The three-year old Syrian crisis presents dire dilemmas for Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and in refugee camps across the Middle East. Given Syria’s traditional role as a sponsor of Palestinian resistance movements and a home to hundreds of thousands of refugees, Palestinian leaders are understandably torn [...]]]> by Sam Badger and Giorgio Cafiero*

The three-year old Syrian crisis presents dire dilemmas for Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and in refugee camps across the Middle East. Given Syria’s traditional role as a sponsor of Palestinian resistance movements and a home to hundreds of thousands of refugees, Palestinian leaders are understandably torn between loyalties to President Bashar al-Assad and his enemies.

Palestinians have fought in Syria on behalf of both the regime and the rebels. The conflict has deepened ideological and political wedges between Palestinians and complicated their patchwork of international alliances. Moreover, as various proxy battles are waged within Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, the Palestinian refugees there are now enduring an underreported humanitarian crisis.

Syria’s Role in the Palestinian Resistance

Historical bonds between Palestinian resistance movements, refugees, and the Syrian government have complicated Palestinian attitudes toward the grinding civil war in Syria. In 1948, 90,000 Palestinians fled to Syria as refugees. Since then, several hundred thousand more have arrived and settled in large refugee camps, such as Yarmouk in Damascus.

Syria has been more than just a host to refugees—it has actively fomented Palestinian resistance to Israel. The Syrian government armed, financed, and protected various left-leaning Palestinian guerilla groups that were established in Yarmouk during the 1960s. Two of these groups included the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist-Leninist group founded in 1967, and the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Council (PFLP-GC), established in 1968 as a splinter group from the PFLP.

The Assad regime has also funded Islamist Palestinian movements. After Jordanian authorities kicked Hamas’ leadership out of Amman in 1999, the Palestinian group establishedits political bureau in Damascus and received weaponry, financial assistance, and political support from the Syrian regime.

This partnership was ideologically paradoxical for the rigidly secular Assad regime. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Syrian branch waged an uprising against the Syrian regime from 1976-1982. The uprising ended with a regime-led offensive against rebel-controlled Hama—Syria’s third-largest city—that left tens of thousands of civilians dead and still rallies jihadist rebels against the Assad regime. Despite this bloody history, Bashar al-Assad’s support for groups such as Hamas (and the more radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad) played into Syria’s grander geostrategic strategy of countering Israel’s military dominance in the Levant by arming anti-Israel proxy networks.

A Resistance Divided

The outbreak of violence in Syria complicated Damascus’ relationship with these resistance groups, strengthening its ties with certain secular Palestinian currents but sundering them with most of the Islamists. Assad’s Palestinian backers have generally framed their narratives of the Syrian crisis around a Western-backed conspiracy to overthrow the only Arab regime that remains willing to confront Israel. The Palestinian supporters of the rebellion, however, view Assad as a dictator responsible for killing his own people. Rebel supporters are quick to bring up the massacre of Palestinian refugees at the Lebanese camp of Tel al-Zaatar in 1976, for which Hafez al-Assad’s forces bore responsibility.

The PFLP-GC and the West Bank-based Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party have thrown their weight behind Assad, as have several prominent religious and civil society figures in the West Bank—including Bishop Atallah Hanna (the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Sebastia), Murad al-Sudani (Secretary-General of the Palestinian Writers’ Union), and Adel Samara (a left-leaning intellectual). Hamas, however, severed ties with the Assad regime and openly declared support for the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Meanwhile, certain Gaza-based Salafist factions, including the Mujahedeen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem, have supported the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), even after al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri disavowed the notorious Syrian rebel group this past January. According to Mohammed Hijazi, an expert on Islamist movements in Gaza, “scores of Salafists in Gaza” have traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS and other al-Qaeda-linked groups.

Meanwhile, Fatah, the dominant party within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA), has been forced to take a neutral stance on the Syria conflict while also trying to stand up for the safety of Palestinians inside Syria. Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the PA as well as the PLO, is currently preoccupied with peace negotiations with Israel. Abbas does not want to antagonize the Syrian government or the Palestinian groups it supports. Yet he also does not want to invest his already limited political capital in supporting a regime that has committed serious human rights violations. Nor does he want to alienate the Obama administration, which he needs on his side to pressure Israel over sensitive topics like settlements or the right of return. Additionally, both pro- and anti-Assad groups within the Palestinian resistance stand to gain political capital if the PLO’s seemingly moribund peace negotiations with Israel ultimately fail and more Palestinians become convinced that a peaceful solution to the conflict with Israel cannot be found.

As these divisions simmer, Palestinian refugee camps in Syria have become sites of violent clashes between Palestinian and Syrian groups with opposing stakes in the conflict. When many analysts expected the regime to lose control of Damascus, the PFLP-GC militants fought against rebels in the capital, leading anti-Assad forces to target the Yarmouk camp, precipitating a serious humanitarian crisis. Food and medicine supplies were cut as the Syrian Army laid siege to the camp in July 2013. The government was able to negotiate a fragile ceasefire to bring aid into Yarmouk, but on March 2, the al-Qaeda-affiliated rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra moved in and imposed its own siege. Although the PFLP-GC retains significant support and influence among the refugees, the Free Syrian Army has made inroads in the area as the siege continues.

Both sides in the Syrian conflict espouse the Palestinian cause and accuse the other of serving Israel’s interests. Officials in Damascus claim that Israel sponsors the insurgents to destabilize the last Arab state willing to confront Tel Aviv. The Islamist rebels, however, criticize the Assad regime for pacifying Syria’s border with Israel for the last four decades and failing to re-conquer the occupied Golan Heights. Certain elements within the Islamist rebellion havestated their intentions to “liberate” Palestine after they “liberate” Syria by toppling the Ba’athist regime in Damascus, however ill-equipped they are to truly challenge Israel on the battlefield. Thus, both sides play the “Palestinian card” to attack the other while appealing to wider pan-Arab and pan-Islamic trends in the Middle East.

Shifting Geopolitical Winds

As the Syrian crisis enters its fourth year, the evolution of the conflict could have major implications for Palestinians.

Following several Israeli bombings of strategic sites in Syria, Assad has threatened to retaliate against Israel. Ultimately, given that the Syrian Army is bogged down fighting the insurgents, it is doubtful that Damascus would initiate an Arab-Israeli war. However, if Assad does retaliate, the Palestinians—particularly those living in Israel proper—will have much at stake.

Iran is also a factor. When Iran and Hamas’ relationship cooled as a consequence of their opposing stakes in the Syrian crisis, Iran cut its support for Hamas and increased its assistance to the PFLP and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Although Iran and Hamas achieved a rapprochement in late 2013, ultimately agreeing to disagree on Syria, it appears that Iran’s renewed support for Hamas has not come at the expense of its sponsorship of these other groups, which have been at odds with Hamas for many years due to various political disputes. Since Hamas ended its relationship with the Assad regime and the Egyptian military ousted the Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo, the Gaza-based group has been hard pressed to find foreign sponsors. Within this context, Hamas has been careful not to antagonize Iran by clamping down on Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Gaza-based groups that have violated Israel-Hamas ceasefires. Therefore, the Syrian crisis has forced Hamas to recognize other political powers in Gaza as a consequence of Iranian pressure.

