Finally, someone in the US government has followed through on President Barack Obama’s judgment that CIA-conducted and “-outsourced” torture—let’s call it by its common name—is “not who we are” as a nation.  Finally, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has given us a (still heavily-redacted) account of what the CIA did between 2002 and 2006.

There is good as well as bad news in all of this mess.  After all, the Senate Committee (or at least its Democratic members) was prepared to see the United States “come clean” about some practices that—certainly in hindsight and, for people of any true moral sense, as should have been obvious at the time—are unacceptable  to a civilized society.

How many other countries would have done the same? Quite a few it turns out, at least 28 at last count, in what are typically known as “truth and reconciliation commissions.” Notable have been those in South Africa, Argentina, and Chile. However, by contrast with crimes in those countries, mostly against their own people, what was done by US government officials and their paid servants—some US “contractors” and some foreign governments—directly affected only a few people; most of them were avowed enemies of the United States; and at least some of whom were involved in the worst foreign attack on the continental US since 1814.

The published part of the report actually contains few surprises, other than to reveal that some of the “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs), an antiseptic euphemism like the Vietnam War’s “termination with extreme prejudice,” was much more brutal than hitherto reported.  More details than previously known were provided by how officials of the Central Intelligence Agency lied to Congress—a felony—and also, supposedly, to senior officials in the George W. Bush White House (which had its own share of the cover-up).  Further, the report confirmed what many terrorism experts and insiders-now-outsiders had said before: that such techniques rarely if ever produce “actionable” intelligence and certainly not in this case.

Thus, the argument is now being made widely around the world that the United States—self-styled since 1630 as a City Upon a Hill,  the producer of regular human rights reports about  every other country on the planet, and a list-keeper of other peoples’ misdeeds—has confessed to its own inhumane acts.

Yes, that is still part of the (relatively) good news.  Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.) and her Senate committee did not have to release the report. While the journalism community would continue to sniff at the edges of scandal, and awareness of thus-and-so would long be whispered around Washington, the full picture could have probably been buried, not quietly, but still buried.

The unalloyed bad news comes in different forms. As the inevitably-to-be-leaked list grows of foreign countries that either allowed the CIA to build private, purpose-built prisons or even took part in the “extraordinary rendition” of US terrorism suspects (to be tortured away from prying American eyes), there will be domestic embarrassment for some political leaderships that have not already been called to account (e.g., as has happened in Poland). As President Obama summed it up this week: “These techniques did significant damage to America’s standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners.”

The “bad guys,” especially the thugs of the world who have been subjected to American criticism or who themselves engage in immoral actions—like al-Qaeda, Islamic State (ISIS or IS), and a host of brutal governments, many but not all in the Middle East—will now claim a US precedent for what they do, and terrorist groups will use the Senate Committee revelations as a recruiting tool.

By any standard, the US is not in their league as a miscreant.  There is the issue of provocation to balance against the immorality of the CIA’s torture program. But at the same time, there is also the issue of efficacy—was the immorality worth the price? As President Obama said of the report this week: “It reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as a nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests.” They were not only wrong; they didn’t work.

More bad news will be felt immediately by America’s diplomats abroad.  They will just have to hunker down, stick to the talking points that Washington gives them and, we hope, contrast our openness (though it took far too long) with rampant terrorism and state oppression by people who would not dream of repentance or accountability. We can also expect Schadenfreude on the part of some of our closest allies, including in Europe. “Too bad about what happened in the United States, tut, tut,” they will say. Some friendly governments will face popular resistance to cooperating with the US in other actions abroad, as this report comes hard on the heels of revelations about the National Security Agency’s spying on foreign leaders.  However, these views will be tempered among those who recognize that damage to America’s standing could also negatively impact  them, since they still need us as a security guarantor, a point that was underscored earlier this year by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

We are already seeing the worst of the bad news, and it is at home.  Senator John McCain (R-Az.), who himself was tortured in a North Vietnamese prison, has welcomed the issuance of the report; but for most other Republican members of Congress, it is the Democrats and Barack Obama who are somehow to blame for this whole business. They contest the evidence and claim that water-boarding and other EITs did indeed help forestall further terrorism on our shores.  They see a witch hunt by the current administration, although President Obama said in April 2009 that “For those who carried out some of these operations within the four corners of legal opinions or guidance that had been provided from the White House, I do not think it’s appropriate for them to be prosecuted.” (Whether such a pledge should have been made is another matter.) The Attorney General, Eric Holder, followed through on that pledge in August 2012 by dropping two prominent cases. Even worse are former officials of the CIA who have joined the chorus in arguing that what was done protected the nation. Their efforts at self-justification add to the case that the CIA needs a thorough house-cleaning.  The agency’s leaders during the period in question should be denied any further government service. Those who lied to Congress should be prosecuted; the lawyers who justified the breaking of laws should be disbarred. (If that could be done to a sitting president for lying about sex, surely it should be done in this case.)  And no one should be allowed to get away with saying, however they phrase it, “We were just following orders.”  That line of argument fell to pieces at Nuremberg almost seven decades ago. Prosecution?  Maybe not—though it would be true to the rule of law and would send a useful message. No further government service? Definitely. Actions, whatever the sincerity of motives, must have consequences.

Maybe some larger good can begin to come out of all this. I do not mean just, as President Obama has said:  “I will continue to use my authority as president to make sure we never resort to those methods again.” That is a worthy goal—though all-too-likely of short duration, as can be testified to by those of us who remember the hearings in the 1970s by the Senate’s Church Committee, whose report and resulting national debate should have stopped in its tracks what the CIA did after 9/11.

The larger good can be a recognition that accountability needs to be returned to government, in general – a quality that has never been in great supply. The last senior political figure to quit over an issue of principle and policy was Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in 1979, following the abortive hostage rescue mission in Iran.  While Britain tried to sort out responsibility after its prime minister, Tony Blair, misled his country into joining the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, we have never done so and never will. We have never held accountable the small group of senior officials who consciously misled not just the president of the United States but also the American people, thereby leading the country into one of the most costly mistakes ever in US engagement abroad.

There can be no doubt that we are a great nation; we are basically a moral society, and the overwhelming majority of people in government, including most but unfortunately not all elected politicians, Republicans and Democrats, are so as well and work to do what they think is the best for our country.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has started us thinking once again about the demands of creating “a more perfect union” and has reminded us that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Let us hope that we also make a serious start on raising both the standard and the practice of accountability, across the board, to validate President Obama’s statement: “Today is also a reminder that upholding the values we profess doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us stronger and that the United States of America will remain the greatest force for freedom and human dignity that the world has ever known.”

Tuesday’s release by the Senate Intelligence Committee of its long-awaited report on the torture by the CIA of detainees in the so-called “war on terror” does not go far enough, according to major U.S. human rights groups.

While welcoming the report’s release, the subject of months of intensive and sometimes furious negotiations between the Senate Committee’s majority and both the CIA and the Obama administration, the groups said additional steps were needed to ensure that U.S. officials never again engage in the kind of torture detailed in the report.

“This should be the beginning of a process, not the end,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “The report should shock President Obama and Congress into action, to make sure that torture and cruelty are never used again.”

He called, among other steps, for the appointment of a special prosecutor to hold the “architects and perpetrators” of what the George W. Bush administration called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) accountable and for Congress to assert its control over the CIA, “which in this report sounds more like a rogue paramilitary group than the intelligence gathering agency that it’s supposed to be.”

He was joined by London-based Amnesty International which noted that the declassified information provided in the report constituted “a reminder to the world of the utter failure of the USA to end the impunity enjoyed by those who authorised and used torture and other ill-treatment.

“This is a wake-up call to the USA; they must disclose the full truth about the human rights violations, hold perpetrators accountable and ensure justice for the victims,” said Amnesty’s Latin America director, Erika Guevara.

The Senate Committee’s report, actually a 524-page, partially-redacted summary of a still-classified 6,300-page report on the treatment of at least 119 terrorist suspects detained in secret locations overseas, accused the CIA not only of engaging in torture that was “brutal and far worse” than has previously been reported, but also of regularly misleading the White House and Congress both about what it was doing and the purported value of the intelligence it derived from those practices.

Water-boarding, for example, was used against detainees more often and in more of the CIA’s “black sites” than previously known; sleep deprivation was used for up to a week at a time against some suspects; others received “rectal feeding” or “hydration’; and still others were forced to stand on broken feet or legs.

In at least one case, a detainee was frozen to death; in the case of Abu Zubayda, an alleged “high-value” Al Qaeda detainee who was subject to dozens of water-boardings, the treatment was so brutal, several CIA officers asked to be transferred if it did not stop.

