Hardly a day goes by it seems without a news article, column, or statement from a prominent leader on the likelihood of war with Iran. Yesterday’s example was this column by David Ignatius:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has a lot on his mind these days, from cutting the defense budget to managing the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But his biggest worry is the growing possibility that Israel will attack Iran over the next few months.

Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June — before Iran enters what Israelis described as a “zone of immunity” to commence building a nuclear bomb. Very soon, the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon — and only the United States could then stop them militarily.

Mr. Ignatius is an opinion writer (it says so right below his name). His column does not offer an explicit opinion, an odd choice for an opinion writer. I do not know whether he has an opinion on the subject or has some reason to avoid taking a stand.

In the months before the U. S. invasion of Iraq, there were complaints, too few, unfortunately, of a “drumbeat to war”. I believe that columns of this sort are just that sort of drumbeat. By not taking an explicit position against a U. S. attack on Iran, a column like this renders the idea more acceptable, part of the prevailing wisdom. As I read Mr. Ignatius’s columns, he is the doyen of the prevailing wisdom.

I do have an opinion. I do not believe that, in the absence of a direct attack by Iran on the U. S. or U. S. interests, the U. S. should bomb or invade Iran. I know of no evidence that Iran is preparing to attack the United States. An attack by the U. S. in the absence of such evidence such an attack would be preventive in nature. Preventive war is immoral.

Furthermore, our on-the-ground intelligence in Iran is notoriously bad. I find it highly unlikely that limited strikes against presumed nuclear weapons development sites will do more than slow a nuclear weapons development program by more than a few years and it will certainly incentivize such a program. It also might rally the people to the present regime, very much the opposite of what we might wish to happen.

Finally, Iran is not Afghanistan or Iraq. Remember what Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: if you strike at a king you must kill him.

I invite my colleagues at OTB to update this post with their own opinions on the subject. Commenters, weigh in in the comments. Please keep your remarks as succinct and dispassionate as I have attempted to keep mine.

UPDATE (James Joyner): Longtime readers will know that I oppose military intervention in Iran to prevent their acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Given the regime’s enmity toward the United States and history of promulgating terrorist violence  against the United States and its allies, I have no moral objections to doing so. Rather, I think there are no politically acceptable military solutions to the problem. Further, I’m not entirely convinced that an Iranian regime with a handful of nuclear weapons even constitutes a particularly significant threat to the United States.

Among people whose views on the matter I respect, few think we can significantly disrupt Iran’s nuclear drive from the air. The most notable exception is Chuck Wald, who made his case in an August 2009 WSJ op-ed. But even he allows that it would set of a perpetual game of cat and mouse rather than being a permanent solution.

We could, of course, follow an air attack with a ground invasion, decapitate the regime, and establish a long term occupation aimed at dismantling the nuclear program and installing a more friendly government. That option, however, is not only not politically viable at home but would almost surely create ripple effects in the region that would leave us less secure than we’d be if we just let Iran alone.

Finally, the notion that a nuclear Iran would pose some sort of existential threat to the United States–or even Israel–seems far-fetched. While the notion that the ayatollahs are a bunch of madmen eager for martyrdom may have been plausible 30 years ago, they’ve certainly demonstrated in the interim that they’re rational actors interested in long term survival. Frankly,  we’ve had some really bad actors in charge of significant nuclear arsenals over the years. Joe Stalin. Mao Zedong. Kim Jong Il. Not to mention the unstable morass that is Pakistan. None has ever launched a nuclear attack on their enemies.

Indeed, while my strong preference would be that Iran not get nukes, there’s an argument to be made that being a possessor nation would actually make them less threatening simply because they’d feel less threatened. Right now, they have to live under the constant specter of an Israeli, American, or Arab attack. As North Korea demonstrated, it’s better to be the nuclear end of the axis of evil than the non-nuclear end. And, as Libya demonstrated, it’s probably not a good idea to give up your nuclear program for a bag of magic beans.

Update (Doug Mataconis): I generally agree with James and Dave on this issue. Absent an attack or direct threat to the United States, or vital American interests, I see no justification for military action against Iran. Not only should our experiences in Iraq  and elsewhere educate us on this regard, but the rather obvious potential consequences of war should cause anyone in the “Bomb Iran” crowd to pause before pumping their fist in victory. Increased terrorism, threats to shipping in the Persian Gulf, and a massive oil spike are only the most obvious unintended consequences of military action, any one of which would turn an “easy” military strike into something that has long term consequences for the region and the world.

There are three dangers that we need to be aware of as we get closer to what seems like a final decision point. First, the antipathy toward Iran in the United States that goes back some three decades makes it far too easy for pro-war advocates to whip up war fervor among the public. Second, Iran itself seems intent on acting in a manner that provokes its enemies. Barring inspectors, war games in the Straits of Hormuz, and apparently plotting terrorism inside the United States are just a few of the actions we’ve seen most recently that seem guaranteed to help raise tensions to a tripwire level very quickly. Finally, this decision may not be entirely in our control. Israel is likely to strike out if it feels it has no other choice, and that is likely to lead to a wider conflict. So far, we’ve been successfully in convincing the Israelis to calm down vis a vis Iran but we may be nearing the point where those assurances aren’t going to be good enough. At that point, we may have war whether we want it or not.

