The Arab League on Syria.

Yesterday (12/2/12) the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) and satellites met under the banner of the Arab League at the Arab League's HQ in Egypt. They produced an action plan that may be taken to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) but sounded much more dramatic then it really was.

Firstly the League announced that it will break off all diplomatic ties with Syria. Due to the deterioration in the diplomatic relationship with Syria over the past year in practical terms all this means is that the League will end it's observer mission. They went on to call for the observer mission to be replaced by a joint League/UN peacekeeping mission to Syria. However this will require a UNSC resolution. As the UNSC won't pass a resolution endorsing an observer mission it is highly unlikely they will endorse a GCC land invasion. Finally the League announced it's intention to set up a Libya style Friends of Syria Contact Group. This could mean anything ranging from no-one turning up to the GCC flooding Syria with weapons and fighters via Turkey and Lebanon. NATO will obviously be very opposed to Iraq being used as a shipping route in case the weapons end up travelling in the opposite direction to Afghanistan via Iran.

The GCC's main hope is that the League meeting along with today's (13/2/12) UN General Assembly (UNGA) meeting will heap pressure on the Syrian government causing them to panic and make the situation worse. In taking this approach the GCC have actually exposed the great lie that is being told about Bashar al-Assad. Far from being a blood thirsty tyrant he's actually quite timid, indecisive and frankly a bit wet. This is evidenced by his reticentence to use air power against the insurgents in case it leads to the imposition of a no-fly zone. Although using fighter jets and helicopter gunships against what looks like civilian areas will give the media an excuse to be outraged they'll be outraged anyway. The people who will make a decision about a no-fly zone however all have their own militarys and battle plans. Therefore they know full well that surgical air strikes are the less lethal option then indiscriminate shelling.

In news from the same neighbourhood Israel is reporting that it's diplomats have survived car bomb attacks in India and Georgia. The most obvious assumption and probably the most likely one is that the attacks were carried out by Iran in retaliation for all the Iranian diplomats and scientists that Israel has killed with car bombs. However it is also possible that Israel faked attacks on their own diplomats in order to make it look like Iran did it as part of very complicated negotiations about Iran's nuclear program which it's probably best I don't comment on further at this point.