While the CIA officers and former Bush administration officials, notably former Vice President Dick Cheney, have long insisted that key information – including intelligence that eventually led to the killing of Osama bin Laden — was obtained from EITs, the report concluded that these techniques were ineffective.

Seven of 39 detainees who were subject to the most aggressive EITs provided no intelligence at all, while information obtained from the others preceded the harsh treatment, according to the report, which relied on the CIA’s own cables and reports.

In some cases, detainees subjected to EITs gave misinformation about “terrorist threats” which did not actually exist, the report found. Of the 119 known detainees subject to EITs, at least 26 should never have been held, it said.

Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, who fought hard for months to release the report over the CIA’s fierce objections, wrote in its Forward that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks, “she could understand the CIA’s impulse to consider the use of every possible tool to gather intelligence and remove terrorists from the battlefield, and CIA was encouraged by political leaders and the public to do whatever it could to prevent another attack.”

“Nevertheless, such pressure, fear and expectation of further terrorist plots do not justify, temper or excuse improper actions taken by individuals or organizations in the name of national security,” according to Feinstein.

For his part, CIA director John Brennan, a career CIA officer appointed by Obama whose role in the Bush administration’s detention programme remains cloudy, “acknowledge(d) that the detention and interrogation program had shortcomings and that the Agency made mistakes.”

“The most serious problems occurred early on and stemmed from the fact that the Agency was unprepared and lacked the core competencies required to carry out an unprecedented, worldwide program of detaining and interrogating suspected al-Qa’ida and affiliated terrorists.”

But he also defended the EITs, insisting that “interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives.” A fact sheet released by the CIA claimed, as an example, that one detainee, after undergoing EITs, identified bin Laden’s courier, which subsequently led the CIA to the Al Qaeda chief’s location.

With several notable exceptions, Republicans also defended the CIA and the Bush administration’s orders to permit EITs. Indeed, the Intelligence Committee’s Republican members released a minority report that noted that the majority of staff had not interviewed any CIA officers directly involved in the programme.

“There is no reason whatsoever for this report to ever be published,” said the Committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Saxby Chambliss. “This is purely a partisan tactic” which he said was designed to attack the Bush administration. Republicans also warned that the report’s release would endanger U.S. service personnel and citizens abroad by fuelling anti-American sentiment, especially in the Muslim world.

But Sen. John McCain, who was himself tortured as a prisoner of war in the Vietnam war, defended the report, calling it “a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose …but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.”

McCain has championed efforts to pass legislation outlawing torture, particularly because Obama’s 2009 executive orders prohibiting such practices could be reversed by a future president.

Passage of such a law – whose prospects appear virtually nil in light of Republican control of both houses of Congress for the next two years – is one of the demands, along with release of the full report, of most human-rights groups here.

“The Obama administration and Congress should work together to build a durable consensus against torture by pursuing legislation that demonstrates bipartisan unity and fidelity to our ideals,” said Elisa Massimino, director of Human Rights First.

Many groups, however, want Obama to go further by prosecuting those responsible for the EIT programme, a step that his administration made clear from the outset it was loathe to do.

“We renew our demand for accountability for those individuals responsible for the CIA torture programme,” said Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented a number of detainees at Guantanamo, including Abu Zubaydah, in U.S. courts. “They should be prosecuted in U.S. courts; and, if our government continues to refuse to hold them accountable, they must be pursued internationally under principles of universal jurisdiction.”

“The report shows the repeated claims that harsh measures were needed to protect Americans are utter fiction,” according to Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth. “Unless this important truth-telling process leads to prosecution of the officials responsible, torture will remain a ‘policy option’ for future presidents.”

Noting that health professionals, including doctors and psychologists also played a role in the EITs, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) also called for legal accountability. “For more than a decade, the U.S. government has been lying about its use of torture,” said Donna McKay, PHR’s executive director.

“The report confirms that health professionals used their skills to break the minds and bodies of detainees. Their actions destroyed trust in clinicians, undermined the integrity of their professions, and damaged the United States’ human rights record, which can only be corrected through accountability,” she said.

This article was first published by IPS and was reprinted here with permission.

Although the Obama administration appears to be currently focused on resisting calls to increase sanctions on Iran while negotiations over its nuclear program are in session, the far more dangerous “military option” is alive and well in Washington despite its many pitfalls.

Senator-elect Tom Cotton (R-Ark) told a group of reporters on Dec. 3 that Congress should be considering the “credible use [of] force,” against Iran, according to the Free Beacon. Cotton, who described the ongoing negotiations with Iran as “a sham,” also said the US should consider arming Israel with bunker-buster bombs that could penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.

A day later, Dennis Ross, Ray Takeyh and Eric Edelman—all of whom have served in the US government—echoed their previous calls for a greater threat of force against Iran in the Washington Post. “The president would be wise to consult with Congress on the parameters of an acceptable deal and to secure a resolution authorizing him to use force in the event that Iran violates its obligations or seeks a breakout capacity,” they wrote Dec. 4.

While the White House has considerably lowered the volume on its insistence that “all options are on the table,” it has maintained the mantra. “We will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon—period,” said Vice President Joe Biden on Dec. 6, according to Reuters. “End of discussion. Not on our watch.”

Of course, President George W. Bush considered the so-called “military option” against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in 2006, but rejected it. The notion of “surgical” air strikes is also absurd: Bush was told taking out Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would require a massive effort. And despite its repeated threats, Israel does not have the capability with which to launch such an effort (unless it resorted to nuclear weapons). Only the US has a sufficiently robust conventional capability to do so. However, the military challenge is greater now than it was back in 2006.

The Military Option Lives On

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared in June 2014 that the Americans “have renounced the idea of any military actions.” Khamenei was likely reacting to President Obama’s West Point speech a week before. Referring to military action in general, the president said: “Just because we have the best hammer does not mean every problem is a nail.” However, asked for a reaction to Khamenei’s assertion, the White House highlighted another passage in the speech on Iran: “…we reserve all options in order to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Possibly extending the threat into the future, leading Democratic presidential contender for 2016 Hillary Clinton repeated the mantra in March of this year. While arguing that the diplomatic process with Iran should be given enough time to work, she also said she was “Personally skeptical” of Iranian intentions. “[L]et’s be clear, every other option does remain on the table,” she added, according to Haaretz.

Various American pundits (be they hawks or those who are sensitive to Israeli views on the matter) have since labored to keep the military option alive. Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz declared in TV interview on Nov. 24 that if diplomacy fails, the US “should use its military facilities and ability to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.” Israel also keeps the heat on the US by threatening to strike Iran if Washington fails to do so. Dershowitz, however, noted correctly that an Israeli attack “could only ‘set back’ Iran’s nuclear program for a few years.”

Israeli vs. US Military Action

Aside from using nuclear weapons, Israel does not have an effective military option. The extreme range involved greatly reduces the power of Israel’s military reach. Additionally, finding routes to and from the target is dicey, with most countries certain to oppose use of their airspace.

Flying through Turkey is a leading option, but Ankara would not grant permission, and could try to interfere. Cooperation between Israel and some of the Arab Gulf states (sharing the same dim view of Iran) reportedly has increased. But if a southern corridor were available—even if GCC aerial tankers refueled Israeli aircraft en route—the Israelis could only severely damage a few key targets.

By contrast, with access to the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, plus its bases close to Iran, the US could mount a vastly more powerful effort. Carrier battle groups, other naval assets, and large numbers of US Air Force combat aircraft could be used.

Iranian Military Preparations

Despite its public scoffing, Iran is aware that it could face a robust military assault at some point and has thus been busy since 2006 upgrading its ability to deter or confront an attack.

Iran has upgraded its military radar and missile systems with assistance from sources such as China and Russia, as well as a variety of equipment and expertise secured through less official channels. Iran has also enhanced its large arsenal of MiG-29 fighter aircraft and several formerly Iraqi SU-24 fighter-bombers that were flown to Iran at the outset of the First Gulf War. Iran’s navy has also expanded its inventory of missile-equipped fast-attack vessels to confront a more modern navy with an asymmetric threat: “swarming” enemy vessels (overwhelming them with large number of smaller craft).

The most significant upgrade to Iran’s air defense was to have been the potent Russian S-300 anti-aircraft/ missile system. However, in response to a greatly tightened UN arms embargo in 2010, Moscow suspended the deal.

The Iranians claim to be developing their own version of the S-300 (the “Bavar-373”). They also claim to have produced their own models of a host of other foreign air, air defense and naval systems.

