Kuwait oil to Japan down 20% 22, February 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Japan, Kuwait.Tags: Japan energy, Japan oil imports, Kuwait oil exports
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KUNA reports that in December 2009 Kuwait’s exports of oil to Japan were down 20% on the same period last year. Anyone have any ideas why? Perhaps it’s just a random cyclical thing…
Durham and their Iran conference controversy 22, February 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Iran, UK.Tags: Durham conference, Durham University, Iran conference
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At the end of January the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, UK (both my department and my University) held a conference attended by relatively hard-line Iranian academics and diplomats. The two keynote speakers pulled out at the last-minute to avoid the controversy kicked up by students angry at the University hosting such an event. Thus, in the words of the conference organiser Dr.Colin Turner it was “monopolised by pro-regime speakers.”
Aside from the notion of giving a detestable regime a platform to discuss their points, Durham’s Iranian students were specifically angry about a few things. First, on the day of the conference Iranian authorities announced the execution of two young men condemned as terrorists. Second, there is a Durham PhD student in Iran who has had his passport taken away preventing him from leaving the country.
Turner, the organiser, defended the conference with rather injudicious gusto.
These same people who denigrate us have absolutely no problem in accepting scholarships from the British government – which has turned the slaughter of innocent teenagers in Iraq and Afghanistan into an art form. Before they accuse us of receiving what they term ‘blood money’ from our Iranian funders, maybe they should look a little more closely at the source of their own funding.
Whilst his intrinsic point may be true about differing sources of funding, by using such crude hyperbole he comes across as something of a partisan zealot.
This issue is certainly difficult. Dialogue is just about always the best thing. Peace, reconciliation and other such positives cannot come about if there is no interaction at all. Yet, in practice, this is obviously distasteful. Talking to the IRA was clearly the best thing to do, for now there is an absence of their terrorism. Setting free IRA prisoners as part of the bargain was also the right thing to do in exchange for peace. Yet, many of these steps can just feel so wrong. Setting free unrepentant killers years or decades early in particular grates profoundly. Notions of ‘the greater good’, I suppose, must take over personal, human emotions at this point. Perhaps this difficulty is as simple as a macro versus a micro point of view; easy to understand on the grand scale, but when they are speaking in your department, it’s more difficult to accept.
Patriot and Aegis in Gulf to pressure Iran 22, February 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in American ME Relations, Iran, The Gulf.Tags: Aegis Cruisers, Iran threat, missile defence, Obama, Patriot facts, Patriot Missile System
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UPI reports that the Obama Administration has accelerated the deployment of anti-missile defenses to friendly Gulf States to counter the Iranian missile threat. Patriot Systems and Aegis Cruisers are the key plinths of this deployment, though General Petraeus did not specifically name the countries that hosted the Patriot Systems. This is somewhat curious as the Guardian reported at the end of January that the Patriot System would be installed in Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain, with Kuwait and KSA having their existing systems upgraded. The widespread leaking of this move is seen as a mechanism to heap pressure on Iran.
Patriot Missile Facts
– Production began in 1980
– Currently at least 17 countries operate the system
– In the first Gulf War their success rate was 70% in KSA and 40% in Israel
– Each missile can weigh up to 1000kg, has a range of 100 miles, is more than 6m long, costs around $9 million and carries 90kg of explosives
– It automatically finds its target by radar
The Gulf blog 