Tag: United States
Punt and rethink
Having failed to reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program by today’s deadline, the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) and Tehran have decided to punt. The new deadlines are March 1 for a framework political agreement and July 1 for the definitive agreement. Iran continues to get access to $700 million per month with the current Joint Plan of Action (JPA) extended. That’s a lot of money, but nowhere near enough to compensate for Iran’s loss of oil revenue due to the recent sharp fall in prices.
The interesting question is how this punt will be received politically in the US and in Iran.
With the Republicans taking over control of the Senate, there is a real possibility of new sanctions being passed, whether the Administration wants them or not. My guess is that something along those lines will happen, possibly new sanctions to be triggered if the March 1 deadline is missed. These would likely focus on the Iranian financial system, making transactions with the rest of the world far more difficult than they are today.
In Iran, the JPA restrains the overt nuclear program from dashing towards accumulating the material necessary to build a nuclear weapon, but Tehran has still not clarified the possible military dimensions of some of its past nuclear activity. With the Majlis likely to amplify its belligerence, there will be internal pressures there to accelerate any clandestine activities and to ensure maximum development of enrichment capacity consistent with the JPA. The punt gives Iran time to try to move the goal posts before the game starts again.
Meanwhile, the war against ISIS in Iraq has Iran and the US fighting on the same side, to support the Shia-led government in Baghdad, while it puts them at least nominally at odds in Syria, where Tehran supports Bashar al Asad’s minority Alawite regime while the US supposedly supports the Syrian opposition. But President Obama is doing nothing militarily to harm Assad’s forces and has said that he is not trying now to remove Assad, presumably in order to avoid disrupting the nuclear talks with Iran.
It is high time for Washington to reconsider its position in Syria. Would the nuclear talks go worse if Bashar al Assad were under more immediate threat, or would they go better? If Washington were to accept the Turkish proposal to create a protected area within Syria in which the opposition could govern, would the nuclear talks go worse or better? The answers to these questions are unclear, but it is arguable that a more robust American position in Syria opposing Assad and supporting the opposition would give Tehran something to worry about and increase American leverage on the nuclear issue, not decrease it.
Washington needs also to reconsider whether it is wise to give absolute priority to the nuclear talks in their current configuration. If the JPA is the best the P5+1 are going to get, it might make sense to accept the limited time it puts between Iran and a nuclear weapon (less than six months?) and refocus on possible military dimensions. There really is little precedent for a country using facilities safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency to gain nuclear weapons. Clandestine facilities are the far greater threat.
With the resignation of Secretary of Defense Hagel, President Obama has an opportunity to use the appointment of his replacement as a way of signaling what he plans to do on Iran, the nuclear talks and Syria. Some rethinking is in order. Let’s hope it gets done.
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Lame duck flies again
Like just about everything else in Washington today, how you feel about the President’s action on immigration depends on how you feel about the President. He has become the political touchstone for everyone.
Dislike him? You are likely to think it is a mistake for him to act without Congress, he doesn’t have or shouldn’t use the authority needed, and the Republicans in Congress should teach him a lesson by holding up confirmations or screwing with the budget, maybe even causing a government shutdown, suing the bastard or impeaching him.
Like him (as I do), you are likely to think it is a good move, both politically and administratively. We are never going to be able to deport five million people, the Congress has failed to act, and this move will solidify the Democrats’ link to the Hispanic and Asian communities. If Republicans don’t like it, they can up the ante in the next session, when they will have majorities in both houses.
So we are at loggerheads one more time. Unlike most others, I’m not prepared to bemoan that. It seems to me immigration is an important issue that should be subject to the full force of political contestation. Who is allowed into the country does determine who we are.
The outcome of the political debate is of course uncertain, but I am betting that the Republicans in Congress will up the ante. They cannot afford to have the Democrats walk off permanently with the lion’s share of Hispanic, Asian and Silicon Valley votes, as they did during the Roosevelt era with black votes.
