Analysis: A Bus Blows up in Damascus – Exploding Tire or Terror Strike?

Posted on April 4, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Gloria Center- 07/12/2009

The Syrian authorities are currently trying to attribute the blast Thursday on a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims near the Saida Zeinab mosque in Damascus to an exploding tire. However, eyewitnesses earlier reported a bomb explosion on the bus, killing a number of people and causing damage to buildings in the area.

Syria’s Interior Minister Mohammad Sammour ruled out a terrorist attack in a statement to state-run Syrian TV. He said the bus driver and two gas station workers were killed when a tire into which they were pumping air exploded.

But a private Syrian television station, Ad-Dounial TV, said six people were killed in the blast, and Iranian state television also reported six killed, including two Iranian bus drivers.

The tire story, on the face of it, looks like a somewhat ludicrous attempt by the Syrian authorities to explain away an alarming episode for the regime. If what took place in the Saida Zeinab quarter was in fact a bombing, rather than an exploding tire, then it may be assumed that the perpetrators were intending to deliver a series of calculated insults.

First, and perhaps most importantly, such an act would constitute an attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran. The explosion took place as Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, was visiting Damascus. The targeted bus contained Iranian citizens, at least one of whom is reported dead.

This is the second apparent terror attack on an Iranian target in the last two months. The previous incident targeted Revolutionary Guard officers.

Such attacks have the quality of making a regime, which prides itself on its ability to project force and defiance, look suddenly vulnerable. Iran prefers to sponsor, not suffer, the attacks of terror organizations.

Second, such a bombing would be a slap in the face for the Assad regime. Syria has been emerging smartly from international isolation in recent years. Its practice of fomenting trouble for its neighbors – Israel, Iraq and Lebanon – and then offering to help solve the problems it is largely responsible for creating, has been paying dividends.

But a security-state such as Ba’athist Syria holds power because of its ability to inspire fear and impose quiet at home.

In the last two years a series of embarrassing events have served to tarnish the regime’s image of chilly authority. The killing of Imad Mughniyeh in February, 2008 was the first of these. The subsequent death of General Mohammed Suleiman in August of the same year further reduced the Syrian Ba’athists’ projections of invulnerability. In September, 2008, meanwhile, a car bombing on a security complex in a civilian neighborhood of Damascus took place.

An attack on Iranian pilgrims in Saida Zeinab would be yet more embarrassing for Syria because it would indicate its inability to protect the citizens of its closest regional ally from sectarian attack on its soil.

Third, a bombing of this kind would constitute an assault on Shi’ite Islam. It would bear the hallmarks of the sectarian attacks on Shi’ite targets which characterized the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. The Saida Zeinab shrine is a place of pilgrimage for Shi’ite Muslims everywhere. Saida Zeinab, a granddaughter of Mohammed, is venerated by Shi’ite Muslims as a heroine of the seminal battle of Karbala.

Hence, a bomb near the site of the Saida Zeinab shrine would be an expression of Sunni contempt for the symbols held dear by Shi’ite Islam – and for the Shi’ite practice of venerating individuals associated with the early years of the faith.

Now, assuming that a mysteriously potent puncture might not have caused the carnage at Saida Zeinab, what manner of organization could have been responsible? It is impossible to know for sure, of course, but the signs would suggest a Sunni jihadi grouping of some kind.

Syria’s relations with Sunni Islamists are complex. Damascus has offered support and safe passage to Sunni jihadis on their way to fight in Iraq. Yet the regime itself – non-Sunni, aligned with Shi’a Iran, and with a record of brutal suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood – is also a natural target of opposition for devout Sunni Islamists.

The world of extreme Sunni Islamism is notoriously murky and riven, with many groups operated and/or supplied by governments for their own aims. It can only be a matter for speculation and theorizing (of which there will be much) as to who might have had an interest in striking a blow at Iran, its religion and its allies in the heart of a regional capital. But the latest events in Damascus offer further potent proof to Iran and Syria that support for terrorism is a two-way street.

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Iran Hasn’t Won the Cold War Yet

Posted on April 4, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Gloria Center- 07/01/2010

The salient strategic fact in the Middle East today is the Iranian drive for regional hegemony. This Iranian objective is being promoted by a rising hardline conservative elite within the Iranian regime, centred on a number of political associations and on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards corps.

This elite, which is personified by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has received the backing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Their aim is a second Islamic revolution that would revive the original fire of the revolution of 1979. They appear to be aiming for the augmenting of clerical rule with a streamlined, brutal police-security state, under the banner of Islam. Building Iranian power and influence throughout the Middle East is an integral part of their strategy.

The Iranian nuclear program is an aspect of this ambition.

A nuclear capability is meant to form the ultimate insurance for the Iranian regime as it aggressively builds its influence across the region.

This goal of hegemony is being pursued through the assembling of a bloc of states and organisations under Iranian leadership. This bloc, according to Iran, represents authentic Muslim currents within the region, battling against the US and its hirelings. The pro-Iranian bloc includes Syria, Sudan, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas among the Palestinians, and the Houthi rebel forces in northern Yemen.

A de facto rival alliance is emerging, consisting of states that are threatened by Iran and its allies and clients. This rival alliance includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait.

Israel, despite lacking official diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, is also a key member of this camp. Unlike the pro-Iranian bloc, which has a simple guiding ideology of resistance to the West, the countries seeking to counter Iran are united by interest only.

