by Thomas W. Lippman
It might be a mistake to jump to conclusions about the removal of Prince Bandar bin Sultan from his post as chief of Saudi Arabian intelligence. When it comes to senior jobs held by the royals, the Kingdom’s decision-making process is entirely opaque and there is no way [...]]]>
by Thomas W. Lippman
It might be a mistake to jump to conclusions about the removal of Prince Bandar bin Sultan from his post as chief of Saudi Arabian intelligence. When it comes to senior jobs held by the royals, the Kingdom’s decision-making process is entirely opaque and there is no way to know at this point whether the flamboyant former ambassador to the United States was pushed out or bailed out.
A terse announcement by the official Saudi Press Agency on Tuesday said King Abdullah relieved Bandar of his duties “upon his request.” That’s what the SPA almost always says; sometimes it’s true, sometimes not, but the people involved in such high-level decisions never explain them to the outside world.
In Bandar’s case it might even be true. At the age of 65 he is relatively youthful among senior Saudi princes, but he has nursed various ailments for years and recently was absent from his post for months, reportedly recuperating in Morocco after surgery in the United States.
The standard narrative about Bandar for some time has been that he fell from the king’s favor because he failed to carry out his most urgent mission: to bring about the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an outcome to which King Abdullah is committed. Bandar, who for years was a powerhouse in Washington, was unable to forge a common strategy on Syria with the United States, which is seeking the same outcome. He was unable to unite the disparate Syrian rebel groups or curb the influence among them of radical jihadis. And on a visit to Moscow last summer, of which no details were ever made public, he apparently failed to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to back off from his support of Assad. In February Bandar was relieved of responsibility for Syria, replaced by Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the powerful minister of interior, who had made the rounds in Washington a few weeks earlier.
Whether Mohammed can salvage the operation in Syria, where the military trend has clearly been in the government’s favor lately, remains open to doubt, despite assertions from the Saudis and the United States that they got back on the same page when President Barack Obama visited Riyadh last month.
Iran’s Fars News Agency, reporting that Bandar had been “sacked,” appended to its article a photograph of Bandar crossed out by a big red X. “In September,” the Fars article said, 17 Saudi princes “in a letter to King Abdullah protested at Bandar Bin Sultan’s failure in coaxing the US into a war on Syria to topple President Bashar al-Assad’s government.” Could be, but Fars and other Iranian news organs regularly report unsupported nonsense about Saudi Arabia if they think it makes the Saudis look bad.
Bandar apparently retains at least for now his position as head of Saudi Arabia’s National Security Council, although his responsibilities in that post have always been murky. Even if Bandar is in the king’s doghouse, this latest development does not necessarily mean that he is permanently excluded from the inner circles of power. After all, he was appointed to the intelligence job in 2012 after the king dismissed his predecessor, Prince Muqrin bin Abul Aziz. Muqrin not only survived that apparent display of kingly displeasure, he recently was elevated to the position of “deputy crown prince,” putting him second in the line of succession after Abdullah. Even Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz, a half-brother of Abdullah who distanced himself from the royal family decades ago by supporting Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and other Arab nationalists, was politically rehabilitated by King Abdullah a few years ago.
As of now, only two things are knowable with certainty about this latest move: Bandar is out as intelligence chief, and has been succeeded by an obscure deputy, Yousef al-Adrisi, who has stayed so far out of the public eye that a Google search turned up little beyond Wednesday’s announcement. The Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a statement last year saying he had been promoted to the rank of “general staff” upon the recommendation of Prince Bandar. He may be well known in the CIA and other foreign intelligence agencies, but his public profile is the polar opposite of Bandar’s. It will likely be many months before it becomes possible to assess his performance or to know the degree to which, as a non-royal, he has genuine authority over intelligence operations.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
Israeli academics have recently provided a case study of how Israel and Iran may say and do much the same thing, but Iran alone will be criticized for it.
In their latest Iran Pulse piece, headlined “Iran and the Ukraine Crisis,” Prof. Meir Litvak, head of Tel Aviv University’s [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Israeli academics have recently provided a case study of how Israel and Iran may say and do much the same thing, but Iran alone will be criticized for it.
