The Week in Review
Middle East
Iran and Egypt have bolstered ties in their first round of high-level talks since 1979. On December 20, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak received a rare two-hour visit from Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani. In addition to the meeting with Mubarak, Larijani held talks with his counterpart Ahmed Fathi Surur and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. According to the Los Angeles Times, Egyptian sources said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is trying to bring an end to tensions between his country and Egypt. Immediately following Larijani’s visit, Mubarak, who rarely travels because of his failing health, flew to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. In meetings with his fellow Arab heads of state, Mubarak placed Arab-Iranian relations at the top of the list of discussion items. Cairo’s steps toward coexistence with a nuclear Iran indicate a substantial loss of American influence within Egypt and the region at large. Upon his return to Iran, Larijani told reporters that Tehran and Cairo do not differ in strategies regarding Israel. Based on Bible prophecy, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has said for over 15 years that Iran would ally itself with Egypt. Watch for the further development of this relationship.
Eight people were killed Sunday at anti-regime demonstrations in Iran during the Shiite ritual of Ashura. These were the largest clashes since the protests that immediately followed Iranian elections in June. In an attempt to quell the unrest, Iranian authorities arrested several aides to the country’s top two opposition leaders. An Iranian intelligence source cited by Stratfor says unrest in Iran is an economic battle rather than a battle for political freedom as is generally believed. “The real situation in Iran is not the way it is being portrayed in the Western media. It is not a fight over ideology. Rather, it is a battle between rival economic elites, the old one led by the regime’s second most influential cleric, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and the emerging one led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rafsanjani and his reformist allies (former President Mohammed Khatami, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and former Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi) have been losing ground to the Ahmadinejad camp, and their businesses have been suffering” (December 29). Stratfor sources indicate that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may be close to trying to reach a political deal with the opposition movement in order to bring an end to the unrest.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday proposed an Egyptian-hosted peace summit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as a way to kick-start the peace process. “Israel’s idea of an Egypt-hosted peace summit with Abbas was proposed during Netanyahu’s talks with Mubarak,” an Israeli official told Reuters, referring to a meeting between the two leaders on Tuesday in Cairo. After coming to power as a perceived hard-liner, Netanyahu has proceeded to pursue rapprochement with the Palestinians through compromise as he seeks to project a willingness to resurrect the peace process. Read Joel Hilliker’s column from last week, “What Is Benjamin Netanyahu Thinking?” for more on the Israeli leader’s apparent about-face and where it will lead.
Europe
As of January 1, new EU President Herman Van Rompuy will begin chairing European Union summits and guiding Europe’s agenda. The EU will also implement its diplomatic service. “Fifty-two years of European Union history are set to come to an end on Friday as Sweden hands over the bloc’s last full national presidency to its new full-time chairman and to Spain,” wrote Deutsche Press-Agentur. Spain will hold the six-month rotating presidency, but this post will be more low-key than Europe’s full-time president. For the full significance of the handover on January 1, read our article “The Holy Roman Empire Is Back!” from the February issue of the Trumpet.
One of Sweden’s last acts as holder of the rotating EU presidency was to condemn Israel for building new apartments in Jerusalem. “The presidency of the European Union is dismayed at the announcement of the government of Israel to build nearly 700 apartments in occupied East Jerusalem,” the December 28 statement from Sweden read. “The presidency of the European Union thus urges the government of Israel to reconsider these plans.” The statement was in response to Israel’s announcement that it would construct 500 housing units in Silwan for Arabs and 692 housing units in mostly Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. The U.S. has also condemned the settlements. The EU and the U.S. profess to be friends of Israel, yet they constantly take the side of the Palestinians. Still, watch for the Jews to trust Europe more as the U.S. abandons them.
The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that a group of hackers led by German encryption expert Karsten Nohl had cracked and published the coding that encrypts 80 percent of the world’s mobile telephones. “This shows that existing gsm [global system for mobile communication] security is inadequate,” Nohl told about 600 people at a four-day hacker conference in Berlin. The hacked code could compromise over 3 billion people in 212 countries.
