by Julien Barnes-Dacey
The designation of Haider al-Abadi as the new prime minister of Iraq is a significant step toward opposing the Islamic State if his premiership can be secured and fulfils the potential to create an urgently needed cross-sectarian coalition against the jihadist group.
However, a fundamental ingredient is still missing in [...]]]>
by Julien Barnes-Dacey
The designation of Haider al-Abadi as the new prime minister of Iraq is a significant step toward opposing the Islamic State if his premiership can be secured and fulfils the potential to create an urgently needed cross-sectarian coalition against the jihadist group.
However, a fundamental ingredient is still missing in shaping a coherent strategy for targeting the Islamic State in Iraq: a concurrent strategy to defeat its presence in Syria. In the absence of such a policy, any plan for Iraq is doomed to failure.
Abadi’s nomination has been widely welcomed at home and abroad — including Washington and Tehran. He must now urgently form an inclusive government that draws in meaningful Sunni representation and Kurdish support. Given the depth of Iraq’s sectarian polarization, this will be no easy task and it remains to be seen just how willing he is to take it on given his own background in the Shia Islamist Dawa party. The likely price for meaningful Sunni participation in a new government will be significant power-sharing and federalisation and any unwillingness by Abadi, or narrowing of his ability to negotiate, could be fatal. But with incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki viewed as the source of the divisions now tearing the country apart, Abadi offers a more hopeful way forward.
This approach is probably the only way of peeling local Sunni support away from the Islamic State, which has been the foundation of much of the group’s recent gains in Iraq. It also offers the prospect of securing expanded and urgently-needed US military assistance for Baghdad. Washington, which is already directly arming Kurdish forces against the Islamic State, has promised Baghdad increased backing if a new inclusive government is formed. While it may be doomed to failure, Abadi’s nomination offers the starting point for a strategy towards combatting the Islamic State in Iraq.
For any prospect of success, however, the response to the Islamic State cannot be viewed through an exclusively Iraqi lens.
The group that grew from al-Qaeda in Iraq and until recently was known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), has over the past three years concentrated its efforts in neighbouring Syria, where it is now the leading military opposition to Bashar al-Assad. Its recent surge into Iraq was conducted on the back of its presence in Syria (which it has in turn expanded on the basis of its new gains in Iraq). These territorial ties linking the Islamic State mean that any strategy geared towards its demise must confront its presence in both countries.
Without a comprehensive approach, the Islamic State will respond to political and military setbacks in Iraq by regrouping in Syria from where it can continue to destabilise Iraq — and the wider region. Yet international governments continue to narrowly focus on an Iraq response, largely ignoring the critical Syria component.
To be sure, there are no easy options in Syria today. On the one hand, direct Western military action against the Islamic State will play into Assad’s hands by weakening his main rival on the ground. The idea that “moderate” rebels will fill the void is farfetched. They are weak in numbers and fighting ability and there are real question marks over the reliability of their moderate stance. Moreover, any approach grounded on this hope would unrealistically require the West to drastically step up its armed support for the rebels, effectively taking ownership of the fight against Assad.
The alternative of deal-making with Assad against the Islamic-State is not only hugely unpalatable, it is also an illusion given his deliberate role in fuelling the extremism.
The more promising avenue — continuously rejected by those still seeking absolute victory in Syria — could now lie in using the regional and international consensus formed against the Islamic State in Iraq to forge a similar approach in Syria. This will require drawing Assad’s key backer, Iran, and Western and Gulf supporters of the opposition together. While Assad’s removal cannot be a precondition, the different external actors need to shape a negotiated path towards a power-sharing agreement that moves towards eventually excluding Assad, or at minimum limiting his powers. It is increasingly in all parties’ interests to see significant parts of the regime remain in place. That could be a unifying factor that, given the growing regional threats, offers a greater prospect than ever for progress in regional and international deal-making.
Leaving Syria alone is not an option if the West is serious about combatting the Islamic State. While grappling with policy dilemmas in Iraq, the crisis in Syria needs to be placed at the forefront of the international agenda. Despite the distinctions between the two conflicts, it is clear that to fix Iraq, you also need to fix Syria.
Julien Barnes-Dacey is a senior policy fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Programme for ECFR.
