Category: Daniel Serwer
Pushback
The big downside of the Iran nuclear deal is what the Iranians get: somewhere between $50 and $100 billion in unfrozen assets once sanctions are lifted. While I support the deal because it delays any Iranian attempt to get nuclear weapons by at least 10-15 years (and maybe forever), I also recognize that some portion of the unfrozen assets and the increased revenue from future oil and eventually gas sales will be used for activities that destabilize the Middle East and potentially areas beyond. The notion that it will all go to improving the lot of ordinary Iranians is bozotic.
The Obama Administration has hesitated during the negotiations to push back hard against Iranian support for Hizbollah in Syria and Lebanon, the Houthi rebellion in Yemen and arming of Shia militants in Bahrain. Iran views these efforts, which are under the control of the Supreme Leader (SL) and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as protecting its homeland from Sunni extremists and possible Israeli attack. The Administration’s logic seems to be that pushing back harder might have weakened Rouhani’s standing within the Islamic Republic and made conclusion of a deal on the nuclear program, which is also under SL/IRGC control, impossible.
So what about now? There is still an argument to be made: push back against Iran’s regional troublemaking could stiffen the Iranian reaction and make implementation of the deal more difficult. But that argument is inconsistent with the Administration’s own claim that the deal concerns the nuclear file, as Middle Easterners call it, and nothing else. We are paying for this deal with lifting sanctions. We shouldn’t have to pay for it by tolerating Iranian subversion using money derived from lifting sanctions.
Rob Satloff last week offered a handy checklist of options to pushback against Iranian subversion in the region:
Ramp up U.S. and allied efforts to counter Iran’s negative actions in the Middle East, including interdicting weapons supplies to Hezbollah, Assad, and the Houthis in Yemen; designating as terrorists more leaders of Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq that are committing atrocities; expanding the training and arming of not only the Iraqi security forces but also the Kurdish peshmerga in the north and vetted Sunni forces in western Iraq; and working with Turkey to create a real safe haven in northern Syria where refugees can obtain humanitarian aid and vetted, non-extremist opposition fighters can be trained and equipped to fight against both ISIS and the Iran-backed Assad regime.
All of these seem to me meritorious, but I imagine the Administration might argue that most are already in train. Certainly there have been efforts to interdict weapons going to the Houthis and Assad; I imagine also to Hizbollah, whose missile supplies the Israelis have repeatedly attacked. Training of the Kurds and Sunnis in Iraq started some time ago. Both clandestine and public programs have been training and equipping non-extremist opposition fighters in Syria, though the numbers and outcomes so far have been ridiculously low. Certainly more and better can and should be done.
The only really new idea here–new in the sense that the Administration hasn’t yet signed on to it, but it has been around for years–is the “safe” haven in northern Syria. I certainly don’t understand what the Turks and Americans might have agreed to already and plan to talk with colleagues in the Pentagon next week about that. But let’s imagine that they have agreed on the basic idea, which would deprive the regime of any pretense of sovereignty in a border area of the country and begin to offer an opposition alternative. What is required to make it viable?
There are five basic requirements to be considered:
- Security
- Governance
- Rule of law
- Economic activity
- Social services, including humanitarian aid
Without any one of these, Syrians won’t go to a safe haven and the effort will fail, like many others before it. The conditions created don’t have to be perfect, but they need to be better than what people can find in Syria outside the safe haven. That might appear a low bar, but really is isn’t: there are regime-controlled areas in Syria that have suffered relatively little, in which even its opponents seek haven. And the refugees camps in Turkey are not the worst on earth.
In a future post, I’ll consider how to meet these requirements, which are far from trivial, especially under the conditions prevailing at the moment in northern Syria.
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Tehran calling
Unlike many colleagues around Washington, I have decided to talk with and answer questions from Iranian media willing to publish them. I think it important for Americans to try to be understood in Iran. Certainly Tehran is making big efforts to be understood in the US. While I find some of what the Iranian media broadcast objectionable and even odious, most of the questions they ask me are straight up, like these from Hamid Bayati, published this morning in the Tehran Times:
Q: As you know Iran and Russia begin new initiative to bring peace to Syria, so how do you evaluate these efforts?
