Category Archives: Energy Agenda

Why Keystone XL Failed

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The Keystone XL Pipeline vote passed by the House of Representatives failed in the Senate.

S.2280
Latest Title: A bill to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Sponsor: Sen Hoeven, John [ND] (introduced 5/1/2014)      Cosponsors (55)
Related Bills: H.R.5682, S.2314, S.2554
Latest Major Action: 11/18/2014 Failed of passage/not agreed to in Senate. Status: Under the order of 11/12/14, not having achieved 60 votes in the affirmative, failed of passage in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 59 – 41. Record Vote Number: 280.

The full text of the bill is here. To find out which Democratic Senators voted no, click here.

We all want the Keystone XL pipeline for the sake of jobs even though they may be temporary and some interesting people will make lots of money, however it should also be noted that this oil will not be used domestically. It is also important to use the Keystone legislation to see the behind the curtains machinations and money that drives law from many lobby groups, corporations and special interest.

Senate Keystone “Yea” Votes Took In Six Times More Oil & Gas Money Than Opponents

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Senate Democrats successfully blocked a bill Tuesday that would have approved construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The controversial measure fell one vote shy of overcoming a filibuster, with 59 senators supporting it and 41 opposing. The vote followed the bill’s approval in the House by a much wider margin, with 252 lawmakers voting to advance the pipeline.

The vote largely fell along party lines. All Senate Republicans supported construction of the pipeline but they were joined by 14 Democrats, including three of the four Democrat incumbents who lost their re-election bids earlier this month. For Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), the bill’s main sponsor, the vote was considered an important test of her effectiveness in advance of a Dec. 6 runoff that will determine whether she keeps her seat. In the House, 31 Democrats crossed the aisle to side with the Republican majority.

SVB

Construction of the pipeline has been decried by environmental groups and championed by heavyweights in the oil and gas industry. Both of these interests are no strangers to money in politics. The oil and gas industry has long been a generous donor to federal candidates and committees — and increased its donations in 2014 over 2010. In the environmental community, where the League of Conservation Voters has long been the lead player on this front, environmental activist Tom Steyer is 2014′s top overall donor.

Oil and Gas

The 59 senators who voted for the pipeline have received, on average, significantly more money from the oil and gas industry than those who voted against construction. Over the course of their careers, those 59 took in over $33 million in campaign donations from the industry, compared to the approximately $4.2 million received by the 41 who successfully blocked the bill’s approval. On average, those voting for Keystone have received $572,000 from oil and gas interests, compared with just $103,900 for those voting against it.

TAOG

Among the Democrats, the 39 “nay” votes received $4.2 million from oil and gas, while the 14 who voted with the Republicans received just under $4 million. On average, those voting no received about $108,000, while the Democratic supporters — who disproportionately represent states with strong oil and gas industry presence – received more than twice as much, about $284,000.

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But the amount taken in by Democratic Keystone supporters pales in comparison to that received by Republicans, who received $662,000, on average, from oil and gas interests. The 11 Republicans who will be joining the Senate in January have taken in $370,000 on average (likely an artificially small amount since most of these Republicans have had much shorter time periods in which to accrue this money).

In the House, the picture is even more stark. Keystone supporters have garnered $56.2 million from the oil and gas industry over the course of their careers, compared to the $5.2 million that opponents have brought in. On average, a “yea” vote took in around $223,000 over the course of his or her career, while a “nay” vote took in a paltry $32,200. For just the 31 Democrats voting in favor, the average oil and gas tally was $115,349 — slightly less than the Republicans were able to bring in, but much more than the Keystone opponents.

Environment

The environmental community has historically given much less to federal candidates than oil and gas interests have. One reason the tally is lower: We have no way of knowing which donors consider themselves environmentalists. We classify contributions according to donors’ employers, and far more donors work for oil and gas companies than work for environmental groups.

(Spending by the Tom Steyer-funded NextGen Climate Action super PAC, as well as that of other super PACs, is not reflected in these totals, which include only contributions directly to candidates.)

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Environmental money largely followed the same pattern that oil and gas money took, but in reverse — Senate Republicans received far less than Senate Democrats (on average just under $11,000 compared to an average of $141,000 for Democrats). Among Democrats, those who voted to build the pipeline received less than those who voted not to: just over $98,000 on average, compared to the $183,000 that Democrats who wanted to deep-six the project raised.

TAE (1)

Similarly, in the House Republicans received far less than Democrats overall, but Keystone-supporting Democrats took in less from environmental groups and their employees than Keystone opponents. Keystone opponents received $6.2 million over the course of their careers, while Keystone proponents were only able to bring in $1.1 million, despite there being many more of them. On average, Keystone’s GOP supporters took in $2,932 from environmental interests while its Democratic cheerleaders brought in $14,196. Keystone opponents, all of them Democrats, took in $38,642 — more than twice as much as their nay-voting Democratic counterparts.

What does it mean?

It probably comes as no surprise that opponents of the pipeline — all Democrats — were more likely to be supported by environmental interests and that proponents were more likely to take in large sums from the oil and gas industry. Those Democrats who crossed party lines are a more interesting story: Although they more closely resemble their Democratic colleagues, they are far less likely to have received significant sums from environmental donors, but have received more from the oil and gas industry than those who voted against Keystone.

They are also less likely to be returning. Of the 14 Senate Democrats who sided with Republicans, four will be departing and many pollsters are speculating that Landrieu will not win her runoff. If she does not return, 65 percent of the Keystone-supporting Democrats will be members of the 114th Congress. Among the 39 Keystone opponents, however, five will not be returning — a yield of 87%. All of those five except for Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) will be replaced by Republicans.

Table

Though the 114th Congress will have more GOP senators, they will have, on average, received less from the oil and gas industry over the course of their careers than the Republicans currently in the Senate, but the difference is slight and probably explained by the incoming lawmakers having had shorter congressional careers than the senators they are replacing.  However, incoming Democratic senators will have received much less, on average, than the current Democratic class: A Democrat in the 114th Congress will have received $100,000 from the oil and gas industry, while a Democrat in the current Congress has received more $155,000.  It looks, therefore, like upcoming Congress’ Senate Democrats will not only be fewer in number, but will have a weaker connection to the oil and gas industry.

For the full data set showing how each member of the Senate voted and how much they received from oil and gas or environment, click here.

All numbers in this story reflect career (back to 1989 at the earliest) totals to members of Congress and are based on data collected from the Federal Election Commission on 11/17/2014. Only itemized contributions of greater than $200 are included in the industry totals.

