Day: June 21, 2018
The Levant: from bad to worse
The Wilson Center hosted a panel yesterday entitled “The Middle East: A Region in Chaos?” to discuss the current situation in the Middle East and the U.S. government’s reaction to this situation. Jane Harman, Director, President, and CEO of the Wilson Center, introduced the speakers before the moderator, Michael Yaffe, Vice President, Middle East and Africa at the U.S. Institute of Peace, provided a brief summary of the many developments in the region in 2018. The panel included:
Robin Wright – USIP-Wilson Center Distinguished Fellow
Bruce Riedel – Senior Fellow and Director, Brookings Intelligence Project, Brookings Institution
Mona Yacoubian – Senior Advisor, Syria, Middle East and North Africa, U.S. Institute of Peace
Aaron David Miller – Vice President for New Initiatives and Middle East Program Director, Wilson Center.
This post will focus on the panel’s analysis of recent developments in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Syrian Conflict. A previous post focused on the Iran/Saudi Arabia dimension.
As the conversation shifted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Miller painted a bleak picture of future prospects for a two-state solution. At a time when Syria, Iraq, and Egypt – traditional, vocal allies of the Palestinian cause – are projecting less power across the region because of unrest at home, the US-Israel relationship has reached unprecedented strength. This realignment is a central premise of Jared Kushner’s peace plan strategy. Kushner hopes that aligning fully with Israel on previous roadblocks, such as the governance of Jerusalem, will take these issues off the table while heaping pressure on Netanyahu to accept concessions made to the Palestinians. At the same time, Palestinian demoralization with the current state of affairs will push them back to the negotiating table if any unexpected compromises are made. Miller argued that Kushner’s moves will have the opposite effect; Palestinian trust in America to be an honest broker has evaporated over the last six months, leaving them less inclined than ever even to engage with the United States to find a viable two-state solution.
Miller and Yacoubian also highlighted the diminishing US leadership as power vacuums emerge across the region due to the dysfunction of many Arab states. As Trump continues the Obama administration’s hands-off approach to the region, these voids are being filled by Russia, Turkey, Israel, and non-state actors. US aversion to conflict has also allowed Iran to dramatically increase its influence in Syria, leading to direct military engagement between Israel and the Islamic Republic. Yacoubian argued that a possible Israeli airstrike on Iranian positions close to the Syria-Iraq border could mean that more escalation is on the horizon. Paradoxically, continued hostilities could drag the United States into a proxy war between Israel and Iran fought in Syria and Iraq.
On the southern front, the Syrian Arab Army’s ongoing siege of Dera’a and Al-Quneitra provinces could force even more refugees to flee to Jordan. The Hashemite Kingdom is already reeling from the political blowback to tax hikes designed to combat the country’s ailing economy, and another refugee influx would further inflame internal tensions. Yacoubian argued that recent US inaction in Syria suggests that the State Department’s promise for “firm and appropriate measures” in response to cease fire violations in Southern Syria is also bluster, so Jordan is on its own. Yacoubian also revealed that efforts to convince the Kurds to leave Manbij and move east of the Euphrates in northern Syria could easily derail, leading to more violence, while Trump’s desire to quickly withdraw US. troops could leave a power vacuum that ISIS would exploit.
The Bottom Lines: The political situation in the Levant has gone from bad to worse over the last six months. Increased US support of Israel at the expense of Palestinian goodwill appears to have driven them away from the negotiating table completely, at least for now. In Syria, immediate US withdrawal will only lead to further destabilization. While the train has left the station for Trump to intervene in the south to limit further economic and political strain on Jordan, maintaining a presence in the east could prevent a resurgence of ISIS in this sparsely populated, US-controlled region.