A: There really is nothing to evaluate yet. The Iranian four-point proposal, which has been public for some time, requires a good deal more detail before it can be evaluated. The key question is how the transition will be handled. No political solution will work that keeps Bashar al Assad in power, because the Syrian opposition will continue fighting.
Q: Some experts believe that after nuclear deal reach between Iran and world powers, Western countries especially the US begin to cooperate with Iran in regional issues such as Syria, and a new era begins in Middle East. Do you agree with this view?
A: Not really, even if I would like to see it happen. Iran with the nuclear agreement will have substantial resources. The question is how it will use those resources. Hardliners in Tehran will presumably argue for more support to Iran’s allies in the region: Bashar al Assad and Hizbollah, Iraqi Shia militias, Houthi forces in Yemen and Hamas. The US and Europe will not welcome moves of that sort. There will be enormous pressure on the US administration to push back, especially against Hizbollah.
Q: Turkey launches airstrikes against ISIL and PKK positions in Syria and Iraq, are these acts helpful to peace process in Middle East or not?
A: The Americans think more Turkish help against ISIL is vital. The US and Turkey have different opinions about the Kurds in Syria, though at this point PKK attacks inside Turkey are making that irrelevant.
Q: How do you evaluate the US-led Coalition against ISIS after one year of its creation? Does this Coalition reach its goals?
A: The Coalition has not reached its goals, but it has blocked ISIS advances and has rolled them back in some areas (Tikrit, Kobane, Tal Abayd). Without a better formula for who will govern in ISIL-controlled territory, I don’t see how the Coalition can “win.”
Q: As you know US congress is reviewing the Iran nuclear deal and it is possible US lawmakers will kill this deal. If this event happen what will we have after that?
A: It is possible but not likely that US lawmakers would kill the deal, but in order to do so they would need a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress. That will be difficult to get. If they do kill the deal, Iran and the P4+1 will have some important decisions to make. Do they abandon the deal completely, or do they implement it without the US? If the deal is abandoned, what will Iran do?
Q: In an interview aired Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” Obama said the United States’ role in global politics could be affected by the deal, how do you explain this sentence?
A: Defeat of the deal would separate the US from its allies and undermine confidence in American leadership in many countries. It would be like the Senate’s rejection of the League of Nations almost 100 years ago, a move that isolated and weakened the US.
Q: If US congress kills the deal, is it possible United States and EU continue a different strategy toward Iran? I mean is it possible they have different relations with Iran and EU that don’t follow US policy?
A: It is possible, though the US might try to apply “secondary” sanctions by barring European companies from doing business with the US if they do business with Iran. That would create big problems with America’s closest allies.
Q: It seems European countries have been more eager than US to revive their relations with Iran, how do you explain this view?
A: Europe needs Iranian oil and gas much more than the US does. Our companies are far less interested in doing business with Iran than some European countries. Geography is destiny I’m afraid.
As I failed to respond adequately to his question about the PKK, Hamid sent more, which were not published with the rest of the interview:
A: What do you think about Turkey military attacks on PKK positions? Some experts said these attacks are because the AK party lost in elections. Some experts said Turkey attacks the PKK because Turks don’t want Kurds to be strong, what do you think about it?
Q: The PKK made the mistake of ending the ceasefire with the Turkish government, which reacted forcefully. Some think this was the result of a split among the Kurds between those who did well in recent elections and the military component, which feared irrelevance.
It might have been better for the Turks to escalate more slowly; some think Erdogan may be seeking to regain some of the popular support he has lost recently by vigorously responding to every Kurdish provocation. But the PKK is a terrorist organization that attacks the Turkish state and can’t expect safe haven in Iraq or Syria. Iranian support for the PKK is a big concern for Turkey.
The complication of course is that the most effective Syrian fighters against ISIL include Kurds affiliated with the PKK. The Americans prioritize the fight against ISIL, which is an international threat. The Turks prioritize the fight against the PKK, which is a domestic threat. Iran does likewise when it faces a domestic threat of the PKK variety. The US and Turkey will work out their differences in dealing with the Kurds. I’m less sure that Iran and the US, or Iran and Turkey, will do likewise, though it would be desirable.