The potential for Salafist groups, such as ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, to carve out a de factoIslamic emirate in parts of northern Syria could send reverberations through the West Bank and Gaza as well. In both territories, Palestinian Salafist groups have challenged Fatah and Hamas’ authority in several ways, including by launching terrorist attacks. Gaza-based Salafists, meanwhile, have traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS. With such currents gaining greater power in the Egyptian Sinai, Lebanon, and western Iraq, al-Qaeda’s dream of establishing a borderless Islamic emirate in the Levant will continue to impact the regional environment. Under such circumstances, Hamas will likely be compelled to strike a balance between leading the jihad against Israel while simultaneously restraining other groups that seek to steal the resistance banner as Hamas engages in ceasefire negotiations with Israeli authorities.

As the Syrian crisis appears to have no easy solution in sight and the Palestinians’ internal divisions are unlikely to resolve in the near-term, the Syrian conflict’s polarizing impact will likely be felt within the Palestinian population for the foreseeable future. Of course, while the stateless Palestinians have less capacity to influence events in Syria compared to major regional powers that are heavily involved in the conflict, nearly all Palestinians understand that their people have high stakes in Syria.

Sam Badger is a graduate teaching associate of philosophy and graduate student at San Francisco State University. Giorgio Cafiero is a Washington, D.C.-based foreign affairs analyst and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.

Photo: This photo taken in January 2014 shows residents of Yarmouk, a neighborhood of Palestinians in Syria, lining up as far as the eye can see to receive food supplies. The grinding civil war has exacerbated political divisions in the Palestinian resistance and left ordinary Palestinians open to attacks from fighters on both sides of the conflict.

by Aurélie Daher

As the Syrian uprising against the Baathist regime enters its fourth year, it is clear, given the changing balance of power on the ground, that predictions about the imminent collapse of the Assad dynasty, which constituted conventional wisdom from 2011-12, are far from the mark. Once derided [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Aurélie Daher

As the Syrian uprising against the Baathist regime enters its fourth year, it is clear, given the changing balance of power on the ground, that predictions about the imminent collapse of the Assad dynasty, which constituted conventional wisdom from 2011-12, are far from the mark. Once derided by its neighbours for the obsolescence of its equipment and what was perceived as the cluelessness of its soldiers, the Syrian army has retaken from opposition fighters several strategic positions, including the latest, Yabroud, which, according to all major actors, is of pre-eminent importance. The same observers also agreed that recent victories by the regime are in reality less those of the Syrian security forces than of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, both in terms of the manpower they provided and the strategic advice they offered their Syrian counterparts.

Hezbollah’s open intervention in its neighbour’s civil war has from the outset posed many questions and provoked not a little anxiety. What exactly are Hezbollah’s aims in Syria? In light of the reprisals that have been conducted by its Syrian foes and their sympathizers in areas sympathetic to the group or under its control, doesn’t it have more to lose than to gain? Finally, and in particular, does Hezbollah risk losing its popular base and its pre-eminence on the national level in Lebanon?

Flashback to an intervention outside national borders

If Hezbollah’s leaders have supported — and from the beginning — the Lebanese government’s policy of non-intervention in the Syrian crisis, that has not prevented them from taking a clear position in favor of Assad’s regime, even while calling for a negotiated settlement between the belligerents. It must not be forgotten that cooperation between the Baathist regime in Damascus and Hezbollah began in the early 1990s and their strategic alliance has consisted essentially of Syria’s facilitating the transfer of arms from Iran to Hezbollah. In its various defeats of the Israeli army, the group became to a certain extent indebted to the Assad dynasty, which explains why, despite Damascus’s decades-long abandonment of any armed challenge to Tel Aviv, Hezbollah still considers the Syrian leadership to be a “regime of resistance against Israel.”

This arrangement would probably not survive in the event that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) or the Sunni jihadi groups actually took power. The Syrian opposition factions didn’t wait for Hezbollah fighters to actually cross the border before declaring their hostility for — and issuing threats against — the party. In December 2011, for example, Burhan Ghalioun, who then headed the Syrian National Council (SNC), declared that if indeed the Assad regime was defeated, “the new authorities would drastically review their relations with Iran and Hezbollah” (Al-Arabiya, 12/2/11). The following month, FSA spokesman, Col. Ammar al-Wawi, warned that Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, will be “held accountable for his actions before revolutionary courts after the victory of the Syrian revolution” (L’Orient-Le Jour, 2/1/12). Then, in the fall of 2012, the head of al-Qaeda in Syria (as it was then known), Majid al-Majid, issued a specific threat against Hezbollah, announcing his plans to conduct attacks against tourist sites in Lebanon if the government in Beirut continued to support the party (Al-Joumhouriya, 9/3/12). Similarly, the FSA’s leadership promised to bring the war into the heart of southern Beirut (a Hezbollah stronghold) if the party “didn’t end its support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad” (L’Orient-Le Jour, 10/9/12). The rhetoric became if anything more virulent and increasingly characterized by a sectarian, anti-Shiite hostility as the Sunni jihadi groups, which made clear that the conflict went far beyond any ideological or economic differences, gained ascendance among the opposition forces.

It bears repeating that all of this preceded Hezbollah’s intervention, which in fact took place in two stages. The first real appearance of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon (IRL), Hezbollah’s paramiltary, mother organization, dates in all likelihood to the latter half of 2012 (the IRL is normally presented as the military wing of Hezbollah. In reality, it preceded Hezbollah and originally helped create it. The relationship is thus the opposite: Hezbollah is the civil extension of the IRL). It didn’t involve sending combatants to fight alongside regime forces. Rather, the first units were members of local self-defense forces that formed spontaneously in the increasingly conflicted zone along the border. Having never been precisely demarcated, the border between northeast Lebanon and Syria constitutes a large area that is home to some 30 villages actually inhabited by Lebanese — mainly Shiite — citizens, all of whom, however, are subject to Syrian sovereignty. Given their sectarian character, these villages were targeted early on by Sunni jihadi groups linked to the opposition. Small groups of local youth — all Lebanese — thus took up arms to defend their families and homes against those attacks. Some among them were members of Hezbollah and the IRL whose initial purpose was thus simple self-defense.

The second stage of Hezbollah’s intervention on Syrian territory came with the battle of Quseir in the spring of 2013, when IRL combatants fought side by side with regular Syrian army forces. This more extended intervention resulted from the confluence of the interests of both the regime and Hezbollah, a confluence that is readily apparent from a glance at Syrian geography. The IRL hasn’t fought in the central, southern or eastern part of the country and does not (yet) appear to be committed to helping Assad re-conquer his country. Rather, its zone of intervention has been confined to the swath of territory around the Aleppo-Homs-Damascus axis, stretching roughly from the northwest coast of Syria (immediately north of Lebanon) along the border down to the Lebanese Shiite region of Baalbeck al-Hermel. The northwest coast is largely Alawite (Shiite) and Christian; that is, the two sectarian constituencies most closely allied with the regime. The regime, with IRL’s help, has been focused on clearing the major transportation routes that link the capital, Damascus, to the northwest, and making it more difficult for Syrian rebels to gain access to Sunni sympathisers in the Bekaa who have provided them with safe haven and, above all, a base for resupply.