The rivalry between these two camps now informs and underlies all-important developments in the Middle East. It is behind the joint Israeli-Egyptian effort to contain the Iran-sponsored Hamas enclave in the Gaza Strip. It is behind the fighting in north Yemen, as Saudi troops take on Shia rebels armed and supported by Iran. The rivalry is behind the face-off between pro-American and pro-Iranian forces in Lebanon. The insurgencies in Afghanistan and in Iraq are also notable for the presence of weaponry traceable to Iran in use by insurgents against Western forces.

Who is winning in this ongoing Middle East cold war? The rhetoric of the Iranians, of course, depicts their advance as unstoppable. The reality is more complex, and the past year has seen gains and losses for both sides.

First, within Iran the electoral victory of Ahmadinejad and the subsequent backing given to him by Khamenei represented a major advance for the Iranian hardline conservatives. Ahmadinejad subsequently confirmed his victory by forming a cabinet that is packed with conservatives and Revolutionary Guardsmen.

But the refusal of large sections of the Iranian people to accept the possibly rigged election and the unprecedented scenes of opposition in the streets of Iranian cities in recent weeks have severely tarnished this achievement.

The ongoing unrest in Iran probably does not constitute an immediate danger to the regime. But it surely indicates that large numbers of Iranians have no desire to see their country turned into the instrument of permanent Islamic revolution and resistance envisaged by the hardline conservatives. The domestic unrest thus hits significantly at the emerging regime’s legitimacy, and their ability to promote their regime as a model for governance to the Arab and wider Muslim world.

Iran made major advances in Lebanon last year. The formation of the new Lebanese government in November in essence confirms Hezbollah’s domination of the country. Hezbollah is the favoured child of the Iranian regime and its partner in subversive activity globally. There is now no serious internal force in Lebanon able to oppose its will.

In Gaza, the Iranian-sponsored Hamas regime is holding on. The Iranian investment is central to Hamas’s ability to stay in power. The movement just announced a budget of $US540 million ($590m) for 2010. Of this, just $US55m is to be raised through taxes and local sources of revenue. The rest is to come from “aid and assistance”. Hamas does not reveal the identity of its benefactors. But it is fairly obvious that the bulk of this funding will come from Iran. The Palestinian issue remains the central cause celebre of the Arab and Muslim world. The Iranian regime’s goal is to take ownership of it.

But there have been setbacks here too. The Iranian resistance model failed in a straight fight with the Israeli Defence Forces in the early part of the year. Hamas’s 100-man “Iranian unit” suffered near destruction in Gaza. The Hamas regime in Gaza managed to kill six IDF soldiers in the entire course of Operation Cast Lead. This is a failure, recorded as such by all regional observers.

In addition, someone or the other appears to be trying to demonstrate to the Iranians that the use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy is a two-way street. Hence the killing of 29 Revolutionary Guards in a bombing in October near the Iran-Pakistan border, and the mysterious explosion in Damascus last month that killed a number of Iranian pilgrims.

So at the beginning of 2010, the lines are clearly drawn in the Middle East cold war, and the contest is far from over.

Ultimately, like other totalitarians before them, the Iranian hardline conservatives are likely to fail through overreach. The inefficient, corruption-ridden and oppressive state they are coming to dominate is likely to prove an insufficient instrument to sustain their boundless ambition. Still, this process probably has a long way to run yet. Much will depend on the sense of purpose, will and resourcefulness of the Western and regional countries that this regime has identified as its enemies.

This is a contest for the future of the region. It has almost certainly not yet reached its height.

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EU and Teheran: A Collision in Slow Motion

Posted on April 4, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Gloria Center – 01/08/2010

This week, the European Union approved sanctions of unprecedented severity against Iran, because of its refusal to desist from enriching uranium. The EU decision follows the recent fourth UN Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran, and the subsequent additional package of measures approved by Congress and the White House.

Three things are worth noting regarding the new sanctions. They are substantive.

They are likely to have a serious effect on aspects of the Iranian economy. This effect is almost certain not to cause a rethink on the part of the Iranian regime regarding its nuclear ambitions.

Nevertheless, the European decision is significant for an additional, slightly less tangible reason. It is the latest evidence of a hardening attitude on the part of the Western democracies with regard to the Iranian nuclear program.

The new sanctions are focused on the Iranian financial sector and the country’s vital gas and oil industries. These are precisely the areas of the Iranian economy most vulnerable to international measures.

From this week on, any further investment or technical assistance from EU companies in these areas will be prohibited.

Iran is particularly vulnerable in this area because, despite its vast oil reserves, the country lacks the ability to produce sufficient refined petroleum to meet its population’s needs.

In addition, the new sanctions will ban European companies from providing insurance services to Iranian bodies, and will ban Iranian banks from opening any additional branches in the European Union.

The former measure is significant because it will negatively affect the Iranian transport and shipping sectors.

The EU decision was sufficient to coax from Iran a renewed expression of willingness to reconsider the long-standing proposal for Teheran to export its enriched uranium to another country, where it would be converted into fuel rods for a medical research reactor.

Teheran has enjoyed toying with the West over this proposal since its emergence last year, as an exercise to buy time.

