Iran: will there be a nuclear deal?

S P SETH

The good news is that the November 20 deadline for working out a long-term nuclear deal between Iran and the 5-plus-1 powers that include the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, UK, France, China and Russia) and Germany has been extended for 7 months to June 30 next year. The bad news, though, is that there are still serious gaps between the two sides, with the US and other dialogue partners wanting to curb Iran’s nuclear capability to suddenly “breakout” into making an atomic bomb. How and weather these gaps will be bridged during the extended period will be a difficult, if not an improbable, exercise. The opening premise of the negotiations in which Iran is considered a culprit of sorts pursuing a nuclear weapons programme in contravention of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), is seriously challenged by Tehran. Iran maintains that its nuclear research and technology programme is for peaceful purposes as per the NPT charter. The one-year interim agreement signed last year, which virtually froze Iran’s nuclear programme , was a stopgap arrangement to curtail Iran’s nuclear capability until a long-term arrangement was worked out. In return, Iran was given, limited, relief from some of the sanctions imposed on it.

The US intelligence on Iran’s nuclear capability didn’t detect that Tehran was working on a nuclear bomb, which enraged Israel. It is quite clear that, despite all the sanctions it has suffered and is suffering for many years, Iran insists that it will not give away its ‘peaceful’ nuclear programme as it is a matter of national sovereignty. Even if it were to accept low level of enrichment capability at 10 per cent or below, an unlikely prospect, it still wouldn’t be acceptable to the  Zionist lobby in the US which, with Israel, has a veto of sorts when it comes to Iran’s nuclear programme. They are unlikely to let it get through, with threats of more sanctions. For them, the only real solution is the dismantling/destruction of Iran’s nuclear capability because Tehran cannot be trusted to abide by any agreement.  

Israel is simply dead set on stopping Iran from a nuclear path, peaceful or otherwise. It believes that Tehran will use its nuclear capability against Israel. Therefore, it has sought to subvert it by all sorts of subterfuges. For instance, it infected the programme with a computer virus targeted at Iran’s nuclear centrifuges to enrich uranium, possibly with US help/involvement. In the process, it was reported to have, at the time, ruined almost one-fifth of the centrifuges thus seriously complicating and slowing the programme. But Iran apparently was able to fix up the damage. Israel has also been reportedly behind the killing of some of Iran’s nuclear scientists. Israel had reportedly tried hard to persuade the Bush administration to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities but it didn’t succeed as they were already bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, and didn’t have the stomach to buy into another adventure with all sorts of unpredictable consequences. Israel would have liked to do it on its own but wanted US help and backing that was not forthcoming. The US, however, made it clear that all options, including military action, were on the table if Iran acquired nuclear weapons. But Israel is not satisfied with such assurances. One thing, though, is clear. Whether or not Iran’s nuclear programme is legitimate, Israel certainly doesn’t have any political/moral case to oppose it, being the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the region and is said to have an arsenal of a few hundred bombs.

Israel is not the only regional country strongly opposed to Iran’s nuclear programme. Among the Arab countries, Saudi Arabia is in the vanguard of such opposition, though it doesn’t seem coordinated with Israel. It is rather part of the larger sectarian conflict in the Muslim world between the Sunnis and Shias and the attendant geopolitical rivalry. Iran is believed to have ambitions to destabilize the Arab world and establish its dominance. One way to do would be to stir up and support Shias in Arab countries, like in Bahrain with a majority Shia population ruled by a Sunni monarch, in the restive Saudi oil producing eastern province with Shia majority, and in Yemen. Iran’s nuclear status apparently would enhance its regional position and might further stir up the Shias in Arab countries, with direct or indirect support from Iran. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners are, therefore, strongly opposed to any US nuclear deal with Iran.

Of course, the US has no intention of facilitating an Iranian nuclear programme. That is why there are so many obstacles to doing a deal. It has to be so foolproof that Iran wouldn’t be able to “breakout” into making a bomb through its existing nuclear facilities. Hence, the need for the US to keep Iran’s capability to enrich uranium to the lowest possible level and to keep its nuclear facilities under strict and widest scrutiny and surveillance. While Iran is willing to accept reasonable curbs and be transparent about its programme, it is not willing to let international inspectors from IAEA or wherever roaming anywhere and everywhere to demand instant inspections and interview its scientists. In return for accepting curbs on its nuclear programme, Iran wants economic sanctions lifted substantially, if not completely. The US, on the other hand, would like any lifting of sanctions to be limited both in scope and time to Iran’s compliance to Washington’s satisfaction, thus keeping it on life support. It is, therefore, not difficult to see what a maze the nuclear dialogue is between Iran and its six dialogue partners, particularly the US and UK, France and Germany.

However, the last year’s interim agreement was a breakthrough of sorts between Iran and the US, though a limited one. John Kerry admitted that some progress was made in recent negotiations but not enough to clinch a deal. Serious gaps remain in their respective position. The extended time schedule is meant to iron out and bridge those gaps, which is a big task. One thing, though, is clear that without Iran’s constructive involvement, the Middle Eastern region is likely to remain volatile, even more so after the run away success of the Islamic State (of Iraq and Levant). There is considerable scope for the US and Iran for cooperation against the IS, and some of it is already happening informally in Iraq. Indeed, John Kerry described recent recent Iranian aerial sorties against the IS as “positive.”

