Why Do Israeli Media Keep Predicting War with Iran?

A frenetic pounding of the war drums appears designed to create the impression that Israel will attack Iran before the U.S. presidential election. Whether that's Netanyahu's real intent remains a mystery.

By TONY KARON


Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem August 12, 2012

If the White House believes November will arrive without any nasty surprises in the Iran nuclear standoff, it is not taking seriously the feverish chatter throughout Israel‘s media positing an imminent Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic. The front pages of the four main Israeli dailies last Friday reflected what appeared to be a concerted campaign to create the impression that Israel is preparing itself to start a hot war with Iran sometime over the next 12 weeks, notwithstanding objections by the U.S. and other Western powers — and, indeed, by much of Israel’s security establishment.

“[Benjamin] Netanyahu and [Ehud] Barak determined to strike Iran in the fall,” proclaimed Yedioth Ahronoth. Haaretz offered: “Senior Israeli official — The Iranian sword at our throat is sharper than the run-up to the war in 1967.” Maariv informed us in its banner headline that 37% of the Israeli public believes that “If Iran gets the bomb, it might result in a second Holocaust.” And Yisrael Hayom said: “Iran significantly speeds up its progress toward the bomb.” The following day, the latter paper included a headline claiming that, according to Israeli TV, a “Decision by Netanyahu and Barak to strike Iran is almost final.”

Haaretz seemed to suggest that part of the renewed urgency was a claim that new intelligence allegedly received by the U.S. ostensibly showed Iran making accelerated progress toward a capability to build nuclear warheads, although there was no U.S. confirmation of those claims. And others in the Israeli media were skeptical. One of Israel’s most senior columnists, Maariv’s Ben Caspit, sought to calm the media frenzy. “You can all relax,” wrote Caspit. “In the last two weeks, nothing new has happened with regards to an attack on Iran. The Cabinet hasn’t convened, the Defense Minister hasn’t summoned the IDF general staff, and no new information has been received. Everything that is known today was also known two weeks and two months ago.”

Caspit suggested that the new “bomb Iran” talk wasn’t based on any qualitative shift in the nature of Iran’s nuclear work. The U.S. intelligence assessment until now has been that despite steadily accumulating the means to build nuclear weapons, Iran has not thus far moved to enrich uranium to weapons grade or to begin the process of actually building a bomb. Nor has it taken a strategic decision to do so as yet. The problem is that the “red lines” adopted by Israel and the U.S. for triggering a military response are different: President Obama has vowed to take military action to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, whereas Israel has insisted that Iran can’t be allowed to maintain the capability to build such weapons — a technological capacity it essentially already has. Caspit also argued that the primary issue was one of lack of trust among Israel’s political leaders that it could rely on the U.S. taking military action should Iran move to build nuclear warheads. A recurring theme in much of the coverage, and statements from Israeli leaders, is the belief that Israel can’t entrust its security to the current U.S. government, or any future Administration.

Some of the speculation in Israel suggests that Netanyahu and Barak might take advantage of the window of opportunity offered by a U.S. election season that leaves the Obama Administration vulnerable on the Iran issue to present the Administration with a fait accompli — although even the Israelis acknowledge that the limits on their military capacities are such that, at best, they could hope to simply delay Iran’s nuclear progress by a year or two — begging the question of what strategy would guide an aftermath in which Iran was more likely to seek a nuclear deterrent, and in which Israel’s break from the Western consensus on how to deal with Iran would potentially deal a body blow to the sanctions regime.

Until now the U.S. and other Western powers have restrained Israel from launching what they believe could be a catastrophic war for very limited gains through imposing what even Washington’s flagship Israel-lobbying organization, AIPAC, has called the “strongest set of sanctions to isolate any country during peacetime.” And Israelis have long recognized that their threat to take unilateral military action gives them leverage over Western powers to demand ever tighter sanctions and pressure on Iran. When former Mossad chief Meir Dagan last year publicly ridiculed the idea of Israel attacking Iran as strategic folly, Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit excoriated him for letting the cat out of the bag:

The threat of a military attack against Iran … is crucial for scaring the Iranians and for goading on the Americans and the Europeans. It is also crucial for spurring on the Chinese and the Russians. Israel must not behave like an insane country. Rather, it must create the fear that if it is pushed into a corner it will behave insanely. To ensure that Israel is not forced to bomb Iran, it must maintain the impression that it is about to bomb Iran.

Most Western analyses in recent months have concluded that Israel won’t scramble its bombers before November and that the sanctions that are steadily eroding Iranian living standards will be given more time to bleed Iran’s economy — although the Israeli leadership correctly points out that there haven’t been any signs, thus far, that the tightening choke hold of sanctions will prompt Iran’s leaders to capitulate to Western demands. By the logic of using the threat of military action to spur greater Western action, last week’s frenzied percussion on Israel’s war drums could be read as an attempt to challenge complacency in Washington and other Western capitals and to demand even harsher pressure on Iran in the months ahead.

