A supreme challenge to US policies in the Middle East—especially in the Arab world—has been dealing with the no-win dilemma of leadership in the Arab world. As we look out across the wreckage of the present scene in the Middle East, many observers, including myself, highlight the striking absence of any genuine Arab leadership in the region today.
Yet “leadership” is a highly subjective word. What kind of “leadership?” And from whose perspective? The painful answer is that most of the foreign policy goals sought by the people of the region are not in synch with US preferences and goals. And leadership that does promote popular goals will likely be on a collision course with Washington.
If you ask US government officials what the ideal foreign policy of a Middle Eastern state should be, the answer is well known: full engagement in the struggle against terrorism and Islamic extremism, stability, normalization of relations with Israel, open markets, and membership in the “global community.”
Yet this well-rehearsed list is tailored first and foremost to meet western, and especially US, goals. Muslims might buy into some of them, as far as they go. But they represent a consolidated package of specifically western interests. We’ve all heard them—to us these goals are the norm. But taken together they do not constitute a comprehensive package of foreign policy priorities remotely acceptable or sufficient to most Muslims. Part of the constant grief of US policy stems from our outright ignorance, or deliberate dismissal, of alternate goals by other states and societies in the world. Americans somehow assume that America’s goals represent a self-obvious and universal good for the world. We are offended when they are rejected by others as being neither—even when a few of those goals, under the right circumstances, could be a part of a much larger basket of Muslims’ own goals.
Of course, the Muslim world (or Arab world) is not a homogeneous bloc; different preferences and ideologies exist. But overall it is evident to everyone that most Arabs (and other Muslims) are clearly deeply alienated and disillusioned. So if Washington’s agenda does not represent their package of foreign policy goals, what does?
A Muslim package would highlight the following principles for international policies. First and foremost, the exercise of genuine independence and national sovereignty free of foreign control, external intervention or suppression via great power politics—qualities long absent in the Muslim world today. The free choice of national leaders without external pressure, intervention, or countermanding western actions is another key goal. The freedom to avoid serving as pawns in some larger global geopolitical game between great powers is an additional essential prerequisite for national self-determination and preservation of local interests.
Muslims are similarly hostile to manipulation by US autocratic allies that seek to impose a particular regional agenda; Saudi Arabia in particular comes to mind with its propagation of Wahhabi/Salafi religious values, and its promotion of an ugly and essentially bogus sectarian confrontation between Sunni and Shi’a. Additionally, nearly all Muslims undoubtedly favor unremitting pressure on Israel to accept the establishment of a fully sovereign Palestinian state after fifty years of harsh Israeli occupation; they seek the freedom to articulate such demands in responsible international fora without being shut out.
Sad to say, articulation of such views in the past has primarily resided in the “rogue states”—under anti-American leaders such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Ayatollahs in Iran, Assad in Syria, or Qadhafi in Libya—none of whom feared defying US policies. They were all dictators in their own right of course, but Washington has never objected to that as such; they were “rogue” because they resisted imposition of a US-dominated regional order. It is “sad to say” that these values had to be promoted primarily by rogue states because such values are hardly radical at all: genuine sovereignty, freedom from foreign intervention, justice in Palestine. There is hardly a nation that does not seek them.
Thus any leader who aspires to be “legitimate” and offer genuine leadership in the Middle East will predictably be required to promote precisely these “radical values.” Yet almost none of the Arab world’s rulers today speak out in their favor—demonstrating thereby a key indicator of their own “illegitimacy.”
Regrettably, western foreign policies—UK, France, then the US—over the past century in the Middle East have given short shrift to any of these local values. Indeed, they have often viewed local pursuit of such values as harmful to the maintenance of Western hegemony in the region. The West has never truly even sought genuine elections in the Arab World if there was a possibility that leaders might be elected who would not remain responsive to western interests.
What do Muslims want on the domestic agenda? They want what most people in the world want. The first fundamental human and social need anywhere is of course reasonable order, stability and basic personal safety, without which few other good things can proceed. In that sense, nearly all of the region’s dictators indeed did traditionally provide state-imposed order and stability, albeit often harshly, and always self-serving. But that’s not enough for human satisfaction. Other basic needs call for jobs, housing, food, health and education—nearly all would agree on that. Thereafter peoples’ priorities might begin to diverge, depending on the individual: certainly creature comforts, human intimacy, a modicum of toys, entertainment, an interesting and creative environment, opportunities and choices, connectedness with the broader world—all come into play.
The old mold of Middle East politics has thus demonstrably failed to provide these things, nor has the West helped—except to support unstable “stability” until the stability exploded—as in the Arab Spring. The Arab world in particular has not yet found its new voice and vision. If the Middle East region is in need of sharp, even radical change—political, social, economic, intellectual—then precisely such “radical” new policies are likely what are required to constitute genuine new leadership.
Not surprisingly, the emergence and early spectacular successes of ISIS represent one form of breaking the old mold—the rethinking of old institutions in drastic, revolutionary, even violent new ways. But not all radical change needs ape the ISIS “model.” But it does suggest that a major break with the past in many respects is still needed—and when frustrated, takes radical form. This may not be welcome news in the West, but if our policies are to have any chance of even partial success they will have to accord with what the people of the region themselves need and want. However self-evident, that would still seem to be a somewhat “radical” concept to Washington.
Such a situation poses a genuine dilemma for the West at this point. Western-engineered stability and western-appointed or -backed “leadership” has not delivered what most in the region want. We’ve been there before, and we’ve seen what that has brought us over the past decade or more. Surely it’s time for a hard rethink. Real leadership in the Middle East will offer primarily tumultuous times as the countries of the region struggle to gain experience at more genuine self-rule, mistakes and all, and overcompensate for past grievances against the West. It may be—at least for now—that only Turkey and Iran today possess the foundational qualities to provide some kind of regional leadership.
There are serious doubts as to whether the US is any longer even capable of achieving its own tradition goals as in the past. Long range stability in the Middle East must come on Middle East terms, not western versions. This recognition needs to be one of the foundations of US policy formulation.
(See my latest book, “Turkey and the Arab World: Leadership in the Middle East,” for a more extended discussion of this problem of absence of leadership in the Arab world today.)
This article was first published by Graham E. Fuller and was reprinted here with permission. Copyright Graham E. Fuller.
]]>by François Nicoullaud
Paris, France—This is not the first time that we may have trapped ourselves when drafting UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions that were intended to trap another country—in this case, Iran. The present situation recalls in some respects the period around 1997 when most Security Council members would have liked to rescind, or at least amend, the sanctions adopted against the regime of Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Gulf War, as their effects were obviously getting out of hand: widespread corruption, and the dramatic deterioration of the Iraqi population’s state of health, to name a couple. But any change in the sanctions would have required unanimity from the five permanent members of the Council, and that was definitely out of reach. The situation led French President Jacques Chirac to express his frustration. “We want to convince, not coerce,” he said. “I have never observed that the policy of sanctions can produce positive effects.”
