Tag: United States
Two experienced Iran hands debriefed recent trips there Thursday: David Ignatius of the Washington Post and Robin Wright, a joint fellow at the US Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center. USIP’s Bill Taylor moderated.
Iran is entering a new era spearheaded by realists, Robin Wright pointed out. They are not out to transform Iran, but are willing to work within the system to initiate reforms. The tenor has changed, with realistic goals being set. Iran is also recalibrating its strategy, responding to events in the region like the rise of Al Qaeda franchises and the withdrawal of US from Iraq. Iran sees itself surrounded by Salafis and Sunnis. The US is no longer the enemy it once was. Followers of events in Iran too often forget about other factors, aside from US sanctions, that affect Iran’s decision-making. Rouhani is arguably more popular today than the day he was elected. In addition, he has hired savvy technocrats to solve the economic problems facing the country.
Observing that there is an appearance of political debate going on within Iran, David Ignatius said the US sanctions are often called “crippling.” Yet when one travels to Iran, it does not look like a country on its knees. Iranians are resourceful people. More than damage the current Iranian economy, US sanctions have crippled Iran’s future. This is an enormous opportunity cost that will prevent Iran from becoming a successful state until the sanctions are lifted. It will be very difficult to close a deal with Iran, but the best strategic move now would be to give Iran a taste of what the future might look like if there is a permanent nuclear agreement.
Wright agreed Iran seems to be thriving and is not crippled. It is important to be wary of assumptions about the effects of the US sanctions are on Iran. Wright described her visit to the former US embassy and how she met with one of the masterminds behind the 1979 takeover. He expressed support for reopening the embassy and a nuclear deal between the US and Iran. Realists would then be allowed to run for office more frequently and women’s rights would increase. Without gaining credibility by forging a successful deal with the US first, however, Rouhani will be unable to address other problems in Iran. There is a real sense of public support for nuclear deal.
Ignatius believes Iranian society is waiting to jump into the future and onto the world stage. He interpreted Kissinger’s famous quote “Is Iran a nation or a cause?” as meaning “Has Iran moved on from its revolution?” It seems not, at least for top-level officials. Iran is still carrying out destabilizing activities in the region. Wright concurred. Iran is one of the most nationalistic countries in the world. Iranians will continue to do whatever it takes to protect and further their national interests. However, there is a sense that Syria may not hold together while Assad is in power. Off the record, an Iranian official told her that Iran would be willing to chop off the head (Assad) in order to preserve the body (the Syrian Baath party) Iranian concern about Al Qaeda gains in Syria is real.
Ignatius believes that it is in the US interest to demonstrate how Iran could be a big player in the region if it curbs its nuclear program as well as its covert action in neighboring countries. Iran is adept at riding several horses at once. It can juggle relations with the US, Hezbollah, and Syria at the same time, demonstrating political mastery. The US would be wise to learn the same trick.
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The UN-led Syria peace talks known as Geneva 2 are scheduled to convene in Montreux January 22 for a public session and continue in Geneva with only the Syrian warring parties (regime and opposition), under the aegis of UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi. I’ve betrayed my lack of enthusiasm for Geneva 2, but it is legitimate to ask what else can be done, or what might be done at the talks that would be useful. Let’s assume direct US military action is out of the question, because it is unless Al Qaeda manages to set up a haven in Syria used to launch attacks against the US or its allies.
First is to consider whether convening the talks on the date foreseen is a good idea. The situation on the ground in Syria is in flux. The regime and the opposition may have reached a kind of complex territorial equilibrium, in which neither side can gain much by further fighting. But within the anti-regime forces a lot is happening. The fog of war is still thick, but it appears more moderate Islamist and secular fighters are confronting and at least for the moment undoing the most extreme forces associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, sometimes ISIL for Levant), at the behest of the population in areas that ISIS has brutalized. This development could solve one of Washington’s biggest problems: it has hesitated to support the opposition with lethal assistance for fear it would fall into the hands of extremists, helping them to take control of a post-Asad Syria. But the outcome of the fight is by no means certain and it may presage greater instablity or even extremist strengthening.
