The country that could ultimately suffer the most damage from a sustained depression in the world price of oil could be one that is not a major producer: Egypt.
Unable to sustain itself, Egypt is being propped up by big infusions of cash from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Those two oil states, closely aligned with the Cairo government headed by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, could afford to be generous in their commitments when they were taking in $100 a barrel, just a few months ago.
With the price now down to about $60 and unlikely to rise much over the next year at least, it becomes an open question how long it will take for the two Gulf states’ domestic needs to overtake their support for Egypt.
The Saudis and the Emiratis understand that Egypt is an economic “bottomless pit,” according to Gregory Gause, a specialist in the Gulf monarchies at Texas A&M University. There have been no indications so far that they are contemplating a pullback from Egypt, but it becomes more likely the longer lower prices squeeze their oil revenue, Gause said.
Saudi Arabia’s equanimity so far in the face of the plunging price of the commodity that supports most of its public spending reflects multiple policy interests. If the falling price discourages further development of high-cost new oil sources such as shale in the United States, deep-sea wells off Brazil’s coast, or new fields in the Russian Arctic, that helps Saudi Arabia maintain its market share, a declared objective.
And the Saudis seem quite content as the price contraction inflicts economic damage on damage on Iran, their great regional rival, and on Russia, which has incurred Riyadh’s displeasure by supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to whose ouster the Saudis are committed. Egypt, however, is another matter because Sisi has become a major ally of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates in the regional struggle against the Islamic State and other extremist groups.
In a paper distributed last week, Fahad Alturki, head of research at Jadwa Investment Group in Riyadh, predicted that Saudi Arabia will maintain its current levels of spending at least for a while because it has “foreign reserves of more than 95 percent of GDP and a public debt of less than 2 percent of GDP.” Even at today’s prices, he said, the kingdom is likely to show a balance of payments surplus next year and fall into deficit only in 2016.
If the Saudi government did decide to cut spending, however, external aid would probably be one of the first targets, Alturki said.
Oil prices were already descending rapidly because of declining global demand and inventory surpluses when the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided last month not to reduce their production to stabilize the price. That decision sent the price down still further to the apparent satisfaction of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have very deep pockets. Platts Oilgram, a trade journal, reported that “Saudi oil minister Ali Naimi left the summit all smiles, telling reporters that rolling over the 30 million b/d production ceiling was ‘a great decision.’”
The most immediate losers from the price decline are the large producing countries that need the cash to sustain their current operations. According to Alturki’s paper, these include Russia, which needs a price of $107 a barrel to support its budget; Venezuela, which needs $120; and Iran, which needs $127. Alturki’s “baseline” price projection for the next two years is $83 to $85 per barrel. Oil prices are notoriously hard to predict, but his figures are in line with several other analyses that have been published in the past few weeks.
Egypt’s problem is different, and harder to solve. The country produces about 700,000 barrels of oil a day, and its output has declined steadily from a peak of 900,000 barrels in the 1990s, according to the US Energy Information Administration. (Worldwide production is about 92 million barrels.) Almost all of Egypt’s output is consumed domestically by its population of about 80 million.
Because it is not an oil exporter, Egypt depends on other sources of hard-currency revenue to support itself; mostly Suez Canal tolls, cotton exports, and tourism. The tourist trade, however, has dwindled to a trickle over the past few years because of the country’s political upheavals, leaving the country short of cash to pay for imported food and other necessities.
According to Arabian Business magazine, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia committed aid with more than $12 billion in cash grants, no-interest loans, and refined petroleum products in 2014 alone. Kuwait, another major Gulf oil exporter with a small population, kicked in another $4 billion, the magazine reported.
Saudi Arabia pledged to support Sisi almost immediately after he ousted the former president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013. Morsi had been elected as the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, which both Egypt and Saudi Arabia have since outlawed. In June, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah reportedly declared that any country that did not join in supporting Egypt would “have no future place among us.” But the king is also doling out tens of billions of dollars in salary increases, new social benefits and housing programs that he extended to his own citizens during the regional uprisings of 2011. He is also paying for massive infrastructure projects such as a new metro rail network for Riyadh and a mammoth new port on the Red Sea. Even Saudi Arabia can’t keep it up indefinitely at $60 a barrel.
]]>by Thomas W. Lippman
It was like a movie in which different characters see the same events in completely different ways.
At one of those Washington think-tank panel discussions the other day, senior U.S. national security and military officials insisted that the American commitment to security and stability in the [...]]]>
by Thomas W. Lippman
It was like a movie in which different characters see the same events in completely different ways.
At one of those Washington think-tank panel discussions the other day, senior U.S. national security and military officials insisted that the American commitment to security and stability in the Persian Gulf is iron-clad and will not change. The U.S Navy’s Fifth Fleet and the 35,000 soldiers and sailors in the region are staying, they said, and Iran will not acquire or develop nuclear weapons. They reminded the audience that President Barack Obama, his secretaries of state and defense, and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have told all this to Gulf Arab leaders over and over, most recently during the president’s visit to Saudi Arabia in March.
