Category Archives: US Middle East Politics

Syria, Iran and the Balance of Power in the Middle East

Posted on November 22, 2011 | Comments Off on Syria, Iran and the Balance of Power in the Middle East

November 22, 2011

By George Friedman

U.S. troops are in the process of completing their withdrawal from Iraq by the end-of-2011 deadline. We are now moving toward a reckoning with the consequences. The reckoning concerns the potential for a massive shift in the balance of power in the region, with Iran moving from a fairly marginal power to potentially a dominant power. As the process unfolds, the United States and Israel are making countermoves. We have discussed all of this extensively. Questions remain whether these countermoves will stabilize the region and whether or how far Iran will go in its response.

Iran has been preparing for the U.S. withdrawal. While it is unreasonable simply to say that Iran will dominate Iraq, it is fair to say Tehran will have tremendous influence in Baghdad to the point of being able to block Iraqi initiatives Iran opposes. This influence will increase as the U.S. withdrawal concludes and it becomes clear there will be no sudden reversal in the withdrawal policy. Iraqi politicians’ calculus must account for the nearness of Iranian power and the increasing distance and irrelevance of American power.

Resisting Iran under these conditions likely would prove ineffective and dangerous. Some, like the Kurds, believe they have guarantees from the Americans and that substantial investment in Kurdish oil by American companies means those commitments will be honored. A look at the map, however, shows how difficult it would be for the United States to do so. The Baghdad regime has arrested Sunni leaders while the Shia, not all of whom are pro-Iranian by any means, know the price of overenthusiastic resistance.

Syria and Iran
The situation in Syria complicates all of this. The minority Alawite sect has dominated the Syrian government since 1970, when the current president’s father – who headed the Syrian air force – staged a coup. The Alawites are a heterodox Muslim sect related to a Shiite offshoot and make up about 7 percent of the country’s population, which is mostly Sunni. The new Alawite government was Nasserite in nature, meaning it was secular, socialist and built around the military. When Islam rose as a political force in the Arab world, the Syrians – alienated from the Sadat regime in Egypt – saw Iran as a bulwark. The Iranian Islamist regime gave the Syrian secular regime immunity against Shiite fundamentalists in Lebanon. The Iranians also gave Syria support in its external adventures in Lebanon, and more important, in its suppression of Syria’s Sunni majority.

Syria and Iran were particularly aligned in Lebanon. In the early 1980s, after the Khomeini revolution, the Iranians sought to increase their influence in the Islamic world by supporting radical Shiite forces. Hezbollah was one of these. Syria had invaded Lebanon in 1975 on behalf of the Christians and opposed the Palestine Liberation Organization, to give you a sense of the complexity. Syria regarded Lebanon as historically part of Syria, and sought to assert its influence over it. Via Iran, Hezbollah became an instrument of Syrian power in Lebanon.

Iran and Syria, therefore, entered a long-term if not altogether stable alliance that has lasted to this day. In the current unrest in Syria, the Saudis and Turks in addition to the Americans all have been hostile to the regime of President Bashar al Assad. Iran is the one country that on the whole has remained supportive of the current Syrian government.

There is good reason for this. Prior to the uprising, the precise relationship between Syria and Iran was variable. Syria was able to act autonomously in its dealings with Iran and Iran’s proxies in Lebanon. While an important backer of groups like Hezbollah, the al Assad regime in many ways checked Hezbollah’s power in Lebanon, with the Syrians playing the dominant role there. The Syrian uprising has put the al Assad regime on the defensive, however, making it more interested in a firm, stable relationship with Iran. Damascus finds itself isolated in the Sunni world, with Turkey and the Arab League against it. Iran – and intriguingly, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki – have constituted al Assad’s exterior support.

Thus far al Assad has resisted his enemies. Though some mid- to low-ranking Sunnis have defected, his military remains largely intact; this is because the Alawites control key units. Events in Libya drove home to an embattled Syrian leadership – and even to some of its adversaries within the military – the consequences of losing. The military has held together, and an unarmed or poorly armed populace, no matter how large, cannot defeat an intact military force. The key for those who would see al Assad fall is to divide the military.

If al Assad survives – and at the moment, wishful thinking by outsiders aside, he is surviving – Iran will be the big winner. If Iraq falls under substantial Iranian influence, and the al Assad regime – isolated from most countries but supported by Tehran – survives in Syria, then Iran could emerge with a sphere of influence stretching from western Afghanistan to the Mediterranean (the latter via Hezbollah). Achieving this would not require deploying Iranian conventional forces – al Assad’s survival alone would suffice. However, the prospect of a Syrian regime beholden to Iran would open up the possibility of the westward deployment of Iranian forces, and that possibility alone would have significant repercussions.

Consider the map were this sphere of influence to exist. The northern borders of Saudi Arabia and Jordan would abut this sphere, as would Turkey’s southern border. It remains unclear, of course, just how well Iran could manage this sphere, e.g., what type of force it could project into it. Maps alone will not provide an understanding of the problem. But they do point to the problem. And the problem is the potential – not certain – creation of a block under Iranian influence that would cut through a huge swath of strategic territory.

It should be remembered that in addition to Iran’s covert network of militant proxies, Iran’s conventional forces are substantial. While they could not confront U.S. armored divisions and survive, there are no U.S. armored divisions on the ground between Iran and Lebanon. Iran’s ability to bring sufficient force to bear in such a sphere increases the risks to the Saudis in particular. Iran’s goal is to increase the risk such that Saudi Arabia would calculate that accommodation is more prudent than resistance. Changing the map can help achieve this.

It follows that those frightened by this prospect – the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – would seek to stymie it. At present, the place to block it no longer is Iraq, where Iran already has the upper hand. Instead, it is Syria. And the key move in Syria is to do everything possible to bring about al Assad’s overthrow.

In the last week, the Syrian unrest appeared to take on a new dimension. Until recently, the most significant opposition activity appeared to be outside of Syria, with much of the resistance reported in the media coming from externally based opposition groups. The degree of effective opposition was never clear. Certainly, the Sunni majority opposes and hates the al Assad regime. But opposition and emotion do not bring down a regime consisting of men fighting for their lives. And it wasn’t clear that the resistance was as strong as the outside propaganda claimed.

Last week, however, the Free Syrian Army – a group of Sunni defectors operating out of Turkey and Lebanon – claimed defectors carried out organized attacks on government facilities, ranging from an air force intelligence facility (a particularly sensitive point given the history of the regime) to Baath Party buildings in the greater Damascus area. These were not the first attacks claimed by the FSA, but they were heavily propagandized in the past week. Most significant about the attacks is that, while small-scale and likely exaggerated, they revealed that at least some defectors were willing to fight instead of defecting and staying in Turkey or Lebanon.

It is interesting that an apparent increase in activity from armed activists – or the introduction of new forces – occurred at the same time relations between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other were deteriorating. The deterioration began with charges that an Iranian covert operation to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States had been uncovered, followed by allegations by the Bahraini government of Iranian operatives organizing attacks in Bahrain. It proceeded to an International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s progress toward a nuclear device, followed by the Nov. 19 explosion at an Iranian missile facility that the Israelis have not-so-quietly hinted was their work. Whether any of these are true, the psychological pressure on Iran is building and appears to be orchestrated.

Of all the players in this game, Israel’s position is the most complex. Israel has had a decent, albeit covert, working relationship with the Syrians going back to their mutual hostility toward Yasser Arafat. For Israel, Syria has been the devil they know. The idea of a Sunni government controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood on their northeastern frontier was frightening; they preferred al Assad. But given the shift in the regional balance of power, the Israeli view is also changing. The Sunni Islamist threat has weakened in the past decade relative to the Iranian Shiite threat. Playing things forward, the threat of a hostile Sunni force in Syria is less worrisome than an emboldened Iranian presence on Israel’s northern frontier. This explains why the architects of Israel’s foreign policy, such as Defense Minister Ehud Barak, have been saying that we are seeing an “acceleration toward the end of the regime.” Regardless of its preferred outcome, Israel cannot influence events inside Syria. Instead, Israel is adjusting to a reality where the threat of Iran reshaping the politics of the region has become paramount.