The Federal Customs Service said in a statement that its agents found 18 pieces of metal at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport after a radiation alert went on. It says the gauges showed that radiation levels were 20 times higher than normal.

It was not immediately clear if the substance could have any use in Iran’s controversial nuclear program.

Sodium-22 emits positrons and has a long half-life. For that reason it’s used for point sources in PET (positron emission tomography) scanners. I know of no military applications for it or any way in which it might be useful in Iran’s nuclear development program.

I think there are a couple of ways to read this story. First and foremost, I think it illustrates the impact that trade restrictions are having on Iran. The difficulty of getting certain materials into Iran probably makes this sort of smuggling worthwhile. Second, I find it somewhat reassuring that the Russian authorities are paying attention to this stuff.

Something remarkable is going on in China:

For the first time on record, the Chinese Communist party has lost all control, with the population of 20,000 in this southern fishing village now in open revolt.

The last of Wukan’s dozen party officials fled on Monday after thousands of people blocked armed police from retaking the village, standing firm against tear gas and water cannons.

Since then, the police have retreated to a roadblock, some three miles away, in order to prevent food and water from entering, and villagers from leaving. Wukan’s fishing fleet, its main source of income, has also been stopped from leaving harbour.

The original cause of the protest seems to be about the village’s land having been forcibly sold off. That’s not an isolated complaint. During China’s property bubble, which some argue is beginning to burst, there have been frequent complaints along these lines. However, to my knowledge this is the first time that a protest about land has risen to the level of civil order breaking down and the Chinese Communist Party losing control of a village.

According to some reports China has something between 100,000 and 150,000 protests per year over forced relocation, official corruption, environmental degradation, and any number of other reasons. The number of protesters in Wukan is said to be from 10,000 to 20,000. A few Western reporters have managed to sneak in to the village and I’ve also heard some rumors of satellite photography of them.

Year of the protester, indeed.

• a mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally
• a severe North Korean crisis (e.g., armed provocations, internal political instability, advances in nuclear weapons/ICBM capability)
• a major military incident with China involving U.S. or allied forces
• an Iranian nuclear crisis (e.g., surprise advances in nuclear weapons/delivery capability, Israeli response)
• a highly disruptive cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications, electrical power, gas and oil, water supply, banking and finance, transportation, and emergency services)
• a significant increase in drug trafficking violence in Mexico that spills over into the United States
• severe internal instability in Pakistan, triggered by a civil-military crisis or terror attacks
• political instability in Saudi Arabia that endangers global oil supplies
• a U.S.-Pakistan military confrontation, triggered by a terror attack or U.S. counterterror operations
• intensification of the European sovereign debt crisis that leads to the collapse of the euro, triggering a double-dip U.S. recession and further limiting budgetary resources

The first-listed Tier II contingency is political instability in Egypt.

Tier III contingencies include conflict between the Sudans, political instability in Nigeria, and a host of others.

Have a nice day!

Well, this sounds familiar:

Dozens of hard-line Iranian students stormed the British Embassy in Tehran on Tuesday, bringing down the Union Jack flag and throwing documents from windows in scenes reminiscent of the anger against Western powers after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The mob moved into the diplomatic compound two days after Iran’s parliament approved a bill that reduces diplomatic relations with Britain following London’s support of recently upgraded Western sanctions on Tehran over its disputed nuclear program.

The protesters broke through after clashing with anti-riot police and chanting for its takeover. “Death to England,” some cried in the first significant assault of a foreign diplomatic area in Iran in years.

There was no immediate word on casualties or how many embassy employees were inside at the time of the assault, although it occurred after business hours had ended. More protesters poured into the compound as police tried to clear the site.

Smoke rose from some areas of the embassy grounds and the British flag was replaced with a banner in the name of 7th century Shiite saint, Imam Hussein.

The occupier called for the closure of the embassy calling it a “spy den” — the same phrase used after militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 hostages for 444 days. Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic relations since then.

This comes on the heels of moves by the Iranian government to retaliate against the UK over sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program:

A bill to downgrade Iran’s ties with Britain got final approval on Monday a day after parliament approved the measure compelling the government to expel the British ambassador in retaliation for sanctions imposed over Tehran’s nuclear activity.

The exceptionally rapid move by the Guardian Council, a panel of 12 clerics and jurists who judge whether legislation is Islamic, reflects the urgency with which Iran is treating its reaction to the sanctions announced by Britain last week.

Britain acted after a November 8 report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog presenting intelligence it said suggested Iran had worked on designing an atom bomb. Iran says the intelligence is forged and that its nuclear program has wholly peaceful aims.

“The members of the Guardian Council, after examination of the plan, have approved it unanimously,” council spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai was quoted as saying on the website of the Iranian state broadcaster IRIB.

The bill requires the departure of the British ambassador within two weeks, leaving the embassy to be run by a charge d’affaires. The British government has called the legislation “regrettable” and “unwarranted.”

