Category: Daniel Serwer
Diplomacy v war
I am pleased to publish this contribution from Pantelis Ikonomou, a former IAEA nuclear safeguards inspector who holds a PhD in nuclear physics from the University of Vienna. Peacefare.net is, as always, interested in publishing well-argued contrary views:
“The IAEA has no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009.”
This Statement was made by Yukiya Amano, the Director General (DG) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the Board of Governors (BoGs) of the autonomous UN Organisation on 15 December 2015 in Vienna. It was the conclusion of his report on the “Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues regarding Iran’s Nuclear Programme.” Amano’s Statement has satisfied the six world powers (P5+1) China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United States plus Germany, members of the IAEA BoGs and parties to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Agreement with Iran of 14 July 2015.
Ironically, this very statement was repeatedly made, almost 14 years earlier, by the then IAEA DG Mohamed ElBaradei during the decisive sessions of the UN Security Council on the Iraqi crisis in February 2003 in New York. ElBaradei was then requesting more time to enable the drawing of a credible IAEA broader conclusion on a Possible Military Dimension (PMD) in the Iraqi nuclear programme. The Council was deeply divided. While its permanent members, France, Russia and China and a number of other member States were in favour of providing more time to the Agency’s nuclear inspectors, the response from the United States, backed by Great Britain and Spain, was firmly negative.
The IAEA Statement was then insufficient to prevent a war. Combined forces from United States, Great Britain, Australia and Poland, the so-called “coalition of the willing,” invaded and in March 2003 without endorsement by the Security Council. The war did not confirm existence of any nuclear weapons or related activities in Iraq.
Colin Powell, at that time US Secretary of State and former head of US Army, regrettably admitted before his resignation from politics in 2005 that, in February 2003 there was “no doubt in my mind” that Saddam Hussein was working to obtain key components to produce nuclear weapons. Later on, declassified US intelligence documents on the 2003 Iraq war affirmed the wrong assessment of the responsible US agencies on the country’s virtually non-existent weapons of mass destruction capabilities. The basic reason for this inability was analysts’ misinterpretation of the deceptive Iraqi behavior due to their failure to examine the situation “through an Iraqi prism.
In 2005 ElBaradei and the IAEA inspectors were awarded the Nobel Prise for Peace. IAEA’s current report about the “Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues regarding Iran’s Nuclear Programme,” a programme comprising sensitive nuclear fuel cycle activities with PMD, led to a resolution submitted by the P5+1 and adopted by consensus by IAEA BoGs.
In comparison to the outcome of the Iraqi crisis, this resolution constitutes a major historic diplomatic achievement, which brings an end to a dangerous nuclear crisis. The Iran nuclear deal is a positive example of effective multilateral dialogue and negotiations. It alleviates tensions and leads to the removal of vital sanctions on Iran. At the same time, it leaves hundreds of billions of dollars in postential sanctions in place through an agreed mechanism to snap sanctions back if Iran does not cooperate. Last Saturday January 16, DG Amano announced in a special IAEA session that “inspectors on the ground verified that Iran has carried out all measures required under the JCPOA … to enable Implementation Day to occur.”
Successful implementation of the Agreement would have a twofold consequence. Firstly, Iran would not be able to “sneak-out” by developing clandestine nuclear weapons related activities without detection. Secondly, in case of a “break-out” of the Agreement by Iran, as North Korea did in 2003, the time required for the production of one Significant Quantity of nuclear material for building a nuclear weapon has been now practically increased from two to ten months or longer. It is well understood by all parties involved, including, that this new reality provides enough time for dynamic “corrective” reactions.
In consequence, new parameters emerge in the geopolitical equation allowing for effective and efficient response to regional conflicts and to rising threats. This important diplomatic achievement offers realistic chances for peaceful developments on the road paved by extensive effort of all parties involved in the JCPOA agreement, including Iran. However, a potential threatening “failure-factor” would be the burning out of the advantages gained by both sites through the Agreement during a continuance of the Syrian crisis.