“We are present in a major and significant way,” one senior Pentagon official said at this gathering, organized by the Atlantic Council. “We are not leaving and we are not inattentive.”
The next morning, different panelists, assembled by the Middle East Policy Council, acknowledged that the message had been delivered unequivocally and often, and agreed that Obama and the others were no doubt sincere. Unfortunately, they said, Gulf Arab leaders don’t believe it.
“They think we don’t have the will to uphold our principles,” said Mark T. Kimmitt, a former senior official of both the State and Defense departments. “It’s not about our strength on the ground. It’s about our willingness to use it.” Given the record of the past few years, he said, “There’s not a lot of reason for the Gulf Arabs to be happy.”
“There are deep structural sources of anxiety” about the United States among leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, said Colin Kahl, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in Obama’s first term. First among these, he said, is “the widespread perception that the United States is simply politically exhausted” after more than a decade of war and has no appetite for further involvement. Witnessing the U.S. troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, “They wonder when the U.S. will begin to draw down in the Gulf.” The GCC leaders were taken aback, he said, by the strong popular opposition among Americans to military intervention in Syria, and drew their own conclusions.
Michael Gfoeller, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia, said the Saudis and others have been disconcerted by the way the United States and its partners have conducted nuclear negotiations with Iran without input from them. In their view, he said, Washington is proceeding “with almost no input from us and yet we are going to be the front line of what we think is going to be a nuclear armed Iran…They think that when we don’t consult with them it’s a sign that we don’t take their national security seriously.”
These panelists said it was useful that President Obama went to see King Abdullah and other senior princes in Riyadh, but not sufficient to overcome the doubts that have been built up about U.S. staying power. Ford Fraker, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said that a week ago he asked Prince Muqrin, now second in line to the Saudi throne, how he assessed the Obama-Abdullah meeting. Muqrin, who speaks fluent English, “looked at me and said, ‘We did have the opportunity to clarify a number of important issues,’ and that’s all he said,” Fraker reported.
The two forums amounted to a fascinating but also baffling conversation about a topic that has been a focus of analysis in Washington and the Gulf states for months. The United States and its allies in the region have compelling interests in common — combating al-Qaeda and its affiliates, seeking a solution in Syria, ensuring the free flow of oil through the Gulf, stabilizing Yemen and Iraq, and countering what they see as the malign activities of Iran in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Bahrain. The Gulf states buy American weapons, depend on the United States for military training and assistance with cyber-security issues, and share intelligence about terrorist financing. And these relationships have been in place for many years. Why, then, have the Gulf leaders, and particularly the Saudis, been so vocally unhappy about U.S. policy?
The first answer participants gave was the nuclear negotiations with Iran, from which they are excluded. In the view especially of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, panelists said, these negotiations are dangerous either way: if they fail, nothing will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but if they succeed, sanctions will be lifted, Iranian oil exports will surge, and Iran will be free to pursue its quest for regional hegemony. Moreover, in the Gulf view, if the negotiations succeed, the United States will have another incentive to reduce its military commitments in the Gulf.
Gulf Arab leaders, panelists said, are well aware of the constraints that are curtailing Pentagon spending. Cuts will have to be made somewhere, and they see their region as a target, especially if the United States reaches some accommodation with Iran.
The Gulf leaders were shocked by the alacrity with which Washington turned its back on Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak after demonstrations against him broke out in 2011. They think “Maybe the United States won’t be a reliable ally for them,” Kahl said. These doubts have been stoked, he and other panelists said, by all the talk about growing U.S. oil output in the fracking boom, and the possibility that the United States will feel itself safely insulated from developments in the Gulf.
Despite assurances from Washington to the contrary, panelists said, the Saudis and Emiratis believe that the United States is focused exclusively on the nuclear issue in its negotiations with Iran, ignoring other troubling aspects of Iranian policy. Kahl said it’s actually a good idea to confine the current negotiations to the nuclear issue because Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani does not control the other Iranian activities that so trouble its neighbors. Those matters are under the jurisdiction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Kahl said, and it would be counterproductive to bring the IRGC into the nuclear discussions.
In a separate commentary published during the same week as the panel discussions, Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that, “One Saudi businessman complained to me recently that there was no discernible U.S. global strategy, and that its absence makes it impossible for Saudi Arabia to construct any strategy at all. The quandary is common among many U.S. allies, and it raises fundamental questions about U.S. commitments abroad. Is there anything for which U.S. allies can rely on the United States, and under what circumstances might it change? Equally confounding, how can America’s friends make themselves vital to the United States if the United States has no clear understanding and ordering of its own interests?”
In some ways, however, as several of the panelists noted, it is not just the United States that seems to be groping for an effective regional strategy. The six monarchies that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council have deep policy differences among themselves, about Iran, about Syria, and about the dangers of religious extremism. Oman, for example, hosted the secret diplomacy that led to the nuclear negotiations with Iran, and is reportedly planning a $1 billion natural gas pipeline link to the Islamic Republic. And on Saturday, the Washington Post reported that the United States has identified Kuwait as the major source of funding for jihadist groups fighting in Syria — groups that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are trying to defeat. If Alterman’s Saudi friend is having difficulty discerning a comprehensive U.S. strategy in the region, perhaps it’s not surprising.