We have not yet reached such a dramatic juncture with Iran. But should it become useful to rapidly lift the sanctions imposed by the four UNSC resolutions between 2006 and 2010 in order to secure a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, the Western negotiators may find themselves incapable of delivering and may instead try to kick the can down the road to some point in the distant future.
Aimed at halting Iran’s military, nuclear and ballistic activities, these UNSC resolutions are not the ones that hurt the most. More destructive are those unilateral measures imposed by the United States and the European Union, since they were designed essentially to destabilize the Iranian economy. But the UNSC sanctions carry with them a “pillory effect” that the Iranians perceive, quite correctly, as deeply humiliating. They also provide the legal bedrock upon which the European sanctions, in particular, have been constructed. The Iranians are therefore anxious to see them lifted as soon as possible through a decision by the Security Council to close the file it opened in 2006 and return it to the forum from which it should never have been taken: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The conditions for terminating these resolutions, however, are also overwhelming. In fact, the people who drafted them seem to have been pursuing two not necessarily compatible goals at the same time.
The first goal was to pile up all the preconditions that the authors believed were necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring a deliverable nuclear device, including:
- suspending all activities related to enrichment and reprocessing, including research, development, and construction of new facilities;
- suspending all activities related to the construction of a heavy-water research reactor;
- providing immediate access to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the IAEA in order to verify Iran’s compliance with the Security Council decisions and to resolve all outstanding issues related to the possible military dimensions (PMD) of the Iranian nuclear program;
- promptly ratifying the Additional Protocol to Iran’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA; and
- suspending all efforts to develop ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Considering the context in which these resolutions were adopted, there was little chance that the Iranians would comply with such an elaborate and comprehensive set of so-called “confidence-building measures,” which would have forced Tehran to abandon virtually all of its nuclear and ballistic-missile ambitions.
The second goal was substantively quite different from the first and indeed somehow contradictory. It aimed to push Iran into negotiations, as illustrated by the formula that was included in all the UNSC sanctions resolutions, which ritually expressed the “conviction” that Iran’s compliance “would contribute to a diplomatic, negotiated solution.” Moreover, if Iran suspended its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the Council declared its willingness in return to suspend at least some of its sanctions in order “to allow for negotiations in good faith” and “reach an early and mutually acceptable outcome.”
As we now know, a negotiation process ultimately was initiated, albeit through a radically different path, as the West dropped its demand that Iran fully suspend all its sensitive nuclear activities before entering into substantive talks. One can therefore assume that the second goal will be accomplished as soon as a comprehensive agreement, which will hopefully emerge from the current round of talks in Vienna, enters into force, thus rendering this dimension of the UNSC’s resolutions totally obsolete.
But of course, the resolutions’ first dimension—the exhaustive inventory of “confidence-building measures”—remains in place. Because confidence is essentially an elusive and subjective feeling, taking this path involves embarking on a long-term, winding and always reversible road, the end of which is only faintly discernible now. Such a process is also hardly compatible with the “on-off” mechanism of the Security Council: there is no chance that its resolutions, once cancelled, could be reintroduced. Hence the strong reluctance of the Western powers to commit themselves to such an outcome.
We also all know that the sanctions are much easier to adopt than to rescind, as they tend to create, in the meantime, their own logic and dynamics. They develop new balances of power and vested interests, if only among those in authority who have dedicated themselves so thoroughly to the sanctions’ implementation and enforcement. One has only to recall the notorious example of the general embargo imposed by the Allies against Germany during the First World War whose continuation for several months after the 1918 Armistice unnecessarily prolonged the suffering of the German people and deepened the bitterness of their defeat.
Are Iran’s negotiating partners ready to learn the lessons of history? The Gordian knot that the UNSC sanctions represent should be slashed asunder, if not immediately upon the signing of a comprehensive agreement with Iran, then at least after a moderately short period in which Iran’s determination to comply with its terms could be confirmed. Such a gesture could also be linked appropriately to the formal ratification by Iran’s parliament of the Additional Protocol that Tehran had signed during an unsuccessful round of talks back in 2003—the two moves being equally irreversible.
This would not mean that pending requests made to Iran, such as the ancient issue of the “possible military dimensions” (PMD) of its nuclear program, would have to be abandoned. But it would mean that these requests would thenceforward be dealt with exclusively by the IAEA. It would also mean that the Council, in light of the progress achieved after the signing of a final deal, would no longer consider the Iranian situation a “threat to the peace” under the terms of the UN Charter’s Chapter VII, the only chapter that authorizes the use of coercive measures against a Member State in order “to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
One of the more remarkable aspects of the recent news coverage of Iraq — the Maliki government’s loss of control over the northern region of the country, the deadly confrontations taking place between Iraqi Shia and Sunnis, and the clashes between Kurds and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
One of the more remarkable aspects of the recent news coverage of Iraq — the Maliki government’s loss of control over the northern region of the country, the deadly confrontations taking place between Iraqi Shia and Sunnis, and the clashes between Kurds and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL or ISIS) — is the absence of any mention of Israel.
Commonalities between the Kurdish quest for a long-denied state of their own and Israel’s struggle to survive in a sea of geopolitical enemies are ubiquitous in reports on the Kurdish struggle, both in the Israeli press and among Israel’s supporters abroad. Indeed, it’s not unusual to see Kurdish separatism invoked and idealized as a reflection of the quest to establish a Jewish state, underscored by imagined historical parallels between Jews and Kurds. For example, in an essay titled, “Surprising Ties between Israel and the Kurds,” in Middle East Quarterly’s Summer 2014 issue, Ofra Bengio, a senior research fellow specializing in Kurdish affairs at Tel Aviv University, points out several of these perceived parallels:
Both are relatively small nations (15 million Jews and 30 million Kurds), traumatized by persecutions and wars. Both have been leading life and death struggles to preserve their unique identity, and both have been delegitimized and denied the right to a state of their own. In addition, both are ethnically different from neighboring Arabs, Persians, and Turks, who represent the majority in the Middle East.
The idealized goals and strategies of sovereignty seeking Kurdish separatists are often contrasted with those of Palestinian Arabs, as illustrated by Victor Sharpe at the American Thinker:
…(A)fter the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds displayed great political and economic wisdom. How different from the example of the Gazan Arabs who, when foolishly given full control over the Gaza Strip by Israel, chose not to build hospitals and schools, but instead bunkers and missile launchers. To this they have added the imposition of sharia law, with its attendant denigration of women and non-Muslims.
