The Resurrection of Ahmad Chalabi

The man who helped convince the United States to invade Iraq has spent the last decade in the political wilderness. But now, with his country in chaos, he could be its next leader.

BY JANE ARRAF from Baghdad

Ahmad Chalabi

Outside the steel doors and high walls of what was once a country estate on the outskirts of Baghdad, trash is piled along dusty streets marked with concrete blast barriers. In large swaths of the country, Sunni fighters intent on erasing Iraq's borders to create a sweeping Islamic state battle Iraqi soldiers and Shiite militiamen. Inside, in the more refined world he has willed into being, Ahmad Chalabi ponders his political resurrection.

"The politicians believe this is business as usual -- it is not," he says in an interview with Foreign Policy, while leaning back in the embrace of a Danish-designed chair made in Baghdad from the reclaimed teak doors of old houses. "Iraq has never faced dissolution since its creation until now. This is the first time Iraq faces dissolution on two fronts -- the Kurds and the Sunnis."

Chalabi is dressed in a black T-shirt, black parachute pants, and black suede shoes with no socks. He sits surrounded by Iraqi paintings -- at Baghdad's declining number of art galleries, his purchases alone help keep some artists afloat. In the garden in the evening, fans with water reservoirs spray a cooling, rose-scented mist. He is renovating his swimming pool, where neoconservative American officials used to swim when he was still a darling of President George W. Bush's administration. Now, the U.S. Embassy across town is evacuating its nonessential staff, and the remaining Foreign Service officers aren't allowed even to cross the street.

To many in the West, Chalabi, 69, is still the political operator who convinced the Bush administration that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, paving the way for the U.S.-led invasion of the country. But inside an Iraq dangerously on the verge of splintering, that invasion is almost ancient history. After almost a decade of being sidelined, the man who could not win a seat in parliament in 2005 and whose name once inspired insults scrawled on Baghdad walls has emerged as a serious contender to replace Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

In fact, he believes he can save Iraq.  

"The facts, you see, add cumulatively to my credibility with all sections of society," he says. 

"These people proposing me to be prime minister -- [they are] not only among the Shiites but among the Sunnis and the Kurds."

Those "facts," as Chalabi sees them, are a proven record of reducing government corruption and the economic qualifications to repair Iraq's bleeding economy. Now, he has his sights set on crushing the Islamic State -- formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a jihadist organization that has recently seized vast areas of territory in the north and west of the country. To do that, he says the government needs to mend ties with the country's Sunni community.

"The way to defeat ISIS, in my view the only way, is first of all -- after a good government is formed -- you have to issue a law of national reconciliation to win over the Sunnis in a serious way."

In June, Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, fell to ISIS, which rebranded itself as the Islamic State and declared the creation of a caliphate. With the Sunni jihadists on their doorstep, Iraqi political leaders are still wrangling over who will form a new government after elections in April. One of the only things they seem to agree on is that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki should not be given a third term in office.

Chalabi, a secular Shiite, has not been wasting his time while in the political wilderness. In the past decade, he has forged strong ties with hard-line Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, as well as the major Kurdish factions and key Sunni leaders. Close to Iran and apparently now tolerated by the United States, he has emerged as perhaps the ultimate compromise candidate in a country fatally lacking in political compromise.

Part of Chalabi's proposed reconciliation would be reviewing the cases of thousands of prisoners, most of them Sunnis, who have been arrested under sweeping anti-terrorism laws and held in jail without charge, or long past orders for their release. Chalabi says he would also appoint a judicial committee to review cases where people have been sentenced on the basis of coerced confessions.

Then he would turn his attention to Iraq's bleeding economy and combat corruption. The former banker proposes a team of forensic auditors -- perhaps headed by the American former special inspector for Iraq reconstruction, Stuart Bowen -- to review contracts and contracting procedures in order to reduce Iraq's staggering corruption. Chalabi also points to his experience in government in 2005, when he says he exposed a $1.2 billion contracting scandal and proposed a committee to oversee large contracts. "For one year there was not one instance of corruption in the entire contracting process of the Iraqi government," he says -- a claim difficult to verify.