Several of the panelists said that the key to assuaging the anxiety among GCC leaders is more and closer consultation, more often. It’s well and good for the president and cabinet members and officers from the U.S. Central Command to go to the region from time to time, they said, but the Gulf leaders want to see the deputy assistant secretaries and other policy worker bees out there more often. To some extent they made the Gulf leaders sound like spoiled children demanding mommy’s full attention right this minute.
Photo: President Barack Obama meets with King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during a bilateral meeting at Rawdat Khuraim in Saudi Arabia, March 28, 2014. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
]]>Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain all recalled their ambassadors from Qatar last Wednesday, citing Qatar’s support for organizations and individuals that threaten “the security and stability of the Gulf states”:
The statement said they had withdrawn their envoys “to protect their security” because Qatar failed to fulfill vows [...]]]>
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain all recalled their ambassadors from Qatar last Wednesday, citing Qatar’s support for organizations and individuals that threaten “the security and stability of the Gulf states”:
The statement said they had withdrawn their envoys “to protect their security” because Qatar failed to fulfill vows “to refrain from supporting organizations or individuals who threaten the security and stability of the gulf states, through direct security work or through political influence,” and also “to refrain from supporting hostile media.”
This came on the heels of a UAE court sentencing Qatari doctor Mahmoud al-Jaidah to seven years in prison on Monday for the crime of aiding a banned opposition group called al-Islah, which the UAE alleges has operational ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Islah insists that any connection it has with the Brotherhood is purely ideological). As Emile Nakhleh writes, the decision by the three Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members to recall their ambassadors from a fourth member state illustrates quite clearly that the first “C” in “GCC” — “cooperation” — means virtually nothing at this point, if it ever did mean anything. This was a coordinated move, led by the Saudis, to punish Qatar for supporting Muslim Brotherhood interests around the Middle East (and also for assuming a more prominent role in pan-Arab politics), but beyond that it reflects the Saudis’ deep and ongoing concern about an Iranian resurgence in the Gulf. From the Saudi perspective the Qataris have been punching above their proper weight, and making nice with the wrong people.
Qatar’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are clearly the public justification for this row; it is no mystery why Saudi Arabia followed up last Wednesday’s diplomatic swipe at Qatar with a decision on Friday to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. The Saudis, while they share certain conservative Islamic principles with the Brotherhood, are more than a bit put off by the group’s opposition to dynastic rule. Despite that feature of the Brotherhood’s ideology, though, the very dynastic Qatari monarchy has been a strong supporter of Brotherhood-allied movements throughout the Middle East and North Africa, in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt (especially), and Syria. Their rationale for doing so has been two-fold: one, they feel that supporting the Brotherhood abroad should insulate them from the Brotherhood at home, and two, Qatar has been predicting that the Brotherhood would be the main beneficiary of the Arab Spring. Had they been right in their prediction, Qatar’s regional influence would have been significantly increased as a result, but by the looks of things, they were wrong. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is now outlawed in Egypt, its Ennahda Party in Tunisia has voluntarily agreed to give up power, and it has lost most of its influence within the Syrian opposition. Last November’s reorganization of Syrian opposition groups from the Qatar-financed Syrian Islamic Liberation Front to the Saudi-backed Islamic Front can be seen as evidence of the Brotherhood’s — and thus Qatar’s — loss of stature.
A related complaint that these countries have with Qatar is with the country’s Al Jazeera television news network (the “hostile media”). Al Jazeera has continued to provide media access to Muslim Brotherhood figures in Egypt even as that organization was outlawed by the interim Egyptian government. Now several Al Jazeera journalists are currently on trial in Egypt for allegedly aiding the Brotherhood. These countries are also angry about the fact that Al Jazeera continues to give airtime to the controversial Brotherhood-affiliated cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi is actually wanted for extradition to Egypt over his comments about the coup that removed the Brotherhood from power there, and he just recently lambasted, on Al Jazeera’s airwaves, the UAE, for “fighting everything Islamic.” The reported pressure being placed on Saudi and Emirati journalists working in Qatar to quit their jobs and return home undoubtedly has something to do with the overall irritation with Qatari media.
However, there is another factor at play here: Qatar’s close — too close for Saudi comfort — ties with Iran (the real “organization” that “threatens” Gulf — i.e., Saudi — security), which has to do largely with natural gas. Qatar shares its windfall natural gas reserves with Iran, in what’s known as the North Dome/South Pars Field in the Persian Gulf. The International Energy Agency estimates that it is the largest natural gas field on the planet. Qatar has been extracting gas from its side of the field considerably faster than Iran has been, for a couple of reasons.