It’s being reported that as many as 50 embassy employees may have still be in the embassy when the students entered, but that many escaped out the back of the building. Hopefully, this doesn’t develop into a hostage situation.

The New York Times reports that the British Foreign Office is not amused:

The British Foreign Office in London said in a statement that there had been an “incursion by a significant number of demonstrators into our embassy premises, including vandalism to our property.”

“This is a fluid situation and details are still emerging,” the statement said.”It is utterly unacceptable and we condemn it,” the Foreign Office statement said, adding that Iranian authorities had “a clear duty” under international law “to protect diplomats and embassies in their country.”

“We expect them to act urgently to bring the situation under control and ensure the safety of our staff and security of our property,” the statement said.

One would hope that situation will be diffused quickly. In fact, al-Arabyia is reported that Iranian police are trying to clear the students from the embassy, which at least suggests that this doesn’t have any kind of official support.

More to come, I’m sure.

Update

Reuters is reporting that Mehr, a “semi-official” Iranian news agency, first announced that six hostages had been taken in the storming of the British embassy and then rescinded the claim. The Times of India, apparently, repeated the original announcement. As of this writing there are no confirmations of whether hostages have or have not been taken.

Update 2

The Telegraph has live updates on the storming of the British embassy in Tehran. They’re reporting that Fars is reporting that the “protesters” have left the embassy. Fars’s English language version’s most recent report is that Iran’s deputy police chief has issued a warning to the “protesters” from the embassy’s central compound to leave the premises.

In the wake of Doug’s post on Ralph Peters’s column on the costs of attacking Iran I thought I’d put a little perspective on the question by doing a side-by-side comparison of Iraq and Iran.

In Iraq we see a mostly flat, relatively small, lower middle class or poor country with a fractious population. In Iran we see some of the most rugged country in the world in a territory more than twice the size of Afghanistan and four times the size of Iraq, more than twice the population of Iraq and three times the population of Afghanistan, with a substantial middle class economy. I would also claim that Iran has a lot more social cohesion than Iraq but I guess that would be contentious.

There is no such thing as a limited war with Iran. That’s crazy talk.

This weekend marks the tenth anniversary of the most lethal terrorist attack on American soil. OTB’s writers offer their thoughts on our progress.

Dave Schuler: Despite the passage of ten years, the expenditure of trillions of dollars, and the loss of thousands of lives, we are no safer than we were ten years ago. To understand why you don’t need to engage in yet another futile and frustrating rehashing of our actions since the attacks on September 11, 2001. We have done very little if anything to address the critical success factors for the attacks and, consequently, the risk of a devastating attack is just as high as it was on 9/10.

Afghanistan was not a critical success factor behind the attacks. There are hundreds of square miles of ungoverned territory between the Bosporus and the Indus and in the deserts of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The Taliban was not a critical success factor. They are not the only Islamist masters of a state who sponsor terrorism. Osama bin Laden was not a critical success factor for the attacks. Any number of attacks have taken place since he went to ground shortly after the attacks and there continue to be threats after his death.

Certainly Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq, dangerous as it might have been, was not a critical success factor behind the attacks.

The actions that we have taken domestically especially including centralizing security agencies and federalizing airport boarding pre-screening have not addressed the critical success factors behind the attacks.

This is not to say that we should not have responded to the attacks or that we shouldn’t have removed the Taliban or pursued Osama bin Laden. Failing to respond in any would have placed us at even greater risk than we faced on 9/10.

In a sense looking for safety is asking the wrong question. If there is a single lesson that unites the Oklahoma City bombing, the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, and the attacks on 9/11, it is the enormous increase in individual empowerment. Individuals or small groups at relatively low expense can wreak tremendous devastation. This will only increase. Today radiological, chemical, and biological weapons are well within the capability of small groups without extensive funding. You can construct these things in your basement or even in the closet of your apartment bedroom. Fortunately, nuclear weapons appear to remain beyond the reach of anything but a state but that may not always continue to be the case.

Rather than looking for safety I believe we should be thinking more clearly about resilience. How can we make our institutions and ourselves more resilient to disruption and attack? We have hardly begun this inquiry.

James Joyner: The people who attacked us ten years ago are substantially weaker and less able to do us harm. It would now be so difficult to hijack a commercial airliner, much less four, that nobody has seriously tried.  We’ve hardened several other targets, most notably federal buildings and national monuments. We’ve raised citizen awareness, which has directly foiled attempted attacks. These factors help explain why there has not been another mass casualty terrorist attack on American soil in the intervening decade.

Mostly, though, it’s serendipity. After all, the only significant foreign terror attack within the country prior to 9/11 was the 1993 World Trade Center attack, in which massive deaths were averted only by the incompetence of the bombers. Then as now, most of the attacks on Americans take place where the terrorists live and thus have support networks: Karachi, Riyadh, Amman, Damascus, Mumbai.

I continue to be surprised, if thankful, that Israel-style suicide bombings haven’t caught on here. Three or four successful attacks in shopping malls, sports stadia, airports, and similar places where large crowds gather would cripple the country with fear and lead us to spend more trillions we don’t have hardening those targets at the expense of freedom and convenience.

