Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Muslim extremists in Russia.  According to Aleksey Grishin, president of the Religion and Society centre, Islamist extremism is on the rise on Russia, partly as a consequence of influences from Central Asia.  Speaking on 17 December, he said: “Russian Islam is in a catastrophic situation today.  It has been attacked by extremists.  Over the last three years, 32 key figures have been killed, many of them Tatars...Immigration flows are bringing in a huge number of elements, movements, sects not traditional for the Russian Federation, for Russian Muslims.”

Grishin added: “Those pushed out of Central Asia by strict laws of Central Asian republics, these people are escaping to us.  Local officials in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan tell me that ‘in fact they are hiding in Russia’.  But what are they doing in Russia?  They go to mosques and start seizing mosques of traditional Russian Muslims.”

*** Netanyahu still on target for re-election.  The latest opinion polls suggest that the right-religious bloc is on target to win 64 of the Knesset’s 129 seats in the 22 January election, giving a majority of eight seats over the centre-left bloc.  Likud-Beiteinu’s share would be 37 seats, with Labour on 17, Yesh Atid on 11, and Hatnuah on 10.  Meretz is expected to win four seats and Kadima just two.

*** Warning on Iran from former Israeli air force chief.  The Iranian nuclear question has faded a bit from the public discourse in recent weeks, but last Wednesday (12 December), former Israel Air Force commander Maj-Gen Ido Nehushtan warned the Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference in Herzliya that Iran is continuing to make progress on its nuclear programme.

He warned that “time is working only for one side...the Iranian side.  As time goes by it becomes less and less possible to stop this programme.  The Iranians are masters of negotiations.  They invented the game of chess.  They know how to do the business.  Time is working on their side.”

The former air force commander also dismissed any idea that a nuclear Iran could be contained.  He recalled the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and said: “Can you manage a crisis like this vis-a-vis a radical Islamic regime?  This is a hot area, not built for cold wars.”

Turning to the Arab Spring, Nehushtan argued that “what started as an earthquake coming from youngsters became a big winner of political Islam”.  Overall, he said, the region is “less stable, more inflammable, and more religious”.  Solutions, he said, “are very difficult to come by”.