As the IBT reported yesterday, Congressman Walter Jones recently managed to get intelligence gatekeeper Mike Rogers to share the 28 redacted pages of the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry into 9/11 that show Saudi involvement in the plot.

It took Jones six weeks and several letters to the House Intelligence Committee before the classified pages from the 9/11 report were made available to him. Jones was so stunned by what he saw that he approached Rep. Lynch, asking him to look at the 28 pages as well. He knew that Lynch would be astonished by the contents of the documents and perhaps would join in a bipartisan effort to declassify the papers.

He has now joined with Stephen Lynch in an effort to allow all of us to read about Saudi involvement in 9/11.

“I was absolutely shocked by what I read,” Jones told International Business Times. “What was so surprising was that those whom we thought we could trust really disappointed me. I cannot go into it any more than that. I had to sign an oath that what I read had to remain confidential. But the information I read disappointed me greatly.”

The public may soon also get to see these secret documents. Last week, Jones and Lynch introduced a resolution that urges President Obama to declassify the 28 pages, which were originally classified by President George W. Bush.

And it’s not just the original findings about Saudi financial support for the terrorists. As IBT also notes, more recent reporting from Florida reveals possible ties between Saudi princes and the hijackers. Senator Bob Graham continues his efforts to get people to look more closely at the Saudi role (the entire Real News Network interview with him is a worthy review). And there is reason to believe NSA intercepts that were reviewed neither by the JICI nor the 9/11 Commission implicate Saudis in the attack.

All that — as well as details on how the Saudis refused to cut off funding for terrorism until at least 2009 — has been suppressed for 12 years because our relationship with the Saudis was deemed more important than our need to publicly understand the roots of the worst terrorist attack on US soil.

While it’s very early yet — Congress, many members of which who are funded indirectly by Saudis — are doing everything they can to ensure the Saudis remain ascendant in the Middle East. But if an Iran deal succeeds, and if we continue to wean ourselves from Saudi oil by replacing our ill-considered reliance on them with ill-considered efforts that ruin our own groundwater via fracking, then it may become politically possible to admit that individual Saudis had much more responsibility for 9/11 than, say, Saddam.

But there may be good reason to admit to that now. After all, Bandar flunkie (and the aide of a man who formally suppressed this information) just issued this warning.

An atmosphere this poisonous is dangerous, to say the least. The incentive for the Saudis to engage in all kinds of self-help that Washington would find less than beneficial, even destructive, is significant and rising. Driven into a corner, feeling largely abandoned by their traditional superpower patron, no one should doubt that the Saudis will do what they believe is necessary to ensure their survival. It would be a mistake to underestimate their capacity to deliver some very unpleasant surprises: from the groups they feel compelled to support in their escalating proxy war with Iran, to the price of oil, to their sponsorship (and bankrolling) of a much expanded regional role for Russia and China at America’s expense.

While the suppressed evidence shows more evidence that individual princes supported 9/11 than that the Saudi state did, plenty of still powerful princes have proven their ability to foster terrorism when need be. Particularly as Syria remains a rising source of volatility in the Middle East, it would be well for us to understand how deeply support for 9/11 extended 12 years ago.

Sy Hersh has a long piece in the London Review of Books accusing the Obama Administration of cherry-picking intelligence to present its case that Bashar al-Assad launched the chemical weapons attack on August 21.

To be clear, Hersh does not say that Assad did not launch the attack. Nor does he say al-Nusra carried out the attack. Rather, he shows that:

• At some unidentified time since the beginning of the Civil War, Assad had discovered and neutralized wiretaps on his inner circle, leaving US intelligence blind to discussions happening among his top aides
• Sensors planted to detect any movement of Assad’s CW immediately had not been triggered by the August 21 attack
• By June, some intelligence entity had concluded that an Iraqi member of al-Nusra had the capability to manufacture sarin in quantity

A lot of the story serves to establish that two days after the attack, the US had yet to respond to it, presumably because it did not have any intelligence Syria had launched the attack, in part because nothing had triggered the sensors that had worked in the past. To develop its intelligence on the attack days afterwards, the NSA performed key word searches on already-collected radio communications of lower level Syrian military figures.

‘There are literally thousands of tactical radio frequencies used by field units in Syria for mundane routine communications,’ he said, ‘and it would take a huge number of NSA cryptological technicians to listen in – and the useful return would be zilch.’ But the ‘chatter’ is routinely stored on computers. Once the scale of events on 21 August was understood, the NSA mounted a comprehensive effort to search for any links to the attack, sorting through the full archive of stored communications. A keyword or two would be selected and a filter would be employed to find relevant conversations. ‘What happened here is that the NSA intelligence weenies started with an event – the use of sarin – and reached to find chatter that might relate,’ the former official said. ‘This does not lead to a high confidence assessment, unless you start with high confidence that Bashar Assad ordered it, and began looking for anything that supports that belief.’ The cherry-picking was similar to the process used to justify the Iraq war.

Ultimately, according to one of Hersh’s sources, they used intelligence collected in response to last December’s Syrian exercise on CW as the basis for what the Syrians would have been doing in case of an attack.