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Forget renegotiation, try these ideas
Rob Satloff, abandoning previous suggestions for renegotiation of the nuclear agreement with Iran, now puts forward proposals for the US to undertake without any need for Iranian agreement. He ties these to defeat of the agreement in Congress (whether by a veto-proof majority or not I can’t tell), but that is not logically necessary for their consideration. So let’s consider them, one by one:
Consequences: Rob wants punishments other than full sanctions “snapback” defined for non-capital violations, as he rightly anticipates it will be difficult to to use “the nuclear option,” if I may call it that, unless the violation is major. Specifically, he proposes
to reach understandings now with America’s European partners, the core elements of which should be made public, on the appropriate penalties to be imposed for a broad spectrum of Iranian violations.
I see no reason not to talk about this and even agree the penalties with the Europeans now, but is making the consequences public likely to increase compliance?
I wonder. Penalties defined now are likely to be less severe than what we can actually get once a violation occurs. It might be far better to wait for a incident of noncompliance and respond vigorously. I see no justification for Rob’s assumption that penalties defined later have “no value.” The first violation and reaction are the key to imposing credible consequences.
Deterrence: Rob wants penalties agreed and defined for transfer of funds from sanctions relief to Iran’s regional trouble-making. He suggests:
…these new multilateral sanctions should impose disproportionate penalties on Iran for every marginal dollar sent to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, etc.
Assuming that Rob is correct that our intelligence agencies can in fact determine unequivocally what amount represents increased assistance (which would surprise me), I again see no problem in discussing this with our friends. As he notes, levying sanctions of this sort is not ruled out because they are unrelated to the nuclear issue. We should be traying to block these transfers regardless of what happens on the nuclear deal.
Pushback: This is a related idea:
“Ramp up U.S. and allied efforts to counter Iran’s negative actions in the Middle East, including interdicting weapons supplies to Hezbollah, Assad, and the Houthis in Yemen; designating as terrorists more leaders of Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq that are committing atrocities; expanding the training and arming of not only the Iraqi security forces but also the Kurdish peshmerga in the north and vetted Sunni forces in western Iraq; and working with Turkey to create a real safe haven in northern Syria where refugees can obtain humanitarian aid and vetted, non-extremist opposition fighters can be trained and equipped to fight against both ISIS and the Iran-backed Assad regime.”
Each of these propositions deserves its own consideration, but in general it seems to me vital that we push back in some of these or other ways against Iranian misbehavior in the region, lest Tehran get the idea that the nuclear agreement blesses their ambition of achieving regional hegemony.
Declaratory policy: Rob wants a Congressionally endorsed statement that the US will use military force to prevent Iran from embarking, after the 15-year restrictions in the agreement, on enrichment that could “only” lead to a nuclear weapon. For reasons I fail to fathom, he thinks to be effective this has to be done now by the president who did the deal.
Even leaving aside that problematic “only” lead to a nuclear weapon (which betrays a lack of understanding of the many ways in which uranium enriched to high levels can in theory be used), Rob is self-contradictory. First Rob says President Obama’s threat that “all options are on the table” has lost credibility. Then he says it has to be this president to say more or less the same thing, this time with Congressional backing, in order to be credible.
More importantly, Rob fails to consider the international repurcussions of having the Administration do this right now. The hardliners in Iran love reiteration of the “all options” statement, as it demonstrates their thesis that American attitudes are unchanged and Washington seeks an opportunity to strike Iran.
If Congress wants to go on record, I don’t see who could stop it. Nor do I think anyone in Tehran doubts where Congressional sentiment lies. But the Administration has a stake in seeing maximum implementation of this agreement, which is threatened on the Iranian end by hardliners who didn’t want to see it done in the first place. Strengthening opponents of the deal in Tehran is not in the US interest.
Israeli deterrence: Rob wants to transfer the Massive Ordnance Penetrator and the means to deliver it to Israel.