According to the last paragraph of the pertinent resolution, the Agreement is in effect “…until ten years after the JCPOA Adoption Day (18 October 2015) or until the date on which the Director General reports that the Agency has reached the Broader Conclusion for Iran, whichever is earlier.” In other words, until the DG would make the Statement: “the IAEA is able to provide credible assurance that all nuclear material and facilities in Iran remain in peaceful activities.” This means a direct and solid confirmation of both the “correctness” and “completeness” of Iran’s nuclear declarations, based upon continues monitoring and verification during an honest and flawless cooperation of Teheran with the IAEA inspectors, requiring sustained effort of both sites.
One could argue that the historic Agreement, including the Vienna IAEA resolution of the 15 December 2015, enabled a power shift in the wider area of Middle East which might contain dangerous developments in a persistently dynamic world. Even so, no development would be worse than possible nuclear proliferation.
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Prophets
Today’s Martin Luther King message is from a college classmate, George Stavis. It comes in both prose and musical versions, as he is not only admirably literate but also a superb banjo player (Jack Bowers, another college classmate accompanies on piano). George delivered this short sermon in both versions at Yom Kippur last year, but its relevance today is clear:
If there is one thing we know around here, it’s that we are a storytelling people. Or more accurately, that we have a storytelling rabbi. Why do we tell stories? Because we are asked to consider the lessons of the past in order to inform our lives now. And in great measure, this is the way of our people, from Exodus to the present.
So the rabbi has asked me, for this Yom Kippur, to reflect on our story and my story. But in telling my story at this Yom Kippur, I’ll talk about one of our revered prophets from the past, and I’ll add two prophets from our time, whom I believe will be revered in the future.
I’ll call my prophets Peter, Martin and Isaiah. Peter and Martin are, we shall say, new age, and Isaiah is old school.
Peter is my first prophet. That would be Pete Seeger. Who thinks Pete Seeger is a prophet? Well, the Harvard Crimson remembered Pete in an article titled “Pete Seeger: a Prophet in His Own Land.” And I saw Pete Seeger for the first time when I was about 8, when he was blacklisted and he played at a dinner party honoring a 90-year old progressive. I guess it was baked in at that point: banjo and politics. Pete, in his prophetic vision, taught that the world should be one in peace and freedom, and that the music of the people – the folk music – could help to show the way.
One of his records I listened to was called “With Voices Together We Sing.” He sang, in the Hammer Song, “it’s a song about love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land.” And his crowning achievement was his revision of an old, old gospel song and adapting it to the civil rights movement. His message was We Shall Overcome, which became the final words of Lyndon Johnson’s speech in presenting the Voting Rights Act to Congress. So I was raised with a vision of the power of song, the power of music, to bring people together in a progressive, admittedly optimistic, world of harmony. What has this to do with Yom Kippur? Stay with me.
No surprise that my second prophet, Martin, is Martin Luther King. Who vouches for his prophetic bona fides? A 1999 poll of 137 leading scholars of American public address found that the “I Have a Dream” speech was the most important speech of the 20th century. Notably, King referred to Isaiah in the Dream Speech when he said, “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low … and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” And why is King my second prophet? My late father Morton Stavis, who was raised orthodox and became socialist, secular, and Zionist, was deeply involved with the Civil Rights movement in the 50’s, 60’s and for the rest of his life. He was Dr. King’s lawyer, and while in high school, I met King twice, once at my home. I registered voters in Birmingham, Alabama in the winter of 1964/65.
