Tag: Gulf states
Tighten your seat belts
Yesterday’s unprecedented framework for a nuclear accord with Iran sets back the clock in two different ways: it would put Iran a year away from accumulating the fissionable material needed for a nuclear weapon (as opposed to the current two-three months) and it would maintain tight constraints for at least 10 years (and in some areas 15), in addition to permanent verification procedures. In return, Iran would get still unspecified sanctions relief, presumably timed to implementation of the nuclear parts of the agreement.
What does this mean for US/Iran relations, the region and the rest of the world?
It puts the US and Iran on course for intense interactions for a decade or more to come. This is a sharp break with the sporadic and often hostile relations they have endured for more than 30 years. Negotiation of the final details and implementation of the nuclear agreement will not necessarily be a friendly affair. There is lots of room for frictions and misunderstandings to develop over one or another aspect of Iran’s far-flung nuclear program. But we are going to need a dedicated group of nuclear and Iran savvy diplomats to ensure that all the t’s are crossed and the i’s dotted. It would clearly be best if these people were located in Iran or nearby, which raises the question of reopening an American diplomatic facility in Tehran. A bridge too far for the moment, but something to keep in mind.
Iran’s regional behavior will ensure that future relations with Washington are not entirely friendly. Tehran vaunt strong influence over four Arab capitals today: Damascus, Sanaa, Baghdad and Beirut, in addition to Gaza. This influence has been acquired by force of arms, mainly through aggressive action by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its proxies.
The IRGC and other Iranian security agencies do what they think they can get away with to subvert the Sunni Arab monarchies in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Iranian threats against Israel continue unabated. While claiming to be non-sectarian in outlook and providing support to Hamas (a Sunni Arab organization), Tehran has done a good deal to polarize the Middle East between Sunni and Shia, in particular by supporting Shia militias in Iraq, Hizbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the nominally Shia Alawite leadership in Syria.
At the same time, Iran is a serial human rights violator at home, where it keeps a tight lid on dissent. It is an autocracy, not a dictatorship, one that relies on elections in which candidates are screened and debate is circumscribed even if vigorous. The country’s biggest internal threat is ethnic strife, since barely more than 50% of the population identifies as Persian. Just yesterday there was trouble from Arab separatists in Khuzestan, a particularly sensitive area on the Gulf adjacent to Iraq. But Iran has also seen a broad-based, non-ethnic, pro-democracy movement that it crushed violently in 2010.
The US and Europe cannot ignore the misbehavior of Iran both at home and abroad. As sanctions are lifted, Tehran’s capacity for trouble making will increase with its oil exports, though perhaps not as much as expected because Iran’s renewed production may drive prices down further. Iran would be wise to spend any increased revenue on improving the lot of its own population, which has suffered big declines in standard of living.
But if Tehran chooses instead to unleash the IRGC even further to help Bashar al Asad, to counter the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen or to make trouble for Israel, the West needs to be prepared to respond. It may have been wise to isolate these issues from the nuclear talks until now, but it would be a mistake to allow Iran to use the resources it gets from the nuclear deal to further roil the region.
America’s friends and allies in the region, both Sunni Arab and Israeli, will rightly not let us forget that Iran continues to try to export its Islamic revolution. They regard the end of sanctions on Iran and its return to a more normal international status as strengthening the Islamic Republic. They at times seem more concerned with this return to normality than with the far greater strengthening that would result from Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. But there are real issues: Russia, for example, may transfer advanced air defenses to Tehran once sanctions are lifted. The conventional military balance in the Gulf favors the Sunni Arabs and Israel, but the end of sanctions may enable Iran to improve its standing.
No good deed goes unpunished. Iran and the US are at best at the beginning of a long road. It is not clear where the road leads. There will be many bumps along the way. Tighten your seat belts.
PS: Here is President Obama’s defense of the pending agreement.
