Why is Iran obstructing the prisoner deal?

  

            Iranians are past masters in the art of negotiation.  Adept in hiding their real intentions and keeping their opponents in suspense, they often win the game of who blinks first. For example talks on restoring the Iran nuclear deal began in April 2021 and were prolonged time and again by Iran, until it became obvious that it was using the talks as cover while it ramped up work on its nuclear program.  After the penny dropped, US President Joe Biden was caught on camera in November 2022 saying that the nuclear deal with Iran was “dead”.

Iran is currently in the midst of a long-drawn-out negotiation with the US.  The regime is holding three Iranian American dual nationals in jail – businessmen Siamak Namazi and Emad Shargi, and Morad Tahbaz, an environmentalist.  On February 15 US State Department spokesman Ned Price said, for the umpteenth time, that they are being detained unjustly, on trumped up charges. 

Five days later his opposite number, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani, told journalists that a deal with the US involving their release, brokered by intermediaries, had been on the verge of agreement, “but then the US showed bad faith”.  Consequently Iran had broken off the discussions. 

The so far unidentified intermediaries were said, in media reports, to be the UK and Qatar, and the deal would have seen Iran free the US detainees in its custody while the US would release $7 billion (NIS 25.3 billion) of Iranian funds frozen by South Korea under US sanctions, a proviso being that the money could be used only for buying food, medicine and other humanitarian goods.

This, reports claimed, was the stage reached in the latest round of negotiations, but that in fact Iran and the US had been bargaining covertly for some time about a deal involving the lifting of some US sanctions in return for the release of prisoners charged by Iran with espionage.  A final agreement, part of the talks to restore Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal, had actually been close, but when discussions became deadlocked some months ago, attention turned to concluding the prisoner-sanctions deal separately.

Washington rejected the Iranian accusation of bad faith.  “I will not go into the details of any diplomatic efforts under way,” said Price. “As you can imagine such discussions are sensitive and highly consequential for the US nationals who have been wrongfully detained.  Iran unjustly detains citizens of the US and other countries around the world as an inexcusable tactic to gain political leverage, so for them to claim that the United States has somehow shown ‘bad faith’ in pursuing the release of our citizens is beyond the pale.”

Iran’s charge against the US may reflect growing Iranian fears that the UK, one of the Intermediaries in the delicate exchanges between Washington and Tehran, is about to declare the Iran’s IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) a terrorist organization. This has been on the cards for some time, but so far the UK government, known as a strong supporter of renewing the Iranian nuclear deal, has held off.  Britain’s position on the nuclear talks may have changed following the recent execution by Iran of a British-Iranian dual national charged with espionage.

Perhaps as a direct result of Iran breaking off the US prisoner-sanctions negotiations, on February 22 the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported that US diplomats were pressuring the UK not to declare the IRGC a terrorist organization.  The US State Department, it was claimed, is arguing that if the UK goes ahead against the IRGC, its role as intermediary in the prisoner deal would be compromised.  This seems a classic case of “Do as I say, not as I do”, since the US has itself proscribed the IRGC as a terrorist group, a step taken in April 2019 by then-President Donald Trump.

   Meanwhile, to complete the complex jigsaw puzzle, Voice of America (VoA) recently discovered that the US has 16 Iranians in prison or on supervised pretrial release charged with federal crimes. They consist of eight Iranian-American dual nationals, four Iranian citizens with US permanent residency, and four Iranian citizens with no legal status in the US.  Then on February 10 a federal court in Brooklyn sentenced another dual Iranian-US national to 30 months in prison for smuggling export-controlled technology products to end users in Iran.

Kambiz Attar Kashani pleaded guilty to charges of violating the International Economic Powers Act between 2019 and 2021 by sending hardware and software to Iran through front companies registered in the United Arab Emirates.  In a sentencing memorandum the US Department of Justice (DoJ) claimed that Kashani began providing Iran with enterprise, security and data management software as far back as 2014.

The recipient of the smuggled technology was said to be the Central Bank of Iran, which FBI Counterintelligence assistant director Alan Kohler said is linked to Hezbollah and the IRGC, both US-designated terrorist groups. By supplying such software, said the DoJ, "Kashani and his co-conspirators enabled the Iranian banking system to operate more efficiently, effectively and securely." 

Kashani’s imprisonment can only have soured even further the atmosphere around the latest US-Iranian negotiations, but the truth, according to VoA sources, is that Iranian officials are not greatly concerned with securing the freedom of these detainees.  Their prime objective is to reacquire their desperately needed resources to help relieve Iran’s dire economic situation.  To discomfort your opponent is a good negotiating tactic.  Charging America with “bad faith” and suspending the talks for a while is no more than a ploy to conceal how anxious Iran is for the release of its frozen assets.  

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 8 March 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-733637

Published in Eurasia Review, 17 March 2023:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/17032023-why-is-iran-obstructing-the-prisoner-deal-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 21 March 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/why-is-iran-obstructing-the-prisoner-deal/

Netanyahu is warned: Don’t attack Iran

  

Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – known less formally as the UN’s nuclear watchdog – spent March 4 and 5 in Tehran as the guest of the Iranian regime.  After discussing nuclear matters with Iranian officials, he met foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, and then Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi.  

Despite abundant proof over the years of Iran’s duplicity and disregard for any agreement it might sign up to, Grossi, ever optimistic, told journallists he hoped to use his trip to “relaunch the dialogue” on Iran’s atomic work and to “reset the relationship at the highest level.”. He believed he was “paving the way for important agreements”..  He is on the record as calling for the revival of talks focused on limiting Iran’s nuclear program.

 “I hope to be able to reset, restore, reinforce that indispensable dialogue,” he has said.

