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Here’s today’s evidence that we are now living in Middle East 2.0 instead of the old version.
First, a definition:
Middle East 1.0: Characterized by Arab nationalist domination, competition among the strongerArab states to lead the region and by the weaker ones trying to survive those campaigns. Arab-Israeli conflict is a real enterprise. Roughly 1952-2000 or so. International aspect: Cold War competition between the United States and USSR and, near the end, US as sole superpower.
Middle East 2.0: Characterized by a battle between Arab nationalist regimes and revolutionary Islamists. An Iran-led bloc (Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, Iraqi insurgents) seeking regional hegemony. Israel and most Arab states have parallel interests; Arab states (except for Syria) put low priority on conflict. International aspect: Will the West support the moderates or appease the radicals.
The latest occasion is an interview of Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. Of course, there are the usual rhetorical flourishes about Israel but the passion and focus is clearly on Iran and various Islamist terrorists. (“There is nothing wrong with keeping the terrorists on the run,” says the prince.)
This is the same man who told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that sanctions would be too slow in stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons and the United States better do something quick. Here he says he prefers a resolution through the UN but it isn’t clear what that means.
It’s funny that in the West the region is being discussed, written about, and taught as if we were back in the 1970s. There is a particular obsession with the idea that everything is about the Arab-Israeli conflict. But if the Saudis talk like this publicly (you can imagine what they say privately) it’s a sign of how changed everything is in Middle East 2.0’s world.
Read this carefully. The prince says:
“There are no troops arrayed on the border of Israel waiting for the moment to say, ‘Attack Israel. Nobody is going to fight them and threaten their peace. But they didn’t accept that. So it makes one wonder, what does Israel want?”
Now you can take this as propaganda, and of course Israel does have a lot to worry about: Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, Arab countries being overthrown by Islamist warmongers, nuclear weapons, terrorism, and agreeing to a Palestinian state that then begins phase two of an effort to destroy Israel. It also needs agreement that any peace treaty permanently end the conflict, that Palestinian refugee be resettled in Palestine, that a Palestinian state is really going to block cross-border raids, and that foeign armies (notably those of Iran and Syria) aren’t going to enter the West Bank.
Even Dowd, not known as being sympathetic to Israel, understand some of this and makes the remarkable statement: “If anyone deserves to be paranoid, of course, it’s Israel. But Israel can’t be paranoid because paranoia is the mistaken perception that people are out to get you.”
But Faisal isn’t just trying to score points. He is trying to get across the point that Saudi Arabia’s government doesn’t want a war with Israel and prefer the conflict to go away. It can’t and won’t make a formal peace but the Saudis certainly don’t think the way they did decades ago.
And when Faisal talks about “no troops arrayed on the border….Nobody is going to fight them and threaten their peace,” how does that look if one subtitutes Saudi Arabia for Israel? The Saudis and other Gulf Arab states (along with Lebanon and Iraq) are now on the front line and under threat more than Israel is right now. Faisal know it and so should we all.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
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By Barry Rubin
I’m not going to bash or rant about a Newsweek article about Turkey by Owen Matthews—shocking and dangerous as it is–but rather talk about what is wrong and inaccurate about it. That article is part of a new wave of defeatism sweeping the West, though it still remains subordinate to the more ostensibly attractive idea that there is no real conflict or at least one easy to fix by Western concessions.
Here’s the title: “The Army Is Beaten: Why the U.S. should hail the Islamists.” Yes, we should thank the Islamists for taking over Turkey. But wait a minute! The ruling AK party says it isn’t Islamist. Indeed, I have been viciously attacked by them in the Turkish media for saying so. Up until now the line–including that from the regime itself–has been that we shouldn’t be afraid of them because they are really just democrats. But now some are willing to face the truth and still sugarcoat it.
Matthews writes:
“The political logic should be simple. The arrest of a shadowy group of generals for allegedly plotting a bloody coup should be a victory for justice. The end of military meddling in politics should be a victory for democracy. And greater democracy should make a country more liberal and more pro-European.”
Each of these sentences makes a false assumption and must be examined a bit.
Sentence one: Arresting military officers is only a victory for justice if they are guilty. Why does the author assume they are guilty? In fact, the claims are ludicrous. That a group of officers created a 5000 page plan for a coup that involved attacking mosques and massive attacks on civilians. It is one of a series of such accusations for which no real evidence has been presented, in which a widely disparate group of people have been arrested as alleged conspirators when their sole connection is that they are critics of the government.
This is ridiculously gullible. It’s like the famous sentence by a newsweekly magazine that even if the Hitler diaries were forgeries (they were) that would tell us a great deal about the history of the time. If in fact the arrests were trumped-up to tame the army so that the current regime can impose a dictatorship in practice it was not a victory for justice but for injustice. Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, and Islamists in general lie a lot (and a lot more than democratic government) so why should they be taken at their word, especially when any serious examination of evidence shows the truth.
