Thwarting Iran: the secret alliances

           There are two distinct groupings of interests opposed to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but each – to misapply Oscar Wilde’s aphorism – is “a love that dare not speak its name.”

            Benjamin Netanyahu has been taking the lead for one of these covert community of interests.  Ahead of the 6-party diplomatic talks taking place in Geneva on October 15 and 16, where Iran is facing the US, Russia, the UK, France, China and Germany, Netanyahu has been undertaking a diplomatic and media blitz.  He’s been on a whirlwind tour, both of TV studios and the world, voicing the case for maintaining the sanctions pressure on the Iranian regime until soft words are matched by hard action.  He does not oppose diplomatic initiatives to avert a nuclear Iran but, like the range of states and groupings he implicitly represents, he fears that the international community will accept a compromise on this issue, allowing Tehran to avoid dismantling its nuclear weapons facilities and having its stocks of enriched uranium removed from the country.

            His fears seem all too justified, for behind his back – and the backs of most European and Gulf state leaders – it seems as though a secret deal on Iran’s nuclear program has already been worked out between the White House in Washington, the Kremlin in Moscow and the Tehran office of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  This US-Russian-Iranian grouping represents the second secret alliance – though how far it will go towards curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions remains to be seen.

Sergei Kiriyenko, director of the Russian Atomic Agency Rosatom and the builder of Iran’s first nuclear reactor at Bushehr, is one of Putin’s most trusted advisers on nuclear affairs.  Reports indicate that he has been in Iran for most of the summer and that, under his guidance, the text of a nuclear accord was drawn up by a team of Farsi-speaking Russian nuclear scientists for Tehran and Washington to sign.

Drafts of this text, which was modeled on the US-Russian accord for the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons, were then passed between the US and Russian presidents until they saw eye to eye, and finally it was referred to US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, to be shaped into a document that can be put on the negotiating table at Geneva as agreed proposals.

It is reported that President Obama has briefed Netanyahu in detail on the understandings reached with Tehran, including Iran’s concessions on its nuclear program. Obama has also informed him that Washington will soon start easing certain economic sanctions against Iran. Neither European nor Gulf leaders, including Saudi Arabia, had been let in on the scale of reciprocal concessions approved between Obama and Iran’s Supreme Leader, although by now an indication has probably leaked out via the diplomatic grapevine. Certainly the Wall Street Journal on October 8 reported, one assumes from informed sources, that Iran will offer to limit its operational centrifuges, cease 20 per cent uranium enrichment and agree to greater international supervision of its nuclear program, in return for a lifting of sanctions on its financial system and oil market.  On October 14 the London Daily Telegraph reported that Iran had drawn the line at removing all the uranium already manufactured in its facilities, and insisted on keeping access to nuclear enrichment – since that would leave the potential for a relatively short dash to build a nuclear weapon.  They seem to have won the day.

“Western diplomats have indicated privately,” said the Telegraph, “a deal is likely to include access to limited enrichment.”

Whether it was a done deal before the principals ever took their places at the negotiating table, time will tell.  What is certain is that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have not been party to any backstairs discussions, and that they view the apparent success of Iran’s charm offensive with alarm.  Their concern is for their regional interests.  They fear that Obama may be tempted to strike a deal allowing Iranian allies to go on dominating Arab countries such as Lebanon, Syria and Iraq in return for Iran’s agreeing to inspections of its atomic sites.  They are also desperately concerned about Iran’s ambition to achieve hegemony over the Gulf, and its continuing effort to orchestrate political foes across half a dozen Arab countries.

All this fear was revealed in the 250,000 confidential US documents that were published in November 2010 by WikiLeaks. They showed that, contrary to their public positions, Arab leaders strongly supported, and indeed campaigned for, a US attack on Iran’s growing nuclear programme.  According to the leaked documents Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah “frequently exhorted” the US to bomb Iran and “cut the head off the snake.”  He warned Washington that if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, “everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia.” Abu Dhabi’s crown prince said that Iran was seeking regional domination, and urged Americans to “take out” its nuclear capacity, or even send ground troops.  Iran “is going to take us to war … it’s a matter of time.” The king of Bahrain said the US “must terminate” Iran’s nuclear programme, “by whatever means necessary”.   Zeid Rifai, then president of Jordan’s senate, said: “Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb.”  Hosni Mubarak, then President of Egypt, expressed a “visceral hatred” for the Islamic Republic.  

         In short, no Arab government accepted Iran’s claim that its nuclear programme was merely peaceful.  More to the point, perhaps, the WikiLeaks documents revealed that Iran loomed as the largest source of concern to the Arab world.  As far back as summer 2010 Dubai's chief of police, Dahi Khalfan, one of the most outspoken security officials in the United Arab Emirates, warned of an "international plot" to overthrow the governments of Gulf Arab countries. Then United Arab Emirates officials announced that authorities were investigating a foreign-linked group planning "crimes against the security of the state."