For one thing, the North Dome side of the field (the part in Qatari waters) was discovered in the early 1970s, whereas the South Pars side was only discovered about 20 years later, so Qatar had a lot of time to get a head start on developing the field. For another thing, the North Dome field is pretty much the only game left in Qatar, whose Dukhan oil field is clearly on the decline. Qatar has a huge incentive, then, to develop as much of the North Dome as they can as fast as they can in order to fund the numerous development projects that, when all the oil and gas finally run out, will be what keeps Qatar from going back to the days when pearl diving was its biggest industry. There is a potential conflict here, though. Natural gas, like any other gas, tends to flow toward areas of low pressure. So when one end of a gas field is being drained of its gas faster than the other end, some of the gas in the less exploited end may flow to the more exploited end. This is fine when an entire field is controlled by one country, but in this case, one can easily envision a scenario in which, several years from now, the Iranian government is accusing Qatar of siphoning off its gas.
What this means is that Qatar has a strong incentive to maintain friendly relations with Iran, and on this they have considerable disagreement with their Saudi neighbors. To Saudi Arabia, Iran is a potential regional rival and must be countered at every turn; their opposition to easing international sanctions against Iran, for example, is not so much about the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon as it is about the fear of Iran escaping from the economic cage in which those sanctions have trapped it. The proxy war taking place between Saudi and Iranian interests in Syria is the most obvious example of the rivalry between the two nations, and the Saudi move against Qatar can be seen as another front in that war. Qatar — although it has backed elements of the Syrian opposition — sees things differently than the Saudis where Iran is concerned. In January, Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammad Al-Attiyah publicly called for an “inclusive” approach to Iran, which he argued “has a crucial role” in ending the crisis in Syria. There is enough historic tension between the Qataris and the Saudis for this kind of disagreement over foreign affairs to provide the basis for a wider fracturing of relations. For its part, Bahrain has every reason to go along with a Saudi diplomatic move against a suspected regional ally of Iran; after all, it was Saudi intervention that saved Bahrain’s ruling al-Khalifa family from a Shiʿa-led rebellion in 2011, a rebellion that Bahrain accuses Iran of fomenting.
Look, though, at the two GCC members that did not pull their ambassadors from Qatar: Kuwait, where the Brotherhood’s Hadas Party is out of favor, but whose relations with Iran are “excellent”; and Oman, where Sultan Qaboos has been critical of the Brotherhood, but who is close enough to Iran to have served as a go-between for back-channel US-Iran negotiations. If the issue were really Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, and not its relationship with Iran, both of these countries may well have joined the others in recalling their ambassadors. The one country for which this explanation does not make sense is the UAE, whose relations with Iran are improving after the two countries recently reached an accord over the disposition of three disputed Gulf islands. In this case, it may really be that Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, and especially the Jaidah case and Qaradawi’s criticisms, motivated their action.
The Saudi decision to break ties with Qatar is, as Thomas Lippmann notes, another in a line of recent “sulking” diplomatic moves by the oil giant. Qatar’s failed bet on the Muslim Brotherhood made this an opportune time for the Saudis to move against them, but Saudi fears about an Iranian resurgence may well have been the real reason behind their action.
Photo: Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani chats with Oman’s Sultan Qaboos Bin Said during a meeting in Tehran on August 25, 2013. Credit: ISNA/Mona Hoobefekr
]]>by Emile Nakhleh
Yesterday’s public announcement by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain that they’re withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar signals a serious rift within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The seismic regional changes that have occurred since the establishment of the GCC 33 years ago will likely torpedo [...]]]>
by Emile Nakhleh
Yesterday’s public announcement by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain that they’re withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar signals a serious rift within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The seismic regional changes that have occurred since the establishment of the GCC 33 years ago will likely torpedo this tribal organization.
The stated reason for the ambassadorial recall is Qatar’s perceived support of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the three states view as a threat to their rule. Yet, the other two GCC members — Kuwait and Oman — did not support the move.
Saudi Arabia is angry at Qatar for striking an independent foreign policy course in responding to Arab upheavals in the past three years. The Saudis are lashing out probably because of their arguably waning influence in the region. For example, they failed to get a unanimous GCC support for sending troops to Bahrain to quell the anti-regime uprising in 2011.
They were equally unable to sell the call for unification of the GCC states. Only the Bahraini King supported the Saudi position, which forced them to shelf the proposal.
The Saudis have also disagreed with Qatar’s position on Iran and Syria. As the largest and most powerful member of the GCC, Saudi Arabia resents Qatar’s larger than life posture in the region and internationally. Riyadh’s rulers are wary of Doha’s pro-active search for modernity, Western education, and political and ideological pragmatism. Qatar’s satellite news station Al Jazeera has been a thorn in the Saudi and Bahraini side.
The GCC came into being May 26, 1981 for the sole purpose of preserving the tribal, Sunni and hereditary family rule in the Gulf Arab states and countering perceived rising threats.
At the time those threats included the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Iraq-Iran war, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Ruling Sheikhs and Emirs viewed the rising wave of terrorism in the region as coming from Iran and its Shia supporters across the Gulf and beyond.
The establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan forced Gulf rulers to turn to Sunni Islam, including the Muslim Brotherhood, for protection against the “atheist” Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the “Safavi, Persian menace.”
They preached and bankrolled Salafi Sunni jihad against both perceived enemies. By recasting the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as the current enemy, these rulers are being seen as hypocritical and shortsighted. They are also playing a dangerous game.
Bahrain, for example, has promoted a Sunni Islamic ideology at home that is well grounded in the MB as a line of defense against the Shia opposition. Over the years, some Bahraini political and business Sunni leaders have established close relations with the MB, regionally and internationally, according to media reports.
The Saudis and the Bahrainis are also financing Sunni Salafi jihad in Syria against the Assad regime. Earlier they supported similar groups in Iraq against the Shia power structure. In fact, in the past two years, several radical Sunni activists from Bahrain went to Syria to wage jihad against Assad, presumably with the approval of the Bahraini authorities.
The Saudi, UAE and Bahraini anger at Qatar is yet another manifestation of the tensions that have simmered for years within the GCC. While they recognized growing threats to their rule in the early 1980s, they disagreed even then on how to respond to those threats.
The Al Khalifa regime, especially, finds itself in a dilemma: Supporting the Egyptian military junta against the MB, and at the same time relying on pro-MB activists to fight the Shia opposition and Iran, which they blame for the unrest in Bahrain.
Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait, on the other hand, are pursuing active political and economic relations with Tehran based on pragmatism and mutual economic interests.
Despite their annual summitry and the public rhetoric of Gulf unity, GCC rulers in the past thirty years have pursued their respective national interests separately with barely a nod to the organization. On very few occasions they acted collectively under the umbrella of the GCC security agreement.
The May 1981 GCC agreement stressed the importance of cooperation in education, manpower training, and economic diversification. But the GCC has been unable to transcend security and establish regional cooperative working arrangements in other areas.
GCC states shied away from economic complimentarity, as envisioned in the original agreement, and established separate airlines, banking systems, investment corporations, and media enterprises. Although they cling to authoritarian hereditary family rule, Kuwait has established a pseudo-democracy. Bahrain had a brush with representative democracy in the early 1970s but scuttled the experiment shortly thereafter. Each state devised a political system that is commensurate with its perceived cultural and demographic particularities regardless of their commitment to the GCC.
When I was doing research for my book on the GCC in the mid-1980s, I asked a successful Arab Gulf businessman what he thought of the GCC. He responded colloquially with one word, “Hatchi” meaning “just talk.”
A real gap exists in the minds of Gulf citizens between the rhetoric of the GCC as a collective organization and its social and economic accomplishments. While the member states have advanced in their individual pursuits, the GCC seems to be withering as an organization.
American and Western policymakers regularly cite the GCC in their public statements, but in reality they deal with member countries as separate states with little consideration of the organization.
Although Qatar is being accused of promoting the Muslim Brotherhood, especially providing a home for the televangelist preacher-scholar Yusif al-Qaradawi and his family enterprises, the tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia are much deeper than al-Qaradawi and Al Jazeera, which carries his programs.
Instead of blaming Qatar and recalling their ambassadors, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain should address their poor human rights record at home and respond to their peoples’ demands for genuine reform and social justice.
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
*This post has been updated.
Jim refuses to join Twitter, but today Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani provided him with another reason to reconsider:
Iran gives notice to international community to use all its might to prevent use of chemical weapons anywhere in the world, esp. in #Syria
— [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
*This post has been updated.
Jim refuses to join Twitter, but today Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani provided him with another reason to reconsider:
Iran gives notice to international community to use all its might to prevent use of chemical weapons anywhere in the world, esp. in #Syria
— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) August 27, 2013
An Iranian official criticizing the use of chemical weapons, which Iraq’s Saddam Hussein used (with US assistance) to kill hundreds or even thousands of Iranians during the bloody Iran-Iraq war, is nothing new. What’s shocking is that Iran’s president seems to be endorsing force to prevent chemical weapons-use at a time when the US is positioning itself to strike Iran’s only regional ally, Syria. And as Golnaz Esfandiari reminds us, he made a similar statement on Saturday.
Iran expert Suzanne Maloney tells me that while we shouldn’t interpret too much from one statement, Rouhani’s words could indicate a “remarkable shift in the official posture of the Iranian government on the role of the international community” and “even on the sensitive issue of Syria” — but let’s backtrack for a moment.
For starters, it doesn’t appear like Rouhani tweeted this message by his mistake. Look at the tweets preceding it:
Iran suffered chemical weapons attacks by Iraqi forces during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war 2/2
— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) August 27, 2013
We completely & strongly condemn use of chemical weapons in #Syria because Islamic Republic of Iran is itself victim of chemical weapons 1/2
— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) August 27, 2013
And consider his most recent tweet as of now, which appeared one hour after his “notice” to the international community:
In response to questions abt other accounts in @HassanRouhani‘s name; this is the only English-language Twitter account.
— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) August 27, 2013
Nothing has since been removed, revised, or added to Rouhani’s English Twitter account. His Persian account doesn’t feature these tweets.
What’s even more fascinating about all this is that at least according to news reports, Iran’s position on intervention in Syria has been what it was when the disgraced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was president: don’t do it. State-run and semi-official Iranian news sites are dominated with statements from Iranian officials warning against an outside military attack.
Rouhani also refrained from naming Syria’s rebels as the aggressors when he acknowledged chemical weapons-use in Syria on Saturday — the same day that Iran announced Syria would allow weapons inspectors into the site of the alleged attack. Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif did reportedly blame the rebels, which he called “terrorists”, for using the weapons in “escalating the crisis”, so why did Rouhani hold back?
While cautioning against reading too much into all this so soon, Maloney, a former State Department policy advisor, told me on the phone that all this made her recall Hashemi Rafsanjani’s first term when he “managed to persuade the leadership of the Islamic Republic to remain neutral to the UN-backed international military campaign to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.”
She continued, “This is obviously very different because of the alliance of Iran and Syria and if so, would be an even more dramatic gesture, but it appears that Rouhani is trying to track a more moderate course on Iran’s foreign policy and even on the sensitive issue of Syria.”
“The conventional wisdom is that Rouhani would not have enough wiggle room on Syria, that he would be forced to accede to a hardline position that Iran’s security forces advocate — whether or not the revelation of alleged chemical weapons usage alters that or if Rouhani is taking this opportunity to signal a different approach than what we’ve seen from Tehran over the years, we’ll have to see,” said Maloney, who can also be found on Twitter (I’m nudging Jim).
Maloney added that whatever was discussed in the conversation between Zarif and UN Undersecretary Jeffrey Feltman during his surprise visit to Tehran this week could also be indicative of why Rouhani has made these unusual statements. Though we shouldn’t rush to conclusions, Rouhani’s words are not “terribly subtle,” she said.
(Interestingly, while serving as US ambassador to Lebanon when its Prime Minister Rafic Harriri was killed, Feltman accused the Assads of being behind the assassination.)
There have been varying interpretations among analysts here about how Iran would respond to intervention in Syria, ranging from: it will almost certainly have a negative impact on the nuclear negotiations to, Iran has too much to lose on that front to sacrifice its own interests for its ally.
That debate may be concluded in the near future, but all this brings to mind Farideh’s post from July 2012, where she took a hard look at Iran’s Syria policy. At that time, she noted that Iran seemed to be toeing the Russian line on Syria: “The Iranian government is undoubtedly aware that Syria is in a mess. But in the coming months expect Iran’s response to be more reactive than proactive despite proclamations and posturing that suggest otherwise.”
Is her conclusion, written more than a year ago, still applicable today?
Update: Iranian journalist Omid Memarian tells me that Rouhani’s comments could be focused on the rebels. In other words, perhaps Rouhani is saying that the international community should use all its “might” to stop chemical weapons use by the rebels. If that’s true, Maloney’s suggestion that Iran could be changing its stance on the international community still rings true.
Update II: Some have questioned whether the Twitter account linked to here is operated by Hassan Rouhani or his staff. I base my take on the following: 1) he has never denied that it’s his account; 2) it seems to be in line with Rouhani’s official statements and his talks and appearances etc.; 3) Twitter is prohibited in Iran, which makes public acknowledgement problematic; 4) my Iranian contacts who are usually in-the-know about these things say they can’t see any reason to doubt it.
]]>via IPS News
As the administration of President Barack Obama continues wrestling with how to react to the military coup in Egypt and its bloody aftermath, officials and independent analysts are increasingly worried about the crisis’s effect on U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia.
The oil-rich kingdom’s strong support [...]]]>
via IPS News
As the administration of President Barack Obama continues wrestling with how to react to the military coup in Egypt and its bloody aftermath, officials and independent analysts are increasingly worried about the crisis’s effect on U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia.
The oil-rich kingdom’s strong support for the coup is seen here as having encouraged Cairo’s defence minister Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood and resist western pressure to take a conciliatory approach that would be less likely to radicalise the Brotherhood’s followers and push them into taking up arms.
Along with the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia did not just pledge immediately after the Jul. 3 coup that ousted President Mohamed Morsi to provide a combined 12 billion dollars in financial assistance, but it has also promised to make up for any western aid – including the 1.5 billion dollars with which Washington supplies Cairo annually in mostly military assistance – that may be withheld as a result of the coup and the ongoing crackdown in which about 1,000 protestors are believed to have been killed to date.
Perhaps even more worrisome to some experts here has been the exceptionally tough language directed against Washington’s own condemnation of the coup by top Saudi officials, including King Abdullah, who declared Friday that “[t]he kingdom stands …against all those who try to interfere with its domestic affairs” and charged that criticism of the army crackdown amounted to helping the “terrorists”.