But why will the new measures not be anywhere near sufficient to cause the regime to reconsider its nuclear stance? They do not threaten to really strike hard at vital parts of the Iranian economy. And there is reason to believe that even in the face of genuinely “crippling” sanctions, the rising elite within the Iranian regime might well calculate their interests according to a different scale than that used in the West – and choose to brazen it out.

Despite the recent and ongoing revival of protests, the Islamist regime remains firmly in the driver’s seat. Incrementally, power in Iran is falling more and more to a very radical group centered on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. This group, of whom President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a senior representative, is a genuinely ideological body of men, with vast regional ambitions.

Undoubtedly the protests have hit hard at the regime’s legitimacy at home and its appeal abroad. For the foreseeable future, what this means is that the regime will increasingly rule by terror alone, rather than by seeking the consent of the Iranian people. This is perhaps unsustainable in the long term, but it should not be assumed that the unrest will lead to the fall of the rulers of Iran any time soon.

In the meantime, the very raison d’etre of the group currently amassing power within the regime is the promotion and advancement of Iranian power and influence across the Middle East. A nuclear capability is the infallible insurance for the promotion of a policy of this kind. Even large economic discomforts would probably not be enough to cause the ideologues, militants and security operatives currently on the rise to abandon their nuclear ambitions.

Small discomforts have no chance of doing so.

So why is the EU decision this week still of significance? Because it represents an additional small step toward the emergence of an international climate of opinion wherein serious and direct measures to stop a nuclear Iran will become feasible.

There is still a fair amount of time, according to leading experts, before the Iranians reach the point of developing a useable nuclear warhead. In the time that remains, what is taking place is a growing sense in key circles in the Western democracies that the cost of a nuclear Iran is beyond what the West will be able to pay in terms of the strategic balance in the region.

Ultimately, the plain choice is likely to be between accepting (and seeking to contain) a nuclear Iran, and military action to prevent its emergence. The EU vote this week is evidence of a slowly ripening international climate which may in the end conclude that the latter is the preferable option.

So it is cost-benefit analysis vs. cost-benefit analysis. The Iranian regime, according to its mode of calculation, is almost certain to conclude that the current level of sanctions is no reason to reverse its nuclear ambitions. It is probable that no level of feasible economic pressure will suffice to bring the forces on the rise in the regime to heel. The West, meanwhile, appears to be gradually moving toward a position which finds that a nuclear Iran is an outcome it cannot permit. It is as though two ships at sea, now still quite distant, are each plotting a course which will set them on the road to eventual collision.

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Fight or Flight?

Posted on April 4, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Gloria Center -11/12/2010

The revelation that the Saudis sought to create a military option for anti-Iranian forces in Lebanon is the latest item to fall into the category of “non-surprising surprises” revealed by the WikiLeaks cables. This is not intended as an expression of disappointment.

Having one’s previously expressed suspicions confirmed is one of the more pleasant experiences for a researcher and journalist.

Unfortunately, the issues underlying the Saudi foreign minister’s request and the US ambassador’s brush-off have not disappeared. The same mechanisms are at work today in Lebanon, underlying and dominating events and continuing to benefit Iran and its allies.

On one level, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal’s request for the assembling of a force capable of resisting Hizbullah sounds like obvious common sense. It was made at a time that Hizbullah was engaged in the culmination of an 18- month period of revolt against the Saudi and US-backed elected government of Lebanon. Hizbullah and allied fighters had launched something resembling a coup against the authorities, brushing aside feeble resistance and seizing control of West Beirut.

Lebanon was on the verge of civil war. It had become obvious that the entire project of the “Cedar Revolution” and the attempt to build an independent and sovereign Lebanon was faced with an armed attempt by Iran and Syria to destroy it through the use of a proxy military force. The Lebanese Armed Forces, themselves divided along sectarian lines and with a large Shi’ite element, were useless as an instrument for the defense of the state’s sovereignty. They would have split and ceased to exist if ordered to fight Hizbullah, and would have been defeated in the unlikely event that they had attempted to do so.

In such circumstances, the two stark options for the international guarantors of the March 14 government were to fight or to surrender.

BUT ON closer inspection, Faisal al- Saud was not exactly proposing the former in this meeting. The Saudis, being the Saudis, do not commit to get involved in any fighting themselves.

Rather, Saud proposed to US ambassador to Iraq David Satterfield in 2008 the creation of an “Arab force” composed of troops from unnamed Arab states, which would take on and destroy Hizbullah under UN auspices and with US, UNIFIL and NATO backing.

In its details, the Saudi proposal sounds somewhat hallucinatory, and one can thus understand Satterfield’s cautious return of the ball with his promise that the US would “carefully study” any Arab decision in this regard. The Saudis generally like the Americans to do their fighting for them, and the proposal sounds something like an example of this. There would have been little support in the US in 2008 for a further entanglement of US forces on the ground in a Middle Eastern country.

The reason why we are only finding out about this proposal two years later is because nothing subsequently happened.

There was an Arab decision following the Hizbullah coup of May 2008, but it was not in the direction of an armed defense of the Lebanese government.

Rather, the Saudis, having sounded out their American allies and found them reluctant, concluded that since fighting wasn’t an option, the only remaining path was accommodation.

Hence the concessions subsequently made by the Saudi’s March 14 clients in the Doha negotiations – including the ceding of veto power over government decisions to Hizbullah.

WHILE THe Saudis’ talents as fighters and organizers appear modest from this episode, the clarity of their analysis is once again very impressive.