Perhaps one of the most dramatic aims of a man inextricably associated with laws punishing former Baath party members would be to roll back de-Baathification, which he now argues has been perverted from its original purpose of dismantling Saddam's party institutions to being used as retribution for political purposes.

"It became the common wisdom that Sunnis hate me because of this de-Baathification," Chalabi says. But given the even harsher crackdown that followed his departure, he claims, "They are having nostalgia about de-Baathification."

* * *

But before Chalabi turns to the future, he has a litany of grievances against those he believes have wronged him in the past. While several former Bush administration officials still champion his political ambitions, top on his list of adversaries is the man the United States appoint to lead the occupation authority following the 2003 invasion: Paul Bremer.

"Bremer never liked me from the beginning," Chalabi says, blaming a2003 editorial he published in the Wall Street Journal, in which he thanked the United States for toppling Saddam Hussein but warned it against staying in Iraq. He blames the United States -- and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi -- of excluding him from Ayad Allawi's interim government, formed in 2004.

Chalabi, who was paid by the CIA for six years as part of a futile covert effort to topple Saddam Hussein, also bats away claims that he was responsible for the incorrect intelligence about the Iraqi regime's purported WMD stockpiles. He says his role was limited to putting informants in touch with the CIA for the agency to evaluate on its own. A congressionally appointed committee discounted his connection to the now-discredited source known as "Curveball," later identified as Iraqi defector Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, whose claim that Saddam was operating mobile biological weapons laboratories was used by the Bush administration to publicly make the case for war. Chalabi says the widespread claim in the media of his connection to Janabi was payback for ruffling feathers at the State Department and White House.

"What happened is that the narrative of war that Bush based his plan on fell apart," he says. "Who is at fault? I am. It's an easy target -- a foreigner in Iraq who did things in Washington with questionable methods whom they didn't like. It's easy."

However, Chalabi is still happy to take credit for his key role in bringing the United States to Iraq. After being cut loose by the CIA, he went to Washington in 1997 to lobby Congress to back attempts to overthrow Saddam. A year later, the Iraqi Liberation Act, which made it U.S. policy to support regime change, was signed into law.

"The main thing we did was we made the Iraq issue an American political issue inside the United States," Chalabi says. "Of course this gets me great ill will with the American bureaucrats, so every chance they get, they dump on me."

* * *

Even by the mercurial standards of Iraqi politics, Chalabi has had a dramatic ride. Less than a year after the beginning of the war, he was given a privileged seat near first lady Laura Bush at President Bush's 2004 State of the Union address. Four months later, U.S. Special Forces raided his office following accusations that he sent sensitive files to Iran and forged currency with plates stolen from the Iraqi mint. The charges were later dropped. He is still, however, sentenced in absentia to prison with hard labor in Jordan, where he is held responsible for the collapse of the kingdom's second-largest bank in 1989. Chalabi maintains he was made the scapegoat for that collapse.

The passage of the years has not managed to erase everyone's suspicions about him. As one former Western diplomat who has dealt with him put it, "I think [Chalabi's new popularity] is part of Iraq's long slide into the abyss."

But Chalabi believes that recent events have validated his decision in the years following the invasion -- much bemoaned in Washington at the time -- to pursue cooperation with Iran.

"Are they not cooperating with Iran?" Chalabi says of the United States. "Are they not accepting Iranian interference in the war against ISIS? Why was that a bad thing to do in 2003 to 2004 and why is it a great thing now? Who was right and who was wrong?"

During his years out of political power, Chalabi launched a sort of economic salon -- twice-weekly seminars bringing together technical experts to thrash out economic and political issues -- that has burnished his credentials as a technocrat able to rise above sectarian issues.

In what was once a grain cellar for his family's ancestral farm -- and is now lined with gleaming-white concrete and outfitted with a stage and audiovisual system amid the abstract art -- a rotating cast of academics, policy makers, and industrialists still gathers for discussions of issues such as the role of the central bank, how to revive industry, and how to combat corruption.

Chalabi mostly listens -- as he has been listening for the past decade.

"Every week he meets tens if not hundreds of technocrats and academics, and he tries to find the right people," says an independent Iraqi analyst who has attended his seminars and, like many, describes him as "brilliant."