Here more discussion is needed. Is this without end-use controls, or with them? What means are needed to deliver it, and how many of the bombs and delivery means are we talking about? How realistic is it to imagine that Israel will have the capabilities needed to evade Iranian air defenses and deliver these 30,000-pound monsters? Who is going to pay for this stuff?
So yes, there are certainly some things we should be doing to block Iranian misbehavior in the region but I’ve got more questions than answers about some of Rob’s other propositions.
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Iran plans to dominate post-Assad Syria too
Bassam Barabandi, former Syrian diplomat, writes about developments in Zabadani, a key town on the Lebanese border:
What is happening at Zabadani is the beginning of a long process. Emboldened by the nuclear deal, Iran is trying to consolidate its power and position itself as an indispensable broker for peace. Tehran is even beginning to test the waters for a post-Assad Syria.
Assad (and by extension, Iran) has been failing militarily. Given the amount of treasure Iran has invested in Assad, that failure has more of an impact on Iranian leadership at this point than it does on Assad.
The original “train and equip” program started in Zabadani in the 1980s with Iranian training and equipping of Hizbollah. They have been a force and a player politically in Zabadani ever since.
Once the revolution began, Zabadani was hotly contested by rebels and the regime. Rebels took control of it early. For the most part, they have held the town ever since.
In 2012, Davutoğlu, the Turkish Foreign Minister, scoffed at Assad’s threats that he would attack Turkey, when he could not even break through in Zabadani. The next day Zabadani was beleaguered by airstrikes and has been under siege ever since. Humanitarian assistance is badly needed and the Assad regime has refused to allow it through.
Hizbollah attacked Zabadani this year precisely because it has been under siege and seemed an easy target that might help the regime gain some ground in an otherwise bad fighting year. This was not the case. Fighters, mostly allied with Ahrar as-Sham, account for roughly 30% of the population of Zabadani.
Plagued by defeats throughout southern Syria, Hizbollah was also unable to deliver clear, decisive defeats to the rebels at Zabadani. These difficulties have provided lessons to the Iranian leadership, which began to transition to a new strategy. Tehran has recognized that it will not be able to achieve all of its goals through military means only.
Last week Iran began dealing directly and solely with rebels from Ahrar as-Sham, successfully negotiating a cease-fire without the Assad regime. Their objective is to negotiate outcomes that they could not secure through force.
The Assad regime is trusting Iran as its primary interlocutor in these matters. ISIS is knocking at Ahrar as-Sham’s door. Assad is all but telling the rebels that ISIS cannot get through while the regime still stands, positioning himself as an indirect protector of these areas of Syria. This has the potential to open up cross-border humanitarian assistance through UN resolution 2165.
For Iran, there are two possible outcomes:
- If the cease-fire with Ahrar as-Sham holds, Assad can be seen as opposing ISIS incursions in Zabadani as well as allowing cross-border humanitarian assistance from Lebanon on the basis of UN resolution 2165;
- If the cease-fire fails, the Iranians will be able to blame it on Assad or the rebels, whichever proves to be more advantageous.
Iran’s ultimate aim is to change the demography of Zabadani from Sunni to Shia. Their hope is that through these negotiations they can get the combatants, who they say are foreigners, out of Zabadani, thereby opening up space for new residents to come in.
The Iranians are trying a similar maneuver in Fou’ah, in northern Syria. There they are negotiating a cease-fire, attempting to get foreigners to leave. In Fou’ah there are perhaps 1000 fighters from Hizbollah, Iraq and Afghanistan. But in Zabadani, the fighters are Syrians from Zabadani. The Iranian maneuver there is destined to fail.
The fact that Iran is attempting this negotiation without Assad is a major development and a possible harbinger of Tehran’s new strategy in Syria. It is testing the waters for a post-Assad Syria, in which it envisions itself as the only way to bring peace to the country. Iran would then be in full control. The Iranian leadership feels that in the wake of the nuclear agreement they have more clout and legitimacy to take on a more prolonged, intensive political role in Syria.