But there’s also a domestic political dimension, with Netanyahu and Barak clearly stung by criticism from so much of Israel’s security establishment of their Iran saber rattling and the publicly known skepticism of the current military brass to Israel mounting a solo attack on Iran without U.S. support. Both men repeatedly make clear that it’s the political echelon that will make the decisions on Iran, not the military.

One of the stranger pieces in the latest flurry of reports suggesting Israel’s leaders are shaping to strike Iran was by Haaretz’s Shavit, in which a man he identifies only as “the decisionmaker” — but in a piece so riddled with obvious clues prompting Israel’s cognoscenti to assume he was talking to Barak – warns that “the sword hanging over our neck today is a lot sharper than the sword that hung over our neck before the Six-Day War.” (Talking metaphorically of a blade at Israel’s throat seemed to be a direct response to Dagan, who had repeatedly challenged what he saw as a reckless weighing of a military option by insisting that Israel should only take military action “when a knife is at its throat and begins to cut into the flesh.”)

The reasoning of Barak and Netanyahu is unlikely to convince Israeli skeptics of military action against Iran, because central to their skepticism has been unprecedented public questioning of the strategic competence of Israel’s top political decisionmakers. Former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, for example, in April publicly accused Netanyahu and Barak of being “guided by messianic feelings,” adding, “I don’t have faith in the current leadership of Israel to lead us to an event of this magnitude, of war with Iran.” The breakdown of trust, Caspit claims, is not simply between the U.S. and Israeli political leaderships but also between Israel’s political leadership and its military chiefs.

And the skepticism in the security establishment, and among military chiefs, of a decision to attack Iran at this point will also have been factored into the analyses in foreign capitals of the likelihood of Israel going to war, thereby weakening the leverage derived from that threat. The feverish speculation over an imminent attack on Iran may drown out such skepticism in the Israeli public sphere, of course. But it could also call forth further challenges to an Israeli military option from old security stalwarts.

Asked to comment on last week’s torrent of speculation, Netanyahu on Sunday condemned both the reporting of skepticism of an Iran attack in Israel’s military establishment and claims that such an attack is imminent. But his reasoning wasn’t likely to still the clamor: the Prime Minister lashed out at the media speculation on the grounds that its purpose, ostensibly, was to “prevent Israel from independent action.” On Sunday, Israel tested a nationwide SMS-text-message emergency drill for warning of an incoming missile attack. And its Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, publicly demanded that the West declare failure in attempts to achieve a diplomatic solution to the standoff.

Clearly, someone wants Israelis and the world to think Israel is moving closer to launching a fateful attack on Iran. Whether such a scenario has really become more likely than it was two weeks or two months ago, or the agenda is part of some game of bluff designed to change either Iranian or Western behavior, there’s a growing danger that the Israeli public’s expectations of war are being raised to a critical point. After all, as many in the security establishment have long warned, you can’t keep telling Israelis that there’s a grave and gathering danger of annihilation looming on the horizon without creating overwhelming pressure to act.

-This commentary was published first in TIME on 13/08/2012

Assessing The Threat to Turkey From Syrian-Based Kurdish Militants

By Wladimir van Wilgenburg


Turkish Kurd militants threaten Turkey if it enters Syria (Source: Reuters)

Kurdish militias recently took control of several towns in northern Syria, raising fears in Turkey that in addition to their camps in the mountainous border areas in Iraq, the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK) could also now operate against Turkey from Syria.  It is however, unlikely, that the PKK could operate from Syria against Turkey. Even when former Syrian president Hafez Assad supported them before 1998, the PKK carried out few operations in areas near the Syrian border.

The Syrian Kurdish National Council (KNC) and the PKK-affiliated Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat (PYD -Democratic Union Party), signed an agreement in the Iraqi Kurdistan capital of Erbil to shelve their political differences and prevent an armed dispute (Rudaw.net, July 17). This agreement resulted in the establishment of a Supreme Kurdish Council, and the sharing of power between the two signatories in the Kurdish cities of Syria until elections can be carried out (Rudaw.net, July 25).

After this agreement, the armed wing of the PYD, the People's Defense Corps (consisting of  2,000 armed militia members) took control of some Kurdish areas without much resistance from Syrian security forces (Taz.de, July 26; IRIN, August 2). Syrian president Bashar Assad admitted that the PKK could move more freely, due to a “neighbouring area being in chaos” (Syrian Arab News Agency, July 7). Still he denied that he supports the PKK, and emphasized that the PKK does not need Syria to fight against Turkey.