Iran is, of course, used to psychological campaigns. We continue to believe that while Iran might be close to a nuclear device that could explode underground under carefully controlled conditions, its ability to create a stable, robust nuclear weapon that could function outside a laboratory setting (which is what an underground test is) is a ways off. This includes being able to load a fragile experimental system on a delivery vehicle and expecting it to explode. It might. It might not. It might even be intercepted and create a casus belli for a counterstrike.

The main Iranian threat is not nuclear. It might become so, but even without nuclear weapons, Iran remains a threat. The current escalation originated in the American decision to withdraw from Iraq and was intensified by events in Syria. If Iran abandoned its nuclear program tomorrow, the situation would remain as complex. Iran has the upper hand, and the United States, Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all are looking at how to turn the tables.

At this point, they appear to be following a two-pronged strategy: Increase pressure on Iran to make it recalculate its vulnerability, and bring down the Syrian government to limit the consequences of Iranian influence in Iraq. Whether the Syrian regime can be brought down is problematic. Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi would have survived if NATO hadn’t intervened. NATO could intervene in Syria, but Syria is more complex than Libya. Moreover, a second NATO attack on an Arab state designed to change its government would have unintended consequences, no matter how much the Arabs fear the Iranians at the moment. Wars are unpredictable; they are not the first option.

Therefore the likely solution is covert support for the Sunni opposition funneled through Lebanon and possibly Turkey and Jordan. It will be interesting to see if the Turks participate. Far more interesting will be seeing whether this works. Syrian intelligence has penetrated its Sunni opposition effectively for decades. Mounting a secret campaign against the regime would be difficult, and its success by no means assured. Still, that is the next move.

But it is not the last move. To put Iran back into its box, something must be done about the Iraqi political situation. Given the U.S. withdrawal, Washington has little influence there. All of the relationships the United States built were predicated on American power protecting the relationships. With the Americans gone, the foundation of those relationships dissolves. And even with Syria, the balance of power is shifting.

The United States has three choices. Accept the evolution and try to live with what emerges. Attempt to make a deal with Iran – a very painful and costly one. Or go to war. The first assumes Washington can live with what emerges. The second depends on whether Iran is interested in dealing with the United States. The third depends on having enough power to wage a war and to absorb Iran’s retaliatory strikes, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz. All are dubious, so toppling al Assad is critical. It changes the game and the momentum. But even that is enormously difficult and laden with risks.

We are now in the final act of Iraq, and it is even more painful than imagined. Laying this alongside the European crisis makes the idea of a systemic crisis in the global system very real.

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Posted in Iran, Iran-Syria, Israel, Middle East Geopolitics, Syria, Syrian Opposition, Turkey-Syria, US Middle East Politics, US-Syria

Syria uprising victim of outside game

Posted on November 15, 2011 | Comments Off on Syria uprising victim of outside game
By Ramzy Baroud

Mon Nov 14, 2011 8:52PM GMT
Syrians continue to be victimized, not only in violent clashes with the Syrian military, but also by regional and international players with various agendas.

Protests in Syria began on January 26, and a more inclusive uprising was set in motion on March 15. The initial demand was for serious political reforms, but this was eventually raised to a demand for full regime change, encompassing the unconditional departure of President Bashar al-Assad and his Baath Party, which has ruled Syria for decades.

Soon, there was a deadlock. The uprising failed to weaken the links between the regime, army and other security agencies. It also remained confined to areas outside the two most populated cities, Damascus, in the southwest, and Aleppo in the north. On the other hand, protests seemed extensive and prevalent enough to reflect a real sense of outrage at government practices, which grew with the reported deaths of Syrians all over the country. Despite a relentless military crackdown, and the killing of 3500 Syrians (according to a recent UN human rights office report), the government has not been able to quell the uprising, nor to provide a convincing political initiative that could spare Syria further bloodletting.

It could be argued that the impasse originated in Syria’s own political culture, espoused by the Baath Party’s legacy of shunning dialogue in times of crisis. More, those who ultimately designated themselves as Syria’s opposition remain largely divided, and often seemed to provide conflicting roadmaps for achieving democracy.

Earlier revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt were spared the terrible fate of people’s priorities becoming merely another agenda item to be decided by outside powers. Both revolutions had quickly reached the critical mass required to topple their dictators, denying outsiders the chance of meddling in the outcome. The situation in Syria, however, developed at a different pace. The uprising lacked the full support of the urban middle class. The army neither broke away from the ruling party, nor remained neutral. Additionally, months of violence – in which a successful Western military intervention in Libya toppled the regime of Mummer Ghaddafi – provided outside powers with the needed time to position themselves as the caretakers of Syria’s future. In other words, a popular uprising was decidedly hijacked and is currently being managed from Western and Arab capitals.

It was as though ordinary Syrians began realizing that their vision of achieving revolution from within was futile, and they bought into the illusion that only outside intervention could bring lasting change. These voices were emboldened by members of the Syrian National Council – seen as the lead opposition to the Baath regime – whose behavior seemed to model that of the Libyan National Transitional Council. The latter had blithely welcomed NATO to Libya, initially to ‘protect civilians’ from possible Libyan army retaliation, but eventually to carry out an airstrikes campaign that largely increased the number of deaths in Libya.

Adopting a model that rationalizes foreign intervention – which is incapable of exacting change without extreme violence – will bode horrible consequences for the Syrian people and the whole region. With the Syrian government failing to win the trust of large segments of the Syrian population, the opposition’s growing dependency on outside forces, and some Arab media networks fanning the flames of sectarianism and civil war, the Syrian deadlock is morphing into something even more dangerous: a Lebanon-style civil war or a Libyan-style foreign military intervention.

The fate of Syria is no longer likely to be influenced by the Syrian people themselves, nor by their government. All eyes are now on the United States. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton tried to clarify the US position in her recent comments. In the case of Libya, NATO and Arab countries banded together “to protect civilians and help people liberate their country without a single American life lost,” she said. But in other cases, as in Syria, “to achieve that same goal, we would have to act alone, at a much greater cost, with far greater risks and perhaps even with troops on the ground.” For now, according to Clinton, US priorities in the region would have to remain focused on “our fight against al-Qaeda; defense of our allies; and a secure supply of energy” (The Washington Post, November 7).

Russia and China, worried that another US regime change venture could jeopardize their interests in the region, remain steadfast behind Damascus and critical of the factions that oppose the Assad regime. “We are concerned with news of ongoing aggression by extremist gunmen such as those which took place in Homs, Hama and Idlib in recent days with the provocative aim of forcing security agencies and the army in Syria to retaliate, and then launching a campaign via international media outlets,” said Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov in a recent statement (The Lebanese Daily Star, November 11).

The lines are thus drawn, between US-led Western camp and Russia and its own camp, which vehemently rejects a repeat of a Libyan scenario in a volatile region of unmatched geopolitical significance.

Whatever the outcome of this tussle, the Syrian uprising is increasingly being deprived of its own initiative. Currently, the issue of Syria is being entrusted to the Arab League, which lacks both credibility (since it is too divided between regional interests) and any history of successful political initiatives. On November 2, Syria announced that it had agreed to an Arab League plan which called for the withdrawal of security forces from the streets, the release of prisoners and talks with the opposition.