Wisdom suggests awaiting the result before proceeding with peace talks on what might turn out to be false premises. Postponement for a month or so might be wise. Timing is vital in diplomacy. The situation on the ground–who holds power where–is a vital ingredient of any diplomatic resolution. Trying get a resolution before the situation is clear can be a big mistake.
In the meanwhile, one possibility is to try for local ceasefires, since a country-wide ceasefire is bound to be violated quickly by armed groups not at the negotiating table. Both sides of the fight are exhausted in Aleppo. It may be possible to arrange for all sides to suspend the fight, provided the regime doesn’t wreck the prospect by bombing or rocketing. The Russians would have to make it clear to Bashar that doing so would have consequences.
Another possibility is to insist that the regime demonstrably implement freedom of the press and association before it gains the legitimacy that necessarily derives from its presence in Montreux/Geneva. There are brave Syrians trying every day to exercise their rights. Enabling them to do so was an integral part of Kofi Annan’s plan, observed more in the breach. Moderate Syrians would pour into the streets if they thought they would be safe.
A third option would be to formally break diplomatic relations with Damascus and recognize the recently formed Syrian Opposition Coalition government as the legal representative of the Syrian state. Only one or two countries have done this so far. Washington could lead an effort in this direction, including a challenge to the Damascus’ credentials at the UN.
But if, as I suspect, no one at the State Department wants to go tell John Kerry that his hard-won initiative should be postponed, what can still be done constructively on January 22 and 23?
A step that would be much appreciated on both sides would be prisoner releases. If the opposition negotiators can come home from Geneva 2 having arranged for several hundred of their compatriots to return to their families, that would remove at least some of the stigma associated with attending an international conference that will disappoint most Syrians.
The United States can make it clear that it backs a strict interpretation of the Geneva 1 communique, which provides for a transitional governing body with full executive authority (TGBFEA). It won’t be possible to get that this month, but Washington should leave no one in any doubt that its strategic goal is removal of all power from Bashar al Asad, even if he nominally stays in office (which really isn’t possible once he loses control of the security apparatus). The current wishy washy line is that we are starting a peace process that is intended to lead eventually to a TGBFEA. That line undermines the opposition and encourages the regime.
The United States could put it bluntly to the Russians that they can’t support a peace process that leads to Bashar’s removal from power and arm the Syrian regime at the same time. They need to choose. If they choose to continue supplying weapons that are used against civilians, then the Americans should make it clear they will expand arming the opposition, trying of course to ensure that the weapons are not used against civilians. It would also be possible to offer the Russians something they value in exchange for their defenestration of Bashar. Some flexibility on anti-missile defense in Europe might go a long way.
Geneva 2 could also be an appropriate place to discuss humanitarian access, but the issue should be put clearly. The regime is blocking humanitarian access, not the revolutionaries. There should be no quid pro quo for allowing relief to reach civilians from all of Syria’s neighbors. Both sides have been attacking civilian populations. They should be told to stop, first in a communique from Geneva 2 but then in a vigorous UN Security Council resolution.
The predictable failure of Geneva 2 to move forward on creating the TGBFEA puts the opposition in a difficult spot. Only Bashar stepping aide or down would justify attendance in the eyes of most of the opposition, but the more moderate figures associated with the Syrian Opposition Coalition and the Free Syrian Army will have no choice but to attend if they want to get continuing American support. One option is a walkout, coordinated with Washington (or at least foreshadowed to Washington). This could save face for those opposition moderates who feel compelled to attend in Geneva but worry about how it will weaken their standing inside Syria. Some lower-level officials might be left behind to deal with humanitarian issues, which could benefit from detailed coordination.
The purpose of a meeting like Geneva 2 should not merely be negotiation, or to start a process. Washington needs to think hard about what can be achieved that will improve the situation. It needs clarity about its goals and the means it will bring to bear to achieve them.
