Hamed Aleaziz

The Secret Torture Memo Cheney Didn't Want You To See

| Thu Apr. 5, 2012 12:20 PM PDT

In 2006, Philip Zelikow, an adviser to then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, wrote a secret memo warning his colleagues that many of the Bush administration's enhanced interrogation techniques were likely illegal. Zelikow didn't speak publicly about the memo—the smoking gun that the Bush administration was warned by its own staff about legal problems with its interrogation program—until 2009, when he revealed its existence in a blog post for Foreign Policy. But when Zelikow testified to Congress about his warning, his classified memo was withheld, and two unclassified documents were released in its stead. Zelikow told Mother Jones in 2009 that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had attempted to destroy any evidence of the classified memo, but that some copies might survive in the State Department's archives.

It appears that Zelikow was right about the archives: the secret memo, which he called a "direct assault on [the Bush Justice Department's] interpretation of American law," was finally released by the State Department on Tuesday, three years after the National Security Archive and WIRED reporter Spencer Ackerman (then at the Washington Independent) first requested it under the Freedom of Information Act. You can read it here:

Zelikow Feb 15 2006 (PDF)Zelikow Feb 15 2006 (Text)

In 2009, when Zelikow told Mother Jones that the "White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo" and that he suspected Cheney's involvement, he noted that the vice-president's office was not officially allowed to do such a thing. "They didn't run the interagency process. Such a request would more likely have come from the White House Counsel's office or from NSC staff... It was conveyed to me, and I ignored it," Zelikow said.

Neil Kinkopf, who worked for the Justice Department under the Clinton administration (and is now an Obama administration official), told Mother Jones in 2009 why Cheney might have wanted to get rid of the document: "People in the White House—Dick Cheney for example; David Addington, his legal adviser—didn't want the existence of dissent to be known. It's not hard to imagine David Addington playing very hardball internal politics and not only wanting to prevail over the view of Zelikow but to annihilate it. It would be perfectly consistent with how he operated."

Zelikow told WIRED on Wednesday that he believes the Bush administration's harsh interrogation techniques constituted a "felony war crime."

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Romney Adviser Blasts Government Investigation, Says Bring It On

—By Hamed Aleaziz

| Mon Apr. 2, 2012 3:45 PM PDT

MEK rally on August 26.

Last December, Mitt Romney claimed that he had never heard of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, an Iranian dissident group that's drawn prominent American defenders despite being labeled by the State Department as a terrorist organization.

Romney's ignorance was surprising: Mitchell Reiss, his foreign policy adviser and a known Mujahedin-e-Khalq supporter, had spoken at a MEK rally just the previous weekend. Now it's another adviser to his campaign, Michael Mukasey, who's voicing his support for the MEK. At an event in Paris last week, the former Attorney General spoke passionately against a recent Treasury Department investigation into the terrorist group.

Last month, Treasury delivered subpoenas to speaking agencies that count several high-profile figures and MEK advocates as clients, including former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, former FBI director Louis Freeh, former Department of Homeland Security head Tom Ridge, and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton. The subpoenas demand payment records from speeches given by the figures—records which might detail MEK payments to its backers.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Map: The Cross-Country Fight Against Coal

The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign seeks to stop new coal plants and shut down existing ones. Our handy map shows you which proposed plants have been blocked, which ones are still progressing, and which ones are already operating.

—By Alyssa Battistoni, Hamed Aleaziz, and Maddie Oatman

| Mon Apr. 2, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

For the past decade, Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign has helped toss out two-thirds of 249 new coal plant proposals, avoiding more than 654 million metric tons of carbon that would have seeped into the atmosphere each year. Since 2001, only 23 of those proposals have transformed into functioning coal plants, while 167 have been defeated. Next up on the agenda? Closing all of the some 580 coal plants already existing around the nation. Beyond Coal hopes to close a third of them by 2020 and all of them by 2030, and has employed a full-time staff "working on nothing but figuring out how to shut down these plants and replace them with clean energy," says Sierra Club's executive director Michael Brune.