However, it is very probable that some Arab countries are keen to employ the league in a similar fashion to the way it was used with the war on Libya: a mere springboard that eventually allowed NATO’s war to take place. Signs of such a scenario are becoming clearer, especially following the league’s vote to suspend Syria’s membership on November 12. Indeed, In a New York Times editorial on November 8, the role of the Arabs seems to be confined to just that. The Arab League “should eject Syria and urge the United Nations Security Council to condemn Mr. Assad and impose international sanctions against the regime,” the Times counseled. “Russia and China will find it harder to block a Security Council resolution – as they did in October – if the Arab world calls for action that goes beyond the sanctions already imposed by the United States and Europe.”

And so the saga continues. If Syria doesn’t wrestle its fate from the hands of these self-serving forces, the Syrian uprising and Syria as a whole will continue to be marred by uncertainties and foreboding possibilities.

– Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), available on Amazon.com.

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Posted in Middle East Geopolitics, US Middle East Politics

Arab Spring, American winter

Posted on November 12, 2011 | Comments Off on Arab Spring, American winter

By Aaron David Miller- November 13, 2011 –

All  Gaule was divided into three parts, Julius Caesar wrote in his “De Bello Gallico.” For America, the Arab world had been divided into two: adversarial and acquiescent Arab authoritarians.

Until now.

The last eight months have witnessed profound changes. The willing and unwilling Arab autocrats have gone or are going the way of the dodo.

What remains — Arab states without strong and authoritative leaders and caught up in lengthy, messy transitions, monarchies trying to co-opt and preempt transformational change (Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Jordan); and nonstate actors still at war with themselves (Hezbollah and the Palestinians) — guarantees a turbulent and complex environment for the United States. Few offer a hook on which to hang a set of American policies now broadly unpopular throughout the region.

The long arc of the Arab Spring may yet bring more transparency, accountability, gender equality and, yes, even some semblance of real democracy. But the short term all but guarantees a much less hospitable and forbidding place for America, whose credibility has shrunk.

For 50 years, America dealt with two kinds of Arab leaders: the adversarials (Syria, Libya and Iraq) and the acquiescents (Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan and a few key Persian Gulf states). At times, each of the adversarials also played the role of partners for brief periods: Iraq against Iran; Syria on the peace process; Libya on giving up WMD in exchange for an end to its pariah status. But leopards really do not change their spots. The violent ends of Saddam Hussein, Moammar Kadafi and perhaps at some point even the younger Bashar Assad make the case.

For the most part, these Arab authoritarians guaranteed a relatively stable and predictable region in which U.S. interests thrived: successful containment of the former Soviet Union, access to oil at fair prices, security for Israel, close relations with the acquiescents and even progress on Arab-Israeli peacemaking. This left America with a role it understood and could play rather well.

It wasn’t pretty, of course. There was that pesky Arab-Israeli conflict that drove a handful of wars, oil shocks, an Iranian revolution and Islamic extremism, and a few self-inflicted disasters such as Operation Iraqi Freedom. But by and large, the U.S. got by, its prestige high with acquiescent autocrats and low with their publics.

And why not? America had cut the devil’s bargain: In exchange for giving the friendly autocrats a pass on governance and human rights (and at times reaching out to the adversarials), it was able to enlist their cooperation on a range of issues. But Washington may now find itself in the strange position of getting neither democracy nor stability. America’s stock is lower than it’s ever been, its partners are gone, along with the familiar bad guys, and it’s not at all clear who or what will take the place of those partners. We confront not just an Arab Spring but an array of uncertainties complex enough to run many years to come.

Tunisia, where it all began, appropriately offers the best chance for a working democracy, in part because it’s small and largely irrelevant. In Egypt and Libya, where hopes have been high, you have to wonder. The former is less free, prosperous and secure than it was under Hosni Mubarak and is likely heading for a future like Turkey — but two decades ago. Libya, a country the size of Alaska with only 6 million people and a lot of oil money, should do well. But it isn’t Western Europe. Rival militias, Islamist radicals, outside meddling and just the lack of traditions and experience in self-governance guarantee that Libya will be a long slog.

Elsewhere, matters look a lot worse. In Syria, nobody has a clue: The scenarios run from more of the same to civil war to an Alawite coup against the Assads — even the possibility (now don’t shoot me) of some kind of external military intervention should the bloodletting rise exponentially. We can be pretty confident that whatever transpires, it will be long, complex and bloody. Yemen, which most people (including myself) don’t really understand, is equally opaque. But dollars to doughnuts that won’t be a polity of which Thomas Jefferson would have been proud.

Strange as it seems, the monarchies may well have the best shot at avoiding these kind of painful transitions. Where in varying degrees money, legitimacy from Islam and some enlightened leadership combine (Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Oman), reckonings have been averted. For how long is unclear. At some point, if they’re not smart on reform — and even if they are — the bell may toll for the kings too.

I know that people say, be patient, the arc of the Arab Spring is long and potentially a happy one. And for the Arabs, that may well be true. They are seizing control of their destiny and they will be allowed — as they should be, finally — to make their own beds.

But for America, it may not be such a happy experience. Our policies, opposed from one end of this region to the other, are unlikely to change. Our capacity to succeed at war and peacemaking — the real measure of respect and admiration (Libya notwithstanding ) — has diminished along with our street cred. We can’t solve the Palestinian issue, can’t stop Iran from getting the bomb, can’t find a way to achieve victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are still caught up in the devil’s bargain with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

We resemble more a modern-day Gulliver tied up by tiny tribes and by our own illusions than a smart, tough and fair superpower.

If we could disengage and spend more time and resources on our own broken house, we should; but alas, we can’t. And therein lies the conundrum for America today: stuck in a region (with fewer friends) we can’t fix or walk away from.

Aaron David Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, served as a Middle East negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations. He is the author of “Can America Have Another Great President?” to be published in 2012.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

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Posted in Middle East Geopolitics, US Middle East Politics

US draws down in Iraq, and Baghdad takes the reins

Posted on November 2, 2011 | Comments Off on US draws down in Iraq, and Baghdad takes the reins

Tony Karon—

Nov 2, 2011 –

Washington’s neocons would have you believe that the US president, Barack Obama, will serve up Iraq on a plate to a hungry Iran when he withdraws all US troops at the end of this year.

And Mr Obama’s camp seems concerned to counter this charge, with an election a year away. Officials are warning Iran against “interference” in Iraq, and The New York Times reports that to counter Iran, the US will increase its troop numbers and naval strength in the Gulf after the Iraq withdrawal.

The posturing about Iran is, of course, largely for domestic consumption. Mr Obama’s critics are misguided in believing that the US troop presence limits Iranian influence in Iraq, and they are also directing their complaint to the wrong address: It was not President Obama who decided to leave Iraq; he is required to do so under the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by his predecessor in November 2008.

But if the Republicans are really looking for one man to blame for the US withdrawal it is neither President George W Bush nor Mr Obama, but Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric. He is the man who made sure key decisions about the country’s future were taken democratically, by Iraqis rather than by Americans.

Paul Bremer, the American viceroy best remembered for the epic blunder of summarily dissolving the Iraqi military, fell a foul of Ayatollah Sistani in 2003 when he proposed three years of government by Iraqis hand-picked by the US, who would also write the new constitution.

 

The cleric – who refused ever to meet US officials lest he be deemed to be sanctifying the occupation – issued a fatwa from Najaf, dismissing Mr Bremer’s plan as “fundamentally unacceptable” and insisting that Iraqis democratically elect the body that would draw up a new constitution.

Mr Bremer, seized by the heady arrogance of Bush-era empire-building, hoped to overrule Mr Sistani. But by the end of 2003, with tens of thousands of Iraqis demonstrating in support of the Ayatollah’s decree, it became clear that even Mr Bremer’s hand-picked Iraqi Governing Council would buckle to the election demand.

The US couldn’t very well take to the streets to fight the same Iraqis it claimed to have liberated, and Mr Bremer was forced to back down. The US transferred sovereignty in 2004 and the first election was held the following January. It returned a Shiite-dominated government closer to Iran than to Washington, as did the second election, a year later (although Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki retains his independence from both Tehran and Washington).

