The Iceman Leadeth

The cool diplomacy of Barack Obama

BY DAVID ROTHKOPF

                                                    British Prime Minister David Cameron with US President Barack Obama

After British Prime Minister David Cameron, who visits Washington this week for consultations at the White House, and U.S. President Barack Obama ultimately leave office, it is unlikely you'll find the two of them vacationing together. While the Tory PM and his American counterpart have developed a comfortable working relationship that is actually somewhat warmer than many had predicted given the political distance between the two, these guys aren't pals. But Cameron shouldn't dwell on it. Obama doesn't have a lot of pals among the members of the world's leadership club.

Obama doesn't dream up clever nicknames for his international buddies, as George W. Bush did. The PM will never be "the Cameronator" or "Mr. Horses and Hounds" in this White House. Nor should he expect the kind of late-night phone calls from Bubba that were a hallmark of the Bill Clinton era and made the Clinton-Blair relationship such a close partnership. And the kind of soul-mate, connected-at-the-heart-by-a-Laffer-curve, mind-meld of the Reagan-Thatcher years is out of the question.

At issue is whether Obama's cool is an impediment -- or an asset. Although he is, to use a term favored by my daughters' kindergarten teachers, "slow to warm," he is also famously even-keeled in the face of pressure or difficult circumstances. He hasn't much liked the lecturing and condescension of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but he manages his emotions well and, I'm told, it is only after the pedantic, arrogant Israeli prime minister leaves the room that Obama feels free to express his emotions to some of his very small circle of close colleagues. ("No drama" caricatures aside, Obama has certainly shown his inner circle that behind the scenes he is frequently capable of losing his temper and, more frequently, of sharply communicating his displeasure with staffers who frustrate him with lack of preparation or an inclination to try to draw him into their petty agency politics.)

Interestingly, it looks like the Republican Party is going to present him with an opponent who is just as chill. As one senior Democratic Party observer put it, "2012 could be the year of the icebox vs. the refrigerator." Mitt Romney is no hot-blooded back-slapper either. According to an article in this past Saturday's New York Times, Romney had chilly relations with the Massachusetts legislature that parallel those of Obama with Capitol Hill. Neither man has particularly warm relations even with the leaders of his own party.

Obama, of course, has one strength that has thus far eluded Romney. He can turn on the heat and stir up the passion with crowds. In this he is like a lot of great actors, somewhat remote in their personal lives but capable of incandescence on the stage or screen. The contrast between the rock star Obama of the 2008 campaign and the cooler, behind-the-scenes real man was a bit confusing to global leaders during the first two years of the administration. Although clearly a brilliant guy and always very well briefed, he was difficult to connect with, some complained, and in some cases, so businesslike that he seemed brusque, leading to concerns about what this entailed for U.S. relations. From Cameron to Germany's Angela Merkel to Latin American leaders who interacted with him at the first Summit of the Americas he attended, there were doubts and even unhappiness. One now out-of-office Latin American head of state lamented the loss of the easy connection he had with Bush. When Time's Fareed Zakaria recently asked Obama about his closest international relationships, the example he offered of Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan seemed to many observers to be a reach, further proof of Obama's remoteness. And most recently, here at Foreign Policy, GOP gurus Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie suggested that the president's "cold and aloof" character made Obama vulnerable to Republican attacks, charging that his lack of closeness with Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai and Iraq's Nouri al-Maliki had somehow undercut U.S. relationships with those countries (neglecting to consider whether in fact it was Karzai's corruption and obduracy and Maliki's drift toward strongman status and, for that matter, Iran that might have posed bigger problems for these relationships).

But gradually, people have come to see Obama more for his actions than his sometimes too-businesslike demeanor. He has shown courage in his decisions to go after Osama bin Laden and Muammar al-Qaddafi. He has shown tenacity in his pursuit of a negotiated solution in Iran and his patience with the slow progress in Libya. He has shown vision in his pivot from the Middle East to Asia. He has shown flexibility in his ability to reassess policies from Iraq to Afghanistan to global financial markets. He has shown a willingness to roll up his sleeves and get involved, whether during climate talks or tough discussions with the Israelis. What's more, gradually, he has built constructive working relationships founded on a clear sense of professionalism and candor, be it with Cameron, Sarkozy, Brazil's Dilma Rousseff, or, in fact, Erdogan.