But IRL’s intervention in Syria is motivated primarily by the defense of its own interests, reflecting less an attempt to save the Syrian regime than a proactive effort to anticipate the potential impact of Assad’s fall on its ability to act in Syria. Hezbollah and IRL don’t need to be welcome throughout Syria; if Syria breaks up into various zones of influitence as has already more or less taken place, a stable and protected sanctuary is sufficient for their purposes; that is, to ensure that key supply routes remain intact. It is thus not by chance that IRL fighters have focused their intervention in this area.

Bad for Assad, good for March 14?

Lebanon’s political scene has been split since 2005 between the March 14 Alliance — an essentially Sunni and Christian coalition of parties and individuals opposed to the Syrian regime and consisting mainly of the Sunni “Future Current” (FC) of Saad Hariri and the Lebanese Forces of Samir Geagea — and the March 8 Coalition, which has favoured maintaining close ties with Damascus and is led by Hezbollah with the support of the “Free Patriotic Current” of Michel Aoun.

It has been assumed by the March 14 movement — and some of its western supporters — that Assad’s ouster and the advent of real democracy in Syria would result almost automatically in Lebanon in a decisive victory for its forces over March 8, and thus the marginalization of Hezbollah. In this view, the changing balance of power between the Syrian regime in Damascus and its opposition would logically and necessarily replicate itself in Lebanon between the two coalitions there. In reality, however, the belief in such a direct relationship between the politics of the two countries ignores the nature of the leverage exerted by Hezbollah on the political stage in Lebanon, just as it wrongfully assumes that any successor to the Assad dynasty will necessarily act in favor of anti-Syrian Lebanese forces. Contrary to the popular adage, the ramifications in Lebanon of what happens in Syria demonstrates that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.

Indeed, the major role played by the radical Islamic groups in the Syrian opposition hardly strengthens the March 14 movement; on the contrary, it simultaneously weakens both of the major sectarian factions within it: Christian and Sunni.

Lebanese Christians of all political persuasions are not happy with the growing role played by the Sunni jihadists at the heart of the anti-Assad networks. Shocked by what their Iraqi co-religionists have suffered in recent years and what has begun to happen to their counterparts in Syria — the treatment of the nuns in Maaloula offers one recent example — Lebanese Christians see their worst nightmare as the arrival in Lebanon of a similar regime of repression, abuse and ultimately forced exile.

Within the Lebanese Christian community, two main political factions have vied for popular support. While Geagea, the leader of the Christian faction within the March 14 movement, depends on the moderate and Western-allied Sunni (FC), Aoun, who heads the opposing camp, is wary of Hariri’s close links with Saudi Arabia and pushes for an alliance with a Hezbollah whose behaviour regarding Islamo-Christian relations has for years been seen as exemplary. Thus, its media, which diligently covers all abuses committed against Christians by Sunni jihadi groups throughout the region, takes every opportunity to highlight Hezbollah’s strong ties with Christians.

They recall, for example, the joint project announced by the Maronite Patriarch and Hezbollah to promote the concept of a “civil State of believers,” in January 2011; Hezbollah’s reception of Pope Benedict’s September 2012 visit to Lebanon (on his arrival at the Beirut airport, it sent a welcome escort consisting of hundreds of the party’s Scouts sporting berets adorned with the Vatican’s coat of arms); the construction work of Jihad al-Binaa, a Hezbollah organ which, after the 2006 war with Israel, repaired at its own expense churches damaged by Israeli bombs and artillery shells during the month-long conflict; Hezbollah’s support for the so-called “orthodox” electoral law that had long been a pet project of Christian conservatives, the majority of whom belong to the March 14 movement; and the November 2012 invitation to Hezbollah’s leadership by the Maronite Patriarch, Monsignor Bechara al-Rahi, to send its own delegation to accompany him for his formal installation as cardinal at the Vatican.

Thus, Christians who are already favourable to Hezbollah have no reason to change their position. All the more so in light of the embarrassing position in which their March 14 co-religionists find themselves in given the rise of jihadi groups in the Syrian opposition. Indeed, Geagea, who had argued for months after the outbreak of the insurrection in Syria that an Islamist regime in Syria would not prove harmful to Christians, abruptly abandoned that claim by the end of 2012. At the same time, the Gemayel family, the second political grouping within March 14’s Christian constituency, never endorsed Geagea’s initially enthusiastic embrace of the rebellion and has preferred instead to support the government’s position of not taking sides.

The destabilization of the anti-Assad line resulting from the disarray among the March 14 Christians is enhanced by the weakening of the Sunnis’ position in Lebanon. Syria’s turmoil has effectively accelerated the shattering of Sunni unity, which was already under stress in recent years due to a series of setbacks suffered by the FC and its leader, Saad Hariri, as well as by the emergence of pockets of radical Islamists, particularly in the northern part of the country around Tripoli.

Faced with the militarization of the conflict next door, the temptation to provide reinforcements and logistical support to the insurgents there became too strong for the FC to resist. Despite some initial official denials, Hariri himself opted for silence in November 2012 when pressed about the mounting evidence implicating his associates regarding the supply of arms and funding for the rebels. This direct involvement in the Syrian conflict, which occurred before Hezbollah’s intervention, as well as the clear support for the rebels provided by the FC’s external sponsor, Saudi Arabia — not to mention the overt support voiced by several FC members of parliament in 2012 and 2013 for the radical Sunni cleric Ahmad al-Assir — fatally undermined the efforts by Hariri’s faction to present itself as an effective firewall against extremist groups.

All the more since, when the radical Sunni groups challenged the state’s authority and even, at times, confronted it with violence, FC MPs from Tripoli defended their actions without any public rebuke from the leadership. Thus, Hariri’s pledges of moderation have consistently proved difficult to uphold, as he showed himself either unwilling or unable to rein in these groups.

Indeed, this fragmentation among the Sunnis poses a serious threat to Hezbollah because of the risk that their actions could spark a sectarian civil war in Lebanon. On the other hand, while Sunnis across the political spectrum have long been hostile toward Hezbollah — including well before its intervention in Syria — it appears that the majority of the community still values the civil peace — however tenuous — that has reigned in Lebanon for the past two decades sufficiently to avoid letting themselves be dragged into war against the party.

The community that would logically appear most susceptible to change its political allegiance in light of the Syrian crisis remains the Shia themselves. Indeed, IRL’s intervention on the side of the loyalist forces across the border has reverberated strongly in Lebanon, especially with respect to security. Reprisals by the Syrian opposition have already taken the form of several car or suicide bombings in two Shiite strongholds — Beirut’s southern suburbs and the northeastern Bekaa. While it is undeniable that these incidents have spread unease and fear among the Shiites, any thought that they could trigger a massive desertion by the community would seem deluded.

