The voices making comparisons with 1979 have failed to understand the seeds of the Islamic revolution, nor do they seem to recognize that today’s Egyptian uprising is a non-ideological movement. As someone who conducted research on the Brotherhood in Egypt for many years, I predicted 10 years ago that the only alternative to Mubarak would be a more democratic state run by the Brotherhood; I have been surprised at just how minimal a role the Brotherhood has played so far — not only in the street movement, but in the consciousness of the young people in Tahrir Square.
Abdo points to grievances voiced by pro-democracy supporters which have included the corruption, cronyism, and economic stagnation under the Mubarak government. Notably absent has been any strong ideological beliefs other than a call for democracy and demands that Hosni Mubarak step down.
The Muslim Brotherhood, despite constant mention on neoconservative-aligned blogs, has had remarkably little visible presence in Tahrir Square. Indeed, the movement for democracy in Egypt may have passed by the Brotherhood.
Abdo observes:
If anything, this is a bittersweet moment for the Brotherhood. Although Mubarak appears on his way out, the movement seems to have missed the historical moment when it could have captured a powerful place in the corridors of power. That window began closing in 2005, after the Brotherhood captured 88 seats in the Egyptian parliament only to be targeted aggressively and largely suppressed by Mubarak’s security services ever since. During these intervening years, a new Egyptian generation has arisen that is more secular, more worldly, and not loyal to any particular organization or movement. Though the Brotherhood, in the long term, may still prove to have a profound role in a new Egypt; after all, the skills and tools it takes to start a revolution are rarely those needed to finish it. Ask the Mensheviks and Lenin.
Abdo concludes that while the Brotherhood may or may not have a significant role in a new government, the end of Mubarak’s thirty years in office will have long-term geostrategic consequences for the U.S. and Israel, as Egypt, in all likelihood, will seek a closer relationship with its Arab and Muslim neighbors.
]]>Rather than reaching for false analogies between Iran of 1979 and Egypt today, Western leaders should accept the fact that any new Egyptian government is unlikely to support policies the United States has promoted for 30 years, regardless of whether the Muslim Brotherhood has a small or large share in a new government. The time has come for the West to acknowledge that Egyptian society opposes the country’s 1979 peace agreement with Israel, resents the United States’ close relationship with the Jewish state (a country most Egyptians loathe), and has been historically prepared to end the country’s reliance on U.S. aid. In fact, Mubarak’s image as a puppet of the United States has for years been a political liability.
Saying Iran remained his government’s biggest worry, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not mention possible unilateral military strikes [...]]]>
(Reuters) – The United States and its allies have up to three years to curb Iran’s nuclear programme, which has been set back by technical difficulties and sanctions, a senior Israeli official said on Wednesday.
Saying Iran remained his government’s biggest worry, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not mention possible unilateral military strikes by Israel, saying he hoped U.S.-led action against Tehran would be successful.
For as long as anyone can remember, Israel has been telling anyone who will listen (still a surprisingly large number, considering how wrong they’ve been) that Iran is around the corner from a nuclear weapons capability.
Justin Elliott was all over this ridiculousness in his excellent Salon article. And it came up at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies conference that I covered for LobeLog and Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel.
At that conference, neoconservative Washington Times journalist Eli Lake had the best question of the whole two and a half days, on this very subject:
QUESTION: Thank you. This is a question for General Amidror.
Could you comment on why it seems Israeli estimates of the Iranian program have been one to two years away for about 10 years now?
Does this reflect the failure of your analysts or the success of your saboteurs?
Amirdror, ever the diplomatic general, answered “both.”
Back to Yaalon’s latest prediction. Reuters puts Israel’s Deputy PM’s views in context:
Yaalon had previously been hawkish on Iran, saying Israel, believed to have region’s only nuclear arsenal, should attack Iran rather than see it get the bomb.
All the prognosticating makes me want to take odds. But I’m afraid Yaalon might get the wrong idea if I asked, “Who wants to take this action?”
]]>Hen-Tov, a a doctoral candidate at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies and Gonzalez, author of Engaging Iran, write that Iran has actually overcome the typical challenges faced by newly militarized regimes.
On civil-military relations, the Islamic Republic’s unique hybrid system of elected republican elements, combined with appointed theocratic leaders, allowed for a triangular relationship; with an alliance of the clerical elite and the Revolutionary Guards emerging to counter the elected reformists-figures such as reformist President Mohammad Khatami, and presidential candidate and Green Movement figure Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
Expanding on the strengthened role of the Revolutionary Guard, they say:
In terms of cycles of bribery, the Revolutionary Guards in Iran have actually become an independent economic player in their own right, distinguishing themselves from traditional praetorian entities. The Guards run a vast industrial complex, as well as illicit smuggling cartels, and thus do not need to please any other interest group.
