Growing Islamization in Gaza

Posted on April 5, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Gloria Center- 29/09/2009

Deriving accurate and reliable information from within the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip is not easy. The Strip is largely closed to journalists, and its inhabitants are reluctant to speak in detail of events there.

Nevertheless, reliable sources confirm that one observable trend taking place there is the growing dominance of Islam. This process is being driven forward by the growing strength of Salafi and extreme Sunni elements.

A slow introduction of Islamic norms and practices into society began immediately following the Hamas victory in PLC elections in January 2006. This process was accelerated following Hamas’s seizure of exclusive control of Gaza in 2007.

However, there are clear internal differences in the movement regarding the pace of change. Hamas’s current leadership has tended to favor a slow encouragement of Islamic practices and rules, without straying too far from the desires of the broader public.

More hardline and Salafi elements within the movement want a stricter and more formal introduction of Islamic norms. Events over the last 18 months indicate that the latter camp is now making the running, with Hamas’s leadership under pressure from extreme forces both within the movement and beyond it.

This change is being felt in the very fabric of daily life in Gaza. A transition of the status of Islamic observance from social norm to legal compulsion is under way.

The most obvious sign of this is the creation of the new “Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” security force, which operates under the command of the Ministry of the Waqf (Islamic Endowment).

This force is tasked with enforcing Islamic codes of behavior. Its members patrol beaches, parks and public areas, ensuring proper Islamic modesty.

One source describes how a man wearing shorts while sitting on his own balcony in southern Gaza was spotted and advised that this must not happen again. Rules banning men from bathing topless, and women (who may still bathe separately from men and fully covered) from laughing or smiling while bathing, are also in the process of enforcement.

A special all-female unit within the police has also been created, with responsibility for enforcing female modesty and handling female suspects. This force, numbering 100-150 officers, wear niqab and gloves, with only an eye slit visible.

Other forms of social control are also being strengthened. Every mosque now has an Amir al-jamia or “head of the community” who according to sources functions as a kind of political commissar on behalf of the authorities. It is his task to observe the prayer habits of all members of the mosque, and to intervene and offer help where insufficient devotion is diagnosed.

More familiar methods of increasing public dependence on the authorities may also be observed. Preferential access to desperately needed social services for those close to the rulers of the Strip is becoming increasingly apparent. In the spring of 2009, Hamas established the “Islamic National Bank.”

An Islamic insurance company and Islamic investment bank have since also been set up. Increasingly, Hamas’s ample social welfare budgets are channeled through these bodies. Similarly, Islamic charity organizations are increasingly replacing elected local governments as the providers of social services. The result is to establish channels of material dependence between the public and the Hamas organization.
Few women may now be seen in Gaza without the hijab. More and more are now wearing the jilbab (the long, shapeless black dress associated with Islamic piety).

The wearing of the hijab is now said to have become an accepted social norm – perceived as a requirement when outside of the home even by Gaza’s few remaining Christian women. From the summer of 2009, the wearing of the hijab and jilbab became required in Gaza’s secondary schools (according to some sources, certain schools have chosen to ignore this instruction).

It is not only dress in schools, but also the content of study which is becoming increasingly religious in character. Many secular teachers have been fired. Hamas summer camps, which provide cheap alternatives for poor families in the summer months, involve intensive Koran study and competitions which again can provide access to much-needed funds and jobs.

The promotion of Islamic norms in Gaza extends to the widespread banning of books and restricting of access to “immoral” internet sites. In 2007, there was an outcry when a book of Palestinian folk-tales, “Speak bird, speak again” was banned in the Gaza Strip because of its supposedly lewd content.

Today, such bans are the norm, and no longer merit much attention.

The increasing use of Islamic Sharia law in judicial proceedings in Gaza is an additional facet of the growing influence of Islam on life there. The formal judicial system remains in existence. But it is being filled with Islamic content.

For example, the local reconciliation committees, which were once a forum where clans resolved issues by mediation, have now largely been transformed into Islamic reconciliation committees concerned with the dispensing of advice and guidance based on Sharia law.

It is important to note that these developments do not represent the playing out of some Hamas master plan for the creation of an Islamic republic. Rather, they are taking place because of grass-roots agitation and insistence on the part of ultra-religious elements both within Hamas and outside it.

The Hamas leadership depends on Islamic legitimacy, and is thus vulnerable to claims that is it is merely a nationalist group waving the flag of Islam. Hamas jealously guards its political power – also from its Salafi rivals. But in matters of Islamic observance, it appears willing to bow to their wishes and pressure.