 

U.S. Constant State of Emergency

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From the White House on National Security:

Progress

Guiding Principles

The President’s highest priority is to keep the American people safe. He is committed to ensuring the United States is true to our values and ideals while also protecting the American people. The President is committed to securing the homeland against 21st century threats by preventing terrorist attacks and other threats against our homeland, preparing and planning for emergencies, and investing in strong response and recovery capabilities. We will help ensure that the Federal Government works with states and local governments, and the private sector as close partners in a national approach to prevention, mitigation, and response.

The National Security Strategy, released May 27, 2010, lays out a strategic approach for advancing American interests, including the security of the American people, a growing U.S. economy, support for our values, and an international order that can address 21st century challenges.

But the last time a National Security strategy was addressed in total was 2010.

Meanwhile, see below.

The United States is in a state of emergency – 30 of them, in fact

By Christopher Ingraham

The United States has been in an uninterrupted state of national emergency since 1979. Here in 2014, we’re not dealing with just one emergency – there are currently 30 of them in effect.

That’s according to data on presidential declarations of emergency compiled by Gregory Korte of USA Today. “Those emergencies, declared by the president by proclamation or executive order, give the president extraordinary powers — to seize property, call up the National Guard and hire and fire military officers at will,” Korte writes.

President Obama has declared nine so far, eight of which are currently in effect — they primarily deal with preventing business with people or organizations involved in global conflicts or the drug trade. Obama has also renewed many of his predecessors’ orders — just last week he renewed our ongoing state of emergency with respect to Iran for its 36th straight year.

Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush took a light touch on declarations of emergency – they invoked only a handful, none of which remain in effect. But Bill Clinton proclaimed 16 emergencies and George W. Bush declared 14, 13 of which are still in effect today.

Blocking business transactions with various interests may not seem like national emergency material. But the language underlying these declarations is often nearly apocalyptic. Obama’s recent continuation of a Bush-era emergency relating to “the property of certain persons contributing to the conflict” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo states that “this situation continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.”

The Obama administration also maintains that “the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Belarus and other persons continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

You may wonder why the president needs to declare a state of emergency to deal with what appears to be fairly routine instances of corruption in far-flung corners of the world. Korte notes that Congress provides little oversight on emergency declarations, even through it’s mandated to do so by law. In an era when tussles over executive power are a near-daily occurrence, this is a strange incongruity.

“What the National Emergencies Act does is like a toggle switch, and when the president flips it, he gets new powers. It’s like a magic wand. and there are very few constraints about how he turns it on,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton professor interviewed by Korte.

In the absence of a crisis, there’s little compelling reason for a government to adopt a permanent crisis stance. The danger is that a public desensitized to claims to extraordinary circumstances could be more likely to allow excesses of authority performed in the name of those circumstances.

As Korte writes, “A post-9/11 state of national emergency declared by President George W. Bush — and renewed six times by President Obama — forms the legal basis for much of the war on terror” — a war which has so far seen a rise in terrorism around the globe.

Will John Kerry Gain Accord on Iran Nuke Program?

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LONDON (AP) — With a deadline for Iranian nuclear deal fast approaching, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has embarked on a frenzy of high-stakes diplomacy in a last-minute push to secure an agreement – or at least prevent the process from collapsing.

As senior negotiators huddled for a second day in Vienna in the latest round of talks, Kerry held separate meetings in London and was to travel to Paris on Thursday for further discussions before deciding whether or when to join the larger effort in the Austrian capital to forge a pact that would prevent the Islamic republic from reaching the capability to produce atomic weapons.

Despite his efforts, though, signs increasingly pointed to the prospect that Monday’s deadline will be pass without a deal and the negotiations will be extended a second time.

In London, Kerry met Wednesday at his hotel with Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi of Oman, which has emerged as a key bridge between Washington and Tehran, a senior U.S. official said. Bin Alawi was in Tehran last weekend and met with Kerry on Tuesday. Their follow-up meeting, Wednesday however, was unannounced and confirmed only after an Associated Press reporter saw the foreign minister in Kerry’s hotel.

Oman is not party to the negotiations among Iran, the U.S., Britain, China, France, Russia, the European Union and Germany. But unique among the Gulf Arab states for the close ties it maintains with Iran, it hosted high-level nuclear talks earlier this month and was the site of secret U.S.-Iranian gatherings dating back to 2012. Those earlier discussions laid the groundwork for an interim nuclear agreement reached a year ago, which the so-called P5+1 countries are now trying to cement with Iran in Vienna.

Details of Kerry’s meetings with bin Alawi were not immediately clear and U.S. officials were tight-lipped about any role Oman might play beyond that of an intermediary.

German Ambassador Peter Wittig wouldn’t rule out an extension and said a nuclear deal could lead to better relations and partnerships with Iran and world powers in other regional issues, specifically Syria and Lebanon.

“If these negotiations fail, there won’t be any winners,” Wittig told reporters in Washington.

In Paris, Kerry will meet Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. Those meetings are key because French objections last year delayed the adoption of an interim agreement by several weeks, and Saudi Arabia remains deeply concerned about the potential for its arch-rival Iran to win concessions from the West.

In Washington, meanwhile, Obama administration officials, congressional aides and independent experts who’ve closely monitored the discussions said an extension of the talks was most likely. And, in a twist, many opponents of a deal now see prolonged negotiations as more preferable than an accord.

Even though many U.S. lawmakers opposed an extension when the last one was announced in June, aides in both parties said an agreement now would be viewed as a sign of the administration’s desperation to secure a diplomatic breakthrough at any cost.

Republicans in particular want more time so that they can attempt to pass new sanctions legislation that would pressure Iran into greater concessions. The Senate’s plan is to bring up a package of conditional penalties after January, when Republicans take the majority, according to aides who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity.

Some Democrats are on board with that effort, though Obama has threatened to veto any new sanctions threatening the diplomacy.

The midterm elections have others weighing their approaches. The powerful pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, issued a statement after the last extension urging the U.S. government to “make clear that Iran can expect no further extension of the talks.”

In Israel itself, which has been outspoken in opposition of a deal that it fears could leave it vulnerable to Iran, officials said they believe an extension is the way to go.

A senior Israeli official said Israel supports an extension in the talks’ deadline to allow time for a better deal to be negotiated through additional economic sanctions on Iran.

**

But what does a nuclear weapons program really mean for Iran?

How does religion really influence Iranian nuclear policy?