Sentence two: Of course, in general, keeping the army out of politics is a victory for democracy, but that ignores the specific history of Turkey. The army has viewed itself and been accepted there as the guardian of democracy. This history is certainly imperfect but when the country has been sliding into anarchy in the past or fallen into the hand of those who threatened to destroy the republic, the army has stepped in briefly, gotten civilians to reorganize things on a stable basis, and quickly gone back into the barracks.
The Turkish army is not like those of the Third World which hunger for power, destroy democracy, and unleash corrupt and repressive regimes. On the other hand, this article–and many others–show ignorance about the actual shifts in Turkey.
For example, there is no awareness that the regime is seizing control of the media; that the party leader (which means the prime minister for the ruling party) simply picks candidates for parliament as he pleases; that the reforms have strengthened the prime minister’s power and not parliamentary democracy; and that women are being forced out of high positions. Merely weakening the army doesn’t mean more democracy when in almost every other respect there is less.
Sentence three: If indeed—as is the case—the regime is systematically cracking down on the free media and imposing its control over all the institutions. This is not leading to greater but to less democracy. There should be a lot more reporting on what’s happening within the country instead of just repeating the regime’s claims.
Indeed, the author states:
“And with the last major obstacle to the ruling AK Party’s power gone, Turkey’s conservative prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will be free to implement his vision of a more Islamic Turkey. More democracy, then, doesn’t necessarily lead to more liberalism, either.”
The assumption here is that this is what the Turkish people want. Yet it should be noted there are some big problems for that claim. Turkey’s electoral system is so weighted that the AK has received near-monopoly control on the basis of a vote that in most parliamentary democracies would have produced a coalition government.
Moreover, many or most Turks who voted for the AK weren’t doing so because they wanted Islamism—as public opinion surveys clearly show–but because they thought (mistakenly, even according to this author) that it was a mildly conservative party.
And finally, the AK is seizing control over institutions so as to be sure that it will never lose another election. It is destroying Turkish democracy, a point made rather obvious by a long list of such actions over non-military institutions like the civil service, courts, and media. The author—and many others—are simply taking the regime’s word for it and ignoring what the government is actually doing.
The author concludes by saying: “It’s also clear that Turkey under the AK Party will remain a Western ally, and NATO will remain Ankara’s most important strategic partner.”
Then, this unusually candid if wrong author explains:
“How do we know? The AK Party says so, and it has no real options. There’s no rival alliance, not with Iran, the Arab world, or Russia, which could possibly rival the clout Turkey has, with the second-largest Army in NATO.”
Of course, Turkey has options. And here is the option the regime has chosen: To keep as much as possible the Western alliances while the content of its policy favors radical Islamist forces.
Incidentally, this “no option” argument is the root of a huge amount of confusion in the Middle East. Supposedly, Iran has “no option” but to become moderate; Syria has “no option” but to dump Iran; the Palestinian Authority has “no option” but to make peace. Yet over and over again the local forces find an option that they are quite happy to pursue other than the one laid out for them by Western observers. They have their own view of the world, ideology, and goals (often the goal of the regime being to amass wealth and stay in power).
And one of the key factors in this process is that–rightly or wrongly–they think they are winning so why should they change course or make compromises? And certain other ideas are calculated into their list of options: soon Iran has nuclear weapons. And the divine being is on their side. And the West is weak, stupid, cowardly, and easily fooled.
Turkey is one of the main places they think they are winning, according to Syria and Iran.
Now of course, the Turkish government doesn’t have to say: America stinks and we’re pulling out of NATO. It can keep the benefits of these relationships, having their cake and eating it, too. But in practice Turkey is moving closer to Iran and Syria, with the leaders of both of these two countries openly pointing out that fact. The question is what does it mean for Turkey to be a Western ally in a practical sense? If it supports Iran, Syria, Hizballah, and Hamas, just how does Ankara function as a Western ally? It’s meaningless.
So, the article concludes, “The world would be wise to side with the AK Party, not seek a return of the discredited generals.” I’m not sure why the generals are supposed to be discredited by ludicrous accusations orchestrated by an anti-American (in practice) government which needs to destroy them. Rather, it is the current regime in Turkey that should be discredited.
Still, it’s a pretty neat trick when a regime repressing Turkish democracy and increasingly siding with the enemies of the West can convince people in the West that this is a good thing.
As the theme song to the television show “MASH” put it:
“The game of life is hard to play,
I’m going to lose it anyway,
The losin’ card I’ll someday lay;
So this is all I have to say…
“That suicide is painless…
And I can take or leave it if I please.”
The Western world should reject playing that particular card as its strategy.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal and of Turkish Studies journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
I’ve long been a big Yehuda Avner fan. He writes terrific articles about his personal experiences as advisor to many Israeli prime ministers and as a high-level diplomat. But nothing prepared me for the story he tells in his new book, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, published by Toby Press (of which I’m also a big fan. I urge you to look at their catalogue, much of which consists of translated novels avialable nowhere else).