A lot of people are going to be surprised if the Republicans turn around and offer a path to citizenship (which the President’s action will not). But it is their best political move, provided they can gather enough of their own party’s votes to back it. When you have lemons, make lemonade.
In the wake of the drubbing the Democrats got earlier this month in the mid-term election, it has become popular to pronounce their inevitable decline. I’ve been through too many cycles of that media trop with both parties to believe it likely true this time. But keeping the President and his views under wraps during the last election did nothing to help the Democrats stem the tide of Republican success. Getting him out front and firm about what he believes in and what he wants to do strikes me as more likely to fix the Democrats’ ailing fortunes.
Polarization may not produce the paralysis everyone expects. On immigration, Atlantic and Pacific trade, the response to the Islamic State, preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, engaging with China and other truly priority issues there are large measures of agreement and strong pressures for serious progress. A lame duck president is also a free-wheeling president. He did well in Asia last week. This week looks good too. The lame duck flies again.
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End the Iranian occupation of Syria
Last week, the Middle East Institute hosted Faoud Hamdan, Founder and Executive Director, Rule of Law Foundation and the head of Naame Shaam, a project dedicated to researching Iran’s role in the Syrian conflict. Since its launch early this year, the organization has been involved in a number of initiatives such as a peaceful protests in European cities where Iranian officials and ministers have conducted meetings, an open letter to the Syrian opposition, as well as producing in-depth reports and analysis on Iran’s military and economic role in fuelling the war in Syria.
One of their most in-depth reports, “Iran in Syria: From an Ally of the Regime to an Occupying Force,” provides
numerous examples and case studies of human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Syria by Iranian controlled militias and forces.
This report finds Iranian involvement in the ‘crisis cell’ assassination in July 2012 in which 6 of Bashar al-Assad’s highest-ranking members were killed. In addition, the report claims the Ghouta chemical massacre near Damascus in August 2013 involved the Iranians.
The Naame Shaam report also concludes that Iran is an occupying force in Syria. It presents legal arguments for addressing the war in Syria as an “international conflict that involves a foreign occupation…as defined by the 1907 Hague Regulations and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.” Other key findings in the report suggest that the influence of the Iranian regime will endure past the fall of Assad due to “Iranian-backed and controlled militias fighting on behalf of the Syrian regime, including Hezbollah Lebanon and various Iraqi Shiah militia.”
The question remains of the rational for Iran’s heavy involvement in Syria. Naame Shaam asseses that there motivation is driven
first and foremost by the strategic interests of the Iranian regime in keeping shipments flowing to Hezbollah in Lebanon via Syria, so as to keep Hezbollah a strong deterrent against any attack on Iran’s military nuclear program.
According to the report, the Iranian regime has also been providing the Syrian regime with “financial loans and credit lines worth billions of dollars.” Without Iran’s military and financial support, Naame Shaam claims the Assad regime would already have collapsed.
The Naame Shaam conclusions are far reaching:
- Iran should be held responsible for “complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity”
- No lifting of economic sanctions
- No extension of nuclear negotiations
In addition, the United States and the European Union
- should “demand that the Iranian regime orders Hezbollah Lebanon to disband and integrate into the Lebanese army”
- work to end the conflict in Syria by supporting moderate Syrian rebels
- should give the Iranian regime a “clear ultimatum” to pull “Sepah Pasdaran, Hezbollah Lebanon and other foot soldiers out of Syria.”
- put forth a UN Security Council Resolution under Chapter VII “imposing safe and unhindered humanitarian access to conflict zones and people in need throughout Syria.”
In case of a veto by China and Russia, the US and EU as well as their allies should “act unilaterally by securing areas held by the moderate Syrian opposition, imposing no-fly zones.”
Naame Shaam wants the international community to halt the role of Iranian influence and occupation inside Syria.
The full report is available here.