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Unprecedented
Caveats and qualifications. This is only a “framework” agreement. A lot of details are still missing, and that’s where the devil lies. But I claim some qualifications for expressing an opinion on it: bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physical chemistry, plus seven years as a science counselor in American embassies abroad, where one of my primary responsibilities was preventing the transfer of technology that might enable one country or another to develop nuclear weapons. I’ve done my share of climbing around reactors, fuel fabrication facilities, enrichment laboratories, and reprocessing plants, not to mention talking with would-be bomb builders as well as their enablers.
The Parameters for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Nuclear Program is remarkably detailed and exhaustive in specifying restraints on Tehran and their duration. I counted 32 specific Iranian commitments, including no enrichment above the level needed for power production for 15 years, a limited stockpile of that low enriched uranium for 15 years, a dramatic reduction in the number of centrifuges available for enrichment, verifiable conversion of Iran’s underground enrichment plant to other purposes for 15 years, permanent and intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections, restrictions on nuclear imports, and reconfiguration of Iran’s heavy water reactor to limit severely its production of plutonium as well as a ban on reprocessing.
Nothing like these restrictions has ever before been agreed to by a potential nuclear weapons state. They are truly unprecedented.
The one all-too-obvious gap is this sentence:
Iran will implement an agreed set of measures to address the IAEA’s concerns regarding the Possible Military Dimensions (PMD) of its program.
Iran has stiffed the IAEA on accounting for its suspected secret nuclear activities many times. This sentence offers nothing more than has been pledged many times in the past. That is too bad, as no state has ever developed nuclear weapons in an IAEA-monitored program. Accounting for past clandestine activities is important. But there are three months now to make good on the pledge–I trust Washington will insist.
On sanctions, the promise to Iran is vague: “relief, if it abides by its commitments.” Presumably Iran can expect China and Russia to press in particular for removal of UN Security Council sanctions at an early date, but that will require US, British and French concurrence. In addition:
U.S. and E.U. nuclear-related sanctions will be suspended after the IAEA has verified that Iran has taken all of its key nuclear-related steps. If at any time Iran fails to fulfill its commitments, these sanctions will snap back into place.
The US at least maintains human rights and other non-nuclear sanctions, so at least some will not be suspended. But this sentence appears to promise an “early harvest” of unspecified sanctions relief if everything is going smoothly.
As I read it, this is about as good an agreement as anyone had any hope of achieving. The question is whether it is better than no agreement, which would have left Iran free to generate enough highly enriched uranium to build at least one nuclear weapon within a few months. A 15-year delay in getting to that point seems a significant achievement to me. I see no sense in which this deal “paves the way” to the bomb, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed in his speech to the Congress.
Without this deal, we would have faced an Iran forging ahead unconstrained to make weapons grade uranium and possibly plutonium. Sanctions would be fraying. The only option left would be war, which might set Iran back a few years but cause Tehran to redouble its nuclear weapons efforts, as Saddam Hussein did after the Israelis* bombed the Osiraq reaction in 1981. That sounds much more like paving the way to nuclear weapons than this deal, even without the precious details on Iran’s past clandestine activities.
This is an unprecedented achievement, but I don’t expect the Congress, Israel or the Gulf Arab states to readily agree. President Obama has got his work cut out for him, both to fill in missing details and sell the package to domestic political adversaries and Middle Eastern friends.
*I originally wrote “French” here. Hazards of hasty drafting. The reactor was French. The bombs were Israeli. Apologies.
PPS: Jeb Bush’s statement on the Iran deal, with {my comments}:
Today, the Obama administration has agreed to remove U.S. and international sanctions {it agreed to still unspecified sanctions relief and suspension, not removal}, while permitting Iran to enrich uranium using most {less than one-third} of the centrifuges in use today, conduct research into faster, next generation centrifuges {but not deploy them for 10 years}, maintain an underground, hardened facility at Fordow {but not use it for enrichment}, and expand its ballistic missile capabilities {which are not included in the agenda of the talks}. It fails to obtain a guarantee of sufficient inspections {apparently Mr. Bush thinks insufficient the most intrusive inspection regime available to the IAEA, in addition to access to “suspicious sites” and uranium production facilities, monitoring of nuclear imports and early notification of newly constructed facilities}. Iran isn’t required to disclose its past weaponization activities and many of the deal’s provisions will expire in the near future {the failure to answer IAEA questions about weaponization is a serious issue that should be solved before the final agreement is concluded in June, but I can’t find any of the deal’s provisions that expire in anything I would call the near future, unless a decade is your idea of the near future}.