Furthermore, the president has done what many wise leaders do and surrounded himself with top officials who complement his strengths -- deepening relationships, working them behind the scenes, offering warmth and an attentive ear where he can't or doesn't have the time to do so. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has masterfully and tirelessly shouldered much of the burden in this regard, but so too have Vice President Joe Biden, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and the administration's two secretaries of defense, Bob Gates and Leon Panetta. Collectively and quietly, they have changed the character of America's relationships with the world. The warmth Bush showed for his friends was always undercut by the alienation produced by his us-or-them policy stances (though it must be acknowledged that Gates, together with Condi Rice and Steve Hadley, made valiant and increasingly effective efforts to undo the damage of Bush's first term). What Obama has done is not just restored America's reputation with the tenor of his rhetoric and the substance of his speeches, but he has also turned his seeming aloofness into an American strength.

We've seen it before: For every Bill Clinton or Teddy Roosevelt, the United States has also had effective and even great presidents of considerable reserve, starting with the country's first one. Indeed, drawing on the sang-froid Obama has shown in approving covert, high-risk missions like the one that took out bin Laden, it is increasingly possible to see his remoteness as many of his top military leaders have, not so much as a defect or quirk but rather as the kind of calm, self-possessed "right stuff" of a Chuck Yeager. The reality is that the United States doesn't need a back-slapping president who is chums with other heads of state. In fact, in a world buffeted by crises and fraught with complexity, having a top guy who is unflappable and effective seems to be working considerably better than Americans' recent experience with having one who is a jovial, likeable frat boy oblivious to the havoc he wrought wherever his deeply held convictions took him.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 12/03/2012
-David Rothkopf, CEO and editor at large of Foreign Policy, is author of Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government -- and the Reckoning That Lies Ahead

U.S. Inconsistencies Give The Assads Room To Manoeuvre

By Hassan Hassan

On Friday, senior US intelligence officials reportedly said that the embattled Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad, could survive the one-year-old revolt against his dictatorial rule. Mr Al Assad, according to this anonymous account leaked to McClatchy Newspapers, "commands a formidable army that is unlikely to turn on him, an inner circle that has stayed loyal and an elite class that still supports his rule".

These statements, made only a few days after the defection of high-ranking officials and officers, call into question US policy towards the continuing bloodshed.

It is undeniable that Mr Al Assad bears full responsibility for the continuing massacres, and that Russia is his accomplice because it supplies the regime with weapons while at the same time opposing the arming of military defectors. But the US reluctance and inconsistency have only emboldened Mr Al Assad.

The US has a responsibility, as a self-proclaimed defender of human rights and democracy, to do what it can to stop the barbaric clampdown in Syria. In the context of the Arab uprisings, people across the region have had the courage to face brutal regimes to demand change. But they have done so partly because they know the world is watching and that regimes cannot act with impunity anymore. And by the "world", fairly or unfairly, people typically mean the United States.

In Syria, the Baathist regime will continue to wreak havoc as long as it knows it can get away with it - plain and simple. The US has a responsibility to send an unequivocal warning to Mr Al Assad. But, so far, it has failed to do so.

Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, has rightly pointed out that diplomacy cannot work without a threat of military force: "A credible threat does not mean it must be acted upon," Mr Hamid wrote on The Economist website, "but it does mean the international community must be ready to follow through on its threat, if necessary and if a particular set of conditions are met".

At this stage, such a threat may be pointless as long as Mr Al Assad knows it will not be acted upon. Syrian's foreign minister, Walid Al Moallem, has said: "I assure you from my experience that there will be no foreign military intervention."

When the US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, visited Hama in July, protesters filled the streets. The belief was that the US would not allow another massacre like those that happened several decades ago, the best known of which was the Hama massacre in 1982, when tens of thousands of civilians were killed and neighbourhoods shelled.

When the regime escalated the violence in October, Mr Ford left Syria, apparently in another sign of support for the protest movement. But his return shortly thereafter gave breathing space to Mr Al Assad. Then last month, the US closed its embassy in Damascus. And such "one step forward, one step back" diplomacy has been mimicked by European countries.

The US has consistently followed every condemnation with a reassurance that military intervention has been ruled out. The anonymous US officials' statements came one week after two other officials "leaked" information that the US administration was moving towards support of the Syrian opposition.

The more recent comments about Mr Al Assad's staying power were possibly meant to pressure the opposition to make reassurances about a post-Assad Syria.

But the statements disregarded the nature of the Syrian regime, which makes it difficult for members of the inner circle to defect. The loyalty of top officials might be based on fear for themselves and their families. The regime has increasingly tightened its control over the inner circle since 2004.

Damascus seems to have learnt from the case of the former interior minister, Ghazi Kanaan, who allegedly planned to defect after the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri. Kanaan was killed in his office on the same day that he gave an interview to a Lebanese radio station about the assassination.