Two months later, on March 7, 1965, State troopers and local police in Selma, Alabama brutally beat unarmed marchers protesting the murder, by a trooper, of a peaceful demonstrator a few weeks earlier. This became known as Bloody Sunday, and it created the overwhelming push for Johnson’s Voting Rights Act, presented on March 16, 1965, 9 days later. Additional marches were organized, and my younger brother was there. And on March 6th of this year, my two brothers and I went to Selma for the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, where my father was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Voting Rights Museum. And in the way of things, my father’s work – very much together with that of my mother – was the family work. We constantly reflected on the need to seek justice, and how, in the words of Amos, also quoted by King, we could work to “let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”
And so we come to today, Yom Kippur. And we will soon read Isaiah, who tells us about fasting. And why do we read him today, 2,700 years after his words were uttered? Because his words speak to us, as they have throughout history, and have met the test of time. And Isaiah describes the failures of both the ancient and modern Yom Kippur fast – that is, we fast, sit through hours of services, and then, we go for it: lox, bagels, melons, the works. Some kind of fast! But not the right fast, says Isaiah. The right fast is:
- to break the bonds of injustice and remove the heavy yoke;
- to let the oppressed go free and release all those enslaved;
- to share your bread with the hungry;
- to take the homeless poor into your home.
Great stuff for our liberal congregation of today. And, I think, a link to my own prophets, Peter and Martin.
If we mean to follow Isaiah, we have our work cut out for us. What indeed is the right fast? We are not going to repair the world today, but perhaps we can address a piece of it. Where to start? The injustices of our day – the income inequality, the disastrous relationship between police and minority communities, the 14 million people who pass through or are in jail each year, the refugees fleeing from destruction in Syria, the starvation and disease in much of the world – are as prevalent today as in the ancient world, and the wealthy – that is, us – are satisfied. Isaiah says “not good enough” to forego food for a day and pat ourselves on the back.
Isaiah, Peter and Martin are the gadflies, as Socrates was called: they are annoying people who exhort us to live up to our dreams of a better world – and how we – not merely divine intervention – are responsible for making it so.
We are charged not only to contemplate prophetic words, but to live them: to harmonize our voices together with others; to demand justice; to recognize and cease our own oppressions, and to help and feed the poor. By living our words, so may we help to repair the world.
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Why humanitarian aid is no way to save Syria
Fortune.com published this piece Wednesday under the headline “Here’s What the U.S. Can Do to Save Syria From Starvation,” but I was in Mannar, Sri Lanka without internet access until today:
Earlier this week, the international community celebrated as a UN convoy carrying food and medical supplies arrived in the besieged Syrian town of Madaya, where reliable reports and photographs of starving people emerged over past the few weeks. The Syrian government had besieged Madaya since July, since it’s a rebel-held town northeast of Damascus near the Lebanese border—an area President Bashar al Assad regards as vital to the “useful” part of Syria he seeks to control.
But Madaya isn’t alone, and it’s a small part of the problem. There are dozens of besieged towns in Syria. At least 4 million people in Syria are already dependent on humanitarian aid shipments, while another 4 million are still in need of them. The relatively fortunate are the more than 4 million who have fled the country—only a fraction of those who have any hope of making it to Europe. And a tiny fraction of that fraction constitutes the few thousand who might, after extensive screening by multiple intelligence and law enforcement agencies, make it to the United States, provided the Congress doesn’t block their requests for asylum.
No matter how big the headlines and how tragic the circumstances, Madaya is just a piece of the humanitarian problem in Syria, as are refugees trying to enter the United States. Dealing with Syria by providing humanitarian aid shipments and taking in a few thousand refugees is like trying to empty the Atlantic Ocean with a pail. Every bucketful may make you feel like you are doing something, but there is no way you are going to succeed.
The problem of Syria is above all a political problem inside of Syria. Bashar al Assad is a dictator. When his multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic people peacefully protested in 2011 for “dignity” and “freedom,” he responded with a violent army crackdown in order to preserve his own hold on power. This drove some Syrians to violent resistance, enabling him to frame his crackdown as a fight against terrorists.