Ariane Tabatabai

One of the most enduring myths about post-revolutionary Iran is that the country’s policies, including those on nuclear matters, are shaped by its leadership’s obsession with martyrdom and Messianic ideals. Many observers, especially in the arms control community, base their analyses on this notion, and it leads to some harrowing conclusions. If, after all, a country’s stance is basically suicidal, there’s no telling what it would do with a nuclear weapon. A careful and more nuanced look at the role of religion in Iranian decision-making, though, debunks the idea that martyrdom rules in Tehran, and gives a much more realistic basis for understanding the regime’s behavior.

To be sure, there are reasons why some analysts see the Iranian government as driven by martyrdom. The idea originated with the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, which helped shape the Iranian psyche and the image of the Islamic Republic in the world. During the war, Iran famously launched a series of “human wave attacks,” sending untrained and unprepared men (and occasionally boys) to the front, sometimes through minefields, to clear the way for the trained forces. This tactic went hand-in-hand with the notion of martyrdom, with members of this ill-equipped vanguard promised a place in paradise if they gave their lives for God and country. Mental images of young boys wearing plastic “keys to paradise” around their necks and running across minefields have haunted the war’s observers, and though whether such keys actually existed remains controversial, the picture lingers and contributes to perceptions of Iran.

Much later, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad probably encouraged the notion of martyrdom’s importance in politics with rhetoric deemed bizarre. For instance, in 2005 he said that some delegates at the United Nations General Assembly had seen a “halo” around his head. During his 2005-2013 presidency, Iranians joked that Ahmadinejad would always put out an extra plate at his table for the “Mahdi.”

Shia Muslims believe that the Mahdi, born in the ninth century and also known as the Hidden Imam or the Twelfth Imam, is the Prophet Mohammed’s last legitimate successor. They believe that he has gone into occultation—the state of being blocked from view—but will eventually return, much as Christians believe that Jesus Christ will return some day. According to Shia belief, the Hidden Imam will reappear along with Christ and together they will restore peace and justice, saving the world from the chaos into which it would otherwise descend.

The notions of martyrdom and “Mahdism” have led many to extrapolate that the Iranian leadership’s actions are governed by an inherent suicidal tendency and a willingness to cause chaos, even if it’s self-destructive, in order to facilitate the Mahdi’s return. But if one goes beyond the revolutionary rhetoric and examines the Islamic Republic’s actions, one realizes that more often than not, Tehran is driven by national or regime interests, rather than pure ideology and belief. In fact, Iran’s rulers often use ideology as a means, and do not see it as an end. It’s true that the regime sometimes makes decisions that seem irrational to outside observers. But this is not generally due to religious belief but rather to the fact that the regime’s interests and the national interest do not align—for example, Iran and Israel have many common strategic interests, yet Tehran has adopted anti-Israeli rhetoric and policies since the 1979 revolution. This stance may not serve national interests, but it certainly advances the Islamic Republic’s interest in a strong, external-enemy narrative.

The phantom fatwa. None of this is to say that Islam does not play any role in security decision-making in Iran. Most followers of the country’s nuclear affairs are aware of the famous fatwa reportedly issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei prohibiting nuclear weapons. But this fatwa, or religious edict, has become a puzzle.

In order to issue a fatwa, a religious figure must be deemed an authority in Islamic jurisprudence. (This is why to most Islamic scholars, fatwas issued by Al Qaeda leadership in support of the use of nuclear weapons are void of any legitimacy.) But a fatwa does not have to be written. It can be spoken if it meets certain requirements, such as having been witnessed. In this particular case, Khamenei does not appear to have written the fatwa, but it has been communicated to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and repeated a number of times by Khamenei himself, as well as by other government officials. It is unclear whether the fatwa covers only the “use” of these weapons, or their “production and stockpiling” too, as Khamenei has been quoted saying both.

Some scholars and policy makers believe the Khamenei nuclear-weapons fatwa to be bogus because it is not written, and therefore irrelevant. Others believe it to be all-important. Neither side has seen a fatwa, and it has not been published on Khamenei’s otherwise extremely comprehensive website.

Adding further ambiguity to the fatwa’s status is the fact that such rulings can be overturned, allowing the faith to change and adapt to the times. The founder of the Islamic Republic, the Ayatollah Khomeini, famously overturned a number of fatwas. Even this possibility of reversal, though, does not necessarily make pursuit of an Iranian Bomb more likely, because while there is no religious constraint on canceling a fatwa, the geopolitical cost of overriding this one would be high. Iran has promoted the fatwa in various forums for more than a decade and it is finally being recognized and referred to by world leaders. In a way, by leading a public relations campaign promoting the edict, Tehran has constrained its ability to overturn it.

Nuclear weapons in Shia jurisprudence. Virtually absent from the debate is the fact that Shia scholars who have spoken on nuclear weapons show consensus. Few Grand Ayatollahs have discussed the issue, but those who have present arguments similar to Khamenei’s, regardless of personal political stance. Hence, whether they support the Islamic Republic or oppose it, and whether or not they believe that politics and religion should be intertwined (many Iranian Shia clerics say they should not), they believe weapons of mass destruction to be against the faith. What is unclear, however, is the scope of this prohibition. Clerics tend to be generalists, trained to cover all possible matters from which foot to enter the bathroom with (left!) to the use of technology in warfare. This means that the legal debate is neither elaborate nor nuanced.

But the basic principles underlying the Supreme Leader and the other clerics’ rulings are very close to those in international law. In Shia jurisprudence, like in international humanitarian law, there must be a distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Non-combatants, typically defined as women, children, the elderly, and those mentally unfit to fight, are not to be targeted. Hence, using poison in bodies of water and burning trees is not allowed. The environment too must be protected. These are among the key notions shaping Shia thinking on indiscriminate warfare.

Does it matter what the faith says? A dissident Iranian Shia cleric, Mohsen Kadivar, points out that when Saddam Hussein’s missiles targeted Iranian cities during the Iran-Iraq war, officials asked Khomeini for permission to retaliate in kind. At first he refused, hewing to the Shia ban on indiscriminate warfare. Eventually, though, he allowed similar attacks to be carried out. There are similar examples in which Iran has acted rationally with little or no regard to religious doctrine or sectarianism. Consider Tehran’s relations with two neighbors to its northwest, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Armenia is a Christian country, with good ties to Tehran, while Azerbaijan, a Shia-majority state, has had complicated relations with Iran. In Iranians’ view, Azerbaijan tries to arouse their own Azeri population’s separatism and enables some Israeli actions that target Iran. Tehran’s policies are not driven by sectarianism and ideology here, but rather by national interests.