Saud correctly observed that Iran was advancing on a number of “regional fronts” – he mentioned Iraq and the Palestinians as the other two. He noted, again correctly, that a Hizbullah victory would imply an “Iranian takeover” of Lebanon.

This brings us to the lessons for the present day. Accommodation in fact meant submission. The Saudis’ subsequent response to US unwillingness to underwrite the elected government of Lebanon was to seek rapprochement with Syria, and to formalize Hizbullah’s para-state in Lebanon and its status as a supra-governmental organization.

The result has been that the Iranian advance up to that point was formalized, with the March 14 government allowed to remain in place – increasingly as a kind of decoration.

The next episode in this process may shortly be upon us. Hizbullah is threatening renewed civil strife if its members are indicted by the Special Tribunal on Lebanon for the murder of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

The Saudis are once more talking to the Syrians in an effort to find a way to “contain” the impact of indictments.

That is, in effect, the Saudis appear to be seeking to finesse the next act of surrender.

It is clear that even if Hizbullah members are indicted, no mechanism for apprehending them exists. Hizbullah’s and Iran’s threats in recent weeks have been intended to deter their domestic and regional opponents from even thinking about trying to implement any decision by the tribunal.

These threats seem to have worked.

So the meeting between Satterfield and the Saudi foreign minister represents a snapshot in a larger process that has been under way in the region over the last half decade. It is a fascinating insight into the depth of Saudi fears, and the shrewd understanding of power relations of which Riyadh is capable. Unfortunately, the Arab autocracies are incapable of maintaining the boundaries of their system by themselves, and this is the reason why the Iranians have so successfully penetrated this system at various of its weakest points.

Saud al-Faisal, having correctly identified the problem, could then only beg the Americans to lead in confronting it. The request unheeded, the House of Saud has sought to accommodate the new strong men, granting them their current point of advancement.

But in the long run, this won’t work either.

The Iranians and their friends have ambitions that can’t be accommodated.

So in the long run, we are back to fight or flight. There is no third way.

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Notes From an Undeclared Cold War

Posted on April 4, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Gloria Center- 11/12/2010

The diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks earlier this week confirm that the key strategic process taking place in the Middle East is the push for regional dominance by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The documents show that the Iranian nuclear program is only the most worrisome element of a broader effort, as there is additional evidence of Iranian involvement and interference in political processes across the region.

The method depicted and discussed is familiar: Local Islamist proxies are located, organized and exploited (the creation of “mini-Hizbullahs” in Saudi King Abdullah’s memorable words used in one of the cables), and influence is accumulated through the combination of ground-level brute force and Machiavellian maneuver.

The documents reveal that this Iranian effort is uppermost on the minds of the rulers of the Arab states that Iran is targeting. They suggest that the stronger Arab states are organizing political and intelligence warfare of their own to combat the Iranian effort. They also strongly indicate the absence of a corresponding sense of urgency among US administration officials.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in a meeting with Sen. John Kerry, says that “Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism is well-known, but I cannot say it publicly. It would create a dangerous situation.”

His intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, in a meeting with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, is more explicit regarding Egyptian efforts to counter Iranian subversion.

Suleiman noted that Iran is “very active” in Egypt and that it is granting $25 million per month to Hamas.

Suleiman asserts that Iran has tried to transfer payments to the Kassam Brigades in Gaza, which Egypt has prevented.

He also notes Egypt’s apprehending of what he describes as a large “Hizbullah cell” on its soil (the 49-man cell apprehended by the Egyptian authorities in April 2009), and reports Iranian efforts to recruit among Sinai Beduin.

Suleiman tells Mullen that Egypt has begun a “confrontation with Hizbullah and Iran.” He mentions that his service has begun to recruit agents in Syria and Iraq, and says that Egypt has sent a clear message to Iran that if it continues to interfere in Egypt, Egypt will interfere with Iran. Iran, Suleiman concludes, must “pay the price” for its actions and not be allowed to interfere in regional affairs.

Saudi officials quoted sound no less concerned than the Egyptians, but their remarks are notably less robust and more anxious.

In a meeting with White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan, for example, King Abdullah describes a conversation he had with with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, on the issue of Iran’s “interference in Arab affairs.” Abdullah challenges Mottaki on Iranian meddling in Palestinian politics and support for Hamas.

“These are Muslims,” he quotes Mottaki as responding.

“No, Arabs,” countered Abdullah, before adding, “You as Persians have no business meddling in Arab matters.”

The exchange ends with Abdullah giving the Iranians a year to improve matters, otherwise “it will be the end.”

In the discussion, Brennan responds by noting that the US is reviewing its Iran policy, and observing that the US and Saudi Arabia have a “lot of work to do in the Middle East together.” He then seeks to change the subject.

On two subsequent occasions, Abdullah tries unsuccessfully to return the focus to Iran. When the issue of Iraq emerges, he notes that “some say the US invasion handed Iraq to Iran on a silver platter,” before referring to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as an “Iranian agent.”

The Brennan-Abdullah meeting is dated March 22, 2009. In the meantime, the king’s ultimatum appears to have run its allotted span, and Iranian activities have continued untroubled.