The Kurdish experiment, in at least the territory’s current quasi-independence, has shown the world a decent society where all its inhabitants, men and women, enjoy far greater freedoms than can be found anywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world — and certainly anywhere else in Iraq, which is fast descending into ethnic chaos now that the U.S. military has left.
For decades, Israel has been a silent stakeholder in northern Iraq, training and arming its restive Kurds. Massimiliano Fiore, a fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, cites a CIA document found in the US Embassy in Tehran and subsequently published, which reportedly attested that the Kurds aided Israel’s military in the June 1967 (Six Day) War by launching a major offensive against the Iraqi Army. This kept Iraq from joining the other Arab armies in Israel, in return for which, “after the war, massive quantities of Soviet equipment captured from the Egyptians and Syrians were transferred to the Kurds.” Former Mossad operative Eliezer Tsafrir has described in detail the decade of cooperation between 1965-75 of Israel’s Mossad and Iran’s SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, in arming and training Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces. That cooperation ceased when, without warning, the Shah and Saddam Hussein made a secret deal that abruptly ended the Israeli-Iranian partnership in northern Iraq.
The First Gulf War in 1991 gave Kurds a safe haven with an unprecedented degree of autonomy in the no-fly zone enforced by the US-led Coalition. In oil-rich northern Iraq, Kurds held regional parliamentary elections in May 1992, establishing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Jacques Neriah, a retired colonel who served as foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and as deputy head for assessment of Israeli military intelligence, explains in a 2012 report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:
After the collapse of the Kurdish uprising of March 1991, which broke out after Saddam Hussein’s defeat by the U.S.-led coalition, Iraqi troops recaptured most of the Kurdish areas and 1.5 million Kurds abandoned their homes and fled to the Turkish and Iranian borders. It is estimated that close to 20,000 Kurds died from exhaustion, hunger, cold, and disease. On 5 April 1991, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 688, which demanded that Iraq end its measures against the Kurds and allow immediate access to international humanitarian organizations. This was the first international document to mention the Kurds by name since the League of Nations’ arbitration of Mosul in 1925.
A decade ago, Seymour Hersh called attention to Israel’s close ties with the Kurds. Hersh’s “Annals of National Security: Plan B“, published in the New Yorker is noteworthy, particularly in light of mounting criticism against the Obama administration’s handling of the current crisis. US officials interviewed by Hersh told him that by the end of 2003, “Israel had concluded that the Bush Administration would not be able to bring stability or democracy to Iraq, and that Israel needed other options.” One of those options was expanding Israel’s long-standing relationship with Iraqi Kurds and “establishing a significant presence on the ground in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.” Although the reliability of Hersh’s sources was challenged at the time, they have been affirmed by more recent articles and reports. Neriah, writing in August 2012, cites numerous reports in the Israeli media about the activities of Israeli security and military personnel working for Israeli firms in Kurdistan:
According to Israeli newspapers, dozens of Israelis with a background in elite combat training have been working for private Israeli companies in northern Iraq, helping Kurds there establish elite antiterror units. Reports say that the Kurdish government contracted Israeli security and communications companies to train Kurdish security forces and provide them with advanced equipment.
Shlomi Michaels, an Israeli-American entrepreneur, and former Mossad chief Danny Yatom provided “strategic consultation on economic and security issues” to the Kurds, according to Neriah, although the Israeli government denied any official involvement.
Tons of equipment, including motorcycles, tractors, sniffer dogs, systems to upgrade Kalashnikov rifles, bulletproof vests, and first-aid items have been shipped to Iraq’s northern region, with most products stamped “Made in Israel.”The Kurds had insisted that the cooperation be kept secret, fearing that exposure of the projects would motivate terror groups to target their Jewish guests. Recent warnings that Al-Qaeda might be planning an attack on Kurdish training camps prompted a hasty exit of all Israeli trainers from the northern region. In response to the report, the Defense Ministry said: “We haven’t allowed Israelis to work in Iraq, and each activity, if performed, was a private initiative, without our authorization, and is under the responsibility of the employers and the employees involved.”
Laura Rozen, writing in Mother Jones in 2008, offered a less benign view of Michaels’ activities in Kurdistan. Besides promoting corruption through kickbacks, Michaels attempted to sell — for $1 million — a dossier to the CIA that would prove Saddam Hussein had met with Ukrainian officials in order to develop a covert chemical weapons program. Rozen also linked the 2005 AIPAC spy scandal to Israeli involvement in Kurdistan. In 2004, US intelligence agencies had heard rumors that Iranian agents planned to target Israeli and US personnel operating in northern Iraq. Larry Franklin, who worked for the Pentagon, had been caught leaking the intelligence to Washington hawks. That’s how he was was recruited by the FBI for a July 2004 sting operation that informed AIPAC officials about the alleged threat to Israelis operating in northern Iraq. Franklin pled guilty to leaking classified information and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
In her Middle East Quarterly essay, Bengio also mentions many of Hersh’s claims about Israeli involvement in Kurdistan a decade earlier, which she cautiously avers “remain unproven,” drawing upon Neriah’s account of Michaels’ adventures (without naming names):
The Yedi’ot Aharonot newspaper published an exclusive regarding Israel’s training of peshmergas, the Kurdish paramilitary force. Another Israeli source mentioned the activities of an Israeli company in the construction of an international airport in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. The same source revealed “For their part, Iraqi sources, especially Shiite ones, have published lists of scores of Israeli companies and enterprises active in Iraq through third parties.
Less than a year ago, Lazar Berman of the Times of Israel, under the optimistic headline, “Is a Free Kurdistan, and a New Israeli Ally, Upon Us?” quoted Kurdish journalist Ayub Nuri who argued that Kurds were “deeply sympathetic to Israel and an independent Kurdistan will be beneficial to Israel.” Fast forward a year later to Neriah’s article titled, ”The fall of Mosul could become the beginning of Kurdish quest for independence,” where he says nothing about the stakes for Israel. Would an increasingly independent Kurdistan continue to look to Israel as its patron?
Or will Kurdistan fully join an anti-ISIS Iraqi alliance, backed jointly, if discreetly, by Iran, with the approval of the US? Any scenario in which Iran is part of the solution, rather than the underlying problem, is a nightmare for Israel. “[W]e would especially not want for a situation to be created where, because both the United States and Iran support the government of (Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri) al-Maliki, it softens the American positions on the issue which is most critical for the peace of the world, which is the Iranian nuclear issue,” Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli minister of strategic affairs, told Reuters.
After so many decades of trying to make use of the Kurdish dream of independence as a narrative and nuisance against its enemies, Israel stands at the cusp of being the biggest loser in whatever comes next in strife-ridden Iraq.