"When the Americans turned against him, he became alone -- he was only respected by the Kurds," says the analyst. "Everybody was ignoring him, so he used that in a very clever way -- he did not want to become a puppet. I think he knows the only way to have his star shine is when there is nationwide disagreement."

Chalabi, perhaps disingenuously, says he isn't seeking the prime minister's job.

"What's the point if there's no plan?" he asks. "To put Iraq back together is very difficult. The points of this plan will be opposed violently by some Shiites because their concept is they are in power.... But we can't conquer Sunni lands with Shiite militias. That's one thing we need -- a plan to stitch Iraq back together."

With Iraq unraveling and after a decade waiting in the wings, this might be Chalabi's chance to implement that plan.

·        

       * This report was published first in Foreign Policy on 10/07/2014

·         * Jane Arraf was the CNN’s Baghdad bureau chief after the American invasion of Iraq

The Battle For Iraq Is A Saudi War On Iran

Why the ISIS invasion of Iraq is really a war between Shiites and Sunnis for control of the Middle East.

BY SIMON HENDERSON

King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia

Be careful what you wish for" could have been, and perhaps should have been, Washington's advice to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that have been supporting Sunni jihadists against Bashar al-Assad's regime in Damascus. The warning is even more appropriate today as the bloodthirsty fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) sweep through northwest Iraq, prompting hundreds of thousands of their Sunni coreligionists to flee and creating panic in Iraq's Shiite heartland around Baghdad, whose population senses, correctly, that it will be shown no mercy if the ISIS motorcades are not stopped.

Such a setback for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been the dream of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah for years. He has regarded Maliki as little more than an Iranian stooge, refusing to send an ambassador to Baghdad and instead encouraging his fellow rulers of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) -- Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman -- to take a similar standoff-ish approach. Although vulnerable to al Qaeda-types at home, these countries (particularly Kuwait and Qatar) have often turned a blind eye to their citizens funding radical groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the most active Islamist groups opposed to Assad in Syria. 

Currently on vacation in Morocco, King Abdullah has so far been silent on these developments. At 90-plus years old, he has shown no wish to join the Twitter generation, but the developments on the ground could well prompt him to cut short his stay and return home. He has no doubt realized that -- with his policy of delivering a strategic setback to Iran by orchestrating the overthrow of Assad in Damascus showing little sign of any imminent success -- events in Iraq offer a new opportunity.

This perspective may well confuse many observers. In recent weeks, there has been a flurry of reports of an emerging -- albeit reluctant --diplomatic rapprochement between the Saudi-led GCC and Iran, bolstered by the apparently drunken visit to Tehran by the emir of Kuwait, and visits by trade delegations and commerce ministers in one direction or the other. This is despite evidence supporting the contrary view, including Saudi Arabia's first public display of Chinese missiles capable of hitting Tehran and the UAE's announcement of the introduction of military conscription for the country's youth.

The merit, if such a word can be used, of the carnage in Iraq is that at least it offers clarity. There are tribal overlays and rival national identities at play, but the dominant tension is the religious difference between majority Sunni and minority Shiite Islam. This region-wide phenomenon is taken to extremes by the likes of ISIS, which also likely sees its action in Iraq as countering Maliki's support for Assad. 

ISIS is a ruthless killing machine, taking Sunni contempt for Shiites to its logical, and bloody, extreme. The Saudi monarch may be more careful to avoid direct religious insults than many other of his brethren, but contempt for Shiites no doubt underpinned his WikilLeaked comment about "cutting off the head of the snake," meaning the clerical regime in Tehran. (Prejudice is an equal-opportunity avocation in the Middle East: Iraqi government officials have been known to ask Iraqis whether they are Sunni or Shiite before deciding how to treat them.)

Despite the attempts of many, especially in Washington, to write him off, King Abdullah remains feisty, though helped occasionally by gasps of oxygen -- as when President Barack Obama met him in March and photos emerged of breathing tubes inserted in his nostrils. When Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi -- and, after his elder brother's recent stroke, the effective ruler of the UAE -- visited King Abdullah on June 4, the Saudi monarch was shown gesticulating with both hands. The subject under discussion was not revealed, but since Zayed was on his way to Cairo it was probably the election success of Egypt's new president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, considered a stabilizing force by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Of course, Sisi gets extra points for being anti-Muslim Brotherhood, a group whose Islamist credentials are at odds with the inherited privileges of Arab monarchies. For the moment, Abdullah, Zayed, and Sisi are the three main leaders of the Arab world. Indeed, the future path of the Arab countries could well depend on these men (and whomever succeeds King Abdullah).