It is clear that the PYD now controls (to some degree) Kobani, Efrin, the Kurdish dominated neighbourhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiye in the city of Aleppo and parts of the border areas but not the strategic city of Qamishli (Firat News Agency, August 2). Sources such as the defected Syrian Brigadier Fayiz Amr, the KNC’s head of Foreign Relations and a member of a Kurdish Youth Group suggest Syrian security forces are still present in the region, and even control most vital locations in Kurdish areas (al-Sharq al-Awsat, July 28; Rudaw.net, August 1; Kurdwatch.org, August 5). [1] Assad might want to prevent a clash with the Kurds, but does not want to give them too much control over Kurdish areas because in some cases they have already worked together with the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The PYD says it does not want to fight with Assad or the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) and wants to prevent the war from coming to Kurdish areas while Assad does not want to fight the Kurds in order to focus on the FSA. The PYD is waiting till the Ba’ath-regime grows weaker and hopes it can take over Kurdish areas if Syrian security forces withdraw from parts of northern Syria to protect Damascus and Aleppo. [2]

However, after the PYD took over some Kurdish areas, alarm bells went off in the Turkish media about a PKK-state in “Syrian Kurdistan.” Turkish analyst Nihat Ali Özcan wrote that the worst result would be if the PKK were to obtain surface-to-air missile and chemical weapons, but this seems to be unlikely (Hürriyet, July 26). So far, the PKK only has AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and heavier, vehicle mounted weapons taken over from Syrian security forces, such as 106 mm recoilless rifles (Egypt Independent, July 28).

Some critics have blamed the Turkish government for being responsible for the PKK taking over areas of Syria due to Turkey’s support of the Syrian opposition, support which has weakened Assad and opened the door for the PKK. Yalçin Akdogan, chief advisor to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, declared that more PKK bases would not be permitted by Turkey and other AKP officials indicated Turkey could intervene if the PKK used Syria as a base for operations against Turkey (Star Gazete [Istanbul], July 27) Reuters, August 8). Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu headed to the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq on August 1 to talk with Syrian Kurdish parties and the Kurdistan Region’s president Massoud Barzani about the PYD’s activities.

The acting PKK leader Murat Karayilan claimed the PKK does not need rebel camps in Syria and that Kurds would fight Turkey if they invaded “Syrian Kurdistan” (northern Syria) (Firat News Agency, August 2). PYD chief Salih Muslim and KNC head Ismail Hama both oppose Turkish intervention and, in a reference to Turkey, emphasize that Syrian Kurds would not pose a threat to neighbouring countries, [3] According to a leading KNC member, Abd al-Hakim Bashar:

We will be the guarantee of Turkey's interests in Syria. Turkey's interests have always conflicted with its neighbors. In this region, it is necessary to find friends for Turkey. The Kurds are the best candidate for this friendship… We will never allow a threat that would be directed toward Turkey in Syrian Kurdistan. We have issued a statement that the PYD also signed. This is a statement confirming that no threat will be directed toward neighboring countries from the Kurdish regions of Syria (Hurriyet, August 3).

At the same time, Syria is of limited military value for the PKK due to unfavorable geography. [4] Unlike the rugged Turkish-KRG border in the Botan-Behdidan area, the Turkish-Syrian border is mostly flat and easy to control. Even during the zenith of the PKK insurgency in the early 1990s, PKK activities remained limited near the Syrian border. [5] Without mountainous terrain or support from a super-power, the PKK is very vulnerable to Turkish incursions and this is one of the reasons why the PYD is heavily opposed to foreign intervention in Syria and seeks Russian support to prevent it. [6] Moreover, the Adana agreement signed in 1998 after Syria stopped its support for the PKK gives Turkey the right to pursue the PKK inside Syrian territory (Egypt Daily News, July 26).

According to the PYD, the PKK is not militarily active in Syria nor can it use the non-mountainous Syrian Kurdish areas against Turkey. [7] The only mountainous region in Syria occupied by the Kurds is the Kurd Mountain (Kurd-Dagh) near Alawite-dominated Latakia. Moreover, it is impossible for the PKK to move within the border areas due to precautions taken by the Turkish state. [8] The border region is heavily fortified with military outposts, minefields, barbwire, cameras and night-time illumination. Furthermore, Turkey has moved tanks and more troops near the Syrian border close to PYD-strongholds (Reuters, August 1).

The PKK will therefore continue to use its camps in northern Iraq and only the FSA can operate in areas near the Turkish border. It seems that Turkish concerns over a PKK state are exaggerated; the PKK cannot use the Syrian Kurdish areas as a launching pad against Turkey and only controls limited areas where Syrian security forces are still present to some degree. The PKK may aim to gain more legitimacy by playing a role in Syria, but not to use their presence there against Turkey militarily.

