by Mark Silva

With all his repeated talk of keeping military options "on the table'' when it comes to Iran, President Bush has fueled speculation in the region - and around the world - that the United States is gearing up for an assault inside Iran.

"There's a real search for the underlying logic of it all,'' says Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "And the underlying logic has been that people think that we are taking steps to wage war against Iran. You can see the Admiral Fallon resignation and a whole range of other things.

"So the U.S. has actually been trying to do a number of things over the last several years to reassure the Iranians in particular that we're not about to go off the deep end and there's something to work with,'' he says. "But the perception in the Gulf is that Vice President Cheney has a plan, the president has a plan, that it's all - you just have to watch Fox News enough and you'll understand it all.''

Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the center, says: "When I was on a speaking tour for the State Department in China last year, somebody in the Chinese press announced that the United States was going to war with Iran in two weeks. And that wasn't a casual reaction. Everywhere I went in China, this was one of the first issues I had to deal with.

"I think it's hard for us to realize how serious this is, and it also cloaks over the fact that the number of encounters, not clashes, but the number of encounters in the Gulf is fairly significant, so there are tensions there,'' he says.

President Bush was asked in an interview with Al Arabiya TV on the eve of his trip to the Middle East this week what measures he might take to pressurize Syria or Iran regarding the actions of Hezbollah in Lebanon?

by Mark Silva

As President Bush takes off for a weeklong journey through the Middle East today, with a goal of helping Israeli and Palestinian leaders seek a "common ground'' in peace talks, Lebanon once again is embroiled in deadly civil strife.

Bush, making just his second visit to Israel as president this week, was asked in an interview with Al Arabiya TV what advice he might offer his successor regarding the Middle East.

"Take the Middle East seriously,'' Bush said.

The president also was asked if it might not serve Israel's interests to have Hezbollah take control of Lebanon - giving the Israelis a good reason to attack the country.

"I'm a peace man,'' Bush said. "I will tell you that I would much rather have the Siniora government succeed and survive, and that there be peaceful -- a peaceful process. I think we ought to all work to prevent the necessity for armed conflict in order to solve problems. ''

Bush was asked, in the interview with Al Arabiya on Monday at the White House, why the United States has not come to the aid of the embattled democratic government of Lebanon. Prime Minister Siniora is among the regional leaders with whom Bush has planned to meet this weekend in Egypt,.

"We will help him,'' Bush said of Siniora. "We'll help him particularly and primarily through strengthening his armed forces, the Lebanese armed forces. It's probably the most practical way that we can get some help to him quickly.''

by Bay Fang

The first U.S. military aid flight landed in Burma's capital city of Yangon on Monday, but a US official cited "massive concern" about supplies getting to the approximately 1.5 million people waiting for help in the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy Delta.

The director of U.S. foreign disaster assistance, Ky Luu, said the US plans to track the emergency supplies - water, mosquito nets and blankets - it flew in on a C-130 cargo plane, but appealed to the military government to allow disaster experts into the country.

Myanmar's ruling junta has given permission for just two more C-130 flights, but Luu said the US was prepared to give much more. It has thus far refused to grant visas to foreign aid workers waiting in Bangkok.

Admiral Timothy Keating, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, who accompanied the supplies, told a news conference at an airbase in Thailand before taking off, "We're limited only by the permission from the authorities in Burma."

by Mark Silva

With a new scandal enveloping the Israeli prime minister and Hezbollah militants flexing their muscle in Lebanon, President George W. Bush will confront even longer odds for success when he travels to the Middle East this week to work on two elusive objectives--peace and lower oil prices.

Bush, who will arrive in Israel on Wednesday to join in the nation's 60th anniversary celebrations, still hopes for an agreement by year's end between the Israelis and Palestinians over the contours of a new Palestinian state. But calls over the weekend for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign amid allegations of bribery have further undermined hopes for successful peace talks.

To the north in Lebanon, Hezbollah's rout of pro-Western forces in Beirut on Friday and its attacks outside the city on Sunday raised concerns about the Shiite movement's ascendance in a long-running political standoff there, less than two years after Israel failed to subdue the Iranian-supported group in a two-month war.

"It's hard to remember a less auspicious time to pursue Arab-Israeli peacemaking than right now," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

See the rest of the report in today's Tribune:

With ex-President now Prime Minister Vladimir Putin looking on (right) Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (C) watches the military parade on the Red Square. EPA/Yuri Kochetkov

by Frank James

The Russians had a military parade the likes of which we haven't seen for 17 years, with goose-stepping soldiers, some in Second World War throwback uniforms, marching through Red Square to celebrate Victory Day, the 63rd anniversary of the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany.