In their latest Iran Pulse piece, headlined “Iran and the Ukraine Crisis,” Prof. Meir Litvak, head of Tel Aviv University’s Alliance Center for Iranian Studies, and MA student Michelle Tabariai write, “As the crisis in the Ukraine unfolded since January 2014, Iran’s official position was cautious and seemingly neutral.”
Of course, the Israeli government was also uncharacteristically quiet about the crisis in Ukraine, and has been almost silent about Russia’s takeover of Crimea. Only under pressure from Secretary of State John Kerry did the Israeli government issue its first and only official statement about the Russian incursion into Crimea on March 5 that was terse and subdued. “Israel is following developments in Ukraine with great concern for the well-being of all its citizens, and hopes the situation does not deteriorate to the point of loss of life,” said a statement released by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s office. “Israel expects the crisis in Ukraine to be solved diplomatically and peacefully.”
“We have good and trusting relations with the Americans and the Russians, and our experience has been very positive with both sides,” Lieberman then told Israel’s Channel 9 TV. “So I don’t understand the idea that Israel has to get mired in this.”
Former Mossad Director Ephraim Halevy observes that “Israel’s most articulate spokespersons have sentenced themselves to complete silence over the issue, and this discipline is being kept in an unusually meticulous manner by the senior and less senior commentators in the Israeli media.”
The Iran Pulse analysis points out:
Iran did not participate in the UN General Assembly vote on March 27, which reaffirmed Ukraine’s territorial integrity and declared the Crimean referendum invalid. While seeking to preserve its alliance with Russia, it might have been wary of Russia’s unilateral measures in the Crimea.
Iran was indeed among two dozen states that did not vote in favor of the measure. So was Israel. Neither showed up for the vote.
Another excerpt from the Tel Aviv University critique:
…From the beginning of the protests in Kiev in January, the Iranian media adopted the Russian narrative, which described the movement as a product of Western plot.
Surprisingly, Litvak and Tabariai never mention Iranian rumors that Israeli operatives were involved in the ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich in what appears to have been a rather curious game of propaganda poker between Israeli and Iranian press. On Feb. 16 Press TV cited unidentified Ukrainian sources who claimed a former Israeli army officer was “playing a leading role in the anti-government protests in the former Soviet Republic.” This unnamed Israeli was supposedly commanding 20 Ukrainian militants, and four other Israelis, who had served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and “were recently reported to have taken part in opposition rallies in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev.” The Press TV report also claimed that “Ukrainian media said an Israeli tycoon provides financial support to the opposition in Ukraine, adding that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency is one of the instigators of the unrest in the country.”
A week and a half later, Haaretz and The Times of Israel both published a Jewish Telegraphic Agency interview with “Delta,” a skull-cap wearing commander of a brigade he called the “Blue Helmets of Maidan,” which was fighting in the streets of Kiev. The pseudonymous “Delta” explained he’d been born in Ukraine, emigrated to Israel during the 1990s and served in the Israel Defense Forces. He returned to Ukraine several years ago and joined the protesters in November. He had been using his IDF acquired skills “to rise through the ranks of Kiev’s street fighters,” including “several fellow IDF veterans” engaging “in violent clashes with government forces.” Completing the circle, Press TV picked up the story on Mar. 1: “According to reports published by Haaretz and the Times of Israel on Friday, an Israeli army veteran identified as ‘Delta’ headed a street-fighting unit in Kiev.” There was no apparent glimmer of recognition that Press TV itself might have published the news that triggered the interview with “Delta.”
Write Litvak and Tabariai:
…Fars News, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, denounced the ousting of the president Viktor Yanukovych on February 22 as a “neo-Nazi-spearheaded coup” The new Ukraine, it warned, was governed by some ten “oligarchs” who were buying up media outlets and politicians, while the vast majority of the population will face a bleak future, which will include more European-demanded “austerity” (Fars, Mar. 16, 2014).
There has been no shortage of concerns expressed in the Israeli media about the widespread presence of neo-Nazis in Svoboda, the largest party in the Ukrainian opposition that brought down Yanukovych, or an equal number challenging such a claim. Israel’s official position is silence.
