{"id":186441,"date":"2014-01-20T21:24:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T02:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/01\/20\/this-is-unbelievably-fing-stupid\/"},"modified":"2014-01-20T21:24:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T02:24:00","slug":"this-is-unbelievably-fing-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/01\/20\/this-is-unbelievably-fing-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"This is Unbelievably F%$#ing Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Iran was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2014\/01\/20\/us-syria-un-iran-idUSBREA0J01K20140120\">just disinvited from the Syria peace talks<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon withdrew a last-minute invitation to Iran to attend peace talks on Syria on Monday after the Syrian opposition threatened to boycott this week&#8217;s conference if President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s main sponsor took part.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Ending nearly 24 hours of confusion that dismayed diplomats who have spent months cajoling Assad&#8217;s opponents to negotiate, Ban&#8217;s spokesman said Iran was no longer welcome at the initial day of talks at Montreux, Switzerland on Wednesday.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The opposition immediately withdrew its threat to stay away from the conference known as Geneva-2. But the uproar over Iran, which has provided Assad with money, arms and men, underlined the difficulties of negotiating an end to a bloody, three-year civil war that has divided the Middle East and world powers.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Ban, his spokesman said, made the invitation to Iran after Iranian officials assured him they supported the conclusion of a U.N. conference in 2012, known as Geneva-1, which called for a transitional administration to take over power in Syria &#8211; something neither Assad nor Tehran have been willing to embrace.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Throughout Monday Iranian officials made clear that they were not endorsing that conclusion as a basis for the talks.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I would also note that US Secretary of State John Kerry was also having a hissy fit over Iran showing up.<\/p>\n<p>This is all about the United States, and the Syrian exiles, supporting the House of Saud&#8217;s agenda of both hostility toward secular Arab regimes, and support toward Sunni hegemony in the region.<\/p>\n<p>Doing the Saudi&#8217;s bidding might be unavoidable for the Syrian National Council, they are clearly clients of Riyadh, but for the US, intervening in a 1400 year old sectarian dispute is a losing proposition.<\/p>\n<p>Doing the bidding of Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saudr is not in America&#8217;s best interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iran was just disinvited from the Syria peace talks: U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon withdrew a last-minute invitation to Iran to attend peace talks on Syria on Monday after the Syrian opposition threatened to boycott this week&#8217;s conference if President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s main sponsor took part.Ending nearly 24 hours of confusion that dismayed diplomats who have &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[981,964,986,1021,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war","category-foreign-relations","category-middle-east","category-religion","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}