says the US and Pakistani intelligence services lead the Pakistan-based Jaish-ul-Adl terrorist group responsible for the recent deadly attack on Iranian border guards.

“The key point in this case is the role that US spy agencies play by means of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in conducting such terrorist attacks. This issue has been confirmed in the meeting between representatives of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and members of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee,” Javad Karimi Qoddousi said on Monday.

He added, “The direct affiliation of these groups to US spy agencies and the ISI’s control over such terrorist outfits have been authenticated.”

The next day, a prosecutor in the border town of Zabol was killed. Jeish Al-Adl quickly claimed responsibility:

The Sunni armed group Jaish-ul Adl has claimed responsibility for the assassination of a public prosecutor in Iran’s southeast, media reports say.

Thursday’s reports came a day after Mousa Nouri – prosecutor of the city of Zabol, which lies near the Afghan border in Sistan-Baluchestan province – was slain in a “terrorist attack,” according to officials.

Jaish-ul Adl, the rebel group formed last year whose name means Army of Justice in Arabic, said in a statement Wednesday night that the killing was carried out in retaliation for a mass hanging last week.

“After the hanging of 16 innocent young Baluchis, the fighters decided to take revenge and kill a judicial official,” read the statement posted on the group’s website, jaishuladl.blogspot.fr.

/snip/

Security forces later killed four rebels in a separate clash near Mirjaveh, a town close to the border with Pakistan, officials said last week.

But Iran announced on November 18 that they had captured the prosecutor’s killers. They went to great lengths to point out that the killers were drug smugglers unrelated to Jeish Al-Adl:

Senior Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) officials announced that the terrorists who assassinated Zabol Prosecutor Mousa Nouri and his driver earlier this month did not pursue any political agenda and were drug-traffickers.

The IRGC Ground Force announced an hour ago that it has arrested the culprits who assassinated Nouri and his driver “in a complicated intelligence operation”.

Deputy Head of the IRGC’s Public Relations Department General Ramezan Sharif told FNA that the assailants had no political motivation and affiliation and were drug-traffickers.

“This team (of terrorists) was no way related to opposition groups,” he said.

“The terror has been conducted in relation to smuggling,” Gen. Sharif said, but declined to provide any further details.

The article goes on to present further evidence supporting Iran’s claim:

After the assassination, the outlawed Jeish Al-Adl radical Sunni Wahhabi movement whose members had killed 14 Iranian border guards two weeks before Nouri’s terror incident, claimed responsibility for the assassination of the Zabol prosecutor.

But, Iranian officials rejected the claim, saying Jeish Al-Adl was just bluffing to boast about its power. Iranian officials said another terrorist group had most likely conducted the attack.

“Jeish Al-Adl group has claimed responsibility for the assassination of Zabol prosecutor, but it is lying and we did not want to announce this issue on TV; when the group saw that the assassination had taken place, it wanted to attribute it to itself,” Iran’s Deputy Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Rayeesi said Sunday.

He underlined that the judiciary is suspicious of the role of another group and will continue this line of probe until achieving results, adding that the public will be informed of the results once investigations end.

“This group (Jeish Al-Adl) has made mistakes in its statement; first they said that they killed one person while two people had been killed and they also gave a wrong place and wrong time for the assassination,” he said, explaining that Jeish Al-Adl couldn’t have been behind the assassination.

It appears that Iran is both saying that Nouri’s killers were drug smugglers with no political affiliation and that they were influenced by some group other than Jeish Al-Adl. I’ve seen nothing further on this particular point.

Although they mostly stayed out of the headlines, border incidents have continued at a high pace since Nouri’s killing.  But with the capture of five Iranian border guards on February 6, Jeish Al-Adl has claimed responsibility, and this time they have released photos to confirm their role. Yesterday, Iran publicly protested to Pakistan’s ambassador over the incident.

It is interesting that descriptions of Jeish Al-Adl now describe them as being funded by Saudi Arabia and assisted by Pakistan’s ISI. There also now are references to them having al Qaeda connections. The Saudi connection usually is described as coming from Bandar’s growing unease over improving US-Iranian relations.

I doubt we have seen the last moves by the various parties involved in these incidents, so I will keep an eye out for further developments.

Back in November, two bomb blasts in front of the Iranian embassy in Beirut killed 23 people. From the very beginning, it was known that an al Qaeda-linked group known as the Abdullah Azzam Brigades was responsible for the attack. In a fascinating sequence of events, we have learned that the mastermind of the attack, Majed al-Majed, died in Lebanese custody. Iran claims that Majed had very strong ties to Saudi Arabia, and specifically to Saudi intelligence chief Bandar bin Sultan. In a very interesting twist, Saudi Arabia announced a pledge of $3 billion to Lebanon, ostensibly to be used to buy weapons from France. The announcement most likely came after Majed had been arrested but before news reports had leaked out about his detention, although news reports vary widely on when and where he was detained.