Asia
Early Tuesday, Chinese justice officials executed Akmail Shaikh, a British national convicted of smuggling drugs. The lethal injection was carried out despite appeals for clemency from human rights groups, Shaikh’s family, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Protests were grounded on Shaikh’s alleged history of mental illness, and centered on the question of why a man exhibiting signs of mental illness was not given proper treatment. Chinese law dictates that the possibility of mental illness must be examined before capital punishment may be administered. Among the most outspoken of the protesters were several German voices. Günter Nooke of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats said, “To the Chinese leadership, this was about a demonstration of power rather than rule of law.” Center-left German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung called China a “hypersensitive behemoth,” saying that in its international dealings, it “shows an immaturity that is no longer appropriate given its size and importance in the world.” German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that “the execution underscores the massive difference in the legal systems—and China’s contempt for the West.” The deep-rooted ideological differences between German-led Europe and a China-dominated Asia have not been softened by globalization. Beijing’s defiant execution of this British national exemplifies China’s growing boldness, and Europe’s recognition of it. To understand the outcome of the widening rift between the East and the West, read Russia and China in Prophecy.
South Korea gained ground in the global nuclear power market by winning a key contract to build nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates. The $20 billion deal stipulates that four 1,400-megawatt plants are to be completed for the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation by 2020. Having gained this foothold in the industry, Seoul is now looking to build nuclear power plants in Jordan, Turkey, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. The South Korea-uae contract was 2009’s largest deal in the energy sector.
An Asian free-trade zone which connects almost 2 billion people comes to life today. In a seismic signal of Asia’s developing political and economic unity, China and 10 Southeast Asian nations have scrapped 90 percent of the tariffs that previously curtailed trade between them. The economic union is designed to provide new outlets for China’s products as demand from Europe and the U.S. has declined in the wake of global recession. Beijing hopes the free-trade zone will soon rival the North American Free Trade Area and the European Economic Area. Guangdong University Prof. Zuo Liancun said that, beyond fostering economic union, the zone will also “reduce political disputes” between participating nations. The move toward integration follows calls from Japan, Korea and other countries in the region to establish closer ties between Asian nations to offset the power of the West. Asia’s ascendancy is accelerating.
Africa
Zimbabwe’s Joint Operations Command has ordered members of the Zimbabwe National Army to deploy to farms, reportedly a push to remove the few hundred remaining white farmers in the country. This is the final blow in a story the Trumpet has followed for a decade: the Zimbabwe land-grabs. The Plain Truth warned of President Robert Mugabe’s intentions back in May 1980, saying that despite his vows not to interfere with private property, he “has not, down deep, disavowed his Marxist principles.” Now Mugabe’s government has fully applied the “Marxist principles” that the Plain Truth wrote about almost 30 years ago.
Anglo-America
A Nigerian man tried to bomb a jetliner carrying 288 other people on December 24. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab ignited a bomb hidden in his undergarments as the flight approached its destination, but the device caught fire rather than exploding. Abdulmutallab took advantage of what U.S. President Barack Obama called a “systemic failure” of the nation’s security system. Security agencies were ineffective and uncommunicative leading up to the failed bombing attempt, experts have said. Abdulmutallab’s father alerted Nigerian authorities that he thought a telephone call from his son revealed he had become radicalized. Nigerian authorities took the father to a cia station chief, and the would-be-bomber’s name was entered into a database of approximately half a million suspects. Another U.S. spy agency intercepted al Qaeda conversations in Yemen about a plot to use a Nigerian man in a terrorist attack, but a lack of sharing information among agencies and a failure to add his name to the do-not-fly list meant that Abdulmutallab came one chemical reaction away from murdering almost 300 people. Stratfor reports that due to the nature of American security and society, wide sharing of classified information will continue to be an enduring challenge and a chink in the U.S.’s armor for terrorists to exploit.
On Wednesday, the Central Intelligence Agency suffered its worst loss of life since 1983 when an Afghan man the agency was trying to cultivate as an informant entered Forward Operating Base Chapman in southeastern Afghanistan and detonated a bomb vest in the facility’s gymnasium. Eight Americans (seven agents) were killed in the attack, including the station chief, and six more were wounded—just a day after four Canadian soldiers and a reporter were killed in Kandahar. Total American war deaths for 2009 hit 304, up from 151 in 2008. Total war deaths, including coalition allies, were 502, up from 286 the previous year.
Bloomberg said Thursday that American states are looking anywhere they can for jobs, even overseas. Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and others have tried to sweet-talk companies like India’s Tata to their states to hire employees. “With the economy growing again but unemployment stuck at double-digit levels, states and municipalities across the U.S. are scrambling to woo anyone with hiring plans—even if that means going hat in hand to the same bunch that have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of jobs going overseas,” Bloomberg said. Strickland remarked, “The economy is difficult. I will go wherever I can find jobs.”