…democracy and stability continue to spread.
Some may remember a little war that happened in Lebanon back in July. The attempt to destroy Hezbollah hasn’t quite worked out. In fact, Hezbollah seems that have recovered well. So well that they have been leading rallies aimed at undermining the Lebanese government. Syria is likely to have a hand in all this but it is an unintended consequence in regards of the war.
In Iran, a bizarre and disgusting conference involving Holocaust deniers has wrapped up. In the grand tradition of such conferences, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated that Israel’s days are numbered. A very different position on Israel than Iran was proposing in 2003.
One hopes that the position of President in Iran is indeed more a figurehead than a position of power. Power lies with the Supreme Leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. However there rumours that he is in poor health. Which makes the voting for the Assembly of Experts to be held tomorrow (December 15th) an important indicator of the direction of policy in Iran. The LA Times has a slightly less pessimistic view of the elections.
Meanwhile in Iraq, the rock upon which the Bush Administration’s Middle East policy has dashed itself and consequently finding itself in the hard place of damned no matter what it decides, Saudi Arabi has stated that it will side with the minority Sunnis if the US leave Iraq.
As to what needs to be done in the Middle East, this article from the Financial Times offers some difficult, but worthy suggestions:
The real question is not whether to engage. It is whether the administration can undertake the fundamental policy revision required to recover from the unmitigated disaster it has created in the region. Is it prepared to eschew its rigid ideological framework, restore priority to the search for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace and work towards a regional framework that provides both collective security assurances and guarantees against interference in others’ internal affairs? If yes, then not only does it make sense to engage Iran and Syria – it becomes an essential part of this new strategy.
and
Yet the gap between ideal objectives hardly exhausts the question. Rather than a set of mutually incompatible demands, a more convincing attempt at engagement would begin by seeking to define a common end-state for Iraq and the region that is nobody’s first choice but with which all sides can live. Washington should insist the Hariri probe continue, that Lebanon’s sovereignty be preserved and that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable.
But it can also make clear the investigation’s goal is to deter future Syrian misconduct, not destabilise the current Syrian regime; that a sovereign Lebanon need not be a pro-western, anti-Syrian one; that success in Iraq means a non-aligned state, devoid of US bases; that a peace process with Israel aimed at a full withdrawal to the 1967 lines will resume; and that Iran’s nuclear rights will be respected if it agrees to unfettered international monitoring.
Try reading Michael J. Totten (currently Abu Kais) for some actual insight on Lebanon, Shaun.
“Saudi Arabia has stated that it will side with the minority Sunnis if the US leave Iraq.”
Default Plan B at work. Islam, like the English cricket team is about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The tribalism that beat the beacon of light in Iraq is about to descend on Islam itself. Those two faced Saudi wahhabists are about to get their comeuppance in a fight to the death with Persian Shiites. As for making Israel withdraw to pre 67 boundaries, don’t be bloody ridiculous. Israel is the only decent, civilised democracy in the region and Hamas and Fatah are beginning to do what Muslims do best.
Even Antony Loewenstein has fallen into the trap of believing that Ahmedinejad is denying the Holocaust. He is not. He is merely disputing the fact that as many as 6 million Jews were killed.
Like many leftists, I too hope that the Zionist entity disappears, but I do not wish for war. Somehow the Zionist war criminals must be brought to justice.
I hope Shaun won’t mind if I offer the following:
Hizbollah launched an unprovoked war on Israel, commencing with a barrage of Katyusha rockets targeting civilian population centres. Under this cover, they infiltrated the Israeli border, killed several soldiers and kinapped two. Israel acted in justifiable self-defence, as any nation state would.
Indeed. Hizbollah has been re-supplied by Iran and Syria under the noses of UNIFIL in flagrant defiance of the relevant UN resolutions. IAF surveillance flights (by unarmed aircraft) intended to monitor the movement of arms shipments to Hizbollah have been threatened with shootdown attacks by the French. UNIFIL has done nothing to prevent re-supply convoys crossing from Syria.
Syria is still smarting that it was forced to withdraw from Lebanon after the Cedar Revolution of March 14th after years of occupation. It has capitalised on the enhanced reputation of Hizbollah to attempt the reclamation of Lebanon — which it regards as part of greater Syria — through a putsch against the democratically elected government of Fouad Siniora. In this, Hizbollah is its witting and willing agent.