Top officials are unlikely to defect - unless there is a real threat of intervention and an end in sight for the regime. Until then, Mr Al Assad's lackeys will continue to use tanks and artillery against civilians.

Why should the US care? In 1949, the CIA engineered a coup that deposed Syria's first elected president, Shukri Al Quwatli. According to former US agents, the coup was carried out after Syria's parliament refused to ratify the Tapline (trans-Arabian) pipeline that would secure the right of way for Saudi oil through Syria.

The respected Al Quwatli was replaced by General Husni Az-Zaeem, who suppressed the media, the political opposition and the vibrant civil society. While it would be overly simplistic to blame the United States entirely for Syria's subsequent decline, that military coup, the first in a series of 12 over the next 20 years, set the scene for unelected governments and their extrajudicial abuses.

Syrians believe that the US bears some responsibility for their stifled political life. Yet, as so many people across the region have done, Syrians have shown time and again that they trust the US to support their aspirations and protect them from their regime. Even if that regime is, in part, a product of US meddling.

-This commentary was published in The National on 13/03/2012

Syria’s Carnage, As Seen By A French Doctor

By MAÏA de la BAUME from Paris

A Surgeon's Call to Duty: Dr. Jacques Bérès, a 71-year old French surgeon, smuggled himself into Homs, Syria, to treat the wounded in a makeshift hospital.

At the age of 71, Dr. Jacques Bérès, a veteran of war zones, left his comfortable Paris life last month to smuggle himself into Homs, the center of the Syrian revolt, to tend to the wounded and the sick.

Working in secret, in a dark, abandoned house, with only one operating table, three beds, four local aides and intermittent electricity, Dr. Bérès operated on 89 people, he said; all but nine survived.

Dr. Bérès, a surgeon with a thin white beard who was part of the group that founded Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, appears to be the only Western doctor who has been able to enter Homs, where security forces have been carrying out a brutal assault. His account offers a rare glimpse at the medical emergency that has developed as the Syrian conflict rages on.

His journey into Syria began in early February when he crossed the Lebanese border with the help of smugglers, carrying luggage filled with medical equipment. He then traveled by car and motorbike to Al Qusayr, another besieged city that is part of Homs Province, where he worked for a few days with a Syrian doctor. When he finally made it to Homs, he spent about two weeks there.

In Homs, he was forced to move once — “I sensed that the building had become a target for government forces” — and conditions were far from ideal. “The place was so crowded that we had to walk between the stretchers,” Dr. Bérès said in an interview late last month in his Paris apartment, just days after returning.

“I treated all kinds of wounds, from heavy mortars, shots from long-range sniper rifles, high-velocity rounds, shrapnel,” he said. His makeshift hospital was only a few minutes from Baba Amr, the neighborhood that saw some of the heaviest shelling and fighting.

One day, he said, 11 people died in his hospital, some before he could even begin to treat them. “Some of them had brain damage and arrived already dead,” Dr. Bérès said. “Others were so severely injured that they could not be saved.”

Many of his patients were minors, he said. At least 400 children have died since the beginning of the uprising, according to Unicef.

He was clearly affected by the death of a teenage boy, “who had pale skin, handsome features, a slightly mischievous look and a cap on his head which made him look like Gavroche in Victor Hugo’s ‘Misérables.’ ” The boy, Dr. Bérès said, “had almost been cut into two.”

Dr. Bérès left Syria before the government began its all-out assault on Homs in late February. “I was sad,” he told the French radio network RTL after his return to Paris. “I saw useless suffering, cruelty, meanness, the suffering of children, of families.”

But those who worked with him described Dr. Bérès as a remarkable man, and praised his composure and quiet energy in the face of suffering and death.

“We went through very tense moments,” said Nicolas Hénin, a video journalist and a friend of Dr. Bérès who filmed him on the first days of his mission in Al Qusayr. “But while everyone around him got agitated, Dr. Bérès remained extremely calm, as if all this agitation didn’t affect him.”

Dr. Bérès’s trip to Syria was partly sponsored by two associations: France-Syria Democracy and UAM93, a federation of Muslim associations in Seine-St.-Denis, an area in the Paris suburbs largely populated by immigrants. Dr. Bérès said the participation of the Muslim federation was crucial.

But gaining its support was not easy. “I was strongly against this trip,” said M’hammed Henniche, the director of UAM93, who said he thought it was too risky. “But Dr. Bérès insisted so much that we finally paid for his ticket and begged him to keep his mouth shut during his stay.”

