Biden’s Iranian non-deal

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 July 2023

            US President Joe Biden served as vice-president throughout the presidency of Barack Obama.  Sometimes too little significance is given to Biden’s total identification with the major policy initiatives that marked Obama’s two terms in office. 

            The Iran nuclear deal, endorsed by the UN Security Council in July 2015, was regarded by Obama as one of the crowning achievements of his presidency.  His administration master-minded an international agreement between Iran and the permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany.  Known as the JCPOA  (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) it removed a raft of sanctions and unfroze and returned to Iran vast sums of money – some $1.7 billion – confiscated during years of sanctions.  The quid pro quo was an undertaking by Iran to restrict its nuclear development programme and subject it to inspection by the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency).

            The Obama administration’s policy was founded on the precarious belief that the Iranian regime would respond to conciliatory gestures, that engaging with it would bring it in out of the cold and, crucially, that it would honour any commitments it signed up to.

Despite Iran’s unremittingly hostile rhetoric (the US was and remains “the Great Satan”), Washington seemed blind to the fact that the Iranian regime had no intention of ever establishing friendly relations with the West.  It had, and has, quite different priorities.  The Islamic Revolution in Iran was spearheaded  by Shia zealots determined to convert Iran into a theocracy, gain political and religious dominance in the Middle East, battle against Western democracy, Zionism and communism, and establish Islam across the entire world.  These ends, in their view, justify the use of any means, which explains the series of world-wide terrorist incidents following the regime’s establishment in 1979, and its continued support for proxy-initiated terrorist activities by bodies like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. In short, the Iranian regime has always been working to its own agenda, and is hell-bent on gaining a nuclear arsenal to ensure its regional dominance.

            In April 2015, with the JCPOA deal all tied up and awaiting ratification, Obama was interviewed on America’s National Public Radio:

 “My goal,” he said, “when I came into office, was to make sure that Iran did not get a nuclear weapon and thereby trigger a nuclear arms race.…We're now in a position where Iran has agreed to unprecedented inspections and verifications of its program, providing assurances that it is peaceful in nature… You have assurances that their stockpile of highly enriched uranium remains in a place where they cannot create a nuclear weapon.”

Despite the clearest evidence that Iran’s hostility toward the US was unshakable, Obama and his team never abandoned their belief in the policy of engagement.  The nuclear deal when signed had no effect on the anti-American rhetoric in Iran – if anything, the vitriol increased.  In September 2015 Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tweeted on his English account: “The Iranian nation did expel this Great Satan; we barred their direct access, and now we must not allow their indirect access and infiltration.”  And again: “US officials seek negotiation with Iran. Negotiation is a means to infiltrate and impose their wills.”   

Donald Trump was sceptical of the JCPOA  deal from the start, and during his campaign for the presidency promised on more than one occasion to withdraw the US from it.  In May 2018 he did just that.

Biden came to the presidency believing as firmly in the policy of engagement with Iran as he had when a key player in the Obama administration.  He hoped to rejoin the JCPOA.  In September 2019, during his presidential campaign, he wrote: ““If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the [JCPOA} agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.” 

In point of fact Iran had never been in strict compliance with the nuclear deal, as the secret nuclear archives lifted by Israel in January 2018 from under the regime’s nose demonstrated all too clearly. 

Irrefutable proof came in February 2023 when IAEA Inspectors found uranium particles in Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear site enriched up to 83.7% – very nearly weapons grade. 

Now even Biden acknowledges that the JCPOA is dead.  But faithful as ever to the Obama engagement philosophy, and despite every indication that the Iranian regime is not be trusted, his administration is in the process of finalizing an arrangement with it.  The Washington Post reports that under the negotiated agreement payments owed to the Islamic Republic that have long been frozen by sanctions will be released.  For its part, in addition to limiting its uranium-enrichment levels and cooperating more fully with the IAEA, Iran has agreed to free three wrongfully imprisoned Americans. The ransom for the hostages may be in the region of $10 billion, released in the form of sanctions waivers.  In addition the US is offering Iran the opportunity to export more oil.

However a huge political hazard lies in Biden’s path.  It all turns on the word “deal”.  If what Biden is engaged in can be described as a deal, then Congress has the right to intervene – and Biden and his officials know that, if submitted to legislative oversight, any agreement with Iran would meet substantial bipartisan opposition.

The problem arises because Obama negotiated and signed the JCPOA deal using the executive power granted to presidents under the Constitution to enter into agreements with other countries.  However, by default or design, he overlooked the essential qualifying clause “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate”.  Members of both Houses and of both major parties were outraged, and in May 2015 Congress passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA).  Gaining overwhelming majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, it gave Congress the right to review any nuclear agreement reached in talks with Iran.  

INARA obliges the president to present before Congress any new or amended deal pertaining to Iran’s nuclear programme. The lawmakers would then have a 30-day review period, and the opportunity to vote it down.  A few weeks ago, the Biden administration reassured Congress that it would abide by its provisions and submit any new deal with Iran for review and approval.

          This is why “Deal” has become a dirty word in Washington.  “Rumours about a nuclear deal, interim or otherwise, are false and misleading,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told journalists in June.  In briefings with journalists, officials now use expressions like “mini-agreement” and “interim arrangement.”   So whatever the understanding or bargain is between Biden and Khamenei, it is certainly not a deal.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 July 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-750421

Published in Eurasia Review, 21 July 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/21072023-bidens-iranian-non-deal-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 25 July 20223:

https://mpc-journal.org/bidens-iranian-non-deal/

Britain moves to outlaw BDS

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 11  July 2023

         On July 3 Britain’s House of Commons voted in favour of a government Bill that prevents local authorities and other public bodies from imposing their own economic boycotts or sanctions against foreign states.  The government’s intention is to frustrate the aims of the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement. 