Notes & References:
-This commentary was published in Terrorism Monitor, Volume 10, Issue 16, on 09/08/2012
-Wladimir van Wilgenburg is a political analyst specializing in issues concerning Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey with a particular focus on Kurdish politics.
1. Author’s interview with Bedir Mustafa of the Kurdish Youth Movement (Tevgera Ciwanên Kurd - TCK), August 2, 2012.
2. Author’s interview with the PYD’s Foreign Representative Alan Semo, July 31, 2012.
3. Ibid
4. Author’s interview with Kawa Rashid, Foreign Spokesperson of the Movement of Syrian Kurdistan, July 31, 2012.
5. Author’s e-mail exchange with Associate Professor of Political Science Gunes Murat Tezcur, Loyola University, Chicago, August 2, 2012.
6. Ibid
7. Author’s interview with PYD Foreign Representative Alan Semo, July 31, 2012.
8. Author’s interview with German photojournalist Benjamin Hiller, August 2, 2012.

The Next Proxy War

How the United States can use the Syrian civil war to prepare the region -- for Iran.

BY ROBERT HADDICK



In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joseph Lieberman argued for stepped-up U.S. intervention in Syria's civil war. They called for providing Syria's rebels with weapons, training, and intelligence. They also called on the United States to support the establishment of safe zones inside Syria, to be protected by U.S. air power and other capabilities (but not American ground troops). Failure to take these steps, they argued, would prolong Syria's bloody civil war, boost the role of Islamic radicals such as al Qaeda, increase the chance that Syria's chemical weapons will end up in dangerous hands, and cause the U.S. to be shut out of the country after the Assad regime falls.

A key step in formulating effective strategy is confining oneself to realistic and obtainable goals. Significantly shortening Syria's war, determining which factions come out on top, and seizing control of Syria's most threatening weapons in the midst of chaotic combat are goals very likely beyond the grasp of U.S. policymakers, at least at reasonable cost. The senators' rationale for U.S. intervention implies an ability to influence events in Syria beyond what seems feasible. Should U.S. intervention fail to rapidly end the war or quickly seize Syria's chemical weapons, the United States would risk finding itself climbing a ladder of escalation, with increasing use of air power and even ground troops in an effort to achieve the campaign's goals. Once committed in a large and visible way, U.S. prestige would be at risk, forcing policymakers to continue adding resources in the hope of achieving overly ambitious objectives.

However, that does not mean that the United States should avoid the conflict. In fact, there are important and achievable objectives in Syria, obtainable with little risk and for a modest price. Rather than attempting to influence the course of Syria's civil war, something largely beyond Washington's control, U.S. policymakers should instead focus on strengthening America's diplomatic position and on building irregular warfare capabilities that will be crucial in future conflicts in the region. Modest and carefully circumscribed intervention in Syria, in coordination with America's Sunni allies who are already players in the war, will bolster critical relationships and irregular warfare capabilities the United States and its allies will need for the future.

The conflict in Syria is just one front in the ongoing competition between Iran and America's Sunni allies on the west side of the Persian Gulf. That competition has played out in the past with proxy warfare in Lebanon and Yemen, and Iraq may become the next surrogate battlefield. Should Iran become a nuclear weapons state, the competition will almost certainly intensify. Regardless of the outcome in Syria, U.S. allies around the Persian Gulf must brace for deepening security competition with Iran.

The Sunni Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are building up their conventional military forces, in particular coordinated missile defenses to counter the threat from Iran's ballistic missiles. However, the actual fighting in recent years has been conducted by insurgent militias that have usually been armed and trained by Iran and some of the Sunni countries. For example, Qatar, whose special forces played a large role in the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime in Libya, is a major sponsor, alongside Saudi Arabia, of the rebels in Syria. On the other side, the capture this week of 48 Iranian Revolutionary Guard advisers by the Syrian rebels illustrates Iran's role in the country.

This kind of irregular warfare will very likely continue to be the most common manifestation of the security competition between Iran and the Sunni countries. Hezbollah in Lebanon, various Shiite militias in Iraq, and the current training and support Iran is supplying to pro-Assad militias in Syria demonstrate Iran's experience with this form of warfare. The Sunni countries have a strong interest in stepping up their own irregular warfare capabilities if they are to keep pace with Iran during the ongoing security competition.

The civil war in Syria provides an opportunity for the United States and its Sunni allies to do just that. For the United States, supporting Syria's rebels would constitute a classic unconventional warfare campaign, a basic Special Forces mission. Such missions are typically covert and usually performed in cooperation with regional allies. So, U.S. and GCC intelligence officers and special forces could use an unconventional warfare campaign in Syria as an opportunity to exchange skills and training, share resources, improve trust, and establish combined operational procedures. Such field experience would be highly useful in future contingencies. Equally important, it would reassure the Sunni countries that the United States will be a reliable ally against Iran.