The main purpose of his visit was to publicize Iran’s explanation for a discovery by the IAEA, first reported on February 19.  IAEA officials had detected particles of uranium enriched to 84 percent purity at Iran’s Fordow nuclear plant.  Uranium enriched to that level is frighteningly close to weapons grade, and international alarm bells had been ringing.

In the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), international sanctions against Iran were cancelled, and in exchange Iran undertook to restrict its nuclear activities.  There was always some doubt as to whether Iran ever kept strictly to the terms of the deal, and in May 2018 the US pulled out, and a few months later then-President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions.

Iran’s response was to cast aside any pretense at observing the JCPOA deal, which restricted its uranium enrichment to 4 percent and allowed none at all at the Fordow plant, built deep within a mountain. Ever since April 2021 Iran has been enriching uranium at up to 60 percent purity, and on November 22 Reuters reported that it had started doing so at the Fordow plant.

Now, following months of negotiation, the IAEA chief traveled to Tehran to receive Iran’s explanation of the uranium particles enriched to up to 84 percent purity found at its Fordow plant.  

In its response Tehran first repeated its traditional message to the world: it had no desire to acquire nuclear weapons, and no intention of doing so.  Accordingly, it denied it had made any attempt to enrich uranium beyond 60 percent purity.  It acknowledged, however, that “unintended fluctuations… may have occurred” during the enrichment process.  It did not mention that the highly enriched uranium particles had come to light only after Iran, without informing the IAEA., had substantially modified an interconnection between two centrifuge clusters engaged in enriching uranium.

It was at this point in the proceedings that Rafael Grossi turned his attention to the war in Ukraine, and his particular area of interest – Ukraine’s nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia, the largest in Europe.  Russian forces captured it soon after the invasion a year ago, in March 2022, but it has continued to operate with its Ukranian staff. They have said Russian troops are using it as a military base and that workers are in effect held at gunpoint.  With Russia receiving increasing military backing from Iran, the plant has repeatedly come under fire, raising fears of a nuclear disaster. Each side blames the other for the shelling. The IAEA has been trying to set up a safe zone around the facility.

The volatile situation at Zaporizhzhia was clearly on Grossi’s mind when he said that any military attack on a nuclear facility was illegal.  Expanding on that statement, however, he added that the principle applied to all nuclear facilities around the world.

“I think any attack, any military attack, on a nuclear facility is [outside the law]…This is valid and applicable to every nuclear facility in the world.”

With the JCPOA in abeyance, and no restraints being applied to Iran’s nuclear development program (which Iran’s secret nuclear documents, captured by Israel in July 2018, showed to be active and advanced), Israel has not denied launching attacks on Iranian nuclear and military sites.  If Grossi intended his words to be an oblique warning to Israel’s new government, he was very quickly made aware that his meaning was abundantly clear to its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. 

At a Cabinet meeting the next day,Netanyahu asked which law forbade a nation attacking the facilities of a declared enemy that was producing nuclear weaponry designed to be used against it.  “Is Iran, which openly calls for our destruction, permitted to defend the destructive weapons that would slaughter us? Are we permitted to defend ourselves? It is clear that we are, and it is clear that we will do so.” 

With the festival of Purim on the horizon, he drew a parallel between events in the Persia of 2500 years ago and today’s Iran.  Enemies intent on destroying Jews arose in both.  They did not succeed then, said Netanyahu, and they will not succeed now.  Rafael Grossi, he said, was “a worthy gentleman who had said something unworthy.”

Despite the patent failure of international efforts to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and in the face of abundant evidence that the Iranian regime is prepared to do deals and make agreements that it has no intention of honoring, Grossi remains ever hopeful of curbing its determination to acquire a nuclear arsenal.  His dig at Israel may have been intended to smooth the path to discussions with his Iranian hosts about a renewal of the JCPOA deal, but constraining the ayatollahs' extravagant nuclear ambitions may require considerably more robust action than that - as Netanyahu more or less said, in his first ever address to the Iranian people, on March 9. 

Published iin the Jerusalem Post, 14 March 2023, and in the Jerusalem Post on-line under the title: "IAEA warned Israel: don't attack Iran"
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-734220

Published in the Eurasia Review, 25 March 2023:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/25032023-netanyahu-is-warned-dont-attack-iran-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 1 April 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/netanyahu-is-warned-dont-attack-iran/

Where Jordan and the Palestinians part company

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 2 March 2023

On January 24, for the first time in over four years, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu  flew to Jordan to meet King Abdullah II, in an effort, no doubt, to start his new period in office with a clean slate.  He doubtless recalled the episode in 2019, toward the end of his previous term in office, when Abdullah declared to the world that relations between his country and Israel were “at an all-time low”.  Abdullah, too, may have wished to ensure no repeat of the previous public clash.

In one sense nothing much had changed.  As ever Abdullah focused, as the official Jordanian account of the meeting puts it, “on the need to respect the historical and legal status quo at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif and not to harm it.”

This was a covert reference to the visit by Israel’s new national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, to the Temple Mount on January 3 -­ a visit which did not breach the status quo in any way, but which led to furious condemnation from the Arab world.

Equally familiar during their meeting was Abdullah’s reiteration, for the umpteenth time, of his support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian dispute.  He favors establishing a sovereign Palestinian state within territory captured by Israel in the Six Day War, including east Jerusalem.

On the face of it, this demand puts Jordan arm-in-arm with the Palestinian Authority (PA), both apparently seeking precisely the same from Israel.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Jordan believes that the active involvement of the US would be vital to any attempt to resolve the Arab-Israel conflict, and that Jordan would have a key role to play.  Abdullah met US President Joe Biden in Washington on February 3 when, according to media reports, Biden “reaffirmed his strong support for a two-state solution”, and recognized Jordan’s “critical role” in maintaining regional stability.

