They talked by phone. Quoting, “…the main motive of the phone call was extending condolences to the Russian head of state for the recent suicide bombing in Grozny.” I don’t think so. If, in your liberal arts education, you have been taught the use of Occam’s Razor, and the pitfall of conspiracy-theory psychosis, you may … Continue reading Putin & Erdoğan have a chat…about what? →

In a previous post, I was going to tease out the threads of Iran’s polyphonic Iraq policy, but it has become all too obvious. It now appears that the suggestion of joint Iran/U.S. involvement was a suggestion of the Rouhani “elected government”, which the hardliners of the theocracy are busy cutting off at the knees. … Continue reading Iran’s strategy of partition →

Before we bake an intelligence cake, there is a case that the way Iranians behave today has roots going all the way back to the Sassanian Empire of ancient Persia. I’m not a big fan of  heavy historical influence because so many civilizations shed their skins and fuggadaboudit. But Iran, something in the water? In … Continue reading Legitimacy in Iran →

Fencing the problem is an important part of the predictor’s toolkit. Sometimes the fence is made of facts; other times, pseudo facts, things that have higher probabilities than the swirling cloud of amorphous possibilities. Since the Sunnis and Kurds have abandoned parliament, one part of the fence is that they are out of the picture. … Continue reading No successor to Maliki named; fencing the problem →