Syria assassinated Rafik Hariri last year, and Pierre Jemayel a few weeks ago. No serious commentator inthe Middle East doubts this. The current coup attempt, apart from bein motivated by a desire to re-colonise Lebanon, is an attempt to prevent the Siniora government sanctioning a tribunal to press the investigation of the killing of Hariri.
The letter cited in the link is unconvincing, of very doubtful provenance, not an offical communication from the government of Iran in any case, and entirely at odds with Iran’s policy since the 1979 revolution. Since 1982, Iran has funded and munitioned Hizbollah for the specific purpose of removing Israel form the Middle East. Ahmadinejad’s current position, often stated, is precisely that.
Khameni is known to have cancer and believed to be on the point of death. He has never, to my knowledge, dissociated himself from Ahmadinijad’s rhetoric.
Of course. It is an obvious ploy to bring pressure on the US not to leave Iraq.
As to the FT article, it’s idiotic. A taste:
Neither Syria nor Iran have anything to gain by subscribing to such a framework. Their interests are served by the precise opposite. Iran arms the Shia militia in Iraq to ensure its eventual supremacy of this oil-rich neighbourhood. Syria funnels money and weapons to Hizbollah from Iran in order to effect the re-colonisation of Lebanon. All three desire the destruction of Israel, so there’s at least one meeting of the minds in this benighted aprt of the world.
All essential for peace in the region – but which the USA is implacably opposed to.
Is there anybody here (apart from Rob) who still believes the USA’s intentions in the Middle East are anything other than those born of fear & greed?
Don’t be ridiculous, silkworm.
Silkworm said:
Sounds like it’s not me who should be in a straitjacket.
Take your medication silkworm.
In the fantastic world of wbb, all the world is good, honourable, trustworthy and decent — except the US, whose perfidy, naturally, knows no bounds.
The quote he offers from the FT article has to be seen in its context: support for the ineffably stupid recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which even the Democrats in the US Congress have refused to swallow.
Not true Rob.
Hezbollah dances to Teheran’s tune. Syria is more accurately to be conceived of as an unwitting agent for Iranian, Shiite ambitions.
The term “destruction of Israel” is bandied about a lot. The term naturally conjures up memories of Nasser’s Egyptian tanks in 1973 poised to roll through Tel Aviv.
It is undoubted that Teheran dreams of and plots the end of “the Zionist Entity”. But Teheran’s methods are infinitely more subtle than Nasser’s. Their plans contain no Iranian tanks, at least not unless the US can be induced to give up support for the state of Israel. And even then the now acknowledged possession of nuclear weapon by Israel renders too dangerous frontal attack even on the most advantageous terms from the point of view of conventional weaponry.
No, the key to the destruction of “The Zionist Entity” for Teheran can be found in Hamas’s rejectionism of any two-state settlement with Israel. Shiite and Sunni are engaged in an intense and evermore violent struggle for the hearts and minds of Palstinians. Teheran is committing more and more of its oil wealth to support Hamas’s claims for legitimacy.
Teheran’s immediate ambition is to use Palestine as a consciousness-raising cause for Muslims throughout the Middle East. It is likely that Teheran believes that if enough pressure is placed on Palestine’s Sunni, then the so-called “moderate” Arab states will press hard for a two-state solution, offering Israel recognition in return.
Teheran possibly hopes and expects that the spectre of the region’s “moderate” Arab regimes parlaying with Israel will provoke revulsion throughout the Muslim Middle East. Teheran hopes that the “moderates” will be overthrown. Iran will emerge as the great promoter of Islamic interests.
Thus, the “destruction of Israel” isn’t at present an aim of Iranian arms. Rather the “destruction of Israel” is a method of Iranian subversion and hegemony throughout the Islamic Middle East.
When Khomenei booted out the Shah in 1979, the world’s punditry confidently predicted that an entity as absurd as an “Islamic Republic” surely would soon collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions. Almost a generation and a half later, and despite the horrors of the Iran-Iraq war, Iran still stands stronger and more united than ever.
Teheran’s plans for the region aren’t desperate and rash grabs for power. They are gradualist and cautious. Teheran is very confident of success because they believe that time is on their side.