The military festivities, reminiscent of the Cold War, were a continuation of new Russian President' Dmitry Medvedev's coming-out party which began earlier in the week when he assumed the presidency from Vladimir Putin.

But Putin, the new prime minister is, of course, literally and most assuredly still in the picture, as photos from Friday's ceremonies show.

The Russia experts say the parade was all about showing the world, especially the U.S., that Moscow is the center of a power that mustn't be taken lightly. That message is a bit contradicted by the wide knowledge that the Russian military is still down at the heels, despite all of that nation's oil and gas wealth. The Russian military hasn't purchased a new plane in ten years, for instance.

(Photo: Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images)

by Mark Silva

Tonight, on the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated the long-standing premise of U.S. policy: Israel has no better friend than the United States.

Yet, as President Bush prepares to depart Tuesday for a five-day tour of Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the promise of peace in the region is no nearer than it was when Bush convened a summit of Israeli and Arab leaders in Annapolis in November and all agreed that they want to see an agreement on the contours of a new Palestinian state by the end of Bush's term.

This will be only the second trip that Bush has made to Israel as president - the first in January. Yet Bush was the first American president to publicly commit to the need for an independent Palestinian state, the key to the "two-state solution'' for peace that Bush has been promoting for several years.

But, in the days following the 60th anniversary of Israel - which Bush will honor with an address to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, next week - the question remains: What else can the United States do to prove that the friendship which the administration touted today can yield the future that both Israelis and Palestinians are seeking. The promise, it appears, may well be left to the successors of Bush and Cheney,

"I think the new president will feel that this president spent too little energy through his term,'' says Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "and that there is a need for a higher level and more sustained U.S. engagement in bringing this conflict to some sort of resolution.''

See what Cheney had to say about the friendship today, at a reception in Washington honoring the 60th anniversary of Israel:

by Matthew Hay Brown

In an apparent first for an American president, George W. Bush spoke this week with dissidents in Cuba, he said today.

"Video conferencing is one of the great wonders of the 21st century, and to be able to sit in the White House and talk to these three brave souls in Havana was a - it was an inspiring moment for me," Bush told the Council of the Americas, a hemispheric business group. "It reminded me about how much work the United States has to do to help the people in realize the blessings of liberty."

The president did not name the individuals, but described them as "a leading Cuban dissident, a former political prisoner, and a wife of a man who is held in a Cuban prison simply because he expressed his belief that all people should live in a free society." He said the conversation took place on Tuesday.

While the U.S. Interests Section in Havana supports and in some cases maintains relationships with Cuban dissidents, others keep their distance, to avoid the appearance of acting on Washington's behalf - a common criticism leveled by the Cuban government against the opponents it calls gusanos -- worms.

Cubans reportedly have welcomed modest economic reforms introduced by Raúl Castro since he succeeded his ailing brother, Fidel, as president of the Cuban Council of State in February. Bush is unimpressed.

"The Cuban government recently announced a change at the top," he said. "Some in the world marveled that perhaps change is on its way. That's not how I view it. Until there's a change of heart and a change of compassion and a change of how the Cuban government treats its people, there's no change at all."

by Mark Silva

Call it Burma. Call it Myanmar.

The choice of the name itself is a political decision. But for the U.S. government, which insists on Burma, the refusal of the military regime in Myanmar to accept international aid in the aftermath of a cyclone that has claimed, perhaps, more than 100,000 lives is unfathomable.

"It's hard to fathom,'' Steve Hadley, the president's national security adviser, said this afternoon of Burma's refusal to grant visas to foreign aid forces, including those from the United States, ready to offer the storm-stricken nation assistance.

"The latest estimates are that 100,000 people have probably lost their lives and there are large numbers that are still not accounted for,'' Hadley said today. "This is a humanitarian disaster of enormous proportions. The international community is ready, willing and able to help. It is not just the United States; there are at least a couple dozen countries and NGOs that are ready to go in and help.

"And at this point the junta has not allowed them access, the visas have not been granted, and the green light has not been given for people to go in,'' Hadley said at the White House today. "It's simply going to compound the humanitarian disaster.