Opening the debate, Secretary of State Michael Gove explained that “Action is required here because there is an existing, organised and malign campaign that aims to target and delegitimise the world’s only Jewish state. That campaign seeks to persuade public bodies to make commercial decisions solely on the basis of harming that state and its people.”

            Legislative action became necessary because in 2016 the UK courts ruled, and in 2017 the High Court upheld, that the government was acting unlawfully by seeking to restrict "ethical" boycotts of Israel.  Three city councils were named in the original court case, and during the debate on the current Bill a fourth was singled out for mention. 

After several hours of debate, the Bill was given what is known as its Second Reading by 268 votes to 70.   Two Conservatives voted against it, while more than 80 abstained.  So did the Labour opposition, which has said that unless the Bill is amended to its liking during its legislative passage through Parliament, they will finally vote against it.

During the debate Labour’s shadow minister, Lisa Nandy, while roundly condemning the BDS movement, said: “It is not, in our view, wrong for public bodies to take ethical investment and procurement decisions.” 

But, she continued: “To seek to target Israel alone, to hold it to different standards from other countries, to question its right to exist, to equate the actions of the Israeli government with Jewish people, and in doing so create hate and hostility against Jewish people here in the UK is completely wrong… I feel strongly that BDS offers no meaningful route to peace either for the Palestinians or for the Israelis… When BDS is used as an argument for the total economic, social and cultural isolation of the world’s only Jewish state, not only will I speak out but I have spoken out time and time again.”

In December 2019, after five years under the leadership of hard-left Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party suffered its worst electoral defeat since the mid-1930s.  Labour’s leader, Sir Keir Starmer, is attempting to manoeuvre the party toward mainstream British opinion, but he has an uneasy relationship with the more left-wing Trades Union movement, the party’s main source of finance, which views his efforts with suspicion.  At its annual meeting in 2019 the Trades Union Congress (TUC) itself voted in favour of boycotting Israel, while the following year it passed a motion calling for sanctions to oppose “Israel’s annexation plans”.  Labour’s equivocal position is clearly on display as it condemns BDS while at the same time abstains from the vote on the Bill’s Second Reading.

In introducing his anti-boycott Bill, Michael Gove was determined to explain fully why the BDS movement is specifically targeted.  As he launched into this part of his speech, he rejected effort after effort by MPs to intervene, insisting on setting out the government’s position without interruption.

“The BDS movement deliberately asks public bodies to treat Israel differently from any other nation on the globe,” said Gove.  “It asks them to treat the Middle East’s only democracy as a pariah state, and to end links with those who have a commercial presence there. Let me be clear: there are legitimate reasons to criticise the Israeli Government, to question their policy and, if individuals so wish, to repudiate their leadership, as there are with many other countries…Nothing in the Bill prevents or impedes the loudest of criticisms of Israel’s government and leaders, including by elected politicians at all levels of government… But the BDS movement asks that, alone among nations, Israel be treated as illegitimate in itself…

“The founder of the BDS movement, Omar Barghouti, has been clear in his opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state,” said Gove.  “He has attacked what he calls the ‘racist principles of Zionism’ – that is, the fundamental right of the Jewish people to self-determination…He opposes any idea of a two-state solution – a secure Israel alongside a viable and democratic Palestine. Instead, the BDS movement’s leader wants a ‘one-state solution…where, by definition, Jews will be a minority.’

“It is …no part of this government’s determination or intent to give any heart or succour to a movement that argues that the two-state solution is wrong, and that Jews should be a minority in one state.”

The vote on July 3 was only the first tentative step in a long legislative journey.  Most UK legislation starts life as a Bill in the House of Commons, introduced either by the government or a private member.  If it is not voted down at that First Reading stage, it is granted a full debate and vote – its Second Reading.  If it passes that test, it moves into what is known as the Committee Stage, where it is scrutinised word by word, line by line, with each change to the original draft subject to a vote.  It then returns to the Commons in its amended form for what is known as its Report Stage and Third Reading. 

The next step is for the Bill to be passed to the House of Lords, the scrutinising and revising chamber in Britain’s bi-cameral legislative system.  Here  it goes through precisely the same procedure, namely First and Second Reading, Committee stage, Report stage and Third Reading.  The Bill as amended by the Lords is then returned to the Commons, where it is either approved in its newly revised form, or rejected.  If the Commons do not like the Lords’ amendments, a tug-of-war ensues.  In the final analysis, however, the will of the Commons must prevail.  Once it has received the Royal Assent, a Bill turns into an Act of Parliament, and becomes the law of the land.

In special cases Bills can pass through the whole legislative process in a matter of days; sometimes they can take years. On average a full year is needed to complete the process. Bills can be carried over from one parliamentary session to another, but if Parliament is prorogued prior to a general election, the whole legislative machine is brought to a stop. 

The next general election must take place in the UK on or before January 25, 2025.  This Bill, scrutinized and doubtless much amended, and perhaps improved, will either have received the Royal Assent by then, or it will be up to a new administration to start the wearisome process over again.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 11 July 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-749534

Published in Eurasia Review, 15 July 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/15072023-britain-moves-to-outlaw-bds-oped/#:~:text=On%20July%203%20Britain's%20House,or%20sanctions%20against%20foreign%20states.