For those confused by the divisions in the Arab world and who find the metric of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" to be of limited utility, it is important to note that the Sunni/Shiite divide coincides, at least approximately, with the division between the Arab and Persian worlds. In geopolitical terms, Iraq is at the nexus of these worlds -- majority Shiite but ethnically Arab. There is an additional and often confusing dimension, although one that's historically central to Saudi policy: A willingness to support radical Sunnis abroad while containing their activities at home. Hence Riyadh's arms-length support for Osama bin Laden when he was leading jihadists in Soviet-controlled Afghanistan, and tolerance for jihadists in Chechnya, Bosnia, and Syria.

When the revolt against Assad grew in 2011 -- and Riyadh's concern at Iran's nuclear program mounted -- Saudi intelligence reopened its playbook and started supporting the Sunni opposition, particularly its more radical elements, a strategy guided by its intelligence chief, former ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The operation's leadership changed in April, when Bandar resigned in apparent frustration over dealing with the cautious approach of the Obama administration, but Saudi support for jihadi fighters appears to be continuing. (The ISIS operation in Iraq almost seems the sort of tactical surprise that Bandar could have dreamt up, but there is no actual evidence.)

In the fast-moving battle that is now consuming northern Iraq, there are many variables. For Washington, the option of inaction has to be balanced by the fate of the estimated 20,000 American civilians still left in the country (even though the U.S. military is long-departed). Qatar, the region's opportunist, is likely balancing its options of irritating its regional rival, Saudi Arabia, while trying not to poke the Iranian bear. There are no overt Qatari fingerprints yet visible and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, just celebrating his first full year in power after his father's abdication in 2013, may be chastened by the public scolding he received from the rest of the GCC after he was accused of interference in the domestic affairs of his brother rulers. Additionally, Doha may be cautious in risking Iran's ire by an adventure in Iraq. Having just given five Taliban leaders refuge as part of the Bowe Bergdahl swap, Qatar has effectively clearly stated where it lies in the Sunni-Shiite divide.

There is a potentially important historical precedent to Saudi Arabia's current dilemma of rooting for ISIS but not wanting its advances to threaten the kingdom. In the 1920s, the religious fanatic Ikhwan fighters who were helping Ibn Saud to conquer Arabia were also threatening the British protectorates of Iraq and Transjordan. Ibn Saud, the father of the current Saudi king, gave carte blanche to the British to massacre the Ikhwan with machine-gun equipped biplanes, personally leading his own forces to finish the job, when the Ikhwan threatened him at the battle of Sabilla in 1929.

It's hard to imagine such a neat ending to the chaos evolving in the Euphrates river valley. At this stage, a direct confrontation between Saudi and Iranian forces seems very unlikely, even though, as in Syria, the direct involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps cannot be ruled out. What is clear that the Syrian civil war looks like it will be joined by an Iraqi civil war. ISIS already has a name for the territory, the al-Sham caliphate. Washington may need to find its own name for the new area, as well as a policy.

-         *  This articles was first published in Foreign Policy on 12/06/2014

-          * Simon Henderson is the Baker fellow at The Washington Institute and director of the Institute's Gulf and Energy Policy Program, specializing in energy matters and the conservative Arab states of the Persian Gulf.  

Syria’s Dirty Secret Is That Assad Could Win In A Fair Election

By Faisal Al Yafai

There is a presidential election in Syria and Bashar Al Assad is going to win. The only question is by how much.

As a presidential candidate, Mr Al Assad has done quite well. He has overseen a truce that has seen one of the country’s largest cities return to government control. He has maintained his relationships with his allies in Iran and Hizbollah. He still cuts a man of the people stance, in marked contrast to the extremists who seek to run the country.