On November 1, 1995, just three days before Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Avner asked him why he made the Oslo agreement deal with Yasir Arafat. Rabin’s answer is extremely close to my own analysis fifteen years later: that the great issue of this era in the Middle East is the battle of nationalists versus Islamists; that this factor offered a chance to reduce or eliminate the Arab-Israeli conflict; but that if the Islamists won things would be much worse.
Rabin explained that the Middle East was characterized increasingly by growing instability in many states. Of special importance was “Iranian-inspired (and financed) Islamic fundamentalism” which threatened most of the area’s countries and had already brought the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
According to Avner, Rabin continued that this situation had brought common interests between most Arab states and Israel since their “long-term strategic interest is the same as ours””and they recognize “they have less to fear from Israel than from their Muslim neighbors, not least from radicalized Islamic powers going nuclear.”
The triumph of the Islamists would make resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict impossible (not that it was so easy before) since they would turn it into a solely religious conflict. “And while a political conflict is possible to solve through negotiation and compromise, there are no solutions to a theological conflict. Then it is jihad – religious war: their God against our God. Were they to win, our conflict would go from war to war, and from stalemate to stalemate.”
Rabin concluded:
“And that, essentially is why I agreed to Oslo and shook hands, albeit reluctantly, with Yasir Arafat. He and his PLO represent the last vestige of secular Palestinian nationalism. We have nobody else to deal with. It is either the PLO or nothing. It is a long shot for a possible settlement, or the certainty of no settlement at all at a time when the radicals are going nuclear.”
If Rabin had lived five years more he might well have (I think probably would have) concluded that a comprehensive political settlement with Arafat was also impossible. He already suspected that. But it was still better to work with the PLO’s heir, the Palestinian Authority, then to watch Hamas take over. Indeed, it did take over the Gaza Strip. And Islamism produced two wars for Israel, with Hizballah in 2006 and with Hamas in 2009. Today, too, Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons is a far more visible factor than it was fifteen years ago.
The nationalists in general were unwilling or unable to make a comprehensive peace with Israel, though one should not forget Egypt and Jordan making at least a treaty, but the rest of Rabin’s vision came true. May his memory be even more blessed.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
I remember it as if it were yesterday. January 20, 1978. I was visiting an esteemed professor at Georgetown University and we were talking about the new Carter Administration. The conversation went to Zbigniew Brzezinski who was going to be the new national security advisor. Mark my words, said the professor, who knew the man well and had studied international relations for decades, this country will live to regret that he is in office.
He was right. Brzezinski played a leading role in the mismanagement of U.S. policy toward the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis (for details, see my book Paved with Good Intentions). Brzezinski is one of those people who has a huge reputation and yet it is hard to see why. Every few years he comes up with a grand theory and clever phrase to describe the status of the world. He’s proven wrong, but both errors and theory are soon forgotten when he invents a new one. Since I worked in close proximity for several years I was able to observe this phenomenon first-hand.
Reportedly, he played a role as advisor when the Obama Administration was getting started. I don’t think he plays any major role now but it shows the continuity of his influence with policymakers and prestige with the media.
Now Brzezinski has given us his view of the current situation of Iran. It is fairly typical of his opus. It’s not that everything he says is bad. A lot of it is conventional and obvious: try to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons and if it does then warn it against using them, give guarantees to countries in the region, and provide some support to the opposition.
In the longer run, he adds, Iran will change:
“This is a country with a growing urban middle class, a country with fairly high access to higher education, a country where women play a great role in the professions,” he says. “So it is a country which I think, basically, objectively is capable of moving the way Turkey has moved.”
The problem here is not the over-optimism on Iran but the unintentional irony of his reference to Turkey. “The way” Turkey has moved is toward Islamism, the same direction that Tehran went in some thirty years earlier. And to apply what happened in Turkey in the 1920s, during a very different era, to the current situation in Iran shows a breathtaking lack of both knowledge and seriousness.
But more dangerous than this is the very conventionality of his response. The idea that, as Gerald Seib writes up the interview:
“There’s a chance, he thinks, that Iran isn’t seeking to possess actual nuclear weapons, but trying to become `more like Japan, a proto-nuclear power’ with a demonstrated ability to make nuclear arms without actually crossing that line.”
And that a U.S. policy can succeed in, again Seib’s wording, succeed in “coaxing it into more responsible behavior.” or that a U.S. defense umbrella “should be sufficient to deter Iran.”
Because Brzezinski doesn’t seriously consider the irrational (or perhaps it would be better to say radical ideology and high level of risk-taking) aspects of the regime while, even more important, not taking into account the political effect of Iranian nuclear weapons on a region he once called the “arc of crisis.” Will an Obama Administration have the credibility for its guarantees to be taken seriously by those whose survival is at stake and will consider appeasement a better bet?
Equally left out is how having the confidence engendered by the possession of nuclear weapons would make Iran bolder in subverting other countries and sponsoring terrorism without shooting off the missiles.