The idea that US troops somehow diminish Iranian influence in Iraq is hard to take seriously. Iran certainly had an agenda in Iraq; it was determined to see a friendly government replace Saddam Hussein, its most reviled and dangerous enemy, and so avoid any repeat of the disastrous eight-year war waged by Saddam against the Iranians in the 1980s. And given Iran’s long-standing ties with Shiite parties in Iraq, the most effective means for achieving Iran’s objective may well have been Iraqi democracy – the Shiites, on whom it could count for friendly ties, were after all an electoral majority.

 

So, Iran deepened political, economic and religious ties with Iraq’s Shiites. It provided financial support to its political and religious allies, and military training and supplies to Shiite militias that were fighting the US and were also engaged in vicious sectarian warfare against Iraqi Sunnis.

Iran built this influence despite the presence of up to 170,000 American troops – and it used that influence to help press for the departure of US forces.

If anything, the departure of US forces removes the key pretext for Iran backing Shiite militia groups, of which Mr Maliki would like to be rid. But the possibility of escalating proxy warfare between Iran and Saudi Arabia might see such support maintained.

In the unlikely event that Iran invaded Iraq after the American withdrawal, it would find plenty of Arab Shiites ready to fight their Persian Shiite neighbours – as they did during the 1980s war. The interests of men like Mr Maliki and Muqtada Al Sadr may coincide with those of Iran at times but these men remain, at heart, fierce Iraqi nationalists.

Mr Bremer’s plan had implied that the Iraqis weren’t quite ready for democracy, but Ayatollah Sistani turned the question on its head, asking if the Americans were ready to abide by the election results.

To its credit, the US has done so. In 2008, when Mr Bush began negotiating a new Status of Forces Agreement, he envisaged an open- ended stay, and wanted the Iraqis to agree to 50 permanent US bases in the country. The Iraqis walked him back, setting the December 31, 2011 withdrawal deadline and rejecting permanent bases.

US officials still hoped that the Iraqis could be pressed to accept a couple of US divisions staying behind, but the Iraqis declined.

The US will certainly retain a substantial presence, with thousands of security contractors on the staff of its 17,000-person embassy in Baghdad and hundreds of soldiers in training capacities, to say nothing of covert operations.

Many perils lie ahead. Some of the Shiite militias may escalate attacks on US troops to make it look as if their military efforts drove the Americans out. But Iraqis know it was their government – Iraqi public opinion, as expressed through the democratic process – that forced the Americans to accept their terms. And if the Iraqis could prevail over the world’s last superpower, they’re unlikely to become a cat’s paw for the lesser regional hegemon next door.

American leaders like to tell their counterparts in newly democratic societies that the iron test of democracy is whether leaders accept defeat at the polls. That’s exactly what they’ve had to do in Iraq.

Tony Karon is an analyst based in New York. Follow him on Twitter @Tony Karon

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Posted in Iran, Iraq, Middle East Geopolitics, US Middle East Politics

Why Contain Iran When Its Own Aims Will Do Just That?

Posted on November 1, 2011 | Comments Off on Why Contain Iran When Its Own Aims Will Do Just That?
By Vali Nasr – Oct 31, 2011

Iran is once again in America’s cross hairs. Even before the allegations of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, concerns about Iran were high, with an impending U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq possibly leading to increased Iranian influence there. U.S. opinion and decision makers are expanding their estimate of Iran’s adventurousness and calling for new containment measures.

In both exercises, there is room for misjudgment. In fact, Iran has not become more ambitious of late; rather, its aspirations have been underestimated. As for attempting to rein in Iran, that could prove both counterproductive and unnecessary.

Until recently, the U.S. government regarded Iran as subdued, weakened and relatively isolated. There was considerable evidence for this view. Iran’s leadership is deeply divided. Its economy is reeling as a result of economic sanctions, which have reduced trade and therefore contact with the Arab world.

What’s more, Iran’s standing in the Middle East appeared to be declining after the Arab Spring. The “Arab street,” once enamored with Iran’s bluster, is now turned off by the country’s suppression of dissent at home and its support for the oppressive Syrian regime. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad put down a growing uprising. The possibility of a collapse of the Assad regime threatens to confound Iran’s plans for regional domination. Syria is Iran’s main Arab ally and its conduit for aid to Hezbollah, the militant, Islamist Lebanese group that Iran has used as a proxy to menace Israel, the U.S., Lebanon itself and others.

A Different View

From Tehran, however, the situation looks quite different. For one thing, Iran is not as worried about losing sway in a post-Assad Syria as many in the West think. Iran calculates that until Syria gets back the Golan Heights, a plateau captured by Israel in the 1967 war, any government in Damascus will need Hezbollah as a force to pressure Israel. And with Hezbollah comes Iranian influence.

Iran’s leaders are clearly preparing for the possibility of Assad’s fall. Even while claiming nefarious outsiders are fomenting the unrest in Syria, they have begun to add veiled criticisms of the regime’s brutal crackdown, an obvious means of pandering to the street.

What’s more, Iran’s leaders perceive that it is the U.S. position, not theirs, that has weakened in the region. They see U.S. troops withdrawing precipitously from both Iraq and Afghanistan; U.S. relations with Pakistan turning ever more sour; and Arab dictators who have been propped up by America for years under threat or already gone. The brazen nature of the Washington assassination plot supports the idea that Iran sees the U.S. as soft.

Given this perception, Iran is asserting itself. In the past two years, it has eschewed serious engagement with the U.S. on the Iranian nuclear program, Afghanistan or anything else. Rebuffing the U.S. idea of a hot line to avoid conflict in the Persian Gulf, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, Iran’s navy commander said, “The presence of the U.S. in the Persian Gulf is illegitimate and makes no sense.”

Fill the Void

Iran’s goals are to hasten the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq and fill the void left behind. Iran has increased its outreach to the Taliban and is pushing to complete a project to supply natural gas to Pakistan through a pipeline connecting the two countries. In Iraq, it has supported stepped-up attacks by the Iranian-backed Shiite resistance and is talking about having an expanded role after the Americans leave, for instance by volunteering to train the military. Iran is also exploring diplomatic relations with Egypt, which it has not had in years.

In this U.S. election season, presidential candidates will be tempted to propose strategies to contain Iran’s aspirations. To be seriously effective, such plans would require Arab countries as well as Russia and China, major trading partners of Iran, to sign on to a concerted policy of isolating the country. That’s unlikely to happen, given the Arab world’s preoccupation with Libya and Syria and the eagerness of Russia and China to do business with Iran.

Moreover, if the U.S. confronts Iran directly, it would probably work to the advantage of Iranian leaders, allowing them to divert attention from domestic woes such as inflation, unemployment and the embarrassing alienation between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The U.S. should not hand them that opportunity.

The alternative is to let Iran’s ambitious regional strategy play out. So far, it hasn’t gone so well. Iran has clashed over Syria with Turkey, which is hosting anti-Assad forces. And Iran’s strained relations with the other big Mideast power, Saudi Arabia, have been tested anew by the Washington plot and by the suspicious assassination in May of a Saudi diplomat in Karachi, Pakistan.

Iran expects greater influence in Iraq and Afghanistan once U.S. troops leave, but with that will come greater burdens. Once absent, America can no longer be the focus of opposition in both places. Instead, Iran may replace the U.S. as the target of popular anger, blamed for the failure of government to meet people’s needs. Iran may prove no more able to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan than the U.S. has been. Iran is adept at causing security headaches in the region but is untested when it comes to resolving them.

Failure on that front would leave Iran, rather than the U.S., in the middle of renewed civil conflict in Iraq or Afghanistan. It also would have direct implications for Iran domestically. Renewed chaos in either country would send refugees flooding into Iran and increase drug trafficking and violence in the border areas.

Iran may come to remember fondly the period when the U.S. military absorbed resentments in the region.