Wondering If Your "Jihadist" Friend Is With the FBI?

—By Hamed Aleaziz

| Tue Mar. 20, 2012 3:30 AM PDT

Shahed Hussain in an FBI surveillance video

Shahed Hussain, a long-time FBI terrorism informant Mother Jones profiled last year, has surfaced again—but this time, Google appears to have foiled his effort to identify a new target. Khalifah al-Akili, a 34-year-old Pittsburgh man, says he was approached by Hussain and another informant in January. Al Akili told the Albany Times-Union that after Hussain "repeatedly made attempts to get close" to him, he googled them. He found Trevor Aaronson's August 2011 Mother Jones expose about the FBI's massive network of undercover terrorism informants and confronted Hussain on the phone. After al-Akili explicitly asked if he was an informant, Hussain hung up the phone. Now al-Akili awaits trial on a gun charge (but no terrorism charges).

Al-Akili says became suspicious of Hussain because he was friendly, dropping in at al-Akili's house and, after al-Akili lied that he had a sick family member, dropping off a get-well card.

Hussain's involvement in two previous FBI counterterrorism cases led to convictions: James Cromitie, a 45-year-old former Walmart stocker from Newburgh, New York, was sentenced to 25 years in the headline-making Bronx synagogue plot. Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain of Albany, New York, an imam and pizza shop owner respectively, were each sentenced to 15 years for, among other charges, conspiracy to provide support to a terrorist organization with which Hussain claimed to have connections.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Syria Hit List Targets Thousands

EXCLUSIVE: A detailed document obtained by Mother Jones appears to identify a vast group of Syrian dissidents targeted by Bashar al-Assad's regime.

—By Hamed Aleaziz

| Mon Feb. 27, 2012 9:01 AM PST

Syrian protesters in May 2011

A 718-page digital document obtained by Mother Jones contains names, phone numbers, neighborhoods, and alleged activities of thousands of dissidents apparently targeted by the Syrian government. Three experts asked separately by Mother Jones to examine the document—essentially a massive spreadsheet, whose contents are in Arabic—say they believe that it is authentic. As Bashar al-Assad's military continues a deadly crackdown on dissent inside the country, the list appears to confirm in explicit detail the scale of the regime's domestic surveillance and its methodical efforts to destroy widespread opposition.

The document does not contain any identifying government markings. But the experts consulted agree that its organization and content—which they say is striking in scope—are characteristic of lists used by intelligence services in the Middle East. A link to the document, which surfaced in mid-January in discussions about Syria on Twitter, was provided to Mother Jones by a self-described hactivist who tweets frequently in Arabic and English and whose identity is unclear. A redacted sample of the document is below; Mother Jones is not publishing the full document or revealing the names of individuals in it because we cannot definitively confirm its authenticity nor predict how the document might be used if more widely disseminated.

But the experts who examined the document say it shows what many observers have strongly suspected: In addition to relentless bombing of cities such as Homs and Hama, the Assad regime is tracking down thousands of its own people for interrogation, coercion, or far worse. Joshua Landis, a scholar on Syria who has consulted for the State Department and other US government agencies, said he thinks the document merges the records of several Syrian intelligence agencies in order to better coordinate the crackdown. "This is what a secret service does," he said. Actions allegedly taken by individuals in the document—such as setting up a roadblock near Homs or issuing instructions about how to attack a Syrian military outpost—are "the kind of thing that people get whacked for all the time, or at least tortured for."

"They put me face down on the floor, and started beating me with a cable on the soles of my feet, my legs and back. They were asking, 'Why did you go to the demonstration?'"

According to Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syria expert and fellow at the conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the document contains the names of people wanted by the government's military and security services. It lists many of them with specific information—the year of their birth, names of their relatives, and descriptions such as, "he leads rallies in the Sakhaneh neighborhood." The list also includes military defectors and their units and ranks, Abdulhamid said. "This kind of info on this scale cannot be available to the general public, or faked."

