[Trailer for 'Nederwiet', a documentary on the Dutch soft drugs scene of coffeeshops, illegal growers, and the police, that was shown on Dutch television on Monday 25 April 2011]

With the ‘weed-pass’ coming to the southern Dutch provinces on 1 May, another notorious case in the decline of Dutch soft drug tolerance resurfaced last thursday. The long-running saga surrounding the closed coffeshop Checkpoint in Terneuzen took another twist. In a surprising decision considering the current conservative turn in the Netherlands, a court in The Hague has decided that the former owner of Checkpoint, Meddie Willemsen, should be free from prosecution.

The Bureau covered the crazy story of the rise and demise of Checkpoint back in March 2010 (Exit Checkpoint -Exit Dutch Soft Drug Policy?), following the judgement by the Middelburg court that even though the coffeeshop represented a ‘criminal organisation’ neither the owner nor sixteen of his employees should go to jail. Why not? Simply because the booming marijuana business had been fully supported by the local council and police force – it was literally a huge tourist-puller and cash-cow (+/-2500 customers a day) for the otherwise rather dismal town of Terneuzen lying under the shadow of Dow Chemical’s biggest European plant.

The state prosecutor’s office wasn’t satisfied with the outcome and began to plot a case against Willemsen and his employees, despite the obvious message from Middelburg that while this was technically possible it would in reality open a huge can of worms. It looked like Checkpoint was being set up as a scapegoat to send a message to all other coffeshops – If you transgress the law on holding more than 500 grams of marijuana we’ll come down on you hard (Checkpoint had in total 160 kilos when it was raided). And a message to the local councils – don’t get too supportive of the local drugs business. Another nail in the coffin for Dutch soft drug tolerance.

Only they’ve picked the wrong case – as the judges in The Hague have said, this one literally doesn’t stand up in court. The level of cooperation that Willemsen had received from the authorities before the bust had strongly suggested that he was beyond the long arm of the law. The fact that this relationship was reversed without warning has fundamentally undermined the prosecution’s argument.

While the Checkpoint case continues in the background, a much bigger issue that will fundamentally transform the soft drug landscape is fast approaching – the weed-pass or wietpas. The most interesting thing about the pass, which will restrict each coffeeshop to 2000 registered customers living in the immediate area, is that it is being introduced against strong opposition from the municipal authorities in those same southern provinces. A superb review of the coming the law in De Groene Amsterdammer last November made clear that just as there was serious movement for an experimental legalisation of marijuana cultivation in Brabant, Minister of Justice Ivo Opstelten torpedoed it with his plan for a more severe clamp-down. Support for legalisation had come from among others Eindhoven mayor Rob van Gijzel, who saw a rise in violent criminal activity surrounding the illegal drugs business. In these circumstances the idea of weakening the law to deal with criminality was not on Opstelten’s mind. Conservative Netherlands was on the rise.

The stupid thing is, the wietpas is not going to deal with the very problem that the southern provinces want to deal with – the free-wheeling drugs gangs. Coffeeshops are no longer seen as a problem for most of the local authorities across Brabant and Limburg, and they literally fear that the introduction of the wietpas will make criminality increase as much of the trade switches to the streets. Belgians, French and Germans, excluded from the coffeeshops due to the residency restrictions for the pass, will be forced to look elsewhere for their supply. The end result is therefore a law that discriminates against foreigners, will produce more crime, and force any well-meaning Dutch dope-smoker to be registered with the state – becoming a semi-criminal in the process.

Understandably the level of criticism has been high, but the sources of much of the criticism has been very interesting. Next to Rob van Gijzel came Thom de Graaf, former leader of D 66 and now mayor of Nijmegen, who pointed out last December that it is up to the mayors themselves how they interpret the law on coffeeshop tolerance. The Hague can’t tell the mayors what to do, whatever Opstelten thinks. Then there was Hans van Duijn, former chairman of the Netherlandse Politiebond (police union), who argued around the same time that the best way to deal with the drugs-crime link was exactly to open more coffeeshops to squeeze the street trade.

So far, all to no avail. On 15 December Opstelten announced that an immediate introduction of the wietpas was not wise, and Zeeland, Brabant and Limburg now have until 1 May to prepare. The rest of the country will follow on 1 January 2013. No doubt there will be more twists to the story in the months to come.