The announcement of the Saudi pledge to Lebanon came on December 29:

Saudi Arabia has pledged $3bn for the Lebanese army, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman announced, calling it the largest grant ever given to the country’s armed forces.

/snip/

“The king of the brotherly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is offering this generous and appreciated aid of $3bn to the Lebanese army to strengthen its capabilities,” Suleiman said in a televised address on Sunday.

He said the funds would allow Lebanon’s military to purchase French weapons.

An AFP report suggested that Majed was arrested around December 26:

An Al-Qaeda-linked Saudi suspect detained in Lebanon is being held in a military hospital because “he is in poor health”, a medical official told AFP Friday.

/snip/

The doctor who had been treating Majid before his arrest without knowing who he was said he suffers from kidney failure and requires regular dialysis.

“On December 26, the hospital where Majid was being treated contacted the Red Cross to arrange his transfer to another hospital,” said the source.

But before the suspect arrived at the second facility, “the Lebanese army intelligence intercepted the ambulance and arrested Majid,” the source said, adding that neither the hospital nor the ambulance teams had prior knowledge of who Majid was.

In its announcement on January 1 of Majed’s arrest, the New York Times has highly conflicting information about when the arrest took place. First, this bit suggests they were working under the assumption that the arrest was near the January 1 date of the article:

He was taken into custody just three days after Saudi Arabia pledged a $3 billion aid package to the Lebanese Army.

But near the end of this same article, the Times suggests that he was in custody as early as December 15 (clearly before the Saudi pledge was announced):

While it is not known when Mr. Majid was detained, Hezbollah’s television channel Al Manar quoted Lebanese security officials as saying that an attack on a security checkpoint on Dec. 15 near Sidon and the Ein al-Hilwe camp was an attempt by militants to free him.

Given the additional detail and reporting from doctors involved in his treatment, the AFP report seems to me to be more reliable, placing Majed’s arrest after December 26, but most likely not very long after that date since a patient requiring dialysis cannot put if off for very many days.

The Times report suggests that Saudi Arabia considered Majed to be a criminal:

While there was no immediate response from Saudi Arabia, there is little sympathy in its government for Mr. Majid, who is on its list of people most wanted for links with Al Qaeda. A Lebanese newspaper, Al Safir, wrote that he was “wanted by Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and several other Western countries, mainly the United States.”

Iran has a starkly different reading on Majed’s relation to the Saudi government. From a Sunday Mehr News article that also mentions that Majed died on Saturday, we have this:

A high-ranking Lebanese General disclosed the identity of a Saudi national who was detained by the security forces along with Majed al-Majed, the mastermind of the November 19 bombing attack on the Iranian embassy in Lebanon and ringleader of the terrorist Abdullah Izzam Brigade.

“The Saudi national accompanying Majed al-Majed at the time of detention was the son of Saudi Intelligence Chief Bandar bin Sultan,” the Lebanese General told FNA on Sunday on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Although the dates are still fuzzy, it seems most likely that Bandar’s son would have been accompanying Majed as he was being transferred from the first hospital to the one where he was to undergo dialysis. If Bandar’s son was indeed with Majed as he was receiving medical treatment from doctors who didn’t know who he was, that suggests very strongly that Majed was under the control of Bandar rather than being sought by the Saudi government as a wanted terrorist. The Mehr News article cited Lebanese sources to the same effect:

On Thursday, Lebanese sources disclosed that Majed had taken orders from Saudi Spy Chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

Iran makes further interesting claims in this same Mehr News article. They suggest that the $3 billion pledge from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon was meant as a reward for releasing Majed to them:

Earlier today, senior parliamentary officials in Tehran disclosed that Saudi Arabia had offered to pay $3bln to the Lebanese government in return for the extradition of Al-Majed, the suspected head of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades – Ziad al-Jarrah Battalion, that claimed responsibility for the November attack on the Iranian embassy in Beirut which killed 23 people.

“The Saudi government has considered $3bln for the extradition of the individual behind the Iranian embassy blast in Lebanon, indicating that the remarks he might make are vitally important for the Saudi government,” Vice-Chairman of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Mansour Haqiqatpour told FNA on Saturday.

However, with Majed now dead, there are other considerations. From the same article again:

Political analysts believe that the supporters and financers of Abdullah Izzam terrorist group have killed Majed for the fear of the possible revelations he could make against the Saudi Takfiri groups and his masters.

Oh my. Does that mean the $3 billion is more of a payoff for a hit rather than an enticement to extradition?

This is, of course, all wild speculation. More conventional analysis of the Saudi grant is here. But Iran seems determined to dig further into the situation, as they are now even offering to help with an autopsy. Remember that normally, Islamic practice calls for burial as soon as possible. Autopsies are not common and an autopsy several days after death would be even more unusual.