Many of these claims are dubious, but as with its own impressive Shahab series surface-to-surface ballistic missile program, Iran has developed quite impressive technical military-related capabilities. Some upgrades and even a few of these indigenous systems probably have been successfully fielded. I observed impressive Iranian improvisation while covering the Iraq-Iran War from inside the US Intelligence Community. For example, the Iranians kept advanced US F-14 fighters in the air far beyond all Pentagon estimates, even producing a large number of parts needed for basic maintenance and minor overhauls.

The Military Option Means War

Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh consulted me regarding his April 2006 New Yorker article about Bush administration deliberations concerning the military option against Iran. My intelligence credentials told me that Hersh had assembled, effectively, a surprising amount of information on the military planning presented to President Bush.

Hersh revealed that one military option included the use of tactical nuclear weapons to destroy vast underground facilities such as the Natanz enrichment complex. Hersh felt, as I do, that as a part of such planning, extreme options are provided, but such an option was highly unlikely to be part of any realistic plan.

Nonetheless, even conventional US military action to destroy or cripple all known Iranian sites, would, as envisaged in 2006, involve a massive effort. The Pentagon anticipated as many as 2,000 military combat flights and a possible duration of a week. Why? In order to reach Iran’s array of nuclear sites, US combat planes would have to smash Iranian defenses leading to and around the targets.

Although unclear back then, it is also possible once the US had decided to go that far, it would also hit Iran’s ballistic missile inventory, manufacturing, and test sites. This would target what many US officials (and the Israelis) consider a potentially nuclear-related sector of Iran’s military-industrial complex: a formidable delivery capability.

Iran would hardly remain passive while all this unfolded. Therefore, the US would have to anticipate attempts by Iran’s large air force to intercept incoming US aircraft, as well as sea- and air-borne attacks against US naval vessels. Finally, dozens of Iranian anti-ship missile sites flanking the Strait of Hormuz would have to be taken out. Given Iran’s post-2006 military upgrades, US aerial combat missions and the length of the assault would have to be increased. Slugging it out with Iran’s anti-aircraft defenses, confronting its air force, fending off its navy, and striking nuclear targets would effectively add up to war.

Among the many adverse consequences, perhaps the greatest concern would be radioactive contamination stemming from attacking sites near large Iranian civilian populations. The Arak reactor complex and a number of other nuclear-associated sites are close to or practically within Isfahan. The Natanz enrichment facility is less than 30 miles from the smaller city of Kashan. And the Fordow nuclear enrichment complex is situated near over a million people who call the holy city of Qom their home. International outcry over radiation leaks, civilian casualties, and other collateral damage could exceed that resulting from the assault itself.

With so many aircraft missions involved, another is the possibility that a few would be damaged or experience in-flight failures, with aircrew falling into Iranian hands. US diplomatic efforts to secure the return of downed flyers would be inevitable (for which Iran would surely exact a high price).

A particularly ominous result could be the very real possibility of an Iranian break with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in order to pursue—with lots of expertise and perhaps more residual nuclear capabilities than thought—a nuclear weapon, although probably defensive (precisely what such an attack would try to forestall).

Once hostilities are initiated, Iran might also not end them definitively. While Iran might do very little (or nothing) to sustain the military confrontation, the US could be saddled with the seemingly endless task of keeping large air and naval forces in the Gulf as a precaution against potential retaliation, particularly against frightened Arab Gulf states (several of which could have aided the US effort). Such an open-ended commitment and prolonged instability in the Gulf could become a nightmare for Washington—and plenty of other countries around the globe.

Hyping the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) threat risks generating flawed policies. The White House probably is a source of frustration, as its critics claim, but others seem too eager to commit US combat troops. Meanwhile, the administration, under constant pressure regarding the US effort, has not done enough to energize the anti-IS coalition that President Obama worked so hard to assemble. This inclines allies to believe Washington will do the heavy lifting for them.  Although addressing IS full-bore (and unilaterally) might seem appealing to some, this urge undermines the patience needed for more sensible courses of action.

The Hagel Affair

The resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last month resulted in criticism that the White House is unreceptive to outside views, such as expanding the US military effort against IS. Excessive micromanagement of military related issues by the White House (including the phone line to commanders in Afghanistan that bypassed Hagel) has also been cited.

Past Presidents have done likewise. In overseas crises, many presidents created their own channels, giving White House officials more power than cabinet secretaries. Franklin Roosevelt often relied on Harry Hopkins over Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Richard Nixon used Henry Kissinger in lieu of William Rogers, and Colin Powell found himself outside the Bush administration’s inner circle. Perhaps the most extreme example of presidential micromanagement was Lyndon Johnson’s handling of the Vietnam War.

The Obama White House has long had dicey relations with the Pentagon. This has been, according to the Pentagon’s side of the argument, the source of delays and confusing policy directions on several issues, with the White House accused of falling into “group think.”  For his part, Hagel had complained in the early fall to National Security Advisor Susan Rice in a memo about a lack of cohesion in US policy toward IS.

Nonetheless, White House micromanagement or Pentagon-White House difficulties aside, Obama’s reluctance to ramp up the US military effort against IS excessively seems well founded. Of course, Hagel’s position is not entirely clear, but escalation had been advocated by Hagel’s two predecessors: Robert Gates and Leon Panetta.

Costs of US Escalation

IS appears ready to endure lopsided casualties to inflict some on American combat troops. And IS could follow through on this hope. Not only are its combatants fanatics, the radical Sunni militia also employs deadly suicide bombings against foes in close-up urban combat (as we’ve seen in Kobani). Additionally, IS likely hopes to get a hold of at least a few US military prisoners for filmed beheadings. So why hand IS exactly what it wants?

With large urban areas to be cleared just in Iraq—from Fallujah to Mosul—US combat troops would also likely incur casualties in excess of those suffered in 2003-08 against somewhat less fanatical Sunni Arab insurgents and Shi’a militias during the war.

American military difficulties could be further magnified by reduced interest on the part of Iraq’s Shi’a-dominated government in making the political concessions needed to split Sunni Arab tribes and other secular elements away from IS and marshal its own forces more swiftly. After all, why should Baghdad go the extra mile if the US seems willing to take care of Baghdad’s IS problem militarily?

Recently, despite lost ground in and around Ramadi west of Baghdad, Iraqi and Kurdish forces have made gains between Baghdad and Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) territory to the north. Moving up Iraq’s central line of communications, Iraqi forces have driven IS from some important territory. The siege of the vital Baiji refinery complex has been lifted, and gains have been made in the demographically mixed Diyala Governate northeast of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurds continue to push IS slowly westward. Baghdad and the KRG reached a temporary oil agreement yesterday that should clear the way for greater cooperation elsewhere, like battling IS.  Bitter quarrelling under former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki left Iraqi-KRG relations in shambles.

Struggling to rebound from severe reverses last summer, however, the Iraqi Army is in no position to mount a major offensive deep into IS holdings. However, successful Iraqi and Kurdish attacks demonstrate the vulnerability of IS’s vast perimeter. Strong IS forces cannot be everywhere at once to repel various challenges and adequately support ongoing attacks (such as its effort against Kobani).

In terms of a military threat, IS has been largely contained. It cannot advance northward against Turkey; isolated pro-IS sympathies exist in Jordan, but the highly professional Jordanian Army would be a tough nut to crack; and in Iraq, most all Shi’a and Kurdish areas lie outside IS control and are fighting hard to maintain this status. In Syria, IS could advance against weaker rebel forces like the Free Syrian Army, but it seems obsessed with seizing Kobani despite heavy losses.

Coalition and US Escalation

The anti-IS coalition the White House assembled is contributing relatively little to the overall military effort, despite Secretary of State John Kerry’s glowing rhetoric at today’s coalition conclave in Brussels. The air campaign is mainly an American show. Committing more US assets would make it easier for others already foot-dragging over contributions to continue dithering. Now is not the time to ramp up US military efforts, but rather to pressure allies to increase their own contributions.

The bulk of IS’s reinforcements in the form of foreign fighters flow through NATO ally Turkey. The CIA in September and the UN more recently sharply increased their estimate of the number of foreign fighters reaching the Islamic State. To date, Turkey has been more helpful to IS than the coalition because of its passivity. If it cannot be pressured to vigorously interdict incoming fighters, IS would be able to replace many lost fighters—although with less experienced cadres.

The White House (and other allies) must press Turkey harder. President Obama delayed air support for beleaguered Syrian Kurds for two weeks in deference to Turkish concerns (allowing IS to gain a foothold inside Kobani). Even today’s 60-nation gathering seems short on clear goals, let alone a robust military agenda on contributions.

Admittedly, although the Administration has done too little diplomatic spadework, its leverage overseas probably has been undermined by American politicians, pundits, and many in the media demanding an expanded US effort. 

