Middle East

Lebanese immigrants, including terrorists from Iran-sponsored Hezbollah, have been pouring across the Mexican border into the United States, U.S. law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism officials have confirmed. The Washington Times reported March 27 that Hezbollah has partnered with Mexican drug cartels to smuggle operatives and material into the country through increasingly sophisticated methods, including tunnels nine stories underground equipped with ventilation, lighting and groundwater drainage systems. Former Drug Enforcement Agency Chief of Operations Michael Braun confirmed that Hezbollah has formed a partnership with the drug cartels in Mexico and is using the cartel smuggling routes to get people and contraband into the U.S. According to Braun, members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have also recently been showing up in Latin America. “Quite frankly, I’m not opposed to the belief that they could be commanding and controlling Hezbollah’s criminal enterprises from there,” he said. This is just the latest and most imminent threat posed by Iran-sponsored terrorists cooperating with Latin American governments.

U.S. officials are considering whether to accept Iran’s pursuit of uranium enrichment, the Financial Times reported April 4. “As part of a policy review commissioned by President Barack Obama,” the Times wrote, “diplomats are discussing whether the U.S. will eventually have to accept Iran’s insistence on carrying out the process, which can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons-grade material.” Since 2006, a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions have demanded Iran halt its uranium enrichment. Tehran has blatantly ignored the international community and instead sped up its program of uranium enrichment, claiming it has installed 7,000 centrifuges, and amassing a stockpile of more than 1,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium—enough for a bomb if it were enriched further. Now it appears the Obama administration is ready to cede to Iran’s nuclear ambition, reducing its demand to, as Obama said last week, “Don’t develop a nuclear weapon.” When asked in March whether Washington was considering allowing Iran to maintain a limited enrichment capability, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said: “I don’t know. … Let’s let the review be completed and then we can spell out our policies.” This hardly puts pressure on Iran to back off its nuclear aspirations.

Underlining this fact, this Thursday, a day after the U.S. agreed to hold direct multilateral talks with Iran on its nuclear program, Tehran announced further progress in that program. Reuters reports: “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying Tehran was ready for negotiations if they were based on respect and justice, said Iran had mastered the nuclear fuel cycle and it had also tested new, more advanced machines for enriching uranium.” Western analysts are skeptical of how much progress Iran has made. Washington’s agreement to hold direct talks with Tehran regarding its nuclear program is a major concession—and will certainly be seen that way by Iran. The Bush administration had refused to hold such talks until Iran halted its uranium enrichment. The new approach will be sure to reduce the little remaining leverage that America has in its dealings with Iran.

Europe

The Eastern European country of Moldova was hit by massive riots this week, with more than 10,000 protesters taking to the streets on Monday and Tuesday after the Communist government declared itself winner of last Sunday’s elections. Dozens were injured and one killed. Rioters ransacked and burned the parliament building and replaced the Moldovan flag with the Romanian. Some also took over the president’s office. The demonstrators, who reject the election results as fraudulent, flew Moldovan, Romanian and EU flags, calling for Moldova to rejoin Romania and become part of the European Union. Russia, however, has 2,800 troops stationed in Moldova’s separatist region of Transdniestria. Moldova is in a strategically important location; watch for Russia to take steps to maintain its influence there.

Between 10,000 and 30,000 protesters rampaged through Strasbourg, France, last Saturday. The rioters burned a hotel and two other buildings and attacked police; several were arrested while carrying loaded guns, according to security sources. Police arrested a total of 300 people before and during the nato summit. The rioters barricaded roads, hurled rocks and scaffolding at police, and threw Molotov cocktails at a hotel, which caught on fire. They also burned a pharmacy, a tourist office and a disused customs post. As people take to the streets to demand more money from their governments, those governments—especially in Eastern Europe—are running out of money and having to cut back even more on spending. As discontent rises in Europe, watch for European leaders to increasingly throw their weight behind a strong, centralized government. For more, see our Dec. 24, 2008, article “Europe and the Specter of 1968.”

nato’s 60th-anniversary meeting began the evening of April 3, co-hosted by France and Germany. During the conference, former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was appointed the new nato secretary general. The United States used the meeting to appeal for more help in Afghanistan, but European members of the alliance pledged to send just 3,000 troops and trainers for paramilitary police.

After the conference, U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking in Istanbul, annoyed France and Germany by saying that Turkey should be allowed to join the EU. What Mr. Obama may not realize is that Europe is a Catholic club, and as a Muslim nation, Turkey is not welcome. For more, read “To Europeans, Turkey’s EU Bid Is Dead.”