Published in the MPC Journal, 19 Juiy 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/britain-moves-to-outlaw-bds/

The Abraham Accords under strain

 

The recent deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian relations is putting the Abraham Accord countries under pressure.

In signing up to the Accords, each of the Arab nations involved made it clear that they did not thereby reject their support for Palestinian aspirations.  They had simply altered their priorities. Instead of the traditional Arab insistence that solving the Israel-Palestinian dispute was a prerequisite for normalizing relations with Israel, they had  taken the pragmatic decision to normalize relations first, though progress toward the two-state solution remained a priority.

  Back in March 2022 the Accords led to an unprecedented meeting in Israel attended by the foreign ministers of Israel, Egypt, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.  It became known as the Negev Forum.  At their inaugural meeting the members agreed to come together on a continuing basis, making the forum a hub for promoting multilateral cooperation across the Middle East in the fields of health, economy, climate change, water and security .

  They decided to meet again in a year’s time, and Morocco undertook to host the summit in March 2023 in its capital, Rabat.  Over the following months the countries concerned held a series of meetings to plan this next forum.  But as the time drew near, sectarian tensions began to rise, given the overlap of Passover, Easter, and Ramadan, while rallies and strikes in support of Land Day were being organized by Palestinian activists in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.  Accordingly the summit was postponed.

 New dates were announced from time to time, but for various reasons each failed to stick. Finally the second Negev Forum summit was scheduled for mid-July. 

 Then came the June 18 meeting of Israel’s cabinet.  The policy announcements that followed scuppered the conference, perhaps for good. The government declared that it had approved the construction of 4,500 new settlement housing units in the West Bank.  Gilding the lily, as it were, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, noted for his hard-right views, had been granted full control over all settlement planning.

  On the following day, June 19, whether at the urging of the US or on its own initiative, Morocco announced that the second meeting of the Negev Forum, due to be held in Rabat in July, had been indefinitely postponed. 

 As disturbed as the Abraham Accord countries were at the Israeli government’s decision to expand settlement construction, Washington took it very amiss.  The US is “deeply troubled by Israel’s decision,” said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, repeating the administration’s opposition to the expansion of settlements and to unilateral actions that "make a two-state solution more difficult to achieve."

The Israeli move on settlements will do nothing, either, to ease the interchanges between Saudi Arabia and the US on the possibility of Saudi joining the Abraham Accords. Any back channel negotiations that might be under way aimed at enhancing normalization of other states with Israel would be similarly affected.   

Meanwhile both the Palestinian leadership and Hamas are protesting at the determined steps Israel is taking to deal with the upsurge in terrorist activity over the past few months. Incidents are occurring on an almost daily basis.   

On June 19, during a raid on Jenin in the occupied West Bank, Israel used Apache helicopters to cover the evacuation of Israeli personnel engaged in a large-scale anti-terrorist operation.   The next day Hamas terrorists shot and killed four Israelis in a hummus bar.  Nothing but condemnation is appropriate for the incident on June 21 when scores of Israeli settlers attacked villages around Nablus and Turmusaya town, north of Ramallah, setting houses, vehicles and agricultural land ablaze.  No amount of provocation can justify indiscriminate violence against innocent civilians.  Much more appropriate was the IDF operation later that day which succeeded in taking out a terror cell in the West Bank using a drone.

With Israel’s domestic situation so volatile, it is not surprising if its Abraham Accord partners feel the need to reiterate their underlying support for Palestinian aspirations, though hopefully there is no slippage of confidence in the future success of the alliance.  What may be in the wind, though, is a change of emphasis.  The well-regarded news website Axios recently reported that the Biden administration, backed by several of the Abraham Accord states, seemed to feel that the name of the proposed standing conference – the Negev Forum – is too Israel-centric. According to US and Israeli officials, maintains Axios, the Biden administration thinks that using a more general name, or an acronym, would help convince more countries in the region to join. 

One such proposed name was AMENA — the Association of Middle East and North African Countries – until Morocco asked that the new name include the word "peace." It was then proposed that the forum be called AMENA PD, or the Association of Middle East and North African Countries, Peace and Development.  According to Axios, no final decisions have been taken.

Although the future of the Negev Forum is currently hanging in the balance, a US State Department spokesperson recently sounded a note of confidence: "The Negev Forum demonstrates the promise and tangible benefits of regional integration, bringing the region together to discuss solutions to shared challenges.  We are continuing to consult with partners about a second Negev ministerial this year."

Perhaps the announcement of its indefinite postponement will turn out to be less final than appears.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 4 July 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-748717

Published in the Eurasia Review, 7 July 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/07072023-the-abraham-accords-under-strain-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 13 July 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/the-abraham-accords-under-strain/

Resolving the Israel-Saudi deadlock

 Published in the issue of the Jerusalem Report dated 10 July 2023

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jeddah on June 7, 2023.

          The idea that Saudi Arabia would be the next Arab state to sign up to the Abraham Accords is as old as the Accords themselves.  It surfaced literally within hours of the signing of the agreement on the White House lawn by Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain on September 15, 2020.

Then-US President Donald Trump told reporters, in a press conference following the signing, that he had spoken with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, and he believed that the kingdom would shortly follow suit. That statement turned the tap on what became an unceasing flow of speculation about when the magic moment might arrive. 