Note that airports are on the list. We’ve made it much harder–although by no means impossible–to smuggle a bomb onto an airplane. But we’ve done it in a way that makes our airport terminals target rich environments, with hundreds of people queued up in a tight gaggle and focused only on making it through the infernal line.

Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan–which, unlike Dave, I supported–have bled our resources, diminished our soft power, and quite possibly bred more radicals than we’ve killed. Additionally, as my friend Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, author of the new book Bin Laden’s Legacy, argues,

We have an economy in shambles and a national debt of more than $14 trillion. If this continues, we won’t be able to maintain our current security apparatus and our ability to project power — both seriously expensive enterprises — forever. A decade ago, American safety came in part from the fact that we had the capacity, if needed, to ramp up resources to devote to the problem. In the coming decade, fewer resources will be available to devote to counterterrorism and to other problems the country faces; just look at the political scuffle over finding federal money to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. In fact, if current concerns about U.S. creditworthiness snowball, the U.S. could come to have drastically fewer resources to deal with its challenges, foreseen and unforeseen.

It’s not just the U.S. that’s cost-cutting. Austerity is now a global phenomenon, with most developed countries trimming — or severely slashing — their intelligence and security budgets. Austerity can diminish capabilities as well as spread instability, as we saw in the riots in the UK and Greece.  The problem is compounded by resource scarcity — prices are skyrocketing for everything from oil to rare metals to food — further constraining the U.S. and its allies. Not only will we be more hard-pressed to prevent terrorism, but it will be more difficult to absorb another attack. Our resilience has eroded in multiple ways, from our weakened economy, which has increased joblessness and slashed personal savings, to the bitter partisan divide fraying American social cohesion.

Yes, as Michael Cohen responds, we’ve managed to “find” the money to not only sustain but ramp up spending in Afghanistan and elsewhere and would likely do the same were there another attack. But our economic might was the chief factor in turning us into a global superpower a century ago; our national security state is helping undermine that strength.

I wanted to draw your attention to an article by Anatoly Tsyganok, director of the Center for Military Forecasting in Russia, on the war in Libya. The Russian language original is here. Its appearance in RIA Novosti, the state-owned news agency, suggests it has a certain amount of official sanction. The article includes a summary of the situation to date, some description of the weapons that NATO has used, and NATO shortcomings the action has revealed. The quotes below are from the official English translation which I found a bit clunky.

The situation:

NATO’s military operation against Libya, conducted mainly by the armed forces of the US, France and Britain, is speeding up the formation of a new system of international relations. At the same time the war serves as a firing ground for testing the strategy of the United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM) in real combat situation as well as the efficiency of new weapons …

US and NATO strategists were wrong counting that the military campaign would be completed in several weeks. Under resolution № 1973 of the UN Security Council, no-fly zone over the air space of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was created, embargo on weapon supplies was introduced and the Libyan assets were frozen. The operation in Libya which was initially to be completed by June 27 was prolonged by 90 days till the end of September.

There have been reports in mass media that a wide-scale ground operation in Libya under the US command is being planned and the troops are expected to be deployed there by October. The Libyan war is the fifth in addition to four wars the US is conducting in Iraq, Afghanistan Pakistan and Yemen… The goals of the US permanent presence in Libya are to punish Gaddafi for his refusal to join USAFRICOM, to drive the Chinese away from Libya and to cut the access to oil resources for Europeans.

If the U. S. begins ground operations in Libya I will be greatly surprised. Flabbergasted. I think it’s far more likely that we will cease our air operations in Libya without a decisive conclusion than that we will begin ground operations there. I am further skeptical of his third speculative objective (“to cut the access to oil resources for Europeans”). I think that it’s more likely that the objective is to give France and, possibly, Italy a leg up on relations with a future Libyan government with possible increased influence on Libyan oil trade than it is to cut European access to that trade.

NATO shortcomings:

150 days of war have revealed the poor state of political and military coordination within NATO. France, which initiated the military operation, could do nothing with Gaddafi without US noise jammers, fuel tankers, AEW planes and cruise missiles. In order to employ dozens of their Tornado bomb fighters against Libya Brits had to leave half of their aircraft fleet in England without spare parts and to stop flights of its defensive fighters. The operation in Libya is a localized military conflict and if Europeans have problems with the ammunition already a couple months after the beginning of the campaign it would be reasonable to ask them what kind of war they were preparing for?

There is a very different take on the nature of the civil war than you have probably encountered in the Western media:

But NATO underestimated the moral and psychological state of the Libyan troops. The leadership of the US and NATO supposed that after the first strikes the army of Gaddafi will be defeated and the Libyan soldiers would begin to yield themselves prisoners, but the army of Gaddafi managed to keep its combat effectiveness. The Libyan army in March and the Libyan army in July of 2011 are two different armies in terms of tactics, effectiveness and courage. Those soldiers learn very fast. The task on the liquidation of the Libyan combat power remained unfulfilled. NATO and the US failed to gain full control over the coastline and the Western part of Libya.