The former senior intelligence official explained that the hunt for relevant chatter went back to the exercise detected the previous December, in which, as Obama later said to the public, the Syrian army mobilised chemical weapons personnel and distributed gas masks to its troops. The White House’s government assessment and Obama’s speech were not descriptions of the specific events leading up to the 21 August attack, but an account of the sequence the Syrian military would have followed for any chemical attack. ‘They put together a back story,’ the former official said, ‘and there are lots of different pieces and parts. The template they used was the template that goes back to December.’

The White House presented this cherry-picked intelligence 9 days after the attack to a group of uncritical journalists (Hersh notes Jonathan Landay was excluded).

That’s the damning part of Hersh’s story on the intelligence used to support the Syrian warmongering (it is largely consistent with observations made at the time).

Hersh also describes how the NYT ignored the conclusions of MIT professor Theodore Postol, who determined at least some of the shells used in the attack were locally manufactured and had a much shorter range than publicly described.

Ultimately, though, Hersh’s biggest piece of news describes how someone — he doesn’t say who, but this part of his story relies on a senior intelligence consultant of unidentified nationality — sent Deputy DIA Director David Shedd a report on June 20 concluding that a former Iraqi CW expert with the capability of manufacturing sarin was operating in Eastern Ghouta.

An intelligence document issued in mid-summer dealt extensively with Ziyaad Tariq Ahmed, a chemical weapons expert formerly of the Iraqi military, who was said to have moved into Syria and to be operating in Eastern Ghouta. The consultant told me that Tariq had been identified ‘as an al-Nusra guy with a track record of making mustard gas in Iraq and someone who is implicated in making and using sarin’. He is regarded as a high-profile target by the American military.

On 20 June a four-page top secret cable summarising what had been learned about al-Nusra’s nerve gas capabilities was forwarded to David R. Shedd, deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. ‘What Shedd was briefed on was extensive and comprehensive,’ the consultant said. ‘It was not a bunch of “we believes”.’ He told me that the cable made no assessment as to whether the rebels or the Syrian army had initiated the attacks in March and April, but it did confirm previous reports that al-Nusra had the ability to acquire and use sarin.

Though Hersh provided ODNI with the specific cable markings on this report, ODNI spokesperson Shawn Turner claimed to be unable to find it. Turner also issued a denial that suggests some other country came to this conclusion.

[N]o American intelligence agency, including the DIA, ‘assesses that the al-Nusra Front has succeeded in developing a capacity to manufacture sarin’.

“No American agency” of course specifically leaves open the possibility another intelligence agency has made such a conclusion — perhaps the British, who were in no rush to go to war in Syria in response to the August 21 attack.

In spite of Turner’s denial, Hersh quotes one of his main sources, a former senior intelligence officer, noting that the military had concluded the rebels had the ability to manufacture sarin, too.

So that’s it, the central claims in Hersh’s piece. He ends it not with certainty about who launched the attack, but with questions raised about Obama’s subsequent decision to walk away from his planned attack.

The administration’s distortion of the facts surrounding the sarin attack raises an unavoidable question: do we have the whole story of Obama’s willingness to walk away from his ‘red line’ threat to bomb Syria? He had claimed to have an iron-clad case but suddenly agreed to take the issue to Congress, and later to accept Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical weapons. It appears possible that at some point he was directly confronted with contradictory information: evidence strong enough to persuade him to cancel his attack plan, and take the criticism sure to come from Republicans.

That’s what I’ve always looked to. What underlying intelligence would lead to these actions?

• Our European allies refusing to go to war based on the intelligence they had seen
• US refusal to provide specific intelligence on planned attacks in Syria to the Saudis
• Assad deciding to give up his CW stocks
• Obama giving the Russians a big win in Syria, followed by subsequent progress on an Iran deal

One potential underlying motivation for all these actions might be the discovery that al Qaeda has achieved our long-feared aim, the acquisition of CW, which it was using to stage an attack in an effort to get Americans (as one of Hersh’s sources describe) to “provid[e] close air support for al-Nusra,” and that it was doing so with some knowledge or even assistance from our Saudi allies.

Such a discovery certainly might lead allies to avoid empowering al-Nusra. It would explain both Assad’s incentive to expose himself to Israeli attacks by disarming his CW, in an effort to provide real deniability for any attacks going forward. And perhaps most crucially, it might explain why we would move away from our role in granting the Saudis decisive help in extending their hegemony over the region, and move towards shoring up Iran as a counter-balance.

That is, al-Nusra wielding CW with the tacit support of the Saudis might explain all subsequent actions. [Update: If al-Nusra has CW and the Saudis have not objected, it might lead to these actions whether or not they staged the August 21 attack.]

Which leads me to one other tiny detail in Hersh’s story, his source’s description of who pushed the quick conclusion that Assad was responsible.

‘The immediate assumption was that Assad had done it,’ the former senior intelligence official told me. ‘The new director of the CIA, [John] Brennan, jumped to that conclusion … drives to the White House and says: “Look at what I’ve got!” It was all verbal; they just waved the bloody shirt. There was a lot of political pressure to bring Obama to the table to help the rebels, and there was wishful thinking that this [tying Assad to the sarin attack] would force Obama’s hand: “This is the Zimmermann telegram of the Syrian rebellion and now Obama can react.” [my emphasis]

Now, this description of Brennan is a tell. He is and was by no means “the new director” of the CIA; by early September he had been in place for 6 months already. That he was perceived to be such by a “former senior intelligence official” might suggest the source is someone at CIA who lost out with Brennan’s ascendance, perhaps someone close to Mike Morell, who had been a candidate for the position (Morell left CIA on August 9).

