Beijing recognizes that a nuclear-armed Iran would almost certainly be detrimental to its energy security. Iran’s development of a nuclear weapons capability — and the regional nuclear arms race this might trigger — would foster instability in the Persian Gulf, jeopardizing the free flow of oil into the market. It could also strain China’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has been China’s top crude oil supplier for most of this decade and opposes Iran’s going nuclear. And despite appearances, China does not want to jeopardize its relationship with the United States. Not only does Beijing value its relations with Washington more than its ties to Tehran, but it relies on the U.S. Navy to protect the sea lanes between the Persian Gulf and China.

These are good reasons to believe that the Chinese would back an international effort to ensure the Iranian nuclear program doesn’t have a military dimension. They already do. But this alone doesn’t get you Chinese endorsement or acquiescence of punitive measures. If I understand FP’s point correctly, the Saudis would have to threaten to cut off Chinese oil imports to ensure China’s complicity in an oil-sanctions regime. But would they? Not only have the Saudis not stated support for such an embargo, the Saudis didn’t even support an oil embargo over the Gaza war. We’re a couple of billiard-shots away from this policy coming together. Maybe it could, but it doesn’t seem likely. We’re far from getting Russian support, on top of all this.

On his FP blog, Dan Drezner had this to say:

In fact, here’s a good time-saver:  if you read any story about a gasoline embargo [of] Iran, just scan quickly and get to the part where the reporter explains how and why Russia and China would go along.  If it’s not mentioned, the story is inconsequential.

As Dan says, quoting the ever-talented Belle Waring, this is shaping up to be quite the pony-wishing exercise.

What’s more, five days after ago, Human Rights Watch put out a statement criticizing a Saudi law for insufficiently protecting the rights of domestic workers. At Opinio Juris, Kevin Jon Heller has a post compiling a number of additional criticisms of Saudi Arabia on a variety of human rights fronts. And while in Saudia Arabia in May, Whitson says she spent much of her four day trip researching information the group acquired about women’s rights in the kingdom. Curious positions to take if Human Rights Watch is bought and paid for.

If you read closely, the Journal piece, by David Bernstein, doesn’t actually come out and accuse Human Rights Watch of raising money from the Saudi government — merely raising money from people in Saudi Arabia, as if that is itself problematic. Whitson posted a reply on that point in Bernstein’s comments:

What’s really at the heart of Mr. Bernstein’s gripe is his misconception that efforts to raise support among Saudis are unseemly because, well, if they live in a totalitarian country, they must be bad people too. Human Rights Watch accepts funding from private individuals and foundations the world over, which we never allow to affect the independence of our work. We are proud to have a Saudi on the Middle East Advisory Committee and look forward to building an even stronger support base throughout the region.
Support from citizens of Arab countries for the work of Human Rights Watch – including our vocal, public criticism of rights violations by their governments – is something to be applauded, not denigrated. Believe it or not, some Arabs believe in human rights too.

Ben Smith points out some interesting facts about the previous president’s treasonous use of Arabic, but I’ve got a bigger scoop — one surely destined to be blasted across Drudge. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, has nefariously concealed his Muslim heritage. But now it can be told! Just look at what he told the press as he was ending his tour as U.S. commander in Iraq last September:

GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, again, As-Salamu ‘Alaykum, masa’ al-kheir, good afternoon to all of you, and shukran jaziilan for joining us for today’s roundtable.

Can we really trust military commanders who speak other languages on occasion? Everyone knows that by adopting a different language you disrespect the monolinguistic United States and effectively become a citizen of the country in which that language is uttered. Come to think of it, have we ever really seen Petraeus’s birth certificate?

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In this manner, Obama appears to have followed the same path taken by his predecessor, in creating more enmity towards Muslims, and adding on to the fighting enemies, thus paving the way for new long wars.

Let the American people prepare to continue harvesting what their White House leaders grow, in the years and decades to come.

They say the classics never go out of style. But more distressing that bin Laden’s expected bleating is the lack of rapid response from the administration’s public diplomacy infrastructure. If this were a political campaign, the pushback would have begun already. But so far there’s nothing from the State Department’s blog taking bin Laden’s message down.

Now, there have to be a number of caveats to my criticism. First, Obama’s Cairo speech tomorrow is, of course, a massive public diplomacy effort aimed at essentially refuting bin Laden’s worldview, even if the president doesn’t mention bin Laden. Second, the administration’s announced National Security Council shakeup last week is creating a White House director for interagency public diplomacy, so that represents an elevation of the importance of public diplomacy. Third, an argument that I don’t personally find persuasive but others might is that you don’t want the president of the United States in a back-and-forth with an al-Qaeda mass murderer. Fourth, Judith McHale’s testimony to the Senate last month to be the State Department’s public diplomacy chief made some gestures to treating public diplomacy as a national security issue, and embraced a series of Web 2.0 tools for rapid response. Fifth, the bin Laden tape was just released.

But I’m not going to let all that get in the way of my complaint! The longer bin Laden’s dreck is out there, the greater likelihood it’ll spread through the information bloodstream, and experience demonstrates that disinformation will be accepted if it’s not promptly confronted. The State Department has existing infrastructure set up — the DipNote blog, its Tweeting, and so forth — to get the U.S. message out, and yet it rarely spends much effort countering anti-American messages directly. Similarly, the Pentagon is getting out of the public diplomacy business for fear of edging too closely into propaganda. That’s laudable, but it contributes to an information lacuna that several administrations have failed to address.

