Month: September 2013
Women in the Syrian revolution
The beginning of the Syrian revolution in March 2011 provided a window of opportunity for change in women’s rights. But in the last 31 months, women’s issues have been cast aside, with geopolitics and violence taking center stage. Friday, the United States Institute of Peace hosted a discussion on the role of women in the Syrian revolution.
Moderator Steven Heydemann set the stage for the four activists on the panel. He said there is a distinct set of narratives that have dominated the conflict in Syria. The first three—the narrative of geopolitics, the narrative of the war on the ground, and the narrative of the humanitarian crisis—are what have been most commonly depicted in the Western media. The fourth narrative, the role of women in the revolution, is a major aspect of the conflict that is largely unknown outside of Syria.
Over the last 31 months, Syrian women have gained a strong feeling of independence. Before the uprising, the pressure to conform to Syrian social norms kept women quiet on social and political issues. Oula Ramadan of the Syrian Women’s Network said that the revolution empowered women. The unrest gave them a chance to transform Syrian life. Women have been forced to take on new responsibilities—such as fighting, community leadership, and supporting their families. Women are finally able to increase their influence on the neighborhood, town, and city levels. But it remains to be seen if they can break through the historic Syrian social norms and gain representation in national negotiations on the future of their country. Read more
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Peace picks, Sept 30 – Oct 4
Fine, timely events this week in DC:
1. Reform Under Rouhani: Assessing Positive Change in Iran
Monday, September 30, 2013, 9 – 10.30 a.m.
The Stimson Center, 12th Floor
1111 19th Street, NW, Washington , DC
Speakers:
Ramin Asgard, former U.S. diplomat and former director of the State Department’s Iran office in Dubai
Arash Ghafouri, consultant to presidential candidates in 2013 election
Opening remarks
Klaus Linsenmeier, Executive Director, Heinrich Boell Foundation North America
Moderator:
Geneive Abdo, Fellow, Middle East Program, Stimson Center
To RSVP for this event, please click here.
The election of President Hassan Rouhani has led Iran’s political leadership to indicate that reconciliation between the Islamic Republic and the United States could be a distinct possibility.
In the immediate aftermath of talks at the U.N. General Assembly, please join the Heinrich Boell Foundation North America and the Stimson Center for a discussion on the positive social and political changes in Iran, the role of the Iranian youth in changing the political culture, and the implications of the Rouhani presidency on the future of US – Iran relations. Read more
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Fatwa diplomacy
President Obama mentioned Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei’s fatwa against nuclear weapons in his speech last week at the United Nations General Assembly:
Meanwhile, the Supreme Leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons, and President Rouhani has just recently reiterated that the Islamic Republic will never develop a nuclear weapon.
This naturally brought joy to Iranian hardliners and disdain from American hardliners. Mike Doran tweeted:
US intel uncovered a clandestine nuclear weapons program. Therefore, the fatwa is baloney.
What are the merits and demerits of this fatwa, which is a legal opinion or ruling by an Islamic scholar?
It seems clear that a written text of the original fatwa has never been published. The most authoritative early reference to it appears to be an Iranian statement at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005:
The Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued the fatwa that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons.
Thus the fatwa has meaning for the Iranian government, but there is no reason for the American government to regard it as any better than a unilateral statement of Iran’s intentions, albeit at a high level. It is not an internationally binding commitment. Nor is it a commitment that can be verified by international inspection.
Someone in Iran was working on nuclear weapons when the effort was suspended in 2003. But the fatwa, whatever it says or doesn’t say, was issued after that, so Mike’s argument is illogical. The fatwa would be baloney only if it had been issued before the program was uncovered, not afterwards. All the blather about taqiyya, the Islamic doctrine of dissembling is really irrelevant.* Sure the Supreme Leader might be lying, and then again he might have made a serious commitment that he intends to keep. We really don’t know.
The Administration is not relying on the fatwa. What it is trying to do is use the fatwa as a bridge to a more solid and verifiable commitment. This is good negotiating technique, not gullibility. If my enemy is willing to say out loud what I would like him to say, I’d be a fool not to start with that and see if I can get it in writing with the kind of inspections that would give me confidence the commitment is being kept.
Of course those who are convinced the Iranians will never keep such a commitment no matter how tight the verification and don’t want the Administration even to start down this road, for fear the negotiation will provide time and cover for Iran to proceed with its nefarious intent. Some prefer a military solution. Others are prepared to live with containment, if negotiation fails.
Neither one meets my criterion for a satisfactory outcome: a more peaceful world than the one we live in now. I don’t want to live in a world where Iran is a nuclear power, or bombed back to the stone age. The former is a very dangerous world, because Israel would not only target a nuclear Iran but would launch on warning. With a very short transit time (10 minutes?) and no reliable communications between Tehran and Jerusalem, the odds of nuclear war would be higher than any of us would find comfortable. Bombing Iran back to the stone age is pretty much what you’d have to do to prevent them from reconstituting their nuclear program and redoubling their efforts after an initial military attack, even if it were successful.