That by no means means this person is wrong. But CIA officers and alumni who opposed Brennan’s nomination have long condemned his close ties to the Saudis, even claiming he thwarted investigations of al Qaeda while serving as Riyadh station chief in the 1990s, investigations which might have prevented 9/11. So while it is a subtle point, it is worth noting that Hersh’s sources point to Brennan as the source for the quick conclusion that the Saudis wanted us to reach, that Assad had launched the attack.

Hersh’s sources analogize this cherry-picked intelligence to the case for the Iraq War. Are they, with that, also pointing to someone who had been a close aide for George Tenet when he cherry-picked that intelligence?

Update: See Moon of Alabama’s take on this. He thinks the cable to David Shedd came from the Russians. One reason I think it might be the Brits is because the LRB published this piece after Washington Post apparently decided not to. But it would be rather interesting if the Russians provided it, particularly given that it came as they were playing games with intelligence in the wake of the Boston Marathon attack.

Update: Michael Calderone explores why the New Yorker and WaPo didn’t publish this. The New Yorker seemed uninterested because of the subject (I’ve wondered for some time if they were uninterested in pieces critical of Obama from Hersh). WaPo had concerns about the sourcing (which must say something because they’re happy to publish an article based on a bunch of consultants to NSA).

Several weeks after this WSJ article describing a staged Bandar bin Sultan tantrum about US actions, it was revealed the “Western diplomat” involved was a representative of France.

Diplomats here said Prince Bandar, who is leading the kingdom’s efforts to fund, train and arm rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, invited a Western diplomat to the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah over the weekend to voice Riyadh’s frustration with the Obama administration and its regional policies, including the decision not to bomb Syria in response to its alleged use of chemical weapons in August.

“This was a message for the U.S., not the U.N.,” Prince Bandar was quoted by diplomats as specifying of Saudi Arabia’s decision to walk away from the Security Council membership.

[snip]

However, the diplomats said, Prince Bandar told them he intends to roll back a partnership with the U.S. in which the Central Intelligence Agency and other nations’ security bodies have covertly helped train Syrian rebels to fight Mr. Assad, Prince Bandar said, according to the diplomats. Saudi Arabia would work with other allies instead in that effort, including Jordan and France, the prince was quoted as saying.

[snip]

In the run-up to the expected U.S. strikes, Saudi leaders asked for detailed U.S. plans for posting Navy ships to guard the Saudi oil center, the Eastern Province, during any strike on Syria, an official familiar with that discussion said. The Saudis were surprised when the Americans told them U.S. ships wouldn’t be able to fully protect the oil region, the official said.

Disappointed, the Saudis told the U.S. that they were open to alternatives to their long-standing defense partnership, emphasizing that they would look for good weapons at good prices, whatever the source, the official said.

In the second episode, one Western diplomat described Saudi Arabia as eager to be a military partner in what was to have been the U.S.-led military strikes on Syria. As part of that, the Saudis asked to be given the list of military targets for the proposed strikes. The Saudis indicated they never got the information, the diplomat said. [my emphasis]

The subtext here is clear: Bandar invited the French representative to Riyadh not just to whine about the US, but also to discuss weapons sales.

And now French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius is scuttling an Iran nuke deal because it is a “suckers deal.” (See also Laura Rozen’s take, as well as her live tweeting the comings and goings at @LRozen.)

Oh, by the way. François Hollande is also due to visit Israel in a week.

It’s fairly clear what’s going on. Saudi Arabia has to forestall an Iran deal, because once that happens the Iran will be in a position to challenge the Saudi position as a swing producer (particularly if you assume Iran and Shia-led Iraq might act in concert).

So France will make an effort to thwart any deal. And if talks fail, they’ll get a big chunk of Saudi Arabia’s considerable weapons spending, at a time when the Saudis will probably be even further ramping up their purchases.

France, it seems, aspires to be the European participant in the growing Saudi-Israeli power block.

Before diving into Friday night’s border incident where fourteen Iranian border guards were killed and Iran retaliated the next morning by hanging sixteen prisoners already in detention, we need to look back at the important events surrounding other such outbreaks of violence at the Iran-Pakistan border.

On January 1 of 2012, Pakistan detained three Iranian border guards whom they claimed had crossed into Pakistan. Details of the event were sketchy, but Iran claimed the guards were chasing drug smugglers and most of the stories on the event brought up the likely involvement of the group known as Jundallah. Less than two weeks later, a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated on January 11. Only two days after that event, the famous “false flag” article by Mark Perry appeared in Foreign Policy, making the remarkable claim that Mossad agents were posing as CIA agents while recruiting members of Jundallah for operations including assassinations.  Marcy had a series of three posts (one, two, three) delving into the many implications surrounding the false flag accusation. Another border incident then happened in late January, where six “Pakistanis” were killed by Iranian border agents, but there was a lot of confusion over just who the victims were, including their nationality.

Here is how Reuters first broke the news Saturday on this latest incident:

Fourteen Iranian border guards were killed and three others captured by “bandits” on the southeastern frontier with Pakistan overnight, Iranian media reported on Saturday.