Why Lebanese Shia don’t support Assad’s fall

The Shiites of Lebanon have three reasons for not supporting the fall of Assad’s regime. The first relates to the bipolarity of the political scene. The two camps and their followers hold highly defined views regarding their political, factional, regional, and international allegiances. On the one hand, March 8 is allied to Syria and Iran and looks positively at Russia. On the other, March 14 followers have no problem dealing with Israel, are friendly to Saudi Arabia, and, at the international level, consider France and the US their natural protectors. Thus, without necessarily retaining any admiration for the Damascus regime — let alone any endorsement of its policies and behavior — the strong majority of the Shia “naturally” prefer it as the lesser evil compared to one which would upset the regional equilibrium.

It is for the same reason that the Shiite community disapproved of March 14’s adherence in 2005 to an American neoconservative policy aimed at upending the existing regional balance of power. Asked to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea, Lebanon’s Shiites feel more at home and comfortable — and secure — under the Syrian-Iranian umbrella than being subject to US-European (and Saudi) adventures in the Middle East — particularly in the wake of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Over the past 20 years, the community has also developed a very special, very strong and very sophisticated relationship with Hezbollah. The party’s successive victories over the Israeli occupation and its social and political achievements on the domestic front have built a solid confidence in its strategic acuity. Those accomplishments have also sparked a revival of communal identity, based on a new “Shiite pride,” the promotion of a collective self-image. In so doing, the party has permitted the community to rid itself of inferiority complexes that it has suffered for decades, if not centuries, thus inspiring a strong, durable feeling of gratitude towards Hezbollah and, accordingly, cementing an enduring political bond between the party and the community.

The last reason why the majority of Shiites are unlikely to desert Hezbollah is their strong hostility towards the Sunni jihadist groups in the Syrian opposition. Christians are not the only religious group anxious about their growing importance. Shiites feel much the same fear because they know that the hatred directed by these groups at them is based more on religious than on political differences; that is, they are hated for what they are, rather than for what they think. In a country whose state lacks the resources to assure its citizens’ security, Hezbollah appears — as paradoxical as it may seem — as the only group capable of defending the nation — and its community.

In other words, the Syrian crisis has not changed the basic political configuration of Lebanon. Hezbollah’s critics still criticise it; those who support it also continue to do so. Those feelings have perhaps become more polarized as a result of Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria, but no consequential political defection is in view — from one side or the other.

Photo: The Syrian flag is seen as people watch Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah speaking to supporters via live broadcast during a May 25 2013 event in Bekaa Valley, Resistance and Liberation Day, which marks the anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Credit: Sharif Karim

by Aurélie M. Daher

In Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God, Matthew Levitt, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and a former senior U.S. counter-terrorism official, attempts to illustrate the threat posed to the West or its friends by Hezbollah, whose commitment [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Aurélie M. Daher

In Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God, Matthew Levitt, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and a former senior U.S. counter-terrorism official, attempts to illustrate the threat posed to the West or its friends by Hezbollah, whose commitment to violence constitutes, in the author’s view, its very essence. A compilation of the various attacks attributed to the group since the early 1980s, the book consists essentially of a review of the various reports and investigations undertaken by the U.S. CIA and FBI, Israel’s Mossad, and a long list of other western security, intelligence, and counter-terrorism agencies.

An initial problem, which is widely shared by most of this genre, is raised at the outset by the way the thesis is supposedly substantiated. Levitt in effect commits the methodological error of covering what is a highly interactive process from only one point of view; in this case, Hezbollah is detached from its environment, its culture and from the contexts in which it has developed since its creation. It is detached above all from the actors with which it has interacted over its 30-year history.

Thus, Hezbollah’s violence is approached as if it took place in a vacuum, presented as relevant to its own ethos, and practiced according to a logic comparable to “art for art’s sake.” As was noted a few years ago by the sociologist Didier Bigo, however, “terrorism” as an analytical category “doesn’t exist”. In other words, terrorism approached as a study frankly doesn’t permit any understanding of the organization that is responsible for it, nor does it even provide a real understanding of the phenomenon of the violence itself. By extension, to study an organization by cataloguing the violent acts of which it stands accused explains nothing at all. 

Indeed, terrorism, a form of violence, is never practiced for its own sake; it is rather undertaken as a means or as an expression of an idea or a message that requires identification. The intellectual challenge is not to look at the violence itself, but to identify the reasons for such a choice, the objectives the actor intends to achieve, the contexts and conditions for success of the chosen strategy, and the response that it provokes from the target. In that sense, Levitt’s book offers no clue, leaving us completely bereft of such enlightening elements.

Not a word, for example, regarding the realities of Israel’s second invasion of Lebanon in June 1982, the factor of social history that stands at the origin of Hezbollah. Nor does the book have anything to say about the realities of Israel’s military occupation of southern Lebanon, an occupation that lasted a not insubstantial 22 years in the course of which checkpoints, curfews, threats, and even violence, abductions, mass deportations and torture became daily concerns for some 200,000 Lebanese of whom nearly half ended up leaving — or being forced out of — their homes in the occupied zone. Not to mention the 11,000 Lebanese — that is, more than 15 percent of the remaining population — who, without any form of due process, spent time in Israeli prisons, some of them for more than ten years, still others until the end of their lives that were lost as a result of the abuses they suffered. This first category of very real sociological facts contextualizes Hezbollah’s violence, less as an essential trait of its nature than as a strategy of war carried out in response to another kind of violence inflicted on the larger community of which it is a part. Without seeking to justify Hezbollah’s violence, it would have seemed appropriate, both for the sake of intellectual integrity and analytic coherence, for the author to offer us explanatory details of a phenomenon that he claims to decipher.

A second problem is posed by the book’s very subject. Given the difficulty of gaining access to empirical material, cataloguing the malign acts of a clandestine organization as secretive as Hezbollah does not lend itself to strictly academic research, which must necessarily rely almost entirely on documents and sources from the murky world of international intelligence and espionage. Thus, one would have preferred that Levitt would have avoided unattributed assertions or affirmations — Hezbollah is this, Hezbollah does that — and instead referred back to the source on which his account relies — the CIA says that Hezbollah is this, the Mossad believes that Hezbollah does that. The presentation of Hezbollah in the book is thus less a factual and objective depiction as it is more a subjective recitation among similar works, especially when one considers the highly questionable record for reliability of western intelligence agencies regarding the Middle East in the past (including very recently) — a record upon which Levitt’s book unfortunately fails to improve. The fact is that the text abounds with vague, questionable, and uncontextualized assertions; that is, when they are not simply false.

At the same time, the author — who speaks no Arabic — fails to understand Hezbollah’s nature, as well as its aims. Nor does he have a grip on its internal organization or modus vivendi, just as he lacks familiarity with its history or environment and remains a stranger to the culture of its popular base. A number of events in the history of the region, and in particular, of Lebanon, are grossly distorted, leading at best to concerns about Levitt’s ignorance; at worst, about his intellectual honesty. His analysis of Hezbollah’s discourse is also literal; he thus interprets both ad hoc statements and lyrical flights of rhetoric by Hezbollah officials on ceremonial occasions as serious, well-planned strategies. For example, when, on the anniversary of the 2008 assassination of Imad Mughniye, which was very likely carried out by the Mossad, Hezbollah officials declare, “We haven’t revenged him yet but we will,” that hardly means, as Levitt appears to believe, that Hezbollah is preparing to attack Israel or Israelis imminently. It is a mandatory slogan, just as Iranians have chanted (albeit with diminishing conviction) “Death to America” at Friday Prayer rallies over the past 34 years.