Unexpectedly for the Western coalition, most of the population supported Gaddafi. According to mass media, about 70% of citizens of Libya either support their leader or stay neutral. The governmental troops are supported by the units of local defense (a reserve component of the armed forces) and the militia. It means that the leaders of the operation against Libya see the rebel minority not the majority which is loyal to Gaddafi as “peaceful population”.

Estimated costs of the operation:

As of June 3, the US’ expenditure on operation in Libya (only Pentagon related costs) amounted to $715.9 mln. The US servicemen supplied humanitarian aid worth $1 million, while another $1 mln was spent on replenishment of reserves of the US Defense Ministry. By September 30, the Libyan campaign will consume another $400 mln. Storm Shadow and Tomahawk missiles launched from submarines cost $1.1 million and ₤800,000 pounds each.

According to the French Defense Ministry, as of May 3, of total €53 million spent on the United Defender operation €31.7 million ($ 45.1 mln) was spent on the ammunition.

As of May 8, Great Britain’s expenditures on guided high precision weapon amounted ₤43.77 million ($71.8 million).

Sending 4 Tornado GR4 bombers, 3 Europe Typhoon jet fighters and support aircraft costs ₤3.216 million daily. One hour of operation of Tornado plane costs ₤33,000, including fuel, maintenance and crew training. Typhoon costs ₤80,000 per hour. Italy’s Defense Minister Ignazio la Russa announced that his country had reduced costs on participation in the operation in Libya from €142 million to €60 million).

By September 30, that total costs on the operation in Libya are expected to reach $1.1 billion.

The article isn’t long and contains some interesting details that, if they’ve been reported in the American press at all, have been hidden in the back pages. Obviously, I have no ability to vouch for the veracity of any of the facts reported.

There’s an interesting analysis of the Oslo killer’s manifesto from UC Davis sociologist John R. Hall that I’d like to bring to your attention. Here’s a snippet:

As others already have commented, the label of ‘Christian fundamentalist’ seems wrong, at least in conventional use of the term today. Certainly the author represents himself as a nationalist/European federalist conservative opposed to ‘cultural genocide’ of the Enlightenment West, and seemingly he proposes reinstitution of monarchy as more representative of a nation than democracy can be. Only very late in the missive, p. 1134, does he embrace Europe’s return to the traditional Catholic Church, for its apostolic succession of authority and its capacity to guide believers in matters of scripture. This development is to be coupled with a re-initation of patriarchy, developed in substantial detail (p. 1141ff.), and concern about ‘the ongoing genocide of the Nordic tribes’ and a discussion of its genetic basis and the dangers of miscegenation and sexual promiscuity (including a discussion of ‘erotic capital,’ leading to a frank discussion of the possibility that the state could ‘play an essential role in national reproduction’ (p. 1157ff.; quote, p. 1185). The treatise goes on to mention future education, economic, pollution-control, population-control, crime, cultural/anti-multicultural, deportation, and youth policies, as well as discussing financing an organization, categories of traitors (A, B, and C). In short, it is a comprehensive (in Mannheim’s terms) ‘utopian’ vision, i.e., one that could never be realized in the world as it is presently institutionalized.

Read the whole thing. It’s not terribly long.

At first glance and at a distance since I haven’t read the heinous perpetrator of the murders in Norway’s manifesto and don’t plan on reading it, it appears to me that he has embraced the underlying apocalyptic utopian viewpoint of Al Qaeda, substituting Christendom for Caliphate and Templars for Islamist martyrs. Disquietingly, the manifesto does not appear to be the ravings of a madman but, rather, “incredibly chilling in its ruthless rationality and relative coherence”

I can only hope that, like the Unabomber, the Oslo killer is a solitary aberration rather than the vanguard of a movement.

A bomb blast in Oslo’s government center that has killed at least two people and a presumably related shooting spree at a nearby children’s camp are being investigated as terrorist related.

Spiegel (“Violent Blast Rocks Government Quarter in Oslo“):

The center of the Norwegian capital Oslo was a scene of devastation on Friday afternoon following a violent explosion which killed at least two people and injured several. Police confimed that the blast was caused by “one or more” bombs and urged people to leave central Oslo.

The explosion blasted windows out of buildings in the city’s government quarter. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg was safe, however, according to a government spokeswoman. The prime minister was not in the government building when the explosion happened.

“This is very serious,” Stoltenberg later told Norwegian TV2 television in a telephone call. He did not disclose his location, explaining that police has advised him against doing so, but said that all government ministers appeared to be safe. It was too early to say if the explosion was a terrorist attack, he said.

Several government buildings were damaged in the explosion, which happened at 3:26 p.m. local time and was heard for kilometers around. The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten reported chaos in the streets near the site and people covered in blood. “It smells like sulphur,” one reporter at the scene said.

It seemed likely that the death toll would continue to rise. One reporter was quoted on the Aftenposten website as saying, “I saw dead people.” Senior Norwegian government official Kristian Amundsen told the BBC that people were trapped in the buildings affected by the blast. The situation was the worst his country had seen, he said.

[...]

Several terror experts have speculated that the blast could be the work of terrorists. “It is difficult to imagine this not being a terror attack,” said Norwegian terror expert Tore Bjørgo. “This is Norway’s greatest symbol of political power.”