The result is that without any recognized body deciding upon it, an Islamic mini-state in the full sense is currently emerging in Gaza.

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A Tale of Two Palestinian Authorities

Posted on April 5, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Gloria Center- 24/04/2010

Four years after the Hamas victory in elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council, and three years since the movement’s successful coup in Gaza, the split in the Palestinian national movement has an increasing look of permanence about it. This has major implications for the currently frozen diplomatic process.

This week, Dr. Salah al-Bardawil, a leading Hamas official, said that efforts toward Palestinian reconciliation are “frozen.” In an interview with Quds press, Bardawil stated that communication between Hamas authorities in Gaza and the government of Egypt on the issue of reconciliation had ceased. Talks were now restricted to “matters such as permission for patients to leave Gaza for treatment or the return of deceased Palestinians across the Rafah crossing.”

Bardawil’s message was confirmed on Monday by Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in a speech in Damascus. Mashaal said Hamas had been urged by Arab officials to accept Quartet conditions, including recognition of Israel, in return for changes to an Egyptian-brokered reconciliation agreement. He said that Hamas had reiterated its refusal. Addressing “the Americans, the Zionists, and everyone,” he asserted that Hamas would not “succumb to your terms. We won’t pay a political price no matter how long the blockade lasts. God is with us and he will grant us victory.”

These statements indicate that there is now no process under way toward ending the Palestinian political divide. On the ground, meanwhile, the rival Ramallah and Gaza Palestinian authorities are entrenching themselves.

PARALLEL TO the rise of Hamas in Gaza, and its ongoing popularity in the West Bank, Fatah is currently in a process of severe decline. The movement failed to embark on a major project of reform following its election defeat in 2006. As a result, it remains riven by factionalism and corruption. It is also, increasingly, irrelevant.

The key Palestinian leader in the West Bank today is Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Fayyad is not a Fatah member, and his government holds power not as a result of that movement’s authority. Rather, Fayyad is in effect an appointee of the West. The security forces led by Gen. Keith Dayton, which keep him in place, are Western organized and financed, and not beholden to any political faction. His gradualist approach is quite alien to Palestinian political culture, and despite the undoubted improvements this approach has brought to daily life in the West Bank, the level of his support is uncertain.

It remains widely believed that without the presence of the “Dayton” forces and more importantly without the continued activities of the IDF in the West Bank, the area would fall to Hamas in a similar process to that which took place in Gaza.

Veteran Palestinian political analyst Yezid Sayigh recently noted that both the Gaza and Ramallah governments are dependent for their economic survival on foreign assistance. The Fayyad government has an annual $2.8 billion budget, of which one half consists of direct foreign aid. The Hamas authorities, meanwhile, announced a budget of $540 million, of which $480 million is to come from outside (Iran). The dependence on foreign capital reflects perhaps the salient element shared by both Palestinian governments – they are both able to continue to exist because of the interests of rival outside powers that they do so.

The split in the Palestinian national movement is ultimately a function of the broader strategic situation of regional cold war. It is thus likely to continue for as long as this regional reality pertains.

The Middle East is currently divided between a loose alliance of states aligned with the US and the West, and an Iran-led “resistance bloc” of states and movements. Hamas is able to maintain its sovereign enclave in Gaza as a result of the willingness of Iran to arm and finance it. The Gaza enclave serves Iran’s purposes well. It gives Teheran an effective veto over any attempt to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It also gives non-Arab Iran a direct point of entry into the single most important regional conflict in the eyes of the masses of the Arab world.

The West, which also attaches massive importance to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has itself in turn been prepared to create, finance and underwrite a version of Palestinian politics and governance – that of Fayyad – which is to its liking, once it became clear that the Palestinians themselves were not going to do this.

The result is that Palestinian politics has been thoroughly penetrated by the larger regional standoff. Each of the regional blocs has its own Palestinian authority, which acts as a laboratory and advertisement for its preferred methods. The Gaza version favors strict Islamic governance and armed struggle to the end against Israel. The Ramallah government – according to Sayigh the less representative of the two – stands for alignment with the West and proclaimed acceptance of a negotiated solution.

The proudest achievement of PLO and Fatah leader Yasser Arafat was the establishment of a single, authoritative Palestinian national movement not beholden to or dependent on any outside power. Such a movement no longer exists. The split represents a profound change in Palestinian politics, which calls into question many of the basic assumptions regarding the conflict which have become received wisdom in Israel and the West over the last couple of decades.