This article was first published by LobeLog. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
]]>by Shireen T. Hunter
The beleaguered Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, is the latest in the long list of the West’s favorite political leaders turned into pariahs. The conventional wisdom now is that Maliki’s flaws and wrong policies, especially his alienation of the Sunnis and dictatorial style of governance, are at [...]]]>
by Shireen T. Hunter
The beleaguered Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, is the latest in the long list of the West’s favorite political leaders turned into pariahs. The conventional wisdom now is that Maliki’s flaws and wrong policies, especially his alienation of the Sunnis and dictatorial style of governance, are at the root of Iraq’s problems, including its latest troubles with extremist Islamic militants.
Clearly, Maliki has not been a successful prime minister. Yet have his very real and assumed flaws been the only, or even the main, cause of Iraq’s problems today? Could a different person have done a better job? Or have the real culprits been structural problems, Iraq’s long and more recent history, and the policies of regional and international actors? A further question: are the grievances of Iraq’s Sunnis solely attributable to the Shias’ desire to monopolize power? What about the Sunnis’ inability to come to terms with any type of government in which the Shias have a real rather than ceremonial function?
These questions are by no means posed to minimize or underestimate the impact of the current leadership’s mismanagement and mistakes, or the corrosive influence of dissension within Shia ranks among the supporters of Maliki, the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and Ammar al-Hakim, the head of the Islamic Council of Iraq. But if viewed impartially, the weight of evidence shows that other factors have played more substantial roles in causing Iraq’s previous problems and the latest crisis than Maliki’s incompetence and dictatorial tendencies.
The most significant factor behind Iraq’s problems has been the inability of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and its Sunni neighbors to come to terms with a government in which the Shias, by virtue of their considerable majority in Iraq’s population, hold the leading role. This inability was displayed early on, when Iraq’s Sunnis refused to take part in Iraq’s first parliamentary elections, and resorted to insurgency almost immediately after the US invasion and fall of Saddam Hussein. All along, the goal of Iraqi Sunnis has been to prove that the Shias are not capable of governing Iraq. Indeed, Iraq’s Sunni deputy prime minister, Osama al Najafi, recently verbalized this view. The Sunnis see political leadership and governance to be their birthright and resent the Shia interlopers.
The Sunnis’ psychological difficulty in accepting a mostly Shia government is understandable. After ruling the country for centuries, both under the Ottomans and after independence, and after oppressing the Shias and viewing them as heretics and dregs of society, the Sunnis find Shia rule to sit heavily on them. It is thus difficult to imagine what any Shia prime minister could have done — or could now do — to satisfy the Sunnis. For example, during the early years after Saddam’s fall, once they had realized their mistake of abstaining from politics, the Sunnis made unreasonable demands as the price of cooperation, such as taking the defense portfolio. Yet considering what the Shias had suffered under Saddam, there was no possibility that they could agree.
Iraq’s Sunni Arabs have not been alone in undermining the authority of the country’s Shia leadership. Masood Barzani, who dreams of an independent Kurdistan, has also done what he can to undermine the authority of the government in Baghdad, by essentially running his own economic, oil, and foreign policies. A factor in Barzani’s attitude has been his anti-Iran sentiments, which go back to the troubles that his father, Mulla Mustafa Barzani, had with the Shah.
Iraq’s Sunni neighbors, notably Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but also Qatar, also cannot countenance a Shia government in Baghdad. In addition to the anti-Shia impact of the Wahhabi creed that is dominant in Saudi Arabia and among the Qatari leadership, this Sunni animosity has derived from the perception that a Shia government in Iraq would change the balance of regional power in Iran’s favor. Yet Maliki is the least pro-Iranian of Iraq’s Shia leaders, with the possible exception of the now-notorious Ahmad Chalabi. During Saddam’s time, Maliki belonged to the Dawa party, a rival of Iraq’s Islamic Revolutionary Council that was supported by Iran, and he spent more time in Syria than in Iran. This is one reason why the US preferred Maliki to personalities like Ibrahim Jafari.
Moreover, Maliki tried to reach out to Turkey and to other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia. But Turkey snubbed him and supported his rival, Tariq al-Hashimi. The Arab states have also shunned him. Under these circumstances, Maliki had no choice but to move closer to Iran. Yet the idea that he has thus become an Iranian pawn is a myth with no foundation in reality. Even now, Iraq has not reestablished the Algiers Agreement of 1975 that regularized Iraqi-Iranian border disputes, an agreement which, before attacking Kuwait in 1990, Saddam had accepted. Iraq has not signed a peace treaty with Iran and competes with it in courting clients for oil exports. Iraq also has more extensive trade relations with Turkey than with Iran.
In short, by exaggerating the sectarian factor, Iraq’s Sunni neighbors have exacerbated Shia fears and made it more difficult for them to pursue a more inclusive policy vis-à-vis the Sunnis. Further, most killings in Iraq have been in Shia areas, undertaken by Sunni extremists of various kinds who are funded by Sunni governments in the region. The plight of the Shias has also not been limited to Iraq. Similar mistreatment in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan has gone unnoticed by the West, while the exclusion of Iraq’s Sunnis from leadership posts in Baghdad has been blown out of proportion. Western and especially US dislike of Iran has been a major cause for the disregarding of mass killings and assassination of Shias.
America’s conflicting policy objectives in the region have also led it to pursue policies in Iraq that have contributed to current US dilemmas. The most glaring example was the US courting of Sunni insurgents and tribal leaders, both of which were thus emboldened to commit acts such as attacking the Shia shrines in Samara in 2006 and frightening the Shias that America would again betray them as it did at the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Wanting to isolate Iran and perhaps to bring about regime change there, the US has also done virtually nothing to reign in the Saudis and others, including Turkey and Qatar, to prevent them from funding Sunni insurgents. Instead, Washington has blamed Iraqi unrest solely on Iranian meddling. Even today, there is no acknowledgement by the United States that the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) cannot achieve what it has been doing without outside help.
At an even more fundamental level, America’s efforts to achieve too many contradictory and incompatible goals have been at the root of Iraq’s crisis. To date, it has proved to be difficult — indeed impossible — to eliminate Saddam but produce a stable Iraq; to isolate Iran and possibly change its regime; to get rid of Assad in Syria without exacerbating its civil war; to forge a Sunni-Israeli alliance against Shia Iran; and to convince other Shias throughout the region to continue playing second fiddle to the Sunnis.