Asia

North Korea successfully launched a missile on Sunday capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States. This launch resoundingly proves that verbal warnings from other nations mean nothing to Pyongyang. At a UN Security Council emergency meeting held in the wake of the launch, member countries failed to agree on how the United Nations should react to North Korea’s provocative move. Russia and China resisted calls for tougher sanctions, arguing that it was not clear whether the rocket launch violated UN resolutions forbidding North Korea from developing missile technology. This missile technology, however, can be used to fire weapons, including nuclear warheads. Experts say that North Korea and Iran have been cooperating on developing this technology. Iran is reportedly quite close to manufacturing its own nuclear warheads; North Korea has already tested a nuclear weapon. Intelligence agencies said last week that Pyongyang has already assembled five to eight nuclear warheads. North Korea has become a classic example of the limits of soft power when not backed up by concrete consequences.

The Sevmash shipyard in northern Russia will start to build a fourth Borey-class nuclear submarine for the Russian Navy this year, the ria Novosti news agency reported Wednesday. The construction of this submarine is part of a Russian Defense Ministry initiative to maintain and upgrade the Russian Navy. All new Borey-class nuclear submarines will be equipped with new Bulava-M (SS-NX-30) intercontinental ballistic missiles, which can carry up to 10 nuclear warheads and have a range of 8,000 kilometers. This news comes after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a nuclear disarmament deal with his American counterpart, Barack Obama, on April 1. Obama has stated his desire to set an example for the world by reducing America’s nuclear arsenal. “As a nuclear power—as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon—the United States has a moral responsibility to act,” he said. The Russians, meanwhile, are willing to sign a nuclear disarmaments deal even as they plan to increase the number of nuclear-warhead-equipped submarines in their navy. That is the problem with strategies of disarmament: They weaken the strategic position of those countries prepared to subscribe to the strategy while empowering the rogue nuclear powers unwilling to embrace disarmament.

Latin America, Africa

We reported on March 14 that President Obama had begun the process of lifting restrictions on Cuba, though the initial changes were minor. The question is one of direction. On Tuesday, a U.S. delegation of House Democrats returned to Washington after visiting Cuba for five days and meeting with Fidel Castro. Stratfor said “Castro called the meeting ‘magnificent,’ and the U.S. representatives were effusive in their praise of Castro” (April 8).

Pirates seized five ships between April 5 and 6, bringing the total to 17 ships and 250 sailors in pirate custody. Then, on April 8, a U.S.-flagged ship was seized for the first time in 200 years. The crew was able to retake the ship after the confrontation 300 miles off the coast of Somalia , but three pirates are still holding the captain hostage in the ship’s lifeboat. Read our Dec. 17, 2008, article “Pirates Expose Shocking Shifts in Naval Power” for more on the international response to piracy.

Anglo-America

In America this week, the official unemployment rate is 8.5 percent, but the labor underutilization index stands at more than 15 percent. The Department of Labor’s U-6 index includes those available for work, those who have looked for work in the past year but stopped, and those working part-time because of a shortage of full-time jobs. “The situation out there is very grim,” one economist said. “We have seen the mounting of job losses faster than any point since World War ii. I have never seen anything escalate this bad.”

Some American towns are now resorting to Great Depression-era methods to combat the current economic crisis. Known as “scrips” during the 1930s, local currencies designed to replace the U.S. dollar have popped up in dozens of places across the country. These local currencies, including the BerkShare in Massachusetts, bypass the use of dollars and motivate businesses and consumers to shop locally in an attempt to stabilize their financial lives.

In the Indian Ocean on Friday, reinforcements for the American Navy and for Somali pirates raced to the scene where four Somali pirates are holding an American cargo captain hostage. The captain was taken Wednesday after the pirates seized control of the 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama. The unarmed American crew of 20 overpowered the pirates and retook command of the ship, but the pirates fled in a large lifeboat with the captain as hostage. As the Pentagon invests more and more naval, human and political capital in the situation, the negative effect on American prestige is bound to increase.

Meanwhile, fires in Oklahoma and Texas whipped by winds of higher than 60 mph burned neighborhoods, closed highways, forced evacuations, and injured 34. At press time on Friday, the flames still had not been completely doused.

Iraq continues to cost American and Iraqi lives. On Friday morning, a suicide bomber rammed a truck of explosives into a barrier outside Iraqi police headquarters in Mosul, the last urban stronghold of al Qaeda in Iraq, Fox News reported. Five American soldiers were killed alongside two Iraqi policemen.