]]>by Derek Davison
Over the next few months, citizens in several Middle Eastern countries will take to the polls in a series of elections that will have a good deal to say about the direction the region’s politics will take. From Turkey, to Syria, to Iraq, to Egypt, there is [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
Over the next few months, citizens in several Middle Eastern countries will take to the polls in a series of elections that will have a good deal to say about the direction the region’s politics will take. From Turkey, to Syria, to Iraq, to Egypt, there is a danger that these elections will ratify a resurgent authoritarian tendency that has developed, in part, as a reaction to the so-called “Arab Spring” movement.
The most obvious example of this phenomenon is in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarianism has remained constant despite the ongoing civil war it has sparked. Assad recently declared his intention to stand for reelection in June. In an interesting but certainly symbolic gesture, this year’s vote will be contested, as opposed to previous presidential elections in 2000 and 2007 that were conducted as referenda in which Assad’s name was the only one on the ballot. There is little reason to believe that this election will be any more legitimate than those were, and in many ways it will be much worse. The vote will only be permitted in areas of the country that are under government control, and there is no indication that the millions of Syrians who have been displaced by the war will be able to cast ballots. UN Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has argued that elections will only further hamper efforts to reach a negotiated settlement in the three-year old conflict, though progress toward such a settlement has been imperceptible.
Turks have already voted once this year in municipal elections, where Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party won a clear, albeit not overwhelming victory. Erdogan is expected to run in August’s presidential election, where he is the presumptive favorite. Since ordering a violent crackdown on the Gezi Park protesters (whose protest movement is still active) last summer, Erdogan has been governing with an increasingly authoritarian bent by limiting press freedoms, increasing his direct control over Turkey’s judiciary, quashing a corruption probe that targeted his aides, and even banning social media inside Turkey. Although Turkey’s constitution establishes a parliamentary system with limited presidential authority and Erdogan tried and failed to change the constitution to increase that authority in 2012, he has pledged to use “all [his] constitutional powers” if he becomes president, which suggests he will assert the authority of the presidency as far as he can within constitutional bounds.
For Americans, the resurgence of authoritarianism in Iraq may be the most difficult pill to swallow, given the blood and treasure the United States expended, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives it took, in a war that resulted in the only tangible result (since pre-war threats of Iraqi nuclear weapons turned out to be completely empty) of the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But since he was elected Prime Minister in 2006, Nuri al-Maliki has increasingly consolidated his authority over the Iraqi state, particularly by oppressing Iraq’s Sunni population, whose recent uprising has given Maliki an excuse to accelerate his accumulation of power. Maliki has governed in fear of a Baathist revival among the Sunnis, and has manipulated the state security apparatus to consolidate his hold on power even as the security situation in Iraq has collapsed, and while Iraqi infrastructure continues to crumble, Maliki’s attention seems to be focused solely on retaining power. The results of Iraq’s April 30 parliamentary elections are not yet known, and there is a chance that Maliki will have to make some concessions in order to form a coalition government, but the likeliest outcome is that Maliki’s State of Law Coalition will come away victorious and he will retain the premiership with a free hand.
In Egypt, the resurgence of authoritarianism hasn’t waited for Field Marshal-turned-civilian Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s likely election in May. It began, arguably, with the coup that removed former President Mohamed Morsi from power, but certainly revealed itself in August of last year, when Egypt’s interim government launched a violent crackdown against protesters and Muslim Brotherhood figures. That crackdown claimed 638 lives in a single day (August 14, 2013), with almost 4,000 injured, and has led to over 3,000 deaths in total (the majority in clashes between protesters and security forces), with another 17,000 injured and nearly 19,000 Egyptians imprisoned. The government declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in December, a move with obvious ramifications in terms of stamping out political opposition and one that experts have warned could become a “self-fulfilling prophecy” by driving Brotherhood members toward terrorism as their only remaining means of opposition. Last month, an Egyptian judge sentenced 529 people, most or all of them Brotherhood supporters, to death over an attack on Egyptian police in August. This month, that same judge commuted all but 37 of the death sentences to 25-year prison terms — and then sentenced an additional 683 men to death. There is a possibility that the upcoming campaign will somehow put Egypt on a path toward democratic reform, but it seems more likely that Sisi’s election will cement Egypt’s complete return to authoritarian repression.
