If you were near a television this morning, it was virtually impossible not to watch the royal wedding. Every news outlet showed the event as if it were the only thing happening in the world. For those of us with greater interests of world events here are three interesting recent activities that you possibly have missed:
1. Iran: Many Prime Ministers in Iran are discussing the impeachment of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad due to his failure to support Ayatollah Khamenei's decision to reinstate a formerly released minister.
Ahmadinejad has not been seen in the Presidential Palace since last Friday and this has caused internal strife within the Iranian government. This activity can be observed as a swing of the revolutionary pendulum in Iran.
It is highly likely that the United States and its allies will fail to capitalize on the current opportunity to implement psychological operations through information warfare throughout the country. Such activities are critical to create the upheaval needed to ensure continued internal strife exists in a country deemed to be one of the greatest threats to the Middle East and the rest of the world.
We failed to leverage the opportunities presented with the Iranian Green Movement not long ago and it is likely we will fail in such clandestine and or covert activities again.
2. Pakistan: Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Pakistani Navy bus leaving three dead and many wounded.
This activity could be good for the United States as the Pakistani Taliban begin to target Pakistani Defense because Chief of Army Staff General Kayani of Pakistan has done a lot of good in recent times to restore the prestige of Pakistani Defense in the country. He has been known to be a man who doesn’t play well with others in the sense that he will likely fulfill offensive operations against the Pakistani Taliban if such operations against his assets continue.
When there's more activity taking place in Pakistan it normally leads to lesser activity occurring in Afghanistan. -- The less activity in Afghanistan the more secured our own forces become. Time will only tell how this actually plays out.
3. Israel: Hamas and Fatah appear to be in the process of a very unique merger. Interestingly enough, this is taking place during a time where Fatah and the country of Israel are attempting to conduct negotiations—something Hamas has not been a part of.
This could mean one of two things:
1. Either Hamas sees themselves in austere danger, aware that the status quo in the region is crumbling due to popular revolutions. They may also understand that their support from Iran is in jeopardy and that they need to unify with another organization that has recently opened communications with Israel just to keep their organization alive...
2. This merger could mean that Israel is being set up by Fatah now that it will have a unified partner in case their negotiations fail so they can implement a massive coordinated attack against Israel.
While such world events are occurring, domestically it’s still tough to escape the ongoing news of the royal wedding. Our very own U.S. postal service has recently claimed that they will be selling royal wedding commemoratives on behalf of Britain’s Royal Mail for those Americans caught up in Britain’s historical moment. Is this just another poor attempt from one of our most financially unstable federal entities to obtain more funding or is this something bigger? Let the conspiracy theories begin.
Kerry Patton has served in the U.S. Defense and Justice departments, and as a contractor within the Homeland Security and State departments. He has worked in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, focusing on intelligence and security interviewing current and former terrorists, including members of the Taliban. He is the author of “Sociocultural Intelligence: The New Discipline of Intelligence Studies” and the children's book "American Patriotism."
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