The issue remains as live today as ever.  Just a few weeks ago Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, said that normalization of ties with Saudi Arabia is just a "matter of time."  It was not a question of if, he maintained, but of when.  He dismissed the recent reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran – which some believed ruled out Saudi-Israel normalization – as nothing more than "a façade."  Pointing out that Saudi Arabia and Israel are one in considering Iran to be an existential enemy, he said the reality is that the Saudis would do anything to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

It is no secret that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has always given high priority to convincing Saudi Arabia to sign up to the Accords.  Back in November 2020 he made what was meant to be a secret trip to Saudi Arabia for a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, a trip that soon became public knowledge.  He has pushed that policy ever since.  In a speech on February 19 he said he was still actively trying to persuade Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords as that would constitute a “quantum leap” towards regional peace.

Netanyahu has striven hard to get the US administration on board.  Joe Biden came to the US presidency still wedded to the Obama strategy of appeasing Iran in the hope of getting it to re-enter the failed nuclear deal.  Moreover, Biden had no wish to engage with MBS, whom he believed responsible for master-minding the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Washington has slowly retreated from both positions. The nuclear deal with Iran is now dead in the water, and senior Biden administration figures and US Senators have been speaking to MBS about normalizing relations with Israel and signing up to the Abraham Accords.  Yet, despite efforts going back nearly four years, Israel and Saudi Arabia remain deadlocked on the issue of formal normalization. 

          Some green shoots are in evidence. Although the two countries still have no diplomatic relations with each other, on March 3, 2022, MBS said: “We don’t look at Israel as an enemy.” It was scarcely a surprising remark, since for several years extensive behind-the-scenes diplomatic and intelligence cooperation between them has been an open secret.

MBS went on to describe Israel as “a potential ally, with many interests we can pursue together. But,” he added, “we have to solve some issues before we get to that.”

What are the issues that inhibit Saudi Arabia from joining its main Gulf allies, the UAE and Bahrain, in normalizing relations with Israel?  

The biggest obstacle, perhaps, is that Saudi’s King Salman is acutely aware that the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative was conceived and proposed by his predecessor on the throne, then-Crown Prince Abdullah, his half-brother.  The Plan, endorsed on a number of 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,  and a just resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue, the Plan promises full normalization of relations between the Muslim world and Israel.

            In September 2021 King Salman addressed the UN General Assembly.  In his speech he reiterated Saudi Arabia’s commitment to the 2002 Plan, completely disregarding the fact that the one-time Arab consensus –­ no normalization with Israel before a Palestinian state – had been breached.  Four Arab states had ignored it.  A precedent had been set.

Yet Saudi Arabia has remained consistent.  MBS and other Saudi spokespeople, have recently repeated that normalization with Israel would not be possible until the Israel-Palestine situation  is resolved or at least, in a phrase increasingly being used, “progress has been made” in resolving the dispute.

In a TV interview on January 19, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, Saudi’s foreign minister, once again repeated 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.”

The same message emerged from the recent Arab League summit.  A closing statement issued on May 19 reaffirmed that the Palestinian cause remains the central issue for Arab nations and a key factor for regional stability.  That must have disappointed Netanyahu, who had spoken by phone with MBS before the conference to discuss the possibility of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. He and MBS spoke to each other again after the meeting, and the issue, still unresolved, remains on the table.

A major difficulty with the League’s position is in defining what precisely is “the Palestinian cause”.  For twenty years the Arab League, led by Saudi Arabia, has maintained that the two-state solution, as set out in the Arab Peace Initiative, must be a prerequisite for normalization with Israel.  But what is rarely taken sufficiently into account is how the Palestinian leadership as a whole views the two-state solution.

In the world of Palestinian politics, paying lip-service to a two-state solution is understood to be only a tactic, a stepping stone. The true Palestinian cause, right across the political spectrum, is to gain control of the whole of Mandate Palestine, “from the river to the sea.”  Moderates and extremists differ only on what tactics are acceptable to achieve the objective.  Hamas rejects the very idea of a two-state solution.  It came into being to destroy Israel.

The original Arab Peace Initiative, of course, was drafted well before Hamas gained control of Gaza in 2007.  The situation today is radically different from what it was in 2002. The Palestinian people are now split. The proportion supporting the Hamas agenda – perhaps up to half the Palestinian population both within and outside the Gaza Strip  –  would never subscribe to a two-state solution.  Hamas regards Israel as interlopers on Palestinian land, and aims to overthrow it.  

World opinion, including Saudi Arabia, that supports the two-state solution needs to face up to some awkward truths.  In order to achieve it, any Palestinian leader agreeing to endorse Israel’s right to exist would require substantial support from within the Arab world.  In addition truly tough sanctions would need to be in place against extremist bodies like Hamas who would be bound to oppose it.

The conclusion?  The two-state solution is a non-starter until a substantial element within  the Palestinian leadership acknowledges that the State of Israel is here to stay and endorses its legitimacy.  Since Saudi Arabia and the Arab world believe in the two-state solution, the ball is in their court.  Only they can bring the more moderate Palestinian leadership to the negotiating table and circumvent or disempower rejectionists like Hamas.  

If that is too great an ask, then Saudi Arabia will need to consider aligning its position with that of other Abraham Accord signatories.  All maintain their support for Palestinian aspirations, but not at the expense of their self interests.  They have decided to prioritize the substantial benefits to their countries and the region of normalizing relations with Israel – and evidence of those benefits grows stronger day by day.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 1 July 2023
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-748248

Sweden’s NATO dilemma

 

Sweden believes it has gone very nearly as far as it is possible to go in meeting the demands of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has a casting vote on whether the country’s application to join NATO is successful.