The role of religion in post-revolutionary Iranian politics is complex and often misunderstood in the West. It seems clear, though, that the regime follows its practical interests. When ideology serves these interests, it is put forward as a rationale; otherwise, it takes a backseat. Observers who continue to argue that the regime wishes to hasten the return of the Mahdi, and that Iran will therefore withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and develop nuclear weapons, are contradicted by the facts. In actuality, Tehran highlights that it is party to a number of international treaties, and that its program has been in strict compliance with its international obligations. Whether or not this is the case is a different story, but a suicidal regime wouldn’t bother preserving appearances. The regime has not reversed the fatwa or withdrawn from the NPT—precisely because those would be suicidal moves. It is to the government’s advantage to be seen as unlikely to pursue a nuclear weapon, so it cites Khamenei’s fatwa. But the regime puts forward no religious rationale for the fact that 35 years after the US embassy hostage crisis, with the backing of the Supreme Leader, it is negotiating with what the revolutionaries then called the “Great Satan.” It would not be doing so if it did not believe it was acting in its own real-world interest.

Google: Hacking Servers in Taiwan

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Thousands of U.S. companies and countless government agencies get hacked several times a day. This is not a new phenomenon at all and the counter-measures against both China and Russia remain unfinished. The People’s Liberation Army is a wing of the Chinese government.

Politics trumps technology security, while the National Security Council, the NSA and the State Department never use proven evidence of criminal activity against the United States with Russian or Chinese leaders, they merely talk around the issue.

Cyber-War

Many tech companies in the U.S. have experienced hacking and intrusions of sensitive data of their respective systems. Finally the heads of these corporations reached out to top U.S. government officials demanding actions and protections. The State Department pushed back due to global diplomacy and the NSA was brought to collaborate with corporations but to date, no remedies have been forthcoming.

Below is a long but very important read that puts the whole international hacking, threats and failed diplomatic objectives in perspective.

Google’s secret NSA alliance: The terrifying deals between Silicon Valley and the security state

Inside the high-level, complicated deals — and the rise of a virtually unchecked surveillance power

In mid-December 2009, engineers at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, began to suspect that hackers in China had obtained access to private Gmail accounts, including those used by Chinese human rights activists opposed to the government in Beijing.

Like a lot of large, well-known Internet companies, Google and its users were frequently targeted by cyber spies and criminals. But when the engineers looked more closely, they discovered that this was no ordinary hacking campaign.

In what Google would later describe as “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China,” the thieves were able to get access to the password system that allowed Google’s users to sign in to many Google applications at once. This was some of the company’s most important intellectual property, considered among the “crown jewels” of its source code by its engineers. Google wanted concrete evidence of the break-in that it could share with U.S. law enforcement and intelligence authorities. So they traced the intrusion back to what they believed was its source — a server in Taiwan where data was sent after it was siphoned off Google’s systems, and that was presumably under the control of hackers in mainland China.

“Google broke in to the server,” says a former senior intelligence official who’s familiar with the company’s response. The decision wasn’t without legal risk, according to the official. Was this a case of hacking back? Just as there’s no law against a homeowner following a robber back to where he lives, Google didn’t violate any laws by tracing the source of the intrusion into its systems. It’s still unclear how the company’s investigators gained access to the server, but once inside, if they had removed or deleted data, that would cross a legal line. But Google didn’t destroy what it found. In fact, the company did something unexpected and unprecedented — it shared the information.

Google uncovered evidence of one of the most extensive and far-reaching campaigns of cyber espionage in U.S. history. Evidence suggested that Chinese hackers had penetrated the systems of nearly three dozen other companies, including technology mainstays such as Symantec, Yahoo, and Adobe, the defense contractor Northrop Grumman, and the equipment maker Juniper Networks. The breadth of the campaign made it hard to discern a single motive. Was this industrial espionage? Spying on human rights activists? Was China trying to gain espionage footholds in key sectors of the U.S. economy or, worse, implant malware in equipment used to regulate critical infrastructure?

The only things Google seemed certain of was that the campaign was massive and persistent, and that China was behind it. And not just individual hackers, but the Chinese government, which had the means and the motive to launch such a broad assault.

Google shared what it found with the other targeted companies, as well as U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. For the past four years, corporate executives had been quietly pressing government officials to go public with information about Chinese spying, to shame the country into stopping its campaign. But for President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to give a speech pointing the finger at China, they needed indisputable evidence that attributed the attacks to sources in China. And looking at what Google had provided it, government analysts were not sure they had it. American officials decided the relationship between the two economic superpowers was too fragile and the risk of conflict too high to go public with what Google knew.

Google disagreed.

Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg was at a cocktail party in Washington when an aide delivered an urgent message: Google was going to issue a public statement about the Chinese spying campaign. Steinberg, the second-highest-ranking official in U.S. foreign policy, immediately grasped the significance of the company’s decision. Up to that moment, American corporations had been unwilling to publicly accuse the Chinese of spying on their networks or stealing their intellectual property. The companies feared losing the confidence of investors and customers, inviting other hackers to target their obviously weak defenses, and igniting the fury of Chinese government officials, who could easily revoke access to one of the biggest and fastest-growing markets for U.S. goods and services. For any company to come out against China would be momentous. But for Google, the most influential company of the Internet age, it was historic.

The next day, January 12, 2010, Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, posted a lengthy statement to the company’s blog, accusing hackers in China of attacking Google’s infrastructure and criticizing the government for censoring Internet content and suppressing human rights activists. “We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech,” said Drummond.

Back at the State Department, officials saw a rare opportunity to put pressure on China for spying. That night Hillary Clinton issued her own statement. “We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns and questions. We look to the Chinese government for an explanation,” she said. “The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy.”

As diplomatic maneuvers go, this was pivotal. Google had just given the Obama administration an opening to accuse China of espionage without having to make the case itself. Officials could simply point to what Google had discovered as a result of its own investigation.

“It gave us an opportunity to discuss the issues without having to rely on classified sources or sensitive methods” of intelligence gathering, Steinberg says. The administration had had little warning about Google’s decision, and it was at odds with some officials’ reluctance to take the espionage debate public. But now that it was, no one complained.

“It was their decision. I certainly had no objection,” Steinberg says.

The Obama administration began to take a harsher tone with China, starting with a major address Clinton gave about her Internet Freedom initiative nine days later. She called on China to stop censoring Internet searches and blocking access to websites that printed criticism about the country’s leaders. Clinton likened such virtual barriers to the Berlin Wall.