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Doubts about Putin’s credentials
American Ambassador John Tefft presented his credentials to President Putin today in Moscow. Putin’s remarks were pointed:
We are ready for practical cooperation with our American partners in various fields, based on the principles of respect for each other’s interests, equal rights, and noninterference in internal matters.
That “we are ready” betrays Moscow’s reaction to the sanctions squeeze the EU and the US have mounted. It is hurting, as is the fall in oil prices. Moscow is wise to be signing big contracts to sell gas to China, but it will be years before deliveries begin. In the meanwhile, a budget calculated at over $90 per barrel is under real pressure. The ruble’s fall compounds the problem.
Less promising is Putin’s concept of respect for each other’s interests and equal rights. He has promulgated an expanded notion of Russia’s interests. They extend in his thinking to all Russian-speaking populations in neighboring states. The pattern is clear: in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, Moscow has preserved or carved out separate governance for Russian speakers (in South Ossetia and Abhazia, Transdniester and Crimea). He is trying to do the same thing in the Ukrainian part of Donbas, a region that straddles the Ukraine/Russia border.
This is not an effort to reconstruct the Soviet Union. Putin may regard its collapse as a catastrophe, but he knows that the more Western-oriented parts of the Soviet empire are not going back to Moscow’s fold. What Putin is doing is akin to Milosevic’s effort to implement the Serbian nationalist dream of all Serbs in one state by helping Serb-populated territories outside the borders of Serbia proper establish or sustain separate states. Milosevic failed in Croatia and Kosovo and ended up with hundreds of thousands of Serb refugees who fled from those places. But he succeeded in Bosnia, where Republika Srpska is the kind of separate governance Putin envisages in Donbas.
Putin’s concept of “noninterference in internal matters” also merits scrutiny. I was told repeatedly during a fall visit to Moscow that Americans needed to understand that Ukraine is an internal issue for Russia. That was sufficient evidence for me that Moscow does not respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. More evidence: the Russian claim that the US promised that NATO would not expand. The constant public refrain of the Americans after 1989 was “Europe whole and free.” In what universe does “free” not include the right of European states to join whatever alliance will have them?
Of course Putin also means by noninterference that Washington should not support democracy advocates in Russia. He has in fact restricted US efforts to support independent voices and cracked down on many of them. Here he is within his rights I suppose, as the United States was (from an international law perspective) during the Cold War when it restricted the activities of the Communist Party. But Senator McCarthy’s red scare wasn’t the America’s proudest moment. Imitating it won’t be Russia’s. Allowing and protecting dissent is a sign of a state’s strength, not weakness.
Putin accepted John Tefft’s credentials. But America should have profound doubts about Putin’s.
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The Ebola challenge
As the Senate considers President Obama’s request for $6.2 billion to combat Ebola, the questions of US leadership and the international response are critical. On Wednesday, the Brookings Institution hosted a conversation with Rajiv Shah, Administrator of USAID and Eric Postel, Assistant to the Administrator for Africa, to discuss the topic. The moderator was Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institution.
In March, the Ebola outbreak appeared to be on the path to being mitigated, but urban transmission exploded and by May the transmission rates were as high as 2.5 for infected persons. This decimated the health care systems in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, none of which have yet to recover. Shah noted that one of the biggest obstacles is the unpredictability of when or where the next outbreak will be.
In addressing the US role, Shah echoed the sentiments of President Obama, who in a letter to Congress stated
My foremost priority is to protect the health and safety of Americans, and this request supports all necessary steps to fortify our domestic health system and prevent any outbreaks at home…Over the longer term, my administration recognizes that the best way to prevent additional cases at home will be to contain and eliminate the epidemic at its source in Africa.
Shah believes controlling the virus at the source is the only way to guarantee the safety and security of the American people.
Another issue is the setback the Ebola outbreak will cause in the region. According to Postel, preliminary data shows that there has been a significant impact, specifically in the growth of the affected nations. This has been caused many factors such as halts in investments and the flight of expatriates from host countries. While one attendee posed the question of how to incentivize foreigners from curtailing their time in these countries, neither had a solution.