Again, a policy of guarantees plus containment, sanctions and supporting the opposition is certainly a framework for dealing with a nuclear Iran. Yet to set up such a system and think that it is sufficient or that the only threat is a direct Iranian nuclear attack in the current context of Washington thinking is to soothe policymakers into dangerous complacency.
One day, someone will write a devastating intellectual biography of Brzezinski. I look forward to reading it.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
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By Barry Rubin
Forgive me for writing so much about U.S.-Syria events but it is such a remarkable story that it deserves a lot of attention and it really does reveal a great deal about the problems of current U.S. foreign policy. And read on to the end because there’s been a shocking new development.
Imagine: the United States gives concessions to Syria, most recently the announced return of its ambassador to Damascus. The ambassador was removed after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. Syria has not cooperated fully in the investigation; it is suspect number one in the murder. Meanwhile, Syria continues to finance, train, arm, and transport terrorists going into Iraq to kill Americans (as well as Iraqis, of course). So nothing has changed but the United States is acting as if the matter has been resolved.
Of course the administration has reasons for behaving the way it does—though not always good ones. It wants to pretend there’s an easy way out over Iran by pulling Syria away from Tehran (despite Syria confirming and strengthening the alliance every day); hoping Syria won’t escalate during Iraq pull-out (and ignoring it every time Damascus sponsors a major terror attack there); trying to prove that engagement works and avoiding conflicts.
Of course the problem is that this feeds Syrian arrogance and bad behavior. If you’ve never followed the speeches of Syrian leaders and the media there, you can’t imagine how they think: We are the center of the earth! America needs us and we don’t need them! Long live the resistance to destroy Israel and kick the United States out of the Middle East.
But, as I noted here and here, the latest American concession was met by a Syrian punch in the teeth: the summit of Iran, Syria, and Hizballah, the renewed threats and Syrian President Bashar al-Asad openly ridiculing the U.S. effort to moderate his policy.
Now, however, the Syrians and their friends have gone even further in spitting on the United States.
Only hours after Hizballah’s most powerful figure, Hasan Nasrallah, returned from Damascus, another Hizballah leader, Nawwaf Moussawi, has threatened the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Michele Sison. This statement is in the context of a whole string of such hints that something bad will happen to her if American policy doesn’t change. “She does not [follow] diplomatic limits,” he said, adding “The US Embassy in Lebanon is a state within the state” which meddles in Lebanese politics and threatens the country’s security.”
Moussawi continued: “Whatever the Americans know about Lebanon, they pass it on to the Zionist enemy.” That isn’t just a complaint about the U.S.-Israel relationship but an accusation that U.S. diplomats are all enemy spies, which means if one of them were to be killed or kidnapped that would be justifiable since they are, according to Hizballah leaders, trying to destroy and defeat Lebanon. And Lebanese listeners know precisely what he is threatening.
By the way, Moussawi is a Hizballah member of parliament, a category which according to U.S. and British officials proves he’s a moderate since politicians can’t be terrorists they say.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
How do leading Arab forces view the U.S. and Iranian maneuverings over Tehran’s drive to get nuclear weapons, the world’s number one political and strategic crisis? Such reactions are almost always either left out of Western calculations on the Middle East or treated in a distorted manner, replaced by clichés: they only react to what the West does and they are overwhelmingly concerned about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
If treated properly, however, such primary materials are a gold mine for comprehending world views, the situation, and probable responses. Al-Sharq al-Awsat is probably the most interesting Arabic-language newspaper today. It is Saudi-owned, London-based, and the closest thing to a liberal daily. Still, though, it reflects Saudi elite viewpoints.
The newspaper’s editor, Tariq al-Homayed, in a February 18 article, sees the region heading toward war, and he is far from alone in doing so. What he says is extraordinarily important even if—especially if—one doesn’t take it literally.
“The notable thing is that [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad threatens Israel and the West… not with his own country’s weapons but in the name of ‘the resistance and the countries in the region’….
“If a war breaks out, it will be an Iranian war, and Iran will be its target… Why [then] does [Iran threaten to] attack our region and our countries? This is not our war, nor are we working [to promote it]–this war belongs only to Iran and its proxies. As for us, we will be Iran’s victims whether it acquires nuclear [weapons] and whether a war breaks out [against it]…”
Note especially that last phrase. If the United States (an outcome far less likely than Homayed suggests) or Israel attacks Iran to destroy its nuclear weapons’ facilities, Iran and its allies will unleash a wider conflict (more details in a moment) that will suck in the Arabs. But if no one stops Iran from getting weapons, the Arabs will suffer even more from Iranian imperialism, both direct and through fomenting revolutionary upheaval.
Of course, portraying themselves always as victims is a mainstay of the general Arab world view. It reflects a desire to let others do the work of solving problems and to provide an excuse to ask for concessions without making any of their own. But the same argument also reflects a sense of weakness, division, and genuine helplessness. In this case it also highlights the remarkable fact that there is not any Arab state with real regional power or even any Arab regime with considerable influence outside its own borders.