This lack of context is pervasive, as are important omissions, intended or not. Like Saudi anti-Shiite propaganda, Levitt depicts Lebanese Hezbollah and several other organizations based in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq with the same name as one and the same, thus attributing to the Lebanese group the acts of the others when the latter are not only products of their own distinct national histories, contexts, and aims, but also maintain no links or coordination with their Lebanese homonym.

Indeed, contrary to Levitt’s assertion, Hezbollah wasn’t created in 1982. The Israeli invasion initially provoked the formation of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon (IRL), a paramilitary group that first appeared in July of that same year. It wasn’t until several months later that the IRL chose to associate with a network of social and civic institutions that didn’t take definitive form as Hezbollah until the spring of 1984. The armed organization thus isn’t a branch, among others, of Hezbollah’s structure, but the inverse: Hezbollah is the civil extension of the IRL.

Moreover, Levitt’s attempts to describe the organization’s structure are replete with irrefutable errors of fact. Thus, the head of the Council of Jihad wasn’t Mughniye, nor even, after his 2008 assassination, Mustafa Badreddine, but rather Hassan Nasrallah himself, according to the group’s governing rules, which provide that the head of the IRL presides over the Central Decision Council under the secretary general. The mass media run by the party, similarly, are not responsible to the Political Council, as Levitt asserts, but to the Executive Council. These are just a few of the many simple errors in the book that naturally erode confidence in Levitt’s understanding of the most basic features of the organization.

Levitt’s own all-too-certain confidence in the reliability of reports by the CIA and its friendly counterparts leads him to a poor understanding of the socio-political contexts and developments that have taken place in the region during the past 30 years. For example, he notes, quoting from the CIA, that in the Bekaa Valley in 1987, “strict Islamic rule was implemented: Sale or transport of liquor are prohibited, women are forbidden from interacting with men in public and must adhere to a strict dress code, civil crimes are punished according to the Koran, and Western education and influences are prohibited.” Having myself grown up in Baalbek, the capital of the purported “Hezbollah State” in the Bekaa, I can attest without reservation that this description is a total fantasy: women wearing Bermuda shorts and short-sleeved and sleeveless t-shirts vastly outnumbered those donning chadors, however seductive, on the city’s streets. I also recall very clearly barbecues and other informal parties in our neighbours’ homes where orange juice was by no means the only beverage served for the thirsty. As in previous years, Hezbollah cadres lined up with other parents at the beginning of the academic year to enrol their kids in schools where Roman Catholic nuns taught classes in French. And in the courts, cases that applied Sharia law were not only extremely rare, but confined to those in which the families of criminal or tort victims specifically requested it.

In yet another example where Levitt’s sources have misinformed him, Israel did not withdraw from southern Lebanon in 2000 for the sake of upholding international law — such as UN Security Council Resolution 425 — as asserted by the author. Rather, it followed the Israeli government’s recognition of its army’s total defeat faced with the determination, tenacity, and effectiveness of IRL attacks in the region. Another example in the recent past that the author doesn’t get quite right is his confident assertion that Hezbollah organized in 2006 an attack and abduction of Israeli soldiers on Israeli territory “and dragged both Israel and Lebanon into a war neither State wanted.” Aside from the fact that the alleged violation by the IRL of Israeli sovereignty remains a source of debate — only Israel maintains that the attack took place on its territory; Hezbollah, the Lebanese army and the UN peacekeeping force there (UNIFIL) have maintained it took place within Lebanon’s borders — Israel had made plans for a large-scale offensive against its northern neighbor four months before and had meanwhile been waiting for a pretext to launch it under a claim of self-defense, as admitted by the then-Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, in March 2007.[1]

In the same way, one can’t simply take at face value Levitt’s version of the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires’ Jewish cultural center. At that time, the Argentine government maintained close relations with Tel Aviv; the Mossad indeed participated in the investigation that ultimately blamed Hezbollah, a conclusion embraced by Levitt. But the book unfortunately overlooks the fact that 18 years later, the Argentine government, having altered its foreign policy, agreed with Tehran to conduct a joint investigation. Nor does he note a more recent wrinkle from just last July when the former Argentine Interior Minister, Carlos Corach was accused of having supplied the explosives used in the attack, as reported by the World Jewish Congress. In other words, Levitt fails to take account of the flexibility that can sometimes influence judicial processes according to the political preferences of governments. Nor does he cite any serious critiques of the initial and subsequent investigations of the bombing by journalists, including Gareth Porter as in his 2008 Nation article or his more recent discovery that the 2006 indictment of top Iranian leaders for allegedly ordering the bombing relied virtually entirely on the testimony of the formerly-armed Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedin-E-Khalq (MEK). None of this means that Hezbollah is innocent of the bombing; it only demonstrates Levitt’s uncritical acceptance of and lack of curiosity about the “official” version, as recounted to him by his preferred intelligence sources.

The same selectivity brings him to place too much confidence in journalistic accounts about Hezbollah and Lebanese politics — some of which are susceptible to a number of interpretations or hypotheses, while others lack coherence. For example, media stories based on alleged leaks from the international commission investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, as presented in 2009 by the German weekly, Der Spiegel, and in 2010 by the Canadian television channel, CBC, were widely criticized — even by anti-Hezbollah forces who were in the majority at the time — for inconsistencies and inaccuracies. The indictment filed in 2011, which charged four alleged members of Hezbollah with the crime, is, according to the prosecutor himself, Daniel Bellemare, based on inferences and circumstantial — rather than direct — evidence. With the trial now getting underway, moreover, it appears that the SIM cards which, according to the commission, were used to plan and organize the assassination and subsequently to identify the perpetrators, belonged at the time — and still even today — to ordinary citizens who obtained them before the assassination.

While recognizing that Hezbollah is an organization that considers violence part of its strategic “toolbox,” one can’t but regret Levitt’s lack of basic knowledge and analytic rigor, not to mention his sensationalism and apparent ignorance of nearly 30 years of important studies that have focused on the modus operandi of this key actor on the Middle Eastern geo-political stage. If the book had been written by a seasoned and experienced regional specialist fluent in Arabic and fully conversant in the region’s culture, habits and customs, its basic thesis — that Hezbollah has been responsible for dozens of actual and planned attacks against western targets and remains today one of the West’s major threats — might be more convincing.

[1] See L’Orient-Le Jour, 9 March, 2007, a version of which is unfortunately unavailable online. See also this article by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker, 21 August, 2006.

by Jim Lobe

The front-page article by Jodi Rudoren about Israel’s “Castle Strategy” in Sunday’s New York Times offers yet one more example — and right in the opening paragraph — of why the Kirk-Menendez “Wag the Dog” Act of 2013 is so dangerous to the security of the United [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

The front-page article by Jodi Rudoren about Israel’s “Castle Strategy” in Sunday’s New York Times offers yet one more example — and right in the opening paragraph — of why the Kirk-Menendez “Wag the Dog” Act of 2013 is so dangerous to the security of the United States. Here it is:

After a Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon landed in Israel last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Hezbollah, the Shiite militia, and its Iranian backers. But Israeli security officials attributed the attack to a Sunni jihadist group linked to Al Qaeda.