To summarize, Nouri al-Maliki is certainly flawed and has made many mistakes. But the real culprits have been Iraq’s considerable fault lines, contradictory policies pursued by the West, and the predatory approach of Iraq’s neighbors. Thus even if Maliki is removed from office, Iraq’s situation will not improve unless these fault lines are dealt with and the policies pursued by outside states in Iraq are remedied. Rather, the situation will get much worse because the Shias are most unlikely to once again accept living under a regime that can be characterized as “Saddamism without Saddam” or, worse, what they would consider a Salafi-Takfiri government that considers them heathens deserving death.
This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission.
Photo: President Barack Obama greets Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the Oval Office of the White House on July 22, 2009. Credit: White House/Pete Souza
]]>by Wayne White
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) has stunned Baghdad by overrunning most of Iraq’s second largest city in the north, Mosul. Yet, the Sunni Arab extremist group – in its zeal for a quick victory — may have overplayed its hand, sharply increasing the possibility of other [...]]]>
by Wayne White
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) has stunned Baghdad by overrunning most of Iraq’s second largest city in the north, Mosul. Yet, the Sunni Arab extremist group – in its zeal for a quick victory — may have overplayed its hand, sharply increasing the possibility of other parties entering the fray against it.
Reacting to the ongoing successes of Sunni Arab jihadists in Iraq, many wonder how the situation could have gotten this bad. By contrast, for several years now, I’ve been asking: “Why has it taken so long for Sunni Arabs to go on the warpath again?” Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, ruthlessly serving his narrow sectarian agenda, has made clear that Iraq’s Sunni Arab community has little stake in his Shi’a dominated Iraq. His policies have made Sunni Arab push-back (in essence a revival of the post-2003 war insurgency) inevitable. Although a way out of this crisis is unclear, Maliki is not part of the solution.
The rising ISIL threat
Since ISIL wrested Fallujah and parts of Ramadi from Iraqi government control in early January, Maliki’s security forces have failed to eliminate or even contain the militants. With its expansive attacks into other areas of Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland, ISIL is now in a position to menace the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) enclave to the east, as well as locales farther south along Iraq’s central lines of communication, such as Samarra, Tikrit, and the key oil refining center of Baiji.
This dangerous challenge mounted by ISIL and some allied Sunni Arab tribal elements is not surprising. ISIL’s fortunes have waned in Syria in the face of Assad regime counterattacks and intense clashes with more moderate Syrian rebels. That’s why ISIL is pursuing potentially more fruitful opportunities across the border in a broad sweep of the predominantly Sunni Arab Iraqi territory adjoining Syria. The Sunni Arab minority there has grown steadily more embittered over its treatment by Maliki & his governments. Indeed, for over two years now, violent Sunni Arab resistance in Iraq (much of it having little to do with ISIL) has rebounded alarmingly, with nearly 9,000 Iraqis killed, mostly in violence ascribed to attacks by such militants, in 2013.
Maliki the enabler
Maliki and his hardline Shi’a cohorts prepared the ground for ISIL and other Sunni Arab jihadists. Even with Iraq on the brink of civil war and with sectarian cleansing tearing greater Baghdad apart in 2006-07, Maliki vigorously opposed the US deal with most Sunni Arab insurgents that took them out of the fight against the Coalition and turned them into allies against al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). This was the so-called “Sunni Arab Awakening”.
Worse still, in late 2008, Maliki actually tried to destroy an Awakening unit working with US forces west of Baghdad by sending Iraqi troops to attack them. US troops blocked the attack by placing themselves between their new Sunni Arab allies and Iraqi troops. On another occasion, Maliki arrested relatives of an Awakening leader in an attempt to force the latter’s surrender. Eventually, Maliki did agree, albeit reluctantly and only partially, to pay Awakening cadres and incorporate a limited number of them into the Iraqi security forces.
Maliki would later fall short of even those limited commitments, reneging on commitments to Awakening personnel and using special Iraqi security units operating under his own personal orders to arrest or assassinate Awakening leaders. Quite a few of those Sunni Arab prisoners subsequently disappeared into extrajudicial prisons run by Maliki and his cronies (just one of the abuses of power in which Maliki has engaged in recent years).
Maliki’s refusal to capitalize on Sunni Arab assistance brokered by the US was a missed opportunity of vast importance. Back in 2007-08, most Sunni Arabs were profoundly war weary after several years of bruising combat with US forces. As a result, a community previously determined to resist US forces and a government dominated by Iraqi Shi’a and Kurds, reluctantly accepted new realities. In exchange for ending their resistance and helping to battle AQI, Sunni Arabs expected a fair share of Iraq’s political pie, more government employment, and an appropriate slice of the country’s revenues. This, however, was not to be.
Securing a freer hand to deal with Iraq’s Sunni Arabs more harshly appears to have been one reason Maliki and his Iraqi allies backed away from the immunity agreement needed to allow a limited US military presence to remain behind after the American withdrawal. Both the Bush and Obama administrations tried and failed to secure this. Then, within 48 hours of the departure of the last US troops in mid-December 2011, Maliki had an arrest warrant issued against Iraq’s most senior Sunni Arab official, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq al-Hashemi, charging him with alleged involvement in “terrorism.”
Sunni Arab advantages
Following ISIL’s startling triumph in Mosul, many are asking why US training of Iraq’s security forces was not more effective. Yet, Maliki’s government cut short the hands-on, in-country work on the part of US advisors intended to complete that training — a major factor in the disappointing performance of government forces in Mosul. Another reason for the panic among Iraqi police and soldiers is rather sobering: in early fighting against ISIL and other jihadists by the Syrian Army, even elite, experienced Syrian units buckled in the face of such fanatical combatants.
Maliki also woefully underestimated Iraq’s Sunni Arabs (the same mistake made by the Bush administration in 2003 when it cast aside the Sunni Arab establishment and initially downplayed the insurgency). The challenge facing Iraqi government forces now is extremely dangerous: in heavy fighting during 2003-06, even US forces could not crush the post-invasion Sunni Arab insurgency.
The Sunni Arab minority had held sway over Iraq, politically and militarily, not only since independence in 1932 until Saddam Hussein’s fall, but far earlier during Iraq’s time as a province of the Sunni Ottoman Empire. So until Saddam was ousted, Sunni Arabs comprised most of the Iraqi officer corps and the army’s most elite formations. More broadly, as a ruling class, enhanced Sunni Arab access to wealth and education enabled them to dominate key professional fields and governance. Although out of power now, this community still represents a potent force, especially with its back to the wall in the face of grievances and exclusion.
Maliki needs to go
After years of spurning Sunni Arab cooperation, hounding Sunni Arabs out of governance, and turning Sunni Arabs into 2nd class citizens, Maliki is part of the problem, not the solution. Various pundits are urging that he make an “Awakening” like deal with Sunni Arab tribes, but his longstanding hostility toward the Sunni Arab community has left him badly discredited.