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An Increasing Possibility

Posted on April 4, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Gloria Center-09/11/2009

The possible emergence of a nuclear-armed, Islamist Iran committed to the destruction of the Jewish state is the key security issue currently occupying the attention of Israel’s political and security elite. It is one of the few issues upon which there is near (but not total) consensus. Israel has watched the growing power of radical elements within the Iranian ruling elite in the last half-decade with concern. These elements, of which President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is the most prominent representative, openly reject Israel’s right to exist. Ahmedinejad’s comments advocating Israel’s destruction and denying the Holocaust are part of a larger project to recover the original fervour of the 1979 Islamic revolution. The expansion of Iran’s regional role is also part of this, and Israeli strategists note that the influence of Iran in all areas of key strategic concern to Israel is being felt, in a negative way. Iran’s alliance with Syria underwrites Damascus’s increasingly bellicose stance. Iran’s creation and sponsorship of Hizbullah has enabled it to come to constitute the powerful militia opponent seen in last year’s war. Iranian assistance to Hamas and Islamic jihad may be in the process of turning these organisations into analogous forces.

Iran’s active policy of subversion toward Israel, and stated desire for its destruction, make the possibility of a nuclear Iran inconceivable to Israeli policymakers. It is not only the scenario of an Iranian nuclear attack that is focusing concerns. Rather, there is concern that a nuclear Iran would use the “immunity” purchased by a nuclear capability to increase its support for countries and organisations hostile to Israel. Some Israeli policymakers, such as the deputy defence minister, Efraim Sneh, regard this as itself an existential issue. Sneh has stressed that a nuclear Iran could render life in Israel untenable – through support for terror groups, and the possibility that all determined Israeli attempts to oppose Iranian aggression would lead to immediate nuclear crisis.

An alternative, minority viewpoint exists within the Israeli policy elite, according to which Israel could successfully deter a nuclear Iran, and therefore the problem, while acute, is of less existential dimensions. Former Mossad Head Efraim Halevy is understood to support this view.

Israel’s response so far on the Iranian nuclear issue has been to support the imposition of tougher sanctions. Senior officials have been involved in recent weeks in an international campaign to bring home to European states the common danger posed by a nuclear Iran.

Nevertheless, should it become apparent that all attempts to reverse Iran’s progress toward a nuclear capability have failed, and Iran indeed stands on the cusp of a nuclear weapons capability, then the possibility of unilateral Israeli military action to prevent a nuclear Iran would come onto the agenda.

It should not be assumed from Ahmedinejad’s claims this week that Iran has begun to operate 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at Natanz, that Israel will now conclude that this moment has been reached. Ahmedinejad made a similar claim in April, and Israel suspects that the Iranian regime is keen to give the impression of greater progress than has in fact been made.

For the moment, therefore, efforts toward further sanctions are likely to continue. But the consensus in the Israeli intelligence community is that Iran may be as close as two years away from a nuclear weapons capability. So if Tehran cannot be brought to abandon its nuclear ambitions through strengthened sanctions and international pressure – then pre-emptive Israeli action to prevent the emergence of a nuclear-powered Islamic Republic of Iran is an increasing possibility.

Regarding the likely results, should such action take place: to some degree, a precedent exists in Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s nuclear programme at Osirak in 1981. The Israeli move then was universally condemned in public, and in private, at least retrospectively, was quietly welcomed as having prevented the need for the world to confront a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein. Once again, it’s important to note that Israel’s hopes regarding the possibilities of toughened sanctions are genuine. But one may also discern in recent statements by President Bush and President Sarkozy a commitment to the prevention of a nuclear Iran of similar firmness to that of Israel. As such, should the moment of decision arrive, and a consensus be reached that sanctions have failed, it is likely that action by Israel will have no major effect on Israel’s relations with its allies.

Regarding the likely Iranian response: the Iranians may choose to increase their already existing aid to insurgents in Iraq, they may seek to strike at Israel through proxy and client organisations such as Hizbullah and Hamas, they may seek to hit at western, Gulf and Jewish targets through terrorism. The fallout in terms of regional anger and protests will no doubt be immense. Israeli strategists conjecturing such issues, however, may well consider that an angry, vengeful but non-nuclear Iran is a more preferable prospect than a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic, triumphant and filled with the ambition for regional hegemony which possession of nuclear weapons would bring.