Mention “oligarchs” and Israelis get very nervous. A disproportionate percentage of both Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs are Jewish. Several fund the various Jewish organizations and foundations operating in Ukraine and Russia. One of them, the founder of what once was the Yukos oil empire, Mikhail Khordokovsky — once Russia’s richest man who lost the bulk of his wealth and spent a decade in prison due to his political rival, Vladimir Putin – joined the Ukrainian protestors in March, calling for the Russian people to overthrow Putin. A Ukrainian Jewish business tycoon, Vadim Rabinovich, recently announced his candidacy for president of Ukraine in the May elections. Rabinovich, founder of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, is the owner and co-founder of Jewish News One and co-chair of the European Jewish Parliament. These developments, along with the calls from members of the US Congress, who are among Israel’s most energetic supporters, to arm Ukraine and sanction prominent Russian oligarchs are putting Israel in a very awkward position.
The Iran Pulse report notes that Iranian reformist media outlets “showed greater concern from a renewed outbreak of the Cold War and the repercussions of Russian use of force,” while hardliners focused more on the significance of the American failure vis-à-vis Russia”:
The reformist Sharq maintained that Russian military presence in the Crimea reveals the vulnerability and fragility of the international community in ensuring global security…(Sharq, March 3, 2014). Conversely, the conservative Khorasan asked rhetorically why Putin should respect international law while others fail to do so?…(Khorasan, March 3, 2014)
…More important, however, was the unanimous conclusion of the Iranian media that Western reactions to Russia’s measures exposed the weakness of the Western bloc and particularly the US’ declining power. Kayhan noted with satisfaction that “Putin’s agile reaction paralyzed Western response,” adding that “Western preference for economic sanctions and NATO’s contentment with issuing statements rather than acting against Russia’s military action show that the West is in a passive mode” (Kayhan, March 6, 2014).
On this point, right-wing Israelis have the most in common with their Iranian counterparts. Writing in the Sheldon Adelson-owned daily, Israel Today, Haim Shine argues for Israeli self-reliance, broadly hinting that the lesson of Ukraine for Israel is to never give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for pathetic promises of American protection.
Israel’s citizens know from their experience during the run-up to the Six-Day War what the Ukrainians are learning now — you cannot rely on Western nations. Treaties, agreements, promises and worthy guarantees are as flimsy as garlic skins just when you need them. The West is tired and weary. Its last strength rests on its lips alone…So how could Israel, in light of the circumstances, relinquish the very foundations of its security?!
This seems to be the predominant perspective in Israel, according to a head-shaking and somewhat dispirited opinion piece headlined “Israel Striking Obama, Rooting for Putin” by former Mossad head Ephraim Halevy in Y-Net on March 28:
Israel is not limiting its mocking criticism against Washington and its Middle Eastern policy: While Russia is described as a resolved, brave country engaging in a smart, shrewd and winning policy — the US is presented as hesitant, afraid, powerless, and therefore defeated.
The US president must envy his Russian rival for the respect he receives in Israel as opposed to the daily dose of scorn and alienation served to our “ally” time and again.
The Iranians can take pleasure in seeing America’s ally declare on a daily basis with hysterical cries of despair that Washington is going from bad to worse.
At least Iranian and Israeli hardliners can agree on something…
Photo: Delta, the nom de guerre of the Jewish commander of a Ukrainian street-fighting unit, is pictured in Kiev in late February 2014.
]]>via IPS News
In the wake of a renewed diplomatic push on the Iranian nuclear front, shared interests in Iran’s backyard could pave the way for Washington and Tehran to work toward overcoming decades of hostility.
“I think that if Iran and the United States are able to [...]]]>
via IPS News
In the wake of a renewed diplomatic push on the Iranian nuclear front, shared interests in Iran’s backyard could pave the way for Washington and Tehran to work toward overcoming decades of hostility.
“I think that if Iran and the United States are able to overcome their differences regarding Iran’s nuclear programme, if there begins to be some progress in that regard, then I do see opportunities for dialogue and cooperation on a broader range of issues, including my issues, which is to say Afghanistan,” Ambassador James F. Dobbins, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told IPS at a briefing here Monday.
This summer’s election of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a moderate cleric with centrist and reformist backing as well as close ties to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has been followed by signals that Iran may be positioning itself to agree to a deal over its controversial nuclear programme.