Unfortunately, Rudoren does not elaborate on what she calls this “disconnect,” but it once again strongly suggests that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has no hesitation about blaming Iran or its alleged surrogates, most importantly Hezbollah, for anything untoward, even when professionals in Israel’s national-security apparatus disagree. Perhaps Bibi is completely sincere in his belief that Hezbollah was behind this attack and that Israel’s intelligence community was wrong, in which case one has to ask whether the Israeli leader has his own “Office of Special Plans,” Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney to distort and politicize the intelligence to support his own policy preferences and whether our own Congress is paying attention.

But bearing in mind this disconnect between Israel’s political leadership and its national-security apparatus, consider two provisions in the Kirk-Menendez bill, otherwise known as the “Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013.”

First, there’s the provision that requires the President to certify that “Iran has not directly, or through a proxy, supported, financed, planned, or otherwise carried out an act of terrorism against the United States or United States persons or property anywhere in the world.” If he does not so certify, then the enhanced sanctions set forth in the bill would automatically take effect. As Ed Levine pointed out in his analysis,

“…[I]f, say, Hezbollah were to explode a bomb outside a U.S. firm’s office in Beirut, the sanctions would go into effect (because Iran gives financial and other support to Hezbollah) even if Iran’s nuclear activities and negotiations were completely in good faith.”

Presumably, the same logic could well apply if a missile launched from Lebanon struck somewhere in northern Israel and a U.S. person were killed or injured in the strike, and the Israelis — meaning Netanyahu, as the head of government — claimed that Hezbollah was responsible. Remember back when the Begin government accused the PLO of responsibility for the attempted assassination of Israel’s ambassador to Britain — even though the Abu Nidal group, which had broken with the PLO eight years before and was openly at war with it – in order to justify Israel’s (ultimately disastrous) invasion of Lebanon in 1982?

Second, of course, is the “Wag the Dog” provision:

…if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapon program, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide, in accordance with the law of the United States and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence…

Again, as Sen. Dianne Feinstein argued last week, “…we cannot let Israel determine when and where the U.S. goes to war. By stating that the U.S. should provide military support to Israel should it attack Iran, I fear that is exactly what this bill will do.”

Again, Netanyahu’s rejection of the assessment of his own national security apparatus in order to further his efforts to mount up the charges against Iran and derail its negotiations with the P5+1 should give Congress — and Democrats, in particular — pause about moving this legislation.

In the Washington Post two weeks ago, Sen. Robert Menendez described his bill as an “insurance policy” designed to strengthen the administration’s hand in the negotiations, despite the fact that the administration has said the bill’s enactment is likely to either destroy the international sanctions regime or sabotage the negotiations. Indeed, I see the bill as akin to a fire insurance policy for the benefit of arsonists of whom Netanyahu may be the most important, although he is not alone. Others include Saudi Arabia and its intelligence chief, Prince Bandar; Al Qaeda or any of its regional affiliates, such as the one which presumably fired the missiles from Lebanon which Netanyahu blamed on Hezbollah; and the MEK. A lot of potential spoilers are out there, and you can bet they’re all hoping that the now-stalled Kirk-Menendez bill can regain momentum when Congress reconvenes next week.

by Wayne White

The reverberations of the desperate war inside Syria have increasingly radiated outward. In addition to the massive Syrian refugee exodus, Lebanon and Iraq in particular have been impacted adversely by heightened instability and violence. Yet actions associated with both have only increased their vulnerability. By contrast, the Turks [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Wayne White

The reverberations of the desperate war inside Syria have increasingly radiated outward. In addition to the massive Syrian refugee exodus, Lebanon and Iraq in particular have been impacted adversely by heightened instability and violence. Yet actions associated with both have only increased their vulnerability. By contrast, the Turks and Iraq’s northern Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) have boldly ramped up their mutual cooperation, in part to form a common front to counter an unwelcome rival Kurdish alliance taking shape inside Syria.

Despite rising violence in Lebanon, so far Iraq has been the most heavily affected overall of Syria’s neighbors. In addition to the almost daily backdrop of horrific bombings and attacks by gunmen on Shi’a and government-related targets (like those of Dec. 16 killing 65), there has been a surge in execution-style killings and beheadings, with bodies dumped in various locales (characteristic of the dark days of the 2006-2008 sectarian violence). Recently, Iranian workers on a gas pipeline in north central Iraq were also the objects of a massacre. Al-Qaeda associated elements have been the prime culprits, but Shi’a militias have become more active as well.

With more than 8,000 Iraqis already dead this year from extremist violence, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari warned earlier this month of more danger from a jihadist “Islamic emirate” that could take hold in much of Syria. Yet, the Baghdad government’s own marginalization and persecution of Iraq’s Sunni Arab community under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been the leading cause for the powerful revival of Sunni Arab extremism in Iraq and its close linkage to the parallel phenomenon in Syria.
Meanwhile, hardline Grand Ayatollah Kazim al-Haeri (who has inspired Shi’a militias in Iraq for years) issued a fatwa on Dec. 15 pronouncing “fighting in Syria legitimate” and declaring those who die there “martyrs.” This fatwa probably will send many more Iraqi Shi’a into Syria to join over a thousand already believed to be fighting for the regime. But it also could intensify seething sectarian tensions within Iraq.

Other notable developments affecting Iraq, however, involve its northern Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). KRG President Masoud Barzani made his first visit to Turkey in any capacity since 1992 in mid-November. The obvious aim was to support Turkish President Erdogan’s peace efforts focused on the extremist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as well as to help Ergodan secure more Kurdish favor in Turkey’s March 2014 municipal elections.

Such high-profile assistance from Iraq’s Kurds would seem odd but for two other pressing matters. First, both Turkey and the KRG were alarmed by the declaration before Barzani’s visit by Kurdish militias in northeastern Syria of an interim administration for an autonomous Kurdish region there. Although repressed in the pre-civil war era, these militias are believed to have made their move with the approval of the Syrian government, and to have received aid from Assad’s allies, Iran and the Maliki government (relationships both Erdogan and Barzani oppose). Moreover, the Iraqi Kurds and the Turks fear the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), with links to the radical PKK, is behind the recent unity move.

For Damascus, any such agreement probably represents a cynical wartime concession of iffy standing simply to harness the bulk of Syria’s 2 million Kurds against anti-regime Sunni Arab rebels. Support from the regime probably also made possible the only UN airlift of winter relief supplies for any area outside government control into this predominantly Kurdish region. The only other airlifts to rebel areas associated with the Syrian regime have involved bombs.

Syrian Kurdish militias have been battling various rebels for over a year. On Dec. 13, cadres of the al-Qaeda linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) reportedly seized 120 Syrian Kurdish hostages near the Turkish border north of Aleppo, the latest of a number of such kidnappings. There has also been heavy skirmishing between the ISIL and extremist al-Nusra Front rebels and Syrian Kurdish militias along the edges of the Kurdish-controlled zone.