[Thanks to northernindymedia]

Max Smeets

Shale gas.  Attention for this topic has been growing on the local, national, and international levels (see THB’s ‘The Future’s So Dire, We Gotta Pump Shale’). Shale gas is the gas that has, at several places in the world, including the Netherlands, become accessible through a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Due to the low permeability, a mix of water, sand, and chemicals is injected to get it all out of the ground.  This article covers some interesting recent developments on all 3 levels.

In the US shale gas mining started in the 1970s on an industrial scale. Today, the production of natural gas from shale formations has rejuvenated the natural gas industry in the United States – and it is still booming. In the last couple of years other countries have followed suit and started to explore the possibilities. We have seen developments in Canada, India, South-Africa, Australia, some European countries, and above all China.  There is an upsurge of billion dollar contracts being struck and explorative drilling is increasing.

[Thanks to Tangent Reality]

Knowing where political parties obtain their money is a fairly essential aspect of democracy. Transparency for financial transactions prevents parties from becoming trojan horses for hidden interests able to pay for political influence.

On Wednesday and Thursday this week the parliament discussed a proposal for a new law that would require parties to declare any donation of above 1000 Euro in their annual report, and any donation above 4500 Euro must be listed with the name of the donator. Failure to do so would mean a fine of 25,000 Euro. The consequences for Wilders’ PVV would be considerable if this went through, because the party has from day one wanted to avoid any insight into its financial affairs.

To receive state funding like the other political parties, the Freedom party would need party members, and it only has two: Wilders himself, and the Friends of the PVV foundation. In this way Wilders sticks by his aim to avoid any connection with the Dutch state. He also avoids any annual financial reports. And he maintains complete control over everything. But to do so, he needs to haul his money from somewhere else. And as everyone knows, much of it comes from abroad – right-wingers in the US, and probably Israel. There have been plenty of reports on this, some of which were compiled here on the Bureau in June 2010.

“The proposal for a law on the financial support for political parties has a long history, too long in the opinion of my party.” So spoke Tofik Dibi of GreenLeft in the debate yesterday, and his view coincided with the PvdA, who also want to ban all donations that come from abroad (nice twist too - the Communist party was villified for getting money from Moscow, so whats the difference with a party getting money from the crazy US Right?). But the show was stolen by the Freedom Party’s Hero Brinkman, who held forth against this ‘anti-PVV law’ and against a wave of critique from all the other parties for around an hour. Brinkman, who is known as the ‘democrat’ within the PVV for various efforts to develop a more open party structure, used a string of interesting arguments in response:

1) The proposed law originated as a move by former Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst to demand transparency from Pim Fortuyn’s LPF back in 2002. Once the LPF declined in numbers and was less of a threat, the law was shelved. Now that the PVV has become one of the top three parties, the law has been revived. In other words – whenever a threatening political movement rises in power to challenge the established order, this law gets pulled out.

2) The law would require all PVV donators to be made public, and this could bring them in danger – Not for nothing does Wilders wander around with heavy protection every day. The law would therefore actually be undemocratic because it would scare away Dutch individuals who would otherwise support the PVV.

3) According to Brinkman, only nine democracies provide state money for political parties, so the Netherlands already belongs to a minority of states. (needless to say, he didn’t name the other eight, and one wonders if he knows what he is talking about here).

4) The fact that the Freedom party might obtain its money from the US is nobody else’s business.

5) Final point – the new law is so full of holes that it will be possible to find the gaps in it anyway. For instance, money coming in to local branches of a political party will not have to be declared, offering a large and obvious loophole.

Obviously, for any normal politician it would have take around ten minutes to outline these points. For Brinkman, however, this was a useful stage for a tirade against all things leftist and CDA-ish, stringing out his defence of the wonderful contribution that the PVV makes to Dutch democracy so much that the questioners had to repeat their enquiries more than once in order to get an answer out of him. Dibi’s protests that the law reflects the anti-corruption stance of Dutch foreign policy – which the PVV supports – went nowhere against Brinkman’s determination to avoid real debate on the issue. For anyone who wants a taste, the debate can be found here.