The Bush administration is calling on "the whole international community'' to set aside the politics of the Burmese regime's political repression "and say, this is not about politics, this is about helping people in need. And the junta should please open its doors and let the international community provide humanitarian assistance to the people in Burma because they need it desperately.

"It's not just us,'' Hadley said. "It's not just that the United States stay out, it's everybody stay out. And it's hard to understand, given the extent of the commitment -- of the calamity that has befallen the people of Burma..''

Asked about the Burmese military's own motives, he said: "I don't want to politicize this. It is something where it's a humanitarian disaster and the international community should be permitted to help.''

(AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

by Frank James

False positives in any kind of warning system are a bad thing, whether they're produced by an overly sensitive screening procedure for dangerous, blood-borne viruses or al Qaeda terrorists.

Any screening approach that gives off a lot of bad hits adds to overall costs, and wastes time and attention needed to deal with the actual threat.

If you're getting a lot of false positives, you've got a problem that needs fixing and quickly.

Unless, that is, you're the federal government which appears to be stuck with a terrorism watch list that gives off many false positives and yet seems unable to do much about it.

The latest example of this is found in a USA Today story by Mimi Hall who writes that the U.S. terrorism watch list contains the name of Nelson Mandela, the 89-year old Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former president of South Africa, one of the most beloved and respected human beings on the planet.

Mandela and other South African officials are on the terrorist list because they're members of the African National Congress, South Africa's dominant political party.

Before it came to power in 1994 however, the ANC used violence to overthrow the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, a government which labeled it a terrorist group. And it is still evidently listed that way for U.S. terror watch list purposes.

by Bay Fang

It has just been confirmed that Husain Haqqani has been appointed the new ambassador from Pakistan to the US. Haqqani, a close advisor to the late Benazir Bhutto, was most recently a professor of international relations at Boston University. He has also worked as an advisor to two other Pakistani Prime Ministers - Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi and Nawaz Sharif - and served as the ambassador to Sri Lanka from 1992-92.

He will replace General Mahmud Ali Durrani, who is moving back to Islamabad to become National Security Advisor.

The appointment of Haqqani, which has not yet been formally announced, should be welcomed by the Bush administration.

"Haqqani is such a known figure in the city, so he starts off with an enormous advantage," said Marvin Weinbaum, a South Asia scholar at the Middle East Institute. "He knows his way around all the halls of government here, so he doesn't have to learn on the job."

by Mark Silva

Brent Scowcroft, that former national security adviser remembered for saying that Vice President Dick Cheney isn't the Cheney he remembers, suggested in an interview with the Huffington Post today that the U.S. could use some Obama-styled diplomacy.

As Sam Stein tells it, Scowcroft, NSA to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, agrees with the position stated mainly by Sen. Barack Obama "that the U.S. would benefit from having direct talks with the leaders of its most distrusted adversaries.''

Asked by the HuffPost's questioner if the next president should meet with the likes of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Scowcroft said: "Absolutely... It's hard to make things better if you don't talk."

"Scowcroft, a former Air Force general who is widely considered to be one of the preeminent foreign policy minds in the United States, was appearing at an event with Henry Kissinger at Georgetown University,'' Stein reports. "His take on U.S. diplomatic outreach comes as Obama's position -- to meet with our enemies even without preconditions -- has gotten the Illinois Democrat routinely criticized as naive and inexperienced from his Democratic and Republican rivals.

"Scowcroft declined, when asked, to directly assess the foreign policy platform of any of the presidential candidates. But he briefly outlined what he thought was the best steps forward in Iraq. "Our goal in Iraq is to leave an Iraq that produces more stability in the region and not chaos. And that's going to take time," he said. "[It will take troop presence] for a long time...I think gradually security is improving and as it improves we can reduce troop levels. But what we need to do is provide an environment in which their political evolution continues."

Prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Scowcroft expressed public misgivings. In 2002, he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, "Don't Attack Saddam," and warned that action against Iraq, without a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "could turn the whole region into a cauldron and thus destroy the war on terrorism."

"Scowcroft has since warned about the dangers of a precipitous troop withdrawal from the country,'' Stein notes. "In May 2007, he was quoted in the Financial Times as saying: "If we get out before Iraq is stable, the entire Middle East region might start to resemble Iraq today. Getting out is not a solution." In invading Iraq, "we created a revolution; a social and religious revolution,.The U.S. should "gradually withdraw from inter-sectarian warfare. Shia versus Sunni is not a problem we can solve."