This perhaps explains reports that Israel has recently been holding a series of meetings with prominent figures from a number of Gulf and other Arab states, supervised directly by PM Netanyahu. The Arab and Gulf states involved in the talks have no diplomatic ties with Jerusalem, the report noted. What they share with Israel is the concern that Iran’s President Rouhani’s new diplomatic approach will fool the US and lead to a US-Iran diplomatic agreement which provides for “less than the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear program.”

Which, as it now appears, and with Russia’s blessing, is indeed the most likely outcome.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 14 October 2013:

http://www.jpost.com/Experts/Thwarting-Iran-The-secret-alliances-328696 

Published in the Eurasia Review, 15 October 2013:

http://www.eurasiareview.com/15102013-thwarting-iran-secret-alliances-oped/ 

Published in The Commentator, 10 November 2013:

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4343/thwarting_iran_the_secret_alliances

Iran's charm offensive

 How they must be rubbing their hands and congratulating themselves, Iran’s Supreme Leader and his puppet president.  Using intransigence and defiance as the means of buying time to complete Iran’s nuclear ambitions had brought crippling sanctions down on the nation.  So prior to the recent presidential election the Supreme Leader and his chosen candidate, Sayyed Hassan Rouhani, agreed on a long shot – a change of tactics, with no assurance of success.  In order to buy the time we need, let’s try something completely different.  Let’s try talking soft and sweet. Let’s offer to negotiate. In those effete Western democracies – and in none more so than the United States – there is a substantial body of opinion eager to grasp at straws rather than act decisively in support of its principles. So let’s provide some straws for them to grasp.

In the event, the  literally incredible U-turn executed by Iran on the world’s stage has worked better than either Ayatollah Khamenei or President Rouhani could have hoped for.  Anxious to avoid confrontation at almost any cost, President Obama seems to have taken Iran’s charm offensive at its face value.  Ignoring Iran’s continued sponsorship of international terrorism, its support both direct and via its satellite Hezbollah for the murderous régime of Bashar Assad in Syria, and its continued defiance of the UN in its dash to enrich uranium to nuclear weapon capability, Obama recently broke a thirty year embargo on US leaders having any dealings with the rogue state, and spent fifteen minutes chatting on the phone to Rouhani.

Over in the UK, Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, was also busy on the telephone.  Having met with Iran’s new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, at the United Nations, Hague picked up the phone on October 7 and had an interesting conversation with him.  He reported the outcome to Parliament  the next day:

 “I’ve made very clear to Mr Zarif that we are open to more direct contact and further improvements in our bilateral relations,” he said, and proceeded to announce: “Both our countries will now appoint a non-resident chargé d’affaires tasked with implementing the building of relations, including interim steps on the way towards the eventual reopening of both our embassies.”

Nor are these two episodes the only evidence of Iran’s highly successful  foray into the world of realpolitik – the art of saying or doing anything at all, as long as it advances your national interest.  Since this political approach involves jettisoning ethical or moral considerations, it has not met with the approval of those guardians of the Islamic revolution, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who have openly rebuked their “moderate” president for having spoken to President Obama – the leader of the Great Satan – at all, even by telephone.  What their view is of exchanging chargés d’affaires with the UK we have yet to learn.

To be fair to Hague, he did hedge his announcement with qualifications.

“Iran remains in defiance of six UN Security Council resolutions ... and it is installing more centrifuges in its nuclear facilities. In the absence of substantial change to these policies, we will continue to maintain strong sanctions. A substantial change in British or Western policies require a substantive change in that program.”

What Hague failed to include in his parliamentary address was the well-nigh incredible fact that Iran has just been appointed special rapporteur of the United Nations General Assembly’s Committee on Disarmament and International Security. In that capacity, Iran will be reporting on the global disarmament of weapons of mass destruction.

Writing about the appointment to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, was understandably incredulous:

"It is inconceivable that a state under Security Council sanctions for suspected WMD proliferation activities would be allowed to hold this position.”

He put the bizarre, topsy-turvey situation in a nutshell:

“Permitting Iran to serve on the UN’s leading disarmament committee is like appointing a drug lord CEO of a pharmaceutical company. How is it possible to entrust the reporting on disarmament to a country that itself is likely to be the subject of the report?"

Prosor added that Iran’s appointment "erodes the UN’s legitimacy and its ability to promote arms control and disarmament, as well as preserve global peace and security. Rather than provide a global stage for Iran’s defiance and deception, the UN should shine a spotlight on the regime’s ongoing pursuit of nuclear weapons and its support for terrorism across the globe."