In May 2022, responding to the threat posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a few weeks before, Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO.  The move was greeted with some apprehension by Sweden’s Kurdish citizens.  To the Kurdish community NATO meant Turkey, a long-time NATO member – and Turkey had for many years been fighting Kurdish separatists within the country, and also Kurdish Peshmerga forces along the Turco-Syrian and Turco-Iranian borders.

Erdogan, who held up progress on both applications for months, has insisted that Sweden take effective action against its Kurdish minority as the price for lifting his veto.  Even though the Swedish government decided on June 11 to extradite a Turkish citizen resident in Sweden who had been convicted in 2013 of a drug crime in Turkey, what Sweden has done so far has not satisfied Erdogan.  He recently reversed his objection to Finland’s application, but continues to blackball Sweden.  The matter has turned into a conflict between Sweden’s widely acknowledged humanitarian, tolerant, liberal values, and Erdogan’s determination to crush the movement for Kurdish independence at all costs.

The forthcoming NATO summit, scheduled for July 10, will be dealing with vital issues arising from Russia’s partial and illegal occupation of Ukraine.  The organization as a whole very much hoped that the meeting would see it significantly strengthened by the acquisition of two new members.  That will not now take place.  At a press conference on March 17 with his Finnish counterpart, Erdogan praised Finland's "authentic and concrete steps" on Turkish security, and withdrew his opposition to its joining NATO.  He continued to maintain that Sweden has a way to go before he is satisfied.  On June 9 Erdogan said: “Sweden at the moment is a country that terror organizations use as a playground. In fact, there are terrorists even in this country’s parliament.”

He was referring to the leading Swedish politician Amineh Kakabaveh, a member of parliament, who grew up in a poor Kurdish home in western Iran. She is a strong advocate for Kurdish self-determination in the Middle East and a fierce critic of Erdogan.

Kurds represent some 20 percent of Turkey’s 84 million population, and nationalist demands from the more extreme Kurdish elements seem to the Turkish establishment to represent a threat to the integrity of the state. The PKK, founded in 1978, is a political group seeking Kurdish independence and has not been averse to pursuing its political ends by way of armed terrorist attacks within Turkey.  Erdogan has responded by proscribing the PKK as a terrorist organization (a designation now widely adopted internationally), and to combat the PKK and its associate bodies where they are strongest – in northern Syria and Iraq.

Erdogan has made no secret of the fact that he considers Sweden has become a safe haven for members of the PKK.  Although Sweden condemns terrorist activities, it does host those Kurdish bodies known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG) that in the years 2014-2019 fought alongside the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces against ISIS – and indeed chased them out of Syria. The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), their political wing, is a recognized group in Sweden and has an office in Stockholm.  Many Swedes believe, along with professor Khalid Khayati of Linköping University that “It would be unfair and inhuman to consider that group as a terror organization.”

Erdogan claims that elements of the PKK are being sheltered under the wing of the YPG which, together with the PYD, he describes as a terrorist body, and has been demanding that Sweden withdraw its support from them all and also extradite a list of named individuals to Turkey.  As Mark Almond observes in the London Daily Telegraph on June 16, the problem is that Erdoğan, emboldened by an unprecedented third election victory, is more intent than ever on pursuing policies that challenge not only the West, but the very democratic and human rights principles that the NATO alliance is there to defend. “We can debate the rights and wrongs of Sweden’s asylum policy for Kurds,” writes Almond, “but can any advocate of the rule of law agree to let a foreign government decide whom it should expel from its territory?”

            Of all the countries that Kurds fled to during the past turbulent half-century, it was in Sweden that they found the warmest welcome and real freedom from political repression. Sweden is now host to 100,000 Kurds, and the Kurdish community has become well integrated into Swedish society, politically, socially and culturally.

            The NATO quandary is of concern to the whole country.  It touches on Sweden’s long-standing willingness to avoid firm positions on controversial issues – in other words, neutrality.  After all, Sweden managed to remain neutral throughout the Second World War.  One observer believes that this moral ambivalence worries many Swedes.  He reckons the question on many Swedes’ minds now is “Are we willing once again to shrug our shoulders at moral issues for the sake of joining NATO?” and he believes the answer of most would be: “If the price for NATO membership is the sacrifice of Kurds, then it's not worth it.”

            A dilemma is a problematic situation with no clear solution.  Do the advantages to Sweden itself, and to the western world, of joining NATO outweigh the generous, open-hearted, democratic instincts of the Swedish people in supporting the Kurds and their efforts to gain independence, or at least autonomy?  If so, Sweden needs to ascertain  just how far Erdogan would have them go in restricting the liberty of their Kurdish minority, and act accordingly.  If not, the Swedes themselves, NATO and the western world will have to be content with the situation as it has always been, with Sweden outside NATO, but collaborating with it as closely as possible.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 26 June 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-747647

Published in the Eurasia Review, 30 June 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/30062023-swedens-nato-dilemma-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 5 July 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/swedens-nato-dilemma/

Is an Israel-Palestinian deal possible?

       Published in the Jerusalem Post , 20 June 2023   

          An historic 10-year anniversary is on the horizon.  It was on July 29, 2013 that negotiators on behalf of Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) sat down together to talk peace – the last time they did so. Hamas succeeded in scuttling the talks so effectively that for a decade the very idea of a peace process has simply faded away.