The hactivist who alerted Mother Jones to the online document said that it was posted by members of an activist organizing committee inside Syria, but declined to provide any details confirming that, citing security concerns. It's conceivable that the document involves deception by the Syrian regime or counterintelligence operations by its adversaries; the United States, Israel, and other Western powers are known to have run sophisticated covert operations against Syria and Iran for many years.

Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert and fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, agrees that the list appears to be authentic, despite that there is no way to know for sure. "The way it's organized looks similar to other documents I've seen," he said, citing a hit list he saw when he was in Syria in 2006. (That list, he said, also did not contain identifying government markings.) "It organizes people in such a way that it would allow the security services to be able to track them down." Tabler also said the document is longer than any he's previously seen; it allows the Syrian government to "more effectively round up these folks and choke them off as part of the crackdown."

Here is a sample from the top of page 1 of the document, which was translated from the Arabic by Abdulhamid.

(The English above corresponds to the headers and content of line 1 below; the columns are flipped, as Arabic is read from right to left.)

A Syrian student living in Europe who actively supports the opposition movement also examined the document and said that it is "very encompassing" and includes details on "activists who make things happen on the field and military defectors." A note above a section near the end of the document, he said, suggests that the names of the people it contains were extracted through confessions.

The infamy of Syria's Mukhabarat intelligence service is well known. For the past year, reports of it rounding up and torturing Syrian activists have steadily trickled out of the country. "When they took me in, they put me face down on the floor, and started beating me with a cable on the soles of my feet, my legs and back," a Syrian protester told Human Rights Watch last year. "They were asking, 'Why did you go to the demonstration? Who paid you to go? Who made you go?' They just wanted me to confess to something, did not matter what."

"I have seen lists that had hundreds of names listed in the same manner," Abdulhamid said. "Some were published on the web by activists to warn people. Others included names of people who were later arrested or killed. Activists have reported since the early days of the revolution that when loyalist security forces came to their neighborhoods, they indeed carried a list of names in their hands and were looking for specific people, in addition to making random arrests or arresting relatives of the people whose names they had."

"It's way out of control. All of a sudden these large networks of people who were connected through this new technology, it overwhelmed the regime."

He added: "It is possible that some of these lists have been leaked intentionally and that they contain names of pro-Assad elements to be used as bait for catching activists. The dynamics of the revolution have become very complex—there is active cyberwar going on, intelligence and counterintelligence, propaganda and counterpropaganda, and the regime tends to have the upper hand in these fields."

Landis, who also runs the influential blog Syria Comment, says he thinks the scale of the document highlights "how overwhelmed the security forces clearly are with this uprising. They're trying to keep track of leadership and who's in the opposition, and it's reaching into the thousands upon thousands." Even for a regime as systematically brutal as Assad's, it's an immense undertaking. "They have to go out and find these people's homes and interrogate their families, and then try to track these people down."

Landis believes that the Arab Spring and the rise of social networks have weakened the iron grip that the regime has had on the country for more than four decades. "It's way out of control…it's on Facebook, it's using all these technologies they don't understand and were not up to speed on," he said. "All of a sudden these large networks of people who were connected through this new technology, it overwhelmed them. It wasn't people just making phone calls on the old hard lines the government had completely wired."

Still, ever since the uprising began last March, the regime has shown that it will go to extreme lengths to crush the opposition. The situation turned particularly grim this month: There have been reports of hundreds massacred, including women and children, the US shut down its embassy in Damascus, and Western journalists have been killed. (For more details and essential background, read our updated Syria explainer.)