But if it doesn’t withdraw to pre-67 boundaries it will have to choose between being a decent, civilised democracy with a Palestinian Arab (Moslem and Christian) majority or becoming the apartheid state that its more extreme detractors say it is. Withdrawal to pre-67 boundaries is a necessary condition for Israel to remain a democratic Jewish state.
As Sharon realised.
If Israel sees some benefit in withdrawing to pre 67 borders so be it, but the West is not going to force it to, just to please Islam. Basically we infidels are all Israelis now. Iraq and Afghanistan are teaching(have taught?) us there’s no hope for civilising much of Islam in the near future. That being the case they can tear each other to bits in their internicene tribal wars, as long as they leave us alone.
Rob,
A few quick points.
The argument is not whether Israel where justified in defending themselves (I agree they where and the attacks had to stop). As I said back in July:
I’d day the question has been answer and that Israel miscalculated. Hezbollah have been strengthened and Lebanon has been plunged 30 years into the past which is a tragedy.
As for the Iranian 2003 overture, you disingenuous dismissal doesn’t acknowledge that the letter has been verified by US and Iranian officials and that given no official diplomatic ties existed and to save face, Iran had to use a backdoor. At that time Khatami was president and such an overture was in line with his notions of dialogue. Iran was also worried that they were next after Iraq so were quite interested in talking. The US in their instransigent hubris missed a possible, incredibly valuable opportunity for change. Of course, the disaster in Iraq has made the US less of a threat hence the current Iranian position.
The points listed by wbb are important. Your childish caricature of the argument as “US bad other Good” misses the point. The Bush Adminstration’s approach to Middle East policy has been a disaster. I don’t see Iran and Syria as being particularly trustworthy nor without blood on their hands. But if they can be persuaded to temper Hezbollah and the US in turn influence Israel into a little more flexibility and a gradual approach to some sort of peace then it is worth a try.
Katz, I agree with your strategic assessment of Iran’s mischief-making.
Iran does not have the means to destroy Israel itself, not least because they are not contiguous states. When Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it would have the technical means to do so, but whether it would risk nuclear reprisals is a question no-one can answer at this stage. Rafsanjani has publicly boasted that a first strike against Israel would reduce it to smoking rubble, which may be true, given it is a tiny state.
And I agree that Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric is a rallying cry for Muslims in the region — rallying around Iran, as you suggest — rather than a concrete, present intention.
However, Iran does not need to do the deed itself. In Hizbollah it has a unique instrument: a fully trained, equipped and perpetually mobilsed terrorist army. By all accounts, Iran is now engaged with Hamas to turn it into another such. Both organsations — not just Hamas — reject the two state solution.
It is hard to conceive that Iran is equipping these groups for a purpose other than the one they themselves loudly advertise — the destruction of the Jewish state.
As for withdrawal to the pre-’67 boundaries, that’s off the table for now.
Gaza is not occupied any more, neither is southern Lebanon. Yet both, since Israel’s withdrawal, have become terrorist strongholds. The dream of Gaza becoming a Palestinian Singapore, based on the infrastructure the Israeli settlers left behind, are long dead. It is merely a terrorists’ kitchen. And south Lebanon is their subterranean fortress.
As Mark notes, Sharon was prepared to withdraw. But that was before Gaza became what it is now, and before Israel discovered the extent to Hizbollah’s entrenchment along its northern border (Israel has acknowledged its intelligence failed in Lebanon).
With existential threats to the north and south, it’s hard to see how Israel could allow the West Bank to go the same way.
It’s moot as to whether Sharon would have followed up with a West Bank withdrawal, Rob, though he probably would have. Olmert certainly won’t – and couldn’t as he now leads a very weak and unpopular government primarily because of his political and strategic miscalculations in the Lebanon War.
My other comment, and this is a quick one because I have to go out in a sec, is that the economic position of Gaza and the West Bank is what it is largely because of the restrictions imposed on cross border movements and even movements within the territory. Of course corrupt and maladministration by the PA is also a factor.
Mark, withdrawal from the West Bank is I suspect simply not an option for Israel, at least for now. Israel seems content to endure continuing rocket fire into its southern towns — about 25 have been fired since the recent ceasefire, and about 1200 since disengagement. The people of Sderot are furious that the government won’t protect them, but I guess Olmert’s strategy is to gain some goodwill by maintaining Israel’s side of the ceasefire even if Hamas is ignoring it.