For its part, Google said it would stop filtering search results for words and subjects banned by government censors. And if Beijing objected, Google was prepared to pull up stakes and leave the Chinese market entirely, losing out on billions of dollars in potential revenues. That put other U.S. technology companies in the hot seat. Were they willing to put up with government interference and suppression of free speech in order to keep doing business in China?

After Google’s declaration, it was easier for other companies to admit they’d been infiltrated by hackers. After all, if it happened to Google, it could happen to anyone. Being spied on by the Chinese might even be a mark of distinction, insofar as it showed that a company was important enough to merit the close attention of a superpower. With one blog post, Google had changed the global conversation about cyber defense.

The company had also shown that it knew a lot about Chinese spies. The NSA wanted to know how much.

Google had also alerted the NSA and the FBI that its networks were breached by hackers in China. As a law enforcement agency, the FBI could investigate the intrusion as a criminal matter. But the NSA needed Google’s permission to come in and help assess the breach.

On the day that Google’s lawyer wrote the blog post, the NSA’s general counsel began drafting a “cooperative research and development agreement,” a legal pact that was originally devised under a 1980 law to speed up the commercial development of new technologies that are of mutual interest to companies and the government. The agreement’s purpose is to build something — a device or a technique, for instance. The participating company isn’t paid, but it can rely on the government to front the research and development costs, and it can use government personnel and facilities for the research. Each side gets to keep the products of the collaboration private until they choose to disclose them. In the end, the company has the exclusive patent rights to build whatever was designed, and the government can use any information that was generated during the collaboration.

It’s not clear what the NSA and Google built after the China hack. But a spokeswoman at the agency gave hints at the time the agreement was written. “As a general matter, as part of its information-assurance mission, NSA works with a broad range of commercial partners and research associates to ensure the availability of secure tailored solutions for Department of Defense and national security systems customers,” she said. It was the phrase “tailored solutions” that was so intriguing. That implied something custom built for the agency, so that it could perform its intelligence-gathering mission. According to officials who were privy to the details of Google’s arrangements with the NSA, the company agreed to provide information about traffic on its networks in exchange for intelligence from the NSA about what it knew of foreign hackers. It was a quid pro quo, information for information.

And from the NSA’s perspective, information in exchange for protection.

The cooperative agreement and reference to a “tailored solution” strongly suggest that Google and the NSA built a device or a technique for monitoring intrusions into the company’s networks. That would give the NSA valuable information for its so-called active defense system, which uses a combination of automated sensors and algorithms to detect malware or signs of an imminent attack and take action against them. One system, called Turmoil, detects traffic that might pose a threat. Then, another automated system called Turbine decides whether to allow the traffic to pass or to block it. Turbine can also select from a number of offensive software programs and hacking techniques that a human operator can use to disable the source of the malicious traffic. He might reset the source’s Internet connection or redirect the traffic to a server under the NSA’s control. There the source can be injected with a virus or spyware, so the NSA can continue to monitor it.

For Turbine and Turmoil to work, the NSA needs information, particularly about the data flowing over a network. With its millions of customers around the world, Google is effectively a directory of people using the Internet. It has their e-mail addresses. It knows where they’re physically located when they log in. It knows what they search for on the web. The government could command the company to turn over that information, and it does as part of the NSA’s Prism program, which Google had been participating in for a year by the time it signed the cooperative agreement with the NSA. But that tool is used for investigating people whom the government suspects of terrorism or espionage.

The NSA’s cyber defense mission takes a broader view across networks for potential threats, sometimes before it knows who those threats are. Under Google’s terms of service, the company advises its users that it may share their “personal information” with outside organizations, including government agencies, in order to “detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues” and to “protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google.” According to people familiar with the NSA and Google’s arrangement, it does not give the government permission to read Google users’ e-mails.

They can do that under Prism. Rather, it lets the NSA evaluate Google hardware and software for vulnerabilities that hackers might exploit. Considering that the NSA is the single biggest collector of zero day vulnerabilities, that information would help make Google more secure than others that don’t get access to such prized secrets. The agreement also lets the agency analyze intrusions that have already occurred, so it can help trace them back to their source.

Google took a risk forming an alliance with the NSA. The company’s corporate motto, “Don’t be evil,” would seem at odds with the work of a covert surveillance and cyber warfare agency. But Google got useful information in return for its cooperation. Shortly after the China revelation, the government gave Sergey Brin, Google’s cofounder, a temporary security clearance that allowed him to attend a classified briefing about the campaign against his company. Government analysts had concluded that the intrusion was directed by a unit of the People’s Liberation Army. This was the most specific information Google could obtain about the source of the intrusion. It could help Google fortify its systems, block traffic from certain Internet addresses, and make a more informed decision about whether it wanted to do business in China at all. Google’s executives might pooh-pooh the NSA’s “secret sauce.” But when the company found itself under attack, it turned to Fort Meade for help.

In its blog post, Google said that more than twenty companies had been hit by the China hackers, in a campaign that was later dubbed Aurora after a file name on the attackers’ computer. A security research firm soon put the number of targets at around three dozen. Actually, the scope of Chinese spying was, and is, much larger.

Security experts in and outside of government have a name for the hackers behind campaigns such as Aurora and others targeting thousands of other companies in practically every sector of the U.S. economy: the advanced persistent threat. It’s an ominous-sounding title, and a euphemistic one. When government officials mention “APT” today, what they often mean is China, and more specifically, hackers working at the direction of Chinese military and intelligence officials or on their behalf.

The “advanced” part of the description refers in part to the hackers’ techniques, which are as effective as any the NSA employs. The Chinese cyber spies can use an infected computer’s own chat and instant-messenger applications to communicate with a command-and-control server. They can implant a piece of malware and then remotely customize it, adding new information-harvesting features. The government apparatus supporting all this espionage is also advanced, more so than the loose-knit groups of cyber vandals or activists such as Anonymous that spy on companies for political purposes, or even the sophisticated Russian criminal groups, who are more interested in stealing bank account and credit card data. China plays a longer game. Its leaders want the country to become a first-tier economic and industrial power in a single generation, and they are prepared to steal the knowledge they need to do it, U.S. officials say.