[Read the full article]

Book Review: "The United States of Fear"

—By Hamed Aleaziz

| Wed Feb. 22, 2012 4:58 PM PST

Tom Engelhardt, who founded and runs the popular website TomDispatch, is a politician's worst nightmare. In his new book, The United States of Fear, Engelhardt criticizes the right and the left in equal measure, challenging both former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama for the wars they have engaged in and the costs associated with those wars. Engelhardt's popular columns are republished on websites like ours, and his own site was borne out of the post-9/11 haze. That's according to Engelhardt himself, who told fellow TomDispatch writer Nick Turse in 2006: "It was more an endless moment—those couple of months after 9/11 when, for a guy who was supposedly politically sophisticated, my reactions were naive as hell. I had this feeling that the horror of the event might somehow open us up to the world. It was dismaying to discover that, with the Bush administration's help, we shut the world out instead."

Engelhardt takes a hard look at what he calls the decline of the "American empire." He draws a comparison between the path that the United States has taken over the past two decades and that which led the former Soviet Union to destruction: "In a far wealthier country, another set of leaders, having watched the Soviet Union implode, decisively embarked on the Soviet path to disaster." He describes how the United States of today and the former Soviet Union share one key characteristic: an unreasonably massive military budget. Engelhardt traces the US path from the '90s, when he says the United States turned into a "self-intoxicated" country, intent on solving the world's problems even if bleeding itself in the process.

[Read more in the Mixed Media blog]

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Is a Top US Cop Helping "Reform" Bahrain's Police?

—By Hamed Aleaziz

| Wed Feb. 15, 2012 4:10 PM PST

Tear gas used during the Bahrain protests in Feb. 2011.

A veteran US law enforcement official recently began advising the Bahraini police, who on Tuesday engaged in another harsh crackdown as protesters took to the streets. John Timoney, fomerly Miami's police chief, agreed in December to join Bahrain's effort to reform its police; a brutal government response to protests there last year included fatalities. The tiny Gulf Kingdom also recruited a former top police official from Britain to help with the process. Timoney has since claimed that Bahrain is changing its police tactics for the better. Tuesday's events cast doubt on that, with protesters once again facing tear gas, stun guns, and armored vehicles aimed at stifling the demonstrations.

The police attempted to prevent protesters from even entering Manama's Pearl Roundabout, the site of mass protests and brutal police response last year. One protester described the use of tear gas to Reuters: "They fired straight at us, they weren't even shooting in the air." Andrew Hammond, a reporter at Reuters and one of the only journalists who covered yesterday's protests, wrote on Twitter that police "chased everyone down road, firing straight at ppl fleeing." Some protesters reportedly threw Molotov cocktails and rocks at police, who arrested at least 25 protesters in Manama. More than 100 protesters were injured. In Shia villages, Bahraini police reportedly even entered homes in hopes of finding protesters. Opposition activist Mohamed al-Maskati described the scene to Bloomberg: "They are storming houses suspected of harboring demonstrators, using tear gas, closing roads and arresting people."

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Tracking the Secret War on Iran

Assassinations, explosions, cyberattacks, plane crashes: A time line of the mysterious battle raging over Iran's nuclear program.

—By Hamed Aleaziz

| Thu Feb. 9, 2012 4:00 AM PST

Wreckage from a bomb that killed Iranian nuclear scientist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi in January 2010

Rumors about an imminent military attack on Iran over its nuclear program have come and gone for years. In recent weeks such talk has intensified, though it's still anybody's guess as to whether Israel or the United States might openly carry out military action any time soon. But most experts agree on one thing: A covert war with Iran has already been raging for years. Details are often murky, but the conflict has been punctuated with brazen assassinations, exploding missile sites, crippling cyberattacks, and a litany of arrests and spying allegations on all sides. Below is a timeline of major developments in the war—or at least the ones that are publicly known.

Explosions:

According to an in-depth report in Foreign Policy, Israeli agents, allegedly posing as CIA operatives, recruited members of a Pakistan-based terrorist group called Jundallah, apparently to conduct attacks inside Iran. Over the last decade, the group has repeatedly carried out attacks inside the country, including bombing Iranian mosques in 2009 and 2010.
An Iranian missile site blows up, killing 17, including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a Revolutionary Guard commander who was said to be a key figure in Iran's missile program. Time cites a "Western intelligence official" as saying that Israel was behind the attack. November 2011.
An explosion occurs in the Iranian city of Isfahan, reportedly near a uranium conversion plant. Iranian officials give conflicting accounts of the cause, then deny that there was an explosion. November 2011.
An Iranian steel factory in the city of Yazd blows up, killing seven people, some of them reportedly non-Iranians, according to Iranian media. It remains unclear whether the factory had any relation to Iranian nuclear activity. December 2011.