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I spent yesterday listening to well-informed people talk (Las Vegas rules) about prospects for the January 22/23 Montreux/Geneva 2 peace talks. The UN faxed invitations Monday. The Syrian government has already named its delegation. The Russians are in. Iran is not invited to the multilateral opening day in Montreux, but John Kerry says it can hang around with everyone else while UN envoy Brahimi meets with the Syrian parties on the second day in Geneva. Faute de mieux, the Americans are committed to Geneva 2 and anxious that it begin a peace process, even if there is no hope it will conclude one. “What else can we do?” they ask plaintively.
The Syrian opposition doesn’t know if it is coming or going. Some portion of Etilaf, the Syrian Opposition Coalition that Washington and other capitals have accepted as the political representative of the Syrian people, is bound to give in to US pressure to attend, but no formal decision has been taken yet. The Syrian National Council component of Etilaf is against attending. So of course are the more extreme Islamists armed groups. Most moderate Islamist armed groups, organized now as the Islamic Front, are also opposed. The Free Syrian Army’s Supreme Military Council will have to go, since it gets a lot of assistance from the US.
Why would the opposition not want to attend? Let me count the reasons:
- There is no serious possibility of Geneva 2 implementing the Geneva 1 goal of a “transitional governing body with full executive authority,” since Bashar al Asad is clearly not prepared to step aside, down or up.
- Anyone from the opposition who attends will be regarded as a traitor by those who don’t, including armed groups with the capacity to do real harm.
- Even if the risks are not mortal, the political risk is significant.
- Attending will fragment the opposition even more and weaken it.
- The opposition does not trust the Americans and loathes the Russians.
- Whatever statement comes out of Geneva 2, it will have to be balanced between the Americans and Russians, which means it could imply support for the scheduled May elections, focus on fighting terrorism rather than ending Asad’s brutality towards the Syrian people and imply an obligation of those attending to cut off supplies of arms (thus obligating Saudi Arabia and Qatar but not Iran).
A ceasefire agreed at Geneva will be meaningless, as the extremist militias not present will violate it right away, with the regime responding in kind (if not pre-empting). The only real upside for the opposition at Geneva would be agreement on humanitarian access. But the opposition believes that could be agreed without negotiation between the warring parties, as it is a clear legal obligation for the government to allow relief to the civilian population.
One-third of Etilaf is already said to have resigned to protest against going to Geneva 2, which even the many fighters who want a political solution regard as an a snare and a delusion. Without changing the military balance on the ground, and without strong American backing, Geneva 2 will cause more fragmentation in the opposition. It will also weaken relative moderates within the opposition and strengthen extremists. The West is setting up the opposition for failure.
What will it do for the the regime, the Russians and the Iranians?
The regime looks to an international meeting like Geneva 2 for legitimacy, which it has never sought from the Syrian people. It will claim to have offered reforms and even amnesty, portray itself as a bulwark against extremism, denounce the international conspiracy against Asad and claim that what it has done on chemical weapons demonstrates its reliability. Disciplined and organized, it will present a clean face to the world in Montreux, even if barrel bombs are still falling on the civilian population of Aleppo.
Moscow’s main objective is to prevent chaos and the flow of extremists from Syria (where 5-600 Russian citizens are fighting against the regime), as well as to protect specific interests like port access and protection of orthodox Christians. It is difficult for Moscow to see how chaos can be avoided if the regime is removed. Russia doesn’t want to see Libyan-style chaos in Syria. In Moscow’s view, a majority of Syrians still supports Asad, who may well run for re-election in May. He is not creating the extremists, who would exist even if there were no war in Syria. The Sunni/Shia divide is exaggerated. It is strife within the Sunni community that is really important. Transitional justice in Moscow’s estimation should be postponed, as it has been in Cambodia. It claims to be ready for a peaceful transition to democracy, but there is no sign it is ready to cut off the weapons flow to the regime.