That’s where the “persistent” part comes into play. Gathering that much information, from so many sources, requires a relentless effort, and the will and financial resources to try many different kinds of intrusion techniques, including expensive zero day exploits. Once the spies find a foothold inside an organization’s networks, they don’t let go unless they’re forced out. And even then they quickly return. The “threat” such spying poses to the U.S. economy takes the form of lost revenue and strategic position. But also the risk that the Chinese military will gain hidden entry points into critical-infrastructure control systems in the United States. U.S. intelligence officials believe that the Chinese military has mapped out infrastructure control networks so that if the two nations ever went to war, the Chinese could hit American targets such as electrical grids or gas pipelines without having to launch a missile or send a fleet of bombers.

Operation Aurora was the first glimpse into the breadth of the ATP’s exploits. It was the first time that names of companies had been attached to Chinese espionage. “The scope of this is much larger than anybody has ever conveyed,” Kevin Mandia, CEO and president of Mandiant, a computer security and forensics company located outside Washington, said at the time of Operation Aurora. The APT represented hacking on a national, strategic level. “There [are] not 50 companies compromised. There are thousands of companies compromised. Actively, right now,” said Mandia, a veteran cyber investigator who began his career as a computer security officer in the air force and worked there on cybercrime cases. Mandiant was becoming a goto outfit that companies called whenever they discovered spies had penetrated their networks. Shortly after the Google breach, Mandiant disclosed the details of its investigations in a private meeting with Defense Department officials a few days before speaking publicly about it.

The APT is not one body but a collection of hacker groups that include teams working for the People’s Liberation Army, as well as so-called patriotic hackers, young, enterprising geeks who are willing to ply their trade in service of their country. Chinese universities are also stocked with computer science students who work for the military after graduation. The APT hackers put a premium on stealth and patience. They use zero days and install backdoors. They take time to identify employees in a targeted organization, and send them carefully crafted spear-phishing e-mails laden with spyware. They burrow into an organization, and they often stay there for months or years before anyone finds them, all the while siphoning off plans and designs, reading e-mails and their attachments, and keeping tabs on the comings and goings of employees — the hackers’ future targets. The Chinese spies behave, in other words, like their American counterparts.

No intelligence organization can survive if it doesn’t know its enemy. As expansive as the NSA’s network of sensors is, it’s sometimes easier to get precise intelligence about hacking campaigns from the targets themselves. That’s why the NSA partnered with Google. It’s why when Mandiant came calling with intelligence on the APT, officials listened to what the private sleuths had to say. Defending cyberspace is too big a job even for the world’s elite spy agency. Whether they like it or not, the NSA and corporations must fight this foe together.

Google’s Sergey Brin is just one of hundreds of CEOs who have been brought into the NSA’s circle of secrecy. Starting in 2008, the agency began offering executives temporary security clearances, some good for only one day, so they could sit in on classified threat briefings.

“They indoctrinate someone for a day, and show them lots of juicy intelligence about threats facing businesses in the United States,” says a telecommunications company executive who has attended several of the briefings, which are held about three times a year. The CEOs are required to sign an agreement pledging not to disclose anything they learn in the briefings. “They tell them, in so many words, if you violate this agreement, you will be tried, convicted, and spend the rest of your life in prison,” says the executive.

Why would anyone agree to such severe terms? “For one day, they get to be special and see things few others do,” says the telecom executive, who, thanks to having worked regularly on classified projects, holds high-level clearances and has been given access to some of the NSA’s most sensitive operations, including the warrantless surveillance program that began after the 9/11 attacks. “Alexander became personal friends with many CEOs” through these closed-door sessions, the executive adds. “I’ve sat through some of these and said, ‘General, you tell these guys things that could put our country in danger if they leak out.’ And he said, ‘I know. But that’s the risk we take. And if it does leak out, they know what the consequences will be.’ ”

But the NSA doesn’t have to threaten the executives to get their attention. The agency’s revelations about stolen data and hostile intrusions are frightening in their own right, and deliberately so. “We scare the bejeezus out of them,” a government official told National Public Radio in 2012. Some of those executives have stepped out of their threat briefings meeting feeling like the defense contractor CEOs who, back in the summer of 2007, left the Pentagon with “white hair.”

Unsure how to protect themselves, some CEOs will call private security companies such as Mandiant. “I personally know of one CEO for whom [a private NSA threat briefing] was a life-changing experience,” Richard Bejtlich, Mandiant’s chief security officer, told NPR. “General Alexander sat him down and told him what was going on. This particular CEO, in my opinion, should have known about [threats to his company] but did not, and now it has colored everything about the way he thinks about this problem.”

The NSA and private security companies have a symbiotic relationship. The government scares the CEOs and they run for help to experts such as Mandiant. Those companies, in turn, share what they learn during their investigations with the government, as Mandiant did after the Google breach in 2010. The NSA has also used the classified threat briefings to spur companies to strengthen their defenses.

In one 2010 session, agency officials said they’d discovered a flaw in personal computer firmware — the onboard memory and codes that tell the machine how to work — that could allow a hacker to turn the computer “into a brick,” rendering it useless. The CEOs of computer manufacturers who attended the meeting, and who were previously aware of the design flaw, ordered it fixed.

Private high-level meetings are just one way the NSA has forged alliances with corporations. Several classified programs allow companies to share the designs of their products with the agency so it can inspect them for flaws and, in some instances, install backdoors or other forms of privileged access. The types of companies that have shown the NSA their products include computer, server, and router manufacturers; makers of popular software products, including Microsoft; Internet and e-mail service providers; telecommunications companies; satellite manufacturers; antivirus and Internet security companies; and makers of encryption algorithms.

The NSA helps the companies find weaknesses in their products. But it also pays the companies not to fix some of them. Those weak spots give the agency an entry point for spying or attacking foreign governments that install the products in their intelligence agencies, their militaries, and their critical infrastructure. Microsoft, for instance, shares zero day vulnerabilities in its products with the NSA before releasing a public alert or a software patch, according to the company and U.S. officials. Cisco, one of the world’s top network equipment makers, leaves backdoors in its routers so they can be monitored by U.S. agencies, according to a cyber security professional who trains NSA employees in defensive techniques. And McAfee, the Internet security company, provides the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI with network traffic flows, analysis of malware, and information about hacking trends.

Companies that promise to disclose holes in their products only to the spy agencies are paid for their silence, say experts and officials who are familiar with the arrangements. To an extent, these openings for government surveillance are required by law. Telecommunications companies in particular must build their equipment in such a way that it can be tapped by a law enforcement agency presenting a court order, like for a wiretap. But when the NSA is gathering intelligence abroad, it is not bound by the same laws. Indeed, the surveillance it conducts via backdoors and secret flaws in hardware and software would be illegal in most of the countries where it occurs.