Assassinations:

Ardeshir Husseinpour, an Iranian nuclear scientist, dies in January 2007. Iran officially says he died from asphyxiation "following a gas leak," but suspects Israel is behind Husseinpour's death.
Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, an Iranian nuclear scientist, is killed by a "remote-controlled bomb" in Tehran. January 2010.
Unidentified motorcyclists in Tehran attach magnetic bombs to cars carrying Iranian nuclear scientists Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi Davani. Shahriari is killed and Abbassi Davani survives the attack. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blames Israel and other "Western governments." A State Department spokesman claims to have "no information" about the attack; an unnamed US official states that the scientists were "bad people, and the work they do is exactly what you need to design a bomb." November 2010.
Iranian state TV interviews Majid Jamali Fash, an Iranian man who claims he worked with Israel to kill an Iranian nuclear scientist in 2010. "My first contact with the Israeli intelligence agency was in Istanbul three years ago," the man says. "A man named Radfur approached me and suggested I visit the Israeli consulate." January 2011.
Darioush Rezaei Nejad, nuclear scientist, is shot dead by a gunman while sitting in a car outside of his home. Nejad becomes the fourth nuclear scientist to have been killed since 2007. An Israeli intelligence official tells Germany's Der Speigel that Mossad carried out Nejad's assassination. July 2011.
In January 2012, Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, is killed by a magnetic car bomb in central Tehran. He is the fifth Iranian nuclear scientist to have been killed in since 2007. January 2012.
US officials confirm that the Mujahedin El-Khalq, a terrorist group, has been working with Israel to kill Iranian nuclear scientists. The Obama administration reportedly has not been involved, but confirms the US has been aware that the two have been working together. February 2012.

Cyberattacks:

Inside Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant. PhotoXpress/Zuma Press

A computer worm known as Stuxnet infiltrates Iran's nuclear facilities in mid to late 2009. The worm, reportedly tested in Israel, causes serious damage to Iran's nuclear centrifuges—20 percent of them are destroyed. The cyberattack is thought to be an Israeli operation, possibly in cooperation with the US or other Western allies.

In April 2011, Iran's civil defense commander claims that a second computer virus, reportedly called "Stars," has been detected inside Iran. He says of the virus: "Fortunately, our young experts have been able to discover this virus and the Stars virus is now in the laboratory for more investigations."
In September 2011, a third computer virus is reported to have disturbed the Iranian nuclear program. Symantec, a company that develops security software, says the virus is a "precursor to a future Stuxnet-like attack." Iranian officials say the virus did not impact the nuclear program.

Disappearances:

Ali-Reza Asgari, a high-ranking official in former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami’s administration, goes missing in Turkey in 2006. Asgari’s disappearance gives rise to speculation that he'd been kidnapped or had defected, and had ended up in Israel. His whereabouts remain unclear.
Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent, goes missing on the Iranian island of Kish in 2007. He reportedly was there to investigate cigarette smuggling on behalf of a private client. Four years later, a video surfaces of Levinson, in which he pleads for the US to help him. It's unclear who is holding Levinson.

Plane crashes:

Over a year and a half, three Revolutionary Guard airplanes go down in Iran on three separate occasions; one crash kills the Guard's ground forces commander. Spokespeople for the Revolutionary Guard say that the planes' engines "failed." 2006-2007
A highly sophisticated US military drone, launched from a base in Afganistan, goes down in Iran. The Iranian government claims to have brought it down—offering conflicting accounts about shooting it down and taking control of it via cyberattack. It says the drone has "priceless technological information," and later shows it off on state television. December 2011.