Looks like a solid majority in parliament want to pass the law. Is it anti-PVV? It is an important move to standardise Dutch politics by getting everyone to play by the same rules - and there is only one loser, as the Dutch press have made clear. Private financial arrangements are the life and soul of the whole Wilders operation. He has to be able to declare a distance between himself and ‘the state’ (i.e. established politics), otherwise his whole carefully constructed image collapses.

Brinkman’s Pyrotechnics included the announcement that the PVV would find ways around the law if necessary, a sign of the way ahead. But the law could just add extra weight to the apparent decline in Wilders’ fortunes shown by recent opinion polls. When it comes to the effects of economic crisis, will the voter after all choose the Socialists over the PVV? Maybe….

[Thanks to ArnhemDichtbij]

The Dutch league just kicked-off its 2012 part of the season after a month of recess in which all teams went abroad to set up camp, refuel and finesse tactics. Concurrently the transfer window re-opened, giving a chance for coaches and players alike to find themselves new terms of employment.  The most eyebrow-raising move by far has been Vitesse Arnhem signing Jonathan Reis. The twenty-two year old Brazilian striker came in as free agent, but, in doing justice to the meaning of his name in Dutch, through a complicated personal journey.

Many people were upset to find out about Vitesse’s latest signing. Perhaps it was to be expected, however, due to the fact that in the last year much has changed around the club from Arnhem, once close to bankruptcy up until the moment the Georgian investor (and friend / business partner of Chelsea’s owner Abramovic) Merab Jordania took over. On the pitch, last season under the leadership of Spanish debutant head coach Ferrer resulted in a disappointing 15th place in the table, but the return of John van den Brom brought back the likelihood of European competition and challenging the traditional top teams.

Upsetting to those who found the move disagreeable, among which outspoken TV pundit Johan Derksen, was the question of ethics that allegedly determined Reis was unavailable to be approached from another club except PSV Eindhoven, who brought him to the Netherlands as a teenager. Reis would grow into a favorite for the Eindhoven crowd with his hattrick in the epic 10-0 victory over Feyenoord in October 2010, but only after going through a troublesome period while learning some harsh lessons.

Nonetheless, it won’t be goals alone for which PSV will remember Jonathan Reis’ stay, seeing that his time there was filled with controversy and set-backs. Everyone but the staff at PSV had given up hope after a series of offences was followed by the termination of his contract. At the start of 2010 the youngster was caught using narcotics, and his subsequent refusal to go into rehabilitation was enough reason to fire him. At that point PSV still possessed the transfer rights, and after Reis went back to Brazil and successfully kicked the habit and got clean at a local clinic, he returned. As he put it later, “the way I was living was amounting to nothing, and I would never amount to anything.”

Reis was on the rise at PSV Eindhoven from then on, save an incident where he lost his driver’s license after being caught behind the wheel with alcohol levels almost exceeding three times the maximum. The troubles were written off as a young man facing difficulties in a place far from home, after a life full of violence and poverty. With additional care, a sizable fine and sportive challenges on the pitch he would be right back on track. His goal-scoring record of 8 goals out of 11 matches at the outset of the 2010/2011 season proved as much. Many in Eindhoven thought the natural heir to Romario and Ronaldo’s momentous heritage had finally arrived.

It was then when misfortune struck again, during the match against Roda  JC. In a duel Reis smashed into Roda’s goalie and was left seriously injured. The sobering diagnosis showed the damage done consisted of a torn anterior cruciate ligament, posterior cruciate and medial ligament.  Most feared it to be a career-ending predicament, which it could be, even for a mature and mentally strong sportsman.

The troubled Reis, however, once more showed his resilience and started working on his revalidation right after getting surgery in the United States. PSV supported his recovery, both morally as financially, but decided not to extend his contract for another three seasons automatically. They awaited his return and opened negotiations by offering a half-year contract with a tentative option to extend it unilaterally. Reis – and his agent – came to Holland to listen to the proposal, and then politely refused to sign such a deal.

It would soon become clear why. During his stay in Eindhoven, Mr. Jordania representing Vitesse also made contact with the striker, upon which PSV informed him that they were not pleased with such undertakings. Vitesse backed down for the moment, but after several weeks they informed PSV that they would approach him again. It resulted in a signing that rocked Dutch soccer circles. Popular opinion dictated that Reis had a moral obligation to sign with PSV, because he simply was indebted to them due to the multiple chances he had had to return and redeem himself. Others stated that PSV was simply fulfilling its obligations as an employer, and became negligent and risk-averse at a critical moment, handing Reis an opportunity to shop around for alternatives.