Of course, backdoors and unpatched flaws could also be used by hackers. In 2010 a researcher at IBM publicly revealed a flaw in a Cisco operating system that allows a hacker to use a backdoor that was supposed to be available only to law enforcement agencies. The intruder could hijack the Cisco device and use it to spy on all communications passing through it, including the content of e-mails. Leaving products vulnerable to attack, particularly ubiquitous software programs like those produced by Microsoft, puts millions of customers and their private information at risk and jeopardizes the security of electrical power facilities, public utilities, and transportation systems.

Under U.S. law, a company’s CEO is required to be notified whenever the government uses its products, services, or facilities for intelligence-gathering purposes. Some of these information-sharing arrangements are brokered by the CEOs themselves and may be reviewed only by a few lawyers. The benefits of such cooperation can be profound. John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, became friends with George W. Bush when he was in office. In April 2006, Chambers and the president ate lunch together at the White House with Chinese president Hu Jintao, and the next day Bush gave Chambers a lift on Air Force One to San Jose, where the president joined the CEO at Cisco headquarters for a panel discussion on American business competitiveness. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger also joined the conversation. Proximity to political power is its own reward. But preferred companies also sometimes receive early warnings from the government about threats against them.

The Homeland Security Department also conducts meetings with companies through its “cross sector working groups” initiative. These sessions are a chance for representatives from the universe of companies with which the government shares intelligence to meet with one another and hear from U.S. officials. The attendees at these meetings often have security clearances and have undergone background checks and interviews. The department has made the schedule and agendas of some of these meetings public, but it doesn’t disclose the names of companies that participated or many details about what they discussed.

Between January 2010 and October 2013, the period for which public records are available, the government held at least 168 meetings with companies just in the cross sector working group. There have been hundreds more meetings broken out by specific industry categories, such as energy, telecommunications, and transportation.

A typical meeting may include a “threat briefing” by a U.S. government official, usually from the NSA, the FBI, or the Homeland Security Department; updates on specific initiatives, such as enhancing bank website security, improving information sharing among utility companies, or countering malware; and discussion of security “tools” that have been developed by the government and industry, such as those used to detect intruders on a network. One meeting in April 2012 addressed “use cases for enabling information sharing for active cyber defense,” the NSA-pioneered process of disabling cyber threats before they can do damage. The information sharing in this case was not among government agencies but among corporations.

Most meetings have dealt with protecting industrial control systems, the Internet-connected devices that regulate electrical power equipment, nuclear reactors, banks, and other vital facilities. That’s the weakness in U.S. cyberspace that most worries intelligence officials. It was the subject that so animated George W. Bush in 2007 and that Barack Obama addressed publicly two years later. The declassified agendas for these meetings offer a glimpse at what companies and the government are building for domestic cyber defense.

On September 23, 2013, the Cross Sector Enduring Security Framework Operations Working Group discussed an update to an initiative described as “Connect Tier 1 and USG Operations Center.” “Tier 1” usually refers to a major Internet service provider or network operator. Some of the best-known Tier 1 companies in the United States are AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink. “USG” refers to the U.S. government. The initiative likely refers to a physical connection running from an NSA facility to those companies, as part of an expansion of the DIB pilot program. The expansion was authorized by a presidential executive order in February 2013 aimed at increasing security of critical-infrastructure sites around the country. The government, mainly through the NSA, gives threat intelligence to two Internet service providers, AT&T and CenturyLink. They, in turn, can sell “enhanced cybersecurity services,” as the program is known, to companies that the government deems vital to national and economic security. The program is nominally run by the Homeland Security Department, but the NSA provides the intelligence and the technical expertise.

Through this exchange of intelligence, the government has created a cyber security business. AT&T and CenturyLink are in effect its private sentries, selling protection to select corporations and industries. AT&T has one of the longest histories of any company participating in government surveillance. It was among the first firms that voluntarily handed over call records of its customers to the NSA following the 9/11 attacks, so the agency could mine them for potential connections to terrorists — a program that continues to this day. Most phone calls in the United States pass through AT&T equipment at some point, regardless of which carrier initiates them. The company’s infrastructure is one of the most important and frequently tapped repositories of electronic intelligence for the NSA and U.S. law enforcement agencies.

CenturyLink, which has its headquarters in Monroe, Louisiana, has been a less familiar name in intelligence circles over the years. But in 2011 the company acquired Qwest Communications, a telecommunications firm that is well known to the NSA. Before the 9/11 attacks, NSA officials approached Qwest executives and asked for access to its high-speed fiber-optic networks, in order to monitor them for potential cyber attacks. The company rebuffed the agency’s requests because officials hadn’t obtained a court order to get access to the company’s equipment. After the terrorist attacks, NSA officials again came calling, asking Qwest to hand over its customers’ phone records without a court-approved warrant, as AT&T had done. Again, the company refused. It took another ten years and the sale of the company, but Qwest’s networks are now a part of the NSA’s extended security apparatus.

The potential customer base for government-supplied cyber intelligence, sold through corporations, is as diverse as the U.S. economy itself. To obtain the information, a company must meet the government’s definition of a critical infrastructure: “assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.” That may seem like a narrow definition, but the categories of critical infrastructure are numerous and vast, encompassing thousands of businesses. Officially, there are sixteen sectors: chemical; commercial facilities, to include shopping centers, sports venues, casinos, and theme parks; communications; critical manufacturing; dams; the defense industrial base; emergency services, such as first responders and search and rescue; energy; financial services; food and agriculture; government facilities; health care and public health; information technology; nuclear reactors, materials, and waste; transportation systems; and water and wastewater systems.

It’s inconceivable that every company on such a list could be considered “so vital to the United States” that its damage or loss would harm national security and public safety. And yet, in the years since the 9/11 attacks, the government has cast such a wide protective net that practically any company could claim to be a critical infrastructure. The government doesn’t disclose which companies are receiving cyber threat intelligence. And as of now the program is voluntary. But lawmakers and some intelligence officials, including Keith Alexander and others at the NSA, have pressed Congress to regulate the cyber security standards of critical-infrastructure owners and operators. If that were to happen, then the government could require that any company, from Pacific Gas and Electric to Harrah’s Hotels and Casinos, take the government’s assistance, share information about its customers with the intelligence agencies, and build its cyber defenses according to government specifications.