The cables also show how Iranian regional ambitions have placed Teheran’s fingerprints on myriad political processes across the Middle East. They detail Iran’s extensive interference in Iraq, quote the Saudi king’s assertion of Iranian aid to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, outline Iranian and Syrian involvement with illegal arms transfers from North Korea and describe the extensive involvement of Revolutionary Guards personnel in shipping weapons to Hizbullah during the Second Lebanon War (using the Iranian Red Crescent relief organization as cover).

So the leaked cables provide added and deepened color to an already existing picture of regional cold war. They do not require the altering of any of the main contours of that picture.

Iran is attempting a hostile takeover of the local system.

Regional states are concerned by this and are trying to organize in order to frustrate it. The US administration, meanwhile, appears to be failing to acknowledge this overarching reality in private conversation with its allies, just as it refuses to speak its name in public statements.

For as long as this state of affairs continues, the private conversations of US officials look set to be a (henceforth probably better guarded) repetition of the dialogue of the deaf available from the cables. The likely subject of the conversation, meanwhile, will be the latest example of successful subversion of the regional order by Iran and its allies.

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The West Should Use Resolution 1701 to Roll Back Hizbullah’s Effective Take-over of the Lebanese Government

Posted on March 31, 2011 by jonathanspyer

22/04/2010

The summoning by the United States of Syrian Deputy Chief of Mission Zouheir Jabbour for a review of Syrian arms transfers to Hizbullah is the latest evidence of the serious basis to the recent tensions in the north.

Syria has continued to deny recent reports suggesting that it permitted the transfer of Scud-D ballistic missiles to Hizbullah.

But the issue of the Scuds is only a significant detail within a larger picture, which has been emerging into clear view since August 2006. This is the reality in which UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the war between Israel and Hizbullah in 2006, has been turned into a dead letter by the “resistance bloc” of Iran, Syria and Hizbullah.

It is worth recalling that Resolution 1701 was hailed as a significant achievement for diplomacy at the time. The resolution was supposed to strengthen the basis for the renewed Lebanese sovereignty that seemed possible after Syrian withdrawal in 2005.

Its provisions are quite clear. The resolution calls for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that… there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state.” It also explicitly prohibits “sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its government.”

Hizbullah and its backers calculated, correctly, that neither the government of Lebanon, nor the United Nations, nor the “international community” would be able or willing to enforce these clauses.

The UN has itself admitted the severe inadequacy of arrangements along the Syrian-Lebanese border. Two UN border assessments have been carried out since 2006 – in June 2007 and August 2008.

The second report found, in the dry language employed by such documents, that “even taking into account the difficult political situation in Lebanon during the past year,” progress toward achieving the goals laid out in Resolution 1701 had been “insufficient.”

The “difficult political situation” of 2008 is a reference to the fact that the elected Lebanese government’s single attempt at enforcing its sovereignty over the allies of Syria and Iran in the country ended in May 2008 with the violent rout of the government.

Hizbullah and its allies simply made clear that any attempt to interfere with their military arrangements would be met with blunt force, and no further attempt was made.

The result has been that over the past three-and-a-half years, under the indifferent eyes of the world, the roads between Syria and Lebanon have hummed to the sound of arms trucks and suppliers bringing Syrian and Iranian weaponry to Lebanon.

The response of Israel has been to observe the situation, and to make clear that the crossing of certain red lines in terms of the type and caliber of the weaponry being made available to Hizbullah would constitute a casus belli.

The recent heightening of tensions has come because of emerging evidence that these red lines are being flouted with impunity.

This did not begin with the reports of the Scuds. Evidence has emerged into the public sphere over the last months of weaponry suggesting a Syrian and Iranian desire to transform Hizbullah into a bona fide strategic threat to Israel.

The weaponry supplied to Hizbullah include M-600 surface-to-surface missiles, the man-portable Igla-S surface-to-air missile system, which would threaten Israeli fighter aircraft monitoring the skies of Lebanon, and now the Scud-D ballistic missile system.

If the reports regarding such weaponry are correct, they would make Hizbullah by far the best-armed non-state paramilitary group in the world.

These reports do not mean that war is necessarily imminent.

Israel appears in no hurry to punish Hizbullah and Syria for the flouting of red lines. Unlike its enemies, the Israeli government is publicly accountable, and would find it difficult to justify a preemptive strike – which might well result in renewed war – to the Israeli public.

Hizbullah and Syria also seem in no rush to initiate hostilities. They have merely internalized the fact that nothing serious appears to stand in the way of their activities across the eastern border of Lebanon, and are hence proceeding apace.

The clearest lesson of the latest events is the fictional status of international guarantees and resolutions if these are not backed by a real willingness to enforce them.

The Western failure to underwrite the elected government of Lebanon has led to the effective Hizbullah takeover of that country. The failure to insist on the implementation of Resolution 1701 has allowed the apparent strategic transformation of Hizbullah over the last three and a half years.

While the “resistance bloc” does not necessarily seek imminent conflict, there is also no sign whatsoever that its appetite has been satiated by its recent gains. Laws, elections and agreements do not stand in its way. It operates, rather, according to the dictum of a certain 20th-century German leader, who said, “You stand there with your law, and I’ll stand here with my bayonets, and we’ll see which one prevails.”

The real question, of course, being how long the intended victim of such an approach is prepared to allow it to continue.

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Arab Order and flying Shoes

Posted on March 31, 2011 by jonathanspyer

21/12/2008

US President George W. Bush’s visit to Iraq this week reflected the mixed legacy of his presidency. The Iraq invasion is likely to be remembered as the defining issue of the Bush era and recent events show real progress in the country.