Bottom Line

IS remains a daunting foe, so it will not be defeated easily, soon, or completely. To Americans pressing urgently for quick solutions, this is difficult to accept. But comments like one yesterday by Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chair of the House Foreign Relations Middle East and North Africa Sub-Committee, suggesting IS could damage everyone’s way of life are typical of exaggerations impeding objective policymaking.

Yet those claiming the air campaign has been ineffective are also naïve. IS has mostly ground to a halt. In some places, like Kobani, IS is hemorrhaging combat casualties. Meanwhile IS’s infrastructure, leadership, training camps, heavy weapons, oil refineries, and lines of communication have been hammered by the ongoing aerial bombardment. This week, assets in IS’s “capital” of Raqqa, Syria were also subjected to a wave of airstrikes.

Many want IS crushed quickly out of fear of IS attacks against the American homeland. Yet, as we saw in Afghanistan in 2001-02 with al-Qaeda, the combatants would not be completely rounded up should substantial US forces be sent in. Many hundreds at the very least would escape to find refuge elsewhere. In that scenario, IS would likely shift toward an international terrorist mode, posing an even greater threat to the United States. Therefore, a more collective effort—forcing IS to truly understand that it faces dozens of foes and not just a few—would be a wiser way forward. It is meanwhile imperative to strip IS of as many of its non-extremist Sunni Arab allies as possible, so they do not have to be dealt with militarily.

Photo: President Obama addresses reporters during a meeting with th anti-IS coalition on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Sept. 24, 2014

by Jahandad Memarian

According to a recent special report on Iran in The Economist: “The revolution is over.” The article concludes by suggesting that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s approach to the country’s controversial nuclear program and international relations is a departure from that of his predecessors. While the piece makes several noteworthy points, it fails to mention some important nuances of Iran’s foreign policy paradigm shift, a movement three decades in the making.

Ruhi Ramazani, a veteran scholar on Iranian affairs, has long demonstrated that since Iran’s 1979 revolution, the country’s foreign policy-makers have broken away from a doggedly spiritual paradigm in varying degrees, at times acting directly in opposition to long-held religious, moral, and ideological values. Indeed, the intervening years since the Iranian Revolution have facilitated an evolution of the country’s foreign policy, which has culminated as a hybrid political construct framed by both pragmatism and spirituality, as Ramazani asserts in his book, Independence Without Freedom.

The leader of Iran’s revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, a super-idealist, led the charge toward a more aspirational foreign policy paradigm based on ideals rooted in what Ramazani describes as spiritual pragmatism. To achieve this, Khomeini, at times, allowed deviations from “his ideological line” (Khatti Imam) and adjusted his worldview in response to social and political circumstances. Whether in regard to declaratory or practical policies, no one altered Khomeini’s line more than Khomeini himself.

For example, after the 1979 American hostage crisis in in Tehran, which began the era of ever-increasing US sanctions on Iran, Khomeini declared, “We must become isolated in order to become independent.” Yet following the release of the hostages in 1981 and the liberation of the Iranian port city of Khorramshahr from Iraqi forces in 1982, Khomeini saw his power consolidated at home and turned the lens on his ardent followers. He placed the blame for Iran’s “hermit” status on the international stage squarely on their shoulders. In one markedly critical accusation of his hard-line supporters, Khomeini even went so far as to cite the prophet Muhammad as an example of someone who sent out ambassadors to establish conciliatory relations with the outside world. To demand that Iran permanently cut ties with other countries made no sense, said Khomeini, because for Iran “it would mean defeat, annihilation, and being buried right to the end.”

Perhaps the most salient example of Khomeini’s pragmatism was Iran’s decision to secretly purchase arms, for its defensive war against Iraq (1980-88), from both the United States and Israel in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra Affair (1985-87). By striking a deal through intermediaries, American and Israeli military supplies were provided to Tehran in return for its cooperation and assistance in securing the release of Western hostages in Lebanon. In negotiating with his adversaries, Khomeini’s pragmatism proved he was focused on the bigger picture for Iran.

Many Iranian leaders have attempted following in Khomeini’s footsteps. Even president Sayyid Ali Khamenei, now the country’s Supreme Leader, adopted similar views under Iran’s “open door” foreign policy and declared, in the summer of 1986, that “Iran seeks a rational, sound, and healthy relations with all countries.”

What would these healthy relations look like for Iran? Consider the example of the high point in US-Iran relations that occurred during the two countries’ decision to cooperate in response to the war in Afghanistan. In late 2001, Iranian diplomats (and even some members of the Revolutionary Guard) domestically lobbied for working with the United States to deliver the mutual benefit of toppling the Taliban and implementing a new political order in Afghanistan. Ayatollah Khamenei conceded and as a result Iran offered airbases, search-and-rescue missions for downed American pilots, the tracking and killing of al-Qaeda leaders, and assistance in building ties with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. But this warming in relations was short-lived. Not long after taking advantage of Iran’s assistance, then-President George W. Bush declared Iran as part of an “Axis of Evil,” thereby instantly destroying the tenuous goodwill the two discordant countries had been working to build.

In another example, during his first two terms, President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani pressed for military reconstruction and economic development as a means of emphasizing the country’s practical needs following the end of the Iran-Iraq war. During his time in office, Rafsanjani invited Conoco Oil, a US company, to bid for the Sirri oil field development project (the largest in Iran’s history at that time). With Khamenei’s approval, Rafsanjani worked to close the Conoco deal, understanding that this act would significantly increase economic relations between Iran and the United States. But not long after the $1 billion deal was awarded to Conoco, the Clinton administration blocked the contract as a “threat to national security.”

There are of course other events in the Islamic Republic’s history proving that from Ayatollah Khomeini to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, many Iranian leaders have genuinely attempted to—even in the face of powerful internal and external impediments—implement a hybrid paradigm, with each leader assigning different weights to practical and spiritual considerations. Considered with this history in mind, Rouhani’s efforts to facilitate compromises in regard to the Iran’s nuclear program are not, as The Economist suggests, a turning point in Iranian politics. They’re merely a continuation of an ongoing trend that should have been noticed by Western analysts long before now.

Jahandad Memarian is a research associate at the West Asia Council and a senior research fellow at Nonviolence International as well as a contributor to Al-Monitor and the Huffington Post. He holds an M.A. in Western Philosophy from the University of Tehran and was previously an Iranian Fulbright scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2010-11. Prior to that, Mr. Memarian was a researcher at the Iranian Parliament Research Center and worked as a journalist for the Iranian news daily, Hamshahri.

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by Bernard Chazelle

In matters of battle, there are certain things we’ve come to expect. The pairwise nature of combat, for example. From the playing fields of Eton to the morne plaine of Waterloo, sports and war alike feature two rival sides with an attitude. They come in pairs. One day, Federer shows Nadal how it’s done; the next day, Bush takes on Saddam. Threesomes are uncommon. George Foreman didn’t climb into the ring to tussle with Ali and Frazier. Though no friend of Hitler or Stalin, FDR knew better than to declare war on both of them. Nor did he try to resurrect the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact so more panzer divisions could be in Normandy to greet the GIs. As far as we know, Eisenhower didn’t drop free weaponry for the Nazis to use before the Battle of the Bulge. And Nazi is what they were: not Nazoo, Noozi, or NZ depending on whom you asked. The enemy had a name we all agreed upon. Certain things about combat we’ve come to expect.

Well, expect no more. In the Middle East, the old battle script is quaint. ISIS is our new enemy. Or perhaps it is ISIL, or IS, or Daesh, or the Caliphate, or something. The point is, we have an enemy that “we need to fight there so we won’t have to fight it here.” It seems a pity because we share so much. They hate Bashar al-Assad and so do we. They can’t stand the Persian ayatollahs and neither can we. They have it in for al-Qaeda in Syria and who doesn’t? They draw their spiritual inspiration from our oldest ally in the region, Saudi Arabia, a corrupt theocracy known for its black gooey stuff and religious fanaticism. In the same month ISIS beheaded James Foley, our Saudi associates carried out 19 public beheadings, including a man accused of witchcraft. Our kind of friends.

The US-Saudi axis is key to understanding the rise of ISIS. Despite its public reticence, Riyadh supported the war in Iraq in 2003. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was still fresh in Saudi memory, so letting Bush finish his dad’s job was fine by the House of Saud. They had another reason to be appreciative. A recent Wikileaks document reveals how cuddly King Abdullah feels about Iran: “[The US should] cut off the head of the snake.” The invasion, it was hoped, would lock Iraq into the Saudi orbit and build a firewall to keep the heretic Shias at bay. Alas, the neocon dream turned into a Saudi nightmare, as Bush’s fiasco pushed Iraq right into the arms of Iran and raised the specter of a Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus axis. The Saudis freaked out and launched Operation “Down with the Shias.”