Normally, the goals of a combined U.S.-GCC unconventional warfare campaign in Syria would be the overthrow of the Assad regime and the establishment of a government friendly to U.S. and Gulf Sunni interests. However, policymakers should recognize that unconventional warfare campaigns are fragile projects with no assurance of success. They can take years to run their course with plenty of opportunity for embarrassments along the way. The Syrian war is proving to be just as dirty as any other modern proxy war, with both sides apparently guilty of war crimes. Rather than committing to the goal of overthrowing the Assad regime, an elusive task that could result in an unpleasant spiral of escalation, the U.S. should limit itself to the goal of growing coalition irregular warfare expertise.

But to improve the odds of achieving this limited goal, policymakers should expand U.S. participation beyond its current limits. They should not rule out providing lethal assistance to the rebels not available through other partners. U.S. special forces advisers and trainers should be allowed to visit rebel sanctuary camps in Turkey and Syria. Finally, U.S. policymakers should consider the limited use of air power -- for example, drones for intelligence-gathering and close air support. Since the principal U.S. goal would be the buildup of GCC irregular warfare capacity, GCC intelligence and special forces officers should have the lead, with U.S. officers supporting them. This approach would do the most to build overall alliance special operations capacity while limiting U.S. exposure and risk.

Some will no doubt criticize this approach as an exploitation of the humanitarian disaster in Syria to allow the U.S. and its allies to refine some unpleasant techniques. A historical analogy would be the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, another very ugly civil war, which Europe's great powers used to tune up their military doctrines before World War II. By this view, intervention would only accelerate Syria's suffering and make the United States an accessory to a dirty war.

However, to the extent U.S. intervention in support of its Sunni allies shortens the war and hastens the end of the Assad regime, it will save lives and reduce the suffering in Syria. U.S. intervention cannot assure such a result and U.S. policymakers should not commit U.S. prestige to such an outcome. But as we saw in the Balkans in the early 1990s, standing aside while a civil war rages has its own moral problems. By contrast, when outside adviser assistance to the Croatian and Bosnian militias was finally allowed, the fighting soon ended. No one can guarantee a similar result in Syria. On the other hand, we can see what Syria is going through right now. Although ending the war should not be a goal of the very limited intervention discussed here, the odds of ending the fighting on favorable terms would seem to be higher than with no intervention at all.

Furthermore, irregular warfare is the future for which the U.S. and its allies must prepare. When Senators McCain, Graham, and Lieberman -- the most hawkish elected officials in Washington -- rule out the use of conventional ground troops, policymakers should conclude that they have a depleted toolbox for addressing future security challenges. With the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan still fresh, policymakers will be highly reluctant to employ conventional ground forces in future contingencies. Among the few remaining tools will be intelligence and special operations officers pursuing irregular warfare techniques alongside allies. Supporting the Sunni allies in Syria will sharpen irregular warfare skills, improve operational relationships, and prepare the United States and its allies for future contingencies. And it may even end the war and save some lives.

-This commentary was published first in Foreign Policy on 10/08/2012
-Robert Haddick is managing editor of Small Wars Journal

How Iran’s Spies Are Losing The Shadow War With U.S. And Israel

In Syria and around the world, Iran’s covert operatives are in trouble.

By Christopher Dickey


Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, its infamous expeditionary unit, the Quds Force, and the network of Hezbollah operatives it supports around the world, are starting to look like the proverbial gang that couldn’t shoot straight. They’re still dangerous, to be sure, but a series of recent incidents widely attributed to these groups suggest that as spies, assassins, and terrorists, they just aren’t what they used to be. And Tehran is getting worried.

According to sources in the Iranian capital, concerns about IRGC inadequacies are fueling the bitter infighting among Iran’s elites at a critical time: the war in Syria threatens to bring down Iran’s most vital Arab ally, the confrontation with Israel and the West over Iran’s nuclear program has provoked devastating sanctions, and a military attack on Iran by Israel still looms as a distinct possibility. This is a bad moment for the Iranians to discover their fearsome covert operatives are essentially incompetent.

Last weekend, for instance, Syrian rebels captured a group of 48 Iranians who were alleged to be IRGC members on “a reconnaissance mission” in Damascus. Rumors have circulated extensively in Tehran (a very rumor-prone city) that the head of the Quds Force, Qasem Suleimani himself, was wounded recently when his convoy was attacked in Damascus. Over the last year, at least nine apparent Iranian assassination and bomb plots around the world have failed or been thwarted. The grim attack on a bus full of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last month, which killed seven people and wounded 30, appears to have been the exceptional “success” for these murderers rather than the rule.