In a speech in 2013 the Pentagon’s chief cyber security adviser, Major General John Davis, announced that Homeland Security and the Defense Department were working together on a plan to expand the original DIB program to more sectors. They would start with energy, transportation, and oil and natural gas, “things that are critical to DOD’s mission and the nation’s economic and national security that we do not directly control,” Davis said. The general called foreign hackers’ mapping of these systems and potential attacks “an imminent threat.” The government will never be able to manage such an extensive security regime on its own. It can’t now, which is why it relies on AT&T and CenturyLink. More companies will flock to this new mission as the government expands the cyber perimeter. The potential market for cyber security services is practically limitless.

Excerpted from “@WAR: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex” by Shane Harris. Copyright © 2014 by Shane Harris. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Shane Harris is the author of The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State, which won the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism and was named one of the best books of 2010 by the Economist. Harris won the 2010 Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense. He is currently senior writer at Foreign Policy magazine and an ASU fellow at the New America Foundation, where he researches the future of war.

November 24, Deal or no Deal for Iran and Kerry

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Tensions and meetings are mounting as the November 24 date approaches. If a deal is reached you can be the 114th session of the U.S. Congress will scrutinize every word as no one has trusted Barack Obama or John Kerry on this process. Allies have been sidelined in the process and betrayal is on the horizon if a deal is struck.

Meanwhile Iran demands that the West comply with their demands and such demands have not been spelled out or forthcoming. If no deal is reached the consequences are just as bad if not worse. This is a time to look cautiously at allies, territory, weapons, dates and sanctions.

Meanwhile there is Oman, a quiet and settled country that has been an interlocutor in the process.

US State Department spokeswoman Psaki said that the US remained “very focused” on making progress in talks with Iran and on signing an agreement by the November 24 deadline.

MOSCOW, November 10 (Sputnik) – The talks in Oman on Iran’s controversial nuclear program were “tough, direct and serious,” US Department of State spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Monday.

The talks involved EU diplomat Catherine Ashton, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Psaki said her country remained “very focused” on making progress in talks with the Islamic Republic and on signing the agreement by the November 24 deadline.

“There is still time to do so,” she told reporters.

The meeting between the three foreign policy chiefs wrapped up the second day of talks in the run-up to broader negotiations between Iran, EU’s Ashton and P5+1, which includes Russia, the United States, Britain, France, China, and Germany.

The trilateral meeting was called to address major differences that have been hindering a comprehensive agreement. On Sunday, the three envoys discussed Iran’s uranium enrichment program and the possibility of easing Western sanctions against Tehran.

The talks between Iran and the group of six powers will continue on Tuesday in the city of Muscat, Oman.

The West has accused Iran of attempting to build nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear program, while Tehran argues that its nuclear ambition is to meet the country’s growing energy needs and achieve other peaceful goals.

Last January the United States agreed to provide limited sanctions relief if Iran froze its nuclear program. Since then, Iran has halted production and opened the door to international inspectors.

In November 2013, during talks held in Geneva, the P5+1 group agreed to reach a deal with the Tehran delegation, guaranteeing the peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program by July 2014. The deadline was later extended to November 24, 2014.

So what is in Oman’s future? One of my favorite analysts has published a soft alarm bell.

Could Oman be the Next Crisis?

by Michael Rubin Commentary November 14, 2014

http://www.michaelrubin.org/15656/oman-crisis

 

In 1970, with British help and support, Qaboos bin Sa’id overthrew his father and took the reins of powers in the Sultanate of Oman. Sultan Qaboos was an enlightened monarch, and firmly guided the xenophobic and isolationist state back into the modern world. Oman has since been a model of neutrality and tolerance, often acting as a bridge between regional adversaries (it is no coincidence that Oman served as the initial go-between for U.S.-Iran talks). Nevertheless, when push came to shove, Oman has done what is needed to combat terrorism. U.S. aircraft based in Oman launched some of the initial airstrikes against the Taliban during Operation Enduring Freedom.

Oman is also strategically important. For all Western policymakers fret about Iranian activities in the Strait of Hormuz, they often forget that Oman occupies one side of the important waterway. Should Iran gain a toehold on both sides of the Strait, the calculus of Persian Gulf security would change.

Alas, the status quo cannot last forever. Sultan Qaboos is aging. A “confirmed bachelor,” Qaboos has produced no offspring. Succession looms. And, perhaps never closer than now. ForeignPolicy.com today has an interesting piece speculating that Qaboos, who will turn 74 next week, may be on his deathbed. The Sultan has in recent weeks sought to dispel the rumors that he suffers from terminal colon cancer, but his frail appearance and his subsequent cancellation of his forthcoming national day appearance have added fuel to the fire.

In theory, when Qaboos dies, a new leader is supposed to be chosen by consensus among the leading factions of the royal elite. But if there is no consensus, then a letter that Qaboos will leave should help determine that successor. The problem is that surrounding countries have everything to gain and nothing to lose by disputing the authenticity of such a letter or by putting forward fraudulent copies favoring their own proxy. While it’s doubtful that Oman will make as radical a political shift as it did as a result of the last succession, the failure of the White House to adopt a proactive strategy toward the region does put its future in doubt. While Washington shouldn’t necessarily muck about in Omani royal politics, it is a vital interest to protect the integrity of the process and prevent Iran from doing so.

There are a few nightmare scenarios. One is that a pro-Iranian ruler will become Oman’s next leader. Another is an outbreak of fighting. This is farfetched, of course. Just as Saudi troops invaded Bahrain to prevent a Shi’ite triumph over the Khalifa ruling family, it would not sit idly while another friendly monarchy fell to what it considers hostile forces. Then again, Oman is neither Sunni nor Shi’ite, and so long as the monarchy isn’t threatened—and it won’t be—then Saudi Arabia might choose more subtle ways to interfere.

Herein lays another danger. Should both Iran and Saudi Arabia begin supporting proxy figures or movements, it might not be long before this undercut Omani stability in other ways. After all, Oman has been a pillar of stability for decades, but then again so was Syria; at least since Hafez al-Assad staged his 1970 coup. Oman could also face the resurgence of regional tension; it wasn’t too long ago in the scheme of things that it fought an insurgency against communist rebels in Dhofar.

Let us hope that Qaboos overcomes his current health crisis but, realistically, septuagenarian leaders do not last forever. The United States should hope for the best in Oman, but it’s long past time when U.S. officials should plan for the worst. Alas, planning for the worst case is something to which too often American strategists across administrations seem adverse. We should not be. Oman is too important to lose.