Norway has faced several homegrown terror plots in recent years linked to al-Qaida. Last week, an Islamist cleric in the country was charged for making death threats against Norwegian politicians should he be deported from the country. There are over 400 Norwegian troops currently stationed in Afghanistan as part of NATO operations there.

Al-Qaida has long warned of a revenge attack in Scandinavia ever since a Danish newspaper published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad over five years ago. In its propaganda, al-Qaida makes little distinction between the Scandinavian countries. There have been several attempted attacks against Muhammad caricaturists in Denmark. Last December, a suicide bomber with ties to radical Islamists blew himself up in the Swedish capital Stockholm, though nobody was injured in the explosion.

BBC (“Oslo: Bomb blast near Norway prime minister’s office“) adds:

Police later said shots were fired at a Labour Party youth meeting near Oslo. Unconfirmed reports carried by Norwegian media said a man dressed as a police officer had opened fire indiscriminately.

Television footage from the government quarter showed rubble and glass from shattered windows in the streets – smoke was rising from some buildings where fires were burning. The wreckage of at least one car was on one street.

All roads into the city centre have been closed, said national broadcaster NRK, and security officials evacuated people from the area, fearing another blast.

Mr Stoltenberg, in a telephone call to Norwegian television, said all government ministers were believed to be safe. He said he had been advised by police not to reveal his current location. ”Even if one is well prepared, it is always rather dramatic when something like this happens,” he said.

[...]

State Secretary Kristian Amundsen said Friday was a public holiday in Norway so the offices were not as busy as they might usually have been. ”But there are many hundreds of people in these buildings every day,” he told the BBC. ”We have to focus on the rescue operation – there are still people in the building, there are still people in the hospital.”

Reuters said the oil ministry was among the other government buildings hit.

Oistein Mjarum, head of communications for the Norwegian Red Cross, said his offices were close to the site of the explosion. ”There was a massive explosion which could be heard over the capital Oslo,” he told the BBC. ”This is a very busy area on Friday afternoon and there was a lot of people in the streets, and many people working in these buildings that are now burning,” he said.

An NRK journalist, Ingunn Andersen, said the headquarters of tabloid newspaper VG had also been damaged. ”I see that some windows of the VG building and the government headquarters have been broken. Some people covered with blood are lying in the street,” AP quoted her as saying.

The terrorist angle is simply speculative at this point but seems warranted. Elisa Mala and David Goodman for NYT (“Big Blasts at Government Buildings in Oslo“):

While Norway has seen little political violence in recent years, the country is a member of NATO alliance and has a small fighting contingent in Afghanistan. It was one of several countries cited by Ayman al-Zawahri, the Al Qaeda leader, as potential targets for attack. In 2006, Norwegian newspapers reprinted Danish cartoons that angered Muslims by lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. Norway has also historically been a frequent participant in peacekeeping missions and a host for diplomatic talks, including the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee of the Norwegian parliament.

A Norwegian security analyst, who asked not to be named, said the country has historically been seen as at low risk from terrorism, but cautioned that the nature of the explosion was still not known.

Three Norwegian men were arrested in July 2010 on suspicion of terrorism and were said to be a terrorist “node” in a larger global network, American counterterrorism officials said at the time.

Reuters (“Bomb wrecks government offices in Oslo, two said dead“) has additional conjecture from analysts:

John Drake, senior risk consultant at London-based consultancy AKE, said: “It may not be too dissimilar to the terrorist attack in Stockholm in December which saw a car bomb and secondary explosion shortly after in the downtown area. That attack was later claimed as a reprisal for Sweden’s contribution to the efforts in Afghanistan.”

NATO member Norway has sometimes in the past been threatened by leaders of al Qaeda for its involvement in Afghanistan. It has also taken part in the NATO bombing of Libya, whose leader Muammar Gaddafi has threatened to strike back in Europe.

Political violence is virtually unknown in a country known for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize and mediating in conflicts, including in the Middle East and Sri Lanka.

David Lea, Western Europe analyst at Control Risks, said: “There certainly aren’t any domestic Norwegian terrorist groups although there have been some al Qaeda-linked arrests from time to time. They are in Afghanistan and were involved in Libya, but it’s far too soon to draw any conclusions.”

But not, of course, to speculate. That’s all we have in the early search for answers. And there’s good reason to speculate in the direction of al Qaeda, which is in need of a win after months of setbacks.

Update (Dave Schuler)

There are now some reports that a Kurdish group affiliated with Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Norway. From CBS News:

A group called “Helpers of Global Jihad” has taken responsibility for the bomb which ripped open buildings, including the prime minister’s office, in Norway’s capital, CBS News has learned.

It is apparently the same local shadowy extremist group that the Stockholm bomber in December 2010 had said he was connected to.

In the 2010 Stockholm blast, the bomb, in a backpack, went off prematurely and the bomber blew himself up. However, the bomber had left behind a video protesting the Afghanistan war and the killing of Muslims.