In the April 30 Iraqi parliamentary elections, Maliki made a strong showing, so a 3rd term as prime minister seems certain. Yet he was over 70 seats short of a majority, and has not yet succeeded in pulling together a coalition government.
In the current crisis, the largely Shi’a parties Maliki has partnered with in the past may rally around him instinctively. There is also, ironically, a misperception among many within Iraq’s majority Shi’a community that Maliki is the only reliable bulwark against Sunni Arab violence (despite his leading role in feeding it). By contrast, in recent years more savvy Kurdish leaders became increasingly concerned over Maliki’s polarizing policies — including problems with the Kurds over oil exports and territory.
Enter Iran?
The burning question now is: what can be done to take back ISIL’s gains. In response to ISIL’s seizure of Fallujah, the Obama administration provided drones, Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, stepped up delivery of combat aircraft, and additional intelligence. Clearly, that was not nearly enough. What is needed most at this point, with the Iraq Army sagging, are additional and more reliable “boots on the ground.” This, however, appears unlikely to happen in terms of the US or its most capable allies.
There is another possibility: Iranian intervention. Maliki’s government and the two dominant Kurdish militias in the KRG have close ties to Iran. While the US and other Western states have been concerned about Iranian influence in Iraq, ISIL’s gains have now alarmed Tehran. Just today, Iranian officials reflected this deep concern and called for the international community to address the crisis. The foreign ministry also indicated Iran’s willingness to assist Iraq in confronting “terrorism.”
In 1996, one Kurdish militia requested and received robust Iranian Revolutionary Guard intervention to help repel its leading rival. If ISIL and affiliated Sunni Arab combatants move against the KRG, or continue their advance south toward Baghdad advance, the KRG, Maliki, or both might feel compelled to request the commitment of Iranian ground forces.
This article was first published by LobeLog.
Photo: An undated image posted on a militant website in January shows fighters from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIL, marching in Raqqa, Syria.
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, [...]]]>
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 50th 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.
]]>Shortly after President Obama’s startling telephone conversation with Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a Saudi Arabian journalist wrote that “The phone call between Obama and Rouhani shocked the Gulf states, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, and other countries.” No matter which president initiated the call, he wrote, “What is important to know is what stands [...]]]>
Shortly after President Obama’s startling telephone conversation with Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a Saudi Arabian journalist wrote that “The phone call between Obama and Rouhani shocked the Gulf states, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, and other countries.” No matter which president initiated the call, he wrote, “What is important to know is what stands behind the conversation and how deep the ties are between America and Iran.”
Never mind that there are no “ties” between Washington and Tehran, let alone “deep” ones. His article reflected concern among Saudis that the United States might negotiate some wide-ranging settlement of its issues with Iran and that any such deal would automatically be detrimental to Saudi interests.
Such anxiety has surfaced in Riyadh many times over the past two decades, dating to Madeleine Albright’s unsuccessful efforts to reach out to Iran when she was secretary of state in Bill Clinton’s second term. No doubt many prominent Saudis share the journalist’s sentiment, not just in the ruling family but in the Sunni religious establishment. In their short-sighted view, regional security is a zero-sum game: if it benefits Iran, it must be bad for Saudi Arabia. To this group, as the authors of a major RAND Corp. study noted in 2009, “the prospect of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement (or even near-term coordination on Iraq) would appear to jeopardize the privileged position Riyadh has long enjoyed in Gulf affairs.”
Since that study appeared, Saudi antipathy to Iran has only increased. Iran’s growing influence in Iraq, its all-out support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and its perceived instigation of civil unrest in Bahrain have exacerbated Saudi anxieties and reinforced the kingdom’s determination to keep Iran isolated and economically constrained. At the same time, the Saudi perception that the United States abandoned Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, a longtime ally, and might do the same to them if regional circumstances changed, has led some Saudis to doubt the long-term reliability of the United States as anchor of the kingdom’s security. Their doubts were not alleviated when panelists at a Gulf security conference in Washington earlier this year projected a reversal of the regional alignment over the coming decade, with Iran emerging as more friendly to the United States and Saudi Arabia less so.
The Saudis have also been peeved about the inability of the United States to deliver on its commitment to a two-state solution that would end the Arab-Israeli conflict. That diplomatic stalemate has allowed Iran, which refuses to acknowledge Israel’s existence and openly supports Hezbollah, to present itself to the Arab world as the true champion of justice for the Palestinians, as opposed to the Saudis, who have offered a comprehensive plan for peace with Israel.
Furthermore, the Saudis went all-in to try to engineer the ouster of Assad, believing that they were in tune with U.S. policy. Now they may be feeling exposed as the United States and Russia appear to be pursuing a different course.
And it is certainly true that many of Saudi Arabia’s leading officials, including some diplomats in the foreign ministry, harbor a deep loathing for, and suspicion of, all things Shia. A softer U.S. line on Iran would not make those Saudis more comfortable in the bilateral relationship.
Moreover, the Rouhani initiative, assuming it is genuine rather than cosmetic, coincides with a growing realization in Saudi Arabia that the United States is becoming steadily less dependent on Gulf oil. Could the Obama administration’s announced shift of strategic resources to Asia presage a reduction of U.S. commitments in the Gulf? Senior U.S. officials say no: Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a few months ago that “You can take it to the bank” that the U.S. will maintain its posture in the Gulf for the foreseeable future.
Thus, recent reports of anxiety in Riyadh about a possible shift in relations between Washington and Tehran were predictable, and may well have some basis in fact.
But there are also Saudis who understand that a better relationship between Washington and Tehran might actually benefit the kingdom. After all, the two countries shared a strategic alignment with the United States before the Iranian revolution. In that era, Iran was far more powerful than Saudi Arabia militarily and economically, but the Saudis did not perceive it as a strategic threat, partly because it was influenced by the United States and partly because Saddam Hussein’s Iraq provided a protective buffer — a buffer that the United States dismantled with its invasion of Iraq a decade ago.
Even during the past decade, when tensions were high over Lebanon, Bahrain, Iraq and other issues, the Saudis and Iranians found ways to work cooperatively when it was in the interests of both countries. “Such calculations often take place independently of U.S. pressure or encouragement,” the RAND report noted, adding that in past times of tension with Washington the Saudis have been more flexible, rather than less so, in their regional rivalries.