Mr. Henniche said that Dr. Bérès left because he could no longer cope with the violence and harsh living conditions in Homs, including the lack of hot water and electricity, and because he was exhausted from treating so many patients. “We also thought that he had to escape before the city was entirely besieged,” he added.

Dr. Bérès described weeks of tension and sleepless nights; he struggled with the noise of bombardments, cold weather, mud in the streets, a lack of food and a shortage of child-size masks for anesthesia. He said there was not enough equipment to allow for anything but the most basic treatments.

“Some people walked out of the hospital with bandages that had barely stopped the flow of blood, only three hours after they had been operated upon,” he said.

But he also emphasized the professionalism of his aides and the character of the Syrian opposition, as well as the spirit of solidarity among the city’s residents.

“The members of the opposition are formidable,” Dr. Bérès said. “They’re very smart, they’re very, very motivated, their morale is very strong regardless of what happens to them.”

Donations of blood, which are often difficult to obtain in war zones, “never caused us any trouble,” the doctor said. “There was almost a line of people ready to offer their blood.”

Born in 1941 and married twice, Dr. Bérès learned battlefield surgery in Vietnam in 1967 at the French hospital in Saigon where he did his military service. Surgery was primitive, Dr. Bérès said, and some doctors were reluctant to use techniques “often inherited from the First World War.”

He was among the dozen or so co-founders of Doctors Without Borders in 1971 and of a similar group, Doctors of the World, in 1980. He has spent more than 40 years in some of the most dangerous war zones around the world, experiencing conflicts in Vietnam, Liberia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Chechnya, Iraq and most recently Libya.

“In Baghdad, I used to operate on people with an aide hanging an oil lamp over my shoulder,” Dr. Bérès said.

He said he wanted to return to Homs because the need was great and international aid was meager.

“I don’t know what the future of Syria will look like,” Dr. Bérès said. “But I admire the Syrians so much.”

-This article was published in the New York Times on 12/03/2012

Lessons From The Saudi “Spring”

By Christoph Wilcke

                                                     King Abdullah of Saudi Arabaia

On March 11, 2011, Saudi Arabian activists called for a "Day of Rage" wishing to bring the rising tide of protest to the kingdom. Only one person showed up. But underneath the quiet surface, some things have changed in Saudi Arabia and dissent is brewing. One significant change is that activists can, sometimes successfully, challenge arbitrary detention in administrative court. The second change is that in order to avoid such challenges, the security services now level formal charges against detained dissidents and bring them to trial for their activism. In a country without written criminal law, forcing the government to submit to judicial process gives dissident grievances a legitimate platform.

The official Saudi response to the attempted protests showed that the government would not cede an inch of political space to popular calls for reform, choosing instead in February and March 2011 to placate Saudi citizens by doling out an estimated $135 billion in subsidies. The ruling Saud family, whose senior members occupy not only the throne but also key ministries and all provincial governorships, clamped down early on dissent. But for all government efforts to project an air of normality and suppress protests, popular displays of discontent continue.

The legal treatment of protesters reveals that the courts remain pliant to political will despite King Abdullah's judicial reform project -- but subjecting dissidents to a judicial process is a significant gain for the latter who have a platform to defend their rights to peaceful expression, assembly, and association.  In February 2011, security forces arrested the first protesters, a group of people who intended to establish the country's first political party, and other intellectuals who advocated for political reform in a series of petitions issued that month. In March, ahead of the "Day of Rage" that had been announced on Facebook, the interior ministry and the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, the highest religious body tasked with interpreting Islamic law, issued a ban on all protests. Over the following months, more and more protesters in the heavily Shiite Eastern Province who defied the ban landed in jail. In March, and again in December, peaceful protesters in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and Qasim, a northern province, were also jailed. In May and June, authorities arrested women who drove automobiles to protest the kingdom's informal prohibition on women getting behind the wheel.

Arresting dissidents is not new in Saudi Arabia. In the past, Saudi Arabia's feared secret police, the mabahith, have locked up thousands of suspected militants as well as individual peaceful reform activists. In some cases, they pretty much threw away the key. In others, the detainees have been released after the authorities thought they had served sufficient time -- conditional on repentance and a promise not to repeat the supposedly offensive activities. There was no judicial process.

What is new is that activists arrested in 2011 either for peaceful protest or written expression of dissent now are formally charged and sometimes tried in court. This is a small victory resulting from increased pressure from protesters and activists, as well as judicial reforms begun by King Abdullah in 2007. Abdullah ordered specialization of Sharia courts dividing them into criminal, civil, family, commercial, labor, and traffic courts, and added appeals courts. He also ordered the codification of criminal law -- however with no tangible progress to date -- and poured millions of Saudi Riyals into increasing and training judicial officials.