Bruce Riedel, a former top CIA Middle East analyst who has advised the Obama administration, called the comments “unprecedented” even if the king did not identify the United States by name.
Chas Freeman, a highly decorated retired foreign service officer who served as U.S. ambassador to Riyadh during the Gulf War, agreed with that assessment.
“I cannot recall any statement as bluntly critical as that,” he told IPS, adding that it marked the culmination of two decades of growing Saudi exasperation with U.S. policy – from Washington’s failure to restrain Israeli military adventures and the occupation of Palestinian territory to its empowering the Shia majority in Iraq after its 2003 invasion and its abandonment of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and its backing of democratic movements during the “Arab awakening”.
“For most of the past seven decades, the Saudis have looked to Americans as their patrons to handle the strategic challenges of their region,” Freeman said. “But now the Al-Saud partnership with the United States has not only lost most of its charm and utility; it has from Riyadh’s perspective become in almost all respects counterproductive.”
The result, according to Freeman, has been a “lurch into active unilateral defence of its regional interests”, a move that could portend major geo-strategic shifts in the region. “Saudi Arabia does not consider the U.S. a reliable protector, thinks it’s on its own, and is acting accordingly.”
A number of analysts, including Freeman, have pointed to a Jul. 31 meeting in Moscow between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the head of the Riyadh’s national security council and intelligence service, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, as one potentially significant “straw in the wind” regarding the Saudi’s changing calculations.
According to a Reuters report, Bandar, who served as Riyadh’s ambassador to Washington for more than two decades, offered to buy up to 15 billion dollars in Russian arms and coordinate energy policy – specifically to prevent Qatar from exporting its natural gas to Europe at Moscow’s expense – in exchange for dropping or substantially reducing Moscow’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
While Putin, under whom Moscow’s relations with Washington appear to have a hit a post-Cold War low recently, was non-committal, Bandar left Moscow encouraged by the possibilities for greater strategic co-operation, according to press reports that drew worried comments from some here.
“[T]he United States is apparently standing on the sidelines – despite being Riyadh’s close diplomatic partner for decades, principally in the hitherto successful policy of blocking Russia’s influence in the Middle East,” wrote Simon Henderson, an analyst at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).
“It would be optimistic to believe that the Moscow meeting will significantly reduce Russian support for the Assad regime,” he noted. “But meanwhile Putin will have pried open a gap between Riyadh and Washington.”
As suggested by Abdullah’s remarks, that gap has only widened in the wake of the Egyptian military’s bloody crackdown on the Brotherhood this month and steps by Washington to date, including the delay in the scheduled shipment of F-16 fighter jets and the cancellation of joint U.S.-Egyptian military exercises next month, to show disapproval.
U.S. officials have told reporters that Washington is also likely to suspend a shipment of Apache attack helicopters to Cairo unless the regime quickly reverses course.
Meanwhile Moscow, even as it joined the West in appealing for restraint and non-violent solutions to the Egyptian crisis, has also refrained from criticising the military, while the chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee of the Duma’s upper house blamed the United States and the European Union for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
“It is clear that Russia and Saudi Arabia prefer stability in Egypt, and both are betting on the Egyptian military prevailing in the current standoff, and are already acting on that assumption,” according to an op-ed that laid out the two countries’ common interests throughout the Middle East and was published Sunday by Alarabiya.net, the news channel majority-owned by the Saudi Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC).
Some observers argue that Russia and Saudi Arabia have a shared interest in containing Iran; reducing Turkish influence; co-operating on energy issues; and bolstering autocratic regimes, including Egypt’s, at the expense of popular Islamist parties, notably the Brotherhood and its affiliates, across the region.
“There’s a certain logic to all that, but it’s too early to say whether such an understanding can be reached,” said Freeman, who noted that Bandar “wrote the book on outreach to former ideological and geo-strategic enemies”, including China, and that his visit to Moscow “looks like classic Saudi breakout diplomacy”.
But reaching a deal on Syria would be particularly challenging. While Riyadh assigns higher priority to reducing Iran’s regional influence than to removing Assad, some analysts believe there are ways an agreement that would retain him as president could be struck, as Moscow insists, while reducing his power over the opposition-controlled part of the country and weakening his ties to Tehran and Hezbollah.
But Mark N. Katz, an expert on Russian Middle East policy at George Mason University, is sceptical about the prospects for a Russian-Saudi entente, noting that Bandar has pursued such a relationship in the past without success.
“I’m not saying it can’t work, but this has been his hobby horse,” he told IPS. “Whatever happens in Saudi-American relations, however, the Saudis don’t trust the Russians and don’t want them meddling in the region. Everything about the Russians ticks them off.”
He added that Abdullah’s harsh criticism was intended more as a “wake-up call” and the fact that “the Saudis are on the same side [in supporting the Egyptian military] as the Israelis has emboldened them”.