The PA leadership has a quite different view.  They broke off diplomatic relations with the US after then-President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in late 2017 and moved the US embassy to Jerusalem in May 2018.  That chasm remains as wide as ever.  The US now has no official diplomatic offices in the Palestinian territories, and provides no consular services to Palestinians.  Equally, the Palestinians have had no diplomatic representation in the US since the closure of the PLO mission in Washington in October 2018. Palestinian leaders maintain that they would refuse to engage in any peace effort in which the US was dominant.

Explaining the position of the PA leadership, Dr Abdullah Swalha, founder and director of the Center for Israel Studies in Amman, said: “They can count on the Europeans, Japan and other countries, as well as the halls of the UN and some international human rights platforms.”

That difference between Jordan and the PA over the role of the US is exacerbated by their different positions on the two-state solution.  For the Fatah-controlled PA public advocacy of partition remains the tactical ploy originally conceived by Yasser Arafat at Oslo in 1993 – a ploy which has proved remarkably successful in winning world support for the Palestinians. 

Not long after the conclusion of Oslo 2 in 1995, Arafat held what was intended to be a secret meeting with Arab leaders in a Stockholm hotel. 

To his embarrassment, both his tactical plans and his strategic objectives were leaked to the Norwegian daily, Dagen. Among much else, he told Arab leaders that the PLO intends: “…to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state.”  The failure of the PA over the years to sign up to any of the increasingly generous partition deals subsequently tabled has demonstrated the sham that the ploy is.  

The Hamas organization regarded the Oslo Accord of 1993 as a total betrayal of the Palestinian cause, and broke with Arafat completely. On 5 September 1993, shortly after the terms were announced, Hamas issued its Leaflet 102 condemning both the agreement and the PLO leadership: “We will therefore insist on wrecking this agreement, and continue the resistance struggle and our jihad against the occupation power… Arafat’s leadership is responsible for destroying Palestinian society and sowing the seeds of discord and division among Palestinians.”

Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, which contains some 40% of the Palestinian population. It  regards Israel as an illegal occupier of Palestinian land, and its purpose is to remove Israel through armed struggle and terror, and occupy all the land “from the river to the sea”.  It rejects the tactics of the PA leadership, and has consistently opposed Abbas’s apparent advocacy, in the UN and more widely, for a two-state solution, since one of the two states would be Israel.

Jordan, together with the majority of world opinion, fails to take account of the realities of championing a two-state solution.  Nobody acknowledges that the real long-term objective of the Palestinian leadership is to gain control of all of what was Mandate Palestine, and that any PA leader signing up to a two-state deal would be regarded as a traitor to the Palestinian cause. Which is why no Palestinian leader has done so.

However, even if the PA could be induced to do so, Hamas and the 40% of the Palestinian population occupying Gaza would never come on board.  They would never recognize Israel’s right to exist in the region.  So what sort of sovereign Palestinian state could it be, shorn of half the Palestinian population?

There is an uncomfortable truth that Jordan, the US and all genuine supporters of the two-state solution must eventually face up to.  An essential prerequisite to any two-state solution would have to be the disempowerment of the Hamas organization.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 2 March 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-733116

Published in Eurasia Review, 3 March 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/03032023-britain-and-the-irgc-oped/

Published in Jewish Business News, 3 March 2023:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2023/03/03/the-story-of-britain-and-iranian-irgc/

Britain and the IRGC

      Alireza Akbari, an Iranian politician and once a senior officer in Iran’s notorious IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), was deputy Minister of Defense from 1998 to 2003.  In 2009 he was arrested, accused of spying for Britain, but was released on bail.  He moved to Europe and settled in England where, according to his brother Mehdi, he obtained British nationality in recognition of his substantial investments and job creation in the UK.  He thus became a British-Iranian dual national – a status recognized in the UK but not in Iran.

Travelling back to Iran in 2019, he was arrested on a charge of spying for Britain’s intelligence agency, MI6. 

On January 11, 2023, BBC Persian broadcast an audio message in which Akbari said he had been tortured and forced to confess on camera to crimes he did not commit. The next day Iran’s intelligence ministry posted a video of him confessing to the spying charge, and described him as "one of the most important agents of the British intelligence service in Iran", and.  On January 14, the Iranian judiciary announced that Akbari had been executed by hanging.

Iran’s decision to go ahead with Akbari’s execution was no doubt accelerated by two factors:  the upcoming 44th anniversary of the Iranian revolution on February 11, and growing signs that the UK was preparing to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organization.  The BBC reported as early as January 1 that government sources had confirmed the UK’s intention to do so.

On January 11 the UK’s Middle East minister, Lord Tariq Ahmad, chanced to be in Jerusalem meeting Israel’s foreign minister Eli Cohen. 

“I expressed my hope,” said Cohen, ”that the UK would soon declare the IRGC as a terror organization.”  Such a step would send an “unequivocal message to the Iranian terrorist regime against the terrorist activities it leads in the Middle East and around the world.”

The very next day, January 12, British parliamentarians voted unanimously in favour of a motion urging the UK government to proscribe Iran's IRGC.  During the debate MP Bob Blackman said that the UK should “refer the regime’s appalling dossier of systematic violations of human rights and crimes against humanity to the UN Security Council.”

The IRGC should be proscribed “in its entirety,” Blackman added, echoing the words of then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who announced the US listing of the IRGC as a “foreign terrorist organization” back in 2019.