What we are witnessing from so many sources is mass wish-fulfilment.  Some people will always ignore inconvenient facts if they conflict with what they want to believe. Accumulated evidence over years of Iran’s involvement in global terrorism, its ambitions to achieve  hegemony in Islam, its continued defiance of International Atomic Energy Agency demands that it fully disclose its nuclear activities as it races towards nuclear weapon capability – all can apparently be set aside, in some minds, by a few honeyed phrases.

There is wisdom in the old English saying: “Fine words butter no parsnips” – anyone can say anything; it’s what they do that matters.  So as Iran prepares for new negotiations next week with the UN Security Council on its disputed nuclear program, an informed speculation by the Wall Street Journal on October 8 is perhaps relevant. They reported, one assumes from informed sources, that Iran will offer to limit its operational centrifuges, cease 20 per cent uranium enrichment and agree to greater international supervision of its nuclear program, in return for a lifting of sanctions on its financial system and oil market. 

A gesture along these lines would indeed confound Iran’s critics. And it would enormously strengthen those who want to believe that Iran has literally undergone a conversion on the road to Damascus.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, October 10 2013: 
http://www.jpost.com/Experts/Irans-charm-offensive-328379?prmusr=nIVypWo%2ffLI3xSEBkfuljvgOfI%2fvV4I3YWPwmidLIv9N8u9zjggiYBEYIUVQNh5D
Published in Eurasia Review, October 10 2013:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/10102013-irans-charm-offensive-oped/ 

Iran's internal tensions

 "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."

- Winston Churchill, October 1939

 Substitute “Iran” for “Russia”, and Churchill’s words go some way towards explaining the convoluted stance that Iran is assuming on the world stage.  Iranian national interest, as perceived by the Supreme Leader, is indeed the key to forecasting where the nation is heading, however enigmatic the means adopted. 

The comparison with the old Soviet Union is, though, far from exact.  Supreme Leader he may be, but Ayatollah Khamanei is no Josef Stalin. His political position, though strong, is considerably less assured than the unassailable status enjoyed by the one-time absolute dictator of the USSR. Iranian expert, Karim Sadjadpour, points out that Khamenei’s legitimacy was among the many casualties of the tainted 2009 presidential election. Taboos were shattered when hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets, chanting “death to the dictator” and “death to Khamenei.” Among Iran’s pious classes, images of government-sanctioned brutality against civilians further undermined his image. Afterwards, once-respectful subordinates such as Khatami and Mousavi, to say nothing of Rafsanjani who had rarely been respectful, openly defied him.

As for the recently-elected, so-called “moderate” president, Sayyed Hassan Rouhani, he is hemmed in by internal political constraints that severely restrict his freedom of manoeuvre. Iran’s new stance on the world stage – honeyed words as part of a charm offensive – are a considered change of tactics, designed to provide it with yet more time to achieve its aim of nuclear weapon capability.  But the Supreme Leader’s acquiescence in the election of the non-abrasive Rouhani was also partly a response to the demands of the Iranian people, articulated so clearly during the mass protests in 2009.

Given the opportunity to express their views, they demand democracy, human rights, an improved economy, and an end to their country’s international isolation. It is far from clear that Rouhani has the ability, or even the desire, to respond very far. He is constrained by the Islamic Republic’s constitution, which places real power in the hands of the unelected Supreme Leader and byzantine institutions. Iran’s constitution also significantly limits human rights protections, entrenching inferior status for women and religious minorities, and limiting rights of speech and assembly.

In any case, the President comes well down in the pecking order of Iran’s establishment.  Quite outside his control, and reporting direct to the Supreme Leader, are a range of seven organizations which represent the real instruments of state power:  the Assembly of Experts controlling the electoral process, the judiciary, the Guardian Council, the Expediency Council, the Friday Prayer Leaders, the Joint Headquarters which controls both the Revolutionary Guards and the conventional army, and – a vital component – the Bonyads.

Little understood in the West, the Bonyads are para-governmental organisations which account for some 30 per cent of Iran’s GDP. Complex and deceptive, even to those operating within the International Monetary Fund, Bonyads are one reason why Iran has been able to withstand US and international sanctions for so long. Comprising well over 120 corrupt semi-state monetary foundations, Bonyads are tax-exempt charitable entities through which the Iranian oligarchy has accumulated access to vast wealth and power.

To decipher Iran’s system of governance, one must hark back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, which ousted the Shah and established the Ayatollah as Supreme Leader of the Iranian people.  An early step by Khomeini was to form the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), created, according to Bruce Riedel, former CIA analyst, as a "counterweight to the regular military, and to protect the revolution against a possible coup."  It is a body imbued with extremist Shi’ite principles.

In recent years the IRCG has mushroomed into a formidable power within the Iranian body politic, and its reach extends well beyond its original military remit. “The Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution”, to give it its full title, under its Chief Commander Mohammed Ali Jafari, regards itself as the ultimate protector of the principles of Shia Islam.  With a huge military force at its disposal, the IRCG has come to preside over a power structure that influences almost every aspect of Iranian life.