Now China is actively attempting to revive it.  Following an April announcement by China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, that China was ready to facilitate peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, PA President Mahmoud Abbas undertook a state visit to Beijing from June 13 to 16.  President Xi Jinping is known to favour resolving the Palestinian issue by way of the two-state solution, and Abbas had no sooner arrived in Beijing than a meeting with Xi was announced. And Xi is indeed quoted as supporting an “independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

The two presidents no doubt took on board the main lesson from the last attempt to revive the peace process – that it would stand or fall on successfully emasculating or circumventing Hamas and its followers.  A decade ago Abbas had been hoodwinked and out-maneuvered by the Gaza-based rulers of half the Palestinian population, wholly opposed as they are to any two-state solution, since one of the two states would be Israel which they are committed to eliminating.

At around this time ten years ago, the heightened diplomatic activity leading to the historic Israel-Palestinian peace negotiation meeting was at its most intense. On June 27, 2013, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, said, prior to joining Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for a long working dinner: “I would not have returned here five times – I would not be here now – if I didn’t have a belief that this is possible.”  Kerry was referring to the US objective of securing a peace agreement ending the interminable Israel-Palestinian dispute, and establishing a sovereign Palestinian state.

From the moment in January 2013 that US President Barack Obama assumed office for his second term, he made it clear that his administration would accord a high degree of priority to tackling the Israel-Palestine issue.  In point of fact he had attempted to do just that back in January 2009 on first becoming president, but subsequent events had demonstrated all too clearly that his first effort went disastrously wrong.  He would not make the same mistakes a second time.

It was on January 22, 2009, that newly-elected President Barack Obama named George Mitchell his “special envoy to the Middle East” charged with seeking a “comprehensive peace”. In March 2009 the Obama administration explicitly incorporated into US policy the 2002 Arab League peace plan under which the Arab world undertook formally to recognise Israel and enter into normal relations in exchange, inter alia, for Israel’s withdrawing from territories captured in the 1967 war to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. 

George Mitchell’s unremitting efforts did result, in September 2010, in the first of a few face-to-face meetings between Netanyahu and Abbas, but they soon petered out.  They foundered on Obama’s condemnation of the resumption of construction in Israel’s West Bank settlements, following the 10-month building freeze that he had persuaded Netanyahu to institute.  The consequence was to block the peace process for the next two-and-a half years.

Which was doubtless why, in his second attempt to grapple with the formidable Israel-Palestinian issue, Obama nominated his newly appointed Secretary of State, John Kerry, to carry it forward. 

Kerry quickly made clear that he did not intend to base his new peace effort on the 2002 Arab League peace plan.  Instead, the US quietly unblocked almost $500 million aid to the PA, frozen by Congress for months, and Kerry promised further economic assistance.  Israeli construction in the West Bank was given no prominence in US pronouncements. 

Kerry’s efforts paid off, and on July 29, 2013 peace negotiators for Israel and Palestine – Tzipi Livni and Saeb Erekat respectively – shook hands in Washington to launch "sustained, continuous and substantive" talks on a long-sought Israel-Palestinian peace treaty.  A mere nine months was the period optimistically allotted to reaching agreement between the two sides.  If the negotiating teams were to travel right up to the wire, they had until April 30, 2014.

          Their journey shuddered to a halt on April 23. Taking the diplomatic world by surprise, that day witnessed a sudden meeting in the Gaza Strip between Fatah and Hamas, the so-far irreconcilable wings of the Palestinian body politic. The next day saw the announcement of an “historic reconciliation” that would lead to a united Palestinian government within five weeks, and presidential and parliamentary elections within six months.

          Hamas had played a master stroke, blowing any hope of an Israel-Palestinian peace deal out of the water. The inevitable result was an immediate cessation of the negotiations begun with such high hopes just nine months before.

           President Abbas “can have peace with Israel,” said Netanyahu in a TV interview, “or a pact with Hamas. He can't have both…I will never negotiate with a Palestinian government that is backed by Hamas terrorists that are calling for our liquidation."

          In point of fact, Abbas has always had a straight choice – beat Hamas or join them. Since the moment in 2007, when Hamas reneged on its pledge to form a united government with Fatah and instead chased them from the Gaza Strip in a bloody fratricidal coup, the two organizations have been at daggers drawn.

           How could it be otherwise, even though the ultimate aim of both is precisely the same – a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea”? For while Fatah has decided that embracing the two-state solution is the best tactic toward achieving their ultimate objective, Hamas rejects Israel’s right to exist at all and is committed to its destruction.

           It seemed inconceivable that Hamas would sit round a cabinet table, with Abbas at its head, and agree to discuss how a sovereign Palestine might live side by side with an Israel finally recognized as a permanent presence in the region. Hamas would have had to turn somersaults to adhere to these requirements.

          Given that the two-state solution is an article of faith for China, as for much of world opinion, the Chinese and all those holding it will have to face up to an awkward truth. Until Hamas has been disempowered, and those Palestinians within and outside Gaza who adhere to its beliefs outflanked, two states can never become practical politics.

          But if two states did somehow emerge, all those supporting it would need to remember that, for a large proportion of Palestinians, Israel occupying part of what was mandate Palestine is but a way station on history’s long march.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 20 June 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-746874

Published in Eurasia Review, 23 June 2023

https://www.eurasiareview.com/23062023-is-an-israeli-palestinian-deal-possible-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 28 June 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/is-an-israel-palestine-deal-possible/

The State of Iraq

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 13 June 2023

On May 30, in a two-minute session, the UN Security Council extended the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) for another year until May 31, 2024. 