Given the UK’s clear intention to act against the IRGC, the organization has stepped up its anti-British activities.  Its illogical response to the mass anti-government protests in the fall over the death of Mahsa Amini for wearing her hijab “improperly” was to arrest seven people with links to the UK.

On January 17 the UK House of Commons issued a research paper titled Dual Nationals imprisoned in Iran.  It quotes research published in 2022 that suggests at least 66 foreign and dual nationals have been imprisoned by Iran since 2010 – 15 with links to the UK. Those detained, in addition to the ill-fated Akbari, included the British-Iranians Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, who were released in March 2022.  Morad Tahbaz, an American-Iranian national who also holds British citizenship, remains in Iran, as does British-Iranian Mehran Raoof.  

The IRGC was set up over 40 years ago to defend Iran's Islamic revolution, and it has been the enforcer and exporter of Iran’s revolution ever since. It  has become the world’s top terror organization, and.is now arguably the most powerful paramilitary organization in the Middle East. Running a multi-billion dollar business empire across the Iranian state, the IRGC has unlimited resources with consequently enormous military, political and economic power.  It uses its vast funds to support extremist governments and militant groups across the region. These include  its satellites – Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The former is a Shia organization in thrall to Iran’s Supreme Leader, but the latter is an off-shoot of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.  To this Iran has turned a blind eye. Overriding all other considerations is that both are dedicated to overthrowing Israel, a prime objective of the Iranian revolution.

Of even greater concern to the UK is that Iran has supported Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by supplying President Vladimir Putin with hundreds of suicide drones and now, reportedly, with ballistic missiles. The IRGC is also a key player in Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear capability.  Alongside this, evidence is mounting about the extent of IRGC involvement in the international drugs trade.

Over the past few months the UK has subjected the Iranian regime in general, and the IRGC in particular, to an escalating set of sanctions, but the delay in designating the Guard Corps a terrorist organization is becoming increasingly indefensible. UK security services have done an outstanding job in preventing an IRGC-backed attack in the UK but, as the accepted rubric goes, the group needs to be lucky only once. The former British ambassador to Tehran, Richard Dalton, has suggested Akbari’s execution may be a warning to the UK not to go ahead with plans to proscribe the IRGC.

Meanwhile it seems that hardliners are intent on a confrontation with Britain over the issue. Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of the Kayan, the newspaper closest to the IRCG, urged the government to exact revenge on Britain by revealing the true names of the British intelligence agents who supposedly worked with Alireza Akbari.  Shariatmadari wrote: “it would be a terrible blow to the body of the British spy system and its foreign intelligence and espionage department, MI6”.

          Britain and the Iranian regime, as represented by its foremost protagonist the IRGC, now stand eyeball to eyeball.  

Published in the Jerusalem Post 23 February 2023, and in the Jerusalem Post online under the title: "The lead up to IRGC's murder of British-Iranian Alireza Akbari":
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-732437

Published in Eurasia Review, 3 March 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/03032023-britain-and-the-irgc-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 9 March 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/britain-and-the-irgc/

Published in Jewish Business News, 3 March 2023:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2023/03/03/the-story-of-britain-and-iranian-irgc/

Questions from the quake

 

On August 17, 1999, Turkey suffered an earthquake registering 7.6 on the Richter scale that killed some 176,000 people.  The then leader of the opposition in Turkey’s parliament, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was scathing in his condemnation of a government that had failed to prepare the country against the possibility of a natural disaster that was known to occur from time to time.

Shortly afterwards Turkey’s parliament approved a special tax, known as the earthquake tax, whose proceeds would be earmarked to strengthen the nation’s infrastructure, reinforce buildings and prepare cities to cope better with earthquakes.  Temporary at the time, it was made permanent when Erdogan and his AKP party swept to power in 2002. 

Over the past 23 years this special tax has raised about $4.7 billion.  Unfortunately, when the 7.8 magnitude quake struck south-eastern Turkey on February 6, there was little evidence that any earthquake preparation or strengthened building construction had taken place.    Residential tower blocks collapsed like packs of cards, hundreds of ordinary homes and low level buildings were razed to the ground.  As rescuers toiled to pull bodies from the urban devastation, and survivors shivered in the freezing temperatures, questions were being asked about what had happened to the huge sums raised by the earthquake tax.

These questions came as no surprise to Erdogan’s government.  They had already been raised in the aftermath of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Izmir on November 13, 2020.  The government was pressed then to account for the billions of dollars raised by the earthquake tax.  The opposition party, the CHP, said that had the revenue been used properly, millions of buildings around the country could have been strengthened to help them survive.

Alpay Antmen, a lawyer and CHP politician, was reported as saying: “This money was meant to be used for urban transformation and for making housing areas in the earthquake zones much more resilient. However, about 70 billion lira of these taxes was… transferred to the builders close to the government.”

This allegation was clarified in a recent media report.  In 2018 the Erdogan-led government launched a special amnesty called “zoning peace”.  On payment of a fee anyone could legalize whatever property they may have built or renovated in violation of building regulations.  Thanks to this loophole, about 13 million non-compliant buildings across Turkey became legal, according to industry estimates.

Professor Pelin Pinar Giritlioghlu, head of the Istanbul branch of the Chamber of Turkish Engineers and Architects, is reported to have said: “Many new buildings have become earthquake-fraught after unauthorized renovations.  The state has pardoned those buildings in exchange for money…With the earthquake, we have come up with the tragic outcome of this set-up.”

The political implications of this issue for Erdogan and his AKP party could be critical. With parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for May 14, the failure to account for how the vast earthquake tax resources have been expended has given rise to public anger. There are suspicions they may have been misappropriated, or at best used to little effect.   Turkey’s building boom had been marked by slipshod construction and by the administration turning a blind eye to firms evading the quake-proofing regulations.  Erdogan and his allies are well aware that the AKP rose to power in 2002 on the back of the then government’s failures following the 1999 quake. 