Jonathan Reis himself has shied away from publicity, having noted merely that he has “many friends in Eindhoven, but I am proud to play in the Vitesse jersey now.” When all is said and done, the fact is the talented Brazilian is back to show his skill on Dutch soil. Last weekend he made his official debut for Vitesse, 399 days after playing his last game for PSV, on the losing side in the derby against NEC, in which he was substituted after 66 minutes.

There won’t be a place to hide from the spotlights when Vitesse visits PSV Eindhoven for an important league game coming Friday. Wearing number 13 on his jersey, he’s not afraid superstition will team up with bad karma to take him down again. The remainder of the season will reveal if the young man carrying all that baggage is ready to fight his way back to the top. For now, whenever he takes a moment to look down, he’ll most likely draw strength from Jesus’ name written on his kicks.

[Thanks to Boomerang]

Tough week for the AIVD. Every service has to endure the fact that while its successes are hardly ever disclosed to protect the sources, its failures often reach the outside world quite easily. So it was this time. After several reports in the press concerning blunders and questionable work practices at the service, Andre Elissen and Marcial Hernandez of the PVV tabled seven questions to Rutte and Minister of the Interior Ivo Opstelten yesterday. 

The bad news began on Friday 13th (of course), with the news that an AIVD officer had been expelled from their post in Ankara by the Turkish government in 2011. A case of ‘forward defence’ gone wrong. The reasons behind this are unclear and there is an information black-out on the incident from both The Hague and Ankara, but not enough to prevent it from eventually reaching the press. The officer had fulfilled a liaison function with the Turkish service and was tracking muslin extremist groups, among others Hizbollah, which is meant to possess networks in the Netherlands and Germany. They have now been transferred to another embassy in the Middle Eastern. Apparently only around twelve embassies around the world have such an official AIVD liaison position to work with the local services, which indicates how important the position in Turkey was.

Dutch-Turkish relations are not at there best these days. According to Ankara the Netherlands is too easy-going on the PKK, and Dutch financial support for a human rights organisation operating in South-East Turkey was seen as support for the Kurdish cause (as well as the charge that the finance could have found its way to the militants). Another thorn in the bilateral side is the PVV itself. Geert Wilders has not hidden his feelings about the Turkish government of Recep Erdogan and his AK [Justice and Development] party. On 23 December PVV’ers Wilders, Hernandez, and Wim Kortenoeven questioned whether Turkish membership of NATO should be reconsidered due to the unilateral ending of military cooperation with Israel and France earlier in the year, stating that the Turkish government was now “an untrustworthy islamic ally.” Then there is the issue of 380,000 Dutch inhabitants of Turkish origin, a not insignificant fact of Dutch social life. Interesting times for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to celebrate 400 years of Dutch-Turkish diplomatic relations, 1612-2012.

But back to the AIVD. The next report was from Bart Olmer in De Telegraaf  last Saturday and concerned the case of Outman ben Amar, hired by the service to act as an Arabic translator but who in 2007 received four years in prison for leaking information to the ‘Hofstadgroep’ cell. The story painfully illustrates what can happen if a lack of knowledge in a specific sector is too hastily filled. Ben Amar’s application procedure is meant to have included enough suspicious signs – unexplained gaps in his CV, unclear motivation for the job – for the selection committee to give a negative advice to the AIVD. Remarkably these concerns were overruled due to the rapid need for Arabic-speaking personnel. The article was accompanied by another in the Telegraaf that covered the tragic suicide of an AIVD officer five years after the death of Theo van Gogh. This event has apparently caused others in the service to release information to the press about AIVD blunders, among others the den Amar case.

The result of the Telegraaf article(s) was the list of PVV questions, which focused on the trivialities of AIVD routine work (is it true that the staff operating the safes for secret information knock off at 4pm?) and whether the service possessed a sufficient ‘whistle-blower’ mechanism to deal with discontent lower down the ranks.  The PVV to the rescue of a disillusioned service? More like a classic move by the Wilders’ gang – blame the elites for being lax and undermining national security as a result.