“With the ‘moderation’ discourse strengthened during the presidency of recently elected Hassan Rouhani, pragmatism will be enhanced in Iran’s regional policy,” the columnist Kayhan Barzegar, an experienced analyst of Gulf affairs, predicted in the online magazine al-Monitor after Rouhani was inaugurated. “This development will weaken the existing ‘mutual threat’ perception between Iran and Saudi Arabia that is rooted primarily in the policies of both countries in response to regional issues. Such a development will also consequently strengthen relations between the two. Iran and Saudi Arabia are not interested in an intensification of sectarian or geostrategic regional rivalries. They are well aware that such rivalries will eventually be instrumentalized and used politically, draining energy from both sides. The result will be increased instability and growth of extremist trends in their backyard. Conflict between the two also provides an opportunity for other rival actors, such as Turkey and Qatar, to play an active role in regional issues at their expense, such as happened with the Syrian crisis, which is not currently welcomed by the Iranians or the Saudis.”
In fact, there are several ways in which a lessening of tensions between Iran and the United States could actually benefit Saudi Arabia. To achieve some form of rapprochement with the United States now, Iran would be required to forgo definitively any attempt to build or acquire nuclear weapons — a development that could hardly be depicted as detrimental to Saudi interests. The United States would also press Iran to curtail the aggressive policies that have destabilized the region for years. If Iran’s leaders truly want relief from international economic sanctions, they will have to persuade the countries that imposed them that they will be good neighbors to Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states. Would that not assuage some of the security concerns that have prompted Saudi Arabia to spend tens of billions of dollars on new U.S. weapons?
If Iran were to curtail its support for Hezbollah in order to improve relations with Washington and the West, it might forfeit its position as “more Arab than the Arabs” on the issue of Israel, another development that could be to Saudi Arabia’s advantage.
And Saudi Arabia’s Gulf neighbors such as Qatar might no longer feel the need to hedge their bets by keeping some distance between themselves and Saudi Arabia and maintaining correct relations with Iran, thus facilitating Saudi Arabia’s desire to exert the regional leadership to which it feels entitled.
On a visit to South Asia when she was secretary of state, Albright chided the Pakistanis for opposing a U.S. initiative to expand economic ties with India. The initiative was not aimed at undermining Pakistan, she said, and might actually be helpful if an expanding Indian economy brought greater cross-border trade.
The Pakistanis didn’t buy it, but that did not diminish the validity of her message. It might be useful now for Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry to explain to the Saudis that any deal with Iran will be a long time in the making and will not damage U.S. ties with Riyadh unless the Saudis want it that way.
– Thomas W. Lippman is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and author of Saudi Arabia on the Edge.
by Marsha B. Cohen
One of the more disconcerting developments in foreign policy discussions in the 21st century is that political satirists seem to be offering keener and more prescient assessments of the dilemmas involved than pundits and policy makers. Put somewhat less charitably, the cliches and conventions of foreign policy have [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
One of the more disconcerting developments in foreign policy discussions in the 21st century is that political satirists seem to be offering keener and more prescient assessments of the dilemmas involved than pundits and policy makers. Put somewhat less charitably, the cliches and conventions of foreign policy have become such a topic of mockery that it takes a comedy writer to get them right.
One classic case in point is from The Onion, published on Jan. 17, 2001, just before the first inauguration of George W. Bush as president. In the faux transcript of the soon-to-be-delivered speech, the incoming president assured the American people that “our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.”
During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.
“You better believe we’re going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration,” said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. “Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?”
Written nine months before the events of 9/11/2001 and a year before Bush’s (in)famous “Axis of Evil” State of the Union address, it’s difficult to see where The Onion missed any of the real events that would transpire during Bush’s two terms in its hyperbolic prognostications, days before he took office.
“We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two,” Bush said. “Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, but there’s much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation’s hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.”
About six weeks ago The Onion ran a piece on Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to bring Israeli and Palestinians together, headlined “Man Who Couldn’t Defeat George W. Bush Attempting to Resolve Israel Palestine Conflict”:
Arriving in the Middle East today for top-level negotiations with Palestinian and Israeli officials, a man who could not even devise a way to beat George W. Bush in a head-to-head vote will spend the next several days attempting to bring a peaceful resolution to the most intractable global conflict of the modern era, State Department sources confirmed. “We are confident that [this person who managed to win just 19 states against George W. Bush, even in the midst of two highly unpopular and costly foreign wars] will be able to establish a framework to bring about lasting peace in the Middle East…”
The Onion just posted a “commentary” in the form of an op-ed, purportedly by Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, titled So, What’s it Going to Be?
Well, here we are. It’s been two years of fighting, over 100,000 people are dead, there are no signs of this war ending, and a week ago I used chemical weapons on my own people. If you don’t do anything about it, thousands of Syrians are going to die. If you do something about it, thousands of Syrians are going to die. Morally speaking, you’re on the hook for those deaths no matter how you look at it.
So, it’s your move, America. What’s it going to be?
The amazingly astute commentaries on the paradoxes and perils of intervening in Syria presented on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart at the end of April were so far ahead of the mainstream media, that watching them now as military intervention is being debated by the punditocracy is both timely and terrifying. Segments such as Whose Line is It Anyway: Boots on the Ground? or “Assad but True” have retained their insight as well as their wit far better than the cliches and talking points on the nightly news. John McCain’s Syrian Photo Op, first broadcast on June 3, highlights the difficulties of figuring out and finding the Syrian rebels that the US ought to be arming in opposition to the Assad regime, a dilemma that still hasn’t been satisfactorily resolved.
Cartoonist Garry Trudeau, whose first Doonesbury comic strip was published in 1970, mocked the Orwellian doublespeak that accompanies the initiation and escalation of all wars since. One of my personal favorites was a comic strip just before or after the US invasion of Iraq (I’m not sure whether it was the first or second) that showed a spokesman at a news conference being asked how the US could be so certain Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The speaker held up a piece of paper: “We’ve got receipts!” In recent days, news headlines are finally revealing that the US not only knew that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons and nerve gas against Iran in the 1980s, but actively assisted Iraq by providing detailed intelligence on Iranian troop movements.
“The Borowitz Report” in The New Yorker has just weighed in on Syria, with Andy Borowitz’s sardonic but all too convincing headline Obama Promises Syria Strike Will Have No Objective:
Attempting to quell criticism of his proposal for a limited military mission in Syria, President Obama floated a more modest strategy today, saying that any U.S. action in Syria would have “no objective whatsoever.”
“Let me be clear,” he said in an interview on CNN. “Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave.”
“I want to reassure our allies and the people of Syria that what we are about to undertake, if we undertake it at all, will have no purpose or goal,” he said. “This is consistent with U.S. foreign policy of the past.”
The movement toward an attack on Syria — a precursor to, or stand-in for a war with Iran — seems to be increasingly regarded as inevitable — “not whether, but when” — gives a new and poignant meaning to “laughing till it hurts.”
- Comic Credit: The Oatmeal
]]>by Mark N. Katz
“Obama weighing limited strike on Syria,” reads the main headline of an August 27 Washington Post article. We still don’t know exactly what this will entail, but as this piece — and many other news reports — indicate, the operative word definitely appears to be: limited.