In response, the Iranian judiciary executed 16 people it said were elements of “terrorist” groups, according to the ISNA news agency. There were no further details of who they were or whether or when they had been tried.

A follow-up story by Dawn from Sunday has more details, with the identity of the attackers unknown (but Jundallah is still mentioned prominently in the article):

It was still unclear whether the attackers were drug smugglers or armed opposition groups.

However, Iran’s Deputy Interior Minister Ali Abdollahi called on the Pakistani government to “take measures to control the border more seriously.”

Pakistan’s charge d’affaires was received at the Iranian foreign ministry to receive an official demand that Islamabad “act firmly with officials and members of terrorist groups who have fled to Pakistani territory,” IRNA reported.

The Dawn article also notes a second, separate border incident on Sunday in which one Pakistani was killed and four others were wounded.

Responsibility for the attack has now been claimed by a group known as Jeish Al-Adl:

A little-known Iranian Sunni group says it carried out the killing of 14 border guards on Friday night.

Jaish al-Adl said the attack was in retaliation for an alleged Iranian “massacre” in Syria and the “cruel treatment” of Sunnis in Iran.

Iran is now saying that they are a subgroup within Jundallah:

14 Iranian border guards were killed and 6 more were injured during the terrorist attack in Saravan border region in Southeastern Iran in the early hours of Saturday morning. The terrorists who have reportedly been members of the outlawed Jeish Al-Adl radical Sunni Wahhabi movement affiliated to the terrorist Jundollah group fled into Pakistan after the operation in Iran’s Southeastern Sistan and Balouchestan province.

It seems quite interesting to me that Iran would point out the “radical Sunni Wahhabi” connection of the group they are blaming. Of course, the primary sponsor of “radical Sunni Wahhabi” teachings is Saudi Arabia through their madrassas. But Iran seems to be dancing around an outright referral to Saudi involvement in this attack, even though it would make sense since we know that Bandar is now very upset both with the US “failure” to launch a strike on the Assad regime in Syria and the US diplomatic push toward Iran. This same Fars News article doesn’t name names, but refers to “two countries” providing financial support and “three countries” providing intelligence and equipment to them:

Commander of Iran’s Border Guard Force General Hossein Zolfaqari accused certain regional and trans-regional states of providing financial and intelligence backup for the militant groups carrying out terrorist operations against the Iranian people.

“Based on the authentic intelligence that we have, terrorist grouplets are supported financially by two countries in the region and outside the region,” Zolfaqari told reporters explaining Tehran’s intelligence on the financial resources of the terrorists who killed the 14 Iranian border guards in the Southeastern Sistan and Balouchestan province on early Saturday morning.

“Also, three countries in and outside the region are providing intelligence and technical equipment to the terrorist grouplets,” he added.

Based on the usual accusations from Iran, the “two countries” reference would be the US and Israel and the third one joining them for “three countries” would be the UK.

One last tidbit should be considered here. Back in December of 2012, Fars News noted (the link is to a reposting of the article, but it looks like authentic Fars wording, note how the recitation of Jundallah terrorist strikes lines up with the Fars article cited today) that the UK had facilitated a meeting between top representatives of Jundallah and the MEK in London. The article also notes as an aside that a Jundallah figure had been given refuge in Saudi Arabia. This would suggest to me that Iran considers Saudi Arabia to be a backer of Jundallah and that they continue to monitor MEK despite the US taking them off the official list of terrorist organizations a few months before this article came out.

At any rate, an armed group capable of killing fourteen Iranian border agents, especially when Iran doesn’t seem to be claiming that their agents were able to kill any of the attackers, sounds like a serious escalation of the firepower involved in these skirmishes on the Iran-Pakistan border. Especially given the assassination on January 11, 2012 following a smaller, but otherwise similar skirmish on January 1, we are left to wonder how many operatives may have gone into Iran while this battle took place and who their targets will be.

The timing of this attack also stands out as quite significant. On the very same weekend that Iran was seen to be removing posters with anti-American slogans in Tehran, this border skirmish forced Iran to re-run its usual descriptions of the CIA training and funding Jundallah terrorists. Both the Israelis, who are upset over apparent diplomatic progress on US-Iranian nuclear negotiations, and the Saudis, who are upset over that and the lack of an attack on Syria, would seem to benefit from such an irritation of old wounds.

Today’s New York Times also points out that two members of the Rigi family, which is prominent within Jundallah, were killed earlier this month in Iran, so that is another likely contributor to the timing of this attack.

Congressional Republicans are not the only ones who like to throw very public temper tantrums. The Saudis have decided not to address the UN General Assembly today to show their displeasure about developments in Syria and Iran.

This follows the Saudi threat to increase its support of the liver-eating terrorists trying to supplant Bashar al-Assad.

Saudi Arabia wants “intensification of political, economic and military support to the Syrian opposition…. to change the balance of powers on the ground” in Syria, Prince Saud said in his remarks to the Friends of Syria group, a coalition of Western and Gulf Arab countries and Turkey that supports the Syria opposition against Mr. Assad. The state-run Saudi Press Agency carried a transcript of his remarks.

[snip]

Saudis now feel that the Obama administration is disregarding Saudi concerns over Iran and Syria, and will respond accordingly in ignoring “U.S. interests, U.S. wishes, U.S. issues” in Syria, said Mustafa Alani, a veteran Saudi security analyst with the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center.