In the economic sphere it wields control over strategic industries, commercial services, and black-market enterprises; in the political, it is in a position to administer a sharp rap over the knuckles to the President, if its leaders believe he is stepping outside the area of acceptable behavior – that is, conduct in strict conformity with the Shia Islamic principles that they are in existence to protect. In 1999 the IRGC sent a threatening letter to President Khatami, who had instituted far-reaching reforms, warning him against continuing a policy that threatened the Islamic nature of the régime. Now the “moderate” Rouhani – despite the Supreme Leader’s nod of approval for his tactical U-turn – has also fallen foul of the Guardians.

October 4, 2013 witnessed an historic moment in US-Iranian relations.  The President of the United States and the President of Iran were in direct communication for the first time in over thirty years.  Although a face-to-face meeting had been evaded, by one side or the other, Obama and Rouhani spoke by telephone for a quarter of an hour.  The event was not to the liking of the IRCG’s Chief Commander, who administered a severe public rebuke to his president.

"Just as he refused to meet Obama,” said Ali Jafari, in an interview with the Tasnimnews.com website, “he should also have refused to speak with him on the telephone, and should have waited for concrete action by the United States."

Nor is this the only sign of Iran’s internal strains and stresses coming to the surface.  On September 16, Rouhani called on the Guards to "stand above political tendencies." The next day the Supreme Leader said it was "unnecessary" for the Guards to get involved in politics.

According to Iranian journalist, Omid Memarian, Ayatollah Khamenei has shaped the most homogenous ruling group in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yet a side-effect of this is that shortcomings in the country's policies can no longer be blamed on reformists. In this sense, Iran's Supreme Leader is in a more vulnerable position than would appear.

The leaders of the IRCG viewed the Supreme Leader’s bold support of Rouhani for president with not a little suspicion, and it is clear that now they are chafing under Iran’s new charm offensive. The strategy may have as its objective to win as much time as possible for Iran to reach its nuclear objectives, but flirting with the West does not accord with strict Islamist methodology.

         As a result, echoes reach the outside world of a power struggle about the direction Iran is taking, between Khamenei and Rouhani on the one hand, and the IRCG – the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution – on the other.  Can the Iranian constitution withstand the strain?

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 6 October 2013:

http://www.jpost.com/Experts/Irans-internal-tensions-327981?prmusr=g51t3v+zDkhkzFxv59m7bhEAUs2G6TTyfXaY7oj1eQWTrjHTabPfHBEYIUVQNh5D
Published in Eurasia Review, 7 October 2013:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/07102013-irans-internal-tensions-oped/

Islamist terror and the civilized world

              The BBC, dominated as ever by the “politically correct” attitudes of the liberal-left, continues to shy away from calling a spade a spade.  Take its reporting of the recent Kenyan shopping mall siege. In spineless deference to people sympathetic to the jihadists’ cause, BBC news reports consistently refrained from referring to those responsible for the gunning down of over 60 people as “terrorists”.  The furthest they would go was to use the term “militants.”

   A row immediately blew up in the British press, parliament and beyond. It was summed up effectively by Douglas Murray, associate director of the Henry Jackson Society think-tank: ‘By not calling these jihadists what they actually are, the BBC is effectively covering for them. No-one wants to say they are jihadis, which they are. No-one wants to say they are Islamic extremists, which they are. Most people know what these people are, and it’s only certain sections of government and the media which refuses to point the finger.’

Or as one Member of Parliament said:  ‘Most members of the British public would see the planned and systematic murder of dozens of innocent people in Kenya as terrorism.’

BBC guidelines, which govern journalistic practice within the corporation, suggest avoiding the use of the word 'terrorism” because it is a “difficult and emotive subject with significant political overtones.” So in a misconceived pursuit of maintaining their reputation for objectivity and accuracy, the BBC avoids using “terrorist” – except when they are quoting someone else. In other words, they prefer sheltering behind some other source bold enough to condemn people who commit monstrous outrages in pursuit of their distasteful agendas.  For the BBC to do so itself is too strong meat for its delicate appetite nowadays.

Objectivity and accuracy.  BBC executives might reflect that the corporation’s enviable reputation for accuracy was established during the second world war, when BBC news broadcasts were renowned for telling the truth, however unpalatable at times, and people across Europe literally risked their lives to listen to London.  “Objectivity” did not feature as a suitable aspiration when the nation was fighting a war to the death against a ruthless enemy. The BBC did not bend over backwards in those days to present Hitler’s point of view.  Everyone knew what he and his Nazi régime were up to, and the BBC, along with everyone else, condemned it outright.