Each of these cases illustrates the limits and challenges facing US foreign policy in the region. The US’ unwillingness to take a strong stance on Egyptian repression was made clear when it refused to admit that the coup which removed Morsi from power was, in fact, a coup, because doing so would have triggered automatic cuts in US aid. Now, while it condemns the death sentences handed to hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters as “unconscionable,” America continues to send military aid to Egypt (though not without Congressional opposition) because its security priorities (fighting Sinai terrorism, maintaining close Egypt-Israel ties, and ensuring that the Suez Canal remains open) require it. Turkey is a NATO ally whose collaboration is important to American policy on Syria, Iran, and even Russia, so there is little that Americas can do to rein in Erdogan even as the White House criticizes his more repressive policies. It’s been apparent for some time now that the US has little leverage with which to hasten Assad’s ouster, and given the makeup of the Syrian opposition, it’s not clear that a post-Assad Syria would actually be preferable from an American viewpoint, though millions of Syrians would disagree. Finally, as far as Maliki is concerned, it seems that Washington is content to remain relatively quiet as Maliki consolidates his power, as long as he keeps up the fight against jihadist forces like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which have used the discord among Iraqi Sunnis to expand their regional influence.
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via IPS News
Despite Thursday’s announcement that President Barack Obama has decided to provide direct military assistance to Syrian rebels, what precisely the administration has in mind remains unclear.
Analysts here are also questioning whether the decision is part of a deliberate strategy – and, if so, what that strategy [...]]]>
via IPS News
Despite Thursday’s announcement that President Barack Obama has decided to provide direct military assistance to Syrian rebels, what precisely the administration has in mind remains unclear.
Analysts here are also questioning whether the decision is part of a deliberate strategy – and, if so, what that strategy is – or whether it is instead another in a series of efforts to relieve growing pressure from its allies in Europe and the Gulf and hawks at home to take stronger military measures designed to shift the 27-month-old civil war decisively in favour of the opposition.
“When Julius Caesar actually crossed the [Rubicon], he proceeded rapidly to mission accomplishment in accordance with a sound strategy,” noted retired Ambassador Frederic Hof, a Syria specialist at the Atlantic Council who has long called for stronger U.S. military intervention.
“Although the administration’s crossing [decision] is significant, welcome, and long overdue, it is far from certain whether this particular legion will move smartly toward an objective or simply mill around the river bank.”
The White House tied the decision to escalate the “scope and scale” of military aid to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Syrian Military Council (SMC) to the U.S. intelligence community’s determination that the Syrian forces had used chemical weapons – albeit “on a small scale” – against rebel forces in multiple battles over the past year.
It also cited the deepening involvement of Iran and Hezbollah militants from Lebanon in support of the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad, whose departure from office Obama has repeatedly demanded since hostilities first broke out more than two years ago.
The announcement, however, followed a series of intensive internal meetings over the past two weeks, as it became clear that the regime’s forces had made a series of battlefield advances – most importantly by capturing, with Hezbollah’s help, the strategic western town of Al-Qusayr close to the Lebanese border – that threatened to tip the war decisively in Assad’s favour.
With pro-government forces and Hezbollah fighters reportedly preparing a major assaults on the key city of Aleppo and other “moderate” opposition leaders appealing desperately for weapons, the administration has found itself under pressure from both its allies abroad and hawks here to “do something” that could halt, if not reverse, the regime’s momentum and restore the “strategic stalemate” that Washington considers essential to any prospect for a political settlement.
But what precisely that “something” is or will be remains unclear. In a briefing for reporters Thursday evening, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes repeatedly avoided answering the question, insisting, however, that Washington will increase “the scope and scale” of direct aid to the SMC which so far has received mainly humanitarian and “non-lethal” assistance.
According to various published reports, Obama has indeed decided to provide small arms and ammunition but still pending are decisions on rebel requests for anti-tank weapons and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Washington had previously ruled out the latter, in part due to Israel’s concerns that they could be used against its aircraft, particularly if they fall into the hands of radical Islamist factions among the anti-Assad forces.
But hawks here have argued that small arms and even anti-tank weapons are at this point insufficient to redress the rapidly tilting balance of power on the ground.
“The president must rally an international coalition to take military actions to degrade Assad’s ability to use airpower and ballistic missiles and to move and resupply his forces around the battlefield by air,” declared Congress’s most visible interventionists, Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham late Thursday. “We must take more decisive actions now to turn the tide of the conflict in Syria.”
They and others have called for Washington to create “no-fly zones” along Syria’s Turkish and Jordanian borders that would both safe havens for refugees and rebels and permit the latter to be trained, armed and supplied for operations against government forces inside Syria.