(Vali Nasr is a Bloomberg View columnist and a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this article: Vali Nasr at vali.nasr@tufts.edu

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-31/why-contain-iran-when-its-own-aims-will-do-just-that-vali-nasr.html

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Posted in Iran, Iran-Syria, Syria, Turkey, US Middle East Politics

Iran, the Arab intifada and the end of the ‘Middle East’

Posted on October 31, 2011 | Comments Off on Iran, the Arab intifada and the end of the ‘Middle East’

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam–

Once upon a time there was a United States naval officer who invented a region he called the “Middle East”. His name was Alfred Thayer Mayhan (1840-1914) and he lived during a period when this “Middle East” was subjugated and colonized, when it was turned into a geopolitical “region” that could be defined by the office of a naval strategist whose penchant for US imperialism made him famous.Since then, there exists a place the “West” imagines as the “Middle East” as if it has an existence of its own. Yet this “Middle East” is not merely a jolly good imperial fantasy. The Euro-Americo-centric designation buttresses the West’s claim to hegemony, re-inscribing dependency into the very consciousness of the peoples and governments acting in that area. It is also distortive because it suggests that the “West” can control events there. It is indicative of this illusion that the “Middle East” is the only “region” that is still officially defined from the perspective of Europe and America.But the old (post-) “colonial” “Middle East” is withering away, at least since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The ensuing mayhem, the immense loss of life and the horrific images of torture and death that accompanied that devastating war put psychological and material boundaries on US foreign policies. The “Vietnam syndrome” has turned into an “Iraq pathology”, exactly because political elites in the US were forced to accept that there are no military solutions to the conflicts in the region and that a military victory does not necessarily yield a strategic advantage. There seems to be an emerging understanding that events cannot be controlled by the barrel of the gun, that the area we have called the “Middle East” can’t be defined from here anymore, that there is both reciprocity (them affecting us) and autonomy (them doing what they want beyond our control).

As such, the Iraq war was a major step towards a post-American order in the area exactly because it revealed the impotence of military might in the contemporary international system. It also signaled the demise of the “Middle East” as a region defined in terms of dependency on us. Today, when we look at the map we don’t see an abstraction anymore, but concrete events, memories–Abu Ghraib, Saddam Hussein, Gadaffi–and Tahrir square, civil society, democracy, calls for liberty, empowerment, revolution!

It is within this context of a non-colonial future that the Arab intifada can be interpreted. If the revolution in Iran of 1979 uprooted a pro-western dictatorship from the country, the Arab uprisings have created their own possibility for independence. After all, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak were quite comparable to the shah; kings of kings who were dependent on the United States and skeptical of democratic accountability. “King of kings” was also a preferred title of Muammar Gaddafi, who lost the last residues of ideological support from his people when he turned himself over to the Bush administration and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair during their inglorious “war on terror”. Add Turkey’s increasing distance from the US and its confrontation with Israel to the mix and what emerges is a region that has ceased to function in a colonial mode.

What we are witnessing, then, is the second coming of independence, which promises a non-colonial order. It signals the end of the “Middle East”, which would translate into the end of dependency on the “West”. This is salutary for Europe and the United States, as well, if we finally accept and appreciate that non-western societies are writing their own history. They don’t need us to dictate words to them and to pester them with our patronizing wisdom. This is what the Iraq war and the uprisings should have taught us.

And then there is Iran, of course, which in 1979, much like Castro’s Cuba two decades before, instituted a revolutionary narrative advocating radical independence for the country, the region and the “global south”. The revolutionary emphasis on independence is one of the main reasons why Iran refers to the Arab uprisings as “awakenings”. In the jargon of the revolutionaries of 1979, including Ayatollah Khomeini, being “awake” (or “bidar” in Persian) signified the prelude to revolutionary action: a society that was ready to struggle for its independence.

Of course, there are also many in Tehran who are delusional enough to assume that the Arab revolts are modeled after the Islamic revolution of 1979. Those Persian fantasies need to be ignored. But by and large the emerging post-American order is viewed with immense optimism in Iran and a good dash of anxiety, too. Optimism, because Iranian strategists assume (rightly so in my opinion) that governments that are more responsive to the preferences of their societies will yield foreign policies that are more friendly to the Palestinian cause and Iran itself, and by implication less acquiescent to the United States and Israel.

Below the surface, however, there is anxiety too, especially among the right wing, which is subduing the demands of Iran’s powerful civil society. They are aware that Iranians have been plotting their own intifada to reform the state for quite some time now and that today democracy and human rights, not only independence, are the measure of successful governance in the Arab and Islamic worlds. In the middle-to-long term, the Iranian state, which perceives itself a major player in this area, can’t be oblivious to that brave new world and its anti-authoritarian norms.-Published 27/10/2011 © bitterlemons-international.org

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and is author of “A Metahistory of the Clash of Civilizations” (Hurst & Columbia U.

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The western support for authoritarian regimes in the Middle East

Posted on October 28, 2011 | Comments Off on The western support for authoritarian regimes in the Middle East

A blogger view about the role of Western countries in the Syrian case.

So I guess you hate Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Cheney and most of the US present Congress and practically the whole western world for the unpunished Gaza crimes on children. And what about Chirac and the other Europeans countries who stood silent when in 2006 children were killed in South of Lebanon? Forgotten?

I condemn western countries that have taken advantages of the inherent flaws and weaknesses in some personalities in the Middle east to manipulate them to reach their own selfish goal.
The Shah, Mobarak, Ben Ali, Saleh, Ataturk were for decades pushed and encouraged by Western countries to oppress their people in the name of ‘fear” either from communism or Islam.
The occupation of Palestine sponsored by western countries has created a generation of Arab and regional authoritarians regime cherished and manipulated by the Western countries.
Syria is the only country that had a leadership opposed to the manipulation by the West, the only “non-puppet” regime in the area.

Just for that, it deserves admiration.

It has been targeted relentlessly to join the cohort of pro-west leaders. While the corruption has been present, the country has had a consistent support of the Palestinian conflict at the core of the whole illness of the region.
With the cost of not developing its economy as fast as other countries fed with millions of dollars for their submission, Syria has stood slow but independent.

The latest attack , using the “arab spring” movement as a cover up is actually an attempt of a coup d’etat. That the government reacts with indiscriminated violence is not justified but understandable when it stands against powerful countries like the US, France, the UK who can manipulate people and media easily.

If you look at it this way, deaths are as much imputable to the Western countries incitations to hatred and to a change of regime that would have made Syria another puppet as to the awkward and excessive methods used by the government on the defense. The government’s aim was to stop and prevent demonstrations that could degenerate into civil war and break the resistance Syria had toward western plans in the region in support of Israel. It was also certainly to keep the power structure intact and in the same hands.

Your hatred is natural but it should also be directed to the countries behind this situation, while you probably believe they are genuinely calling for ‘freedom’ and democracy.

We all care for the lives of children, but foreign policy and greed are cynical, they don’t value human lives.

http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=12558&cp=2#comment-280533

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Posted in EU-Syria, Israel, Middle East Geopolitics, Religion, Syria, Syrian Opposition, US Middle East Politics, US-Syria

The End of Iraq War: A complete neocon defeat

Posted on October 24, 2011 | Comments Off on The End of Iraq War: A complete neocon defeat
Jonathan Steele
Guardian.co.uk  Sunday 23 October 2011

Thanks to the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iran’s greatest enemy, Tehran’s influence in Iraq is stronger than America’s

The Iraq war is over. Buried by the news from Libya, Barack Obama announced late on Friday that all US troops will leave Iraq by 31 December.

The president put a brave face on it, claiming he was fulfilling an election promise to end the war, though he had actually been supporting the Pentagon’s effort to make a deal with Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to keep US bases and several thousand troops there indefinitely.