What the BBC, in common with other sections of the western media, a range of non-governmental organizations worldwide, some United Nations agencies, and even some governments, will not acknowledge is that the civilized world is today fighting for its continued existence against enemies just as ruthless as the Nazis – namely, Islamist terrorists, intent on undermining the West and all it stands for.

Many refrain from outright condemnation of Islamist extremism for fear of being dubbed “Islamophobic” – a fear that may well be justified.  However, understanding the reasons for faint-heartedness does not justify it, nor does burying one’s head in the sand remove the danger.

Seth Frantzman, writing in the Jerusalem Post recently, suggested that “terrorism” was not adequate to describe the atrocities being committed continually by Islamist extremists. Citing recent incidents like the killing of 81 people in Pakistan during the bombing of a church. and the slaughter of 159 people in Nigeria, he suggests they should be dubbed “crimes against humanity”, and treated as such by the civilized world.  What inhibits robust condemnation of incidents such as these, Frantzman suggests, is that it is often non-Muslims who are targeted by the terrorists.  This was certainly the case in the Kenya shopping mall siege, where those held hostage who could prove they were Muslims were allowed to go free, while non-Muslims were gunned down.

In an entirely understandable effort to avoid suggesting that there is a battle of ideologies in progress between the Muslim and the non-Muslim worlds – for this is certainly not the case – left-wing opinion is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The baby, in this case, is Islamist extremism, which is indeed at war with the West, with our democratic values, our standards of justice, tolerance and free speech, and the importance we assign to individual liberty and human life.  In short, by obfuscating or deliberately ignoring the nature and objectives of Islamist terrorism, the civilized world is allowing it to flourish, and is in effect sleep-walking towards its own destruction.

A main protagonist of Islamist extremism of the Sunni persuasion – by far the major part of Islam – is the Muslim Brotherhood and its al-Qaeda-backed adherents like Somalia’s al-Shabaab. Wherever it manifests itself, the Muslim Brotherhood and its associates are dedicated to the tenets set out originally by its founder, Hassan al-Banna, in 1928. He declared, quite simply: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”

That is the agenda of these Islamist extremists. That is why their expansion of influence and activity should concern the Western world far more than it has done up till now. For the Brotherhood not only spans the Middle East but, as political author Lorenzo Vidino has demonstrated, since the early 1960s its members and sympathisers have “moved to Europe and slowly but steadily established a wide and well-organised network of mosques, charities and Islamic organisations”. Islamism has active branches in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and a variety of other European countries. Its goal, stated quite openly by its leaders, is to create situations in which Sharia law can be imposed on states, with the aim eventually of uniting them and thus continuing the expansion of Islamism. The Brotherhood’s motto includes the chilling words: “Jihad is our way. And death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our ambitions.”

The civilized world, which includes the vast bulk of Muslim believers, has yet to declare a clear distinction between Islam and Islamist extremists, to characterize the jihadists for what they are – dedicated enemies of everything the West holds dear – and to oppose them tooth and nail, using every means at its disposal. 
        This should include – and why not? – charging in an appropriate judicial setting any who are apprehended, with crimes against humanity.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 29 September 2013:
http://www.jpost.com/Experts/Islamist-terror-and-the-civilized-world-327383?prmusr=ANbuRH5su4MaohJ5nk3yjmtxOqwHdkG%2fU%2byadoSleo6yroVSAKzJttGaMAzTOnKQ 

 Published in the Eurasia Review, 29 September 2013:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/29092013-islamist-terror-civilized-world-oped/

Palestine's democratic deficit

Back in New York, accompanied by his prime minister, is the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) – or the State of Palestine, as the PA decided to rename itself last April, presuming on its upgrade to “non-member observer state” at the UN General Assembly.  
         President Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Rami Hamdallah will be attending sessions of the UN General Assembly, and also a meeting of the ad hoc Liaison Committee comprised of donor countries that finance the PA.  A meeting with President Obama is also scheduled, for discussions about the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations.

What the two presidents are most unlikely to include on their agenda is the decidedly shaky ground on which Abbas is standing, democratically speaking. 

The “State of Palestine” that Abbas is intent on establishing in reality, as well as in wishful thinking, comprises the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza strip. The convenient fiction, adopted on all sides, is that Abbas as president of the PA can negotiate on behalf of all Palestinians because the PA is the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”. 

But the 1.4 million Palestinians who occupy the Gaza strip are not ruled by Abbas and his government but by Hamas, which does not recognise Mahmoud Abbas as president of the PA, rejects the peace process out of hand, and would not under any circumstances conform to any agreement that Abbas might reach with Israel.  Abbas may propose that Gaza be included as part of a putative sovereign Palestine in a two-state solution, but Hamas would have to be dislodged from Gaza before that could be realised. How is this to be accomplished? That is the elephant in the negotiating room.