Albertine Bloemendal

A week after the Obama administration released its Strategic Defense Review and in anticipation of the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago in May, Dutch Defence Secretary Hans Hillen was in the United States to discuss budget cuts in defence spending as well as the development of the F35/Joint Strike Fighter.

After meeting with his American counterpart Leon Panetta, Secretary Hillen spoke at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC on “how the Atlantic alliance can keep its triple A status in an age of austerity.” Hillen’s answer was threefold: 1) NATO needs to adapt to new strategic realities, 2) it needs to substantially deepen its defence cooperation and 3) it has to secure public support for the alliance through political will and leadership. The main focus was on the importance of defence cooperation, especially in Europe.

Hillen promised the Netherlands would take a leading role in intensifying defence cooperation in Europe, something he has been pushing for a while now. Last November, Hillen initiated a debate on this topic in the Dutch parliament in which he pleaded for a fresh and pragmatic approach to the idea of sovereignty, which was not well received by Geert Wilders’ PVV. The Dutch Defence Secretary called for a ‘relaxed’ discussion and promised the Netherlands would lead by example, hoping to inspire other European countries to deepen defence cooperation from the bottum up. Joint investment and procurement should be the starting point.

Approached from this angle, Hillen was actually able to present recent trouble with the development of the JSF/F35 [see HB post JSF - Hanging In There] as one of the most promising opportunities for closer defence cooperation in a time of austerity: the ‘price problem’ has created a platform for cooperation between the Netherlands and countries like Denmark and Norway to think about collaboration in the fields of acquisition, maintenance “and perhaps even in the field of operations”. He identified the ‘formality’ of NATO as the biggest obstacle to success. (“If you’ve ever been to a NATO meeting, it is so formal, so dreadful…”). “Relaxation” was to be the key word, Hillen declared (about seven times), without it nothing would be possible.

With regards to his last point – the importance of public support for NATO – it seems that Hillen may have some reason to be relaxed: the Dutch Atlantic Association (Atlantische Commissie) just released the outcome of an opinion poll by TNS/NIPO concerning Dutch opinions about NATO and Dutch security which shows that 79% of the Dutch think NATO membership is important to their security and 73%  believes that NATO offers a positive contribution to the Dutch-American relationship. Furthermore, only 15% of the responders were in favor of more budget cuts in the defence realm.

While many Europeans have expressed concern about the American defence strategy’s change of focus from Europe and NATO to Asia and the Pacific, Hillen declared he was optimistic, saying he regards the American document as “a commonsensical response to a rapidly changing world.” According to him, America’s growing strategic attention towards Asia is a very logical development. It does mean, however, that Europe, for its part, will need to pick up more of the burden when security problems arise on its own periphery.

“It is obvious that the European and American continents are drifting apart,” Hillen said at the end of his speech. “This has been going on for some time, it is impossible to stop and will result in closer proximity of the US to the Far East than to Europe. The good news is that this is only a geological fact and that our tectonic plates only drift apart with a speed of two centimeters per year.”

[Thanks to RoyalBlog]

Max Smeets and Giles Scott-Smith

The Dutch Queen Beatrix received some serious media attention this week due to the Islamic-style headscarf (hijab) she was wearing while visiting mosques in Oman, as part of her state visit to Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

For the Freedom Party (PVV) and its leader, Geert Wilders, this visit was an excellent opportunity to reiterate its anti-Muslim stance. Wilders immediately blamed Beatrix for legitimising the oppression of women by wearing a hijab. Alexander Pechtold, leader of the liberal party (D66), propelled the hijab debate on twitter. Soon other colleagues followed to ventilate their opinion. Uri Rosenthal, the Dutch foreign minister, said that the Queen’s actions were not wrong at all, because she merely adjusted herself to the places she visited.

Queen Beatrix responded to it herself, in a reaction that some regarded as ‘a slip of the tongue’ (if you can say her remark that its ”really nonsense” that the hijab is a sign of female oppression, then ok…..). Mark Rutte got drawn into the whole affair, being accused by Pechtold, the PvdA, and the Socialists (the Socialists!) for not defending the Queen enough against Wilders’ Tweet Terror. 