The talks broke down because Moqtada al-Sadr’s members of parliament and other Iraqi nationalists insisted that US troops be subject to Iraqi law. In every country where they are based the US insists on legal immunity and refuses to let troops be tried by foreigners. In Iraq the issue is especially sensitive after numerous US murders of civilians and the Abu Ghraib scandal in which Iraqi prisoners were sexually humiliated. In almost every case where US courts tried US troops, soldiers were acquitted or received relatively brief prison sentences.

The final troop withdrawal marks a complete defeat for Bush’s Iraq project. The neocons’ grand plan to use the 2003 invasion to turn the country into a secure pro-western democracy and a garrison for US bases that could put pressure on Syria and Iran lies in tatters.

Their hopes of making Iraq a democratic model for the Middle East have been tipped on their head. The instability and bloodshed which the US unleashed in Iraq were the example that Arabs sought to avoid, not emulate. This year’s autonomous surge for democracy in Egypt and Tunisia has done far more to galvanise the region and undermine its dictatorships than anything the US did in Iraq. And when the Arab spring dawned, the Iraqi government found itself on the defensive as demonstrators took to the streets of Baghdad and Basra to protest against Maliki’s authoritarianism and his government’s US-supported clampdown on trade union activity. Maliki hosted two Syrian government delegations this summer and has refused to criticise Bashar al-Assad’s shooting of protesters.

But the neocons’ biggest defeat is that, thanks to Bush’s toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iran’s greatest enemy, Tehran’s influence in Iraq is much stronger today than is America’s. Iran does not control Iraq but Tehran no longer has anything to fear from its western neighbour now that a Shia-dominated government sits in Baghdad, made up of parties whose leaders spent long years of exile in Iran under Saddam or, like Sadr, have lived there more recently.

The US Republicans are accusing Obama of giving in to Iran by pulling all US troops out. Their knee-jerk reaction is rich and only shows the bankruptcy of their slogans, since it was Bush who gave Tehran its strategic opening by invading Iraq, just as it was Bush in the dying weeks of his presidency who signed the agreement to withdraw all US troops by the end of 2011, which Obama was hoping to amend. But Senator John McCain was right when he said Obama’s announcement would be viewed “as a strategic victory for our enemies in the Middle East, especially the Iranian regime, which has worked relentlessly to ensure a full withdrawal of US troops from Iraq”. A pity that he did not pin the blame on Bush (and Tony Blair) who made it all possible.

The two former leaders’ memoirs show they have learnt no lessons, even though their reputations in history will never be able to shake the disaster off.

Whether the lessons have been taken on board by the current US and British leaders is more important. Nato’s relative success in the Libyan campaign is already being used to draw a veil over the past. Indeed, the fortuitous timing of Gaddafi’s death has knocked the news of the US withdrawal from Iraq almost entirely off the media’s agenda.

But the past is still with us. A key lesson from Iraq is that putting western boots on the ground in a foreign war, particularly in a Muslim country, is madness. That point seemed to have been learnt when US, British and French officials asked the UN security council in March to authorise its campaign in Libya. They promised there would be no ground troops or occupation.

This should also apply to Afghanistan where Obama claims to be fighting a war of necessity, unlike the war in Iraq which he calls one of choice. The distinction is false, and the question now is whether he will pull all US troops out by 2014.

On the pattern of the aborted deal with Iraq, his officials are trying to negotiate an arrangement with the Karzai government which will authorise the indefinite basing of thousands of US troops, to be described as trainers and advisers, after combat forces leave. This would continue the folly of fuelling the country’s long-running civil war. Now that al-Qaida has been driven from Afghanistan, Washington should support negotiations for a government of national unity that includes the Taliban and ends the fighting among Afghans. Iraq is no haven of guaranteed stability but, without the presence of US combat troops for the last 15 months, it has achieved an uneasy peace. If talks in Afghanistan are seriously encouraged, it could go the same way once foreign troops at last withdraw.

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The ‘great game’ in Syria

Posted on October 22, 2011 | Comments Off on The ‘great game’ in Syria

By Alastair Crooke

This summer, a senior Saudi official told John Hannah [1], former United States vice president Dick Cheney’s former chief-of-staff, that from the outset of the Syrian upheaval in March, the king has believed that regime change in Syria would be highly beneficial to Saudi interests: “The king knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria,” said the official.

This is today’s “great game”: the formula for playing it has changed; the US-instigated “color” revolutions in the former Soviet republics have given way to a bloodier, and more multi-layered process today, but the underlying psychology remains unchanged.

The huge technical requirements of mounting such a complex

game in Syria are indeed prodigious: but in focussing so closely on technique and on coordinating diverse interests, inevitably something important may recede from view, too.

Europeans and Americans and certain Gulf states may see the Syria game as the logical successor to the supposedly successful Libya “game” in remaking the Middle East, but the very tools that are being used on their behalf are highly combustible and may yet return to haunt them – as was experienced in the wake of the 1980s “victory” in Afghanistan.

It will not be for the first time that Western interests sought to use others for their ends, only to find they have instead been used.

In any event, the tactics in Syria, in spite of heavy investment, seem to be failing. Yet Western strategy, in response to the continuing cascade of new events in the region, remains curiously static, grounded in gaming the awakening and tied ultimately to the fragile thread connecting an 88-year-old king to life.

There seems to be little thought about the strategic landscape when, and as, that thread snaps. We may yet see the prevailing calculus turned inside out: nobody knows. But does the West really believe that being tied into a model of Gulf monarchical legitimacy and conservatism in an era of popular disaffection to be a viable posture – even if those states do buy more Western weapons?

What then is the new anatomy of the great game? In the past, color revolutions were largely blueprinted in the offices of the political consultancies of “K” Street in Washington. But in the new format, the “technicians” attempting to shape the region [2] , hail directly from the US government: according to reports by senior official sources in the region, Jeffrey Feltman, a former ambassador in Lebanon, and presently assistant secretary of state, as chief coordinator [3], together with two former US ambassadors, Ron Schlicher and David Hale, who is also the new US Middle East Peace Envoy.

And instead of an operations center established in some phony “Friends of Syria” organization established in Washington, there is a gold-plated operations center located in Doha, financed, according to a number of sources, by big Qatari money.

The origins of the present attempt to refashion the Middle East lie with the aftermath of Israel’s failure in 2006 to seriously damage Hezbollah. In the post-conflict autopsy, Syria was spotlighted as the vulnerable lynchpin connecting Hezbollah to Iran. And it was Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia who planted the first seed: hinting to US officials that something indeed might be done about this Syria connector, but only through using the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, adding quickly in response to the predictable demurs, that managing the Syrian Brotherhood and other Islamists could safely be left to him.

John Hannah noted on ForeignPolicy.com [4] that “Bandar working without reference to US interests is clearly cause for concern; but Bandar working as a partner against a common Iranian enemy is a major strategic asset”. Bandar was co-opted.

Hypothetical planning suddenly metamorphosed into concrete action only earlier this year, after the fall of Saad Hariri’s government in Lebanon, and the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak in Egypt: Suddenly, Israel seemed vulnerable, and a weakened Syria, enmired in troubles, held a strategic allure.

In parallel, Qatar had stepped to the fore, as Azmi Bishara, a pan-Arabist, former Israeli parliament member, expelled from the Knesset and now established in Doha, architected a schema through which television – as various in the Arabic press have reported [5] – that is, al-Jazeera, would not just report revolution, but instantiate it for the region – or at least this is what was believed in Doha in the wake of the Tunisia and Egyptian uprisings.

This was a new evolution over the old model: Hubristic television, rather than mere media management. But Qatar was not merely trying to leverage human suffering into an international intervention by endlessly repeating “reforms are not enough” and the “inevitability” of Assad’s fall, but also – as in Libya – Qatar was directly involved as a key operational actor and financier.