Hof has urged that such a zone also be used protect a rebel government that could gain formal recognition from the United States and other allies, request heavier weapons and eventually go to peace talks as diplomatic, as well as military, equals of the Assad government.
While Rhodes told reporters that Obama has “not made any decision to pursue a military operations such as a no-fly zone”, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that a Pentagon proposal still under consideration calls for a limited “no-fighting” zone extending up to 40 kilometres inside Syria that would be enforced by U.S. and allied aircraft operating from Jordanian airspace.
In recent months, Washington has set up Patriot air-defence batteries and sent fighter jets to bases inside Jordan, where it has also been secretly training rebel and Jordanian forces on securing chemical-weapons facilities and weapons in the event the Assad regime collapses, according to some reports.
Some analysts who have opposed escalating U.S. involvement in the civil war agree that directly supplying arms to the rebels would be unlikely to turn the military tide, certainly in the short term, and could carry additional risks.
“Selective arms shipments could [spur] clashes between rival rebel groups. Extremist elements might attack more moderate rebel units receiving better arms, driven by need, resentment or both,” according to Wayne White, the former deputy director of the State Department intelligence unit on the Near East, who noted that this could actually strengthen the regime. Indeed, he added, the “rebel military vanguard” for some time has been the “radical Islamist in character – even Al-Qaeda affiliated”.
He also expressed scepticism about the effectiveness of a no-fly zone, noting that it would risk swift escalation. “The rebels would remain at the mercy of the regime’s other heavy weapons on the ground, thus tempting those establishing any sort of no-fly zone to attack regime ground targets as well.”
“The first step on the slippery slope is always easy, but it’s much harder to actually resolve a conflict or to find a way out of a quagmire,” wrote Marc Lynch, a Middle East expert at George Washington University, on the eve of the White House announcement.
For Lynch, who has long urged Obama to resist calls to escalate Washington’s intervention, the key issue is what U.S. policy ultimately aims to achieve and whether providing military aid or taking more aggressive measures will help achieve them.
“Should Syria be viewed as a front in a broad regional cold war against Iran and its allies or as a humanitarian catastrophe that must be resolved?” he asked, noting that very different strategies should be followed depending on the answer to that question.
At the moment, according to Lynch, “advocates of arming the rebels switch between making the case that it would strike a blow against the Iranians (and Hezbollah) and that it would improve the prospects for a negotiated solution.”
While the White House clearly framed its decision this week in the latter terms, it may nonetheless add momentum to those who tend to view the Syrian conflict more as part of the larger conflict against Tehran the model for which, according to Lynch, “would presumably be the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan – a long-term insurgency coordinated through neighbouring countries, fuelled by Gulf money, and popularised by Islamist and sectarian propaganda”.
]]>As former top State Department intelligence specialist Wayne White points out for Lobe Log, in the absence of a tenable ceasefire agreement, the quagmire that is the Syrian civil war will likely intensify, thereby only worsening post-Assad scenarios.
“The bottom line is that a sort of Catch-22 situation is [...]]]>
As former top State Department intelligence specialist Wayne White points out for Lobe Log, in the absence of a tenable ceasefire agreement, the quagmire that is the Syrian civil war will likely intensify, thereby only worsening post-Assad scenarios.
“The bottom line is that a sort of Catch-22 situation is continuing on the diplomatic front,” wrote White last week. “[T]he side that believes it has the upper hand and will eventually prevail militarily (currently the opposition) is unlikely to accept a truce because a ceasefire would interfere with its ability to sustain intense military pressure on the other side.”
Anyone hoping for even a temporary cessation to the deadly violence would have been shattered by Bashar al-Assad’s rare speech in Damascus on Sunday, where he thanked his base for showing “the whole world that Syria is impervious to collapse and the Syrian people impervious to humiliation.” The defiant president refused to step down while claiming he was ready to talk with the opposition. But as White noted, Assad did so while urging his supporters to continue fighting against the “bunch of criminals” who oppose him.
This political gridlock makes creative diplomacy appear all the more important in bringing an end to the ongoing carnage that’s ravaging the country. Asked if the Iranians should be included in diplomatic efforts, former top CIA analyst Paul Pillar told Lobe Log that ”Any multilateral diplomatic initiative has a better chance of success if all the parties with leverage to exert are included.”