Kinda fun. But isn’t this missing the point slightly? It all seems to distract away from the bigger picture of the trip: the context of the Arab Spring, the role of the monarchy and its ‘freedom of movement’, and the economic diplomacy angle. Unfortunately, relatively few people addressed these kinds of questions recently. A more in-depth look at the justification for the trip is worthwhile.

The Omani sultanate in the Persian Gulf has also experienced deadly protests over the past year. It was also for this reason that a prior state visit, planned for March 2011, was called off.  These uprisings – mainly at the Globe Roundabout in Sohar – were about salary increases, unemployment, and fighting corruption.

As a response to the protests, Sultan Qaboos – Oman’s head of state, prime minister, foreign minister, defense minister and the head of the armed forces since 1970 – reshuffled the cabinet twice. Also other measures were taken – an independent authority for consumer protection in the country was set up, a second public university was created, and the first Islamic bank in the region was established. Nonetheless, many pressing issues have not been addressed at all. Women’s rights are still almost nonexistent and the idea of political parties has not yet formed in the Sultan’s mind. Hence, arguing in this vein, one might judge the trip of the Dutch Queen as morally wrong.

On the other hand, there are enough reasons to defend the trip.  Carol Riphenburg writes in the introduction to her book Oman: Political Development in a Changing World that the country serves “as sort of a bellwether for the region … as it faces the prospect of diminishing oil revenues.” She also states (p. 147) that because of religious and ethnic diversity, Oman is one of the most tolerant states in the Arabian Peninsula. In addition, the author observes that since 1970, “the sultanate has moved from a poor underdeveloped country toward a modern nation state.”

Riphenburg is also very much aware of the problems Oman still faces today; economic diversification in the country is limited, as is private investment. These are problems which the Sultan very much would like to solve by cooperating with innovative countries. Hence, the country provides numerous economic opportunities for the Dutch. The economic cooperation deal signed between the countries on 12 January confirms this statement. The hijab hysteria has only shrouded the more important and interesting details of the visit in the background.

Back in March 2011 the Volkskrant and one or two news outlets did give attention to one major issue behind the controversial visit: the proposed sale of four ships for the Omani navy, worth several million Euros, to be built by Dutch shipyard Damen Schelde. A Foreign Ministry official was quoted as saying that the interests of Damen Schelde literally defined the aim of the visit: “this cabinet strongly applies the idea of economic diplomacy.”

Cut to 2012 and Mark Rutte is flatly denying that economic interests lay behind the recent royal visit. The Groene Amsterdammer was one of the few outlets that revived the Damen Schelde issue this month, pointing out that Damen was an important Dutch company which has been facing major competition for the Oman deal from Goa shipyards and Singapore Marine. Shell and Rotterdam Harbour have also benefitted from Omani largesse for many years. So if in doubt, send in the Queen. Bob Nugent of shipping consultancy AMI International: “Beatrix often plays a role in the sale of naval ships.”

The erstwhile lefties at the Groene also make the interesting argument that the more contacts there are, the more outside influences will enter Omani society, open it up, and gradually fuel the reform process. This is an old pro-free trade argument (if not a major Cold War debate – do you use trade as a way to open up communist regimes, or do the regimes simply benefit from the trade?) and its not entirely without merit, but there have been plenty of nefarious regimes over the years that have stayed in power while foreign investors looked the other way.

The monarchy as an international sales campaign for Dutch business – it sounds very 21st century modernist find-them-a-role, but its been a long tradition in the Netherlands. Beatrix has only to look at her late father, for example …… although, on second thoughts, as Gerard Aalders reminded us in The Lockheed Scandal at the end of last year, perhaps not. Bernhard was for several decades a roving ambassador for KLM, among other Dutch multinationals, which fits the Beatrix-Oman visit perfectly. But the Prince’s shift of allegiance to the US military aircraft manufacturer Lockheed kind of changed the roles around a bit….

Who knows….if the royal house starts promoting Omani dates and carpets, maybe…..

[Amir Mirzayee Hekmati: Fars News Agency]

By Diederik Perk

On Monday the Iranian media announced that Tehran’s Revolutionary Court had confirmed the death sentence for the 28-year old American citizen Amir Mirzayee Hekmati on charges of espionage. Curiously, Mr. Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine, holds dual citizenship having been born in Arizona to Iranian parents. Hekmati had reportedly been working for a contractor company in Qatar when he visited Iran this past August to –according to his parents’ statement- visit his grandparents.