The next stage was to draw French President Nikolas Sarkozy into the campaign through the emir of Qatar’s expansive nature and ties to Sarkozy, supplemented by Feltman’s lobbying. An “Elysee team” of Jean-David Levite, Nicholas Gallet and Sarkozy, was established, with Sarkozy’s wife enlisting Bernard Henri-Levy, the arch promoter of the Benghazi Transitional Council model that had been so effective in inflating North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) into an instrument of regime change.

Finally, President Barack Obama delegated Turkey [6] to play point on Syria’s border. Both of the latter components however are not without their challenges from their own security arms, who are skeptical of the efficacy of the Transitional Council model, and opposed to military intervention.

The Turkish leadership, in particular, is pushed by party pressures in one direction [7] , whilst at another there are deep misgivings about Turkey becoming a NATO “corridor” into Syria. Even Bandar is not without challenges: he has no political umbrella from the king, and others in the family are playing other Islamist cards to different ends.

In operational terms, Feltman and his team coordinate, Qatar hosts the “war room”, the “news room” and holds the purse strings, Paris and Doha lead on pushing the Transitional Council model, whilst Bandar [8] and Turkey jointly manage the Sunni theater in-country, both armed and unarmed.

The Salafist component of armed and combat experienced fighters was to have been managed within this framework, but increasingly they went their own way, answering to a different agenda, and having separate finances.

If the scope of the Syria “game” – for let us not forget the many killed (including civilians, security forces, and armed fighters) make it no game – is on a different scale to the early “color” revolutions, so its defects are greater too. The NTC paradigm, already displaying its flaws in Libya, is even more starkly defective in Syria, with the opposition “council” put together by Turkey, France and Qatar caught in a catch-22 situation. The Syrian security structures have remained rock solid [9] through seven months – defections have been negligible – and Assad’s popular support base is intact.

Only external intervention could change that equation, but for the opposition to call for it, would be tantamount to political suicide, and they know it. Doha and Paris [10] may continue to try to harass the world towards some intervention by maintaining attrition but the signs are that the internal opposition will opt to negotiate.

But the real danger in all this, as John Hannah himself notes on ForeignPolicy.com [11], is that the Saudis, “with their back to the wall”, “might once again fire up the old jihadist network and point it in the general direction of Shi’ite Iran”.

In fact, that is exactly what is happening, but the West does not seem to have noticed. As Foreign Affairs noted last week, Saudi and its Gulf allies are “firing up” the Salafists [12], not only to weaken Iran, but mainly in order to do what they see is necessary to survive – to disrupt and emasculate the awakenings which threaten absolute monarchism.

Salafists are being used for this end in Syria [13] , in Libya, in Egypt (see their huge Saudi flag waving turn-out in Tahrir Square in July ) [14] in Lebanon, Yemen [15] and Iraq.

Salafists may be generally viewed as non-political and pliable, but history is far from comforting. If you tell people often enough that they shall be the king-makers in the region and pour buckets-full of money at them, do not be surprised if they then metamorphose – yet again – into something very political and radical.

Michael Scheuer, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency Bin Laden Unit, recently warned [16] that the Hillary Clinton-devised response to the Arab awakening, of implanting Western paradigms, by force if necessary, into the void of fallen regimes, will be seen as a “cultural war on Islam” and will set the seeds of a further round of radicalization.

Saudi Arabia is America’s ally. The US, as friends, should ask them if the fall of Assad, and the sectarian conflict that is almost certain to ensue, is really in their interest: Do they imagine that their Sunni allies in Iraq and Lebanon will escape the consequences? Do they really imagine that the Shi’ites of Iraq will not put two-and-two together and take harsh precautions?

One of the sad paradoxes to the sectarian “voice” adopted by the Gulf leaders to justify their repression of the awakening has been the undercutting of moderate Sunnis, now caught between the rock of being seen as a Western tool, and the hard place of Sunni Salafists just waiting for the chance to displace them.

Notes
1. See here.
2. See here.
3. See here and here.
4. See here.
5. Qataris seeking alternative for Waddah Khanfar to manage Al-Jazeera, Al-Intiqad, 20 September 2011.
6. See here.
7. See here.
8. See here.
9. See here.
10. See here.
11. See here.
12. See here.
13. See here.
14. See here.
15. See here.
16. See here.

Alastair Crooke is founder and director of Conflicts Forum and is a former adviser to the former EU Foreign Policy Chief, Javier Solana, from 1997-2003.

(Copyright 2011 Alastair Crooke.)

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Truth and falsehood in Syria

Posted on October 17, 2011 | Comments Off on Truth and falsehood in Syria
There are at least 23 reasons why we should be careful about uncritically accepting Western views of the insurrection in Syria, writes Jeremy Salt* in Ankara

As insurrection in Syria lurches towards civil war, the brakes need to be put on the propaganda pouring through the Western mainstream media and accepted uncritically by many who should know better. So here is a matrix of positions from which to argue about what is going on in this critical Middle Eastern country.

1. Syria has been a mukhabarat (intelligence) state since the redoubtable Abdel-Hamid Al-Serraj ran the intelligence services as the deuxième bureau in the 1950s. The authoritarian state which developed from the time former Syrian president Hafez Al-Assad took power in 1970 has crushed all dissent ruthlessly. On occasion it has either been him or them. The ubiquitous presence of the mukhabarat is an unpleasant fact of Syrian life, but as Syria is a central target for assassination and subversion by Israel and Western intelligence agencies, as it has repeatedly come under military attack, as it has had a large chunk of its territories occupied, and as its enemies are forever looking for opportunities to bring it down, it can hardly be said that the mukhabarat is not needed.

2. There is no doubt that the bulk of the people demonstrating in Syria want a peaceful transition to a democratic form of government. Neither is there any doubt that armed groups operating from behind the screen of the demonstrations have no interest in reform. They want to destroy the government.

3. There have been very big demonstrations of support for the government. There is anger at the violence of the armed gangs and anger at external interference and exploitation of the situation by outside governments and the media. In the eyes of many Syrians, their country is once again the target of an international conspiracy.

4. Whatever the truth of the accusations made against the security forces, the armed groups have killed hundreds of police, soldiers and civilians, in total probably close to 1,000 at this stage. The civilian dead include university professors, doctors and even, very recently, the son of the grand mufti of the republic. The armed gangs have massacred, ambushed, assassinated, attacked government buildings and sabotaged railway lines.

5. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has a strong base of personal popularity. Although he sits on top of the system, it is misleading to call him a dictator. The system itself is the true dictator. Deeply rooted power in Syria — entrenched over five decades — lies in the military and intelligence establishment, and to a lesser degree in the ruling Baath Party structure. These are the true sources of resistance to change. The demonstrations were Al-Assad’s opportunity to pass on the message, which he did, that the system had to change.

6. In the face of large-scale demonstrations earlier this year, the government did finally come up with a reform programme. This was rejected out of hand by the opposition. No attempt was even made to test the bona fides of the government.

7. The claim that armed opposition to the government has begun only recently is a complete lie. The killings of soldiers, police and civilians, often in the most brutal circumstances, has been going on virtually since the beginning.

8. The armed groups are well armed and well organised. Large shipments of weapons have been smuggled into Syria from Lebanon and Turkey. They include pump action shotguns, machine guns, Kalashnikovs, RPG launchers, Israeli-made hand grenades and numerous other explosives. It is not clear who is providing these weapons but someone is, and someone is paying for them. Interrogation of captured members of armed gangs points in the direction of former Lebanese prime minister Saad Al-Hariri’s Future Movement. Al-Hariri is a front man for the US and Saudi Arabia, with influence spreading well beyond Lebanon.

9. Armed opposition to the regime largely seems to be sponsored by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. In 1982, the Syrian government ruthlessly crushed an uprising initiated by the Brotherhood in the city of Hama. Many thousands died, and part of the city was destroyed. The Brotherhood has two prime objectives: the destruction of the Baathist government and the destruction of the secular state in favour of an Islamic system. It is almost palpably thirsting for revenge.