This statement is a sad commentary on Bush’s ability to respond quickly and accurately to an admittedly technical subject.
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The Islamic Republic and the Kingdom
This morning’s news confirms that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has jinned up a Sunni alliance (including Egypt, Turkey, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan as well as several other countries) to battle the (sort of Shia) Houthi rebellion in Yemen, which the Shia-majority Islamic Republic of Iran backs. No one likes to label wars sectarian, but avoiding it doesn’t make them less so.
Sectarian wars are identity conflicts, which makes them particularly difficult to resolve. No one likes to compromise their identity. During conflict, the multiple (and sometimes common) identities we all sport in more normal times are often shorn in favor of a single one. Middle East experts will all tell you that seeing what is going on exclusively through a sectarian lense is a mistake. But it is a mistake that in a first approximation comes all too close to reality during conflict.
It is increasingly clear that it won’t be possible to manage the conflicts in the Middle East country by country, which is the way diplomacy normally works. War does not. Syria and Iraq are one theater of operations for the Islamic State and for the Iranian-backed militias fighting it. Lebanon could be engulfed soon. Iran supports the Houthi rebellion in Yemen in part because of the Sunni rebellion in Syria.
The Sunni/Shia dimension of these conflicts puts the Americans in an awkward spot. They don’t want to take sides in sectarian war. Their major concerns are not sectarian but rather nuclear weapons, terrorism and oil. So they find themselves supporting Iranian militias in Iraq and as well as their (allegedly moderate) Sunni opponents in Syria and Yemen. The result is that Sunnis feel abandoned by their erstwhile ally even as Iranians accuse the Americans of originating Sunni sectarianism in the Middle East. We are in a lose-lose bind.
Getting out of it is going to require more skilled regional diplomacy than we have demonstrated so far. We need to be able to do two things at once:
- bring home a serious product from the nuclear talks with Iran early next week, and
- counter Iranian aggression and proxies in Yemen and Syria
If the nuclear talks fail, expect to see escalation on all sides: in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. But if the nuclear talks succeed, that will not mean peace in our time, as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will seek a free hand in pursuing its activities abroad to compensate for limits on the nuclear program. Only preparedness to counter the IRGC will convince it otherwise.
The Administration has wisely kept the nuclear talks focused mainly on the Iranian nuclear program. But the time is coming for a wider discussion with Iran of its interests in neighboring countries and the counter-productive way in which it is projecting power through Shia proxies. We’ll also need to be talking with America’s Sunni friends, especially Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, about the opening they provide to Iran by discriminatory and exclusionary treatment of Shia in their own populations.
A classic security dilemma has emerged between Sunni and Shia in many parts of the Middle East. What one group does to make itself more secure the other group sees as threatening. Escalation is the consequence, but that won’t work. Neither Sunni nor Shia will win this war. Eventually the Islamic Republic and the Kingdom will need to reach an accommodation. How many will die before they do?