There is no confirmation that this group was indeed responsible. Investigators are also trying to determine if there are links to this jihadist group with the core al Qaeda organization. They are looking too to see if there may be a connection to three al Qaeda individuals recently arrested in Norway.

As the story says there is no official confirmation of this yet. This story is still breaking so we may yet get news that completely contradicts this.

UPDATE (James Joyner):  All indications are now that the youth camp shooter is a white, non-Muslim Norwegian. Police are, reasonably, operating on the assumption that the shooting spree and the car bomb are “linked.” So, the working assumption has shifted away from al Qaeda and other Islamist groups to either a lone wacko or some sort of Oklahoma City-type domestic conspiracy.

I took grief on Twitter this morning and early afternoon for being too cautious in not coming out and declaring “This Was The Work of Our Muslim Enemies.” It’s looking like, despite my relatively careful couching, that I was instead too forward-leaning.

Under the circumstances, it was perfectly reasonable to start with al Qaeda/Islamists/Jihadists as the working assumption. But every terrorist attack isn’t perpetrated by Muslims. There are plenty of other aggrieved maniacs out there willing to commit mass mayhem.

I want to direct your attention to a post by prominent authority on Chinese economics Michael Pettis. It’s so carefully constructed that it’s difficult to excerpt but I’ll do my best to give you its flavor:

Over the past two years we have become pretty used to the spectacle of Chinese government officials warning the US about its responsibility to maintain the value of the huge amount of US treasury bonds the PBoC has accumulated. More recently we have been hearing complaints in Germany about the possibility that defaults in peripheral Europe will lead to losses among the many German banks that hold Greek, Portuguese, Irish, Spanish and other European government obligations.

In both cases (and many others) there seems to be an aggrieved sense on the part of creditors that after providing so much helpful funding to undisciplined debtors, the creditors are going to be left with losses. There is, they claim, something terribly unfair about the whole thing.

To me this whole argument is pretty surreal. Not only have the creditors totally mixed up the causality of the process, and confused discretionary foreign lending with domestic employment policies, but an erosion in the value of the liabilities owed to them is an almost certain consequence of their own continuing domestic policies. It is largely policies in the creditor countries, in other words, that will determine whether or not the value of those obligations must erode in real terms.

I urge you to read it in full.

The linchpin of Germany and China’s mercantilist economic strategies is that in order for the strategy to work China needs to buy U. S. dollar assets and German banks needs to fund peripheral European debt. Were the U. S. or the PIIGS to consume less, as the Chinese and German authorities have been demanding, it would hurt China and Germany. To mitigate the overall damage to the world economy it is China and Germany’s strategies that must change if only for their own self-preservation. Both countries must consume more and export less.

This is why I find the moaning and gnashing of teeth over the possible erosion of the value of claims accumulated by surplus countries surreal. There is only one possible way to avoid that erosion of value, and that requires that the surplus countries work with the deficit countries to reverse the trade imbalances. If the surplus countries refuse to take the necessary steps, an erosion in the value of those claims is the automatic and necessary consequence. In practice that means that either the claims must be devalued or they will lead to default.

The picture above is a drawing of one of his far-fetched contraptions by the famous cartoonist Rube Goldberg. How else would you illustrate a complicated and harebrained system?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced that the U. S. will formally recognize the Libyan rebels as the legitimate government of Libya:

ISTANBUL (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the Obama administration has decided to formally recognize Libya’s main opposition group as the country’s legitimate government. The move gives foes of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi a major financial and credibility boost.

Clinton announced Friday that Washington accepts the Transitional National Council as the legitimate governing authority of the Libyan people. Diplomatic recognition of the council means that the U.S. will be able to fund the opposition with some of the more than $30 billion in Gahdafi-regime assets that are frozen in American banks.

Clinton made the announcement at an international conference on Libya in Istanbul.

This is rather a long time in coming and I interpret the move as confidence on the Obama Administration’s part that the Qaddafi government will fall sooner rather than later.

As of today 27 countries recognize the TNC as the legitimate government of Libya with the U. S. now joining France and most of the rest of Europe including the Russian Federation (in part), Canada, Australia, Qatar, and Ghana in recognizing the Transitional National Council as the legitimate government of Libya.

The military of northern Sudan has launched attacks against southern Sudan:

Clashes in south Sudan have killed almost 100 people in separate cattle raids and rebel attacks in the past week, as the soon-to-be independent state struggles to contain bloody violence.

The northern military has launched air strikes against groups that are aligned to the country’s south, which is due to become independent next month.

In Warrap state, 29 people were killed after an attack on Monday by rebels led by Peter Gadet, a former southern general turned militia commander.

“These people were killed in an attack by those rebels of Gadet, coming from Unity state, and the dead included two police officers,” said Philip Aguer, a southern army spokesman.

Meanwhile separate battles between heavily armed cattle raiders last week have left at least 71 people dead in Lakes state, local officials said.

The UN refugee agency has also accused Sudanese authorities of blocking humanitarian aid to thousands of people displaced by the fighting in the South Kordofan region.

President Obama has condemned the actions by the north:

Mr Obama said it was clear that military might would not solve the current crisis that has left at least 65 people dead, and called on both sides to honour their pledges or the US might reconsider its promise to remove Sudan from its list of states sponsoring terrorism.