“They are going to be upset—we can live with that,” Mr. Alani said Sunday of the Obama administration. “We are learning from our enemies now how to treat the United States.”

[snip]

Saudi unhappiness didn’t mean that the kingdom would start supporting terrorist groups, Mr. Alani stressed. Saudi Arabia, like the U.S., has been targeted by al Qaeda, a group born of U.S. and Saudi support for fighters against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

However, the U.S. is more conservative than the Gulf countries in what it considers terrorist groups in Syria. The U.S. has declared Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra to be a terrorist organization, while many in the Gulf consider the rebel faction to be a legitimate, predominantly Syrian fighting force against Mr. Assad.

All this risks proving allegations Vlad Putin made correct — that the Saudis were willing to use terrorists to accomplish their goals in Syria (and, Putin further claimed Bandar bin Sultan had threatened, in Russia).

But I suspect the Saudis fear something greater: that warming relations with Iran might create a rival swing producer, the role that has served as the basis for outsized Saudi influence since we ditched the Shah in the 1970s. With the Euro region in such dire straights, the Saudis are less able to ditch the Dollar for another currency. And while the Saudis have a window during which US peace efforts in Iran might blowback against the US, after that time, I suspect, they worry not that Shias will take over their own oil fields, but that the US will be less dependent on the Saudis. It doesn’t help them that the most viable challenge to US power, the BRICS, want Iran to come back online themselves.

We shall see. We shall particularly see if the Saudis no longer hide their efforts to back groups we consider terrorists.

Today’s New York Times opens its article on the effects a US attack on Syria would have on the efforts by the US to halt Iran’s development of nuclear technology by framing the question from the militaristic point of view that we must be “strong”:

As the Obama administration makes a case for punitive airstrikes on the Syrian government, its strongest card in the view of some supporters of a military response may be the need to send a message to another country: Iran. If the United States does not enforce its self-imposed “red line” on Syria’s use of chemical weapons, this thinking goes, Iran will smell weakness and press ahead more boldly in its quest for nuclear weapons.

And it is this need for the US to be tough (and for Obama to prove that he has a big d) that seems to be dominating virtually all of the media coverage of the push to get Congressional authorization for a strike. At least the Times does realize there is a very important flip side to that position, though, and that we may now be on the brink of more substantial talks with Iran than we have had in a long time. Here are the next few paragraphs:

But that message may be clashing with a simultaneous effort by American officials to explore dialogue with Iran’s moderate new president, Hassan Rouhani, in the latest expression of Washington’s long struggle to balance toughness with diplomacy in its relations with a longtime adversary.

Two recent diplomatic ventures have raised speculation about a possible back channel between Washington and Tehran. Last week, Jeffrey Feltman, a high State Department official in President Obama’s first term who is now a senior envoy at the United Nations, visited Iran to meet with the new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and discussed possible reactions to an American airstrike in Syria.

At the same time, the sultan of Oman, who has often served as an intermediary between the United States and Iran, was in Tehran meeting with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It is not lost on Iran that the AUMF for action in Syria is written broadly enough that US military action could spill over into Iran. A Fars News article dated yesterday cites the Jack Goldsmith analysis of the draft AUMF that foresees US action in Iran:

Goldsmith asked whether the proposed AUMF authorizes the President to use force against Iran or Lebanon’s Hezbollah, in Iran or Lebanon? Again, yes, if the President accuses Iran or Hezbollah of having a (mere) connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war, and the use of force against Iran or Hezbollah would prevent or deter the use or proliferation of WMD within, or to and from, Syria, or protect the US or its allies (e.g. Israel) against the (mere) threat posed by those weapons. Again, it is very easy to imagine.

The article continues, noting (as Marcy has many times) how the 9/11 AUMF has been interpreted broadly:

It brings to mind the AUMF passed in the aftermath of September 11. While that resolution directly concerned Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it was later broadened to justify drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia–even on targets that were clearly not part of Al-Qaeda.

I find it truly remarkable and somewhat surprising that even in the midst of a domestic economy that the US has ruined through its sanctions and with new threats looming that could turn into direct US military action within Iran, there are still back channel efforts that show avenues of discussion being maintained. And yet those who lust after an attack on Syria seem ready to shut off those communications which almost certainly would come to an immediate end once the first cruise missile heads into Damascus.

But it’s not just the crucial opportunity for negotiations with Iran that will be lost when the US launches its attack. Russia also is closely allied with Syria. Of course, with many questions still unanswered on the Boston Marathon bombing and with Edward Snowden having asylum in Russia, the US has very important reasons for maintaining an open and healthy dialog with Russia.

Especially now as the report directly implicating Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan supplying sarin to rebel factions in Syria to carry out the deadly attack gathers more attention, the US needs to be more forthcoming in its sharing of its intelligence that points toward the Assad regime as carrying out the attack. And so far, Russia is not pleased with US behavior on that front:

“What we were shown before and recently by our American partners, as well as by the British and French, does not convince us at all,” Mr. Lavrov said on Monday. “There are no facts, there is simply talk about ‘what we definitely know.’ But when you ask for more detailed evidence, they say that it is all classified, therefore it cannot be shown to us. This means there are not such facts to encourage international cooperation.”