While calling for national unity and a week of mourning for the victims of the disaster, Erdoğan clearly has the elections in mind.  On February 6 he phoned AKP municipalities offering help, but made no such offer to the leadership in opposition-controlled areas.  On February 7, he appeared on TV to reject criticism of the government’s response to the quakes and announce a 3-month state of emergency across Turkey's 10 southern provinces.  It would be lifted just a week before the scheduled elections.  Later the same day, the Istanbul State Prosecutor initiated criminal investigations into journalists who had reported the criticism.

The crisis facing Turkey is truly monumental, but Erdogan must surely turn his attention away from silencing his critics, and focus on relieving the plight of his fellow citizens, regardless of their political affiliations.

Much the same obligation rests on the shoulders of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, who had been insisting that his regime must be solely responsible for delivering aid in Syria. The government had a stranglehold on international aid supplies, most of which flowed through Damascus, with very little reaching rebel-held areas in the northwest.  The same was true of aid workers.  Assad allowed them to assist people in regime-controlled areas, but very rarely let them enter the northwest.  

This may have changed on February 10, when state controlled media announced that the government would permit humanitarian aid to enter rebel-held areas. Whether this change of stance will result in relieving the suffering there remains to be seen. The easiest way to get aid directly into the non-regime region would be from Turkey across the border, but there is only one land crossing from Turkey into Syria, Bab al-Hawa, and it was damaged by the earthquakes.

The US has already ruled out giving aid directly to Bashar’s regime.  Secretary of State spokesman Ned Price has said: “it would be ironic, if not even counterproductive, for us to reach out to a government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now, gassing them, slaughtering them, being responsible for much of the suffering that they have endured”.

Experts say that a vast amount of aid is necessary. Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said: “For northwestern Syria, this earthquake represents a crisis within a crisis. After 12 years of brutal shelling by the Syrian regime, at least 65 per cent of the area’s basic infrastructure was already destroyed or heavily damaged… the scale of the needed response is huge.”

Basic humanity demands that ways be found of relieving the immense suffering imposed by nature on the peoples of Turkey and Syria, even if that suffering has been intensified many times over by the failures of their politicians.  

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post on-line under the title: "Corruption enabled the earthquakes' damage", 14 February 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-731473

Published in Eurasia Review, 24 February 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/24022023-questions-from-the-quake-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 1 March 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/questions-from-the-quake/

Published in Jewish Business News, 23 February 2023:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2023/02/23/questions-from-the-quake/

Saudi Arabia still won’t commit

 

            Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made no secret of his hope that Saudi Arabia will be the next Arab state to sign up to the Abraham Accords. He is reported to have discussed the issue with US national security adviser Jake Sullivan on January 19​​, and no doubt did so with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, when he was in Israel recently​. They ​ ​also considered, no doubt, the contribution of Saudi’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud, to a meeting at the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos the day before, January 17.

            It was an odd statement.  Far from reporting any development in the kingdom’s relations with Israel, Prince Faisal announced that Saudi Arabia was trying to find a way to negotiate with Iran, apparently hoping the Abraham Accords would persuade it to engage – an argument unlikely to cut much ice.  The prince said that the decision by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to focus on their economies and development was a "strong signal to Iran and others in the region that there is a pathway beyond traditional arguments and disputes towards joint prosperity.”

            Saudi Arabia and Iran – long rivals for dominance in the Muslim world – severed relations in 2016, but for a full year starting in April 2021 officials from the two countries held direct talks, hosted by Iraq, presumably directed at achieving some sort of accommodation.  There have been five rounds in all, the last in April 2022.  All proved inconclusive.  Yet Prince Faisal apparently remains hopeful.  During his address at Davos he remained provocatively unclear as to which he considers the more important – repairing relations with Iran, or signing up to normalization with Israel. As practical political objectives, the two seem incompatible, and he may soon have to make a choice between them. 

            Founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab, a German engineer, economist and academic now in his eighties, the World Economic Forum has become an established annual event. This year it took place as usual in Davos from January 16 to 20.  Israel’s new foreign minister, Eli Cohen, was in attendance.  His brief was doubtless to try to advance Netanyahu’s hope of persuading Saudi Arabia to sign up to the Abraham Accords.  Prince Faisal’s remarks about Iran, added to others in which he highlighted regional concerns over Israel's new government and its "provocative policies", did not set a hopeful tone.  His comments in a TV interview on January 19 did nothing to improve matters. On normalizing relations with Israel, he indicated no movement at all on the traditional Saudi stance. 

“We have said consistently that we believe normalization with Israel is something that is very much in the interest of the region,” he said. “However, true normalization and true stability will only come through giving the Palestinians hope, through giving the Palestinians dignity.  That requires giving the Palestinians a state, and that’s the priority.”

            Prince Faisal is certainly correct in describing the Saudi stance on normalization as consistent.  An Arab offer to normalize relations with Israel, come to be known as the Arab Peace Initiative (API), was first made in a meeting of the Arab League in 2002. The plan, endorsed on three subsequent occasions by the Arab League, advocates a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine dispute.  Given the establishment of a sovereign Palestine on territories overrun by Israel during the Six-Day War, namely the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and a just resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue, the API promises full normalization of relations between the Muslim world and Israel.