His warning came as talk of a ceasefire deal at the African Union summit in Ethiopia gave way to further reports of bombings by the northern Sudanese Armed Forces in the north’s main oil state which borders south Sudan.

The United Nations Mission in Sudan said northern jet fighters dropped 11 bombs around Kauda, in the Nuba Mountains, on Tuesday morning and was causing “huge suffering” to the civilian population. There were further clashes in the border territory of Abyei on Wednesday.

“The leaders of Sudan and South Sudan must live up to their responsibilities,” Mr Obama said. “The government of Sudan must prevent a further escalation of this crisis by ceasing its military actions immediately, including aerial bombardments, forced displacements and campaigns of intimidation.

In my last post some time ago on Sudan I questioned whether a plebiscite in favor of independence on the part of the people in the south would be enough to protect them from the Sudanese government in the north. Unfortunately, it hasn’t.

Above: people fleeing the bombing sit under a makeshift tent

The horrifying graphic of the day, above, contrasts the biomass of popular fish in the North Atlantic in 1900 with the biomass of the same species in 2000. A dramatic change. Source: Villy Christensen of the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre via Henry Blodget.

There are any number of reasons for the depletion of wild fishery resources worldwide including ocean acidification, other environmental degradation, poor resource management, and just plain too many fishermen and not enough fish. However, according to the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organization the single largest cause of over-fishing is government subsidies of domestic fishing fleets.

Historically, Japan’s seafood consumption has been the largest in the world, Japanese consumers have determined world prices, and Japan’s commercial fishing fleet the largest in the world. That has begun to change. China’s commercial fishing fleet is now the largest, much of its catch is sold to Japan, and Japan is importing an increasing percentage of its fish.

Collectively, the European Union’s fishing fleet may well be the largest and most destructive, particularly in the North Atlantic. Our European cousins have an edge in methods, technology, and numbers over other major commercial fishing nations.

Solutions to the problem are elusive. The Neolithic Revolution, the beginning of the transition from hunting and gathering to sedentary agriculture and herding, began ten thousand years ago. If we were still dependent on wild game as our major protein source, we’d have starved to death millennia ago (or be vastly reduced in numbers). Aquaculture, particularly ocean farming, does not appear to be a near term solution to the problem of depletion of the oceans. Most of the desireable species are carnivorous and at the present state of the art ocean fish farming remains heavily dependent on wild catches with each pound of cultivated protein requiring more than a pound of wild protein albeit of different species.

Ocean fisheries would appear to be a classic “tragedy of the commons”, granting or selling exclusive fishing rights to private individuals and companies has frequently been suggested as a solution to overfishing, but I have my doubts. Fishermen operate according to laws of economics not those of conservation. Just to give an example, the amount of edible fish discarded every year is unconscionably vast. When the catch in a net is hauled in it’s not all a single species: multiple species are intermingled. More valuable fish are retained; the others are discarded to make room for the more valuable. In this way every year thousands of tons of perfectly good haddock are discarded from the catch in the North Atlantic. By the time the market has worked its way down to the less desireable species the ocean ecology may well have been disrupted enough to be irrecoverable.

Onboard inspectors have been suggested. IMO this is an utterly unworkable proposal, enormously expensive, suffers from time inconsistency and knowledge issues, and incentivizes piracy, already a substantial problem in fishing.

“Flags of convenience” provide a strategy for evasion of catch limits.

Unless some solution is found within our lifetimes there may be no more fish in the sea.

I’ve run across a couple of articles on the Greek credit crisis, the Eurozone, and the IMF that I wanted to bring to your attention. First, from Andrew Lilico at The Telegraph on what happens when Greece defaults:

It is when, not if. Financial markets merely aren’t sure whether it’ll be tomorrow, a month’s time, a year’s time, or two years’ time (it won’t be longer than that). Given that the ECB has played the “final card” it employed to force a bailout upon the Irish – threatening to bankrupt the country’s banking sector – presumably we will now see either another Greek bailout or default within days.

and continues with a list of a dozen or so likely outcomes including a domino effect on Ireland and Portugal and insolvency for the European Central Bank. Not a pretty list. Hat tip: Megan McArdle

The other piece is a post from former chief economist at the IMF Simon Johnson on why the French want the next managing director of the IMF to be French so badly:

If Ms. Lagarde becomes managing director she can directly influence the terms of IMF involvement – and based on her negotiating position to date within the eurozone, we can presume she will lean towards more money, easier terms, and above all no losses for the banks that made foolish loans.

Increasingly it looks like the eurozone leadership, under French guidance, will go for the Full Bailout option, in which all Greek debt is bought up by the IMF, by the European Central Bank, and by other eurozone entities. This debt will be held to maturity – and any creditor who did not yet sell will be made whole (those who already sold at a loss are out of luck).

Unfortunately, the IMF is extremely Euro-centric and there appears to be an unwritten rule that a European will always head the IMF. Under present circumstances that’s likely to mean that American, Japanese, and poorer countries’ money will be used to paper over the incompetence of European banks.