General David Petraeus added his voice to the mix in a front page interview in the influential Saudi paper al-Hayat, saying that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would improve American security and weaken its adversaries.  (Perhaps the imprimatur of Gen. Petraeus will sway some American skeptics as well?)

Maybe, maybe not. It’s somewhat bewildering that a figure of Petraeus’ stature would be needed to express what ought to be an uncontroversial assertion — a settled Israel-Palestinian issue is a net security positive to the United States and a net loss to its enemies — but we are where we are. In The New York Times today there’s a piece elaborating on the administration’s approach to stopping Israeli settlement expansion, which is one of several obstacles to a peace settlement, but according to the Jerusalem Post, Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu rejects that American demand as “unreasonable.” Petraeus’ interview to al-Hayat will be read as a statement of American intent — though, alas, I can’t read it for its specifics, so perhaps it’s merely a generic statement — and there will be a price to pay in the Arab world if the administration backtracks on the settlement issue.

Renditions yes, “extraordinary renditions,” no, said Panetta. Usually when “moving someone outside the country for prosecution.” Panetta clarifies that his comments that extraordinary rendition and torture occurred during the Bush administration were based on the overwhelming public record, including “[Former CIA Director] Mike Hayden’s acknowledgment” that people were waterboarded, not specific CIA confessions. “It is clear there were black sites, it is clear individuals were brought there … clearly steps were taken that prompted this president to say they will not be taken anymore.” Bond just wants to say the Clinton administration is as dirty as the Bush administration.

Were there renditions that resulted in torture, either during the Clinton or Bush administrations? “I can neither affirm nor deny … my understanding there were renditions to countries that engage in behavior from what I’ve seen in the press. … I have no official information from within that those kinds of rendition took place.” Bond says that this is different from a “blanket statement” on renditions. Happy now? “I suspect that. .. we have rendered individuals to other countries that use techniques to get information … that violate our own standards,” Panetta said, arms folded across his chest.

And — following extra lines of questioning about Saudi programs to rehabilitate incarcerated jihadists, Hamas, and institutional challenges with human intelligence — we’re out for today. Bond didn’t come out and oppose Panetta’s nomination, but he insisted on having the hearing reconvene tomorrow morning for additional questioning, probably along these lines.

Politically, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, looks halfway canny for scheduling this hearing so late in the day. Panetta has emerged from it with no real scratches on him — pretty amazing, considering that he stepped into this nomination to the immediate objections of Feinstein. But who knows if Bond and his colleague, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) — who apparently has questions for Panetta as well — will have more in their arsenal tomorrow.

I’ve got an idea: Why not get the Saudis to pony up, say, 20-30,000 troops for Afghanistan, about the same number that Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said Sunday might be added to the 30,000 we already have there?

But would deradicalization work in Pakistan?

Doubtful, says Kenneth Ballen of an organization called Terror Free Tomorrow.

Why?

Because most Pakistanis see Al Qaeda as “standing up to America, and Pakistanis overwhelmingly agree with that goal.” They see the U.S. as being far more responsible for violence in Pakistan than Al Qaeda or the Pakistani Taliban. (You can see Ballen’s poll data here.)

Think how serious that is: Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban are overwhelmingly more responsible for disruption in Pakistan. It wasn’t the U.S. that bombed the Islamabad Marriott.

The U.S. role has to be changes in policy,” he says, “and changes in policy make a difference.”

Along with military and law-enforcement measures, the kingdom pioneered a strategy of “counter-radicalization,” using religious figures to directly contend that Al Qaeda was an apostate organization. How’d that work, exactly?

Christopher Boucek of the Carnegie Endowment explains. Pay attention to “the psychological and emotional… counseling part,” he says. The Saudis take the approach that “everyone’s a victim… of a deviant organization” — the government, the casualties and the recruits. “In doing this, the government is able to call upon a lot of resources.”

Basically, it’s an anti-recidivism program, launched in prison against detainees and convicts. It works so radicalization “doesn’t spread to people’s families.”

The program is “invitational” instead of mandatory, targeting, in particular, people picked up in Iraq or on their way there, and it also has components for those repatriated from Guantanamo. It won’t be a ticket out of jail “if you have blood on your hands,” but it will be your ticket out if you can prove you’re no longer going to threaten the government.”

In short, religious figures work with you in prison to convince you that Al Qaeda is anti-Islamic in a serious way.

There’s an advisory council in the Ministry of Interior made up of 150 religious scholars and university professors. They sit down with prisoners, one on one, and go into the history of each offender’s case, explaining what went wrong. But it’s based on “benevolence,” Boucek says, not on threats. It draws on traditional Saudi ideas of cooptation — “good-cop-aganda,” as he puts it, not torture.

Typically it’s a six-week program of 20 sessions, ending in an exam that, if you fail, means you have to repeat the whole thing.

Clearly, offenders have to want rehabilitation for this to work. When an offender is released, he’s released to his tribe, “thereby spreading responsibility” for his rehabilitation. There’s also an online component, giving “positive answers” to ongoing religious programs.

According to Boucek, about 3,000 people have gone through the rehabilitation program. Of those, about 1,400 have been released. Only 35 have been re-arrested — a 1 percent or 2 percent recidivism rate.

But for Guantanamo ex-detainees, about 50 have been released and none have been re-arrested on security charges.