On almost every front in a wide-ranging covert war with Israel and the United States, Iran appears to be suffering major setbacks. Its nuclear program was disrupted by the Stuxnet computer worm in 2010 and at least one virus since. Its scientists have been attacked and five of them murdered. According to one source, recent leaks provided Western intelligence services with detailed information about work on the Iranian nuclear program at the Parchin military complex, which may have encouraged the Americans and their allies to toughen their stand in the faltering talks meant to defuse the crisis.

As always in covert wars, denial is part of the picture, and sometimes a kind of perverse affirmation. The Iranian government denies any connection to the various alleged plots over the last year in the United States, Cyprus, India, Thailand, and Bulgaria, even though they are widely seen as attempted retaliation for the attacks on its scientists. (Iranian state television broadcast a documentary film on Sunday, Terror Club, that included “confessions” by Iranians who said they had been trained in Israel to carry out the murders of Iran’s nuclear scientists. Israel has never officially acknowledged a role in the killings.) Last month, intelligence analysts at the New York City Police Department prepared a detailed chronology of nine alleged Iran-backed plots in other cities around the world this year, all of them apparently aimed at Jewish targets. The NYPD stepped up security around several similar sites in New York City.

Some of the alleged IRGC plots appear so convoluted it’s hard to believe they were ever serious, or, indeed, ever existed. Would the Iranians really have tried to hire members of a Mexican drug cartel to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington in a crowded D.C. restaurant last year? Mansour Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American former used-car salesman from Texas, whose lawyers say is bipolar, is awaiting trial in New York for his alleged role as a middleman in that plot.

The Iranian government insists the Iranian citizens who are now “hostages” in Syrian rebel hands were mere religious pilgrims visiting the Shia shrine of Sayyida Zeinab in Damascus. But Tehran says it will hold the United States responsible for their treatment.

The back and forth of denial and recrimination is reminiscent of events 30 years ago in Lebanon, when Iranian agents were captured by hostile militias and the retaliation came in the form of multiple Iranian-backed kidnappings that targeted American journalists, a CIA station chief, an American colonel, and other Westerners.

Back then, however, the Iranians and their agents working under the government’s Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) showed impressive, if frightening, tradecraft. Throughout the 1980s and early '90s, the Iranians pulled off a series of assassinations targeting opponents of the regime in Paris, Geneva, Rome, Vienna, and elsewhere. Sometimes they used guns and sometimes car bombs, as in two attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina that took more than 100 lives in the early '90s. On August 6, 1981, Iranian agents murdered a former Iranian prime minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, in his own heavily guarded house outside of Paris with a knife from his kitchen, then calmly walked out the front door.

In recent years, however, especially since the political upheaval following rigged presidential elections in 2009, the MOIS has been pushed aside in many areas by the separate, independent, and much clumsier IRGC. “You read about ‘the elite IRGC’ and the ‘elite Quds Force,’” says a veteran American operative in the counterterror wars. “Well, there is nothing ‘elite’ about the IRGC.  It’s not the MOIS, which has a certain elegance.”

“They are using Hezbollah operatives where they can find them, or borrow them, and they are willing to use criminal elements,” says the American operative. “That’s what happens when you try to push out nine plots in six months. One maybe, or two. But nine—you get sloppy.”

According to one of our correspondents in the region who is in close contact with various governmental sources in Iran, senior leaders of the regular Iranian army, which has been sidelined for decades as the IRGC gained strength, are now accusing the IRGC of squandering precious military resources and political capital in its efforts to save the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been a major Assad supporter, according to these sources, supplying expensive military hardware to help bolster the regime. His IRGC allies advised al-Assad early on to hang tough and forget about reforms, much as they had done when suppressing the popular protests in Iran in 2009.

Any Iranian leadership might have taken this stand—reluctant to lose such a strategically important ally and a critical link to the powerful Hezbollah forces in Lebanon--but Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have become rivals, and Khamenei may use the record of IRGC failures to force out commanders who haven’t supported him in these intramural fights.

According to our correspondent, who is not named for security reasons, a “mole hunt” has begun inside the Quds Force, looking for the source or sources of mismanagement and potentially disastrous leaks to hostile intelligence forces. As in many bureaucracies, it is easier to blame conspirators than incompetents. Meanwhile, the deadly game of spy and counterspy continues.

-This commentary was published first in The Daily Beast on 07/08/2012
-Christopher Dickey is the Paris bureau chief and Middle East editor for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. He is the author of six books, including Summer of Deliverance and, most recently, Securing the City: Inside America’s Best Counterterror Force—the NYPD

The Palestine Mitt Romney Doesn’t Know

By Zahi Khouri


U.S. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney

I am a proud American. I am a hardworking businessman and job creator. I am a faithful Christian.
And I am Palestinian.