A catastrophic de-Ba’athification policy had created the ideal terrain for a sectarian war in Iraq. The once-dominant Sunnis had trouble adjusting to their new status as an oppressed minority. Formerly mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad were ethnically cleansed and Shia leaders redoubled their efforts to give the Sunnis something to be mad about. Riyadh couldn’t take the fight to Tehran, so a Sunni-Shia war was the next best thing. Perhaps only the geniuses in Washington believed this could end well, but the Gulf states foresaw a Shia crescent descending upon the region and decided it was time to panic. The sectarian war was on.

Israel had two reasons to go along with the anti-Shia pushback. One was that a nuclear Iran would threaten its regional hegemony. After Iran’s victory in the US-Iraq war, the urge for Israel to defang the ayatollahs had become irresistible. The other factor at play was Iran’s Lebanese client, Hezbollah, which fought the IDF to a stalemate in 2006 and caused Israel to question its deterrent capacity. (The case of Hamas is more complicated because its two patrons, Iran and Qatar, are at loggerheads over Syria). Israel’s will is America’s command, so to see Washington sing from the same hymnal was no surprise. But the US also had its own reasons to join in the anti-Iran chorus.

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Just as Israel fingers Iran as its sole threat to regional dominance, the US knows that only China and Russia can imperil its position as world hegemon. China is a lost cause. The containment fantasies behind the much-touted “Pivot to Asia” died at birth and will not be revived. Last month, with little fanfare, China dethroned the US as the world’s largest economy, one of several reasons the Middle Kingdom is out of America’s hegemonic range. Russia is a different story. It is a midsize economic power. Yet it remains the biggest country in the world, its second nuclear power, and a necessary component of any “world order.” Ukraine and Syria are the current battlegrounds for the containment of Russia. King Abdullah can decapitate witches all he wants, he’s our best-friend-forever. But Vladimir Putin cannot just be a recalcitrant leader with legitimate concerns about the encirclement of his country by NATO forces. Hillary needs to assure us that he is the new Hitler, a comparison of exquisite vulgarity given Russian history. (Now, it is true that Putin illegally invaded Crimea with the overwhelming support of the locals—quite unlike our own illegal invasions, which tend to piss off the natives.)

It is common knowledge in foreign policy circles that the US is not in the Middle East for the oil but for its control. Europe relies on Russia for a third of its gas supply and is more than open to American attempts to reduce its dependency on Gazprom. With US blessing, Qatar lobbied hard to get its North Field gas reserve, the largest in the world, pipelined to Turkey and Europe while bypassing Russia. Assad, a Russia client, balked, and negotiated with Iran a passage for the latter’s South Pars gasfield in the Persian Gulf (adjacent to the North Field). An Iran-Iraq-Syria route would be a Gulf state nightmare and an American headache. It would also dash Ankara’s hopes of playing gatekeeper to European energy needs. The US-Saudi axis could put up with Assad’s murderous policies, but a pipeline from Iran, now that was going too far! Saudi Arabia dispatched its Intelligence chief, Prince Bandar, to Moscow to read Putin the riot act: Stop your support of Assad or expect a nasty Chechen surprise at the Sochi Olympics. Fluent in mafioso language, Putin became furious and made it clear to the sandbox princeling that he didn’t take orders from a terrorist-coddling camel herder. Moscow would stick with Assad and stick it to the sheiks.

With no Syria policy to speak of, Washington pivoted to Ukraine, only to show the world what Western impotence really looks like. Taking their cue from Obama, the leaders of Britain and France threatened the new Hitler with sanctions so painful he’d soon be begging on his knees for mercy: no camembert and pudding for him! Of course, Russia was still welcome to park its oligarchs’ money in London, get its assault ships from Paris (now on hold), and buy its usual $100 billion worth of goods from Berlin every year. But no dessert—that’ll teach him! To be fair, Obama’s Russia policy could have been worse: we could be at war with Moscow. By any other measure, it has been an unmitigated disaster. Putin will soon have achieved all of his objectives in Ukraine, a fact that President Poroshenko all but conceded recently by granting autonomy to the pro-Russia Donbass rebels. Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland can go back to handing out cookies in Kiev: her darling Yatsenyuk has resigned as prime minister and Washington’s plans are in tatters.

Consider the blowback: Moscow and Beijing signed a draft currency swap agreement to bypass the dollar in bilateral payments; the BRICS countries set up their own $100 billion development bank to counter the dominance of the IMF and the World Bank; Putin and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, agreed to a game-changing $400 billion gas deal after years of stalled negotiations. Nothing like Western sanctimony backed by sanctions to make Russia and China find love. Meanwhile, with its economy mired in quasi-perpetual recession, the West has turned Teddy Roosevelt’s adage on its head: Speak loudly and carry a small stick.

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From 10,000 feet, the geopolitics of the Middle East shows a semblance of coherence: a Washington-Riyadh petrodollar axis aligned against a rising Shia crescent backed by Russia, the whole thing played against the backdrop of a race for global dominance combined with blind US support for Israel. The neat rationality of this narrative is an illusion. A closer look reveals a world of Jabberwocky absurdity. While, in March 2011, Saudi troops rolled into Bahrain to repress the Arab Spring aspirations of its people, the Gulf states cunningly seized the zeitgeist of liberation to hijack the peaceful anti-Assad movement. Naturally, the one point of agreement between Bashar and the sheiks was that peace was not an option. Qatar and Saudi Arabia may not be on speaking terms but they found common ground in funding, training, and arming the Syria rebels.

Not the Free Syrian Army, mind you, that hapless bunch of weekend warriors who look ferocious only in the feverish minds of Hillary Clinton and John McCain, but the only two groups in Syria capable of fighting Assad: ISIS and the local al-Qaeda branch (Jabhat al-Nusra). As Steve Clemons reported in the Atlantic, Qatar took the latter under its wing and Saudi Arabia took care of ISIS. There you had two of our closest allies in the Arab world funding the newest branches of the 9/11 franchise. McCain’s reaction to CNN in Jan. 2014? “Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar!” When it became clear last spring that the Faustian deal had turned sour and ISIS had the Saudis in its crosshairs, Bandar was fired (McCain was not). ISIS is self-funded at this point—smuggling oil at discount rates along the Turkish border is its principal source of revenue—so cracking down on private financing from the Gulf is largely moot at this point.

The civil war in Syria gave the West a chance to recover its delusional optimism from the early days of the Iraq war. While Obama has repeatedly called the end of the Assad regime a certainty, even a sober analyst like Juan Cole predicted in January of last year that Iranian influence would wither and Assad would be gone by 2014. What happened is the exact opposite. Iran is in the driver’s seat and Assad has never been stronger. The only forces posing a credible threat to ISIS are Assad’s army, Hezbollah, Iran, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Washington opposes all four of them. Think of FDR preparing for D-Day and refusing help from Britain, Canada, and the French Résistance. Obama is precisely where ISIS wants him to be: fighting the Islamic State while denying himself any chance of success. With ISIS firmly ensconced in urban areas, airstrikes will do little besides boosting recruitment for the group. The Islamic State publicly welcomed the US decision to arm the “moderate” rebels, confident that the weapons will eventually be theirs. In fact, thanks to the cracker jack squads of US-trained Iraqi forces, ISIS is already in possession of a whole arsenal of American weaponry.

Most experts agree that, unlike bin Laden’s organization, ISIS has chosen to focus its ire on the near-enemy and not on the West. Obama is intent on proving them wrong. His policy, such as it is, will help Assad stay in power (so much for regime change) and create a new generation of Western jihadists coming home as fully-trained terrorists. The US president must have in mind a repeat of the 2007 Sunni Awakening which put an end to al-Qaeda in Iraq. This is sure to fail for three reasons: first, the US no longer has 150,000 troops on the ground; second, scared of ISIS as they are, the Iraqi Sunnis are even more afraid of the Shia militias out for revenge; third, ISIS is mostly based in Syria (hence the US airstrikes on Raqqa, in blatant violation of the sort of international law that matters only when Putin breaks it). As for the brilliant idea of training the Iraqi army, words fail. The US has been doing just that for the last 10 years at a cost of $25 billion, and we all know how effective that was. Last June, a mere 800 ISIS fighters defeated 30,000 US-trained soldiers and took over Mosul, making off with millions of dollars worth of American military equipment. No problem, says Washington: more training will do the trick. As has been said, doing the same thing and expecting different results is a definition of insanity.