The head of UNAMI, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, was empowered to continue her efforts to provide advice, support, and assistance to the government and people of Iraq by promoting national and community-level reconciliation; aiding the electoral process; facilitating regional dialogue between Iraq and its neighbours; protecting human rights; and promoting judicial and legal reforms.

UNAMI’s mandate refers only obliquely to the one overriding factor in Iraq’s situation –  the influence of Iran.  Iran dominates almost every aspect of the country’s governance, and Hennis-Plasschaert has told the Security Council that “pervasive corruption is a major root cause of Iraqi dysfunctionality.”

 Although Iraq’s last election in October 2021 gave a majority of seats to the main anti-Iranian political bloc, that of Shia Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, it did not give al-Sadr victory.  A long period of political stalemate followed the poll. No president or prime minister was appointed and no government formed. 

Through poor judgment or bad advice, al-Sadr threw away his winning hand.  A series of impulsive political decisions, some of which he probably regrets, finally handed power to the main pro-Iranian bloc, the Coordination Framework.  Once the political logjam was broken, a Kurdish politician, Abdul Latif Rashid, was approved as president, and a pro-Iranian, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, was appointed prime minister. 

Iran has burrowed deep into Iraq’s body politic and its administration.  More than a dozen Iraqi political parties have ties to Iran, which funds and trains paramilitary groups aligned with them. Some groups have explicitly pledged allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  Prime minister al-Sudani is said not to be comfortable with these loose cannon, but he has avoided confronting them directly.  In outlining his government’s intentions, he has gone no further than stating that his government will try to put an end to weapons over which there is no state control. 

It is not easy to deduce the reasoning behind some of al-Sadr’s surprising decisions.  For example, when Iraq’s 2021 general election had led to more than a year of political deadlock, what led al-Sadr to order the members of his bloc to resign from parliament?  How did he envisage benefiting politically?

It is difficult to believe he was unaware that under Iraqi law, if an MP resigns, the second-placed candidate in the election takes the empty seat. The process of filling the seats vacated by al-Sadr’s 74-seat bloc led to a new wave of intense debate and protests, but finally the pro-Iran Coordination Framework became the majority bloc in parliament.  It then nominated al-Sudani as prime minister.

This resulted in violent clashes between al-Sadr’s supporters and pro-Iranian factions, mainly in Baghdad’s Green Zone, the administrative center of the country.  Then, in August 2022 came another dramatic announcement from al-Sadr the motive for which is difficult to discern.  He suddenly announced that he was  retiring from politics.  Whether he meant to quit his political career altogether, or merely withdraw from what he regarded as Iraq’s corrupt political scene, was not clear.  In any case he lost none of his prominence in Iraqi life as a result, and the violence subsided.

More recently another startling al-Sadr announcement hit the headlines.  On April 13, 2023 he declared  that he was suspending his organization for one year in an effort to curb “corruption”.  Since he was still associating himself with his political group, he has clearly reneged on his earlier decision to leave politics, but the true import of this latest announcement remains to be seen. 

Meanwhile the new Iraqi cabinet, approved by parliament in October 2022, is implementing a reform package. It is seeking to reform the economic and financial sectors, tackle unemployment, create work opportunities, and enhance public services. On March 13, al-Sudani announced that the government had finalised its draft budget law for 2023-2025 which aims to address these priorities.

The programme also commits the government to amending electoral legislation and holding parliamentary elections within a year. Consequently, parliament voted on March 27 to adopt a proportional representation system of voting and to reform the electoral division of the country.

On the economic front, the government has announced a series of agreements with international energy companies to boost the production of domestic oil, gas, and renewables. Long-running tensions between the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) over the sharing of oil revenue persist, however.

Iran’s heavy hand is apparent in shaping Iraq’s security priorities.  In September and November 2022 Iran mounted a series of air strikes against Kurdish-Iranian opposition groups in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.   Shortly afterwards al-Sudani met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran.  In a joint news conference after the meeting, al-Sudani announced that Iraq will strengthen its security cooperation with Iran and prevent “the use of Iraqi lands to threaten Iran’s security”.

On March 19 Iraq and Iran signed a border security agreement.  According to a statement released by al-Sudani’s office, they agreed to coordinate efforts in "protecting the common borders between the two countries and consolidating cooperation in several security fields."  An Iraqi security official added: “Under the signed security deal, Iraq pledges it would not allow armed groups to use its territory in the Iraqi Kurdish region to launch any border-crossing attacks on neighbour Iran."

To mark the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq on March 30, 2003, UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, visited the country for the first time in six years, reiterating in a joint press conference with al-Sudani on March 1 “the commitment of the United Nations to support Iraq in the consolidation of its democratic institutions, and advancing peace, sustainable development and human rights for all Iraqis”.  He side-stepped the all-pervading influence of Iran.

One week later, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also travelled to Baghdad and reaffirmed the US commitment to retaining its current military presence of 2,500 troops in the country.  In supporting the continued presence of US troops in Iraq, al-Sudani is at odds with several Iran-aligned groups.  He regards them as vital in the continued fight against ISIS militias.

On March 20, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzya, held a press conference to mark “the 20th anniversary of US aggression against Iraq.”  The irony involved in Russia condemning aggression was no doubt unintentional.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post online under the title: "The state of Iraq's international standing", 13 June 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-746058

Published in Eurasia Review, 16 June 2023:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/16062023-the-state-of-iraq-oped-2/

Published in the MPC Journal, 22 June 2023:
https://mpc-journal.org/the-state-of-iraq-2/

Are the Taliban open to persuasion?

