World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (December 22, 2011)

The Washington Post reported that Iran’s navy chief says his forces plan to hold a 10-day drill in international waters beyond the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told state TV on Thursday that the maneuvers, dubbed Velayat-90, will begin Saturday. He said they will be held in a 1,250-mile (2,000-kilometer) stretch of sea off the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula and into the Gulf of Aden, near the entrance to the Red Sea. Sayyari denied an Iranian media report from last week that the drill would close the Strait of Hormuz, which is the passageway for about 40 percent of the world’s oil tanker traffic. Iran regularly holds war games. Iran has also been active in fighting piracy in the Gulf of Aden.

The New York Times published the article headlined “Where Communists See an Opening, Many Russians See a Closed Door.” It says that the Communists were big winners in recent parliamentary elections, capturing nearly 20 percent of the popular vote and cementing their place as the most formidable opposition bloc, as voters began to express their exhaustion with United Russia, the governing party of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin. The longtime party leader, Gennadi A. Zyuganov, has instead found himself walking a political high wire. In recent days, he has sharply criticized the elections as marred by fraud, while simultaneously maneuvering to claim the spoils of victory in those same elections, including some important committee chairmanships in the Duma, the lower house of Parliament. Perhaps his trickiest political pirouette, however, will be trying to convince Russian voters that the Communists have a real plan for moving the country forward and do not simply want to rewind the clock to the Soviet Union. It will be no small feat, given that the party’s platform is largely built on nostalgia, and that many Russians, no matter how unhappy they are with the current government, seem to have concluded that life is better in a market economy.

The Turkish information agency Hurriyet published the article subtitled “Ankara prepares measures on Paris.” It says that Turkey will freeze all economic and diplomatic cooperation and cease all discussion of international issues with Paris if France’s parliament adopts a bill penalizing the denial of the 1915 events as genocide, diplomatic sources have said.  “We will not remain silent. The adoption of the bill will have consequences,” a diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity told the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday.  A bill stipulating a one-year jail term and a fine of 45,000 euros for those who deny that the 1915 events constituted genocide will be voted on in the French Parliament’s lower house on Dec. 22. It is unlikely that Turkey will declare the French envoy in Ankara persona non grata but it would not be surprising if France recalls the ambassador and the attaché for talks, according to sources.

The same agency reported that The Pentagon and the top U.S. General have sought to pour cold water on remarks by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta after he refused to rule out military action against Iran, which he claimed was in the advanced stages of acquiring a nuclear weapon. Chairman of U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said a military option would be “executable if necessary,” but warned that the United States should not “miscalculate” its resolve on Iran. Tehran could draw Washington into a prolonged conflict which would be “a tragedy for the region and the world,” Dempsey told CNN. Dempsey’s comments come a day after Panetta said Iran would possess a nuclear weapon within one year, if not less if Tehran had a secret “hidden” site.