Zabadani looks to be the first stages of long process whereby Iran is moving Assad aside and positioning itself as the sole power in Syria, using its Quds forces and Hizbollah as the primary military and training apparatus for Syrian forces.
PS August 15: Bassam Barabandi updates yesterday’s post on Zabadani:
Yesterday Iranian negotiators and representatives from the armed opposition force known as Ahrar Al-Sham agreed on ceasefire in the Zabadani area adjacent to the Lebanese border and four Shia villages located in northern Syria.
What’s unfortunate about the the results of this ceasefire is that the deal will entail the swapping of populations. The Sunni Arabs of Zabadani can leave to Idlib and the Shia Arabs of the four villages can go to the area under the Assad regime’s control.
Ahrar Al-Sham used the authorization from the people of Zabadani to do such a deal under the rubric “humanitarian reasons and to save life.”
It’s more complicated than simply this one issue.
It’s clear that the deal is between Iran and Turkey to share influence over Syrian territory. The regime authorized Iran to negotiate. Foreign Minister Zarif was in Damascus for this reason.
The people of Zabadani will issue a statement soon rejecting this deal. Should it be implemented, it will be the first time since the beginning of the revolution that a population swap based on sectarian lines is conducted in Syria.
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Jeb, the anti-Trump
Jeb Bush’s foreign policy speech at the Reagan Library yesterday merits careful attention. In a campaign for the Republican nomination dominated so far by Donald Trump’s verbal antics, this speech ranks as the most serious effort yet to challenge Barack Obama’s approach to threats from the Islamic State and Iran.
I won’t quarrel much with the Governor’s analysis of the current situation. Yes, the Islamic State in particular and Islamic extremism in general are more of a threat today than they were in 2009, even if American civilian deaths from terrorist acts since 9/11 have been minimal. Iran is a bad actor likely to cause more problems in the Middle East once sanctions are lifted. The situation in Syria, which Iran has exacerbated with support to Bashar al Assad and Hizbollah, is catastrophic and needs a more effective approach.
But Bush confuses cause and effect in ways that make his policy prescriptions screwy. It is apparent that the mainly military approach both the Bush and Obama administrations have taken to fighting Islamic extremism in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen has made the situation worse, not better. Yet in Iraq Jeb suggests we only need to do more and better on the military front in order to fix the situation. I don’t see any reason to believe that will work well. Nor is his hand-waving confidence about Iraqis “coming through for their country” convincing.
The Iraq war is the basis for much of what Bush thinks Obama has gotten wrong. In Bush’s narrative, the “surge” was a military success that Obama squandered by withdrawing American troops. Only by showing more military resolve region-wide can the US reverse that mistake.
But that is a false account of what actually happened. Obama withdrew American troops from Iraq on a schedule negotiated and agreed by the George W. Bush Administration. Republicans neglect that fact, because it disrupts their portrayal of the Obama Administration as weak, vacillating and prone to ignore the importance of military power. When challenged, they claim that George W. thought the agreement would be renegotiated. Obama tried that and failed, not because he was weak, vacillating and prone to ignore the importance of military power but because political sentiment in both the US and Iraq leaned heavily against a continuing US military presence.
If anyone is to be blamed for the rise of the Islamic State’s takeover of Sunni portions of Iraq, it is Nouri al Maliki, who was hand-picked as prime minister by the Bush Administration. The Obama Administration compounded that error when it backed Maliki for a second term even though his party had lost its plurality in parliament. Maliki thereafter proved himself an aggressive Shia sectarian who alienated both Sunni and Kurds, thereby weakening the Iraqi state and setting the stage for the ISIS takeover. It is vital always to remember that the problems in Iraq and generally in the region are at their heart political, not military.
But that narrative is too complicated for Jeb Bush. He prefers a simpler one that echoes his older brother’s worldview:
What we are facing in ISIS and its ideology is, to borrow a phrase, the focus of evil in the modern world.
I can think of a lot of other foci of evil in the modern world, and I’d have thought that “axis of evil” was a Manichean phrase no one would want to echo, given its association with the catastrophic mistake of invading Iraq and the less catastrophic but still serious mistake by George W. of failing even to try to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran before it had installed almost 20,000 centrifuges and enriched enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon.