At the same time, the flying shoes that greeted the president at his joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Sunday, and the instant canonization of the shoe thrower as the latest poster child for Arab “defiance” show the extent to which the prevailing regional political culture that the invasion was supposed to help end remains alive and kicking – in Iraq as elsewhere.

Iraq appears on the way to uneasy stability. There has been an estimated drop of 80 percent in attacks by insurgents since March. Last month, Iraqi civilian deaths were the lowest since the US invasion, 290. These figures reflect the relative success of the US troop surge. No less important a contributor has been the sahwa (awakening) movement in the provinces of Sunni Arab central Iraq.

The new US-Iraqi security pact marks the start of the final act of the US occupation. The pact calls for all American troops to be withdrawn by the end of 2011. The first stage is set for next year, with the withdrawal of US forces from Baghdad and other major cities.

As the US begins to draw down its forces in Iraq, the emergent political order in the country is one of Shi’ite domination and inter ethnic tension. Yet the tensions are being played out – for the moment – within the framework of a working political system based on democratic elections. If this system can hold during and after the US withdrawal, it will represent a significant achievement. It will mean that for the first time since decolonization, one of the main countries of the Arab world will be under democratic rule. Thus far the credit side of the ledger.

As the US president’s reception in Iraq indicates, however, deep problems remain. Muntadar al-Zeidi’s flying shoes are the latest semi-comic emblem of a particular, familiar political culture with deep roots in the Arab world. This outlook sees all events through the prism of a wounded sense of nationalism, and a furious resentment against the West and Israel. This outlook currently finds its active political expression mainly through movements of Islamic revival, but it is not confined to them or solely produced by them. Indeed, to a great extent the rise of Islamism is a product of this political-cultural ambience, rather than the other way around.

This political culture sanctifies anti-Western fury, and continues, half a century after decolonization, to see the Arabs as hapless victims of the West. As a result, it gives its greatest honor and respect to those who are able to articulate a sense of furious resentment. If this can be accompanied by the successful application of political violence, then popular deification is assured.

The tremendous popularity of Hizbullah’s Hassan Nasrallah, and even the non-Arab Mahmoud Ahmedinejad among broad masses of Arabs is a product of this political culture. Zeidi and his shoes will henceforth form a very tiny presence in its pantheon.

It is this political culture that is capable of producing the curious spectacle of the furious demonstrations against Bush by members of the Iraqi Shi’ite community in the past days. Much may be legitimately criticized about the conception and execution of the invasion of Iraq. But it is an empirically undeniable fact that the individual more responsible than any other for the enfranchisement and elevation to power of the Shi’ites of Iraq is George W. Bush. That is to say that the man who has established a situation in which the Iraqi Shi’ite Zeidi is able to work freely as a journalist, worship freely as a Shi’ite and vote freely as a citizen was the same one whom Zeidi chose to hurl his shoes at.

The probable lesson the US and its allies will take from the Iraq invasion is that ambitious projects for the reform and reshaping of the Arab world are not worth undertaking. Regional order, or something approaching it, will once more be maintained through “off shore balancing” in the form of relations with existing, imperfect but stable regimes in the region, such as the National Democratic Party regime in Egypt and the Saudi monarchy.

A Shi’ite regime of one kind or another is likely to emerge in Iraq in the coming years, and the key issue will be whether it allies with the US-dominated existing Arab order, or with Iran.

But the combination of post-9/11 rage and genuine desire for reform that powered the US invasion of Iraq of 2003 is, for better or for worse, gone. The strange spectacle of an Iraq now closer to democracy than any other Arab state, into which the chief architect of its liberty must steal like a thief in the night, and in which he is subjected to insults by a member of the very community he brought to power, is its problematic legacy. It is also the latest evidence of the astonishing hardiness and longevity of that peculiar political culture of self-righteous fury that bestrides the Arabic-speaking world, and that constitutes perhaps the single largest barrier to its rational and mature development.

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Northern Sinai: A Desert Playground for Smugglers, Jihadis

Posted on March 31, 2011 by jonathanspyer

13/11/2008

The 25 Egyptian police officers taken hostage by Beduins in northern Sinai on Tuesday have now been freed.

The men were released on the Egyptian border with Israel, reportedly unharmed.

The freeing of the hostages concludes a series of events that began on Monday with a shoot-out between local Beduin and police on Monday, in which one Beduin was killed. A large and angry crowd of Beduin then gathered, firing weapons in the air, burning tires and clashing with security forces. The kidnapping took place in the context of these protests.

This incident – which had Israeli forces on alert along the border earlier this week – cannot be understood in isolation. Rather, it is a reflection of a deeply problematic situation in the northern Sinai, which is host to large-scale smuggling networks that traffic a wide range of commodities between Sinai and Gaza and Israel.

These networks are regarded by many Sinai Beduin as a legitimate source of income. This sense is exacerbated by the neglect displayed by the Egyptian authorities toward the Beduin of the north Sinai since the peninsula was returned to Egypt.

Drugs, tobacco, sex workers, and weaponry are among the most notable items flowing into Israel and Gaza. Cash flows in the other direction.

The development of fortress Gaza under Hamas rule is made possible through the smuggling paths of northern Sinai. But they also serve to facilitate the activities of organizations close to al-Qaida that have been active there in recent years, such as the Tawhid wal-Jihad group.