Consider the parallel argument made by the editor of al-Goumhouriyya, Muhammad Ali Ibrahim, February 18. That newspaper is usually the most outspoken of the trio of state-controlled Egyptian dailies and since Ibrahim is also a member of parliament for the ruling party he really reflects government opinion. As MEMRI translates it:
“One can envision the region as a chessboard with white and black pieces moving across it…As everyone knows, chess is a game played by two opponents, but in the Middle East, Iran is playing against a very formidable rival [consisting of] the U.S. and Israel….”
The players are the United States, Israel, and Iran. Where are the Arabs? Ibrahim hints they are abandoning the side of Iran and going over to that of the United States and Israel, though saying that in an indirect enough fashion not to tread on Arab Political Correctness of claiming never to side with Israel, and usually not too much with the United States either.
Following his newspaper’s usual line—which is more Third World radical and traditionally Arab nationalist in tone, Ibrahim continues by saying, far more questionably, that both sides want war. Iran is supposedly seeking war as a way of uniting its population and getting rid of its domestic problems. I doubt this is true but it certainly reflects how Egyptian and Arab politics have worked for the last century.
He says the United States wants war because it will then “sell advanced weapons to the countries of the region, to impose its air defense umbrella on the Gulf states, and to determine oil prices independently of OPEC….”
What is interesting about this point is not that it is accurate but that it shows—along with a mountain of other evidence–that the presence of President Barack Obama has made zero difference in the Arab view of the United States. It is just business as usual as far as they are concerned. Americans often have no notion of how little real change relates to the president, his strenuous efforts at—depending on your viewpoint—empathy or appeasement, and his alleged popularity.
[Speaking of which I can’t resist inserting here a point which I was telling you about a year ago but which even the New York Times has finally had to acknowledge:
"The probable loss of the Dutch contingent and the continuing resistance to significant increases in manpower by other allies [in Afghanistan] demonstrate the extent to which the dividend expected from the departure of President George W. Bush, who was so unpopular in capitals across the Atlantic, has not materialized, despite Mr. Obama’s popularity in Europe.
“`The support for Obama was always double-faced,’” said Stefan Kornelius, foreign editor of the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. `It was never really heartfelt. People loved what they heard, but they never felt obliged to support Obama beyond what they were already doing.’”]
Finally, the Arab editors both see two very different aspects to such a war. On one hand, it will be an aerial battle in which cruise missiles and bombs will fall on Iran, but on the other hand it will involve Iranian attacks in the Gulf, against Israel from Arab soil, and within Arab states.
The United States isn’t going to attack Iran and it isn’t even certain that Israel would do so. But the editors point to three scenarios that no one is talking about in the West:
–Iran may trigger a conflict through aggressive action, including possible miscalculation.
–Any conflict, no matter how it starts, would bring some involvement by Hamas, Hizballah, and Syria, along with smaller Iran-directed or even independent Islamist revolutionary terrorist groups.
–If Iran does have nuclear weapons, Tehran will outweigh all the Arab states not only in terms of strategic power but the ability to mobilize allies, subversive forces, and followers in the region.
That’s why the idea that the West can “contain” Iran using pledges of support and threats to attack Iran if Iran nukes anyone else is so misleading and simpleminded. How is the West going to “contain” the cheering millions, the wave of passion that will sweep the region?
It’s easy to find parallels. In the 1950s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser became a hero across the region and mobilized supporters everywhere merely by nationalizing the Suez Canal company and telling the West to go to Hell. Only his defeat in the 1967 war by Israel dissipated Egypt’s leading and revolutionary role in the region.
Later on, during the late 1960s and through the 1970s, came various experiments with Marxism, the PLO, and with radical Arab nationalist regimes in Syria and Iraq as the great transformative heroes.
During the 1980s, the Iranian revolution seemed to pose the model for upheaval but it was handicapped by being Persian, Shia Muslim, and involved in conflicts with Arab states that led to the Iran-Iraq war.
After that it was Saddam Hussein’s turn in 1990, until he was defeated the following year. If a U.S.-led coalition hadn’t gone in and thrown him out of Kuwait, Saddam would have been the Arab world’s strongman.
Usama bin Ladin had his shot in 2001 but didn’t go anywhere after his initial big splash. He was chased out of Afghanistan, and any way Arab regimes had an incentive to put down his supporters who were also attacking them.
Now it is going to be the Age of Ahmadinejad and the Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians, and others know that this involves far more than getting a nuclear umbrella. Either there will be a shooting war or, more likely, a combat conducted through subversion, terrorism, mass hysteria, and serious efforts at revolutionary upheaval.
Meanwhile, in the West, the debate continues of whether to have sanctions; precisely what weak and useless sanctions to impose; or how easily it will be to “contain” Iran through a few sentences of speech by a president not noted for his strength or readiness to use force along with a few military units in the Gulf.