Pillar is well aware of the fact that this may be easier said than done. UN and Arab League mediator Lahkdar Brahimi remains in between a rock and a hard place — expected to please everyone while not being able to please anyone. The brutal force that the government deployed to crush what were initially peaceful protests seems to have pushed both sides beyond the point of no return. Presently, the opposition’s recent disgust with Brahimi’s choice of Russia as the venue for his recent truce initiative has been overshadowed by the regime’s accusations of Brahimi’s “bias toward sides known for conspiring against Syria and the Syrian people.”
It was in this atmosphere of hopelessness that news surfaced Wednesday of over 2,130 Syrian prisoners being released by the regime in exchange for 48 Iranians abducted during what they claimed to be a religious pilgrimage in August. (The opposition had said that the Iranians were members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which Tehran adamantly denied.) The massive exchange again raises the question of whether Iran has a role to play in bringing an end to the Syrian crisis.
This question may be more difficult to answer now than it was when the fighting first broke out over a year ago. On the one hand, the prisoner swap supports the argument that Iran holds considerable influence over Assad’s government and could help shift events toward a “peace process”. Throughout last year, Iran tried to inject itself into diplomatic processes taking place over Syria by, for example, supporting a failed United Nations-Arab League peace plan and making is own proposal in December.
“On Syria, Iran is pursuing a dual track policy of support for the Syrian Government as it faces internal instability, while pressing Damascus to take measures to reduce tensions, open the grounds for negotiations with the opposition and find a path towards national unity and conciliation,” said Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, the former spokesperson for Iran’s nuclear negotiating team (2003 to 2005) and now a visiting scholar at Princeton University.
“Iran can play a major constructive role on the Syrian crisis,” he said.
That Iran reportedly included Syria in its five-point proposal presented during nuclear talks in Moscow last June could be an indication that it would be willing to bargain away its support for the regime — if it was provided with enough incentive. (Recall how the government of Mohammad Khatami reportedly offered to end Iran’s material support to Palestinian groups opposing Israel in a March 2003 proposal for “broad dialogue” with the US that was rejected by the Bush administration.)
On the other hand, this prisoner swap, which amounts to about 44 Syrians for every 1 Iranian, displays the extent to which Iran is tied to Assad’s repression. If the war in Syria is really about the major powers that are backing each side (Russia, Iran and China for the regime, and Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Western countries for the opposition), and since the fall of Assad would indeed be a “major blow” to the Iranians, can Tehran really be expected to help its foes?
For now, talks with Iran over its nuclear program are expected to resume shortly, even if they’re already off to a bad start. But as the fighting in Syria produces ongoing suffering while the Israeli-led campaign against Iran’s nuclear program continues to involve the potential of a costly military conflict, considering all options on the Syrian diplomatic table be more important now than ever.
“If the Iranians are excluded from a joint effort to do something helpful, they are only more likely to do something unhelpful, said Pillar, who advocates a more flexible US negotiating posture with Iran.
“Engagement with Iran over Syria also can reap secondary benefits in other areas, such as the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, by expanding channels of communication and bargaining space,” he said.
Photo: Feb. 23, 2012. A Free Syrian Army member prepares to fight with a tank whose crew defected from government forces in al-Qsair. Freedom House photo/Creative Commons/Flickr.
]]>Every problem in the Middle East must look like a nail to some neoconservatives because they always want to bring out the big hammer of the U.S. military. That was the case today on Fox News when Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president of research at the [...]]]>
Every problem in the Middle East must look like a nail to some neoconservatives because they always want to bring out the big hammer of the U.S. military. That was the case today on Fox News when Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, wondered why President Obama would call for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to “step aside” without holding a threat of military attack over his head:
Schanzer’s lack of understanding is puzzling considering that Obama himself said explicitly in his statement exactly why he was taking military force off the table:
This was backed up by a senior administration official, who said this morning on a call with reporters:
Over the past several months, including in meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Syrian opposition activists have called for political and diplomatic support from foreign governments while explicitly warning against a foreign military intervention.
Just last week, a Syrian activist told an independent Arabic news outlet:
In the meeting with Clinton, U.S.-based Syrian opposition activists “unanimously refuse(d) any kind of military intervention in Syria and believe that Syrian people themselves are the ones to determine their future.”
In June, the Washington Times reported that “Syrian protesters are urging their colleagues in the West to oppose calls for foreign military intervention.”