And
[W]hile the Guards have moved into other arenas as large commercial players, they have also raised their level of professionalism as a military force in charge of domestic security, asymmetric warfare, the country’s sophisticated ballistic missile arsenal, and a presumed nuclear weapons program. While praetorian militaries eventually lose the capacity to effectively fight interstate wars, Iran only seems to be getting stronger in this arena.
While the IRGC cannot withstand complete economic failure, the Guard Corps’ increased strength could present a greater likelihood for meaningful engagement with the West.
They conclude:
[The IRGC] will no longer feel the need to pander to extreme anti-American ideology to placate domestic factions and it could be more responsive to engagement or coercive initiatives. While this would come at the expense of human rights and freedom inside Iran, it may portend a better future for Iran’s relations with the international community.
While not a pleasant prediction for human rights in Iran, their article asks an interesting question about how an increasingly consolidated Iranian political elite might choose to engage with the West. While anti-Americanism has played an important role in the domestic political rhetoric in Iran, the shift towards a more authoritarian political structure could have some interesting effects on the role of anti-American ideology in the Iranian political sphere. As the IRGC takes on greater control–and the corresponding responsibility–for the economy, the interests and incentives for the state’s security apparatus may dramatically shift.
]]>Jim Lobe and I wrote an IPS article last week challenging the right-wing talking points that the WikiLeaks cables were a nail in the coffin for those in the Obama administration who believe, as does the military’s top leadership, that linkage is an important concept if the U.S. is going to contain Iran and withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Basically, the “linkage” argument holds that continued irresolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hinders America’s ability to achieve its national security goals in the region, both by serving as a driver of extremism and a source of anti-American sentiment. Critics of the argument contend that the significance of the conflict has been vastly overblown, and that “the Palestinian issue” is simply an excuse used by violent extremists and lacking genuine salience among Arabs, despite what they may say in public.
Duss reviews the many WikiLeaks cables in which Arab diplomats endorse the concept of linkage and the countless op-eds from Iran hawks claiming that WikiLeaks shows that Arab leaders don’t care about Palestinians or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He writes:
All of this would seem to demonstrate the bankruptcy of the linkage argument. In reality, what it demonstrates is the willingness of some analysts to ignore evidence.
But, despite the overwhelming evidence in the cables, hawkish groups such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) have shown a shocking willingness to misrepresent and twist the words of Arab leaders and the Foreign Service Officers who wrote the cables.
Duss concludes:
It is of course true that hostility toward Israel and its U.S. patron will not simply dissipate upon the end of Israel’s occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state — the completeness of that de-occupation, and the contours of that state, matter greatly. There are also problems and pathologies in the Middle East that have nothing to do with Israelis or Palestinians. Securing a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will, however, make addressing some of those problems easier, by sealing up one well of resentment from which demagogues and extremists have for decades drawn freely and profitably.
Indeed, the WikiLeaks cables provide abundant evidence that Arab leaders collectively agree that containing Iran–and in the process weakening Hezbollah and Hamas–requires removing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the lightening rod for anti-West, anti-Israel and anti-U.S. sentiments in the Middle East.
]]>“The problem,” they write, “is that democratic reform in Iran is a long-term proposition. As a [...]]]>
“The problem,” they write, “is that democratic reform in Iran is a long-term proposition. As a result, it cannot serve as the basis for an effective U.S.-Iran policy.”
“If the Obama White House were to rest its efforts to dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons on regime change, it would end up with an Iran policy as incoherent as those of the administrations that preceded it.”
Even though President Barack Obama seems to be trying very hard to distance himself from past polices — and avoiding the same results — Burmberg and Blechman write his policy is still muddled. (What are sanctions for, in the end? they ask, for example: “[W]e need to define that end far more clearly.”) The uncertain policy outcomes from the administration’s Iran policy creates room for more radical proposals like regime change:
As support for engagement wanes in Washington, calls for regime change are reverberating in the U.S. Congress and out national media. The idea that we can slay the Iranian nuclear dragon by destroying its autocratic heart will probably become a leitmotif of the House and quite possibly the Senate in 2011.
This seems to be the “forget negotiations” approach taken by a bipartisan group of six Senators who called on Obama to ensure ‘zero enrichment’ in any agreement. It’s almost definitely a deal-breaker for the current leadership of the Islamic Republic — or for even a reformed Islamic Republic.
Brumberg and Blechman explore many of these contradictions. Their piece should be informative for regime change hawks who constantly push the need for more aggressive U.S. support of domestic dissent in Iran (my emphasis):
Political reform will eventually come to Iran, but in manner far more prolonged and partial than that imagined by advocates of a full-scale democratic revolution. This kind of dramatic scenario may pluck a tour heart strings, but it has not been the animating vision of Iran’s reformists. The latter speak for a 25-million urban middle class of Iranians, many whom share one goal: to compel the state to stop forcing religious dogma on the population.