The threat far outweighs the response.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
In its editorial welcoming President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Syria, the Syrian government newspaper al-Ba’th makes an interesting point buried at the end. One should note, of course, that this and just about everything else coming out of Syria also makes ridiculous the U.S. policy of engaging the dictatorship there with some illusion of splitting it away from its patron Iran.
But there’s something else going on here of the greatest importance. The editorial speaks of people in the Middle East who are coming together in an alliance rejecting Westernization, artificial borders, America, Israel, and various conspiracies. What countries are in this new alliance?
“Syria, Iran and Turkey, with their great peoples and their lively peoples and their rejectionist [the Syrian term for radical and anti-Israel, anti-American [policies are moving toward brotherhood….Welcome, President Ahmadinejad, in Syria.”
The Syrian regime is thus publicly trumpeting an Iran-Syria-Turkey alliance. The Turkish government’s policy, in theory, is one of getting along with everyone. But while one should not exaggerate how far this has gone—and, of course, this is a Syrian, not a Turkish statement—the fact is that Ankara is now politically as well as geographically much closer to Damascus and Tehran than to Washington DC.
Incidentally, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Asad laughed at the United States openly. “We met today to sign an agreement to distance relations between Syria and Iran,” he joked laughing at his joint press conference with Ahmadinejad. And to its credit the Washington Post picked up the story.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
How will you know what’s going on if you don’t become subscriber 9,161?
By Barry Rubin
Hussain Abdul Hussain gets it. He’s one of the most interesting Arab journalists and he also writes in English. His latest article—published in the “Huffington Post”—entitled “Lonely Obama vs. Popular Iran” [but you don't have to use the link as I quoted practically all of it] he points out what the most realistic people and more moderate rulers in the Arabic-speaking world are thinking.
He explains what I’ve been telling you but since he has “Abdul” in his name perhaps you’ll believe it when he says it.
Theme one: Popularity isn’t so important in the Middle East:
“A common perception is that under President Barack Obama, America’s image has improved, and perhaps its friends have increased. But such claims are unfounded, as the opposite proves to be true.
“International relations, however, are about interests, not sweet talk. As Bush went out recruiting allies, and making enemies, Obama lost America’s friends while failing to win over enemies.”
Theme two: What is important is that allies believe you will support and protect them. Obama isn’t doing that:
Example A, Iraq: “After losing more than 4,300 troops in battle and spending $700 billion [it says trillion but I assume that’s a typo] since 2003, America today cannot find a single politician or group that would express gratitude to Americans for ridding Iraq of its ruthless tyrant Saddam Hussein, and allowing these politicians to speak out freely.
“On the contrary, shy of making their excellent backdoor ties with Washington known since they fear Obama will depart Iraq and never look back, Iraqi politicians started expressing dissatisfaction with the United States in public.”
Example B, Lebanon, before Obama took office, more than one-third of the entire population—most of them Sunni Muslims– demonstrated against Hizballah and Syrian occupation. And the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said on television “that he was proud to be part of America’s plan to spread democracy in the Middle East.” Now Jumblatt has practically gone over to Hizballah or, at least, is heavily hedging his bets because he fears Iran and Syria more than he has faith in Obama’s policy. And so:
“By the time Obama had made it to the White House, support of America’s allies in Lebanon waned since Obama was determined to appease their foes in Syria and Iran. Hariri and Jumblatt were forced to abandon their fight for Lebanon’s democracy and freedom as Hariri rushed to Damascus to ask his former enemies for forgiveness, while Jumblatt is still begging for audience with Syria’s dictator Bashar Assad.
Example C, Iran: “The people revolted against their autocratic regime and took to the streets shouting death to the nation’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in what came to be known as the Green Revolution.
“But Obama’s Washington was busy sending one letter of appeasement after another to Iran’s tyrants, and accordingly failed to take the side of the Green Revolution for democracy and freedom. When Obama did show support for the Green Movement, it was too little and too late.”
You can add in Israel here, and Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia; the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait; Oman and Bahrain; Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria; along with most of Lebanon and those Turks who don’t want Islamism.
Theme three: Iran helps its allies. Hence, Iran has more allies while the United States has fewer. Iran is going up; the United States is going down:
“Now compare America’s friends around the Middle East to Iran’s cronies, and you can immediately understand why Washington is in trouble, both diplomatically and on a popular level, while Iran is confident as it marches toward producing a nuclear weapon and expanding its influence across the Middle East.”
A good example of the ridiculous weakness of the U.S. response is this statement by State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley: ”It is not our intent to have crippling sanctions that have…a significant impact on the Iranian people. Our actual intent is…to find ways to pressure the government while protecting the people.” Get it? Sanctions that don’t really damage the economy and that hardly anyone feels! And that’s what the White House is proposing before the Russians, Chinese, and Europeans start whittling it down to even less!