Mr. Lavrov also took a direct jab at Mr. Kerry. “It is very strange to hear, when we recently discussed the issue, my good colleague, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, say that the American side had produced irrefutable evidence for Russia of the Assad regime using chemical weapons, and then claiming that Russians deliberately refused to recognize the fact.”

Lavrov has a dire prediction for the consequences of a US attack carried out without the consent of the UN Security Council:

“If someone tries to make gross violations of international law a norm, then we will create chaos,” Mr. Lavrov warned. “We will create a situation where the U.N. Charter and the principles under which all the nations of the world have signed up, including the principle of unanimous agreement of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the so-called right of veto, which the United States insisted on — then all of these principles will simply collapse.”

Perhaps Obama should keep the size of his d a classified secret and instead share the “convincing” evidence that the Assad regime carried out the attack. Who knows, if there is real evidence that is convincing, perhaps Russia and Iran could find a peaceful way for the Assad regime to give way to rapid elections. In case you think that is a far-fetched idea, note that Lavrov directly tied the sharing of “facts” to the ability of those facts to “encourage international cooperation”. The alternative is a regional war that leaves the US increasingly isolated and viewed as preferring missiles over diplomacy.

An embarrassing number of people in DC have been saying publicly since Friday that we have to launch cruise missiles against Bashar al-Assad or risk the “credibility” of the United States. John McCain. Mike McCaul. Adam Schiff. Former NSC staffer Barry Pavel.

But this WSJ piece — after describing how central the Saudis were in presenting earlier claims that Assad had used chemical weapons and in the midst of descriptions of how central a role Bandar bin Sultan is playing in drumming up war against Syria — reports that Saudi King Abdullah and others were bitching about US credibility as early as April.

In early April, said U.S. officials, the Saudi king sent a strongly worded message to Mr. Obama: America’s credibility was on the line if it let Mr. Assad and Iran prevail. The king warned of dire consequences of abdicating U.S. leadership and creating a vacuum, said U.S. officials briefed on the message.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, who was the first Saudi official to publicly back arming the rebels, followed with a similar message during a meeting with Mr. Obama later that month, the officials said.

I wonder if we started taking Saudi taunts about our credibility more seriously after Bandar made a show of wooing Vladimir Putin?

In any case, here we go, hastily getting involved in the war in Syria and potentially escalating it across the region as a whole, without proper review much less a plan on how to actually improve the situation in Syria.

Credibility.

Apparently, the only kind of credibility that matters for America’s place in the role anymore is if our Saudi overlords suggest we lack credibility if we fail to do their explicit, and long-planned, bidding.

Credibility.

Meanwhile think of all the things American has squandered its position as unquestioned leader of the world without confronting. Poverty, hunger. The most obvious, of course, is climate change.

How much more “credibility” would the United States have by now if, at the start of his Administration, Obama had launched not just a Manhattan project to dramatically curb American use of fossil fuels, but also invested the goodwill Obama had (back before he expanded the drones) to find an equitable, global approach to climate change.

Credibility.

Apparently, the only thing the Villagers in DC think could or should win us “credibility” is in unquestioningly serving as global enforcer against the brutal dictators our brutal dictator friends the Saudis wants us to punish (though the Saudis are quite selective about which brutal dictators they stake our credibility on).

America could have used its power and leadership to earn real credibility. Instead, we’re trying to suck up to Bandar Bush.

As you no doubt heard yesterday, Obama called off a planned meeting with Putin after the G20 next month in response to a number of things (including Russia’s increasing persecution of gays), but largely triggered by Russia’s offer of asylum to Edward Snowden.

In addition to this piece applauding that decision, Julia Ioffe wrote up all the things about our approach to Snowden in Russia that Lawrence O’Donnell deemed unfit for MSNBC last night, which echo what I said back in June. The key bullet points are:

• You can’t back Putin into a corner and leave him no options. If you are a world leader worth your salt, and have a good diplomatic team working for you, you would know that. You would also know that when dealing with thugs like Putin, you know that things like this are better handled quietly. Here’s the thing: Putin responds to shows of strength, but only if he has room to maneuver. You can’t publicly shame him into doing something, it’s not going to get a good response. Just like it would not get a good response out of Obama.
• The Obama administration totally fucked this up. I mean, totally. Soup to nuts. Remember the spy exchange in the summer of 2010? Ten Russian sleeper agents—which is not what Snowden is—were uncovered by the FBI in the U.S. Instead of kicking up a massive, public stink over it, the Kremlin and the White House arranged for their silent transfer to Russia in exchange for four people accused in Russia of spying for the U.S. Two planes landed on the tarmac in Vienna, ten people went one way, four people went the other way, the planes flew off, and that was it. That’s how this should have been done if the U.S. really wanted Snowden back.

You don’t back ego-driven world leaders into corners — whether it is Putin or Obama — and succeed in achieving your goals.

All that said, Reuters reported a far more interesting development than Obama blowing off the Putin meeting yesterday. The Saudis have offered to bribe Putin to back off his support of Bashar al-Assad.

Saudi Arabia has offered Russia economic incentives including a major arms deal and a pledge not to challenge Russian gas sales if Moscow scales back support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Middle East sources and Western diplomats said on Wednesday.