He is, above all, a known quantity, a man who has led the country through difficult times, promises stability and is backed by an army that can deliver it. All in all, Mr Al Assad looks like a credible candidate.

Though only, of course, if you overlook the fact that he caused the civil war that rages today.

But there is a serious reason to understand why Mr Al Assad is seen by many within and without Syria as a credible candidate. Because many will vote for him.

Certainly, that is because there is no real alternative, because the only places in which voting will take place are under government control, because 40 years of propaganda have removed any alternative – and because the Assad regime has spent three years demonstrating what it means by the slogan “Assad or we burn the country”.

But the dirty secret in Syria today is that, if the presidential election were free and fair, Bashar Al Assad would still win.

However unpalatable it is, the man who has overseen the systematic destruction of the country, who has made more refugees than anyone else in the Middle East this century, is still popular. We ought to ask why.

The last time Mr Al Assad faced a popular vote, in 2007, I was in Syria. Buildings and highways were emblazoned with the Arabic word for “Yes”. Although billed as a presidential election, it wasn’t: the parliament had merely proposed that Mr Al Assad be nominated as president for a second term and the public were asked to ratify this decision. Unsurprisingly, they did, all 97 per cent of them.

Yet even the opposition inside the country conceded that, were there a free vote, Mr Al Assad would still have won. The regime was popular – not 97 per cent popular, but popular enough for a majority.

To understand why, and to understand why millions will vote for Mr Al Assad in three weeks, it is important to understand how Syrians saw themselves then and how they see their country today.

In 2007, and even up to 2011, life was getting better in Syria. It wasn’t moving fast enough and the country was riddled with corruption, but for many of the urban middle-class in Damascus and Aleppo, life was better than it had been. Syria was safer than any neighbouring country. The chaos of Iraq next door felt far away.

The uprising changed that. Many who supported it in the beginning, when it looked like it would swiftly topple a long-standing regime, regretted their position as months became a year and a year became three.

It is one thing to fight for an idea: the revolutionaries of Tahrir Square had no thought who would follow Hosni Mubarak, they just felt it had to get better. Similarly for the Syrian revolutionaries. But gradually, what started as a dream took on a form: no longer were thawra and hurriya, revolution and freedom, slogans. They became personified, first in the person of Mohammed Morsi and then in the faces and actions of the Islamists who flooded into Syria.

The secular society – enforced, certainly, but existing – that the Assad regime has created was under threat. And who would defend it? The politicians of the Syrian opposition? They were unknowns, long in exile, squabbling over who would sit on a throne not yet vacated. To Syrians inside the country, they looked like they were arguing over dividing up the spoils of a battle they were not fighting.

The future these groups offered was unknown or unpalatable. Even those who don’t accept the propaganda that the rebels are terrorists can accept that the regime is brutal and murderous – and still prefer it to the unknown rebels and lawless gangs that promise to follow the regime.

For those who have not suffered loved ones killed or in exile – or for those who have but who blame the Syrian rebels for their deaths, directly or indirectly – life with Mr Al Assad is still preferable to the unknown without him.

That should make the Syrian opposition and the international community think very seriously about their policies, about their outreach and about what message they are sending to the people inside the country. Even the flow of weapons to the rebels has a political dimension, because support will follow success and success requires arms. By arming the moderates, the international community will empower them.

The Syrian civil war is not over. The withdrawal from Homs did not end it and the presidential election, regardless of the declarations of Mr Al Assad, Hizbollah or Iran, will not end the revolution. For millions, there is no way back. After seeing their families killed, seeing their children scrabbling in the dirt for food, seeing their neighbourhoods bombed to pieces, there is no accommodation with a regime. There is only rebellion.

But the opposition must understand that there are millions inside the country who need a message, who need a vision of what Syria without Mr Al Assad would look like. If they cannot fill in the blanks for Syrians, they cannot expect Syrians to fight for the unknown.

- This article was published first in The National on 13/05/2014 

Deal Reached to Halt Iran's Nuclear Program

By Yochi Dreazen from Geneva

The historic nuclear deal Iran signed with the United States and five other world powers early Sunday morning represents the biggest gamble of President Barack Obama's presidency, and the success or failure of that bet will have serious repercussions for the administration's standing on Capitol Hill, Washington's relationships with Israel and other Middle Eastern allies, and the national security of the United States itself.