Nor is there sign Iran is ready to abandon Asad. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in particular the Quds Force, controls Iran’s policy on Syria, not President Rouhani. There is no open dissent from the official narrative: Israel, the US and Saudi Arabia are trying to remove Asad, so the “resistance front” (Hizbollah and the IRGC) needs to respond. They cannot be restrained without stopping the flow of extremists and Gulf financing to the opposition forces. Iran would like an invitation to Montreux, but not with conditions. It will not accept the Geneva 1 goal.
Tomorrow: I’ll attempt to answer that plaintive question: “what else can we do?”
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Former Ambassador to Iraq Jim Jeffrey argues in this morning’s Washington Post for more wholehearted support to Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki and other allies willing to fight Al Qaeda:
…as also often happens in this region, the administration is sounding an uncertain tone, seemingly signaling to everyone that its top priority is to not get the United States into any sort of military engagement…
Let’s leave aside whether the tone is really all that uncertain and whether President Obama has accurately read the sentiment of the American people. They certainly don’t want American troops going back to Iraq, and there is no clear sign that Maliki wants them either.
There is another problem with Jim’s argument. Maliki has contributed to the problem in Iraq, by alienating the Sunni population.
Jim acknowledges this in passing, but fails to recognize that a
I agree with Jim that Iraq is important, both because it is a central player in the Arab and Kurdish worlds and because its oil production helps now and can help in the future to stabilize the world oil market. But the problem with American policy is not insufficient support to Maliki. It is insufficient frankness with him about what we expect of our friends and allies.
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Yesterday’s New York Times suggests “Power Vacuum in Middle East Lifts Militants.” US withdrawal is of course the cause of the power vacuum. For years however we’ve been hearing that US presence in the Middle East is what generates militant reactions. American bases in Saudi Arabia and the American occupation of Iraq are often cited as prime movers of Islamic militancy.
Similar contradictory statements appear often about Bashar al Asad. The Western press is now full of claims that getting rid of him will leave Syria open to the possibility of a Sunni extremist takeover. But his continued hold on power all too obviously also encourages radicalization of the opposition to his rule.
The simple fact is that we don’t know much about what feeds violent militancy. While William Pape and James Feldman claim that suicide terrorism–certainly a salient characteristic of some contemporary Islamic extremists–is rooted in foreign occupation, there are ample reasons to believe that it doesn’t stop with American withdrawal. It certainly did not in Iraq and likely won’t in Afghanistan either.
With respect to Asad’s impact on militancy, we know even less. He has benefitted from, and even encouraged, violent resistance to his regime, which empowers him to respond violently. But would violent resistance end if Bashar stepped aside in favor of a transitional government with full executive powers (as foreseen in the June 2012 UN communique)? I doubt it.
The world does not run backwards. Removing a cause, post facto, does not get you back to where you started. Washington pulled the rug out from under Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 and helped to force his resignation, but that did not reverse the effect in Egyptian minds of decades of US support for military rule in Egypt. An Israel/Palestine agreement now may be highly desirable, but it is unlikely to have the same impact it might have had in the 1990s. There is just too much that has happened since and won’t be forgotten, on both sides.
Violence is particularly important in preventing history from running in reverse. People won’t forget Bashar’s use of mass violence to compensate for his lack of legitimacy, protect Alawites and bolster territorial control. Syria when I studied Arabic there in 2008 was peaceful and tolerant, even though repressed and authoritarian. Ending Bashar’s rule will not take us back there. Any future dictatorship in Syria will have to be much more brutal than Bashar’s was. Any future democracy will face problems that a democracy emerging from a less violent transition would not have to face.
Where does this leave us with respect to US behavior? We are clearly going to need to find indirect and less expensive ways to influence world events than the military interventions we used so boldly from 1995 to 2003. Bosnia and Kosovo were relatively cheap and killed no Americans. The legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan is a gigantic tab–on the order of $6 trillion I read somewhere this morning–plus thousands of dead, military and civilian. I don’t agree with Mearsheimer’s notion that America is unhinged (and responsible for militancy in Syria) but clearly we are not going back to large-scale military interventions, even if economic and financial conditions improve.