The second key driver in Barzani’s and Erdogan’s warming ties is oil. For years, Maliki’s government has been at odds with Barzani’s KRG over the KRG’s efforts to award its own contracts for large-scale oil and gas exports. KRG patience may have run out. In late November, Turkey and the KRG apparently came close to finalizing a comprehensive oil and gas deal — the latest move in Ankara’s cooperation with the KRG that has angered Baghdad.

Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz assured Iraqi officials on Dec. 1 that “any exports must be with the approval of the Iraqi government.” But with Iraq still balking over fears of greater KRG autonomy, the Turks and the KRG are keeping the pressure up; on Dec. 13, test flows of limited amounts of KRG crude were sent through a new pipeline already completed to carry Iraqi Kurdish exports Turkey sorely needs to diversify its energy dependence and secure oil and gas at a likely discount.

Lebanon has been paying ever more dearly for the ongoing sectarian violence just across its lengthy Syrian border and Hezbollah’s military intervention in Syria. Indeed, given Lebanon’s own complex sectarian mosaic, overspill was inevitable, with an ongoing litany of clashes, killings, threats, and squaring off otherwise among Sunni, Alawite and Shi’a communities radiating out from the border.

Tensions and sectarian violence, however, also have been rising in core areas of Lebanon. In the northern city of Tripoli, with a majority Sunni Arab community, a Lebanese soldier died and 7 others were wounded in a Dec. 5 clash with extremists sympathetic to the Syrian rebels. More than 100 have died in Tripoli so far this year in gun battles and a bombing pitting Sunni militants against the army, the police, Tripoli’s minority Alawite community, or Lebanese Shi’a elements. As a result, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, recently turned security there over to the army for 6 months.

Probably most damaging for Lebanon has been Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria, sending thousands of seasoned fighters to reinforce those of the Assad regime. Hundreds of its combatants have been killed in action, and heavily Shi’a-populated areas of Beirut in particular (home to many Hezbollah fighters) have not simply remained a quiet “home front” away from Hezbollah’s war across the border.

Bombings like the one against the Iranian Embassy in Beirut and nearby buildings on Nov. 19, which killed two dozen, have hammered Shi’a neighborhoods. On Dec. 4, a Hezbollah commander back from the Syrian front, Hassan al-Liqqis, was gunned down in front of his residence. Hezbollah blamed the Israelis, but it is more likely he was another victim of rising home-grown violence. Today, Hezbollah claims it thwarted an attempted car bombing believed to have been aimed at one of its bases in the largely Hezbollah-controlled Bekaa Valley 20 miles east of Beirut.

Many assumed through the 1st year of the Syrian conflict that refugees would comprise the main burden faced by Syria’s neighbors, but the savagery and destruction wrought by the Syrian regime especially magnified even that challenge far beyond early worse-case scenarios. The virtual explosion of the rebel al-Qaeda factor, Hezbollah’s robust intervention, and the anti-rebel stance taken — or forced upon — most of Syria’s Kurds was not foreseen. All this further complicates ongoing efforts to find some path out of the Hellish Syrian maelstrom, be they Western efforts to oust Assad & Co. or the recently revived international efforts to bring the parties together for talks in Geneva. All things considered, the prospects for an effective way forward out of this crisis remain grim.

By Robert E. Hunter

The devil is in the details.  This cliché is already being invoked regarding the deal concluded this past weekend between Iran and the so-called P5+1 – the permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, along with the European Union’s High Representative, Baroness Ashton.

Devil and details, [...]]]> via LobeLog

By Robert E. Hunter

The devil is in the details.  This cliché is already being invoked regarding the deal concluded this past weekend between Iran and the so-called P5+1 – the permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, along with the European Union’s High Representative, Baroness Ashton.

Devil and details, yes; but if there is such a thing, the “angel” is in the “big picture,” the fact of the agreement itself – interim, certainly; flawed, perhaps; but a basic break with the past, come-what-may.  It will now become much harder for Iran to get the bomb, even if it were hell-bent on doing so.  The risk of war has plummeted.  Israel is safer – along with the rest of the region and the world — even as Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu denies that fact.

This is the end of the Cold War with Iran, (accurately) defined as a state when it is not possible to distinguish between what is negotiable and what is not.  Going back to that parlous state would require a major act of Iranian bad faith, perfidy, or aggression, not at all in its self-interest.

In the last few days, the Middle East has become different from what it was before.  Indeed, that happened, if one needs to denote “moments of history,” when President Barack Obama picked up the phone to call Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, in the latter’s limousine on the way to Kennedy Airport.

Even that moment was months in the making.  But psychologically it set in train a sequence of events that is causing an earthquake in the region.  And like any good earthquake, the extent, the impact, and even the direction it travels will not be clear for some time.  But one thing is clear: much is now different, and despite serious down-side risks, that can be positive if people in power will make it so.  As said by John Kennedy, the 50^th anniversary of whose assassination also came this past week, “Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.”

The struggle with Iran has never been just about “the bomb.”  Even putting aside the question whether Iran’s insistence on having a domestic nuclear energy program would ineluctably morph into a nuclear weapons capability (or threshold capability, a “screwdriver’s turn” away from a weapon), Iran has posed a problem for the Middle East, many of its neighbors, and outsiders in the West ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.  That turned Iran from being a supporter of Western, especially American, interests – a so-called “regional influential” – to being a challenger of US hegemony, the more-or-less accepted predominance of Sunnis over Shiites in the heart of the Middle East, and the comfort level of close US partners among Arab oil-producing states and Israel.  That all happened well before Iran’s nuclear program became an issue.

Led by the United States, countries challenged by the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution fostered a policy of containing Iran.  It included diplomatic isolation, the introduction of economic sanctions, US support – some covert, some open – for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its war against Iran, and US buttressing of the military security of its regional partners, along with the plentiful supply of Western armaments.  There have also been widespread reports of external efforts to destabilize Iran, along with a US predilection, when not also a formal policy, for regime change in Iran, a goal which continues to have its adherents.  For example, see here.

Why Iran has now decided to negotiate seriously about its nuclear program will be long debated and will be variously ascribed to swingeing economic sanctions that have increased pressures by average Iranians on their government to do what is needed to get them lifted; to progressive loss of popular support for the mullah-led regime and a “mellowing” of ideology – factors analogous to the crumbling of Soviet and East European communism two decades ago; and to the election of an Iranian president with an agenda different from his predecessor – blessed, one has to emphasize, by the Supreme Leader for reasons he has not revealed.

The current state of possibilities was helped immeasurably by a US administration that has itself been prepared to negotiate seriously, unlike its two predecessors, from the time a decade ago when Iran put a positive offer on the table that went unanswered – as Secretary of State John Kerry noted in early Sunday morning (Geneva time) commentary.

At heart, what has happened in the last two months is that Iran is now back “in play” in the region and is beginning the march toward resuming a role in the international community – slow perhaps, abortive perhaps, but for now pointed in that direction.  Assuming that the issue of Iran’s nuclear program can be dealt with successfully – a big “assuming” — that is clearly in US interests.  While it is much too soon to “count chickens,” that could lead toward renewed US-Iranian cooperation, tacit or explicit, over Afghanistan, where complementary interests led Iran to support the US overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001. The possibility of Iran’s potentially no longer being a pariah state could lead it to value stability in Iraq over the pursuit of major influence there, which itself is problematic, given historic tensions between the two countries that Shia co-fraternity between the leaderships in Baghdad and Teheran only partially obscures.