Arrests and spying allegations

Shahrazad Mir Gholikhan, an Iranian woman, is arrested, charged, and sentenced to more than five years for allegedly attempting to export 3,000 "helmet-mounted Generation III U.S. military night vision goggles" from the US to Iran. November 2004.
Amir Hossein Ardebili, an Iranian man, is sentenced to five years for violating US exporting laws. According to US officials cited by CNN, Aredbili "had requested missile and aircraft parts and night vision equipment" to take back to Iran. December 2009.
In a sting operation, US authorities arrest four Columbian citizens and charge them with attempting to export F-5 fighter jet engines to Iran. Their relationship to Iranian officials remains unknown. March 2011.Iranian defector Shahram Amiri. Ahmad Halabisaz/Zuma Press
Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist who had defected to the US, returns to Iran in July 2010. After his return, a US official tells CNN that Amiri had been given $5 million for "information." Hillary Clinton states publicly: "Let me say that Mr. Amiri has been in the United States of his own free will." Amiri reportedly is arrested in Iran seven months later. March 2011.
US officials allege that the Iranian government ordered the assassination of the Saudi ambassador to the US. They say that Manssor Arbabsiar, a former used car salesman in Texas, attempted to work with a Mexican drug cartel to conduct the hit. Iran denies the charges. October 2011.
Iran says it has arrested 12 CIA agents. An Iranian official says of the agents' plot: "The main mission of this act of espionage was related to Iran's progress in the fields of nuclear technology and also military and security activities." November 2011.
Mojtaba Atarodi, an Iranian scientist and professor at Tehran's Sharif University, is arrested in Los Angeles for violating export laws in relation to his purchase of high-tech US lab equipment. An official from Sharif university says Atarodi is "just a professor, and he was trying to buy some equipment for his lab" back in Iran. January 2012.
Amir Hekmati, a US citizen and former Marine, is arrested in Iran and sentenced to death for allegedly being a CIA agent. Hekmati admits to becoming a CIA agent on Iranian state media, but his family believes he has made the confession under duress. January 2012.

What's Happening in Syria Now (Updated)

The situation has grown increasingly dire since Assad's regime began a violent crackdown last March, with reports of thousands killed.

—By Hamed Aleaziz with additional reporting by Asawin Suebsaeng

| Thu Feb. 2, 2012 4:00 AM PST

A man holds up a political cartoon at a Syrian protest in May 2011

Syrian protesters in May 2011.

[The latest updates begin here at the top; for full background jump below to our explainer on the situation in Syria. Also read our exclusive report on a Syrian hit list targeting thousands of dissidents.]

Update, March 6: Republican congressional leaders are at odds about dealing with Syria: John McCain wants to begin US air strikes. John Boehner says the situation is too complicated for the US to get involved militarily right now.

Update, March 1: After a nearly month-long assault, the Syrian Army has overwhelmed the main rebel stronghold in Homs and retaken control. Uprisings continue in other cities. The ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee said on Thursday that the US should make no moves to intervene directly in the conflict in the near term.

Update, Feb. 29: Reports on Wednesday indicated a ground offensive by the Syrian military moved deeper into the city of Homs. The continued assault comes a day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during testimony before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would fit the definition of "war criminal." (Clinton did not, however, state that the international community should bring charges; she stressed that doing so could make it even more difficult to wrest Assad from power.)

Update, Feb. 27: Scores more have been reported killed on Monday as the Syrian military continues its relentless bombing of Homs and towns in the northwestern area of Idlib. The EU has ratched up sanctions including a freeze on European-held assets of the Syrian central bank. Syria's Interior Ministry announced that voters had overwhelmingly approved a new Constitution aimed at reform; Western leaders slammed the referendum as having no credibility amid the widespread violence.

Update, Feb. 24: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other world leaders gathered in Tunis on Friday, calling for humanitarian aid and a UN peacekeeping force to be allowed into Syria. President Obama also weighed in, saying, "We are going to continue to keep the pressure up and look for every tool available to prevent the slaughter of innocents in Syria."