For twenty years Saudi Arabia has continued to advocate the two-state solution as a prerequisite for normalization. But Saudi leaders have increasingly failed to take into account that the Initiative was drafted well before Hamas gained control of Gaza. The situation in 2023 is radically different from what it was in 2002. Ever since 2007, when Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian people have been split in two. The half under Hamas control, or suppporting the Hamas agenda, would never subscribe to a two-state solution.  One of the states would be Israel and Hamas, regarding Israel as interlopers on Palestinian land, aims to overthrow it. World opinion, including Saudi Arabia, has never faced up to the awkward truth that in order to achieve a two-state solution, the Hamas organization must first be disempowered. 

In any case, even for less extreme elements within the Palestinian world, paying lip-service to a two-state solution is only a tactic, a stepping stone. The true Palestinian cause is to gain control of the whole of Mandate Palestine, “from the river to the sea.”  Any Palestinian leader signing a deal that confirmed Israel’s right to exist on that territory would be denounced as a traitor to the Palestinian cause. 

            Back in February 2022 Prince Faisal’s position seemed somewhat more encouraging than at Davos.  He is quoted as saying: "The integration of Israel in the region will be a huge benefit not only for Israel itself but for the entire region."  Yet he reiterated: “…this will happen when a just solution is found."  

            Netanyahu’s tactic must be to convince Saudi Arabia of the sea-change in priorities wrought by Hamas intransigence and the Abraham Accords.  The API regards Arab-Israel normalization as the reward for solving the Israel-Palestinian dispute.  The pragmatic Arab states that sign up to the Accords, although subscribing whole-heartedly to Palestinian aspirations, believe that their own interests and future prosperity should not be dependent on solving what has so far proved an intractable problem, and is likely to remain one as long as Hamas retains its political power.  Netanyahu can be very persuasive, but so far Saudi Arabia is sticking to its guns.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 31 January 2023, and in the Jerusalem Post online under the title: "Abraham Accords: Saudi Arabia is still not budging":
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-730098

Published in Eurasia Review, 10 February 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/10022023-saudi-arabia-still-wont-commit-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 12 February 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/saudi-arabia-still-wont-commit/

Published in Jewish Business News, 12 Febuary 2023:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2023/02/12/saudi-arabia-still-wont-commit/

Why does the US ignore Hamas?

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 9 February 2023

  

            Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, was in Israel on January 30 and 31, incorporating a quick trip on the 31st to Palestinian Authority (PA) headquarters in Ramallah. 

Blinken arrived following a sudden flare-up in violence – an incident a day for three days running.  On Thursday, January 26, the IDF mounted an operation in Jenin aimed at thwarting planned terror attacks.  In a fierce three-hour exchange of fire nine Palestinians were killed.  The next day, Friday, a Palestinian gunman mowed down seven people leaving a Jerusalem synagogue after Shabbat prayers.  He drove off and, stopped by the police, he shot at them and was killed.  The following morning, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy shot and wounded two Israelis outside Jerusalem’s Old City.

In a joint press conference with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blinken, referring to the recent violence, reiterated the long-time staple of US Middle East policy – the importance of making the vision of a two-state solution a reality.

The US government, he said, has the “enduring goal of Palestinians and Israelis enjoying equal measures of freedom, security, opportunity, justice and dignity.  We continue to believe the best way to achieve it is by preserving and then realizing the vision of two states.  As I said to the prime minister, anything that moves us away from that vision is in our judgment detrimental to Israel’s long-term security.”

Throughout Blinken’s visit and his meetings with Netanyahu and PA president Mahmoud Abbas, the media reported every word he said in public.  The one word that did not seem to pass his lips was “Hamas”.  Yet the awkward truth is that, while Hamas rules over some 40 percent of the region’s Palestinian population, the two-state solution is a dead duck – a truth to which successive US administrations, and world opinion generally, have never faced up.

          Ever since 2007, when Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian people have been split in two. About 2 million Palestinians live in Gaza, about 3 million in Israel and the West Bank. Palestinians under Hamas’s control, or those supporting the Hamas agenda – of which there are many – will never subscribe to a two-state solution.  Hamas regards Israel as an interloper on Palestinian land, and the very purpose of the organization is to overthrow Israel and gain control of the whole territory “from the river to the sea”. It totally discounts the age-old connection of the Jewish people to the Holy Land, or international agreement, first in 1922 and again in 1947, that the Jewish people have the right to re-establish their homeland there.

Hamas, founded in 1987, initially took its lead from the pronouncement back in 1970 by Yassir Arafat, then chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): “The Palestinian revolution's basic concern is the uprooting of the Zionist entity from our land and liberating it.”

Hamas regarded the Oslo Accord of 1993 as a total betrayal, and broke with Arafat completely. On 5 September 1993, shortly after the terms were announced, Hamas issued its Leaflet 102 condemning both the agreement and the PLO leadership: “We will therefore insist on ruining this agreement, and continue the resistance struggle and our jihad against the occupation power… Arafat’s leadership is responsible for destroying Palestinian society and sowing the seeds of discord and division among Palestinians.”

Much, perhaps the major part, of Palestinian opinion shares the view that Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian land. The Hamas and PLO charters and the Fatah constitution are at one on the ultimate objective of removing Israel and gaining control of the whole of what was Mandatory Palestine, and indeed on the need to take up arms in support of it. It is on the tactics to achieve their common aim that the two main Palestinian parties diverge.

Hamas believes that the only effective way to achieve the desired outcome is through continual conflict and terror. Any pause in the battle must be temporary and provide a tactical advantage. The Fatah-dominated PA, however, continues to follow the tactical path set by Yasser Arafat. At the Oslo peace discussions in 1993 and 1995 Arafat – on the record as rock solid in his determination to overthrow Israel eventually – decided to woo world opinion by overtly supporting the two-state solution.  Paying lip-service to a two-state solution would be an exercise in public relations, a stepping-stone to the real objective.