Hamas is indubitably an extreme Islamist and terrorist organisation which, although winning a majority in the last democratic Palestinian elections held in 2006,   refused to participate with Fatah in a national unity government, and seized power in Gaza in a bloody coup d’état. Nevertheless it has a certain point in challenging the legitimacy of Mahmoud Abbas’s presidency of the PA.

After Yasser Arafat's death in 2004,  Mahmoud Abbas was endorsed by Fatah's Revolutionary Council as its preferred candidate for the presidential election scheduled for 9 January 2005. Although Hamas boycotted the ballot, Abbas was elected with a convincing majority as President of the PA for a four-year term. His term of office therefore ended on 9 January 2009.

Hamas maintained that from the moment Abbas’s mandate expired, Aziz al-Dewik, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, should have become interim president until new elections could be held.

At the time, Fatah argued that the Palestinian election law calls for presidential and parliamentary elections to be held simultaneously, four years after the date of the later of those. Since parliamentary elections were held in 2006, a year after the presidential ones, new elections for both should have been held in January 2010. And indeed, in one of a wearisome succession of abortive reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah held in Egypt in March 2009, the two sides agreed to hold joint elections by 25 January 2010.  

They never happened. The PA government decided to postpone them, arguing that it wanted to safeguard national unity. As a matter of interest, in December 2010 the Palestinian High Court ruled that once the cabinet calls for elections, it does not have authority to cancel them. So the cancellation of the elections was itself illegal.

Subsequent intra-Palestinian political disputes between Fatah and Hamas meant that presidential and parliamentary elections were postponed time after time. Finally, in November 2011 an election date of  May 4, 2012 was agreed between Fatah and Hamas. Once again, however, a squabble erupted, and a further delay was announced. The election would now be held some time after June 2012.

In February 2011, following the resignation of Saeb Erekat as chief negotiator for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the PA executive committee announced that elections would be held before October that year. The reaction? Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, said that Abbas did not have the legal right to announce elections.

"Hamas will not take part in this election. We will not give it legitimacy. And we will not recognize the results."

It did not take place.

In October 2011, Abbas sent a further proposal to Hamas for a general election, preferably to be held in early 2012. The proposal was rejected.

Following last year’s upgrade of Palestine to non-member observer state status in the UN, the PA proposed that general elections should follow in 2013, in line with the latest unity talks between Fatah and Hamas. But no date has yet been set, and an election this year now seems impossible.

Meanwhile, Abbas sails serenely on, acknowledged on all sides as President of the PA, or President of the State of Palestine, depending on preference.  It is as if George W Bush, who became president of the United States in 2005 – the same year that Mahmoud Abbas became PA president – was somehow able to by-pass the elections of 2007 and 2011 and cling to office, and was still US President. The analogy may be fanciful, it could never happen – within the United States.  But it virtually has happened within the Palestinian body politic, and it illustrates how far along the democratic road Palestinians have yet to travel.

In the meantime, as president de facto, if not in all eyes de jure, Abbas continues to formulate a new PA government from time  to time. After weeks of waiting and speculating, an incoming administration – the 16th since the formation of the PA – was sworn in on September 19. It turned out to be a carbon copy of the outgoing one. Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and his 24 cabinet ministers, who together had formed the previous government, were sworn in anew in front of the president in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

If the president’s own legitimacy is questionable, how stands the government that he swears in?  Or any agreements that he reaches on thorny political issues?  Or his authority in respect of that great section of territory in which his writ does not run?

Palestine’s democratic deficiencies may yet prove to be a hurdle too high for the peace process to surmount.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 22 September 2013:
http://www.jpost.com/PArticle.aspx?id=326756&prmusr=9aHitQHgwX7KmtbtUzvsLCcx5HlaaSNPp8emaYgatSPuGc%2b7%2bodTaluZMeE84zjw 

Published in the Eurasia Review, 22 September 2013:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/22092013-palestines-democratic-deficit-oped/:
 

The chemical-nuclear tie-up

Popular myth, assiduously fostered by the media, is that a throw-away remark by a tired US Secretary of State undermined President Obama’s response to the poison gas attack by the Assad regime on 21 August. 

During a press conference in London, one journalist asked John Kerry: “Is there anything Assad could do to avert a US attack?” 

"Sure,” replied Kerry, “he could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay. But he isn’t about to."

The media were jubilant at what seemed an obvious gaffe,

“American plans for military strikes on Syria were in disarray last night,” trumpeted the London Daily Mail, “after Russia seized on a blunder from US Secretary of State John Kerry.”  The Kerry remarks were “policymaking off-the-top-of-the-head,” said a scathing Washington Examiner.

But was John Kerry’s reply to the journalist merely a throw-away comment with nothing substantial behind it – just an odd thought that happened to come to him after a long, tiring day? Consider this – no sooner were the words out of Kerry’s mouth, than Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov was saying: “We also call on the Syrian leadership not only to put chemical weapons storage facilities under international control, but also to destroy them afterwards.”  Is there any significance in the rapidity with which Russia supported Kerry’s suggestion?