The fatwa has no value in and of itself. It only has value if the Iranians will put it in writing and make a serious, irreversible and verifiable commitment. That’s what fatwa diplomacy should aim to do.
*I’ve decided an earlier version of this post with a reference to Kol Nidre was erroneous and disputable. So I’ve removed it. Credit to @JeffreyGoldberg for calling me out on this.
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What the phone call signifies
I hope you’ll excuse me for not getting too excited about President Obama’s call to President Rouhani yesterday. I find it hard to work up enthusiasm for Rouhani, who is clearly trying his best to preserve and prolong the theocratic regime in Iran, not reform it. But the phone call was a fitting climax to four days of Iranian charm offensive and significant in one important respect: it demonstrated that Washington is prepared to accept the Islamic Republic as the legitimate government of Iran and is not supporting regime change there, as Obama stated clearly in his United Nations General Assembly speech.
That is an important concession to the Iranians, who have good reason to believe that previous American governments have sought to unseat the ayatollahs in favor of something more closely resembling a democratic regime. But it is a necessary concession. There is no way to end Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions without treating its current government as legitimate and sovereign, even if diplomatic recognition and exchange of ambassadors remain in the distance.
Obama and Rouhani agreed to accelerate the nuclear talks, which are slated to reconvene next month. Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif has wanted to “jump start” them, finishing in six months. This presumably means Tehran will put forward a big package in October without responding to the more modest step-by-step proposal that the P5+1 (that’s US, UK, France, China and Russia + German) have already tabled. The Iranian aim is relief from all sanctions while maintaining the “right” to enrichment and presumably reprocessing technology. The P5+1 want a verifiable and definitive end to any and all Iranian efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Those are in principle compatible aims, but the zone of possible agreement is narrow. There are serious sequencing problems: the Iranians will want sanctions relief early while the P5+1 will want it late.
So we are on a diplomatic path for the next six months to a year, one that now has a degree of presidential commitment on both sides that has been lacking. The problem is that neither president has complete control of his own side in the negotiation. While Rouhani claims to have all the authority he needs to strike a nuclear deal, the Supreme Leader could intervene at any moment to make agreement impossible. On the American side, Congress is the uncertain factor, especially as Israel wields a good deal of influence there. An agreement on the nuclear program may not require formal Congressional approval, but implementing it by lifting sanctions does. President Obama will need to present to Congress a truly air tight agreement that leaves Iran no wiggle room to develop nuclear weapons, even in secret.
Syria is the unmentioned factor in the US/Iranian rapprochement. Tehran has to be pleased that President Obama is focusing attention on destroying Syria’s chemical weapons capability and not on ending Bashar al Asad’s rule. The Americans are backing away from serious support for the Syrian opposition, which they see as ineffectual at best and compromised by jihadist fighters at worst. While Geneva 2 remains a hope, and might even convene in October, there is little sign of progress in convening a negotiation that the opposition says must begin with Bashar al Asad stepping down from power. Nothing about the situation on the ground suggests the regime is near its natural end. Fighting has broken out between the more moderate Syrian Free Army and the Islamic State of Iraq. Some fighters have abandoned the Syrian Opposition Coaliton (Etilaf).
So is Syria being sacrificed in order to get a nuclear deal with Iran? I am not privy to the Administration’s thinking on this tradeoff and they would never admit it in public. The circumstances may be fortuitous. Etilaf is in no position to offer assurances that extremists will not be able to take power if Bashar al Asad is deposed. Nor can the Coalition speak in Geneva for the bulk of the fighters waging war against Asad. So it looks very much as if the nuclear deal with Iran will take precedence while a political solution in Syria languishes. That is consistent with what President Obama said at the UN General Assembly. The phone call confirms this, too.
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Not the charm blitz
Rather than burdening you with more words about Iran President Rouhani’s four-day charm blitz, I prefer offering three minutes with Tehran’s men and women in the street:
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Tilting at pyramids
Those who follow Egypt these days are discombobulated. Its military-backed government is forging ahead to exclude the Muslim Brotherhood from existence, never mind political participation. It wants to make all Islamist parties illegal. The Brotherhood is uncompromising. Former revolutionaries are touting what looked like a coup as “popular impeachment.” Secular democrats who don’t buy that are under increasing pressure.
The frequent answer to these developments is to cut off American military aid, sending a signal to the Egyptian military that the US will not tolerate its excesses and to the broader Islamic world that Washington is not willing to sacrifice democracy on the alter of security. Many of my friends in Washington believe we should have done this long ago, though they fail to put forward a serious plan for what happens next.
The latest call for an aid cut-off is more nuanced, long-term and sophisticated. Shadi Hamid and Peter Mandaville recognize that unilateral US action in the absence of a broader political and diplomatic strategy will not work. They argue instead that the US should prioritize democracy rather than security: Read more
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