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The SuShi proxy war is likely to continue
This morning’s news that Saudi Arabia is bombing Houthi rebels in Yemen confirms what you already knew: the Middle East is engulfed in a proxy war between Iran–which supports the Houthis in Yemen, Bashar al Asad in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq, and Lebanon’s Hizbollah–and Sunni states, including in the front lines the United Arab Emirates and Qatar as well as Saudi Arabia. Occasional Sunni-majority contributors include Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt. At the same time, Iran and its allies as well as Saudi Arabia and its allies are fighting against Sunni extremists associated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
No wonder it is hard to keep score. This game is played in many dimensions. In the Sunni/Shia dimension, the United States has no dog in the fight, to use Secretary of State Baker’s unforgettable phrase. Our focus is on the fight against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, wherever they rear their brutal methods, because we fear they will inevitably target the “far enemy” (us) in due course. You might think it would be possible for Iran and Saudi Arabia to cooperate in that dimension, but instead they compete. Neither wants a victory over extremism to be credited to the other or to allow the other (or its proxies) to inherit the territory extremists once controlled.
The Sunni/Shia dimension and the anti-extremist dimension are not really orthogonal. Victory in one will affect the outcome in the other. The protagonists know it, which is one reason they are engaging in both. Iran would gain a great deal in the fight against Sunni states if Shia-allied forces win in Iraq and Syria. Likewise, Saudi Arabia would gain a great deal in the fight against Iran if it is able to put a majority Sunni regime in place in Syria and chase the Islamic State from the Sunni provinces of Iraq.
Yemen is a bit of a side show to the main theater of operations in the Levant. But geography makes it important to Saudi Arabia, in whose back yard it lies. If the Iran-allied Houthis are able to take over there, the Kingdom will feel the loss. By the same token, the Kingdom wants to see Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula defeated. Ironically, the Houthis have been at least as willing to engage on that front as the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, but Riyadh won’t see that as a plus. It wants to defeat both the Houthis and Al Qaeda.
Washington is in a difficult spot. It doesn’t want to be a protagonist in the Sunni/Shia war, but is viewed as one with every move it makes. Yesterday’s American air attacks against the remaining Islamic State forces in Tikrit were apparently undertaken only when Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi agreed to limit the role of Shia militias in retaking the capital of Salahuddin province. David Petraeus and others are being quoted as claiming that Iran is a far greater threat to the US than the Islamic State.
Likewise the nuclear negotiations are being seen through the lens of the Sunni/Shia conflict. An agreement that blocks Iran’s paths to nuclear weapons and provides at least a year’s warning of breakout has come to be viewed as strengthening rather than weakening the Islamic Republic. Sunni states apparently prefer military action against Iran’s nuclear program, which would guarantee that the Iranians do their damndest to get the bomb. But their goading of the US to war might be quickly forgotten in the devastating aftermath, as Iran would no doubt target its Gulf neighbors in any response.
This layered set of interrelated issues (Sunni/Shia, Islamic extremists, nuclear capabilities) is a good deal to complex for even very skilled diplomats to imagine easy solutions. The Obama Administration has essentially decided to prioritize two issue: blocking Iran from nuclear weapons and fighting Islamic extremists. We’ll know by Monday, the deadline for some sort of product from the nuclear talks, if the first issue is likely to be resolved. The second is likely to be with us much longer, if only because the Sunni/Shia conflict we don’t want to be involved in will keep feeding the extremists of both varieties with recruits.
The SuShi proxy war (between Sunni and Shia) is likely to continue.
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Another March madness
I was reminded this week of the CNAS report If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran, by Colin Kahl, Jacob Stokes and Raj Pattani in 2013 when Colin was out of government. It makes particularly interesting reading in the run-up to a possible nuclear deal with Iran. March is the make or break month for at least a framework agreement.
The report is a reminder of what we are going to need to do if there is no agreement and Iran manages (whether or not there is a military strike on its nuclear facilities) to get nuclear weapons. Our objectives would then number 11:
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Prevent direct Iranian use of nuclear weapons;
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Prevent Iranian transfer of nuclear weapons to terrorists;
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Limit and mitigate the consequences of Iranian sponsorship of conventional terrorism, support groups and conventional aggression;
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Discourage Iranian use of nuclear threats to coerce other states or provoke crises;
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Dissuade Iranian escalation during crises;
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Discourage Iran from adopting a destabilizing nuclear posture that emphasizes early use of nuclear weapons or pre-delegates launch authority;
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Persuade Israel to eschew a destabilizing nuclear posture that emphasizes early use of nuclear weapons or hair-trigger launch procedures;
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Convince other regional states not to pursue nuclear weapons capabilities;
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Limit damage to the credibility of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and U.S. nonproliferation leadership;
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Prevent Iran from becoming a supplier of sensitive nuclear materials; and
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Ensure the free flow of energy resources from the Persian Gulf.