The usually trustworthy Israel-based Debkafile, which specialises in political analysis, is convinced that Russia’s backing for the initiative is part of a behind-the-scenes deal linking Syria’s chemical weapons débacle with Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.  Debkafile asserts that secret trilateral talks between the US, Russia, and Iran had been in progress for three weeks prior to Secretary Kerry’s “off-the-cuff” remarks, and that when he made them, a formula had already been agreed for defusing the Syrian chemical weapons issue without the use of military force, as a part of an agreement to facilitate direct nuclear talks between the US and Iran.

There are other indicators of a secret agreement linking Iran’s latest strategy on protecting its nuclear program with the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile.  The new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, announced on September 10 that the meeting of the UN General Assembly later this month “may prove the perfect setting to reignite talks about the nation’s nuclear program.”  Shortly afterwards – as a counter-gesture of good will one presumes – the US Treasury Department lifted a string of long-standing sanctions restricting humanitarian and related exchanges between the US and Iranian non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

It is suggested that in exchanges between the US and Russian presidents, Putin assured Obama that an agreed formula for defusing the Syrian chemical weapons issue without military force would provide the key to progress in nuclear talks with Iran. Debkafile asserts that high-ranking Iranian officials were present in Damascus and Moscow throughout the Obama-Putin discussions on Syria, and that points of agreement were brought to Tehran for approval.

As a result, as soon as the Russians had pledged to bring Assad’s chemical arsenal under international control and destroyed, Tehran announced it would engage in direct dialogue with Washington when the next UN General Assembly session opens in New York on September 23 – a step it had consistently refused to take. The state-run Iranian news agency reported Rouhani, who is due to attend this month’s United Nations gathering with his foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, as saying he would use that UN occasion to get talks with the international community up and running again.

Meanwhile, it is suggested that in another part of his deal with the Russian president, Obama did not object to Moscow providing the Syrian army with a fresh supply of advanced weapons in substantial quantities to compensate Assad for giving up his chemical arsenal.  And indeed, on September 6, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported that a large amphibious ship, the Nikolai Filchenkov, which belongs to the Black Sea fleet, would make a passage from the Crimea to the Russian seaport of Novorossiysk, “where the cargos due to be delivered to the Syrian port of Tartous will be loaded into it.”

All this high-powered diplomacy seems to have resulted in a win-win situation all round. 

The Russia-Iranian-Syrian axis has averted a much-feared military strike by the United States, which could not only have degraded Assad’s fighting capability, but decisively altered the balance of power in Syria itself and the region generally.  Neither Russia nor Iran wished to see the loss of influence that US involvement in the conflict might have brought about.  Additionally Russia, as broker of the non-military resolution of the Syria débacle, has achieved a significant propaganda coup on the world stage, while Iran’s so-called “moderate” president has provided Iran’s nuclear program with even more time to proceed towards its goal of achieving nuclear weapon capability. Even Assad will gain by a substantial additional supply from Russia of conventional weapons to assist him in clinging on to power.

As for the Obama administration, it is already claiming – with some justification – that without the clearly stated wish of the President to use military means to punish Assad for slaughtering 1500 of his own people with poison gas, the non-military resolution of Syria’s chemical weapon usage would never have taken place.  Obama clearly regarded the military approach as a last resort, and the fact that he is now able to provide the American public with an outcome which did not involve its use is a feather in his cap.

There is clearly more than meets the eye to the resolution of the Syrian chemical weapons issue.  It seems to be a classic case of wheels within wheels.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 15 September 2013: 
http://www.jpost.com/Experts/The-chemical-nuclear-tie-up-326155?prmusr=zgyAKw%2fq9HRqZ4HBroEkLD0aQ5udncIlPBjmo6%2b37dm1cL8jsD1DTW81Z8%2bf8acD


Published in the Eurasia Review, 15 September 2013:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/15092013-the-chemical-nuclear-tie-up-oped/ 

Islam's political schism

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” is an old English saying.  In other words, when offered a present, it’s bad manners to examine it for defects.  Accept it graciously, however flawed it may be, and whatever the motives of the giver.

Old English sayings do not travel well to the Middle East.  For example, recent New Year (Rosh Hashana) messages of goodwill to the Jewish people emanating from Iran – a gift horse indeed – have been received with more than a little scepticism.  The first arrived on the eve of Rosh Hashana, Wednesday September 4, as a tweet from the newly–elected President of Iran, Hassan Rohani: “As the sun is about to set here in Tehran, I wish all Jews, especially Iranian Jews, a blessed Rosh Hashana.”  It was accompanied by a picture of an Iranian Jew bowing his head in prayer.