Photo Credit: Analysts worry about the effect of Egypt’s ongoing crisis on U.S.-Saudi relations. Above, CNO Adm. Jonathan Greenert and Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz in February. Credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery/CC by 2.0
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Today in the New York Times, WINEP fellow Martin Kramer is quoted warning against the dangers of the reemergence of Tunisia’s Islamist party, Al-Nahda, widely regarded as one of the most progressive versions of Islamism on the planet:
Martin Kramer, a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who had long criticized Mr. Ghannouchi of Al-Nahda, argued that the party’s professions of pluralism could not be trusted. “Islamists become the more moderate and tolerant of pluralism the further away from power they are,” he said.
For Kramer, this is little more than the latest campaign in a decades-long crusade against Islamism. After Sept. 11, 2001, he went so far as to say that all Islamism breeds terrorism, holding up Lebanon as an example where democratic inclusion has wrought stumbling blocks, but also citing problems with radical Islamism in U.S.-backed dictatorships like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Kramer has been denouncing the Tunisian Islamist movement since the early 1990s, when the main party’s now-exiled founder called for attacking U.S. interests in response to the first Gulf War. But those sorts of views have been moderated in the ensuing two decades. In the Times profile of Al-Nahda’s leader inside Tunisia, he says women should choose to wear veils (and called for political quotas “until they get their voices”), and doesn’t even have a problem with bikinis and sipping wine.
But Kramer doesn’t care for these subtleties, espousing that Islam can play no role in politics at all, ever. Naturally, Kramer is an unflinching supporter of an ethnocratic Israel, though, to be fair, Kramer is consistent — he has flirted openly, elsewhere in the Middle East, with anti-democratic “minority rule”:
In Iraq’s Sunni triangle, they like their tribes and they might want a tough-minded sheikh to keep order among them; in the Shi’ite south, they might wish to venerate a white-bearded recluse in a turban, and have him resolve all their disputes; and so on. What they crave is not democracy, but sub-national self-determination…
(Tell them what they want, Dr. Kramer…)
America cannot revive the Ottoman empire, but it might take a lesson from its legacy: that empire is most effective when it is invisible, that there are things worse than minority rule.
I don’t know what Kramer thinks of Iraq today, but I do know what Rubin thinks of it. It’s Bush’s gift that keeps on giving! Here’s her description of the Iraqi state, emphasized by me:
The left blogosphere seems to have wigged out over the suggestion that George W. Bush and the successful emergence of a secular, democratic Iraq has anything to do with all this.
(While Kramer opposes some Middle East autocrats, he doesn’t note that fervent Islamism, as in Iran’s 1979 revolution and establishment of an Islamic Republic, is often a reaction to U.S. support for these autocrats, as with the CIA toppling of a secular, democratic coup to re-install the Shah in 1953.)
Yet, in a world where Kramer and Rubin warn and warn and warn about Islamism — even in moderated forms — here are the first words of the constitution (PDF) of this “secular, democratic Iraq”:
The Preamble
In the name of God, the Most merciful, the Most compassionate
The document continues in Section One:
Article 2:
First: Islam is the official religion of the State and is a foundation source of legislation:
A. No law may be enacted that contradicts the established provisions of Islam.
B. No law may be enacted that contradicts the principles of democracy.
C. No law may be enacted that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms stipulated in this Constitution.
Second: This Constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people and guarantees the full religious rights to freedom of religious belief and practice of all individuals such as Christians, Yazidis, and Mandean Sabeans.
Article 3:
Iraq is a country of multiple nationalities, religions, and sects. It is a founding and active member in the Arab League and is committed to its charter, and it is part of the Islamic world.
Iraq is not so secular, after all.
Will Kramer denounce the government of Islamic Iraq? Will Rubin admit that, since she holds up the example of Islamic democracy in Iraq (not secular, though with minority protections), perhaps her “real concern” for any “specific sign of an Islamist presence” may not be so sound?
I doubt it. Neocons like Rubin will simply go on ignoring the Islamic character of Iraq when it is convenient to use the country as example of what can be accomplished by going to war.
Take, for example, Iran’s Green Movement, which Rubin and her ideological comrades like Reuel Marc Gerecht claim to support (all the while calling for an attack on Iran that will likely blunt the movement’s chances of success).
Undoubtedly, the Green Movement has an element that pushes for the end of the Islamic Republic, but this is not a monolithic view among the movement’s supporters. Many of its adherents want a reformed Islamic Republic, as with the opposition leadership inside Iran. If one prefers to think of the Green Movement as leaderless, he still cannot deny that figures like Mir Hossein Moussavi and his wife, Mohammad Khatami, and Mehdi Karroubi, do not constitute an important place within the movement.
Neocons, nonetheless, unabashedly call for regime change by any means in Iran, ignoring the fact that the only viable opposition movement there is divided on the issue of maintaining the Islamic Republic.
The notion that moderate, democratic strains of Islamism exist — as with most ideologies — and should be allowed to enter political discourse is blasphemy to these rigid ideologues. (Neoconservatism, for its part, seems not to have a moderate strain.) Kramer insists that his call for blanket exclusion of Islamism “has nothing to do with Islam per se”– but one has to wonder.
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