The “smuggling industry” initially grew because it was one of the few areas of economic activity readily available to the Beduin. The area contains no industry. And while southern Sinai has been developed massively for tourism, the beneficiaries of this have been the very large numbers of Egyptians who have made their homes in the peninsula.

The Egyptian authorities have considered the development of Sinai and its tourism industry as a useful outlet for providing employment to the large number of unemployed graduates produced each year by the Egyptian education system.

The hand of the Egyptian authorities was only lightly felt in northern Sinai until recently. This meant that the smuggling industry could flourish, the neglect of the area could go unnoticed, and clashes between the Beduin and the central authorities could be avoided.

The series of terrorist attacks that took place from 2004 on changed this situation. In Taba in 2004, Sharm e-Sheikh in 2005 and Dahab in 2006, suicide bombers struck, taking a heavy toll on civilian life. It was after these bombings that the Egyptian authorities began to increase their attempts to impose control on northern Sinai.

US and Israeli pressure has resulted in the increased presence of police and security services in northern Sinai. In its turn, this increased presence has led inevitably to clashes with the Beduin of the area. The Beduin of the north have no great sense of loyalty to the Egyptian state – tracing their origins, as they do, to a wide variety of locations in the Arab world. The influence among them of extremist Islam is noticeable and growing.

All these factors taken together create a permanent, latent tension between the authorities and the Beduin that is occasionally sparked into open confrontation, as took place this week.

The series of events this week was not the first example of violence between the Beduin and the authorities. In 2005, the authorities located and killed Khaled Mosaad, the alleged founder of the Tawhid wal-Jihad group, at Jebel Halal, near el-Arish. His successor, Nasser Khamis el-Mallahi, who is believed to have been the mastermind of the Dahab bombings, was killed with six of his associates in a fight with the security forces a year later.

These local successes have not, of course, served to shut down the smuggling networks, which continue to thrive. Their existence continues to impact on the lives of Israelis. Muhammad Saksak, who carried out the suicide bombing at an Eilat bakery on January 29, 2007, that killed three young men, entered Israel by way of Sinai.

Thus, northern Sinai today constitutes, as a recent Israeli study put it, both a “springboard and a target” for Sunni jihadi terrorism.

Inadequate investment and involvement by the Egyptian state in the area has allowed lawlessness to thrive. This, in turn, has created an environment friendly to the presence and activities of the jihadis. Just over two weeks ago, Egyptian authorities discovered eight ground-to-ground and ground-to-air missiles there that could have been on their way to al-Qaida associated groups or to Hamas in Gaza. Either way, northern Sinai today constitutes a desert playground – for smugglers and jihadis. Incidents like this week’s kidnapping should serve to focus greater attention on the area on the part of both Egyptian and Israeli authorities.

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Israel’s Demographic Timebomb

Posted on March 31, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Guardian- 14/01/2004

Israeli right-of-centre politics is today turned in on itself. The reason for this derives from the prominence in recent weeks given to proposals for unilateral disengagement by Israel from the Gaza Strip and the greater part of the West Bank, in the event of the continuation of the current deadlock between the sides.

The Likud party’s raison d’être, since its formation in 1973, has been the rejection of any territorial compromise in the West Bank, an area it considered crucial strategically, and which is saturated with sites and symbols of Jewish historical, cultural and religious importance.

In order to grasp what is happening in Likud, it is important to understand that the party has always rested on two not necessarily compatible foundations. The first is a disenchanted political realism, an acceptance that Zionism would need to re-establish itself in Israel in the face of violent Arab opposition to its claim, and a consequent viewing of the world and the conflict in stark, zero-sum terms. The second is a romantic nationalism, and a sentimental, historical attachment to the land.

The combination of these factors makes for a heady cocktail. While Israel in 2004 is no longer a country of rigid ideologies, a version of these concepts may be said to form the bedrock view of a majority of Israeli Jewish voters. However, for important figures in Likud, the combination can no longer be sustained.

They consider that the maintenance of the strong Jewish state structure with its western and liberal democratic system – the creation of which was always for rightwing Zionism a primary goal – may now be endangered by the insistence on maintaining national heritage in the desired dimensions.

This consideration derives not from any external Arab military threat, nor from international condemnation of Israeli policies, which tends to provoke only contempt. The factor that is leading figures such as trade and industry minister Ehud Olmert towards support for unilateral withdrawal is that of demography.

As he himself expresses it: “It’s only a matter of time before the Palestinians demand ‘one man, one vote’ – and then, what will we do?” This scenario would emerge if, in the absence of a coherent border, the Palestinian Arabs were to achieve a decisive majority of the population between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean. This would enable them to frame their struggle as one for the rights of a majority population, rather than for one side in a bitter ethno-national dispute – and it could spell disaster for the Jews of Israel.

A number of counter-positions to Olmert’s have sprung up on the right. At the extremes, there are the advocates of a policy of expulsion of the Palestinian population, but these find little support outside the lunatic fringe.

Within Likud, senior figures are pioneering the opposition to unilateralism. Most articulate among them is former defence minister Moshe Arens, who argues that since Israel’s final borders have not yet been set, demographics is a non-issue. The majority of the Palestinian Arab people within the area under Israeli control are not, and will not become, Israeli citizens. The key issue in this dispute, of course, is the position of Ariel Sharon. The prime minister has rejected Olmert’s demographic concerns, in tones similar to those used by Arens. Nevertheless, Sharon has also outlined his own plan for “disengagement” from the Palestinians, along lines similar to those advocated by Olmert, and the indications are growing that he is serious about it.