Speaking of insane, ISIS surely fits the bill. Yet there is a logic to the madness. The undeniable lunacy of the Islamic State is not a collective pathology of which the US can easily wash its hands. Until Bush came along, jihadists controlled a few musty caves in Tora Bora, not large swathes of Iraqi, Syrian, Libyan, and Nigerian territory. The self-proclaimed Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was imprisoned by the US at Iraq’s Camp Bucca, usually not a fate conducive to mental balance. More to the point, Iraq has been in a continuous state of war since 1980. All of the last four American presidents have bombed the country. The Bush family alone started two wars against Iraq. Bill Clinton imposed grotesque sanctions that condemned half a million Iraqi children to a premature death, a price that his State Secretary assured us on “60 Minutes” was worth it. And we call ourselves surprised when the world’s largest PTSD ward extends its tentacles across Iraq and Syria through suicide, mass rape, and crucifixion. We stare into the abyss we’ve created and wonder why it stares back at us.

Obama’s policy is based on a contradiction. We hear that ISIS is such a global danger that the war America ended three years ago needs to be refought; yet how bad can it be if it requires neither ground troops nor the forces that could actually defeat it? Electoral politics is at work and it is no surprise that Obama’s call for war came in the wake of much-publicized beheadings of American journalists. His anti-ISIS partners form a “coalition of the unwilling” that cannot even agree on the enemy: one hears reports of US-funded Syria rebels signing non-aggression pacts with ISIS in order to focus on Assad. Obama’s war is a tragic American farce.

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What should be done? The prevailing confusion over ISIS gives Obama a unique opportunity to break new ground. The first step is to re-engage Iran by concluding the current nuclear talks with the lifting of all sanctions. Times are changing. The Gulf states will eventually fade as a quirk of history but Iran will always be one of the world’s major countries. Nothing would do more for regional peace than to dissolve the noxious US-Saudi axis and bring Iran back in from the cold. The second step is to defuse the new Cold War with Russia. Putin is authoritarian, an oligarch’s friend, and—his real crime in Western eyes—an Asianizer. Oddly enough, the new Hitler is not nearly as autocratic as Yeltsin, the former drunken darling of the West who shelled Russia’s parliament with tanks in 1993 and started the war in Chechnya the following year. If one could do business with Yeltsin so one can with Putin. Obama knows this better than anyone, having had his bacon saved by the man right after the Ghouta chemical attacks last year. The US had its 15 minutes of unipolarity. A failure to engage with Russia and Iran will only hasten its decline.

Except for its new Western recruits crossing the long Turkish border into Syria, everybody hates ISIS. Defusing the Sunni-Shia tension and ending the antiquated proxy conflicts between the US and Russia would reshuffle the deck so dramatically that ISIS would find its local support dwindling. The alternative is to wait for ISIS to burn itself out, which is the current, unspoken American strategy. This will prolong Assad’s murderous rule as well as invigorate the new dictatorship in Egypt, which thrives on regional chaos.

In the Middle East, nothing is what it seems. Saudi Arabia has a defense budget four times as big as Israel’s, yet it couldn’t defeat Andorra if it tried. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel calls ISIS “a threat to the civilized world,” conveniently forgetting that the group didn’t exist until we intervened. After 150,000 deaths in Syria, the US suddenly makes a U-turn and aligns its interests with the Butcher of Damascus. Try to make sense of this timeline if you can: in 2009, Assad and Kerry have an intimate dinner with their wives in a Damascus restaurant, a touching moment captured in pictures broadcast all over the web; in 2013, Kerry compares his former dinner companion to Adolf Hitler; in 2014, all is forgiven and the US throws its lot with Assad against ISIS.

It would be a mistake to dismiss this theater of the absurd as the work of leaders who can’t think straight. The one nonnegotiable constraint is that self-determination is an option that the US and Europe have categorically ruled out for the region. If the consequences are spelled in the language of terror and civil war, so be it. We’ll put out the fires when we have to. Experts will be wheeled in to explain in somber tones why the situation is so dire it requires the dispatch of our newest, shiniest fire trucks. Very serious essayists (not this one obviously) will address the optimal positioning of the water hoses and the training of the new firemen. Only grumpy contrarians will ask why there are so many damn fires in this town. And the show will go on, with its stream of beheadings and airstrikes. Until, one day, the Chinese inform us that we might as well stop piling the corpses because the world has moved on and no one is paying attention any more.

—Bernard Chazelle is Eugene Higgins Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. He is currently on sabbatical at the College de France in Paris and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the author of the book, “The Discrepancy Method,” an investigation into the power of randomness in computing, his current research focuses on “natural algorithms” and the algorithmic complexity of living matter. He has written extensively about politics and music.

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Last week I commented on the unhelpful habit of throwing everything Islamist, no matter how extreme or moderate, into a single conceptual bucket and writing off the whole lot as incorrigible adversaries. That habit entails a gross misunderstanding of events and conflicts in the Middle East, and has the more specific harm of aiding extreme groups at the expense of moderate ones. Shortly afterward Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy presented a piece titled “Islamists Are Not Our Friends,” which illustrates almost in caricatured form some of the misleading attributes of the single-bucket attitude that I was discussing.

Ross’s article probably is not grounded in Islamophobia, although it partly appeals to such sentiment. The piece ostensibly is about how “a fundamental division between Islamists and non-Islamists” is a “new fault line in the Middle East” that provides “a real opportunity for America” and ought to guide U.S. policy toward the region. In fact it is a contrived effort to draw that line—however squiggly it needs to be—to place what Ross wants us to consider bad guys on one side of the line and good guys on the other side. The reasons for that division do not necessarily have much, if anything, to do with Islamist orientation. Thus anyone who has been unfriendly to Hamas or to its more peaceful ideological confreres in the Muslim Brotherhood are placed on the good side of the line, Iran and those doing business with it are put on the bad side, and so forth.

Ross tries to portray something more orderly by asserting that “what the Islamists all have in common is that they subordinate national identities to an Islamic identity” and that the problem with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was that “it was Islamist before it was Egyptian.” What, exactly, does that mean, with particular reference to the short, unhappy presidency of Mohamed Morsi? There were several reasons that presidency was both unhappy and short, but trying to push an Islamist-more-than-Egyptian agenda was not one of them. (And never mind that Ross is risking going places he surely would not want to go by making accusations of religious identification trumping national loyalty on matters relevant to U.S. policy toward the Middle East.) It would make at least as much sense to say that the current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, was more authoritarian and more in tune with fellow military strongmen than he was Egyptian.

Where Ross’s schema completely breaks down is with some of the biggest and most contorted squiggles in the line he has drawn. He places Saudi Arabia in the “non-Islamist” camp because it has supported el-Sisi in his bashing of the Brotherhood and wasn’t especially supportive of Hamas when Israel was bashing the Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia—where the head of state has the title Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, the country’s constitution is the Koran, and thieves have their hands amputated—is “non-Islamist”? Remarkable. Conversely, the Assad regime in Syria, which is one of the most secular regimes in the region notwithstanding the sectarian lines of its base of support, is pointedly excluded from Ross’s “non-Islamist” side of the line because of, he says, Syrian dependence on Iran and Hezbollah. Of course, any such alliances refute the whole idea of a “fundamental division” in the region between Islamists and non-Islamists, but Ross does not seem to notice.

Getting past such tendentious classification schemes, we ought to ask whether there is a more valid basis on which we ought to be concerned about states or influential political movements defining themselves in religious terms. If we are to be not merely Islamophobes but true children of the Enlightenment, our concern ought to be with any attempt, regardless of the particular creed involved, to impose the dogma of revealed religion on public affairs, especially in ways that affect the lives and liberties of those with different beliefs.

Such attempts by Christians, as far as the Middle East is concerned, are to be found these days mainly among dispensationalists in America rather in the dwindling and largely marginalized Christian communities in the Middle East itself. In a far more strongly situated community, that of Jewish Israelis, the imposition of religious belief on public affairs in ways that affect the lives and liberties of others is quite apparent. Indeed, the demographic, political, and societal trends during Israel’s 66-year history can be described in large part in terms of an increasingly militant right-wing nationalism in which religious dogma and zealotry have come to play major roles. Self-definition as a Jewish state has been erected as a seemingly all-important basis for relating to Arab neighbors, religion is in effect the basis for different classes of citizenship, and religious zeal is a major driver of the Israeli colonization of conquered territory, which sustains perpetual conflict with, and subjugation of, the Palestinian Arabs.