The president of the World Bank recently announced the need for at least 5,000 more health workers in Sierre Leone, Guinea and Liberia. However, quarantine practices for returning health care workers and the growing fear of infection are creating obstacles. The appearance of Ebola in Mali suggests the epidemic is not slowing down.
Shah mentioned the training of thousands of health workers in West Africa in order to thwart the further spread of the disease however there have been numerous reports of inadequate materials and training for health care workers within West Africa. This dissatisfaction with the conditions was met with an estimated 100,000 members of National Nurses United (NNU), from California to the Philippines, taking part in global “strikes and vigils to highlight perceived failings” surrounding the international response to Ebola.
With the death toll surpassing 5,000 in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea there is a responsibility from international community to allocate the proper funding and resources to ensure the necessary precautions are being taken and the appropriate measures are being put in place. The Ebola crisis must be met with monetary as well as physical assistance in order to effectively combat the deadly disease.
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Lame duck flies
I’m no Asia expert, but President Obama’s performance at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing last week, in Myanmar and at the G20 in Australia looks damn good to me. Besides sporting his Chinese getup better than most of the other leaders, he has managed some serious bilateral moves:
- Prospective lowered tariffs on high tech between China and the US;
- New commitments by the two countries to reduce carbon emissions;
- Agreement with Beijing on avoiding military confrontations;
- Agreement with India on its food subsidy system that will unblock trade negotiations;
- Strong support for democratic transition in Burma/Myanmar;
- Embarrassment of Vladimir Putin for continuing to assert Russian troops are not in Ukraine.
Foreign travel and foreign policy are not unusual moves for a president in trouble. This one has used them well to do things that were planned and executed carefully. He is not looking or acting like a lame duck, especially if you throw in his preparations for a major executive move on immigration, his apparent willingness (in my view unwise) to block the XL pipeline from Canada, and the prospect of a nuclear deal with Iran.
What he hasn’t done yet is to deal effectively with two current wars: against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and in Ukraine.
Despite Canadian Prime Minister’s blunt “you need to get out of Ukraine,” the Russians are still pouring men and materiel into separatist areas of southeast Ukraine. Putin was chivalrous in Beijing, offering of his coat to Xi Jinping’s wife. It behooves him to behave well towards the Chinese customers for Russia’s gas and oil. But his best behavior did nothing to hide his decidedly aggressive stance in Europe, where Moscow is not only invading Ukraine but also challenging NATO’s borders with close approaches of aircraft. President Obama needs to think hard about whether there isn’t more we can do to respond to Russian aggression, whether by military or diplomatic means.
ISIS’ rapid advances have been stopped, but it is still consolidating its control over eastern Syria and western Iraq. It is making mistakes in doing so, including mass atrocities against Sunni tribes that will no doubt be motive for revenge by their surviving relatives. Some Sunni tribes are even welcoming Shia militias to help them fight ISIS. Iraqi government forces have reportedly broken the ISIS siege of the country’s only oil refinery, and Kurdish forces have retaken some towns in the north.
But there seems to be no hope for a serious Iraqi army offensive against ISIS before spring. While coalition air attacks make life tactically difficult for the caliphate’s fighters, they are not faltering strategically. ISIS is far more than the small terrorist group President Obama likes to talk about. It is a serious insurgency that will require someone–be it Iraqi government or Syrian opposition–to conduct a serious counter-insurgency campaign. Killing a few of its leaders and cadres is not going to turn the tide. There are reports this weekend of a plan to accelerate arming of the Syrian opposition. That is long overdue. A commitment to protect it when it moves into Syria should be forthcoming as well.
So yes, Mr. President, you had a good week in Asia. The lame duck showed he could fly. But things are still bad in Europe and the Middle East. Welcome home!
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