It is still a stretch, however, to see Iran’s working to reconcile with Israel (a quasi-ally before 1979), although Iran’s full reengagement in the outside world and especially in relations with the United States can never be completed without Iran’s reaching out to Israel (and vice versa), a feat far more difficult than the diplomacy that began to bear fruit last weekend in Geneva.  And for Iran to change its posture toward Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon would require not just alteration of Iran’s ambitions but also changes in policies by other states and groups.

Syria is both symbol and substance of the core problem of Iran’s re-emergence as a serious player in the Middle East.  At one level is the slow-burning civil war between Sunnis and Shias that was reignited by the Iranian Revolution and then, when that fire began to be tamped down, by the US-led invasion of Iraq, which overthrew a Sunni minority government dominating a majority Shia population.  The war in Syria is at least in part an effort by Sunni states to “right the balance.”  In the process, however, Saudi Arabia in particular has been unwilling to control elements in its country that are both inspiring and arming the worst elements of Islamist extremism and which also fuel not just Al Qaeda and its ilk but also the Taliban.  They have been primary sources of destabilization in several regional states and have killed American soldiers and others in Afghanistan.

At another level is the state-centered competition for influence in the region – geopolitics. This is also linked to the relationships of regional states with the West and especially the United States.  In particular, Saudi Arabia and Israel each has a basic stake in their ties to, and support by, the United States; both stoutly oppose Iran’s reentry into that competition, however modest.  Of course, Israel is also concerned by the continuing risk that, somehow, the US (and others) will fail to trammel Iran’s capacity to get the bomb; and also that attention will again swing back to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  But Saudi Arabia faces no potential military threat from Iran.  Indeed, to the extent it and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf face a threat or challenge from Iran, it is denominated in terms of Sunni vs. Shia, cultural and economic penetration, and the greater vibrancy of Iranian society – none of which can be dealt with by the huge quantities of modern armaments these countries have accumulated.

Further, as Iran does again become a player and moves out from under crippling sanctions, in the process attracting massive foreign investments, uncertainties regarding Iranian power and potential challenges to its neighbors will lead the latter to cleave even more closely to the United States; and the US will have to continue being a critical strategic presence in the region – its desire to “pivot” to East Asia notwithstanding.

With all these stakes, it is not surprising that several regional states are opposing the US-led opening to Iran and have already signaled a no-holds-barred campaign, including in US domestic politics, if not to scuttle what has been achieved so far, at least to limit US (and P5+1) negotiating flexibility.  (Iranian hard-liners will also be working to undercut President Rouhani.)  Israel and others can rightly ask that the US not fall for a “sucker’s deal,” though, as Secretary Kerry correctly stated, “We are not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid.” But they are also worried that they will lose their long-unchallenged preeminence in Washington and with Western business interests.  This is not Washington’s problem. Indeed, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria and even to Israeli-Palestinian relations, drawing Iran constructively into the outside world – if that can be done and done safely – is very much in US interests.

Even as things stand now, at an early stage in moving beyond cold war with Iran, President Obama has earned his Nobel Peace Prize.

by Thomas W. Lippman

A dozen or so of your basic Washington types—lobbyists, consultants, think-tankers — were talking with a U.S. senator the other day about the linkages between energy, foreign policy, and national security. The conversation would not have gone down well in Riyadh.

If there was one point of [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Thomas W. Lippman

A dozen or so of your basic Washington types—lobbyists, consultants, think-tankers — were talking with a U.S. senator the other day about the linkages between energy, foreign policy, and national security. The conversation would not have gone down well in Riyadh.

If there was one point of consensus, it was that it is in U.S. economic and strategic interests to forge a working relationship with Iran, a more sophisticated, potentially more congenial and ultimately more important country than Saudi Arabia will ever be. Nobody suggested that the United States should abandon its longtime commitment to Saudi security, or believed that a deal with Iran will be easy to reach, but everyone, including the senator, agreed that sustained, long-term hostility between Washington and Tehran is not good for the United States.

That kind of thinking among Americans inspires anxiety among the Saudis and is eroding their confidence in U.S. assurances. Beneath all the noise about the kingdom’s rejection of a U.N. Security Council seat that it had labored for years to get, it is clear that the principal driver of Saudi security decision-making these days is fear of Iran.

The Saudis see Iranian troublemaking all around them: in Iran’s support for the Assad regime in Syrian, in its backing of the Hezbollah Shiite militia in Lebanon, in its influence over the Maliki government in Iraq, in its suspected instigation of anti-government protests in Bahrain, in its support — real or imaginary — for dissident Shiites in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, and in the threat posed by Iranian gunboats to critical Saudi oil and water installations on the Gulf coast.

This is why the Saudis are so determined to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and so dismayed by President Obama’s decision not to take military action against the Assad regime: King Abdullah loathes Assad, but, beyond that, Riyadh believes that Assad’s fall would break apart the network of alliances that Tehran has forged all through the region. It is also, according to Saudi officials, the basis of their apprehension about a possible U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement. Riyadh fears that the United States will accept a rapprochement with Iran based solely on the nuclear issue, an outcome that in Riyadh’s view would only enhance Iran’s ability to throw its weight around the region because Tehran would be free of some of the crippling economic sanctions imposed against it over the nuclear standoff. The combination of an unconstrained Iran and survival of its ally Assad would be a nightmare for the Saudis.

In a recent speech in Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the kingdom’s former ambassador to the United States, went so far as to criticize what he said was President Obama’s “open arms approach” Iran. That idea is, to be blunt, ridiculous. The president and all his senior foreign policy officials have stressed that any rapprochement is far in the future and that it will be forged, if at all, only the basis of wide-ranging assurance of Iranian good behavior, in addition to restraints on its nuclear program. Other than the America-Firsters and pro-Israel absolutists of the political right, Americans generally welcome the possibility of better relations with Iran, but nobody advocates giving away the store.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry addressed this concern head-on after meeting in Riyadh with King Abdullah and Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal earlier this week. “The first topic is nuclear,” he said, but that is not the only topic. “We are well aware of Iran’s activities in the region. Obviously, we Americans have never forgotten what happened with Khobar Towers. We know that there were plots involving the ambassador from Saudi Arabia to the United States. We are well aware of other activities, and they concern us. It concerns us that Iran has personnel on the ground in Syria. It concerns us that Hezbollah is active in conjunction with Iran’s support. But the first step is the nuclear step, which we hope will open the door to the possibility to be able to deal with those [other issues.]”

That phraseology is unlikely to have reassured the Saudis. Like the Israelis, they fear that Iran will  keep the current round of negotiations with the P5 + 1 going as long as possible and use the time gained to achieve nuclear-weapons capability.  But if that Tehran’s plan, it only becomes more urgent to pursue the nuclear negotiations to ascertain Iran’s true intentions, without cluttering up the discussions with extraneous issues such as the role of Hezbollah in Syria. Those matters are important, but as Kerry said, it would be easier to address them if the nuclear issue were resolved.