Rouhani’s appointment of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to oversee Iran’s nuclear dossier has been received positively here by leading foreign policy elites who consider Zarif a worthy negotiating partner.
The Western-educated former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations is slotted to meet with his British counterpart William Hague at the U.N. General Assembly later this month, which could lead to a resumption of diplomatic ties that were halted following a 2011 storming of the British embassy in Tehran by a group of protestors.
Dobbins, who worked closely with Zarif in 2001 after being appointed by the George W. Bush administration to aid the establishment of a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan, told IPS that “Iran was quite helpful” with the task.
“I think it’s unfortunate that our cooperation, which was, I think, genuine and important back in 2001, wasn’t able to be sustained,” added Dobbins.
The U.S. halted official moves toward further cooperation with Iran following a 2002 speech by Bush that categorised Iran as part of an “axis of evil” with Iraq and North Korea.
While President Barack Obama’s “A New Beginning” speech in Cairo in 2009 indicated a move away from Bush-era rhetoric on the Middle East, the U.S.’s Iran policy has remained sanctions-centric – a main point of contention for Iran during last year’s nuclear talks.
Positive signs from both sides
But a recent string of events, which continued even as the U.S. seemed to be positioning itself to strike Iranian ally Syria, have led to speculation that the long-time adversaries may be edging toward direct talks, though the White House denied speculation that this could take place at the U.N. General Assembly.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham also verified the exchange but denied speculation that Syria was a subject.
“Obama’s letter was received, but it was not about Syria and it was a congratulation letter (to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani) whose response was sent,” Afkham told reporters in Tehran in comments posted on the semiofficial Fars News Agency.
That both leaders have publicly acknowledged such rare contact is an important development in and of itself, according to Robert E. Hunter, who served on the National Security Council staff throughout the Jimmy Carter administration.
“This is an effort as much as anything to test the waters in domestic American politics regarding direct talks, regarding the possibility of seeing whether something more productive can be done than in the past. And except out of Israel, I haven’t seen a lot of powerful protest,” Hunter told IPS.
“The Iranians have already backed off on the stuff about the Holocaust by saying it was that ‘other guy’. Now, and this is a reach, but keep in mind that as the slogan goes, the road between Tehran and Washington runs through Jerusalem,” said Hunter, who was U.S. ambassador to NATO (1993-98).
“A serious improvement of U.S.-Iran relations also requires Iran to do things in regard to Israel that will reduce Israel’s anxiety about Iranian intentions on the nuclear front, and on Hezbollah,” he said.
Hunter added that “compatible interests” between the two countries, including security and stability in Iraq and Afghanistan and freedom of shipping in the vital oil transport route, the Strait of Hormuz, could also pave the way to improved relations.
A shift in Iran
Even Khamenei, who has always been deeply suspicious of U.S. policy toward Iran, has given permission for Rouhani to enter into direct talks with the U.S., according to an op-ed published by Project Syndicate and written by former Iranian nuclear negotiator, Hossein Mousavian.
During a meeting Monday with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Khamenei also said he was “not opposed to correct diplomacy” and believes in “heroic flexibility”, according to an Al-Monitor translation.
Adding to the eyebrow-raising remarks was Khamenei’s echoing of earlier comments by Rouhani that the IRGC does not need to have a direct hand in politics.
“It is not necessary for it to act as a guard in the political scene, but it should know the political scene,” said Khamenei, who has nurtured years of close relations with the powerful branch of Iran’s military.
Iran sends out feelers
On Sept. 12, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation Ali Akbar Salehi announced that Iran had reduced its stockpile of 20 percent low enriched uranium by converting it into fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR).
This was described as “misleading” by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) based on how little LEU Iran had reportedly converted to fuel.
“As such, this action cannot be seen as a significant confidence building measure,” argued ISIS in a press release.
But Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia (2000 to 2005), called this “an example of all-too-prevalent reductionism that seeks to fold political and psychological questions into technical ones.”
“Confidence-building measures can mean many things, but in general they have at least as much to do with perceptions and intentions as they do with gauging physical steps against some technical yardstick,” Pillar told IPS.
“Confidence-building measures…are gestures of goodwill and intent. They are not walls against a possible future ‘break-out’. If they were, they would not be confidence-building measures; they would be a solving of the whole problem,” he said.