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Middle East chaos: the Saudi-Iranian axis
Since the four following panelists last met at the Wilson Center on December 5, 2017 (click here for that event’s summary), turmoil and chaos in the Middle East seem to have only increased in range and intensity. Faced with developments across the region, the Wilson Center hosted a follow-up panel entitled “The Middle East: A Region in Chaos?” to discuss the current situation and the US government reaction. Jane Harman, Director, President, and CEO of the Wilson Center, introduced the speakers before the moderator, Michael Yaffe, Vice President, Middle East and Africa at the U.S. Institute of Peace, provided a brief summary of the many developments in the region in 2018. The panel included:
Robin Wright – USIP-Wilson Center Distinguished Fellow
Bruce Riedel – Senior Fellow and Director, Brookings Intelligence Project, Brookings Institution
Mona Yacoubian – Senior Advisor, Syria, Middle East and North Africa, U.S. Institute of Peace
Aaron David Miller – Vice President for New Initiatives and Middle East Program Director, Wilson Center.
This post will focus on the panel’s analysis of Iran and Saudi Arabia; a following post will consider the topics of Syria and Israel/Palestine.
Wright began by emphasizing how the past six months have seen the worst domestic turmoil in Iran since President Rouhani was elected in 2013. Economically, Iran has been on the defensive, with stubbornly low prices and the Trump Administration’s re-imposed sanctions creating a “vulnerable moment.” Iran has also been on the defensive politically; President Rouhani is failing to fulfill two of his campaign promises – preserve the JCPOA, and improve the economic situation.
Diplomatically, Iran has actually gone on the offensive by campaigning to convince the five other signatories of the JCPOA – France, the UK, Germany, China, and Russia – to uphold the agreement, despite U.S. sanctions for businesses investing in Iran. Militarily, Iran has been surprisingly restrained in the Persian Gulf, with incidents involving the Iranian navy at a record low. Iran has however ramped up its involvement in Syria, especially as a military confrontation with Israel in the south becomes likelier.
Wright concluded by speculating that the Trump Administration may be quietly pushing for regime change in Iran, although the prospect of such change is dim. While President Trump won 46% of the votes in an election with a 56% voter turnout, President Rouhani and his government were elected with 57% in an election with a 73% voter turnout. He thus commands a broad swath of popular support, despite the protests. The current system will be difficult to displace, especially by a hostile power such as the United States.
Riedel noted that in recent times, Saudi foreign policy has been characterized by recklessness, unpredictability, impulsiveness, and capriciousness, in a manner unprecedented in Saudi history. The best example of this is the civil war in Yemen, which King Salman and his son, Muhammad bin Salman (MbS), expected to be quick and painless. It has now dragged on for more than three years with no end in sight. It may now be reaching a more decisive stage with the ongoing battle for the port of Hodeida. Current Saudi recklessness is also evident in its blockade – or, as Riedel put it, the “siege” – of Qatar.
In the past six months, however, Riedel sees a trend away from recklessness and interventionism. The April 2018 Jerusalem Summit and the June 2018 Mecca Summit put King Salman at the center-stage at the expense of MbS, who seems to be getting sidelined as Saudi Arabia returns to a more risk-averse, conservative style of foreign policy.
As for the US, Riedel noted that while Saudi Arabia is happier dealing with the Trump Administration than with Obama’s, the Kingdom seems to pay little heed to American interests and advice – especially when it comes to the Qatar blockade, which the U.S. sees as playing into the hands of the Iranians. Riedel concluded by calling the legalization of women driving in Saudi Arabia a big deal, although the accompanying repression of female activists shows that there is no room for political dissent in the government’s Vision 2030 program.
The Bottom Line – the most interesting contrast between these two panelists was the way in which they qualified current Saudi-Iranian tensions. Riedel saw them as being based in sectarianism, with political tensions the way in which this sectarianism manifests itself, while Wright instead tried to avoid the usual “tribalist trap” by reminding the audience that there is more to Saudi-Iranian disputes than the Shi’a-Sunni divide. As traditional regional powerhouses – Egypt, Syria, Iraq – lose influence in the region, Saudi-Iranian relations will become one of the main determinants of Middle Eastern politics for years to come.
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