Hamas will have none of it, and the disagreement is so basic that it has ensured that Hamas and Fatah have remained at each other’s throats for decades. All attempts at reconciliation have proved fruitless.

Following Arafat’s death the PA, and its new leader Mahmoud Abbas, made a determined effort to convince world opinion that it supported the idea of establishing a sovereign Palestine within the boundaries that existed before the 6-Day War in 1967 – that is, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. But pressing for a Palestinian state within those boundaries inevitably meant acknowledging that a sovereign Israel would exist outside them. This is the pill that Hamas and like-minded rejectionists find impossible to swallow, even though the failure of the PA to sign up to any of the increasingly generous deals subsequently tabled demonstrated what a sham the ploy was.  

None of this is secret, so how is it that the US administration, together with a vast swath of world opinion, knowing that at least half of the Palestinian people would never subscribe to a two-state solution, continue to advocate it?   Indeed the Palestinian leadership is perfectly well aware that anyone signing such a deal, endorsing Israel’s right to exist on “their” land, would be denounced as a traitor to the Palestinian cause and would certainly be putting his life in jeopardy.

          It is also odd that so little thought has been given to what sort of two-state solution could ever be signed in current circumstances. Since Hamas would never participate or be a signatory, Gaza would be excluded from the arrangement. What sort of sovereign Palestine would it be, shorn of nearly half the Palestinian population? In short, world opinion has never faced up to the uncomfortable truth that in order to achieve a genuine two-state solution, the Hamas organization must first be disempowered.  That is clearly not a task that Washington is minded to undertake.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 9 February 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-730997

Published in Eurasia Review, 19 February 20232:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/19022023-why-does-the-us-ignore-hamas-oped

Published in Jewish Business News, 18 February 2023:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2023/02/18/why-does-the-us-ignore-hamas/

Published in the MPC Journal, 19 February 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/why-does-the-us-ignore-hamas/

Melancholy in Manchester

Urban development swallows 70-year-old UK synagogue 

                       

       All the Torah scrolls are removed from the ark during the deconsecration service

          Manchester is one of Britain’s largest cities after London, and its Jewish community is second in size only to that of the capital.  On Sunday November 28, 2022, Manchester’s only city centre synagogue closed its doors for the last time. A deconsecration service was attended by a distinguished gathering, including the Lord Mayor, Donna Ludford. In her address Ludford said she was proud to follow in the footsteps of her Jewish predecessor, Abraham Moss, Lord Mayor of Manchester in 1953-4, who had attended the synagogue’s opening service.  "For decades,” she said, “the Jewish community has been a massive part of Manchester."

The ceremony ended with the Torah scrolls being removed from the ark.  Participants formed a file, and the scrolls were carried in solemn procession out and around the building.  Before the main doors were finally locked, no-one could find the switch which operated the Ner Tamid (the eternal light).  So it was left burning, as it had been for the previous 70 years.

            The story of how the Jewish community began in Manchester, and its subsequent development, has been recounted in detail by Bill Williams in his “The Making of Manchester Jewry, 1740-1875”.   It began with a few Jewish traders starting businesses in what was then a small provincial town.  By the 1870s Manchester, at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, had expanded hugely and was the only provincial centre boasting three synagogues serving Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Reform communities.

            The old-established Jewish families in Manchester, just as their opposite numbers in London, had begun to respond to the allure of the Reform movement as it spread from Germany into Britain. In addition to its powerful appeal as a form of Jewish law and custom appropriate to the modern world, part of its attraction lay in its emphasis on Judaism as a religion rather than on the Jewish people as a clan.  Many of those who pioneered and supported the Reform movement in the UK had family roots in the country, were deeply patriotic, and chose to describe themselves as “British Jews”.

            This was why Britain’s first Reform synagogue called itself the “West London Synagogue of British Jews”.  The new congregation, supported by four of the leading Jewish families of the day, was founded in 1840, and their synagogue, in the heart of London’s West End, was consecrated in January 1842.  In 1857 those members of Manchester’s Jewish community committed to the Reform movement broke away from the Orthodox synagogue in Halliwell Street which they had been attending.  Taking their lead from London, they founded the “Manchester Congregation of British Jews”. Their original synagogue, located in a busy Jewish neighborhood, was consecrated in March 1858. 

            The “Blitz” – Hitler’s sustained campaign of aerial bombing of British towns and cities – began in September 1940.  On 1 June 1941 Manchester’s Reform synagogue received a direct hit.  The building was destroyed, together with most of its records and treasured possessions.  The only items to be retrieved were the Rimonim which sat on top of one of the Torah scrolls. Then-Rabbi Percy Goldberg ensured that services continued in a series of temporary homes until 1949, when compensation from the War Damage Commission, with additional assistance from donors and a building appeal, allowed the congregation to purchase a site and build a synagogue in Jackson’s Row. It held its first service in November 1953.

This is the building due to be demolished to make way for a 41-storey tower and five-star hotel in a development headed by former Manchester United football star, Gary Neville.  His property firm, significantly named Relentless, has pursued its dream of this major £200 million city centre development through thick and thin.  His long-awaited project was approved in 2018 after the original plans sparked a huge backlash.

Past President Danny Savage, Rabbi Robyn, President Jane Black and the Lord Mayor of Manchester, Donna Ludford

There was a period when the synagogue members were in favour of staying on the site and being incorporated into the development.  Later they decided to sell the building, and relocate.  A former synagogue president, Danny Savage, told the media that the £15m negotiated for the sale was double the building’s valuation. President of Manchester Reform, Jane Black, has said that the move from Jackson’s Row: "ensures that Manchester's Reform Community will have a guaranteed long-term future."