On that subject, Jeb takes up the prevailing Republican unequivocal opposition to the nuclear deal. He offers no idea what his alternative is. He promises to undo the alleged damage Obama has done if elected, but of course withdrawal from the deal at this point would also have consequences he fails to consider: either Iran will race for nuclear weapons or the Europeans, Russians and Chinese will implement the deal and lift sanctions. The US then ends up either 1) having no alternative to war (without any allies except Israel), 2) watching its European allies make common cause with Moscow and Beijing against American efforts to unilaterally enforce sanctions. This is no formula for restoring American leadership, which is what Jeb says he wants to do.
Only on Syria does Bush offer any substantial suggestions worth examination: protected zones in parts of Syria and a no-fly zone over the whole country. Assad, not just ISIS, would be his target. Those are propositions President Obama has resisted because they take the US down the slippery slope towards greater involvement in the chaos that the multi-sided Syrian civil war their has generated. But his refusal to get involved hasn’t improved the situation or made it easier to solve. We shouldn’t have to wait for a new president to correct course on Syria.
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Something is rotten
I had the satisfaction yesterday of sending around yesterday a paper (now available in the local language) by Srdjan Blagovcanin and Boris Divjak on How Bosnia’s Political Economy Holds It Back and What To Do About It. They have done something I have wanted to see for some time: a chapter and verse description of how politicians are ripping off the country’s citizens. They can’t of course name names, but they cite specific instances and elucidate the mechanisms used. The responsible parties know who they are. So does everyone else in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
This paper should be read with the German/British initiative for “reform” in mind. That effort blocked a nascent American initiative to try once again to fix the Dayton constitution, which empowers ethnic nationalists and enables the rip-off. The Germans and British have convinced the European Union to focus initially on labor market reforms, in order to generate growth and presumably in preparation for privatization of state-owned companies. I’m not against it, but there are two obvious problems with that approach:
- Serious labor market reform will worsen social conditions, and privatization will eventually lead to redundancies that will worsen them more;
- Past privatization efforts have put state assets into the hands of crony capitalists, who manage not only to strip assets but also sell the shells back to the state.
It is only by acute awareness of the political/economic context and close international supervision that such perversities can be avoided. But it is definitely time to move ahead with serious reform efforts. Some political leaders are blatantly ripping off the citizens and enriching themselves. Citizens get little or nothing in the way of state services. I only ask that the Europeans not settle for Potemkin villages. It is time to build a state in Bosnia that serves the real needs of its citizens.
How do we get there from here? Srdjan and Boris suggest starting where the problems are: in the political parties and their leadership. They want internal democracy in the parties, which today are controlled by their leadership, without any serious input from the membership. In Italy this is called “partitocracy.” It isn’t any prettier in the Balkans. They also want to see red tape cut and serious judicial efforts mounted against corruption, including international asset freezes and travel bans for guilty parties, who should be pursued by the judicial system with international assistance. They are attentive also to the need for a broader civil society effort to create a context in which corrupt practices are not tolerated.
None of this in my way of thinking substitutes for constitutional reform, which however has failed at least twice (I am counting the close-call 2006 April package as well as the ill-begotten 2009 Butmir initiative), despite high-level international engagement. The EU is now very much in the lead in Bosnia, with the Dayton-created High Representative taking a backseat. Boris and Srjdan like it that way, as does Brussels. And Brussels is following the British/German lead. So constitional reform, essential though it may be, will have to wait a while.
If the current reform effort does anything useful, it shouldn’t have to wait long. Once the political economy in Bosnia is reconstructed and citizens can begin to expect some services, they won’t long put up with the ethnic nationalists who have stood in the way of progress for 20 years. I won’t hold my breath for that to happen, but we’ll know soon enough.
If the current reform effort fails, the country will return to demands for constitutional changes. I only hope they will be in the direction of strengthening the state government and its ability to negotiate and implement the requirements of EU membership. The route Milorad Dodik prefers–towards partition–is one that would set Bosnia back to wartime issues and block its road to the EU. That’s not the way to go.
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