Day: April 12, 2012
Working or not?
While Andrew Tabler, surely one of the best Syria analysts in DC, already denounced the ceasefire as a failure yesterday, the Washington Post this morning suggests it is holding.
The truth is we really don’t know yet just what is going on. Ceasefires often need a few days to take hold, and they just as often fall apart quickly. Tabler is correct to point out that the Syrian military did not fulfill the requirement that it withdraw from population centers, and that Bashar al Assad is clearly intending to keep his police and paramilitaries active. But his army may well need a respite. The elite units comprised of unquestionably loyal soldiers have been hyperactive for more than a year. The opposition could definitely use a few days to refresh itself.
If the ceasefire is even partly effective, it will provide an opportunity to chart a more productive course than the chaotic war that the Syrian government is conducting against its own citizens. The resistance is gradually weakening. We should not delude ourselves: Bashar al Assad may not be any more able to beat the armed insurgency his forces face than the Americans in Afghanistan can defeat the Taliban, but he may well be able to hold on to his seat in Damascus. In the meanwhile, even an insurgency doomed to failure may roil security and politics in the Middle East in ways that are unpredictable but unlikely to be salubrious.
The best way forward is to use whatever respite the ceasefire provides to strengthen the Syrian revolution’s commitment to nonviolence and enable it to speak with one voice. Tomorrow, Friday, will be an important day. If the opposition can convince large numbers of Syrians to demonstrate one way or another that they want Bashar to go, his generals will be thinking about escape routes. But if the cease fire collapses in chaos, with the blame shared, we are headed back into a war Bashar cannot win but won’t lose.
If the ceasefire by some miracle does hold, the question of negotiations will quickly arise. The opposition has said it will only discuss Bashar al Assad’s departure and the subsequent transition. This is Bashar’s “red line”: he seems to believe he is winning and will insist on staying in power. The only thing I can think of that will change that is a Russian or Iranian diktat. The Iranians will hold on tight–they haven’t got a chance of maintaining their strong position in Syria, and its role as transit agent to Hizbollah, once a Sunni-majority transition regime comes to power. The Russians likely have a price–at the least, continuation of their port access and arms sales.
If there are going to be negotiations, the opposition will have a hard time getting organized to engage in them. Their many factions are still jockeying for power. A leaderless revolution has many advantages during the repression–it can’t be decapitated or readily coopted–but once negotiations start structure and discipline become vital ingredients for success. Let’s hope the Syrian opposition is not quite as disorganized and fractious as it has appeared in recent months.
PS: Tonight in Aleppo:
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No nukes or war
Tomorrow’s P5 + 1 (that’s the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China + Germany) talks in Istanbul with Iran promise to be the beginning of the end of the story of the Iranian nuclear program. Either these talks will open the door to negotiating a settlement over the next few months that definitively ends Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons, or we’ll be headed down a path that leads to an Israeli or American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, with unforeseeable consequences.
According to David Sanger and Steven Erlanger, the opening P5 gambit will ask for closing a recently completed underground enrichment facility at Fordo, no enrichment above 5% and shipment out of Iran of all uranium enriched to higher levels.
That is not enough for my friends at the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs. Michael Singh argues:
Rather than maintaining a narrow focus on closure of the Fordo plant and suspension of Iran’s program of highly enriched uranium, the United States should insist that Iran suspend all of its uranium enrichment activities, take steps to address International Atomic Energy Agency concerns about its nuclear work, including coming clean about its weaponization research, and submit to intrusive monitoring and verification. Far from extreme, these points are what are required by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929 and preceding resolutions, to which Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany (the P5+1) have previously agreed. The Obama administration should also insist that Iran roll back the work it has done since those resolutions passed — such as by transporting its enriched uranium stockpiles out of the country, dismantling the Fordo facility and stopping work on advanced centrifuges.
Singh’s colleague Simon Henderson argues that allowing any enrichment in Iran would leave the door open to nuclear weapons development.
These are more like the terms that could be imposed on a thoroughly submissive Iran than on the defiant and feisty one that actually exists. In Istanbul, several of the P5 are likely to be willing to accept significantly less. While Singh and others argue that Iran is on the ropes and facing a credible military threat from Israel if not the U.S., there is no reason to believe that Israel has the capacity to inflict any more than a temporary setback to the Iranian nuclear program. An American attack might be more consequential, but it would still have to be repeated every year or two ad inifinitum to prevent a redoubled nuclear effort in Iran from eventually succeeding.
The vital issue for the United States should be this: has Iran committed itself clearly and unequivocally not to develop nuclear weapons and to allow the kind of intrusive inspections that would allow the international community to ascertain the current state of its nuclear weapons-related efforts and verify compliance in the future? Iran is not going to give up enrichment entirely, and dismantling the Fordo plant is really unnecessary if it is subject to tight IAEA inspections. Even the 5% enrichment limit should be negotiable, provided Iran demonstrates that it needs more highly enriched material and the enrichment facilities are under inspected regularly.
We have every reason to expect Iran to compromise, but it is not wise to seek its surrender. Doing so will split the P5 and wreck the prospects for multilateral approval of military action, should Iran be unwilling to commit itself unequivocally and veriably not to develop nuclear weapons.
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