"Yet a New York Times story published earlier this month identified Scowcroft as part of a group of Republican advisers concerned that Sen. John McCain "might be coming under increased influence from a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush's first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war."

by Mark Silva

There was a lot of noise on Capitol Hill yesterday about the Bush administration's revelation of information about a Syrian nuclear reactor built with the assistance of the North Koreans -- the reactor that was the target of a secretive Israeli air attack.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Republican, and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, complained that he felt "used'' by the White House and that the episode had undermined the six-party talks aimed at forcing North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. The White House acknowledged it faced some damage control.

It took some time for the administration to step forward with the information it had about this Israeli attack, and officials were attempting to explain just what they knew and why they had taken so long.

"Let me say that what we're going to discuss is a nuclear reactor,'' a senior intelligence official said in a background briefing. "It was constructed by the Syrians in the eastern desert of Syria along the Euphrates River on the east side. The Syrians constructed this reactor for the production of plutonium with the assistance of the North Koreans.

"Our evidence goes back an extended period of time,'' this official said, speaking under the cloak of administration anonymity that comes with much of what passes as insight here. "We have had insights to what was going on since very late '90s, early 2000, 2001 that something was happening.

"Our issue was pinning it down and being more precise. We had increasing appreciation for what was happening in the 2003, 2006 timeframe. But we still couldn't quite pin it down, as will become apparent to you when we show you more of the physical evidence that you'll see in just a moment.''

Another senior administration official said the U.S. did consult with Israel about the existence of this reactor, but did not authorize the attack -- and did not feel free to speak about the reactor until now, allowing some time to pass and defuse the tensions that could have surfaced in the aftermath of such an attack.

"Israel considered a Syrian nuclear capability to be an existential threat to the state of Israel,'' this official said. "After these discussions, at the end of the day Israel made its own decision to take action. It did so without any green light from us - so-called "green light" from us; none was asked for, none was given.''

See more of their accounting here:

by Whitney Blair Wyckoff and updated with statement

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said today that the administration is "disappointed" that Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said, after a briefing about a possible Syrian nuclear reactor that might have been built with the help of North Korea, that he felt Congress had been "used" to benefit the administration's agenda.

"There are tensions that exist between the executive branches and the legislation branches on a range of issues in regards to who should know what when," Perino said at the daily press briefing. "But we will continue to work with Rep. Hoekstra and continue to talk with him."

The administration promised to release a statement regarding the alleged reactor later today. Perino added that she was holding off out of respect for the congressional briefing which was continuing into the afternoon. While Perino would not comment on specifics regarding what would be in that statement, she said she believed it would include information on why the news is coming out now.

At about 5 pm EDT, Perino issued this statement:

By Bay Fang

The stated reason for CIA director Michael V. Hayden's briefings on the Hill this morning on North Korean help in building a Syrian nuclear reactor, is that the administration is responding to pressure from Congress.

But some administration officials believe that the briefings, on intelligence given to the administration by the Israelis over a year ago, are an attempt to scuttle the Six-Party talks, aimed at negotiating an end to North Korea's nuclear program.

The briefings will confirm that the facility bombed by the Israelis was a nuclear reactor built with the help of the North Koreans. Hayden will display for the first time photos and videos showing the head of the North Korean nuclear program with the head of the Syrian program at the facility, according to senior administration officials familiar with the briefing. The evidence will also show that the facility is configured in the same way as the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, including the number of holes for the spent fuel rods.

by Frank James

Who to believe? On one hand, as we heard on National Public Radio yesterday, former President Jimmy Carter says he wasn't told by the Bush Administration that he shouldn't meet with Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist and political organization.

On the other, we have the State Department and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying that Carter was told in no uncertain terms not to meet with Hamas.

Actually, that's not what Rice seems to have said as she travels through the Middle East.

The Associated Press is reporting this morning that Rice pushed back against Carter this morning in Kuwait City in language that seemed far from declarative. 

Rice, attending a regional meeting on Iraq's security and future, contradicted Carter's assertions that he never got a clear signal from the State Department. Rice told reporters that the U.S. thought the visit could confuse the message that the U.S. will not deal with Hamas.

"I just don't want there to be any confusion," Rice said. "The United States is not going to deal with Hamas and we had certainly told President Carter that we did not think meeting with Hamas was going to help" further a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Actually, Rice is creating plenty of confusion here, intentionally or not. Her statement does anything but clarify the matter.