The Assad regime has received ample support in the rebel fight from Iran and Russia, neither of which targets extremists. Both are more concerned with protecting Bashar al Assad from moderate rebels, as Tehran and Moscow stand to lose a vital toehold in Syria if Assad falls. Iran provides both its Revolutionary Guard Corps to train and lead Syrian security forces, as well as the Lebanese Hezbollah fighters it controls. Russia has long provided arms and ammunition, but felt compelled to intervene with its own air forces this fall to prevent the fall of Latakia, the heartland of support for the Assad regime threatened by rebels.
Assad’s violent crackdown has driven some Syrians toward the most effective fighters against the regime, who are often (not always) Islamist extremists, including some associated with the Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra. The breakdown of law and order has also opened the door to what the West refers to as “foreign fighters,” attracted to Syria by the radical Islamic State. Relatively moderate rebels, who dominate parts of Central and Northern Syria, get assistance from the United States. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar have provided military support to Assad’s opponents in a far less discriminating way, leading to charges that they support extremists.
President Obama has chosen to fight the Islamic State and Jabhat al Nusra—both of which threaten and commit harm to Americans—but not to attack the Assad regime, which on the whole does not present a direct risk to the U.S. Washington is providing upwards of $1 billion per year (a total of $4.5 billion since the war started) in humanitarian assistance, which does little to relieve the Syrians’ plight. The total UN-estimated requirement is $7.7 billion this year alone.
That is a lot of money. But it won’t buy peace in Syria, or even relief for all of the Syrians who need it. The UN is to convene talks aimed at reaching a political settlement Jan. 25 in Geneva. The recent dust-up over Saudi Arabia’s execution of a Shia cleric and Iran’s trashing of the Saudi embassy will make the talks even more difficult than they would’ve already been. But the best relief for starving Syrians and the best way to prevent more refugees from fleeing their country is a political settlement that ends Assad’s dictatorship and begins a political transition. It will happen sooner or later. The objective should be to make it happen sooner and to try to guide the process away from extremist control, which is where things will end up if the fighting continues.
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Ready or not, here comes transitional justice
I got to Colombo just two days ago. I’ve spent most of the time walking and exploring this bustling town that eats lots of very spicy curry and somehow manages to ignore the spectacular Indian Ocean that lies just off its far too rundown shores. This is not Beirut, Tel Aviv or Miami, despite the gaggle of high-rise hotels in the central Fort district.
Friday afternoon I made it over to the Sri Lanka Foundation for a discussion of transitional justice chaired by Colombo University law professor Dinesha Samaratne, with Centre for Policy Alternatives lawyer Bhavani Fonseka and NYU professor Allen Feldman presenting. The focus of the session was on the applicability (or not) of South Africa’s experience with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission and amnesty, but it in fact ranged far more widely.
Sri Lanka ended its war against the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) in 2009 with a government victory over the insurgents, who were trying to establish an independent Tamil state. A year ago (almost to the day), President Rajapakse, who won the war, stepped aside, defeated at the polls by one of his sidekicks, now President Sirisena. He and parts of Rajapakse political coalition cooperated with the leader of the opposition, now Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, to form a “consensual” government, whose forces won a clear parliamentary majority in August.
By all reports, the atmosphere in Sri Lanka has changed dramatically since last January. Repression is far less in evidence. People feel free to speak their minds. The Rajapaksa government, which included close relatives of the president, was triumphalist, centralizing and moving in the direction of autocracy. A constitutional amendment has undone at least part of the damage and strengthened independent commissions. The Sirisena government has said it is committed to truth, justice and reconciliation. It wants a new constitution.
Whereas Rajapaksa rejected international involvement in the war’s aftermath, the Sirisena government agreed to a UN Human Rights Council resolution that lays out a process that includes a special court with still undefined international participation, a truth and reconciliation process, accounting for missing persons (about 16,000) and compensation to victims. All who spoke agreed there can be no backing away from this commitment.