]]>What accounts for the delay and the finalizing of the U.S. government’s wishy-washy [...]]]>
What accounts for the delay and the finalizing of the U.S. government’s wishy-washy position on Assad’s regime? Writes Inter Press Service Washington Bureau Chief, Jim Lobe:
Despite constant pressure from neo-conservatives and other pro-Israel hawks who have long had Assad in their gun sights due to his support for Hizbollah and Hamas and close ties to Iran, the administration also resisted taking a harder public line against Assad for fear that doing so would make it politically more difficult for other key powers, notably Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, to move against him while making it easier for Assad to depict the opposition as being manipulated by Washington.
“There was legitimate hesitation about getting too far out in front lest regime change in Syria be seen as a specifically U.S. project, which would not be helpful to oppositionists inside Syria,” said Paul Pillar, a former top CIA Middle East analyst teaching at Georgetown University.
But recent statements by the leaders of all three countries expressing exasperation with the continuing repression apparently encouraged Obama to take the leap.
In particular, Saudi King Abdullah’s angry appeal ten days ago for Assad to “stop the killing machine” – as well as his recall, along with those of several other Gulf leaders, of his ambassador in Damascus – and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comparison this week of Assad to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi were cited by senior administration officials as key indicators of a sufficient international consensus to warrant the administration’s latest move.
Read the entire article here.
]]>The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin has a history of never missing an opportunity to criticize the White House, but her post today, “Obama tolerates terror operations run out of Syria’s embassy,” provides yet another example of Rubin’s loose relationship [...]]]>
The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin has a history of never missing an opportunity to criticize the White House, but her post today, “Obama tolerates terror operations run out of Syria’s embassy,” provides yet another example of Rubin’s loose relationship with the facts.
Today, Rubin, citing a Wall Street Journal article, is outraged that the Obama administration is “doing nothing” about claims that Syrian embassy officials are monitoring and photographing anti-Assad protesters in many countries, including the U.S. Rubin observes:
But that’s not what the WSJ article she cited reports:
So while Rubin said the FBI “investigated” (past tense) the Syrian crackdown in the U.S., the Journal article — which provides the entire basis for her claim that the Obama administration is tolerating terrorists — says the FBI “is investigating” (present tense) the reports. Thus, it might be best for the White House to let the FBI conclude its investigation before it takes any action against the Syrian embassy.
With her post hinging on a falsehood — indeed the WSJ article would indicate that the Obama administration and the FBI are taking the allegations about the Syrian embassy very seriously — Rubin goes on to observe that “this suggest[s] a shocking dereliction of responsibility to protect our own citizens here at home” and concludes:
This stands as just one more example of Rubin’s willingness to overlook factual inaccuracies, but it begs the question of whether her interests lie with the protesters in Syria — who by all accounts are facing a horrifying crackdown — or launching attacks on the Obama administration at any and all opportunities.
Just last month, she was widely criticized for her faulty report that the massacre in Norway was the work of “jihadists.” She went on to use the deaths in Norway as an opportunity to attack politicians who support defense spending cuts and to denounce the White House for not taking the threat from al-Qaeda seriously.
Rubin’s factually inaccurate reporting and vicious partisanship is becoming a mainstay of the Washington Post’s “Right Turn” blog.
Her misreporting of the Oslo attack as the work of “jihadists” was left untouched for nearly a day. (She blamed her observance of Shabbat for her delay in correcting but the JTA’s Ron Kampeas raised suspicions about that explanation.) It will be interesting to see when, or if, her misrepresentation of the Obama administration’s investigation into the Syrian embassy will warrant a correction.
]]>According to Iranian-Israeli Middle East analyst Meir Javedanfar: “[t]he moment [...]]]>
According to Iranian-Israeli Middle East analyst Meir Javedanfar: “[t]he moment the Iranian leader realises that Assad’s situation is not salvageable, he will leave him.” Javedanfar says that the break will happen behind the scenes while the Iranian government continues its supportive posturing publicly.
In an August 14 Guardian article Javendanfar writes:
Khamenei will not commit political suicide by staying with Assad until the last moment. Doing so would be very damaging for the regime’s interests. Iran is becoming more isolated every day. It does not need a new enemy in Damascus in the event of Assad’s fall, especially when this could impact on its ability to supply weapons to Hezbollah through Syrian territory (not to mention relations with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which it conducts through its offices in Damascus). It could also lose access to its economic interests in Syria.
Read the entire piece here.
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