During the trial, the Iranian-American confessed to his alleged role in seeking to infiltrate the Islamic Republic of Iran’s intelligence system as a covert agent of the CIA. Whether or not his statements were truthful, the verdict marks another milestone in the midst of ongoing U.S.-Iranian tensions.

The adversity between the U.S. and Iran is not at all new, but dates back to a host of incidents particularly from the 1940s onward. From the U.S. accepting the Anglo-Soviet occupation of the country during World War II, to overthrowing the democratically elected prime minister Mossadegh in concert with the British in 1953, to the Iranian retaliation in taking U.S. embassy staff hostage after the Islamic revolution in 1979-80, its fair to say the two parties have a challenging history together.

With both sides’ increasing their sabre-rattling and war-mongering rhetoric, the key question is, should it escalate beyond a war of words, what the most likely scenario for hostilities will be.

Firstly, its necessary to recognise that from Iran’s perspective its policies are essentially rational. Not in the sense that the regime is legitimately representing its people’s interests, but in terms of the state carving out its own interests and projecting power. This freedom of manoeuvre, both within as outside of its boundaries, is effectively made possible by the U.S. invasion and defeat of Saddam-led Iraq, Iran’s main regional adversary.

Ironically, it is also the Iraq war that will put a brake on both parties’ appetites for an armed conflict. In simple terms, the U.S. cannot afford another major engagement and any politician would have a hard time justifying sending troops abroad for another potential quagmire in an age of deficits, austerity and meagre economic recovery.

The theocratic leadership in Teheran is better off playing the long game. Even though it seems sanctions are painful for the Iranian economy, the majority of its people basically support the nuclear programme, the main point of contention with the U.S. Continuing unfriendly exchanges with Israel, the U.S. and potentially, the EU will make it that much easier to suppress the woes of an already embattled population. In the meantime, the power vacuum in Iraq and by extension the Middle East is being filled by Iranian proxies, and Iran’s strongest alliances are being honed. The most likely scenario is one filled with unpleasant diplomatic exchanges above the water line and increasingly drastic covert operations below.

Both sides mask their hand in a deadly game that has been going on for years but is becoming more and more visible. A listing of some of the more explosive events that appeared on the public radar indicate its intensity, gravity and frequency:

Only a few hours ago an Iranian nuclear scientist was killed by a car bomb in Teheran, the attack showing the same signs as previous assassinations of nuclear experts in January and November 2010 and July 2011.

A recent U.S. drone- or unmanned-aerial vehicle (UAV)- flight that crash-landed on Iranian soil, reportedly while conducting a reconnaissance mission.

The thwarting by the DEA of a nonsensical, supposedly Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador on American soil.

A high-tech piece of sabotage software labelled Stuxnet disrupted the centrifuges in Iran’s nuclear facilities, subsequently denied unconvincingly by Israel and U.S. intelligence agencies.

Iran, in turn, has elaborate, clandestine routes to ship and supply weapons to its proxies in places around the Middle-East, such as Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

These are only the more recent examples of the covert war that has taken shape over the last decade. Now that it has gone so far as a planned execution of an American citizen, the situation is reaching levels reminiscent of the most suspenseful confrontations of the U.S. with the Soviets during the Cold War. High-level diplomatic negotiations to diffuse the rising tension are unlikely in the short run, due to domestic political concerns on both sides.

Yet what comes next is unlikely to involve an escalation to armed conflict, due to constraints both parties are experiencing. Save for human error, no military action is to be expected in the Persian Gulf. For U.S. – Iranian affairs this leaves the continuing operations of top-secret informants, surveillance technology, and sabotage, actions which can be used in staged publicity campaigns against the other side when exposed. There are no heroes in this story, simply cold-hearted strategists and spooks.

A lot of Dutch people say they feel ‘at home’ in New York, a reference both to the all-encompassing nature of this remarkable multicultural city and, I presume, the sense of adventure in escaping the rather narrow confines of Dutch politics and society. I don’t have that feeling at all. New York is an alien place for me. In fact, I have enough trouble even getting to New York in the first place, not being the most willing of transatlantic travellers. But some things will make me get on that plane. The prospect of an interview with Henry Kissinger, for instance. 

