World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Ha’aretz is a lefty newspaper in Israel but it also has unusually good sources in the Israeli government.  In the most recent issue an article suggests that the Americans are not taking the Israeli threat to attack Iran seriously enough and predicts that such an attack is likely before Christmas.   Note–this deadline differs from the earlier prediction made by US Defense Secretary Panetta, but might be more realistic given the timing of the Presidential elections in the US (perhaps a concession made by Netanyahu to Obama during their recent meeting).  The matter is further complicated by the growing cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel–perhaps the military strike will start in the Caucasus.  If so, there’s no surer way to involve both Turkey and Russia in the conflict.  So more to think about and assess.

There’s an interesting article in The Guardian (another lefty newspaper, but this time from Britain) about an extraordinary intelligence failure on the part of the US CIA and FBI prior to September 11, 2001.  Apparently the Taliban had contracted with a joint US-UK telecommunications firm to build a telephone system in Afghanistan.  The possibility created the potential for US intelligence to tap into the Afghan network to an extraordinary degree.  According to the article: “Because the Taliban wanted American equipment for their new phone network, this would allow the FBI and NSA, the National Security Agency, to build extra circuits into all the equipment before it was flown out to Afghanistan for use. Once installed, these extra circuits would allow the FBI and NSA to record or listen live to every single landline and mobile phone call in Afghanistan. The FBI would know the time the call was made and its duration. They would know the caller’s name, the number dialled, and even the caller’s PIN.”  The opportunity was wasted because the CIA and FBI fought over which agency would be in charge of the operation.  It was finally approved on September 8, 2001.  If the agencies had not been fighting, the US would have known everything about the planned attack on the US.