The deal painstakingly assembled during four days of marathon negotiations at a luxury hotel here calls for Iran to halt most of its uranium enrichment efforts, eliminate its stockpiles of uranium already purified to near weapons grade quality, open its facilities to daily monitoring by international inspectors and significantly slow the construction of the Arak plutonium reactor. Nuclear weapons can be assembled using either enriched uranium or plutonium, and the new pact is designed to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Iran to gain enough of either material for a bomb.

In exchange, Iran would gain some relief from the punishing economic sanctions that had been leveled by Washington and its allies in recent years, freeing up roughly $6 billion. Tehran also won a commitment that the so-called P5+1 nations - the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain - wouldn't impose any new sanctions for the next six months. That was an important win for the Iranians since the existing measures have cut its oil exports in half and driven the price of its currency down to a historic low.

The negotiations between the two sides have been going on in stops and starts for nearly a decade, but the actual unveiling of the deal was strangely muted. The text of the agreement itself was signed at roughly 3:30 AM in Geneva's Palais des Nations in a quiet ceremony open to only a small number of reporters and not televised or otherwise broadcast electronically. Lady Catherine Ashton, the European Union's chief diplomat and one of the prime architects of the deal, didn't participate in the public rollout of the agreement or take any questions from reporters.

President Obama, speaking from the White House, said the deal "halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program" and "cut off Iran's most likely paths to a bomb." He also stressed that the agreement was an interim measure designed to give negotiators from both sides six months to work towards a broader, permanent nuclear agreement. If a deal couldn't be reached - or if the United States found evidence that Iran was trying to secretly continue work on its nuclear weapons program - Obama promised to restore the sanctions that had been lifted and impose harsh new ones.

The White House moved quickly to try to preempt criticism that the deal gave Iran too much.  A senior administration official in Washington said the primary U.S. sanctions against Iran's oil and banking sectors would remain fully intact, which means that Iran would lose roughly $30 billion in oil revenue over the next six months, far more than it stands to gain as part of the agreement.  "Iran will actually be worse off at the end of this six month deal than it is today," the official said.

With the agreement in place, the administration is now gambling that it can overcome three distinct challenges.

First, the White House has to persuade skeptical lawmakers to hold off on imposing new sanctions on Iran during the next six months. That may be a hard sell given the number of lawmakers from both parties who want to increase the sanctions on Iran rather than softening or relieving any of the existing measures. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a close White House ally, has said he's prepared to take up a tough new sanctions bill when the Senate comes back into session next month. The bill would almost certainly pass if it was put to a full vote. Secretary of State John Kerry said Obama was prepared to veto new sanctions legislation, but that's a battle the White House would dearly love to avoid.

Next, the administration faces the tough task of convincing Israel that the deal does enough to constrain Iran's nuclear program that Israel should give the administration more time to work out a permanent pact with Tehran rather than resorting to unilateral military strikes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was harshly critical of earlier iterations of the nuclear deal and has promised to do whatever is necessary to protect his country. Administration officials said Obama would speak to Netanyahu Sunday to brief him on the details of the deal. One official said in an interview that the White House felt that Netanyahu, no matter how angry he was about the agreement, would reluctantly give the administration six months to test Tehran's intentions.  With the P5+1 countries committed to ongoing negotiations with Iran, the official said that Netanyahu knows any military action would risk rupturing Israel's relationships with the U.S., China and most of Europe. "Bibi will hold his nose, but he'll let us have six months," the official said.

The third and final unknown is what the deal will ultimately mean for American national security.  The agreement imposes an unprecedented number of new restrictions on Iran's nuclear program and, if fully implemented, would make it extraordinarily difficult for Tehran to obtain a bomb. Still, the deal doesn't require Iran to disassemble any of its roughly 19,000 centrifuges or to destroy all of its uranium enrichment equipment. Netanyahu and other critics argue that leaving the core infrastructure of Iran's nuclear program intact means that Tehran could restart its weapons push anytime it wants, particularly if it senses that the West has lost its appetite for further sanctions or the potential use of military force.