Much as my multiple identities might drive Mitt Romney to head scratching, it is he who needs a lesson in, to borrow his recent words, “culture and a few other things.”

Were he to spend a day with me in the Holy Land, I could take him to the Jerusalem neighborhood where my family home has stood for five centuries. I could show him the orange trees in Jaffa that my family helped introduce to the world in the 1930s.

That’s right: Jaffa oranges are a Palestinian, not Israeli, trademark. Yet like so many “cultural” markers claimed by the self-professed Jewish state, even the fruit trees my people have tended for centuries have been expropriated.

Romney might be duped into thinking that oranges, falafel and hummus — staples of Palestinian cuisine for generations — are Israeli products. But how dare he claim that a state built at the expense of another people’s history and accomplishments is guided by “the hand of providence”?

Israel did not make the desert bloom. Instead, thanks to a deal struck with the British viceroys of Mandate Palestine, it made away with a land, a set of institutions and, indeed, a culture that was not its own.

It did so at the expense of my people. Like more than three-quarters of Palestine’s population, my family was forced to leave this land after Israel’s creation in 1948. Even though we had to abandon our successful businesses and centuries-old homes, however, we did not become the “uncultured” victims that Romney’s caricature suggests.

Most of us went to other Arab countries, where Palestinians became known for our business acumen and management know-how, and helped to build nascent private and public sectors. Ask our fellow Arabs in Lebanon, Jordan or elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region and they will tell you: Palestinian culture, with its premium on education and hard work, has been a force for hope, development and prosperity.

Despite their circumstances, Palestinians living under Israel’s brutal occupation share the same culture and proudly claim the same remarkable achievements. I, for one, returned to Palestine in 1993 to launch the first Coca-Cola bottling plant in the West Bank. It was granted a Best Country Bottling Operation award in May by Coca-Cola, a testament to my colleagues’ ingenuity and determination. But these traits alone cannot overcome the stifling effects of Israel’s occupation.

If Romney got one thing right, it’s that Israelis far outdo Palestinians in net wealth. In fact, his estimates of the disparity were too conservative: Israel’s per capita gross domestic product is roughly $32,000 to the Palestinians’ $1,500.

Remarkably, that $1,500 figure is roughly half of what Palestinians claimed in 1993, when the Oslo accords were signed. In other words, the U.S.-sponsored peace process has made us poorer.

How is that possible?

Palestinians have no say in our economic development. Every resource — water, land, soil, minerals, airspace, humans — is controlled and commandeered by Israel, which then deigns to sell us back a small portion.

In the West Bank, for example, Israeli settlers consume on average 4.3 times the amount of water as Palestinians. In the Jordan Valley alone, some 9,000 settlers in Israeli agricultural settlements use one-quarter the amount of water consumed by the entire Palestinian population of the West Bank, about 2.5 million people.

Palestinians have no control over our borders. This means we cannot import or export without being subject to discriminatory measures by our occupier. It also means that, without Israeli permission, we cannot hire experts to enhance our employees’ skills or send employees for overseas training.

Worse, we are restricted within the territories ostensibly under our “control.” At any given time, there are more than 500 Israeli checkpoints, roadblocks and other barriers to movement within the occupied West Bank — an area smaller than Delaware — hindering Palestinians and their goods from moving between their own towns and cities and the outside world.

Palestinian development of all kinds is severely hindered by the Israeli occupation. Yet Palestinians have not given up. Palestine has one of the highest literacy rates in the Arab world. Our youth continue to graduate from our universities, opening businesses and gaining skills. Our private sector innovates and grows.

All of this is happening on the 22 percent of historic Palestine that is the West Bank and Gaza. If Romney had any historical perspective, he would dispose of his racist judgments about Palestinian culture and instead imagine our potential without Israel’s imposed hindrances.

-This commentary was published first in The Washington Post on 10/08/2012
-Zahi Khouri is a Palestinian American businessman and founder of Palestinian National Beverage Co.

Saudi Women Olympians Deserve Praise, Not Insults

Judoka Wojdan and Sarah Attar participated in london despite a lack of training and experience.

By Faisal J. Abbas



As Sarah Attar finished last in her 800-metre race on Wednesday, Saudi Arabia’s first female participation at the Olympics came to a seemingly ignominious end.

Last Friday, the other Saudi contender, 16-year-old judoka Wojdan Ali Shaherkani, made her international debut at the London ExCel Centre, in a match which was certainly not even. The inexperienced Saudi faced Puerto Rico’s Melissa Mojica, who is ranked 13th in the world. The challenge ended in a mere 82 seconds, when Mojica performed an impeccable match-ending ippon throw.