10. The armed groups have strong support from outside, apart from what is already known or indicated. Exiled former Syrian vice-president and foreign minister, Abdel-Halim Khaddam, who lives in Paris, has been campaigning for years to bring down the Al-Assad government. He is funded by both the EU and the US. Other exiled activists include Burhan Ghalioun, backed by Qatar as the leader of the “National Council” set up in Istanbul. Ghalioun, like Khaddam, lives in Paris and like him also, lobbies against the Al-Assad government in Europe and in Washington.

Together with Mohamed Riyad Al-Shaqfa, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, he is receptive to outside “humanitarian intervention” in Syria on the Libyan model (others are against it). The promotion of the exiles as an alternative government is reminiscent of the way the US used exiled Iraqis (the so-called Iraqi National Congress) ahead of the invasion of Iraq.

11. The reporting by the Western media of the situations in Libya and Syria has been appalling. NATO intervention in Libya has been the cause of massive destruction and thousands of deaths. The war, following the invasion of Iraq, is yet another major international crime committed by the governments of the US, Britain and France. The Libyan city of Sirte has been bombarded day and night for two weeks without the Western media paying any attention to the heavy destruction and loss of life that must have followed. The Western media has made no attempt to check reports coming out of Sirte of the bombing of civilian buildings and the killing of hundreds of people. The only reason can be that the ugly truth could well derail the whole NATO operation.

12. In Syria the same media has followed the same pattern of misreporting and disinformation. It has ignored or skated over the evidence of widespread killings by armed gangs. It has invited its audience to disbelieve the claims of government and believe the claims of rebels, often made in the name of human rights organisations based in Europe or the US. Numerous outright lies have been told, as they were told in Libya and as they were told ahead of the attack on Iraq. Some at least have been exposed.

People said to have been killed by state security forces have turned up alive. The brothers of Zainab Al-Hosni claimed she has been kidnapped by security forces, murdered and her body dismembered. This lurid account, spread by the TV channels Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya amongst other outlets, was totally false. She is still alive although now, of course, the propaganda tack is to claim that this is not really her but a double. Al-Jazeera, the British newspaper The Guardian and the BBC have distinguished themselves by their blind support of anything that discredits the Syrian government. The same line is being followed by the mainstream media in the US. Al-Jazeera, in particular, having distinguished itself with its reporting of the Egyptian revolution, has lost all credibility as an independent Arab world news channel.

13. In seeking to destroy the Syrian government, the Muslim Brotherhood has a goal in common with the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose paranoia about Shia Islam reached fever pitch with the uprising in Bahrain. WikiLeaks has revealed how impatient it was for the US to attack Iran. A substitute target is the destruction of the strategic relationship between Iran, Syria and the Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah. The US and the Saudis may want to destroy the Alawi-dominated Baathist regime in Damascus for slightly different reasons, but the important thing is that they do want to destroy it.

14. The US is doing its utmost to drive Syria into a corner. It is giving financial support to exiled leaders of the opposition. It has tried (and so far failed, thanks to Russian and Chinese opposition) to introduce an extensive programme of sanctions through the UN Security Council. No doubt it will try again, and depending on how the situation develops, it may try, with British and French support, to bring on a no-fly zone resolution opening the door to foreign attack.

The situation is fluid and no doubt all sorts of contingency plans are being developed. The White House and the State Department are issuing hectoring statements every other day. Openly provoking the Syrian government, the US ambassador, accompanied by the French ambassador, travelled to Hama before Friday prayers. Against everything that is known about their past record of interference in Middle Eastern countries, it is inconceivable that the US and Israel, along with France and Britain, would not be involved in this uprising beyond what is already known.

15. While concentrating on the violence of the Syrian regime, the US and European governments (especially Britain) have totally ignored the violence directed against it. Their own infinitely greater violence, of course, in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places doesn’t even come into the picture. Turkey has joined their campaign against Syria with relish, going even further than they have in confronting the Syrian regime.

In the space of a few months Turkey’s “zero problem” regional policy has been upended in the most inchoate manner. Turkey eventually lent its support to the NATO attack on Libya, after initially holding back. It has antagonised Iran by its policy on Syria and by agreeing, despite strong domestic opposition, to host a US radar missile installation clearly directed against Iran. The Americans say the installation’s data will be shared with Israel, which has refused to apologise for the attack on the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara, plunging Israeli-Turkish relations into near crisis. So from “zero problems”, Turkey now has a regional policy full of problems with Israel, Syria and Iran.

16. While some members of the Syrian opposition have spoken out against foreign intervention, the “Free Syrian Army” has said that its aim is to have a no-fly zone declared over northern Syria. A no-fly zone would have to be enforced, and we have seen how this led in Libya to massive infrastructural destruction, the killing of thousands of people and the opening of the door to a new period of Western domination.

17. If the Syrian government is brought down, every last Baathist and Alawi will be hunted down. In a government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the status of minorities and women would be driven back.

18. Through its Syria Accountability Act, and through sanctions which the EU has imposed, the US has been trying to destroy the Syrian government for 20 years. The dismantling of unified Arab states along ethno-religious lines has been an aim of Israel’s for decades. Where Israel goes, the US naturally follows. The fruits of this policy can be seen in Iraq, where an independent state in all but name has been created for the Kurds and where the constitution, written by the US, separates Iraq’s people into Kurds, Sunnis, Shias and Christians, destroying the binding logic of Arab nationalism. Iraq has not known a moment’s peace since the British entered Baghdad in 1917.

In Syria, ethno-religious divisions (Sunni Muslim Arab, Sunni Muslim Kurd, Druze, Alawi and various Christian sects) render the country vulnerable in the same way to the promotion of sectarian discord and eventual disintegration as the unified Arab state the French originally tried to prevent coming into existence in the 1920s.

19. The destruction of the Baathist government in Syria would be a strategic victory of unsurpassed value to the US and Israel. The central arch in the strategic relationship between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah would be destroyed, leaving Hizbullah geographically isolated, with a hostile Sunni Muslim government next door, and leaving Hizbullah and Iran more exposed to a military attack by the US and Israel. Fortuitously or otherwise, the “Arab spring” as it has developed in Syria has placed in US and Israeli hands a lever by which they may be able to achieve their goal.

20. It is not necessarily the case that a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt or Syria would be hostile to US interests. Wanting to be seen as a respectable member of the international community and another good example of “moderate Islam”, it is likely and certainly possible that an Egyptian government dominated by the Brotherhood would agree to maintain the peace treaty with Israel for as long as it can (i.e. until another large scale attack by Israel on Gaza or Lebanon makes it absolutely unsustainable).

21. A Syrian government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood would be close to Saudi Arabia and hostile to Iran, Hizbullah and the Shia of Iraq, especially those associated with the Shia leader Muqtada Al-Sadr. It would pay lip service to the Palestine cause and the liberation of the Golan Heights, but its practical policies would be unlikely to be any different from the government it is seeking to destroy.

22. The Syrian people are entitled to demand democracy and to be given it, but in this way and at this cost? Even now, an end to the killing and negotiations on political reform are surely the way forward, not violence which threatens to tear the country apart. Unfortunately, violence and not a negotiated settlement is what too many people inside Syria want and what too many governments watching and waiting for their opportunity also want. No Syrian can ultimately gain from this, whatever they presently think.

Their country is being driven towards a sectarian civil war, perhaps foreign intervention and certainly chaos on an even greater scale than we are now seeing. There will be no quick recovery if the state collapses or can be brought down. Like Iraq, and probably like Libya, looking at the present situation, Syria would enter a period of bloody turmoil that could last for years. Like Iraq, again, it would be completely knocked out of the ring as a state capable of standing up for Arab interests, which means, of course, standing up to the US and Israel.

23. Ultimately, whose interests does anyone think this outcome would serve?

* The writer is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.

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