While some of these objectives are already operable (especially the last), it is eminently clear that Iranian nuclear weapons would be a major challenge. According to Kahl, Stokes and Pattani, the responses would have to include:
Deterrence to prevent Iranian nuclear use and aggression through credible threats of retaliation by:
- Strengthening U.S. declaratory policy to explicitly threaten nuclear retaliation in response to Iranian nuclear use and strengthening commitments to defend U.S. allies and partners;
- Engaging in high-level dialogue with regional partners to extend the U.S. nuclear umbrella in exchange for commitments not to pursue independent nuclear capabilities;
- Evaluating options for the forward deployment of U.S. nuclear forces;
- Providing Israel with a U.S. nuclear guarantee and engaging Israeli leaders on steps to enhance the credibility of their nuclear deterrent; and
- Improving nuclear forensics and attribution capabilities to deter nuclear terrorism.
Defense to deny Iran the ability to benefit from its nuclear weapons and to protect U.S. partners and allies from aggression by:
- Bolstering U.S. national missile defense capabilities;
- Improving the ability to detect and neutralize nuclear weapons that might be delivered by terrorists;
- Improving network resilience to reduce the threat posed by Iranian cyber attacks;
- Maintaining a robust U.S. conventional presence in the Persian Gulf and considering additional missile defense and naval deployments;
- Increasing security cooperation and operational integration activities with Gulf countries, especially in the areas of shared early warning, air and missile defense, maritime security and critical infrastructure protection; and
- Increasing security cooperation with Israel, especially assistance and collaboration to improve Israel’s rocket and missile defenses.
Disruption to shape a regional environment resistant to Iranian influence and to thwart and diminish Iran’s destabilizing activities by:
- Building Egyptian and Iraqi counterweights to Iranian influence through strategic ties with Cairo and Baghdad, leveraging assistance to consolidate democratic institutions and encourage related reform;
- Promoting evolutionary political reform in the Gulf;
- Increasing assistance to non-jihadist elements of the Syrian opposition and aiding future political transition efforts;
- Shaping Iran’s nuclear posture through a U.S. “no-first-use” pledge;
- Persuading Israel to eschew a preemptive nuclear doctrine and other destabilizing nuclear postures;
- Establishing crisis communication mechanisms with Iran and exploring confidence-building measures;
- Limiting U.S. military objectives in crises and conflicts with Iran to signal that regime change is not the goal of U.S. actions; and
- Providing the Iranian regime with “face-saving” exit ramps during crisis situations.
Denuclearization to constrain Iran’s nuclear weapons program and limit broader damage to the nonproliferation regime by:
- Maintaining and tightening sanctions against Iran; and
- Strengthening interdiction efforts, including the Proliferation Security Initiative, to limit Iran’s access to nuclear and missile technology and stop Iran from horizontally proliferating sensitive technologies to other states and non-state actors.
I suppose there is some universe in which the United States can do all these things successfully and at the same time shift its strategic attention out of the Middle East towards countering an aggressive Russia and a rising China, but it is not the real universe in which you and I live.
Prime Minister Netanyahu argued that an agreement would pave Iran’s way to a bomb. But that was a rhetorical flourish, not serious analysis. The worst that can be said of an Iran/P5+1 agreement is that it is irrelevant: Iran is more likely to sneak out through a clandestine program than break out by diverting nuclear material from its civilian nuclear program. I can see no way an agreement that expands IAEA inspections can make it easier for Tehran to divert nuclear material to a bomb-building effort. And the military strike option–which would certainly cause Iran to try to accelerate bomb-making efforts–would remain open if there are violations of an agreement.