[snip]

Syrian opposition sources close to Saudi Arabia said Prince Bandar offered to buy up to $15 billion of Russian weapons as well as ensuring that Gulf gas would not threaten Russia’s position as a main gas supplier to Europe.

In return, Saudi Arabia wanted Moscow to ease its strong support of Assad and agree not to block any future Security Council Resolution on Syria, they said.

Finally, America’s allies (and it’s unclear how involved the US was in this deal, though Bandar usually plays nicely with us) are speaking to Putin in terms of Russia’s interests, rather than insisting Assad’s overthrow benefits everyone.

I’m especially interested in Bandar’s promise to “ensur[e] that Gulf gas would not threaten Russia’s position as a main gas supplier to Europe.” That, frankly, is probably the biggest carrot on the table here. But I can imagine no way Bandar could guarantee it (did the Qataris buy in? can Bandar control fracking in Europe? and what happens if and when the Saudis succeed in getting us to overthrow the Iranians?).

It appears the Saudis are more impressed with the meeting than Putin.

One Lebanese politician close to Saudi Arabia said the meeting between Bandar and Putin lasted four hours. “The Saudis were elated about the outcome of the meeting,” said the source, without elaborating.

[snip]

Putin’s initial response to Bandar’s offer was inconclusive, diplomats say. One Western diplomat in the Middle East said the Russian leader was unlikely to trade Moscow’s recent high profile in the region for an arms deal, however substantial.

He said Russian officials also appeared skeptical that Saudi Arabia had a clear plan for stability in Syria if Assad fell.

But it at least appears to suggest that Putin would respond to discussions that acknowledged Russia’s interests, for a change. Even if Bandar can’t yet present a plan that seems plausible.

Does Putin really have to be the grown-up in the room who points out that Syria without Assad will not be stable anytime soon?

No matter what happens with Snowden, very few have acknowledged that, in addition to details of spying on Americans, he has also mapped out the backbone of our increasingly fragile hegemony over the world.  We have responded only by ratcheting up pressure, rather than attempting persuasion.

It will be interesting to see, first, whether this Saudi initiative has any better effect. And if it does, whether we’ve been included in implementing it.

Update: Washington Institute’s Simon Henderson says we weren’t part of this scheme.

The Saudi diplomatic push shows Riyadh’s determination to force the Assad regime’s collapse, which the kingdom hopes will be a strategic defeat for Iran, its regional rival in both diplomatic and religious terms. It also reflects Riyadh’s belief, shared by its Gulf Arab allies, that U.S. diplomacy on Syria lacks the necessary imagination, commitment, and energy to succeed.

[snip]

Meanwhile, the United States is apparently standing on the sidelines — despite being Riyadh’s close diplomatic partner for decades, principally in the hitherto successful policy of blocking Russia’s influence in the Middle East. In 2008, Moscow agreed to sell tanks, attack helicopters, and other equipment to the kingdom, but the deal never went through. Instead, in 2010, Washington and Riyadh negotiated a huge $60 billion defense deal (including attack helicopters), the details of which are still being finalized. The events of the past week suggest that the U.S.-Saudi partnership — which covers regional diplomacy, the Middle East peace process, the global economy, and weapons sales — is, at best, being tested. It would be optimistic to believe that the Moscow meeting will significantly reduce Russian support for the Assad regime. But meanwhile Putin will have pried open a gap between Riyadh and Washington. The results of the latest U.S.-Russian spat will be watched closely, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

There have been a series of reports on Syria that culminate in today’s report that most of the arms being shipped to Syria have gone to jihadists.

Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.

There were the reports of a different approach adopted by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with the former preferring to arm Islamists and the latter showing more concern about the consequences.

Another growing problem is a lack of co-ordination between Qatar and the Saudis – the likely subject of Wednesday’s talks in Doha between the Emir and the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar. King Abdullah is said to be growing impatient with the difficulties of the Syrian crisis. According to Syrian opposition activists, the Saudis now sponsor only rebel groups which are at odds with those backed by Qatar and Turkey, which are often linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

“The Qataris are much more proactive than the Saudis,” said one well-placed Arab source. “The Saudis are not interested in democracy, they just want to be rid of Bashar. They would be happy with a Yemeni solution that gets rid of the president and leaves the regime intact.”

Intelligence chiefs from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and France reportedly met in Turkey in early September along with the CIA director general, David Petraeus. But they apparently failed to reach agreement on a co-ordinated strategy.

US officials say the opaque nature of the opposition and the creeping presence of foreign jihadis are behind their pressure on Riyadh and Doha. “They have both been given a yellow light by the Americans,” said a Lebanese minister aligned to the Future movement. “The Saudis see yellow as yellow, but the Qataris have seen it as green.

And rebels are now blaming the delay in receiving arms on their own radicalization.

Majed al-Muhammad, the commander of a Syrian antigovernment fighting group, slammed his hand on his desk. “Doesn’t America have satellites?” he asked, almost shouting. “Can’t it see what is happening?”

A retired Syrian Army medic, Mr. Muhammad had reached the rank of sergeant major in the military he now fights against. He said he had never been a member of a party, and loathed jihadists and terrorists.

But he offered a warning to the West now commonly heard among fighters seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad: The Syrian people are being radicalized by a combination of a grinding conflict and their belief that they have been abandoned by a watching world.