Ending arbitrary detention was the central demand of initial, small street protests in the Eastern Province and in Riyadh in 2011, and had been a longstanding concern of isolated activists. The former judge, and lawyer, Sulaiman al-Rashudi in 2006 and 2007 collected powers of attorney for detainees intending to sue the mabahith before the Board of Grievances, an administrative court, over arbitrary detentions -- until he was arrested in February 2007.

That year, King Abdullah declared judicial reform, with new and more streamlined courts and administration, a central pillar of his reforms. In 2009, the new Specialized Criminal Court began trials for hundreds of long-term detainees accused of militancy. In 2007, the mabahith could still arrest lawyers they considered a threat, or ignore verdicts by the grievances court, but the numbers and the organization of petitioners have grown. Since mid-February, the Saudi Association for Civil and Political Rights (ACPRA) has filed over two-dozen petitions with the grievances court. In previous decisions, the court has sided with the petitioners, for example, ordering the release last June of Thamir al-Khadhr, a human rights activist and student detained since March 2010 without charge.

Pressure through court cases and the king's judicial reforms have led the mabahith to initiate a semblance of legal process. Most activists arrested in 2011 have faced some formal charges and trials. This positive development has neither prevented arrests, nor precluded convictions, but it has starkly set out the judicial interpretation of relations between ruler and ruled, and defined what is considered a crime in Saudi Arabia given the lack of a written criminal law.

Here are some acts that the court has suggested are criminal:

Muhammad al-Bajadi, arrested in March 2011, is being tried for being a member of ACPRA, a peaceful, but unlicensed, rights organization.

Abd al-Aziz al-Wuhaibi, arrested in February 2011, was convicted in November and sentenced to prison for trying to found a peaceful political party.

Sad al-Rashud and others were convicted in January 2012 and sentenced to prison for taking part in a peaceful protest in December 2011.

Nadhir Al Majid, arrested in April 2011, is charged with providing information to an international journalist.

Mubarak bin Zuair, arrested in March 2011, was charged in December 2011 with "disobeying religious scholars," and "encumbering the affairs of the ruler" for petitioning the interior ministry to release his detained father.

Shaima Jastainah, a woman driver, was convicted in September for violating public order and sentenced to public lashing.

These cases are seminal in defining, in law, seemingly absolute powers of the ruler and denying basic rights of assembly, association, and expression to citizens. They underline that the courts remain pliant tools of government repression. But the cases have also given fodder to what by 2012 has become a large number of engaged citizens who use Twitter and other online expression to ridicule these verdicts, protest new arrests and trials, and demand their international human rights. The government has apparently taken note of this public opinion and released Khadhr, Rashud, bin Zuair, and others.

The House of Saud remains the absolute rulers, but the Saudi "Spring" has left its mark. Saudi absolutism has become less arbitrary and more defined, and thus open to challenge, in the courts and in public opinion. The government has to publicly defend its actions, and increasingly, members of the public are doubting its reasoning that portrays peaceful, often nationalistic and religious-based reform activism as dangerous subversion.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 12/03/2012
-Christoph Wilcke is a senior Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch who has long tracked developments in Saudi Arabia

Who Will Save Syria?

By  Shadi Hamid

A protester holds a handmade Syrian opposition flag as he shouts slogans during a protest in solidarity with Syria's anti-government protesters

The Syrian uprising began nearly a year ago, and despite renewed international efforts, the regime has intensified the killing. The death toll, approaching 8,000, is now five times what it was in Libya on the eve of the NATO intervention there. These are "crimes against humanity," a United Nations panel concluded recently.

Those of us who supported military action in Libya hoped that it might set a precedent that the United States and Europe would act quickly and decisively to protect civilian populations in the event of mass slaughter during the Arab Spring. The Syrian opposition has issued unambiguous calls for foreign military intervention. This is no Western imposition. It is Syrians—like Libyans before them—who are pleading that the West do more, not less.

Already, military intervention enjoys considerable Arab and Muslim legitimacy. The Turks, Qataris, Tunisians and Saudis have all called for various degrees of intervention, whether through “safe zones,” peacekeeping forces or arming the Syrian rebels. But these countries cannot do it on their own. They are waiting for the United States to lead efforts to assemble a coalition that can intervene effectively and then help stabilize Syria after hostilities cease.