The gilt was somewhat taken off the gingerbread – to quote yet another old English saying – when the authenticity of the message was openly questioned by Fars News, an Iranian news agency close to the Revolutionary Guards.  An official was quoted as saying the president did not have a Twitter account.

Not true, say observers of the Iranian scene.  The account has semi-official status and is kept active by Rohani's supporters with his consent.  In fact, it is not surprising that the president maintains a Twitter account – he is only following in the footsteps of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Kahmenei, who tweeted the whole nation just prior to the recent presidential elections.

Rohani’s message was further validated when Iran’s new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweeted his own New Year message to Jews in Iran and worldwide and, to remove all doubt of his intentions, confirmed in an interview given to Iran’s Tasnim news agency and published on Zarif's Facebook page, that he had indeed sent the "Happy Rosh Hashana" message.

   As a matter of record, he followed his message up with a unequivocal affirmation of the Holocaust and repudiation of the often stated position of ex-president Ahmadinejad on the matter: "Iran never denied it. The man who was perceived to be denying it is now gone. Happy New Year."

The motives of Iran’s newly-elected president and foreign minister in making these gestures are indeed open to question.  The political reality within Iran is that the Supreme Leader has supreme power.  Any apparent change of direction regarding the state’s attitude to Judaism, Jews and Israel, its nuclear objectives or its regional ambitions, must be considered a tactical move designed to achieve Iran’s aims by more subtle means.  The suspicion must be that the new administration has the approval of the Supreme Leader in trying a new approach, designed to soften up the West by encouraging left/liberal opinion which disapproves of sanctions, favours dialogue, and appears to believe that Iran has no ambitions to become a nuclear power.

   However the majority of the Islamic world will not be taken in by Rohani’s soft soap approach.  This is made crystal clear by the revelations that emerged from the 250,000 confidential US documents that were published in November 2010 by WikiLeaks, the website dedicated to disseminating covertly acquired information. For they show that, contrary to their public positions, Arab leaders strongly support, and indeed campaigned for, a US attack on Iran’s growing nuclear programme.  According to the leaked documents Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah “frequently exhorted” the US to bomb Iran and “cut the head off the snake.”  He warned Washington that if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, “everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia.”

Abu Dhabi’s crown prince is reported to have said that Iran was seeking regional domination, and urged Americans to “take out” its nuclear capacity, or even send ground troops.  Iran “is going to take us to war … it’s a matter of time.” 

The king of Bahrain said the US “must terminate” Iran’s nuclear programme, “by whatever means necessary”.   Zeid Rifai, then president of Jordan’s senate, said: “Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb.”  President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt expressed a “visceral hatred” for the Islamic Republic.  Even Syria, Shia Muslim as Iran is, according to conversations with Turkish officials, was sounding “alarm bells.”

         In short no Arab government accepted Iran’s claim that its nuclear programme is merely peaceful.  More to the point, perhaps, the WikiLeaks documents revealed that, far from the Israel-Palestine conflict being of prime importance in the minds of the majority of Arab League nations, it is Iran that looms largest as a source of concern.  This explains – and explanations have been sparse – why the Arab League has repeatedly endorsed its 2002 Peace Plan, recently softened its terms of reference, and virtually pushed PA President Mahmoud Abbas to the negotiating table.

   Two vital factors need to be borne in mind in considering power politics in the world of Islam: first, that the Sunni brand of Islam represents up to 90 per cent of the Muslim world, and second that Iran is not an Arab nation, but is the champion of  Shia Islam, supporting the Assad regime in Syria by way of the Hezbollah fighters it controls, funds and equips.

The Arab world today feels threatened by Iran’s efforts to create a Shi’ite axis from Iran, Iraq and Syria to Lebanon, allied to its endeavours to acquire nuclear weapons that will make it the leading power in the region.  As Israel’s Intelligence Minister, Yuval Steinitz, pointed out recently, the Arab world feels no less threatened than Israel, for they can see a hundred thousand Sunni Muslims killed in Syria, more than two million expelled from their homes, and an attempt to turn Syria into a Shi’ite Iranian state – an enterprise halfway to achievement already in Lebanon, and with a similar struggle in Iraq. If all that succeeds, then the Persian Gulf and Jordan will be half encircled by an Iranian Shi’ite axis. Faced with that prospect, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute pales into comparative insignificance. So, says Steinitz, they banged on the table and said to Abbas: “Stop your games about preconditions, and talk to the Israelis.” 

It seems clear that within the political world of Sunni Islam a strong streak of realpolitik has emerged. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 8 September 2013:

http://www.jpost.com/Experts/Islams-political-schism-325515?prmusr=xwHfB4QZUjl0LUa%2ftmEBfvwDQrK2msViC8WsPsTCnNtCTKp4IaHaBjlBovGoywO8

Published in the Eurasia Review, 9 September 2013:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/09092013-islams-political-schism-oped/