After she picked herself off the floor, the young Saudi martial artiste received a much-deserved standing ovation from the crowd as she left the arena alongside her father, coach and judo referee, Ali Shaherkani.

Many will say the Saudi women lost their London Olympic battles, but Wojdan and Sarah won a much bigger ‘war’ for women in their home country. After all, up until a few weeks ago, nobody (including the two athletes themselves) even anticipated that Saudi Arabia — where a ban is imposed on women’s sports — would have a female presence in London 2012.

Participation by Sarah (who was born and raised in California) and Wojdan came only as a result of months of negotiations between their government and the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
No infrastructure

The IOC went out of its way to ensure that by the time the 2012 Games were inaugurated, it would be the first tournament to ever have female representation on all participating teams.

With no real infrastructure for female athletes in Saudi Arabia, sports officials had to scramble to secure whomever they could find. For its part, the IOC made exceptions and allowed the two Saudi women to participate based on ‘special invitations’ and not on merit or competiveness.

This is why the results achieved by Wojdan and Sarah were not surprising; hardly anybody actually anticipated they would contest for a medal.

The surprise came from the appalling comments made about the pair on social media sites, blogs and web-forums.

Many ultra-conservatives, who oppose allowing women to engage in sports publically, used extremely offensive terms questioning Wojdan’s and Sarah’s morality.

Others made further comments disassociating Wojdan from being Muslim and even from being Saudi. One racist comment described her as Tarsh Bahar (sea remnants), a local derogatory term used to describe people who came to Makkah from outside Saudi Arabia, but decide to stay and become Saudi.

Such comments are utterly unacceptable towards anyone, let alone a person who took it upon herself to respond to the call of duty when she knew she didn’t stand a chance against superior competition.
Wojdan knew she had no experience, she knew she lacked the training and she knew she was facing the world’s 13th best judo player. She still didn’t shy away from the competition.

If anything, she has proven to be more of a man than most of the mice who were squeaking rubbish against her on Twitter.

As for the ‘Father of the Pride’, Ali Shaherkani, he was well-advised to pursue in a court of law those who insulted his daughter, as he announced he would.

In most civilised countries, most of these hateful comments against Wojdan would easily be categorised as libelous; she would be able to claim for serious damages and demand a public apology as well.

Public support

We also must remember the many supporters of the two Saudi athletes, who went public with their encouragement and gratitude.

Activist Manal Al Sharif, who led a campaign to allow Saudi women to drive, described Wojdan’s participation in the London Olympics as historic. “For us Saudi women judoka Wojdan is a champion,” she said on Twitter.

The praise wasn’t limited to Saudis, as UAE Foreign Minister Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan tweeted: “Thank you, Wojdan Shaherkani”.

Yet there needs to be more gratitude for these courageous women. Even though Wojdan and Sarah are officially Olympians, they have not yet been officially recognised by the Saudi government as Olympic competitors.

It was virtually impossible for these two female Saudi athletes to bring home a gold medal, but there is nothing stopping the Saudi government from awarding them with a medal of honour.
After all, if it wasn’t for the courage and patriotism of these honourable young ladies, Saudi Arabia wouldn’t even have had an Olympic presence this year.

-This commentary was published in GULF NEWS on 10/08/2012

Syria: Mistaking Symptoms For Causes

 By Kori Schake



Obama administration counterterrorism official John Brennan was out on the hustings yesterday trying to once again get the administration credit for what they're not doing. In this case, it was to foster the illusion that the administration is actively exploring options for intervening in Syria's civil war. "Various options that are being talked about ... are things that the United States government has been looking at very carefully, trying to understand the implications, trying to understand the advantages and disadvantages of this." This is little enough seventeen months into a popular uprising against one of the world's worst governments. Italians gave us the concept of festina lente, to hurry up slowly; the Obama administration wants to laurel itself for boldly acting cautiously.

But Brennan's comments are also illustrative for how they characterize the problem in Syria. While at pains to pretend the Obama administration is considering no-fly zones to prevent the Syrian military from killing civilians in refugee camps -- although the administration seems comfortable enough with the Syrian military killing civilians in their homes -- Brennan attested that the administration is "quite busy making sure that we're able to do everything possible that's going to advance the interests of peace in Syria and not, again, do anything that's going to contribute to more violence." That's incredibly revealing: the administration believes that violence is the problem, not the injustice and repression the regime of Bashir al-Assad is imposing on its long-suffering population.

The Obama administration seems not to understand that violence has political causes, and that "preventing violence" only reinforces the grip of those in power. They are diagnosing symptoms, not diseases. As no less a source than Elie Wiesel said, "we must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." The Obama administration applauds itself for "new pragmatism." That should be called what it is: a studied neutrality to the claims of a people against their government, an even-handedness between repressors and repressed.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 09/08/2012