No doubt the risks of intervention are considerable. But so too are the risks of not intervening. Opponents of intervention have warned of militarization, civil war, Iranian intervention and an exodus of refugees. Well, all these things have already come to pass. Syria today is in danger of becoming a failed state. The regime has lost control over large swaths of territory. Al Qaeda and other extremists are hoping to take advantage of the growing power vacuum. Can the world afford a failing state and protracted civil war in such a vital region?

If the objective of intervention is to protect civilian populations, then the first step is for the United States to help other countries provide Syrian rebel forces with both light arms and more advanced antitank and antiaircraft weaponry. The right to self-defense is a right guaranteed by international law. The second step would be the designation of liberated zones—particularly those along the border with Turkey—as safe havens, as was done in Bosnia during the 1990s. To protect these areas, air power and some special forces, preferably soldiers from Arab nations or Turkey, would be needed. The goal would not necessarily be regime change but rather to demonstrate international resolve, encourage regime defections and compel the Syrian government to alter its calculations about the use of force.

Currently, President Bashar Assad believes he can outlast the opposition and ultimately obliterate it through sheer force and brutality. Helping the rebels peel off large pieces of territory would demonstrate to Assad that he cannot win militarily, breathing new life into diplomatic efforts or—at the very least— securing cease-fire agreements around key population centers. Such efforts could be accompanied by a naval blockade and an air campaign against key government and military positions and installations— as in Bosnia, Kosovo and, more recently, Libya. In Bosnia, NATO power forced the Serbs to the negotiating table, eventually leading to the Dayton Accords and the introduction of multinational peacekeeping forces. The Gaddafi regime in Libya showed more interest in negotiating with the opposition after, rather than before, military intervention. Within a few weeks of the start of the NATO operation, Gaddafi envoys were engaging in cease-fire talks. In late May, an increasingly desperate Libyan regime went further, offering to negotiate with rebels and institute constitutional reforms. Intervention and diplomatic efforts need not be mutually exclusive. They should proceed in parallel.

None of this, though, will be possible without U.S. support and leadership. Despite budgetary constraints, this is not the time for the Obama administration to shrink from the challenge at hand. Even if the United States insists on “leading from behind,” it still needs to lead.

-This commentary was published by Brookings Institute on 11/03/2012
- Shadi Hamid, Director of Research, Brookings Doha Center

Ahmadinejad's Fall, Khamenei's Rise

The region will be more insecure as clerics gain more power and influence impacting fledgling democracy

By Osama Al Sharif

It was not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s finest hour. For years he was described as the protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but now the 56-year-old president has been cast out by Iran’s most powerful man. Most of his supporters running for the country’s legislative elections have been trounced. They were defeated by relatively unknown ultra-conservative politicians loyal to Khamenei. Even Ahmadinejad’s sister was among the losers. Khamenei’s loyalists claimed more than 75 per cent of the 290-seat Majlis or parliament.

This was the first election to be held in Iran since the disputed 2009 presidential vote, which Ahmadinejad won, and which resulted in mass street protests. But this time the reformists, like other opposition leaders before them, were banned from participating. Their supporters called for a nation-wide boycott. It was a battle solely among Iranian conservatives of different perceptions. The result means that Ahmadinejad will finish his term, which ends next year, as a lame duck president. But what is more important is that Khamenei can now turn Iran into a full-fledged theocracy with undisputed clerical powers vested in him under Willayat Al Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist).

Few people associate the Islamic Republic with democratic rule. But in fact Iran has maintained a sophisticated structure of democratic institutions since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, including an elected President, Parliament, a Guardian Council and an Assembly of Experts which elects and dismisses the Supreme Leader. On the other hand, Iran’s has been a diminishing democracy with most opposition leaders now in jail or worse and reformists within the official structure under house arrest and banned from public office.

The rise and fall of one of Iran’s most moderate and reformist presidents, Mohammad Khatami, who served from 1997 to 2005, opened the path for Ahmadinejad’s confrontational presidency. And when he was challenged by reformist presidential candidates Mir Hussain Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi in 2009, it is widely believed that the government had rigged election results in his favour.

Since then Iranian democracy took a nosedive. The government has been repeatedly condemned by international agencies for its human rights and press freedom violations. The fallout between Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader is not easy to understand. But the president has come under increased pressure from parliament for his failed economic policies and allegations of corruption. His abuse of power, as seen by conservative deputies, is believed to have changed Khamenei’s position from Ahmadinejad. The Supreme Leader has backed parliamentary efforts to investigate the president for corruption and has intervened to overrule some of his key appointments and dismissals.