When religious zealotry involves bloodshed, especially large-scale bloodshed, is when we when ought to be most concerned with its infusion into public affairs. The capacity for zealotry and large-scale application of violence to combine has increased in Israel with the steady increase of religiosity in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and its officer corps. A prominent exemplar of this trend is Colonel Ofer Winter, commander of the IDF’s Gilati Brigade, who has received attention for the heavily religious content of his instructions to his troops. With his brigade poised near the Gaza Strip before the most recent round of destruction there, Winter said in a letter to his troops that he looked forward to a ground invasion so that he could be in the vanguard of a fight against “the terrorist enemy that dares to curse, blaspheme and scorn the God of Israel.” After Winter’s brigade did get to join the fight, he said that a mysterious “cloud” appeared and provided cover for his forces, an event he attributed to divine intervention. Quoting from Deuteronomy, he said, “It really was a fulfillment of the verse ‘For the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to give you victory.’”

Winter’s brigade was involved in what could be described as a culmination of the synthesis of zealotry and bloodshed. When an Israeli soldier was missing and suspected (incorrectly, as it later turned out) to have been captured alive by Hamas in a battle at Rafah, Winter executed the “Hannibal” directive, an Israeli protocol according to which as much violence as necessary is used to avoid having any Israeli become a prisoner, no matter how many civilians or others are killed and no matter that the captured Israeli soldier himself is killed. Over the next several hours a relentless barrage of artillery and airstrikes reduced this area of Rafah to rubble, while Israeli forces surrounded the area so that no one could escape it alive. This one Israeli operation killed 190 Palestinians, including 55 children. There may have been other implementations of the Hannibal directive in the recent Israeli offensive in Gaza; this one is confirmed because Winter himself later spoke openly and proudly about it. Although some secular-minded private citizens in Israel have objected to the heavily religious content of Winter’s leadership, officially there does not appear to be anything but approval for anything he has said or done. He is an exemplar, not a rogue.

In short, an operation officially sanctioned and led in the name of a national god was conducted to slaughter scores of innocents as well as one of the operators’ own countrymen. We ought to think carefully about this incident and about what Colonel Winter represents when we decide how to conceive of fault lines in the Middle East, what it means to insert religion into politics or to be a religious zealot, exactly what it is we fear or ought to fear about religiosity in public affairs, and which players in the Middle East have most in common with, or in conflict with, our own—Enlightment-infused, one hopes—values.

This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission.

As the wobbly anti-ISIS coalition is being formed with American prodding, the Obama administration should take a strategic look at the future of the Arab world beyond the threat posed by the self-declared Islamic State. Otherwise, the United States would be unprepared to deal with the unintended chaos.

Driven by ideological hubris, the Bush administration on the eve of the Iraq war rejected any suggestions that the war could destabilize the whole region and rock the foundations of the Arab nation-state system.

That system, which was mostly created under the colonial Sykes-Picot treaty of 1916, is now being severely stressed. The Obama administration should avoid repeating the tragic mistake of its predecessor. While trying to halt the advance of ISIS by focused airstrikes, and regardless of the coalition’s effectiveness in “degrading” and  “defeating” ISIS, President Obama should instruct his senior policymakers to explore possible architectures that could emerge from the ashes of Sykes-Picot.

The stresses and fault lines we are witnessing in the region today could easily lead to implosions tomorrow. Rightly or wrongly, Washington would be blamed for the ensuing mayhem.

As Secretary of State John Kerry shuttles between countries chasing the elusive coalition to fight ISIS, the administration seems to be unclear even about terminology. Is it a war or a multifaceted counter-terrorism strategy against ISIS? Whatever it’s called, if this strategy fails to eradicate the Islamic State and its Caliphate, is there a “Plan B” in the making?

Briefing senior policymakers on the eve of the Iraq war, I pointed out the possible unintended consequences of the invasion. George Tenet, former CIA Director, alludes to several of these briefings in his book, At the Center of the Storm.

One of the briefings discussed the possibility that the Iraq invasion could fundamentally unsettle the 100-year old Arab nation-state system. National identity politics, which heretofore has been managed and manipulated by autocratic regimes—tribal, dynastic, monarchical, and presidential—could unravel if the Bush administration failed to anticipate what could happen following Saddam’s demise.

The artificiality of much of those states and their boundaries would come unhinged under the pressures of the invasion and the unleashing of internal forces that have been dormant. National loyalties would be replaced by religious and sectarian affiliations, and the Shia-Sunni disputes that go back to the 7^th century would once again rise to the surface albeit with more violence and bloodshed.

The briefings also emphasized Iraq’s central Islamic dilemma. While for many Sunni Muslims Baghdad represents the golden age of Islam more than 1,200 years ago, Iraq is also the cradle of Shia Islam.

Najaf and Karbala in southern Iraq are sacred for the Shia world because it was there where the fourth Caliph Ali’s son Hussein was “martyred” and buried. Iran, as the self-proclaimed voice of Shia Islam all over the world, is deeply embedded in Iraq and will always demand a central role in the future of Iraq.

Bush administration senior policymakers ignored these warning, arguing Iraqis and other Muslim Arabs would view American and coalition forces as “liberators” and, once the dictator fell, would work together in a spirit of tolerance, inclusion, and compromise. This view, unfortunately, was grounded in the neocons’ imagined ideological perception of the region. As we now know, it was utterly ignorant of ground truths and the social fabric of the different Arab Islamic societies.

Many Bush White House and Defense Department policymakers generally dismissed briefings that focused on the “morning after.” It’s safe to say they cared less about the post-Saddam Middle East than about toppling the dictator.

The region still suffers from those disastrous policies.

ISIS did not emerge in a vacuum, and its transnational ideology, warped as it may be, seems to appeal to Arabs and Muslims who have become disenchanted with the existing political order in Arab lands.

Many citizens view their states as fiefdoms of the ruling elites with no genuine respect for individual rights, personal freedoms, and human dignity. The “securitization” of politics has alienated many young Arabs and is driving them toward extremism.

If the borders between Syria and Iraq are erased by the transnational “Caliphate,” what will become of the borders of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq? Is the Obama administration ready to pick up the pieces when these nation-states disintegrate?

These are the critical questions the Bush administration should have pondered and answered before it invaded Iraq. They are the same questions the Obama administration should ponder and answer before chasing after ISIS in the Iraqi/Syrian desert.

Photo: Then President-elect Barack Obama before taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009. Credit: White House/Pete Souza

As it attempts to hammer out a coalition to combat the Islamic State (IS, ISIL or ISIS), the Obama administration is encountering a variety of complications. More strident calls from certain domestic political quarters for broader US intervention threaten to undermine the overall effort, and potentially increase the danger to Americans. The iffy response of many regional and other allies to US requests for meaningful military participation could also harm US efforts. At this point, a clear vision of the situation even a few months from now is impossible to predict.

Some American politicians seem to be implying that ISIS could be confronted in a manner that would involve practically no threat to the “homeland,” such as by committing far larger US forces. That would not be true under any scenario. Indeed, the harder US forces hit ISIS, the more its assets in the region and acolytes far beyond would likely attempt to exact revenge.

Yet, even with all that in mind, no attempt has been made from Congressional hawks to put the ISIS threat at home in perspective. Americans have vastly more to fear every day, for example, from the ongoing epidemic of violent crime and traffic fatalities than ISIS.

Perhaps the wildest comment so far amidst hyperventilating in Washington came from Senator Lindsey Graham on Sept 13: “This is ISIL versus mankind,” he said. “It’s going to take an army [ours] to beat an army.” He also urged President Obama to put combat troops into Iraq and Syria “before we all get killed back here at home.”

ISIS is appallingly barbaric, but the Senator’s comment implies that ISIS could kill millions of Americans as if it had suddenly inherited a sizeable nuclear arsenal. Moreover, the desire to commit US combat troops en masse as crisis firemen probably rests on the delusion that prior robust US military intervention in Iraq was a thumping success.

Ironically, if Sen. Graham’s prime concern is American lives, sending large numbers of US combat troops into battle against ISIS would result in quite a few American fatalities. Even the 1600 US non-combat troops in Iraq now could become victims of ISIS suicide bombings that occur regularly throughout that country. Nonetheless, ISIS still poses a far greater threat to nearby Middle East countries than it does to Europe or the US.

Adverse Effects

The more US allies inside and outside the Middle East get the impression that Washington will increase its military support, the less incentive they will have to bear more of the military burden. In Iraq itself, the more the US does, the less the new Shi’a-dominated government might feel it has to do to woo back Iraq’s Sunni Arabs. And many Sunni Arabs might not make deals with Baghdad if they could do so with US ground forces instead (as they did during the so-called “Awakening”). So, saber-rattling along the lines that the US might commit far more military assets could do more damage to the anti-ISIS cause and long-term stability than to ISIS.

That is why US Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey’s comment on Capitol Hill on Sept. 16 regarding the prospect of greater involvement of US “advisors” on the frontlines against ISIS also serves to muddy the waters. He admitted that President Obama has left open the possibility of employing US troops in more exposed combat-related roles on a “case by case basis.” The White House, however, later stated that no US combat troops would be deployed to Iraq or Syria.