Update, Feb. 22: The Syrian government's military assault on Homs has reached its 19th day; according to reports from activist groups, more than 80 people have been killed in the latest attacks. Those killed include two Western journalists: reporter Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times of London and Remi Olchik, a photographer from France.

Update, Feb. 16: Awful news: Preeminent foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid, who chronicled the Iraq war and Arab Spring like no other, died Thursday while reporting inside Syria. He apparently succumbed to an asthma attack. He was 43. Just a few weeks ago he spoke with Mother Jones about his invaluable work.

Update, Feb. 12: The Arab League asked the UN Security Council on Sunday to send peacekeepers to Syria. The League's resolution also calls for "opening channels of communication with the Syrian opposition and providing all forms of political and financial support to it." The Syrian government "categorically rejected" the resolution. (Syria was booted from the League in November.)

Meanwhile, Al Qaeda and other Islamist organizations have been calling for a jihad against the Assad regime, ostensibly throwing their support behind the rebels. (Syrian pro-democracy activists have previously rejected endorsement from Al Qaeda.) For instance, Al Qaeda in Iraq—which maintains an operational network in Syria—released a statement encouraging rebel forces to plant roadside bombs and carry out "hit-and-run operations" against regime loyalists.

Update, Feb. 11: A Syrian military general was assassinated in Damascus on Saturday, as a violent government offensive in Homs continued into its second week.

Update, Feb. 6: The US shut down its embassy in Damascus on Monday, with the State Department announcing that "all American personnel have now departed the country." Reports from activists and opposition groups on Monday said that dozens more people have been killed by government forces in Homs.

Update, Feb. 4: On Saturday morning, the UN Security Council held a meeting to vote on a draft resolution that would demand an end to Syria's violent crackdown on protesters and civilians. Thirteen countries voted in favor of the measure, but Russia (facing its own mass protests today) and China vetoed.

BBC News reports that Susan Rice, US ambassador to the UN, said that "any further bloodshed" will be on the hands of the Russian and Chinese actors. Gerard Araud, the French ambassador, said that China and Russia had "made themselves complicit in a policy of repression," and that "[this] is a sad day for this council, a sad day for all Syrians, and a sad day for democracy."

Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin and Chinese ambassador Li Baodong defended their votes, stating that fellow council members had ignored their proposed amendments to the resolution. Margaret Besheer reports that Churkin also said: "I would certainly agree that tragic events are happening in Syria...[but the UN Security Council is] not the only diplomatic tool on this planet."

Earlier in the day, President Obama issued a statement condemning the Syrian regime's "unspeakable assault against the people of Homs," and repeated that the "international community must work to protect the Syrian people from this abhorrent brutality." The statement also read that, "the Assad regime must come to an end."

Update, Feb. 3: On Friday, multiple reports from activists inside Syria described massive shelling and an army offensive in the central Syrian city of Homs. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights puts the casualty figure at over a hundred, and claims many hundreds more are injured; other estimates have the body count at 200 and climbing. Activists report that "nail bombs" were used by the army during a mortar attack on the Khaldiyeh neighborhood. The reports come 30 years after the infamous Hama Massacre was conducted by the Syrian army over the course of four weeks in February 1982 (the operation was ordered by President Hafez al-Assad, father and predecessor to Syria's current ruler Bashar al-Assad).

In response to the news, anti-Assad rallies erupted at Syrian embassies in several major cities, including Cairo, Kuwait City, London, Berlin, and Washington, DC. Some of the embassies—including those in London and Cairo—were stormed by protesters, leading to arrests and property damage.

The UN Security Council is scheduled to convene Saturday morning to discuss a much-debated draft resolution on Syria. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that same morning in Munich.