Latest election results have underlined the extent of Ahmadinejad’s isolation and his estrangement from the Supreme Leader. This will unlikely affect progress with Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, which both men support, or its regional politics in relation to Syria, Iraq or the Gulf region. Khamenei’s hostility towards America, Israel and the West in general is only matched by that of the president.

The net outcome of the latest elections is simple; Iran’s theocratic nature will become more pronounced. Khamenei, 73, will follow the same hard line politics both internally and externally. And with a conservative parliament that is loyal to him he will have the ultimate say on the identity of the next Iranian president in 2013.

But it will not be a smooth sailing for the Supreme Leader and his conservative parliament. Domestically, a more religious parliament will have to face growing discontent among the republic’s 78 million inhabitants over many issues including human rights, freedom of expression, women’s rights, economic reforms, unemployment among the young, official corruption and many others. Western economic and oil embargoes will only make life tougher for millions of families who survive on government handouts in a country that is suffering from gasoline and food shortages in addition to collapsing national currency.

There is also the reformist movement within the existing structure, which while it is prevented from participating in public life, still carries influence with millions of Iranians who are fed up with the interference of clerics in political, economic and social life.

Externally Iran’s nuclear programme will continue to invite international sanctions and threats of a military strike by Israel. Relations with its Gulf neighbours are tense and the latest elections will only make Iran more introverted and isolated as the Supreme Leader gets more involved in his country’s foreign policy.

Not since 1979 and the long war with Iraq did the Islamic Republic face such existential challenges. No one will miss the neurotic rhetoric of President Ahmadinejad or his confrontational politics — he will still be around on the foreign policy front — but the region should feel a bit more insecure as clerics gain more power and influence in Iran, whose fledgling democracy is now in a free fall.

Furthermore, we will witness an ardent revival of Shiite ideologies under the Guardianship of the Jurist in Iran that coincides with a Sunni response in the Arab world, especially in the newly free  Arab countries. Such a state of affairs will determine the region’s course in the coming few years.

-This commentary was published in The GULF NEWS on 11/03/2012
-Osama Al Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman

Gulf States Consider Political And Military Union To Counter Iranian Security Threat

By Elie Issa

The GCC Secretary General Abdul Latif Al Zayani (L) sits next to Saudi Arabia's foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal (R) during a ministerial meeting of the six Gulf nations in Riyadh (AFP/Getty Images)

With growing talk of a political confederation of the Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister, Prince Salman Bin Abdul Aziz, has raised the possibility of transforming the existing Peninsula Shield Force [PSF] into a “unified Gulf army” able to respond to external and domestic security threats. The Saudi prince made it clear that inspiration for this suggestion was the perceived threat from Iran:  "Iran is our neighbor, but we draw a line when it comes to intervention in our internal affairs as 'Gulf Cooperation Council' countries. Whenever we feel that anybody is interfering in our internal affairs through internal mercenaries or people from outside, we will resist it appropriately" (Al-Seyassah [Kuwait], March 3; Arab Times, March 3). The PSF, with a permanent base in Saudi Arabia, was successfully deployed in March, 2011 to end violent street protests by Bahrain’s Shiite minority (see Terrorism Monitor Brief, March 24, 2011).

The long-strained relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia resemble an updated replica of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, including the involvement of both nations in geopolitical and economic conflicts, proxy military conflicts and covert intelligence operations. Saudi Arabia and Iran currently leads two ideologically, politically and religiously opposed regional blocs that could at any moment slip into lethal Sunni-Shiite confrontation, one whose impact would be magnified by the membership of both nations in larger competing world camps.

Sunni Saudi Arabia has close and long-standing political and economic ties with the United States and most other Western nations. Shiite Iran has ties with Russia and China despite certain ideological differences. Perhaps the most recent illustration of the on-going regional geopolitical row is Saudi king Abdullah's statement that "unnamed hands" targeting Islam and the Arabs are behind the political turmoil in Sunni-dominated states in the region (Saudi Press Agency [SPA], February 25). Saudi officials have long accused Iran of meddling in the internal affairs of the GCC and other Arab states without actually naming the Islamic Republic. Saudi Arabia has already lost one of its long-standing and staunchest allies in the Middle East, meaning former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The Saudi rulers are now facing two key challenges that might impact the kingdom's near-to-medium term outlook: the so-called “Arab Spring” and Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions.