But none of this has happened yet, and lots of important details are still undecided. Fonseka emphasized that those decisions are up to Sri Lankans, who need to make it clear what they want, including things that go beyond what the UN suggested like security sector reform and vetting of officials. What will the balance be between truth and justice? While it is clear that there can be no amnesty for the most serious crimes, what incentives will perpetrators have to talk? How will it be possible to avoid prioritizing some victims over others? It is not even clear what time period the transitional justice process will cover (the civil war lasted, off and on, for 26 years). A government task force has been formed for public consultations, which will last however only two and a half months.
Discussion of the South African experience, led principally by Feldman, underlined that there was no blanket amnesty there. Relatively few people who sought amnesty received it. Forensic investigations are still going on, a South African embassy official said, that sometimes contradict the testimony perpetrators provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The main impact of the South African process was to make it impossible to continue to deny what had happened and to clarify the political motives that underlay the behavior of both sides. Citizens, Feldman underlined with reference to Solon, need to participate in the post-war process, as they did in the war. The consequences should be democratizing, equalizing the voices of victims with those of perpetrators.
Samaratne and others in the audience made it clear that the issues the war raised did not end with the war. There have been reports Feldman cited of post-war cases of torture, even some abuses during the last year Fonseka said. The problem is that the justice system has crumbled. It needs to be reconstructed. The current Sri Lankan legal framework and institutions are not adequate to the challenges they face.
Sri Lanka is not ready for transitional justice, one participant concluded. The state should be held accountable for what was done in its name. From this perspective, even limited amnesty risks reducing deterrence, which depends on punishment.The situation in South Africa was dramatically different: there the oppressed came to power and magnanimously agreed to a generous Truth and Reconciliation process. In Sri Lanka , many of the same people are in power and are likely to want to protect themselves. People in the north of the country (where the insurgency was concentrated) are still abused and still afraid.The victims want justice before reconciliation.
That expectation will not be easy to fulfill. Ready or not, transitional justice in some form is on its way.
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Sound and fury
Josh Rogin has pretty much nailed the North Korea nuclear issue with his inspired application of the stages of grief. Bottom line: we’ll end up accepting what we can’t change. Sound and fury will signify nothing.
Does it matter?
Yes. Allowing the North Korean dictatorship to persist in thumbing its nose at the UN Security Council and the international community breaches important international norms. The Security Council, which has mandated that North Korea not conduct nuclear or missile tests, is supposed to be authoritative. Non-nuclear states once signatories to the Nonproliferation Treaty (as North Korea was) are supposed to stay non-nuclear. Pyongyang’s defiance will be an inspiration to others and risks confirming a new international norm: once a state acquires nuclear weapons it is virtually immune to pressure, because it can unleash devastating destruction on its neighbors and other adversaries, provided it has the required delivery vehicles.
But that doesn’t mean there is a lot the United States, or anyone else, can do about it. Barack Obama is thought to be holding his tongue because he doesn’t want to give Kim Jong-un the satisfaction of getting a rise out of the US president. That seems to me wise, especially given the difficulty the President has had making his other red lines stick. A lot of noise about North Korea now would only encourage more misbehavior. What would the President do then? Any parent knows the risks of escalation with an unruly teenager.
No doubt it has been made clear to the North Koreans that US nuclear weapons may now target their homeland. It is even said that was a motive for the latest test. Few Americans realize it, but the US does not have a doctrine of no first use against nuclear states, only against non-nuclear states. The North Koreans certainly know that and are ready to run the risk, which they will presume low given the consequences for Washington if it were to use its nuclear capabilities.
There are of course other options. We could re-tighten financial sanctions, which in the past seemed to be having a serious impact. We could destroy North Korean nuclear facilities or any nuclear-capable missiles Pyongyang seeks to test, as former Sectary of Defense Bill Perry urged years ago. We could undertake a much more concerted effort to undermine the North Korean regime and its iron grip on its people. I imagine there are officials within the US government working on all these options, which could be undertaken either overtly or covertly.