[...]
There is very little the U.S. can or should do to affect this prolonged dynamic [of the reform movement]. The more we embrace Iran’s democratic activists, the more we suffocate them. Iran’s reformists want the international community to stand up for their human rights; they do not want to be pawns of a U.S.-Iranian conflict. In a land where concerns about national sovereignty and religious identity cut across the regime-opposition divide, the quest for democracy will be discredited if it is seen as anything but homegrown.
There is one thing, however, that the U.S. can do promote political decompression in Iran, and that is to make détente with the Islamic Republic a top priority. Sustained U.S.-Iranian engagement would undercut the “threat” that ultra hardliners regularly invoke to legitimate their efforts to pummel or isolate their critics.
That’s been a huge problem of the discourse in the U.S. about Iran — one cannot make a priority both of the nuclear issue and the democracy issue. The same could be said of attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The nuclear clock and the democratic clock are not in sync. Those in the United States who propose bombing Iran in order to both slow down the nuclear clock and speed up the democratic clock are being disingenuous. This is not to say that an accelerated democratic clock — leading to reform — won’t be more favorable to the West and may well slow down the nuclear clock itself. But the process of accelerating the democratic clock (a policy of regime change) holds the dangerous (and likely) possibility of backfiring and creating further insecurity and resentment. And insecurity and resentment would seem to be the top reasons behind the Iranian nuclear drive in the first place.
]]>Abdi argues that Obama, under the Democratic Congress, failed to pursue a viable dual-track strategy — pressure and engagement — with Iran. Instead, the administration [...]]]>
Abdi argues that Obama, under the Democratic Congress, failed to pursue a viable dual-track strategy — pressure and engagement — with Iran. Instead, the administration allowed success to be defined by the amount of sanctions related pressure it could impose on Iranian leadership and on ordinary Iranians.
Abdi writes (my emphasis):
The picture for Obama in Congress is bleak enough, but particularly so on Iran. Bipartisan Iran sanctions advanced in the Democratic Congress imposed significant new restrictions on the president and give the Republicans significant ammunition to undermine Obama. Opportunities to hold the president’s feet to the fire regarding enforcement of unilateral sanctions on China and Russia will not be ignored, and the president will be punished for failing to get “tough enough” on Iran, despite his many efforts to do just that. By failing to realign the metrics for success, and by allowing the outgoing Democratic Congress to undermine his political and policy flexibility, Obama and the Democrats in the 111th Congress have handed Republicans a valuable tool with which to bludgeon the president in the 112th.
Now, with an even more hawkish Republican Congress (Ali wrote about the hawkish rhetoric from Lindsey Graham this weekend), the administration will be charged with failing to unilaterally punish Russia and China for continuing to trade with Iran and will be accused of not getting “tough enough” on Iran. This, of course, comes from a Republican party which has openly discussed its support for an Israeli military strike on Iran — nearly fifty Republicans signed such a resolution last summer — and a policy towards Iran which is increasingly measured by the amount of damage that the U.S. can inflict on the Iranian economy.
Abdi concludes with a word of warning for Democrats who fail to define an alternate policy path from pro-war Republicans (my emphasis again):
]]>In failing to establish any alternative criteria for progress on the Iran issue other than pressure, the administration risks continuing to perpetuate the Bush paradigm on Iran and accepting a measurement for success that, regardless of reality, only plays into the hands of Obama’s pro-war, anti-engagement opponents. It would be disastrous for Obama to embrace the 2002 Democratic foreign policy strategy, when they adopted a Bush-light approach and supported the Iraq war out of fear. It wasn’t until Democrats developed a strong message against the Iraq war in 2006 that they reclaimed Congress. And it wasn’t until a presidential candidate staked out his own paradigm and established his own political space through leadership on his anti Iraq-war principles that ultimately a Democrat reclaimed the White House.
My Middle East Channel piece concludes:
Ultimately, ongoing U.S. military support for the LAF will require an understanding of the deeply embedded Hezbollah position in southern Lebanon and a realistic understanding of what stability the LAF is capable of delivering in both the short and long term, as peace initiatives — either Israel-Syria or broader Arab peace agreements — take root. The LAF is unlikely to engage in direct confrontation with Hezbollah, if for no other reason than Hezbollah has succeeded to a considerable extent in depicting itself as Lebanon’s primary defense against Israel. But an LAF which takes on greater security and infrastructure building responsibilities, with a membership which includes Sunnis, Shias and Christians, could serve as an increasingly important stabilizing force in years to come.
The full article can be read here.
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