Tag: Iran
Riyadh and Washington try to get it together
With King Abdullah back in the saddle throne since late February, after months abroad for medical treatment, it seems to me that Saudi diplomacy has gone into relative overdrive. Their biggest move was troops into Bahrain, to free up the Bahraini security forces to beat up demonstrators, but now they appear to be taking an active role in arranging for the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh from his post, if not from the country. I imagine they’ve decided now he is more liability than asset, something most Yemenis seem to have concluded weeks ago.
The Americans are also in overdrive, with Defense Secretary Gates and National Security Adviser Donilon wearing out the flying carpet to Riyadh. This is likely in part damage limitation–the Saudis aren’t happy to see the Americans plumping for transition in the democratic direction in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain. It must be difficult to convince them that somehow we’ll manage to stop the process before it gets to the Kingdom, which has largely pacified its own population and cracks down hard when soft power fails to do the job.
But it looks as if there may be more on the agenda: the Iranian challenge looms large for both Washington and Riyadh, and both have taken to implying that the Iranians are up to no good in Bahrain, though there is little evidence that the protests were fueled by Tehran. This I suppose is where the Saudis would like the Americans to draw the line: democracy is good, but not if it threatens to bring a Shia majority into power (as it did of course in Iraq, and the Saudis were not pleased).
This leaves Libya and Syria. I see no real unhappiness coming from the Saudis about what is going on in Libya, and it is difficult to imagine that the United Arab Emirates would lend its air force to the cause if the Saudis were not prepared to go along. Gaddafi is not a Saudi kind of guy, and of course there is no Shia threat there. Syria is harder to read: are the Saudis backing Bashar al Assad, who runs an Alawi (sort of Shia) regime, or not? Riyadh and Damascus have in the past competed with him for influence in Lebanon. Would the Saudis prefer a Sunni regime in Damascus? Or does the preference for stability prevail? So far, the latter.
Saudi influence is likely one of the reasons the Americans haven’t been as welcoming of the protesters in Syria as might have been expected. Both Washington and Riyadh are worried about chaos in Syria, and how that might affect Iraq and Jordan. This is odd, of course, since Damascus is allied with Tehran and Bashar al Assad has not hesitated to make trouble for the Americans in both Iraq and Lebanon. I wonder if things started really coming apart in Damascus whether the Saudis would reconsider.
Now if you’ve got a headache from all this diplomatic mumbo jumbo, I’m not surprised. But the world really is complicated, the Middle East more than most other regions. And if something happens in Saudi Arabia to disrupt its giant oil production and exports, that $4 gasoline is going to start looking cheap.
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Sure non-violent resistance can work in Iran
Problem is, there is no telling when.
The question “Can Non-Violent Resistance Work in Iran?” was posed Friday by Karim Sadjadpour to a panel at the Carnegie Endowment featuring former Italian ambassador in Tehran Roberto Toscano and Iranian political philosopher (and former political prisoner) Ramin Jahanbegloo.
No surprise the panel thought non-violent resistance might work and is not naive. Jahanbegloo emphasized that it is a strategic (not a moral) imperative, in particular if civil society is to win the day. Regime oppression of the Green Movement is a sign that it is a real threat.
Toscano agreed, saying that violence and politics are alternatives. Violence may achieve quick results, but at the cost of longer-term problems, because it undermines the legitimacy of the revolutionary movement. Violence divides people, and the resulting revolution has to defend itself from those who did not support it. Nonviolence enhances legitimacy by widening support. Iran, Toscano underlined, is autocratic, not totalitarian, rather like Italian Fascism.
Jahanbegloo thinks the Green Movement still has a good deal of capability, as it is a civic movement with real, indigenous, grass roots support. It needs to focus on undermining media and military support for the regime. Because of its dispersed leadership, the Movement is hard to decapitate. Women have been particularly important among the Greens, and more of them are in prison than men.
Agreeing that the lack of a clearly defined leadership structure strengthens the movement, Toscano noted that the regime also lacks a single target–it is an oligarchy that relies increasingly on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its recycled alumni, and far less than in the past on the clerical establishment, who are not united in supporting the theocracy. The Greens need to build a more democratic political culture–to some degree they already have–by emphasizing human rights.
Jahanbegloo noted that the Greens have lost the enormous mass support that they had in the past. They need to rebuild, maintaining nonviolent discipline and establishing a better rapport with the security forces. They are also lacking support from “the bazaar,” business interests. But they are correct to define themselves as a broad civic movement and need to learn from their failures, as the Czechs did.
What can outsiders do to help the Greens? They need to maintain a consistent, principled approach and target human rights violators. At the same time, they have to realize that on the nuclear issue and on Iran’s regional role as a great power, the Greens do not disagree fundamentally with the regime.
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Jon Stewart’s freedom packages
If you didn’t see it on TV, and you are not among the 156,073 people who have viewed it on line since Monday night, this is well worth all 6 minutes and 49 seconds.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| America’s Freedom Packages | ||||
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Implosions, more and less advanced
While the rest of the world catches up with the question of “how does Libya end,” which I dealt with yesterday, let’s take a look ahead. Today’s big news was not the explosions in Libya, but rather the implosion in Yemen, where President Saleh is now facing an opposition strengthened by defections from his army, government, parliament and diplomatic corps. He is appealing for “mediation” by the Saudis, which is being interpreted in some circles as a plea for Saudi guarantees if he agrees to step down in six months. He had already agreed to step down at the end of his present term in 2013.
It very much looks as if Washington may lose its spear carrier in the fight against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This is a problem, since no one–including Saleh–seems to think AQAP is a serious threat to Yemen, which it uses as haven and launching pad. No one in his right mind would want to try to govern it.
