Moscow’s 30-year struggle against encroachment into its sphere of influence by militant Islam

Russia’s unyielding support for Damascus throughout the 16 months of Syria’s escalating crisis has earned Moscow strong condemnation from Washington and other Western governments, but the reasons for Russia’s implacable position have never been fully explained by Moscow or its critics. 

Washington’s latest tension with Russia over Syria came last week in a face-to-face meeting between President Obama and President Putin. The week before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Russia’s assertion that it sold only defensive weapons to Damascus “patently untrue.â€� That was after Clinton had accused Russia of shipping attack helicopters to Syria to crush the rebellion, a charge denied by Moscow.  The New York Times then reported that Russia was only returning repaired helicopters sold to Syria decades ago.

In February, Susan Rice, the top U.S. diplomat at the U.N., used undiplomatically strong language to say the U.S. was “disgustedâ€� by Russia’s veto of a Security Council resolution that would have condemned the Syrian crackdown. The tough talk appears designed to embarrass Russia, especially after the recent upsurge in fighting and a string of grisly massacres blamed on Moscow’s client.

But until now Russia’s motives for defending Damascus have remained largely a subject of speculation, with the U.S. media seemingly disinterested in exploring it.

Russian officials say their position is based on an adamant opposition to regime change, particularly if it is led by Western military intervention, as in Libya. Moscow’s support for the Syrian regime has not changed though it has recently inched away from President Bashar Al-Assad leading it. Read more È

The United States last week turned the U.N. Security Council into a courtroom. It wanted to try Iranian suspects before foreign governments in the bizarre story of an alleged assassination attempt on the Saudi ambassador to Washington. 

Behind closed doors in the council chambers U.S. officials admitted the story was “hard to believe.�  This is according to a Western diplomat who was among the council ambassadors shown evidence by U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, who was accompanied by  officials of the F.B.I., CIA and the State and Justice Departments.

It isn’t known whether the CIA official revealed classified information that went beyond the F.B.I. criminal complaint in the case, which was made public. The U.S. isn’t normally in the habit of sharing intelligence at the U.N. 

Reuters quoted a U.S. official saying classified wire transfer documents used to pay for the alleged assassination had “some kind of hallmark� showing they were approved by Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of the elite Iranian al-Quds Force. Because the circumstances of the story are so strange, one cannot rule out forgery by Iranian agents working for the U.S.—or for another government that may have even fooled at least some U.S. authorities. Just recall the forged Niger uranium document that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The Clinton administration in 1999 went to court in the Southern District of New York in U.S.A. v. bin Laden in the African Embassy bombings. I covered the trial and saw al-Qaeda operatives on the witness stand. They were convicted by a civilian jury.  The Bush administration ridiculed criminal trials for the crime of terrorism and insisted it was a national security matter without any need to test innocence or guilt in a courtroom.  

When the Obama Justice Department wanted to try terrorism suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the same New York court, the Right howled until Obama backed down.  The handling of this alleged Iranian plot appears to be a weird hybrid between a criminal proceeding and a rush to judgment to convince foreign governments of two suspects’ guilt before they are even indicted. The U.S. is also inferring a sovereign state is involved, rather than merely rogue individuals, who, incidentally, are innocent until proven guilty. 

Though the U.S. admitted the story seems far-fetched, U.S. allies Britain, France, Germany and Colombia said they believed Rice’s U.N. presentation. These countries may be ready to support new sanctions against Iran—or other action, even though each of them presumably guarantees due process in their legal systems.

Rush to Judgment

On the day the alleged plot was revealed, and before a Grand Jury has even been empaneled,  Downing Street issued a statement “congratulatingâ€� U.S. authorities on the “successful operation to disrupt a conspiracy to attack diplomatsâ€� in the U.S. “The United Kingdom is in close touch with the U.S. authorities on this case. We will support measures to hold Iran accountable for its actions,” the British statement said. It did not prefix conspiracy with “alleged,â€� and assumed proof that the plot was already underway when “disrupted,â€� dismissing the possibility it was suggested to an Iranian-American suspect by the U.S. informant, posing as a Mexican drug gangster.  Read more È

A combination of mistakes—whether through ignorance or design—and significant omissions of fact have left the American public misinformed about why the Palestinians went to the United Nations last week and what they are trying to achieve.

The biggest error repeated across the media in hundreds of headlines and stories is that the Palestinians are seeking statehood at the U.N. In fact, Palestine is already legally a sovereign state and is seeking membership of the United Nations, not statehood. The United Nations does not grant or recognize statehood. Only states can recognize other states bilaterally. The U.N. can only confer membership or non-member, observer state status to already existing states. The U.N. Charter is clear. Article 4 says that only existing states may apply for U.N. membership.

Last Friday Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon accepted an application for U.N. membership from PLO Chairman and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Ban sent the application to the Security Council, which began deliberating on it on Monday (Sept. 26).

The very act of the Secretary General accepting the membership application is an acknowledgement from the U.N. that Palestine is already a state, since only states can apply.

The Montevideo Convention of 1933 lays out the requirements for statehood: a population living on a defined territory with a government that can enter into relations with other governments. The Palestinians have all three. Though its borders with Israel are not set, other countries with border disputes have been admitted as U.N. members, such as Pakistan and India. Trygve Lie, the first U.N. Secretary-General, also wrote a 1950 memo that states do not need universal recognition to apply.

Palestine declared its independence on November 15, 1988, a fact found nowhere in the American mainstream reporting of the past week. A Palestinian walked out of the Al Asqa Mosque that day in Al Quds/Jerusalem and read the declaration aloud, much as someone read the American Declaration of Independence to a crowd in the courtyard of the Philadelphia State House on July 4, 1776.

Almost immediately one hundred nations recognized an independent Palestinian state. Since then 30 more nations have recognized Palestine, some having opened Palestinian embassies in their capitals. This crucial fact too was not reported in the U.S. media. For Palestinians and those countries that recognize them, Israeli troops are occupying a sovereign nation.

It was the same as when Morocco and then France and other nations recognized an independent United States years before the war against Britain was won. For Americans and those nations recognizing America , British troops became an occupation force, not an army defending British territory.

The problem for the Americans then and for the Palestinians now is that the occupying nation and the world’s biggest power are not among the 130 who’ve recognized them.

If there were a United Nations in 1777 the Americans could have applied for membership. And if Britain had a veto on the Security Council then as it does now, it would have blocked that membership. Read more È