But the sad fact is that these well-known options have downsides and none are guaranteed to work. Tightening sanctions and undermining the North Korean regime run the risk of causing collapse, which from the Chinese and South Korean perspectives is almost as frightening as Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal. Beijing and Seoul don’t like the North Korean regime, but they don’t want millions of North Koreans fleeing uncontrollably. Destroying nuclear facilities can cause serious radioactive contamination. Missiles are a better target, but we’d have to be pretty sure the response would not be a nuclear strike on one of North Korea’s neighbors (its missiles cannot yet hit the US, so far as I am aware).
I’m afraid the only serious option at the moment, other than ignoring the bastards, is to talk with the North Koreans and try to get them to back down from their current defiance of the Security Council and other international pressures. Yes, that will unavoidably give them some of the international acknowledgment and recognition they crave. Nuclear weapons confer privileges. One of them is not being ignored completely.
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Gulf style
Saudi Arabia’s decision to break diplomatic relations with Iran raises the question of how much worse things can get. It depends of course on Riyadh’s and Tehran’s objectives and what they are willing to risk to gain them.
Marc Lynch at Monkey Cage today suggests the Saudi motives for escalating its conflict with Iran by executing Shia cleric Nimr al Nimr are three: to isolate and contain Iran even as the nuclear deal proceeds, to distract from foreign policy failures and to rally regional Sunni support. He regards domestic repression as a relatively unimportant factor, which I find hard to credit. Only four of those executed last weekend are known to be Shia. The other 43 were presumably Sunni, many of them extremists responsible for attacks that occurred a decade or more ago. Someone is surely trying to send a strong signal to Sunni extremists about the consequences of targeting the Kingdom.
But let’s examine the international factors and their consequences.
Executing a nonviolent Shia cleric isn’t a likely way to isolate or contain Iran. But Tehran helped the Saudi cause when it allowed Riyadh’s embassy to be sacked. That’s a surefire way of getting negative diplomatic attention, especially from the US and UK. Score one own goal for Riyadh. The Supreme Leader also threatened Saudi Arabia with God’s wrath. That puts him in good company with some right-wing American politicians who are likewise convinced that God acts on their behalf (and maybe even at their behest).
Riyadh is getting some regional support. Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates have downgraded their relations with Tehran. That doesn’t count for much more than an improved field position in my book. Nor are the executions likely to distract much from foreign policy failures, and then only temporarily. The wars in Syria and Yemen are not going well from the Kingdom’s perspective. Riyadh is going to have to throw even more money and hardware into them, while encouraging others to do likewise, if it wants to have a serious impact.
The US failed to condemn the Saudi executions, though it regretted their contribution to increasing sectarian tensions in the region. Friends don’t condemn friends, I guess. It certainly would not have helped Washington’s relations with Riyadh, which are already tense because the Saudis are feeling sold out in the Iran nuclear deal. The question is how much longer friendship will trump honesty. The Americans are in no position to object to executions per se, but no one in Washington thinks much of the Saudi justice system. At least from what is readily available in public, it is hard to picture how anything al Nimr said would justify the death penalty.
The blowup between Iran and Saudi Arabia puts at risk the UN-sponsored Syria peace talks, which are scheduled to being January 25 in Geneva. But it also makes them all the more important. You wouldn’t know it from the headlines, but the Saudis and Iranians have a common enemy in the Islamic State. If only they could agree on how to fight it.
On BBC Five Live last night I was asked whether the current downward spiral could lead to war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It’s hard to rule that out, as breaking diplomatic relations can be a prelude to war and feelings are certainly running high. But both countries seem much keener to fight on third-country turf than on their own. Iran has Revolutionary Guard forces commanding and training in Syria, but most of the actual fighting is done by Hizbollah on Tehran’s behalf. The Saudis are bombing Houthi forces in Yemen, but they seem to have kept their ground forces mostly out of the fight. Some naval dueling in the Gulf, possibly involving tankers, might be in the offing, but proxy war through intermediaries is more the Gulf style.
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