Iranian ally A, Hizballah [my preferred transliteration]:
“Since 1981, Iran has been funding its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, never defaulting on any of its pledged payments. Hezbollah went from an embryonic group into a state within a state, boasting a membership of several thousands and maintaining a private army, schools, hospitals, orphanages, satellite TV and a number of other facilities that have won it the hearts of Lebanon’s Shiites, and have given Hezbollah an absolute command over them.
Iranian ally B, Syria:
“Iran has maintained a flow of cash and political support toward Syria for a similar amount of time. Obama has been begging Syria to switch sides and abandon Iran. Judging by the mishaps that always seem to befall America’s friends with time, Syria does not seem likely to change, but is rather playing an Obama administration desperate for whatever it can claim as success in its foreign policy.”
As if to prove the point, immediately after a big American delegation visited Damascus to restore full relations and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress that U.S. policy is seeking to detach Syria from its alliance with Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Syria and the two leaders made strong anti-American statements while pledging eternal partnership. Here’s the headline in the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat: “Syria and Iran defy Clinton in show of unity.”
Iranian ally C, Iraqi insurgents:
“In Iraq, Iran does not only fund and train militias and violent groups, but they also fund electoral campaigns of Iraqi politicians, loyal media groups and political parties, thus expanding their influence over Iraq exponentially. Spending billions more than Iran in Iraq, America has seen its money spent to no or little effect.”
And here’s the bottom line:
“The comparison between Iran and Obama’s America is simple.
“While Tehran never let down an ally, offering them consistent financial and political support, Washington’s support of its allies around the world has always been intermittent, due to changes with administrations and an ever swinging mood among American voters, pundits and analysts.
“So while Iran has created a mini-Islamic republic in Lebanon, and is on its way to doing the same in Iraq, America has failed in keeping friends or maintaining influence both in Lebanon and in Iraq.
“And while Tehran brutally suppressed a growing peaceful revolution for change inside Iran, Washington’s pacifism did not win any favors with the Iranian regime, or with its opponents in the Green Revolution.
“While Iran knows how to make friends, Obama’s America has become an expert in losing them.”
Yes! That’s what it’s all about. You know, it’s an interesting point. Obama and company says we should listen to Muslim and Arab voices.
Ok, but which ones? Not, as they are doing, to the apologists for radicalism and the purveyors of conventional nonsense (all that matters is the Arab-Israeli conflict, America should just make concessions, you need to understand how Islamism isn’t a threat). If you want to know what a dozen Arab governments think and fear–and Israelis, too–plus Muslims horrified by the extremist faction in the religion and liberal or moderate intellectuals this is the real stuff.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
A basic principle is to look at the underlying interests and perceptions of specific governments and states, not the immediate headlines, if you want to know what countries or mass movements are going to do. Over and over, however, we see stories that prove false in a few days yet probably leave a lasting impression to the contrary on readers.
For example we keep seeing phony trend stories can be said about Hamas or Hizballah moderating, Hamas and the PA reconciling, a great new deal offered by Iran over the nuclear issue, and many other such items.
That thought is prompted by a recent flurry of stories that the Palestinian Authority is about to return to negotiations with Israel. In fact, for reasons I’ve outlined repeatedly in this blog (relating mainly to the radical nature of internal Palestinian politics) that isn’t going to happen for a long time.
Another story we keep hearing is about how Russia or China are about to support real sanctions on Iran. Yet every time an official from those countries makes a statement it is to the contrary. Here’s the latest from Oleg Rozhkov, a high-ranking Foreign Ministry official. And note he is very clear:
“We are not got going to work on sanctions or measures which could lead to the political or economic or financial isolation of this country. What relation to non-proliferation is there in forbidding banking activities with Iran? This is a financial blockade. And oil and gas. These sanctions are aimed only at paralyzing the country and paralyzing the regime.”
And that’s a regime with which Russia is quite friendly.
I just wrote a piece pointing out that since the Obama administration wants the EU to endorse the sanctions, it needs a unanimous vote there. This means that countries like Luxemburg and Sweden can now block, or water down, sanctions. Yet it doesn’t end even there! As Der Spiegelexplains, reporting on what EU leaders are saying:
“But the West also wants to secure the backing of countries such as Brazil, Turkey and the Gulf states for sanctions. That would make it harder for Iran’s leadership to argue that it’s being victimized by a `Western conspiracy’ or the `vassals of Israel.’”
This is crazy. Nothing will make it harder for Iran’s leadership to make such arguments because they will do so no matter what happens! How long will it take to get all these countries on board? How minimal they will demand sanctions to be! And Turkey is now practically Iran’s closest ally.
Here is a serious crisis where the Western states want to avoid Iran getting nuclear weapons or a war erupting to stop that from happening. Yet they are either frozen into near passivity or want to do less than the minimum and throw away the time available for peaceful and effective action. True, they are somewhat affected by a desire not to lose money from trade with Iran, yet Britain, France, and Germany along with others are ready to move forward.