The community must now decide what comes next. A three-month community engagement project has begun, and every possibility will be examined, including merging with another reform synagogue in Whitefield, a town in the Greater Manchester conurbation.  Principal Rabbi Robyn Ashworth-Steen has said it is no secret that she would love to stay in the city centre. It’s for the community to say, she says, “but I think to have a Jewish community at the heart of the city is vital…With our great leaders, and a proud history, the next couple of years, as we leave Jackson's Row and find a new home, is a time full of potential."

This article appears in the new issue of the Jerusalem Report dated 20 February 2023

China and Israel – a waning relationship

 

It was back in the 1990s that the Chinese began to realize that Israel was fast becoming a global technology hub.  Previous frosty relations began to thaw, and China started to engage with Israel’s growing hi-tech, partly to enhance Chinese power in the Middle East, partly to help speed their own innovative developments.  It was not long before the thriving economic and technological Sino-Israeli relationship became a cause of concern to the US administration. The US regards China as its prime competitor for influence and profit in the Middle East, and warning bells began ringing in Washington.

The US National Security Strategy prioritizes “maintaining an enduring competitive edge” over China. The head of Britain’s secret service, citing China’s cyber warfare and espionage activities in the UK, recently called it the agency’s top intelligence priority.  He was none too complimentary, either, about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has seen China investing billions into development projects throughout the Middle East and Africa in an obvious attempt to enhance Chinese power and influence.  “Debt and data traps” was his succinct description.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister in the twelve years till June 2021, did not quite see it that way.  Over that period, with his enthusiastic support, Israeli governments conducted a clear policy of promoting economic relations with China in the fields of hi-tech innovation, investment, infrastructure projects and trade. Netanyahu perceived China’s growing economy as an important opportunity for Israel.  Chinese companies, mainly through the BRI, have been involved in upgrading Israeli ports and in building infrastructure such as the Tel Aviv light rail.

Even so, Israel has consistently maintained control over network management and electricity provision, restricted Chinese companies from controlling key infrastructures and ensured that Israel remains in charge of management, maintenance, and development of its ports. The light rail in the Tel Aviv area runs about 150 meters from the headquarters of the Israeli military. Aware of the obvious security risk, in January 2019 then-Shin Bet chief Nadav Argaman called for legislation to oversee Chinese involvement in the country’s infrastructure projects. 

In May 2020 Washington formally asked its allies to sever ties with China in areas with security risks.  As a result, in August 2020 the UK government announced that products manufactured by the China-based company Huawei, one the world’s largest providers of telecommunications equipment, would be removed entirely from the UK’s 5G networks by the end of 2027. 

Slowly, perhaps too slowly, the democracies have come to understand the danger to national security of allowing China-based companies to construct and operate infrastructure projects that are key to the functioning of the state itself. As a result, Sino-Israeli relations have cooled.

One expert commentator, noting that bilateral trade grew from $50 million in 1992 to some $15 billion or more in 2021, added that “a closer look at the data shows that in 2018 both Israeli exports to China and Chinese investment in Israel peaked. The former thereafter declined and then plateaued.”

Israel has also taken steps to align its political position on China with Washington. In late June 2021 Israel joined with the US in the UN Human Rights Council’s condemnation of China’s inhumane treatment and forced incarceration of its Uyghur minority. On the thorny issue of Taiwan, recognized as an independent state by much of the world but long claimed by China as one of its provinces, Israel could not remain neutral if China decided to invade.  The US would most likely condemn China and impose sanctions, and Israel would most likely concur.  One reason why China’s President Xi has hesitated thus far from taking irrevocable action against Taiwan is probably the damage it would cause to China’s carefully constructed power and influence BRI structure across the Middle East.

On December 1, 2022 the Washington-based Middle East Institute published a carefully researched survey of the current state of Sino-Israeli relations.  Among a variety of other issues, it noted that since 2019 favorable views of China among Israelis have declined.  Until then  Chinese state media and Chinese diplomats had succeeded in penetrating Israel’s media sector and shaping Israeli public opinion. Among the devices employed were direct messaging to the Israeli public in local Hebrew-language newspapers, and the use of the Hebrew department of China Radio International targeted at Israeli audiences.

Israeli sentiment has shifted for a number of reasons, not least the public’s awareness of repression in China, Beijing’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, unfavorable reporting by the Chinese media of the 2021 conflict with Hamas in Gaza, and repeated voting against Israel in the UN. Most impactful, perhaps, has been Beijing’s policy in respect of Iran.  By continuing to import Iranian oil, China has provided Iran with an economic lifeline, leading to a possible strategic partnership with a regime dedicated to destroying Israel

By late 2022 Israelis had come to recognize the potential risk to its national security from China’s cyber technology, and the danger of becoming economically dependent.  Bilateral trade and investment slowed. Meanwhile, Israel was facing increasing pressure from the US to limit Chinese involvement in the Israeli economy.

In his recently published memoir Netanyahu describes the tightrope he walked in Israeli-Chinese relations.  While seeking to foster bilateral China-Israel investment, he was at the same time candid with the Chinese about his firm commitment to the US to restrict military and intelligence technologies.

Now Netanyahu is back in charge of Israel’s government.  As the Institute for National Security Studies recently remarked: “The man who over the past decade enthusiastically championed the development of Israel’s relations with China must chart Israel’s future path between China and the United States, and between the economy and national security.”

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 24 January 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-729381

Published in Eurasia Review, 3 February 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/03022023-china-and-israel-a-waning-relationship-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 6 February 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/china-and-israel-a-waning-relationship/

Published in Jewish Business News, 5 Feb 2023:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2023/02/05/israel-and-chinas-relationship-is-deteriorating/