Recently Olmert, considered the Israeli politician closest to Sharon, announced that the clock is counting down to the start of unilateral moves. If Sharon truly means to move forward, it is hard to see what considerations other than the demographic can be underlying the stark change in his thinking.

Undoubtedly, progress within the framework of the road map would be preferable from Israel’s point of view. A unilateral arrangement can offer no long-term solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and the broader Arab world. At the same time, the urgency of the hour demands action.

There are growing voices on the Palestinian side calling for the abandonment of the two-state solution and the adoption of a strategy of demanding a single state, based on an imminent Arab majority, between the river and the sea. Given the stated lack of will of the Palestinian administration to confront terror organisations, progress on the road map is unlikely.

To rule out the possibility of an imposed, unilateral arrangement would effectively make the future of Israel hostage to the Palestinian Authority. This is something a Likud government is unlikely to be willing to do.

As such, unilateral disengagement will and should remain an option for Israel, should it become clear that the Palestinian national movement has decisively and finally abandoned the path of partition.

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Waking from the Oslo Dream

Posted on March 31, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Guardian- 01/05/2002

Israel is at war. The brief respite afforded by operation Defensive Shield ended with the killings at Adura. As I write, Israeli forces are in Hebron. Here in Jerusalem, once again, the streets are emptying. Tension, fear in the air. The poet Chaim Guri summed it up: “The bad has come to live amongst us again,” he wrote, “as is its wont.”

If the world’s faith in rational problem-solving was shaken on September 11, then for the Israeli Jewish public a similar process took place in the autumn of 2000. That was the Indian summer of Oslo. A period of uneasy waiting, between the failure of Camp David and the renewed violence that erupted in October. There were those who were surprised and those who were not. For many of us, the bright tale of the 1993 Oslo agreement never rang true. We saw that the historic compromise on which it was based was an illusion made possible by the structure of the process itself.

The defunct peace process of the 1990s was based on a negotiation model perhaps unique in the history of conflict resolution. Peace talks usually result either from the military defeat of one side by the other, or from a change in thinking on the part of one, introducing hitherto unimaginable possibilities for historic compromise.

Oslo did not derive from a meeting of minds on the feasible parcelling out of the area under dispute. Rather, it was founded on faith: in the power of a negotiating process to bring the two sides together. Problems which seemed to come down to zero sum equations (Palestinian refugees to return to Israel or not, Jerusalem to be redivided or not, the conflict to be declared at an end or not) would, in a sort of alchemy born from the process of talking, become amenable to solution. This would come about without either side feeling that it had surrendered something at the very core of its national being.

What seemed intractable would somehow simply prove not to be. This process, and the hopes it engendered now belong to the realm of memory. With all issues on the table, it was discovered that Israelis and Palestinians were as far apart as ever. The Palestinian leadership, with victorious Hizbullah as its inspiration, then decided to embark on a course of limited armed confrontation. They had looked at the evidence and drawn conclusions. Ratchet up the body count, and the flexibility would follow. This is the formula which the Palestinian leadership, using Fatah-associated forces such as the Tanzim and the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, has been testing for 18 months. Before new negotiations can begin, this formula must be disproven. This is the rationale behind the Israeli armed action in the territories.

What would be the Israeli bottom line in renewed negotiations? An overwhelming consensus exists among the Israeli public in favour of an arrangement based on territorial concessions. Recent opinion polls confirm that the events of the past 18 months have not dented this. But the experience of the last period shows that such concessions must be accompanied by cast-iron security arrangements. These must mean clear limitations on the ability of any Palestinian entity to develop its capacity for aggression.

Our right to exist as a Jewish state has been accepted by none of our Arab neighbours. The unavoidable fact of our existence, however, and the advisability of coming to terms with it, has been internalised by some of them, with the resultant negotiation of cold peace agreements. With the Palestinians, even an agreement of this kind is currently not feasible. As Camp David and Taba indicated, the absolute maximum which Israel can offer is apparently less than the minimum which the Palestinian leadership finds acceptable. The Palestinian side has sought to bridge this gap by softening the Israeli position through the use of violence. Israeli submission would invite further aggression.

This misreading of the capacity for steadfastness of Israeli society has now led the region into its most dangerous impasse in a generation. More than half of the Arab-Israeli wars began with low-intensity conflicts. The resumption of Hizbullah aggression, combined with the likelihood of an Iraqi strike on Israel in the event of US action against Baghdad, point to possible further deterioration. Irreconcilable differences rule out conflict resolution. Facts must be faced. Returning the conflict to the lowest possible temperature is the only available objective. Conflict management will only emerge from the firm maintenance of Israeli deterrent capacity.

This capacity was allowed to slip in the high days of Oslo. Violence has been the result. Our neighbours see all the justice on their side and all the sin on ours. When we seem weak, we are attacked. Until they change their minds, Israel’s existence depends on its strength, and on our neighbours’ awareness of this strength. The rapture of illusory rapprochement brought us to the present situation. It is to be hoped that the sombre awakening from illusion which is now taking place contains the potential for a more durable stability after the guns fall silent.

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