But the West Bank is very different. It’s only about 10 km from the West Bank to Tel Aviv, easily within range of rockets and missiles. Israel could not permit the kind of continual barrage into its major city that Sderot has endured for a year.
As for Gaza, well, yes, there are severe restrictions on movement. That’s because of the need to interdict terrorist operations and incursions into Israel. The solution to that problem lies with the Gazans themselves. As Israel’s PR at the UN said during last month’s emergency session:
“But if [Iran] can be persuaded to temper Hezbollah and the US in turn influence Israel into a little more flexibility and a gradual approach to some sort of peace then it is worth a try.”
Perhaps, Shaun, but it seems to me to completely unrealistic. Baker himself has conceded that Iran would be unlikely to negotiate along the lines recommended in his report, and Iran has since said it would not. Baker has taken the ‘it can’t do any harm’ line, but with all due respect to him and his experts I don’t see that it is so.
Consider, for example, the impact on the moderate Muslim states, mainly at least notionally US allies. They fear Iran’s expansion of influence (see Katz’ excellent post above) more than anything. Any overture to Iran, particularly from a self-confessed position of weakness (‘we are not winning in Iraq, please help’) will look like an abandonment of the US’ allies.
Also, think of Lebanon’s Siniora, desperately trying to hold his government in place in the face of a putsch by Hizbollah. Syria and Iran are behind that coup-in-progress. What does it say to moderate Lebanon that the US goes cap in hand to the very powers that are destabilising Lebanon and seeking the ovethrow of the Cedar Revolution? Nothing but bad.
Bernard Lewis commented recently that in the Middle East today ‘the US is seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend’. That’s a bad position for both the US and the region to find themselves in.
Thanks for your comments Rob. I’d like to discuss this point:
While this is in itself correct, it tells only part of the story. I wish to return briefly to my theme of Iranian subtlety and their view of a “long war”.
In Shaun’s link Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Israel’s days are numbered. The interesting, indeed truly fascinating, thing is how he said they were numbered:
I don’t need to remind you that the Soviet Union fell without a shot being fired:
1. Economic failure brought on by the struggle to match US military spending. (Self-inflicted unnecessarily in my opinion.)
2. A large proprtion of the Soviet population ceasing to believe in the Soviet project, rising up in a great gesture of people power to paralyse the state.
This is what Ahmadinejad sees:
1. An Israeli population overburdened by the demands of self-defence.
2. An apartheid de facto state, the result of rejectionism of a two-state settlement becoming ungovernable.
He may be correct. Ergo his reference to the end of the Soviet Union.
Katz, I think the analogy Ahmadinejad really has in mind is with the United States. It’s part of jihadist thinking that the fall of the Soviet Union came about because of the Soviets’ defeat by radical Islam in Afghanistan — as they see it. They believe defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan will similarly presage the end of the US. Can’t find a link at the moment but I do recall Ahmadinejad hsa made the connection before. I think he just modified a favourite talking point for the occasion of the Holocaust conference.
My poor comment is in limbo.
I admit to not understanding the ways of covert diplomacy but such covert overtures to Iran might be worth trying. I haven’t read the Baker report and do not know what he recommended (other than talking Iran and Syria).
Indeed the US is in a week position but it is of their making. Irregardless of the reasons for invading Iraq, the occupation has been botched leaving the US very little room to move. Giving Iran a little room move may be what is needed. To just sit their muttering stay the course whenever someone ask what should be done only exacerbates the problem.
The seemingly insurmountable problem is Palestine and be buggered if I know what to do about that one. Removing Palestine as a rallying point would help. Even though I disagree with their policy towards Israel, it was a mistake to totally shut out Hamas. Attempts should have been made to see if they could be tempted in moderation.
With regards to Iran, if the reformists can gain some ground then it may be the opening that the US needs for a dialogue and hope that the reformists will soften Iran’s stance. However if Ahmadinejad’s mob increase their representation then Iran is likely to move even further towards extremism.
Even though opening dialogue with Syria and Iran may seem politically unpalatable. But it is time for a new approach. Hell, it may not work but I don’t see any better policies coming out from the US.