Photo Credit: ISNA/Mehdi Ghasemi
]]>Since Saturday, more than a dozen young journalists working for five reformist newspapers and journals, one news agency (Iranian labor News Agency or ILNA), and one website (Baztab), have been arrested mostly at their place of work on order from the Iranian Judiciary. Little is yet known about the reasons for [...]]]>
Since Saturday, more than a dozen young journalists working for five reformist newspapers and journals, one news agency (Iranian labor News Agency or ILNA), and one website (Baztab), have been arrested mostly at their place of work on order from the Iranian Judiciary. Little is yet known about the reasons for their arrests (one has already been temporarily released). But various Iranian news media outlets are suggesting that their arrest warrants were issued by the Judiciary based on the charge of cooperation with “Persian anti-revolutionary media” located outside of Iran. Meanwhile, the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance said today that he is “sure their charges are not media related.” In other words, he is saying that they were not arrested for what they wrote.
The arrests come on the heels of reports of harassment suffered by families of journalists who work for BBC Persian and just a week after the spokesperson for the Judiciary, Mohseni Eje’I, said that “reliable sources” had told him that a number of journalists, along with those writing for domestic newspapers, “have their hands in Western and anti-revolutionary hands,” whatever that means.
About three years ago, the Intelligence Ministry made “contracts and receiving of resources” from 60 foreign institutions, including Persian speaking media, illegal as part of its attempt to manage the “Soft War” waged against Iran by Western enemies. In 2011, the Ministry arrested 6 filmmakers on charges of cooperation with BBC Persian despite the BBC’s denials that anyone works for its news service in Iran.
Cartoon by Mana Neyestani
The recent arrests, however, are by the Judiciary and not the Intelligence Ministry, and if the reporting of Fars News is to be taken seriously – and that’s a very big “if” – the journalists’ “crime” was “attempting to participate” in the BBC’s online photojournalism classes with the intent of shooting films with their mobiles and presumably sending then to the BBC eventually.
In addition to these arrests, the popular conservative website Tabnak has now become completely blocked. Tabnak belongs to former IRGC (revolutionary guard) commander and presidential candidate, Mohsen Rezaie, and had been operating without filter. According to Fararu, another conservative website, the popular site was blocked because of the publication of improper reader comments (public insults against religious authorities is against the law and punishable; in the same way, contact with Persian-language “anti-revolutionary” sites is also considered illegal).
As Jamshid Barzegar of BBC Persian has written, the simultaneous arresting of journalists is unusual for two reasons. First, while during the height of the reform era a number of newspapers were closed at the same time (hence depriving many journalists of work), this is the first time such a large number of journalists have been arrested in their work environments. Second, the arrests — combined with the blocking of Tabnak – provide a hint that there has been a change in the pre-election norm of relative openness for the media.
The Iranian leaders’ desire to increase participation rates in the presidential election has usually been deemed reason enough for pre-election relative media openness. In this context, the question of whether these moves indicate that the Iranian leadership could care less about participation rates in the presidential election becomes an important one. The worry that the election might get out of control seems to be trumping the desire to elicit higher participation rates as an indicator of state legitimacy.
The way the Iranian deep security state continues to show its pre-election nervousness is nevertheless puzzling. Newspapers for which the arrested journalists worked have not been shut down and unless there is a much wider crackdown they will continue to publish critical commentaries that are not made up by journalists but uttered by commentators that range from university professors to members of the Parliament to business leaders to former presidents of the Islamic Republic. What happened in Iran in the past few years has moved the country so much to the extreme right that even center-right presidential candidate such as Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf or former nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani — if they decide to compete — will run on a platform that will be critical of the direction the country is going in. Arresting journalists will not change this.
The move, which will be given a veneer of legality, will keep journalists generally scared and worried about the way they report on issues, even non-political issues since a couple of arrestees are in charge of the social desks of various newspapers. It will also make everyone wary of their contacts with the outside world. But it will not address the fundamental contradiction faced by Iran’s security establishment, namely: the more it highlights as a threat the linkages of regular folks doing their jobs inside Iran to outside or anti-revolutionary manipulation and machinations, the more it advertises its own failures in creating a more “secure “environment for the Islamic Republic.
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