As authors [...]]]>
by Mark N. Katz
“Obama weighing limited strike on Syria,” reads the main headline of an August 27 Washington Post article. We still don’t know exactly what this will entail, but as this piece — and many other news reports — indicate, the operative word definitely appears to be: limited.
As authors Karen De Young and Anne Gearan explain, the action that the Obama administration is contemplating “is designed more to send a message than to cripple Assad’s military and change the balance of forces on the ground.” In other words, after warning last year that the use of chemical weapons is a “red line” that the Assad regime must not cross, President Barack Obama feels that he must respond if (as appears increasingly likely) the Assad regime has used them against its own citizens. But he wants to do as little as possible for fear of getting the US involved in another fractious Middle Eastern conflict.
If this is indeed the sort of attack on Syria that the president is contemplating, it is not likely to be very effective. Bashar al-Assad is not only willing to kill his opponents; he will sacrifice his supporters as well. If the US-led retaliation to his alleged recent use of chemical weapons is just one that targets some of his military facilities, that is a cost that Assad will be willing to pay. Indeed, it may encourage him to launch even more chemical weapons attacks due to the belief that while US retaliation may be annoying, it will not threaten the survival of his regime or its advantages vis-à-vis his opponents.
The White House should not forget that there is precedent for something like this. Between the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 and the US-led intervention against Iraq in 2003, the US launched numerous, small-scale attacks against Iraq in retaliation for Saddam Hussein’s many misdeeds. These did not succeed in improving his behavior much.
Nor will limited (there’s that word again) strikes against Syria improve Assad’s behavior. If the Obama administration seriously wishes to alter Assad’s ways, then it must attack or threaten to attack that which he values most: his and his regime’s survival. It is not clear, of course, that Assad will change course even if he is personally threatened. But it is only if he is eliminated, or appears likely to be, that elements within his security services concerned primarily about their own survival and prosperity will have the opportunity to reach an accommodation with some of the regime’s opponents, neighboring states and the West.
Threatening Assad’s survival is what is needed to attenuate the links between Assad and the forces that are protecting him. Undoubtedly riven with internal rivalries (something that dictators encourage for fear that their subordinates will otherwise collaborate with one another against them), the downfall of Assad — actual or believed to be imminent — is what will open the door for some in the security services to save themselves through cooperating with the regime’s opponents. Absent this condition, it is simply too risky for them to turn against their master and his other supporters — who are ever on the lookout for signs of disloyalty.
So far, though, the Obama administration has taken pains to signal that it is not going to threaten the Assad leadership. This seems very odd. It did, after all, kill Osama bin Laden when it could have captured (and possibly gained a treasure trove of intelligence from) him instead. The Obama administration has also launched an aggressive drone missile campaign against Al Qaeda targets in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere. But however heinous the actions of these terrorists have been, they have killed far fewer people than Assad and his henchmen.
The Obama administration may be reluctant to target Assad because he is a head of state. But whether for this reason or any other, the result of Washington’s self-restraint will be that Assad remains free to kill more and more of his own citizens.
An American attack on Syria does indeed need to be limited — limited to Assad.
]]>Considering the misleading claims made about non-existent Iraqi and Iranian nuclear weapons, and the ramifications of another costly and catastrophic war, there should be more analyses like Scott Peterson’s highlighting of lessons from the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
A declassified January 2006 report published in [...]]]>
Considering the misleading claims made about non-existent Iraqi and Iranian nuclear weapons, and the ramifications of another costly and catastrophic war, there should be more analyses like Scott Peterson’s highlighting of lessons from the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
A declassified January 2006 report published in September by the indispensable National Security Archive shows that CIA analysts allowed their search for non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to overshadow Saddam Hussein’s reasons for bluffing about them. Peterson accordingly suggests that Iranian attempts to eradicate traces of what appears to be previous weapons work (halted in 2003, according to the 2007 NIE), could be a face-saving measure rather than evidence of malicious intent. Increasing “scrutiny and distrust” directed at Iraq also led to counterproductive activities from both sides:
But that Iranian refusal – while at the same time engaging in “substantial” landscaping of the site, which the IAEA says undermines its ability to inspect it for traces of past nuclear work – echoes many Iraqi weapons inspections in the 1990s. In those standoffs, Iraqi officials often behaved as if they had something to hide, when in fact they did not.
As the CIA’s 2006 assessment states, “Iraq’s intransigence and deceptive practices during the periods of UN inspections between 1991 and 2003 deepened suspicions … that Baghdad had ongoing WMD programs.”
The CIA further notes that Iraqi attempts “to find face-saving means to disclose previously hidden information” meant that Iraqi attempts later to “close the books” only “reinvigorated the hunt for concealed WMD, as analysts perceived that Iraq had both the intent and capability to continue WMD efforts.…”
This led Iraq to one conclusion, similar to the public declarations of Iranian leaders today: “When Iraq’s revelations were met by added UN scrutiny and distrust, frustrated Iraqi leaders deepened their belief that inspections were politically motivated and would not lead to the end of sanctions,” read the CIA report.
Some analysts have dared to suggest that Iranian attempts to remove traces of halted weapons work is ultimately a positive sign. Consider the assessment of MIT international security expert Jim Walsh, who focuses on Iran’s nuclear program, talking about Parchin last week at a conference in Washington last week:
]]>So I think they had a weapons program; they shut it down. I think part of what was happening was at Parchin, this gigantic military base that the IAEA visited, but because it’s so large, they went to this building and not that building and that sort of thing. Then they get – IAEA gets some intel that says, well, we think the explosives work was being done in this building, and, you know, all this time, Iran’s being – Parchin’s being watched by satellites continuously, and there’s no activity there. Nothing for five years, right? And then – or – not five years, but some period of time – years.
So then, the IAEA says, well, we want to go to that building, and then suddenly, there’s a whole lot of activity. You know, there’s cartons put up and shoveling and scalping of soil and all that sort of thing. So I read this as – that was a facility involved in the bomb program, and they’re cleaning it up, and IAEA is not going to get on the ground until it’s cleaned up. Now here’s the part where I’m practical and blunt – I don’t care. Right? This is part of a program from the past. And I wish they didn’t have the program from the past, but I’m more worried about Iran’s nuclear status in the future than the past, and so, you know, if it’s dead, and all they’re doing is cleaning it up so there’s no evidence of what they did before, I – you know, it’s regretful and blah, blah, but I don’t care. I would rather get a deal that prevents Iran from moving forward towards a nuclear weapon or moving forward so that we don’t have a military engagement that leads to a nuclear weapons decision by Iran.