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Arab Summit, Iranian Agenda

Posted on April 4, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Gloria Center- 05/04/2009

The issues that dominated the 21st Arab League summit in Doha, Qatar, this week testified to the weakness and disunity of the Arab states. Sunni Arabs are the majority population group in the Middle East. Yet the Doha agenda reflected a regional reality dominated by the interests of, and clash between, two strong but non-Arab countries – Israel and Iran.

Current Arab diplomacy is dominated first and foremost by a growing Iranian encroachment on the politics of the Arabic-speaking world, and the divided Arab response to this. This was reflected in all the major issues at and around the summit.

The central diplomatic headline at Doha was the decision by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak not to attend, against a backdrop of growing Egyptian displeasure with Qatar. Egypt’s irritation derives from the increasingly pro-Iranian stance being taken by Qatar. The Gulf Emirate of Qatar offered demonstrative support to Hamas during Israel’s recent Gaza incursion. Qatar hosted an improvised summit during Operation Cast Lead, which was attended by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamas leader Khaled Meshal.
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Egypt regards Qatar’s stance as hypocritical and somewhat ludicrous – given the emirate’s close defense ties with the United States (the headquarters of U.S. military Central Command is located there). But Cairo is also worried. Qatar is aping the Iranian language of anti-Western defiance and “resistance” – a concept sure to have a receptive audience in the Arabic-speaking world – in an attempt to build its own regional influence.

The Palestinian cause – the great self-proclaimed moral flagship of Arab politics – is currently the subject of a hostile takeover bid by Iran and its clients. The Doha summit issued the expected ringing call on Israel to accept the Saudi initiative while there is still time. It is not entirely clear what the implied threat behind this statement actually consists of. But the truth is that as long as the Palestinian national movement remains in its current state, this demand lacks even the most elementary logic.

The Iranian-armed and sponsored Hamas enclave in Gaza has successfully suppressed its internal rivals and defended its existence against Israel. There are now in effect two Palestinian national movements. One of them is ideologically strong and hungry, favors Israel’s destruction, and is supported by Iran. The other is old and tired and lost, and is propped up by vast amounts of Western funding. The former is in the process of trying to devour the latter, and may succeed. So in partnership with whom is Israel expected to implement the Saudi initiative?

Fear of Iran is driving the Saudi attempt to woo Syria away from its alliance with Tehran. At a “mini-summit” in preparation for Doha earlier in March, Saudi King Abdullah offered Syria’s President Bashar Assad an extensive financial package in return for Damascus abandoning its ties with Iran and returning to the “Arab fold.” The Saudis also pledged to help Syria in its diplomatic efforts to re-acquire the Golan Heights from Israel.

So far, Assad has managed to resist all such temptations. In a recent interview with Al-Jazeera, Foreign Minister Walid Moallem dismissed the very possibility of such a move. The Syrian line, as expressed in an editorial in the government-owned al-Thawra newspaper earlier this week, is that the search for peace must go hand in hand with a policy of muqawama (resistance). The doctrine of “resistance,” of course, is the ideological and rhetorical glue holding together the disparate forces aligned with Iran in the region.

All the above examples might lead one to conclude that Iran is developing into a vast, looming power, about to overshadow the region. But the situation is more complicated than this. Iran’s advances are testimony not to the great strength and vitality of the Tehran regime and its governing idea, but rather to the weakness of Arab states, institutions and political cultures.

Iran’s regional strategy is itself limited by a series of contradictions. The muqawama doctrine is designed to enable Shi’ite, Persian Iran to link up with Islamist and oppositional forces across the Middle East. The Tehran regime stresses the idea of the “Islamic world” and an overriding Muslim identity. It dreams of a bloc of Muslim states led by a nuclear Iran, challenging Israel’s existence and American power.

And indeed, Iranian regional “outreach” has succeeded in building close alliances with a number of Arab states and movements. This project is impacting all aspects of regional politics. But Iran will always suffer from a “legitimacy gap” in the Arab world. It will always be perceived as a foreign, frightening power by many non-Shi’ite Arabs. In the end, the faltering Iranian economy and domestically unpopular regime are probably instruments too weak to carry the grand ambitions of Iran’s rulers.

Still, Doha signaled that for the moment the Iranian star in the region is on the rise, with the leading states of the Arab system – Egypt and Saudi Arabia – reduced to scolding and attempted bribery respectively in their efforts to limit its influence. It is perhaps the final ironic testimony to the Arabs’ weakness that the only regional state capable of mounting a real resistance to the westward march of Iranian power is the one against whom all Arab League members can still momentarily unite in displays of verbal ferocity – namely, Israel.

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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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