Containment requires far more of Washington than it can reasonably be expected to deliver. That is a good reason for preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And an agreement is the best bet for that. Anything else would be March madness.
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The Gulf beyond oil
Elizabeth Kiefer, a master’s student at SAIS, reports on the Carnegie Endowment discussion this week of the Chatham House report Future Trends in the Gulf.
Panelists:
Jamil De Dominicis, Coordinator, Middle East and North Africa Program, Chatham House
Kristen Smith Diwan, Visiting Scholar, Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University and lecturer at American University’s School of International Service
Jane Kinninmont, Deputy Head and Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Program, Chatham House
Matar Ebrahim Matar, Former Member of Parliament, Kingdom of Bahrain
Moderator:
Frederic Wehrey, Senior Associate, Middle East Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Jane Kinninmont provided a brief summary of the new Chatham House report. While the Gulf States are often seen as a bastion of stability, a number of factors that have generated tensions between civil society and Gulf governments such as high population growth, increased internal migration, lavish economic spending, government nepotism, the public’s dissatisfaction with current land ownership policies, lack of employment opportunities for women, and the uneven distribution of wealth. The proliferation of information via Twitter and satellite television has created the expectation among Gulf citizens of greater government transparency and generated calls that citizens be included in international and domestic policy debates.
While the Gulf States were originally receptive to change in the wake of the Arab Spring, these regimes are now less likely to accommodate local demands for openness as a result of the turmoil that has accompanied transitioning states. Governments are now repressing civil dissent and resisting calls for political transformation. Some of the Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia, have increased social spending in an effort to buy off local dissent, but this strategy is not sustainable in the long-term due to declining oil revenues and poor economic policies.
Kinninmont argued that these regimes must pursue economic policies that move beyond oil to create knowledge-based economies. Such a shift must be accompanied with parallel public discussion about what a “new deal” with a state that provides fewer subsidies and expects greater inputs from its citizens entails.
Western countries are sending mixed messages to Gulf states. Continued military and security assistance, without pushes for democratic reforms or increased social spending, have reinforced negative Gulf behaviors.
Jamil De Dominicis noted the space for constructive political dialogue in the Gulf States has decreased since 2011. He is particularly alarmed about the practice that many states are pursuing of revoking the citizenship of political dissidents. Dominicis advocates that Gulf states take a long-term approach towards transition that redefines the relationship between the state and citizen beyond the accumulation of wealth.
Kristen Smith Diwan noted that the West needs to view its strategy with Gulf states beyond the lens of oil and gas. The new security environment in the Middle East will make Western political concerns in the Gulf more difficult to address. Many Gulf states are using new legal frameworks and media laws, enacted under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts, to crack down on peaceful opposition. She highlighted the use of such tactics in Kuwait and Bahrain, where several moderate clerics who spoke out against government policies were sentenced to prison. The parliaments in many Gulf States are now less representative of the region’s political landscape due to free speech restrictions.
Diwan echoed Dominicis‘ concerns about taking away citizenship, noting that revoking citizenship is a highly effective and symbolic tactic to repress dissent. Policies that drive peaceful political dissent underground risk creating violent extremist groups in the coming years.
Matar Ebrahim said Gulf youth are increasingly following economic, human rights, and democracy issues on Twitter. Their governments are increasingly committing human rights abuses and even torture against those who protest. The current political environment is not sustainable and is driving foreign companies out of the region due to security concerns.
Ebrahim said that there were three scenarios that could play out in the region. The first is continuation of the status quo, which he believes is not sustainable and would ultimately precipitate inevitable but difficult political transitions in Gulf states. The second scenario involves a political “opening up” in Saudi Arabia, which would have ripple effects in the region. The third and most likely scenario is a political transition in a small country such as Bahrain, which could serve as a model for others. Ebrahim noted that the time for change was now, as the economic outlook for Bahrain is particularly bleak.
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