What is lacking? While a number of elements can be cited the number-one item on the list should be: the lack of American leadership. I don’t here mean some kind of bullying or ordering, but I do mean a serious type of determination, prodding, and belief that the United States should lead even if not everyone is in the consensus.
This situation reminds me of an old Romanian joke used to explain about corruption. The lights are turned out, a piece of ice is passed around for a while, and then the lights are turned back on. “See,” says the host, everyone’s hands are wet but there’s nothing left.
So what will be left of sanctions and when will there be any? Not much and not soon.
And what is going to be left of American leadership?.Same as above.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
When you subscribe, the next article is written in your honor!
By Barry Rubin
There has been a huge international controversy about the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a leading Hamas terrorist, in Dubai on January 19. I have no idea who did it but have some points to make on the subject.
1. Generally speaking, media coverage almost never (in Europe) or only minimally (in the United States) talks about what Mabhouh actually did to merit his end. The New York Times had the following paragraph at the very end of its story:
“Mr. Mabhouh had a role in the 1989 abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers, and was also involved in smuggling weapons into Gaza, Israel and Hamas have said. Israel officials say the weapons came from Iran.”
It would seem that there would be more discussion of the deeds of such people so they are not portrayed, at least implicitly, as innocent victims. Readers could weigh the assassination against their crimes, which would otherwise go unhindered and unpunished. Mabhouh was probably in Dubai arranging more arms’ shipments from Iran so that Hamas could go to war again, causing deaths on both sides. He was a real war criminal, in contrast to the bogus ones fabricated by the terrorist-sponsoring dictatorships which seem to have so much influence on the “human rights” agenda.
2. As long as Western states do nothing to help bring Hamas or Hizballah terrorists to justice, and since Israel has no way of getting these people before a court, it has no option other than the extra-judicial one. Remember that an Israeli cabinet minister is more likely to face prosecution in the United Kingdom nowadays than a terrorist who has murdered Israeli civilians.
Some European countries–France and Italy have admitted as much regarding past deals–have secret agreements with terrorist groups to allow them to operate freely as long as they don’t do attacks within the country. Other terrorists–like the Palestinians who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and murdered an American citizen or one of the Libyan masterminds of the Lockerbie plane bombing that killed scores of passengers, mainly Americans–have been released from prison without completing their terms.
This point of international culpability in letting certain terrorists escape or function isn’t brought up, explained, or seriously discussed: What do you do if specific people are attacking you and there’s no other option to stopping them? If the United States could assassinate Usama bin Ladin or other top al-Qaida terrorists whom it could not capture shouldn’t it do so? Of course it should.
3. There is a cliché when talking about counter-terrorism to the effect that getting a specific individual doesn’t matter as there is always someone to replace him. But in terrorism, as in other aspects of life, there are more effective and less effective individuals. Since Israel eliminated Hamas’s master bombmaker—who not only made bombs but trained others–in 1995, less capable people replacing him in that line of work have managed to blow themselves up a lot.
The terrorist Imad Mugniya, who someone killed in Damascus, was a unique individual since he had personally worked with the Palestinians, Hizballah, Syria, and Iran. Given his energy, ability, and connections he was not really replaceable.
Mabhouh was in a similar position, the top Hamas arms’ procurer who enjoyed the trust of the Iranians and who knew how to get lots of rockets and other equipment quickly and consistently.
These are not people who merely carried out a specific attack but those who make possible the staging of dozens of attacks.
Of course, terrorism doesn’t go away—expecting that it will do so is a Western act of wishful thinking—but the point is to reduce the number and effectiveness of attacks, and thus the number of casualties.
There are other advantages to eliminating key terrorist operatives. Often it can spark factional conflicts which make terrorist groups spend more time on internal battles. It also sparks mistrust among terrorist partners. If Mugniya can be assassinated in the neighborhood of Damascus that is the most secure place in all of Syria, can Iran and Hizballah trust Syria? Where did the leak occur? Who is infiltrated by the enemy?
Indeed, though outsiders may understate this reality, there is more than a seed of suspicion planted. Perhaps Iran or Syria or Fatah or some other faction in Hizballah killed Mugniya? Perhaps Fatah or Iran or some other faction of Hamas killed Mabhouh.
By the way, although it doesn’t seem to make the headlines so much, other countries including the United States (certainly in Somalia and Yemen) have taken out specific terrorists. Doing so more would be a good idea, if the cases are carefully selected and in the absence of any option to grab them from some state providing safe haven.
Proposition One: if you truly understand that the terrorist groups are going to try to kill you no matter what you do, it removes the fear of making them angry.
Proposition Two: If you know the world is going to criticize you no matter what you do, it removes the fear of making them angry.
That’s Israel’s situation. It is also the situation of a lot of other countries which admittedly face a lower level of risk but also don’t realize the first proposition. At the same time, though, they have far fewer problems with the second.
But what’s at issue here is not revenge for past attacks but the prevention of future ones, a very careful and well-informed thinking through of what actions would weaken terrorist adversaries and save the lives of the civilians they are aiming to kill.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
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