Washington will have to convince whoever takes over–the betting seems to be on General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, but these things are inherently uncertain–that AQAP merits his attention. This will be difficult: Yemen is a place with a lot of problems. Water and oil are running out, there are more or less perennial rebellions both north and south, the population is high half the day on qat, and the authority of the government barely extends to the outskirts of Sanaa, the capital.
In Syria, the process of popular protest is far less advanced, but firing on demonstrators by the security forces has reaped an increase in demonstrations in the south. No telling whether the Syrians have the stomach to go all the way to revolution, and Bashar al Assad is a clever autocrat. But he too is lacking resources and tied to Iran in ways that make it difficult for him to do what most Syrians want: an opening to the West and foreign investment, which necessarily entails reducing ties to Iran and Hizbollah and settling up somehow with Israel. Syria also has ethnic and sectarian issues: Kurdish citizens treated as second class and a Sunni majority governed by an Alawhite (more or less Shia) but secular majority.
Bahrain, now under Gulf Cooperation Council protection, seems to be doing its best to turn its rebellion into sectarian strife, which is not how it began. It is hard to believe that is in the interests of the (Sunni) Khalifa monarchy, which governs a less than prosperous Shia majority. But when Saudi Arabia decides to embrace you, I guess you have to hug back.
It has already been an extraordinary few weeks in North Africa. While the monarchies in Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia seem to be learning how to keep the lid on, the pot is boiling over in Yemen and may still do so in Syria and Bahrain. It would be nice if the heat rose under the Iranian pot, but that does not appear to be happening, no matter how often the Secretary of State and the President wish it so.
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What will Friday prayers bring?
Tomorrow is Friday again, and across the “greater” Middle East there will be prayers and restlessness. The big questions:
- Saudi Arabia: intellectuals have been signing petitions in favor of constitutional monarchy, but the experts are still betting that people will not go the street–it is illegal to demonstrate, and socially disapproved. We’ll see.
- Libya: most of the country is liberated already, but will crowds risk turning out in Tripoli?
- Egypt: Mubarak’s buddy prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, has stepped down. El Baradei at least is calling this a turning point. Will it open the way for real regime change that the military has been resisting?
- Tunisia: Ben Ali’s buddy prime minister has already stepped down, opening the way for real change, but the country is burdened with refugees from Libya. The Brits are at least trying to relieve that burden.
- Yemen: President Saleh has said he’ll step down in 2013. The political party opposition, buoyed by tribal support, is proposing he do it by the end of this year. Will that be enough to split his opponents and save his tuchas?
- Bahrain: formal opposition parties have presented reform demands in an opening bid for negotiations with the monarchy. Will that split them from the demonstrators?
- Iraq: The violent crackdown last weekend amplified what otherwise might have been relatively quiet demonstrations against corruption and for better services. Has the government learned its lesson?
- Jordan and Syria: little noise, as their king who allows demonstrations and president who doesn’t try to feed a reform half loaf to relatively weak oppositions. Will they succeed?
- Iran: crackdown in full swing with the arrest of Green Movement stars Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and their wives. Ahmedinejad is increasingly dominant and effective against both clerical and lay opponents, inside and outside the regime. Can he keep it up?
I can’t remember a time I looked forward so much to Friday, with anticipation but also with trepidation. The world could be looking very different by Sunday.
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Mad north northwest
Col. Muammar Gaddafi is widely assumed to be mad. President Ali Abdullah Saleh also laid claim to the adjective today when he said Washington and Tel Aviv were behind the protests spreading throughout the Arab world.
I don’t think either one is nuts. Saleh knows as well as anyone else that both Washington and Tel Aviv are discomforted by the protests, which threaten not only himself but other American and Israeli favorites. But Saleh also knows that labeling the protests as an American/Jewish conspiracy is a good bet for inducing Yemenis think twice about whether they merit support.
Gaddafi’s sartorial tastes and wild-eyed lying about not using violence against the protesters and about how much his people love him certainly merit being labeled as extravagant and delusional. But he knows that dictatorship is in large measure theater, and his efforts to create an alternative reality have served him well for more than 41 years. How Christiane Amanpour gets through an interview with him without laughing in his face I don’t know.
Neither Yemenis nor Libyans seem inclined to fall any longer for their leaders’ tall tales. Going along to get along was a reasonable strategy when you felt alone with your local autocrat and his security apparatus. But once you have 10,000 compatriots with you, the need to go along evaporates, along with the fear.
Unfortunately, there is still reason to fear both Gaddafi and Saleh.
Gaddafi is laying siege to his opponents in Zawiya, a town not far from Tripoli to the west, and is attacking there and farther afield using aircraft. The UN will feel obliged to impose a No Fly Zone if that continues. It would be easier and cheaper to act unilaterally to nail his planes to the tarmac, but I imagine cooler heads will prevail. One of his henchmen should at least try to remind Gaddafi that blocking food to Zawiya and shelling civilians are arguably crimes against humanity, for which he can expect to pay if he survives. Or maybe Christiane can work that into her next set of questions: “Do you know that you might be charged with crimes against humanity if you bomb civilians or deny them food?”
Saleh is a more complicated case. He is offering his opponents a role in government, which they have refused, preferring that he step down. He has been losing tribal support but now and again allows a peaceful demonstration without his thugs attacking it, as he did over the weekend. But his army sometimes shoots at demonstrators, especially if they are in Aden, where international scrutiny is less rigorous.
These are not madmen. They are men so attached to power that they cannot imagine living without it. And likely they are right. While Mubarak is setting a good example by withdrawing to Sharm el Sheikh to lick his wounds, I doubt either Saleh or Gaddafi will find a comfortable retirement home. And both can tell a hawk from a handsaw when the wind is southerly.
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