 

            Out of the blue, on June 1 the news broke that secret talks had taken place in mid-May between the head of the Taliban and the prime minister of Qatar. 

            A cloak of secrecy had been cast over this first known meeting of Haibatullah Akhunzada, leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan, with any foreign statesman.  News of the talks was withheld from the public for nearly three weeks.  Then a whistle blower contacted Reuters news agency and, on condition of anonymity, let the cat out of the bag.

The source must have been very close to the action, for he (presuming it was a he) provided a list of the issues discussed and the outcome of the discussions.  The agenda included the need for the Taliban to end their prohibition on girls' education and women's employment.  The source also volunteered the information that US President Joe Biden's administration had been briefed on the talks and was "coordinating on all issues discussed,” including the idea of sponsoring further dialogue with the Taliban.

If this meeting indeed represented a first effort by the Taliban administration to break out of its isolation and engage with the rest of the world, then the source's comments suggest that Washington may be prepared to respond. 

The Taliban’s treatment of women and girls has been condemned by much of world opinion, and is a key reason why no country has recognized the Taliban regime.  In the time since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, Afghanistan has become the most repressive for women and girls in the world.

Girls are banned from secondary and university education, and women are barred from working, studying, traveling without a male companion, and even going to parks or bath houses. Women must cover themselves from head to toe, and are forbidden from working in national and international non-governmental organizations – a decision that has disrupted the delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid to the population.

 According to a recent UN report, the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls could amount to a crime against humanity. The US has long urged the Taliban to reverse its ban on girls' schooling and women working, and to restore their freedom of movement.  In support of this, the US has imposed heavy sanctions on the Taliban regime, including commercial restrictions and a freeze on its assets.

Bringing the Taliban leader to the table represents a diplomatic coup for Qatar – a further step toward establishing it as a major player on the world stage, a position it has fought to achieve over most of the past thirty years. 

Qatar’s tactics have sometimes puzzled, sometimes infuriated, its neighbors. But then, as one of the world’s wealthiest nations – and certainly number one on a per capita basis – Qatar has reckoned for a long time that it could afford the luxury of proceeding along its own preferred path, without too much concern for what others thought. 

For example, Qatar’s strategy of backing Islamists − from Hamas in Gaza, to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to hard-line Syrian opposition fighters − while at the same time offering itself as a key US ally, was rooted in pragmatism: Qatar wanted to extend its influence in the region by being friends with everybody. “We don’t do enemies,” Qatar’s one-time foreign minister is reported to have said, “we talk to everyone.” 

Although the US and Qatar have often failed to see eye to eye, the connections are strong.  At al-Udeid, about 20 miles from Qatar’s capital, Doha, the US Air Force has a base servicing its Central Command which covered US forces in Afghanistan. But while welcoming the US Air Force, Qatar also allowed the Taliban to establish a political office in Doha.

“Major non-NATO Ally” (MNNA), a US legal designation conferred on only 20 countries, is a powerful symbol of close relations, and provides foreign partners of the US with a range of benefits and privileges, especially in the areas of defense, trade and security cooperation.  On March 10, 2022 Biden formally confirmed his grant of the MNNA status to Qatar, probably in recognition of the important role it played in the events leading to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.  Collaborating closely with the US, Qatar acted as mediator between the Taliban and what was left of the previous Afghan administration in assisting the evacuation of refugees.

It is these connections that Qatar has fostered with both the US and the Taliban that confer significance and viability on the recent conversation between Qatar’s prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, and Akhunzada.  Nor did they take place in a vacuum.  They were a sequel to a closed-door international summit on Afghanistan, held in Qatar on May 1 and 2, and hosted by UN Secretary-General, António Guterres.

No less than 20 nations participated, including the US, the UK, Russia, China. Japan , Germany and France.  The UN described the summit as an event where nations and organizations were trying to reach unified stances on human rights, governance, counterterrorism and anti-drug efforts related to Afghanistan.  The Taliban themselves, who were not invited, dismissed it out of hand.

 “If they are not ready to hear us and know our position regarding the issues,” said Suhail Shaheen, head of the Taliban’s political office in Doha, “how can they reach a convincing and palatable solution?... Afghanistan is an independent country. It has its own voice; we want them to listen to our voice.”

Having successfully organized a major international conference on the Afghanistan situation, and with close connections to the Taliban, the Qatari leadership must have seen a conversation with its leader as a next logical step.  They now find themselves as virtually the middlemen between the US and the Taliban, possibly expected by both sides to carry their good offices to the next stage.

            And indeed the signs are that both sides are taking the possibility of an accommodation seriously.  Fearful of souring the chances of success, no-one is saying anything.  Reuters reported that the White House had declined to discuss the talks, and that the State Department and the Qatar embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment. The Taliban, also, refused to issue a statement. 

          So there is a chance, remote perhaps, of achieving a breakthrough that could end the abhorrent treatment of women and girls, ease Afghanistan’s grim humanitarian and financial crises, and bring the country in out of the cold.  That opportunity rests on a knife edge.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 6 June 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-745295

Published in Eurasia Review, 9 June 2023:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/09062023-are-the-taliban-open-to-persuasion-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 13 June 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/are-the-taliban-open-to-persuasion/

Published in Jewish Business News as "Are the Taliban open to new ideas?", 7 June 2023:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2023/06/07/are-the-taliban-open-to-new-ideas/