Coalition Foot-Dragging

The last thing Washington needs is more trouble in extracting commitments for concrete military action from its allies. There have been statements that a number of allies—including those in the region—are prepared to participate militarily. Most of these assertions, however, have stopped short, perhaps ominously, of specifics. In the region, especially among Sunni states closest to Iraq and Syria, no less than four concerns have produced widespread reluctance to become involved directly and militarily.

First, these countries fear military operations against ISIS (even limited military cooperation, as in basing) would make them high profile targets for retaliation from the group (as well as its sympathizers among their own populations). Turkey’s refusal to base coalition aircraft was a serious setback. Then there is the desire to avoid conflict with fellow Sunnis, regardless of how wayward they have become. Making confrontation with Sunnis that much more dicey would be doing so alongside a Shi’a-dominated, partially Iranian-backed government in Baghdad.

Lastly, based on its appalling past track record under former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, there are doubts whether the Iraqi government under new Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi will offer full inclusion to Iraq’s Sunni Arabs. Parallel fears exist concerning Iraqi Shi’a militia excesses during an anti-ISIS ground campaign; some already have occurred.

Meanwhile, exposing its iffy ability to chart a more enlightened course, the Abadi government’s defense and interior ministry nominees were once again rejected Sept. 16 by an Iraqi parliament still riven by sectarian and factional differences. This leaves the cabinet’s two premier national security posts in limbo.

European allies also have concerns much like their regional counterparts over making themselves more inviting targets for ISIS terrorism by signing up for greater military cooperation with the US. Memories of large-scale 2004-05 extremist attacks in London and Madrid in retaliation for European participation in US-led military intervention in Iraq remain painful. Aside from grisly beheadings of Western prisoners, there have been online threats of ISIS retaliation in response to allied military cooperation with the US against ISIS.

Even in the United States there can be no genuine political consensus on how to respond to the ISIS threat in the politically heated environment close to November’s Congressional elections. Views range from leaving the mess entirely to Iraqis, Syrians and neighboring countries to calls for massive US intervention along the lines suggested by Senator Graham. Furthermore, broad international coalitions are notoriously unwieldy, and the one now being assembled by the US is shaping up to be no different. At this point, no one is in a position to predict the situation in the region affected by the ISIS challenge a few months from now with any certainty—let alone several years down the road.

Photo: President Barack Obama talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to congratulate him and the Iraqi people on the approval of a new Iraqi government during a phone call in the Oval Office, Sept. 8, 2014. Credit: White House/Pete Souza)

Last week epitomized the highs and lows of hoping for an improvement in US-Iran relations. A BBC report on Sept. 5 that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had approved Iranian cooperation with the US military in the fight against ISIS was met with near elation in many quarters. Some analysts (myself included) felt this announcement would clarify the strategic value of normalized US-Iran relations for the publics and policymakers of both countries. But after the ensuing Iranian denials that cooperation was in fact approved, the Americans went even further by denying even the possibility of formal cooperation. A Sept. 8 State Department briefing reiterated the exclusion of Iran from the broad 40-nation coalition announced by President Obama to combat ISIS, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s Sept. 12 assertion in Ankara that including Iran “would not be appropriate” because of its involvement in Syria and its alleged status as a “state sponsor of terror in various places” put the icing on the cake.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Iranian hardliners have taken heart from this very public snub. Even Marziah Afkham, the spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, a stronghold of pragmatists who favors improved relations with the West, felt compelled toregister “serious doubts about [the coalition’s] seriousness to fight against the root and true reasons for terrorism.” She noted without elaboration that “[s]ome of the countries in the coalition are among the financial and military supporters of terrorists in Iraq and Syria.”

Unlike US policymakers, Iranian statesmen—and the wider public—have a long memory. As the recent anniversary of Sept. 11 reminds us to “never forget,” we can do little but remember the lives lost and contemplate how the United States was drawn into a global conflict with religious extremists 13 years ago. For Iranians, however, the fateful date came four years before.

The Taliban reached global prominence in 1998, a year when its fighters launched a devastating offensive in northern Afghanistan. Much as the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS) last month swept across northern Iraq, forcing the Kurdish Peshmerga to retreat to within 40kms of Erbil, the better-armed and better-organized Taliban overcame all resistance by the Iran and Uzbekistani-backed coalition there during that summer. On Aug 8, it captured Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan’s fourth largest city, located just 100km from the border with Uzbekistan. Overwhelming local militias, Taliban troops and their allies massacred an estimated 2,000 Hazara civilians in what Human Rights Watch called “one of the worst atrocities of Afghanistan’s long civil war.” In addition, they stormed the Iranian consulate, killing a journalist and ten members of the diplomatic mission, despite assurances from the government of Pakistan, a chief sponsor of the Taliban at the time, that diplomats would not be targeted.

The diplomats’ murder—as well as the massacre of civilians—outraged both the Iranian regime and the broader public. Foreign Ministry officials mourned their fallen colleagues, whom they celebrated as martyrs akin to those who died ”defending the borders of this great country during eight years of holy defense” during Iran’s 1980-88 war with Iraq. An official statement broadcast on Iranian state television asserted Iran’s ”right to defend the security of its citizens” and warned that “the consequences of the Taliban action is on the shoulders of the Taliban and their supporters.”

For Iran, there was no question that the Taliban enjoyed the support of two states: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Without significant financial support from Saudi sources and the help of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Taliban would not have been able to stage such a brutal offensive. While it had taken Kabul two years before, the conquest of Mazar-e Sharif consolidated the Taliban’s position as the ruler of virtually all of Afghanistan, a status that no doubt contributed to its increasingly close cooperation with al-Qaeda.

Iran responded by building up its forces along the Afghan border and conducting major military exercises. But the Islamic Republic felt unable to commit to a costly and unpredictable war in Afghanistan unilaterally. It was only three years later, with 9/11, that the US came to realize the full nature of the threat posed by al-Qaeda and its Taliban collaborators.

Suddenly, Iran and the United States had a common enemy. As Washington mulled its strategy to rout the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda, officials in Tehran reached out to offer strategic support. Years of experience in Afghanistan had given the Iranians deep insight into how the Taliban operated in the ethnically and geographically complex nation.

The secret discussions that occurred between American and Iranian officials in the weeks that followed were the highest-level talks held between the two countries since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis. Many analysts believed that the new-found alignment of strategic interests, combined with President Mohammad Khatami’s reformist policies and conciliatory tone, would spur the US and Iran to normalize relations and actively cooperate against the terrorist threat.

In a grave blunder, however, neoconservatives and other hawks in the Bush administration opposed collaboration with Iran, thus depriving coalition forces of a valuable ally. Two months later, in a triumph of politics over pragmatism, Bush gratuitously lumped Iran together with Iraq and North Korea in his infamous “axis of evil,” a move that greatly strengthened hard-line forces in Tehran who had long argued that Washington simply could not be trusted.

It is striking how this situation mirrors that faced by the US and Iran today as both countries face the threat posed by ISIS. The Rouhani administration has opened the door to reconciliation, and the rise of reinvigorated Sunni extremism in the region gives Washington and Tehran a common enemy. Indeed, Iran has sent arms and advisers to Iraq to help the Peshmerga and Iraqi forces roll back ISIS’s recent advances.

Nonetheless, the US remains unwilling to include Iran in its coalition efforts. This position has given hardliners in Iran yet another opportunity to instill doubts about Washington’s sincerity and trustworthiness. Unsurprisingly, the events of 1998 and 2001 weigh heavily on Iran’s collective memory. Indeed, the conservative website Javan Online last week recalled “Iran’s bitter experience of cooperation with the US in Afghanistan,” citing it as reason to dismiss cooperation with Washington against ISIS. The conservative refrain that members of the coalition are “among financial and military supporters of terrorists” is also rooted in the historical memory of the 1998 offensive. Iran also continues to view Saudi Arabia as a key source both of funding for ISIS and other radical Sunni groups and of their intolerant and violent ideology, just as it was for the Taliban.

That Riyadh and its Gulf allies should be treated by Washington as central partners in the anti-ISIS coalition, while Tehran is excluded from any formal participation is particularly galling to Iranians who have suffered the brunt of US sanctions. Not only is this, in their view, illogical. To them, it also suggests that Washington is simply unable to learn from its past mistakes.

–Esfandyar Batmanghelidj is a founding partner of the 1st Europe-Iran Forum, a conference focused on commercial opportunities in Iran to be held in London in October. He has conducted extensive research on Iranian political economy and social history.

Photo: Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif shakes hands with US Secretary of State John Kerr on July 14, 2014 in Vienna.