Here's a rundown of the deteriorating situation in Syria:

The basics: Syria is an Arab country with more than 22 million people; it borders many of the major players in the Middle East (Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey) and is roughly the size of North Dakota. Syria famously lost the Golan Heights to Israel in 1967, during the Arab-Israeli war; negotiations between the two countries have been minimal in recent years. Like many countries in the region, Syria's main export is oil. Unlike Saudi Arabia or Iran, however, Syria's oil reserves are relatively small; it ranks 33rd in the world. Syria is home to a smorgasbord of ethnicities and religions: Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Sunnis, Alawites, and Druze. The capital, Damascus, is a bustling metropolis (many believe it to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world) but is not the site of the country's most significant protests (though rebels captured parts of the city in late January). That city, Hama, is the country's fourth-largest, with fewer than 1 million occupants.

What's happening now? Ever since last March, Syrians, especially those in the country's central region, have protested the iron-fisted government headed by Bashar al-Assad. During the first week of August the Syrian army began a brutal campaign to control Hama, using tanks and troop assaults to kill citizens in a seemingly indiscriminate manner. The situation has continued to escalate in 2012. In late January, rebels known as the Free Syrian Army, reportedly took control of a portion of Damascus' suburbs. On January 31, Syrian government forces, according to Reuters, "reasserted control" of the Damascus suburbs. Elsewhere, in Homs, a central-Syrian town with more than a million people, Syrian government forces killed nearly 100 people—activists say 55 civilians were killed—on January 31. The Free Syrian Army has fought on, asserting that "half of the country" is now effectively a no-go zone for Assad's security forces. Since November, at least 3,000 Syrians reportedly have been killed.

Who's in charge?: Assad has ruled Syria since 2000. His father, Hafez al-Assad, a member of the Baath Party, came to power in 1970 after leading a bloodless coup. Assad's family came from a minority religious sect: the Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam. Thirty years ago, Assad launched one of the most brutal massacres in the modern history of the Middle East: His troops killed nearly 20,000 people in the city of Hama. In 2000, Hafez Assad died, and Bashar took over. To some, the shift from Hafez to Bashar suggested an opportunity (albeit a limited one) for Syria to become a more politically moderate society. Last year, Vogue magazine perpetuated that notion with a widely remarked profile of first lady Asma al-Assad published during the height of the Arab Spring. It stated that Syria was "the safest country in the Middle East." Clearly that couldn't have been more off-base, with Bashar apparently intent on following in his father's footsteps. (Vogue scrubbed its archives of the Assad profile, but the internet doesn't forget.)

[Read the full article]

What's Happening in the Persian Gulf Explained

Why Iran is talking tough, the US is maneuvering warships, and gasoline is getting more expensive by the hour.

—By Adam Weinstein and Hamed Aleaziz

| Tue Jan. 3, 2012 4:58 PM PST

The basics: Iran and the United States appear to be heading for a showdown in the Persian Gulf. Amid already-high tensions over Iran's advancing nuclear program, the US has imposed harsh new economic sanctions on the regime in Tehran. The sanctions have throttled Iran's economy, and the country has responded by threatening to shut down the Gulf to all shipping traffic. Iranian officials have also threatened military action against the United States and its allies in the region if they don't back off. Two US aircraft carriers are en route to the region.

How has the situation escalated? Over New Year's weekend, the Iranians announced that they'd made their first-ever nuclear fuel rods, potentially a major step forward in building a nuclear bomb.* Then they test-fired three anti-ship missiles in the Strait of Hormuz, a 34-mile-wide choke point in the Persian Gulf through which approximately 20 percent of the world's crude oil is transported. An Iranian admiral told state TV that the shots were a warning to America: "The control of the Strait of Hormuz is completely under our authority [too]," he said, warning that Iran would attack "any enemy" that endangered Iranian interests. In response, the US has sent two aircraft carriers steaming toward the Gulf to replace the USS John C. Stennis, which just ended its own Mideast deployment. "Iran advises, recommends and warns them [the US] not to move its carrier back to the previous area in the Gulf because Iran is not used to repeating its warnings and warns just once," a general told state media.

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