If the West continues to turn its back on Syria’s suffering, he said, Syrians will turn their backs in return, and this may imperil Western interests and security at one of the crossroads of the Middle East.

I suspect–in addition to reporting on this classified intelligence so Mitt can use it in Tuesday’s debate (Sanger explicitly invokes the debate)–what we’re seeing is some preliminary blame-casting for blowback, even as the problems with arming loosely vetted militias becomes apparent in Libya.

Who could have imagined that asking a bunch of conservative monarchs to arm rebels to overthrow an Iranian ally would not result in the flowering of democracy?

All that said, because the blame here is going to be significant, I’m not entirely convinced by Saudi claims they’ve bowed to US caution on arms.

PressTV yesterday carried a threat from an Iranian lawmaker (and Reuters also reports the threat) that should the current round of P5+1 talks on Iran’s nuclear technology break down, Iran would begin enriching uranium to 60% in order to produce fuel for a nuclear-powered submarine. The state of Iran’s submarine technology suggests that this is mostly an idle threat, but there is a very easy route for the P5+1 group to diffuse the threat before it becomes a “red line” issue. France, a member of the P5+1 group, has a new generation of nuclear reactors for submarines that relies on a fuel known as “caramel”, which is only enriched to 7.5% uranium. Providing one of these reactors to Iran would allow them to power a submarine with nuclear fuel without having to enrich to weapons grade or near weapons grade.

The US Office of Naval Intelligence tells us (pdf) that Iran is the only nation near the Persian Gulf possessing submarines. However, the submarine fleet is meager and mostly composed of very small vessels. From the Nuclear Threat Initiative:

Iran’s submarine force currently consists of three Russian Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines (Tareq 901, Noor 902, Yunes 903), one 350-400-ton Nahang and an expanding force of roughly a dozen 120-ton Ghadir-class midget submarines.

/snip/

The three Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines, called Tareq-class in Iran, were commissioned from 1992 to 1996. Iran allegedly paid USD600 million for each boat and they are all based at Bandar Abbas in the Straits of Hormuz (Tehran is reportedly contemplating the relocation of its submarines from the shallow waters of Bandar Abbas to naval facilities in deeper waters at Chah Bahar in the Gulf of Oman). [12] Two of the Kilo-class submarines are operational at any one time and they are occasionally deployed in the eastern mouth of the Straits, the Gulf of Oman or the Arabian Sea.[13] Their utility in the Persian Gulf is, however, somewhat limited as Kilo-class boats require a depth of at least 164 feet and can therefore only access about one third of the Gulf.[14] Unique water conditions (water salinity and strong currents) in the Gulf further limit the boats’ operational use unless the submarines are deployed to deeper waters in the Gulf of Oman or the Arabian Sea.[15]

Only the kilo-class submarines, which Iran does not manufacture, are large enough to be powered by a nuclear reactor. And NTI tells us that a retrofit of one of the Russian kilo-class vessels would be the likely home of a nuclear reactor, but Iran does not have the technology for the reactor itself:

In June 2012, an Iranian official asserted that scientists were “at the initial phases of manufacturing atomic submarines.”[24] He claimed Iran’s success in retrofitting one of the imported Kilo-class submarines (after Russia had declined to do so), as evidence of the country’s advancing submarine development capability, despite delays.[25] However, outside analysts stressed that manufacturing a nuclear reactor for use in submarines would be beyond Iran’s current capabilities, suggesting that the announcement may be meant as leverage in negotiations with the P5+1, or as an excuse to continue enriching uranium.[26]

It would appear, then, that Iran is threatening to enrich uranium to a level appropriate for a nuclear submarine at a time when the only submarine it could put the reactor into is one purchased from Russia and then retrofitted. However, Iran also does not yet have the technology to build the reactor itself.

The suggestion that they would enrich to 60% uranium for a submarine reactor is a very strange target level for enrichment, as 60% doesn’t line up with any of the known reactors used in submarines. The World Nuclear Organization describes the various submarine reactor technologies now in use:

they deliver a lot of power from a very small volume and therefore run on highly-enriched uranium (>20% U-235, originally c 97% but apparently now 93% in latest US submarines, c 20-25% in some western vessels, 20% in the first and second generation Russian reactors (1957-81)*, then 21% to 45% in 3rd generation Russian units, 40% in India’s Arihant).

Iran’s stated target of 60% enrichment is higher than the Russian technologies that would use 20% or 40% enriched uranium and much lower than the US technologies that rely on weapons grade uranium enriched to over 90%. How did Iran choose the 60% number?

Setting aside the mysterious target of 60%, there is further information from the World Nuclear Organization that suggests a way around the issue of further enrichment if Iran really wants a nuclear-powered submarine:

However, the enrichment level for newer French naval fuel has been dropped to 7.5% U-235, the fuel being known as ‘caramel’, which needs to be changed every ten years or so. This avoids the need for a specific military enrichment line, and some reactors will be smaller versions of those on the Charles de Gaulle.

Since France is a member of the P5+1 group, it seems that they could offer a reactor that runs on caramel to Iran so that they can power a submarine with fuel enriched only to 7.5%, removing the reason to enrich beyond their current maximum 20% level for production of medical isotopes. Alternatively, Russia (also a P5+1 member) could provide access to their submarine reactor technology that relies on 20% enrichment, which is also within Iran’s current enrichment capability.