What we need is to be much more proactive, preventing unhappy events before they happen. We clearly failed at that in the Arab world, where we were caught unawares despite a large and well-established diplomatic presence. But American diplomacy has a pretty good record in recent decades of nurturing, or at least permitting, nonviolent change in Latin America and Asia. Let’s remember how to do it, because history is irreversible.
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Washington is still trying to warm up from the holidays and the chill:
1. US National Security Strategy
Tuesday, January 7, 2014 – 12:00pm – 1:30pm
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On January 7, Thomas E. Donilon, distinguished fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, and former national security adviser to President Barack Obama, will be in conversation with Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of The Aspen Institute. This event is presented in partnership with the Aspen Institute Middle East Programs.
The Washington Ideas Roundtable Series is made possible with the generous support of Michelle Smith and the Robert H. Smith Family Foundation.
2. Mona Yacoubian & Ambassador Frederic C. Hof
As part of the Global Leaders conversation series, Ambassador Frederic C. Hof, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and Mona Yacoubian of the Stimson Center, will participate in a conversation at NYU Washington, DC on January 8, 2014. The series features Alon Ben-Meir, professor of international relations, journalist, and author, who hosts leaders from around the world in conversations that probe critical global issues and explore the policies designed to address them. The Global Leaders series is coordinated by NYU-SCPS Center for Global Affairs.
While at NYU Washington, DC, Ambassador Hof and Ms. Yacoubian will participate in a discussion with Professor Ben-Meir and take audience questions.
January 8, 2014
Program begins at 6:30PM
Reception to Follow
NYU Washington, DC
Abramson Family Auditorium
1307 L Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
3. Securing peace, promoting prosperity: The US, Japan, and India
Thursday, January 09, 2014 | 9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
AEI, Twelfth Floor, Main
1150 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s more forward-leaning foreign and national security policies have led to renewed interest in the potential for a US-India-Japan trilateral relationship. At this public event, experts will explore the rationales behind and roadblocks to greater cooperation.Are there opportunities for enhanced trade and investment relationships? Will shared security concerns lead to greater defense collaboration? And how will stronger US-India-Japan ties influence China’s posture in the region?If you are unable to attend, we welcome you to watch the event live. Full video will be posted within 24 hours.
Agenda
8:45 AM
Registration and Breakfast
9:00 AM
Opening Remarks
Dan Blumenthal, AEI
9:15 AM
Panel I: Economics
Panelists:
Anil K. Gupta, Robert H. Smith School of Business
Richard Katz, The Oriental Economist
Derek Scissors, AEI
Ron Somers, US-India Business Council
Moderator:
Sadanand Dhume, AEI
10:45 AM
Panel II: Security
Panelists:
Patrick Cronin, Center for New American Security
Paul Giarra, Global Strategies & Transformation
Dhruva Jaishankar, German Marshall Fund of the United States
Moderator:
Michael Auslin, AEI
12:30 PM
Adjournment
Event Contact Information
For more information, please contact Shannon Mann at shannon.mann@aei.org, 202.862.5911.
Media Contact Information
For media inquiries, please contact MediaServices@aei.org, 202.862.5829.
4. Inside Iran, US Institute of Peace, 9:30-11 am January 9
With Robin Wright and David Ignatius
Two long-time Middle East experts have recently returned from Iran. Their discussions with cabinet members, ayatollahs, hardliners, Members of Parliament, economists, opposition figures and ordinary Iranians offer rare insights into Iran’s increasingly vibrant political scene since President Rouhani took office and the implications of the new nuclear agreement. Robin Wright and David Ignatius offer fresh perspectives on what’s next.
Please join us for a moderated discussion on these and other issues important to Iran, its internal politics, and its relations with the world.
This event will feature the following speakers:
- Robin Wright
Journalist and Author, U.S. Institute of Peace and Woodrow Wilson International Center
- David Ignatius
Columnist and Author, The Washington Post
- Ambassador William Taylor, Moderator
Vice President, Center for Middle East & Africa, U.S. Institute of Peace
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