Even if the deal succeeds in freezing Iran's nuclear program, meanwhile, Washington and Tehran still remain on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war and face lingerng disputes over Iran's support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, a network of heavily-armed Shiite militias in Iraq, and Shiite activist groups in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states. The nuclear deal could clear the way for further pacts down the road devoted specifically to issues like reducing Tehran's support for the regime of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad.  For the moment, though, those disputes serve as reminders of just how enormous a bet Obama has made by inking this new nuclear deal with Tehran.  

 -This report was first published in Foreign Policy on 24/11/2013

Hezbollah Under Fire

Could the Bombing in Beirut Spell the End of the Shia Group?

By Bilal Y. Saab

A Supporter of Hezbollah gestures as he stands at the site of a car bomb in
Beirut's southern suburbs, August 15, 2013. (Hasan Shaaban / Courtesy Reuters)

Hassan Nasrallah has to wonder whether his approach to the civil war in Syria is starting to backfire. In a recent speech in the southern suburbs of Beirut on a Shiite day of mourning, the Hezbollah chief, in a rare public appearance, urged hundredsof followers to continue the fight against Sunni extremists in Syria. The result, he claimed, would be to spare his Shiite organization and Lebanon as a whole fromSunni extremism. But the double bombing that hit the Iranian embassy in Beirut this afternoon, killing more than 23 people, shows that Nasrallah’s preventive war in Syria is having exactly the opposite effect.

It is not just that al Qaeda, despite Hezbollah’s military advances in Syria, has been able to penetrate deep into the Shiite party’s sphere of influence and wreak havoc. More important is that the same extremists that Nasrallah was hoping to fight outside Lebanon are on the verge of turning Lebanon into another Iraq, a country defined by Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence. In this increasingly likely scenario, Hezbollah stands to lose the most. That is because Lebanese Shiites, Hezbollah’s main constituency, fear sectarian civil war more than anything else. Even the staunchest Hezbollah supporters want to keep the peace with the Sunni and Christian communities, as I argued in Foreign Affairs in August (see below).

But don’t count on Nasrallah to change course. Perhaps he believes that current circumstances, as dire as they are, are much more tolerable than the horror scenario of Syria falling into the hands of his enemies. Regardless of what Nasrallah’s convictions are, the bottom line is that he has put his party on a collision course with the region’s Sunnis -- moderates and extremists alike -- and it is too late for him to take a step back. The tragedy is that he has dragged Lebanon along with him.

Masters at tit-for-tit, Hezbollah and Iran will undoubtedly respond with force and precision to today’s pair of explosions. They may target the Saudi embassy in Beirut (or Saudi interests in Lebanon and abroad), given their belief that Riyadh is supporting Sunni extremists in Syria and across the region. It is more likely that Hezbollah, rather than Iran, will carry out any revenge attack. The two suicide bombings come at a time of rapprochement between Iran and the United States and one of increasing discord between Riyadh and Washington. Iran’s current priority may not be to punish the Saudis but to prepare for tomorrow’s round of negotiations with the P5+1, arguably the most consequential diplomatic summit since the Iranian Revolution. A strategic accord with the Americans, the mullahs are probably thinking, is more urgent than striking back against the Saudis or their proxies.

For his part, Nasrallah, the man who has made a living out of vilifying the United States, has gotten excited about the prospect of warmer ties between the United States and Iran. Last week, he said that a nuclear deal would only enhance the power of his party. That depends, of course, on what the Americans and the Iranians actually agree on.

Regardless, Hezbollah would be deluding itself if it got too comfortable and saw the U.S.-Iranian détente as a sign that its strategy was working. No matter how positive regional or international circumstances may be, Hezbollah’s own house is currently burning. The proxy confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the sectarian warfare that it has brought to the region, has allowed al Qaeda to knock on Hezbollah’s door, putting the Shiite party’s relationship with its constituency -- and thus its very survival -- at risk.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: August 16, 2013

With the bloodbath in Egypt, ongoing carnage in Syria, and gruesome bombings in Iraq, another explosion in the Middle East might hardly seem like news. But the importance of the blast that rocked Beirut’s southern Shia-dominated suburbs on August 15, killing around 20 people and wounding hundreds more, should not be diminished. It could spell the beginning of the end for Hezbollah, the dominant political-military actor in Lebanon and one of the United States’ most powerful nemeses in the region.  