But Iran is also following with concern the Syrian turmoil and the potential weakness of its key regional ally, President Bashar Al-Assad. The Saudi government, however, fears that if the Syrian turmoil escalates further it might develop into a civil war pitting the majority Sunni population against the ruling Alawite minority. In this scenario both the Syrian regime and Iran may try to destabilize the Saudi regime by empowering the two million strong Saudi Shiite minority. The latter is concentrated mainly in the Eastern Province (al-Sharqiyah), which holds the world's largest oil fields. Claiming institutionalized discrimination by the kingdom’s Sunni rulers, the Shiite minority continues to wage sporadic street protests that are gradually turning into deadly clashes with the Saudi security forces. Last month, Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry vowed to use "an iron fist" to end what it called Shiite violence in the Eastern Province (SPA, February 21; Reuters, February 21). The ministry reiterated claims that "foreign-backed troublemakers [read Iran]" were attacking its security forces and instigating violence.  "Some of those few [who attacked security forces] are manipulated by foreign hands because of the kingdom’s honourable foreign policy positions towards Arab and Islamic countries" (Kuwait Times, February 21).

The sensitive Eastern Province is of great importance to the Saudi government due to the strategic oil reserves and related infrastructure. On March 1, a report by Iran's state-run Press TV of an explosion on a pipeline in the Eastern Province sent crude oil prices to a four-year high of $126 a barrel. The next day, however, the Saudi Interior Ministry denied the report, saying "there were no acts of sabotage in the kingdom" (Reuters, March 2). The Saudi government suspects that Iran is using the Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as part of a regional proxy war to improve its negotiation position once the time for a deal involving Iran's nuclear program and the region's geopolitical power balance arrives.

The official U.S. position advocating a peaceful and negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue may limit the force of Saudi rhetoric targeting its Iranian rival, but this does not mean that Saudi Arabia won't develop its own "peaceful" nuclear program (see Terrorism Monitor, February 23). Saudi Arabia plans to build 16 nuclear power plants by 2030 worth $100 billion in a bid to generate at least 20% of its electricity needs from nuclear energy. By 2021, Saudi Arabia is scheduled to have two nuclear reactors up and running. Two plants will then come on stream annually through 2030, each costing $7 billion. In December, 2011 Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to the United States, said that his country might seek to acquire nuclear weapons to help counterbalance regional rivals Israel and Iran (AFP, December 5, 2011). Saudi Arabia has failed to convince Israel to abandon its nuclear weapons and now that Iran may be seeking to possess a nuclear bomb, the kingdom has to protect its people through all possible options, noted Faisal.

Developing its own nuclear power program is not Saudi Arabia's sole move to counter Iran's growing power in the region. In December, 2011 Saudi King Abdullah called on leaders of the GCC states to consolidate their alliance into a united "single entity" in order to confront what he called threats to national security. "No doubt, you all know we are targeted in our security and stability," said Abdullah at the opening session of a GCC meeting in Riyadh (SPA, December 20; Arab News, December 20).  More recently, the GCC called on Iran to cease its “hostile” policies and interference in the affairs of the Gulf States (Bahrain News Agency, March 4; Gulf Daily News, March 5). Jordan and Morocco have also asked to join Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates in the six-nation GCC. Such a potentially large alliance of Sunni Monarchies falls within Saudi Arabia's medium-term aim of creating a unified regional front against Iran.

Iranian rhetoric promising “not a single drop of oil will pass through the Hormuz Strait” is part of the regional geopolitical row and related bickering about Iran's nuclear power program (Iran State News Agency, December 27, 2011).  The question is whether Iran can close the strategic maritime route through which nearly 17 million barrels of oil per day transited in 2011. The answer is not that simple; Iran has likely drafted various case scenarios to deal with a potential Israeli attack on its nuclear sites. From using conventional war methods to small but highly effective suicide speed-boats, Iran could certainly succeed in blocking all kinds of navigation through the Hormuz Strait for at least several days. In the meantime, Iranian missiles would likely hit strategic oil infrastructure in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Such an apocalyptic scenario would most likely prompt the U.S. Fifth Fleet to intervene to re-open the Hormuz Strait. The mere thought of this scenario would send crude oil prices soaring, based on the spike in prices that resulted from fear of even a temporary closure during Iranian war games in January. Mounting threats to the regional political and religious status quo from “Arab Spring” resistance movements and Iran’s aggressive nuclear program will continue to fuel moves towards greater political and military unity in the GCC states.

-This article was published in Terrorism Monitor Volume: 10 Issue: 5, on 08/03/2012
-Elie Issa is a Lebanese analyst focusing on the Middle East and North Africa regions for the past eight years. His interests include geopolitical, security and macroeconomic topics