The location was Kissinger Associates, his international consultancy based at 350 Park Avenue, a relatively sober skyscraper as New York skyscrapers go. A discreet entrance hall, no name plates or lists of corporations visible anywhere, only a desk manned by a couple of guys you don’t want to mess with. The planned time for the meeting was 11am, which first got bumped back to 12 noon, and then to 4pm, by which time the doubts were creeping in that this was going to go badly wrong – but HK came through. Up to the 26th floor and a small nondescript lobby with a Jackson Pollock print and a couple of chairs before going through the air-lock into the rarefied atmosphere of the East Coast elite.

Five minutes later and its HK’s corner office, panoramic views of south-east Manhattan and wall-to-wall photos covering a who’s who of international politics over the past fifty years.  And a couple of large sofas. HK reclines and orders tea.

How had this come about? Henry Kissinger was great friends with the late Ernst van der Beugel, the influential Dutch diplomat, Leiden professor, frequenter of corporate boardrooms and, for twenty years, the honorary secretary general for Europe at the Bilderberg meetings, the annual, informal, off-the-record invitation-only gatherings of the transatlantic movers and shakers, for many the epitome of elite politics. The Dutch connection offered an opportunity to talk more broadly about transatlantic relations. You don’t go into such a meeting expecting major revelations on controversial topics - its more the hope that you come away with a taste for how things work. And its not often you get a chance to ask someone like Henry Kissinger about Bilderberg.

Kissinger first met van der Beugel in The Hague in 1957, soon after the publication of his Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. The reasons for the meeting remain unclear – someone had recommended that the two get together, since van der Beugel was deputy foreign minister at the time. Kissinger recalled that van der Beugel’s first words to him were more than direct: “Are you one of these diplomats who is composing his dispatch while you are talking to me, or can we have a normal conversation?” This openness – one might say bluntness – laid the grounds for a friendship of more than 45 years. 

Kissinger attended his first Bilderberg meeting in 1957, in the wake of the Suez crisis, as a guest of David Rockefeller. Van der Beugel didn’t attend until 1959, but by then he was already a trusted associate of Prince Bernhard and his appointment as honorary secretary the following year was met with general acclaim. The American contingent regarded van der Beugel as something of a safer pair of hands in this role than his predecessor, the Pole Jozef Retinger, who was reputed to have close links with MI6. As Kissinger put it, “you can’t impose people on that group, and in fact you have to avoid controversy, you don’t want that a significant part of the group or even one or two senior people object. But Ernst enjoyed the good-will of the entire group.”

Van der Beugel was someone who believed to his bones in the meaning of the Atlantic Community – an inseparable relationship between (Western) Europe and the United States, joined by common values (history, culture) and interests (economics, security). Through the 1950s and 1960s Bilderberg represented this belief more than any other forum. HK: “He was very important for the Bilderberg meetings because its one thing to bring important people together, its another to create an atmosphere which then grew to be the spirit of Bilderberg, that they talked to each other…but they were also part of a bigger enterprise….I considered him for many years sort of the glue that held the group together.”

And how important was Bilderberg for HK himself? “First of all I never had a deliberate strategy for networking, but as it developed it was an important part in sort of unintentional networking….[W]hen I became a high official what Bilderberg helped me [with] was that I could identify problems with people…so I can’t say it contributed to a specific policy, but it contributed the ease with which I could conduct it…that is a value in itself.”

It is striking that none of the biographers of Kissinger have really spent much time on the significance of Bilderberg,  focusing instead on the formal aspects of his diplomatic career. Yet the formal and informal are closely intertwined, and it is the informal meetings such as these that ease policy-making paths in discreet, difficult to trace ways. HK: “Bilderberg is still the best Atlantic group that I know, and I know them all…” He is unimpressed by his biographers in general. “If you look at the historic facts, there were two administrations that put troops in Vietnam, and regularly increased the commitment. There was another administration that took them all out. But if you read the public discussions the villains of the Vietnam war are the people who took the troops out and the people who put them in are never mentioned. [So] the Cambodian bombing, when you look at [the] Pakistan bombing today, the problem was very similar when you have sanctuaries, but I don’t want to get into this stuff.”

Before this could be explored further, our valuable time was up. A brief handshake and out of the air-lock into the cold New York evening. But it had been good while it lasted.