Reports of Hezbollah’s death have abounded in the past eight years. In 2008, only two years after a devastating war with Israel, Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s most senior military commander, was killed in a car bombing in Damascus. Analysts claimed that Hezbollah had lost its military and strategic edge. They also claimed that Israeli intelligence services had infiltrated the organization and that it was only a matter of time before spies within sewed chaos. In fact, Hezbollah was doing just fine. Despite Mughniyeh’s unique skill-set and accomplishments, he was only one part (albeit an important one) of a much larger institution. The group has an organizational structure that would be envied by the most sophisticated corporations, and it was fully capable of replacing Mughniyeh. In fact, it did so less than a week after his funeral.

In July 2011, when an international tribunal investigating the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri formally accused four Hezbollah members of the crime, commentators again rushed to say that the Shia group was doomed, since it had lost legitimacy in the eyes of most non-Shia Lebanese. Yet Hezbollah weathered the storm with a mix of political strategy, violence, and defiance. The group hardly loses any sleep over its deteriorating popularity among non-Shia. As long as it has the guns and the support of its social base, it is business as usual for Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s prospects truly started looking grim about a year ago, months into the conflict between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah’s staunch ally, and the Sunni rebels attempting to depose him. The Assad regime seemed on the verge of collapse. About to lose its ally (and the arms and intelligence he passed along), the thinking went, Hezbollah would become politically isolated at home. Those assertions had the ring of truth, but it was never clear that isolation would lead to the group’s demise and, in any event, Assad survived. Even if he is toppled down the road, there is a high probability that Hezbollah and Iran have plan Bs. For example, Iran already seems to be reaching out to Sudan, which, although not a perfect alternative to Syria, has a friendly government with viable Shia connections in Iraq.

Since Hezbollah has survived war, the death of Mughniyeh, the international tribunal’s powerful verdict, its loss of popular legitimacy, and the near loss of its strategic alliance with Syria, it might seem like there isn’t much that could touch it.

But there is: the deterioration of its relationship with its Shia supporters. Throughout Hezbollah’s 31 years of existence, the organization has made cultivating good relations with Lebanese Shia a top priority, knowing full well that such ties would serve as its first and last lines of defense. It is the one source of support that the organization simply cannot live without or replace.

For the first time in Hezbollah’s history, this special bond is in danger. By entering the fray in Syria earlier this year or last to come to Assad’s aid, Hezbollah has flirted with open conflict with the region’s Sunnis -- both moderate and extremist. Regional demographics have always worked against the Shia -- and they know it. Even the staunchest Lebanese Shia supporters of Hezbollah would prefer peace with their fellow Sunni Lebanese and the region to agitation.

That is what makes the attack in Al Ruweiss so remarkable. Hezbollah’s leadership will see it as an attempt by its enemies to put pressure on the Lebanese Shia community to call for Hezbollah’s withdrawal from Syria -- just as it did after a bombing last month in the same area, and when two other bombs were discovered in the southern suburbs earlier in the year. If Lebanese Shia start to doubt Hezbollah’s strategy, Hezbollah is doomed.

Soon after the first bombing last month, Hezbollah’s leadership vowed to continue the fight in Syria, saying that attacks will only deepen their conviction. At the time, Shia sentiment was still pro-Hezbollah, although some in the community were already starting to question why the group was risking everything. In the last attack, though, there were no deaths. Not this time. And now anxiety is starting to set in.

It would take a long time for increased Shia dissent and dissatisfaction to shake Hezbollah’s grip on the community. After all, Hezbollah has been nurturing these ties since 1982, providing Shia with social goods, a political voice, security, and a sense of empowerment. But with every bomb that goes off in its stronghold -- and with every loss of Shia life that is not caused by Israel -- the group’s control of its support base will wane. Unless Hezbollah changes its Syria strategy, it might soon find itself really alone at home and in the region. 

-This commentary was published first in Foreign Affairs on 19/11/2013
-BILAL Y. SAAB is the executive director and head of research of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis (INEGMA) North America.