Although Saudi Arabia remains opposed to Iranian involvement and/or any cooperation between it and the US, Riyadh wouldn’t be unaware of the serious threat IS poses to the Saudi regime by seeking to destabilize and/or overthrow the monarchy. The threat would probably have to be more concrete before Riyadh would consider any opening with Iran. However, for Iran to become part of the Middle Eastern geopolitical solution against IS and a range of other issues, a deal with Iran on its nuclear programme is imperative.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

Arab Spring: from hope to despair

S P SETH

With the Arab world plunged in an orgy of mindless violence, the hopeful Arab Spring of, what looks like only yesterday, is now a distant memory. That inspirational people’s revolution, which brought down tyrants and dictators like Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, has turned into a nightmare. Its transformation in Syria from an uprising against the Assad regime is now a hodge-podge of terrorist groups, with the so-called Islamic State (of Iraq and Levant) declared as a caliphate. While Tunisia remains relatively stable with its secular and Islamic components trying out an unsteady coexistence, Libya is tearing itself apart into warring militias with no one in charge of the country. In Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country and, in some ways, its cultural centre, it looks like the Mubarak era is reborn with another military dictator in a civilian garb taking charge of the country. Its new President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has declared war on the Muslim Brotherhood, having overthrown President Morsi and throwing its leadership and a good number of its supporters into jail, sentenced to death or to serve long  sentences. They are now a banned terrorist organization. At the same time, the government has demolished 800 houses along its border with Gaza to create a buffer zone to prevent infiltration of militants from across the border after a suicide bomber killed 30 soldiers in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

It obviously raises questions about how the Arab Spring changed from hope into a recurring nightmare? In all such cases of social and political turmoil, there are no definite answers but researchers and analysts are all the time grappling to make some sense out of it. The first question to ask is how did the people’s revolution start in a region that had been the plaything of dictators? And the answer to this is the first extensive use of social media to mobilize people and thereby largely bypass the vast reach of the dreaded intelligence and security agencies.  The resultant popular protests and demonstrations at Tahrir Square in Cairo and elsewhere tended to create a sense of camaraderie among the crowds gathered there. It also created a sense of security in numbers when faced with early police repression.  

Another factor cited by some analysts is the rising proportion of youthful population of the Arab world, where in some countries the median age is said to be twenty-four. The use of social media, combined with rising level of education among youth, had a radicalizing effect making them the frontline of the revolution. At another level, many of the young and even older people had come to believe that, after the long torpor and repression of the likes of Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Qaddafi, a new popular revolution might be the only way to create a new social, economic and political order. And the hope for a new future didn’t seem all that illusory when almost all strata of society, including the Muslim Brotherhood, secular and liberal youth, Christians and many others joined together in what looked like a common cause to overthrow the repressive regimes. And in Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood undertook not to contest the presidency, which turned out to be false, it seemed that for the first time Islamic ideology was not being pushed as the only or dominant foundation of a new society. There were variations of this theme in other countries experiencing Arab Spring but the general trend seemed, to start with, one of accommodation between Islamic, liberal and secular elements. Syria (and now Iraq) remains in a class by itself where Islamic State jihadists have hijacked the project, for the present at least.

But the signs of a new beginning in the new decade turned into a comprehensive disaster. In Egypt, the coalition of Muslim Brotherhood and the liberal/secular pioneers of the revolution started to fray when the former decided to contest the presidency bringing back fears of a revivalist Islamist agenda. And that seemed validated after the Brotherhood’s Mohammad Morsi was elected the country’s president pushing forward a new constitution with Islamist overtones against considerable opposition from secular/liberal elements. The Brotherhood even sought to use emergency powers and their governance of the country increasingly started to resemble more and more like Hosni Mubarak’s regime by jailing dissidents and journalists. Which ruptured the national coalition and broad consensus forged during the successful revolution to overthrow Mubarak. Who would have thought that so soon after Mubarak’s overthrow, in which the army sought to play a neutral but essentially supportive role, crowds would again throng Tahrir Square and in much larger numbers supporting and urging the army to get rid of President Morsi and the Brotherhood! Many of the youthful secular/liberal pioneers of the anti-Mubarak revolution made a common cause with the army, not realizing that the same army junta, now under former General (turned-president) Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, would turn on them as well. In other words, Egypt has turned full circle from the army-backed Mubarak dictatorship, punctuated with an interlude of Brotherhood rule, to revived military-backed dictatorship of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, as if the Arab Spring had just passed by without creating the bloom that was highly anticipated and expected.

Some analysts have argued that the expectations about the Arab Spring were highly exaggerated, if not unfounded. According to Robert F. Worth, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars who is working on a book on the 2011 Arab uprisings, “The broader point is this: the educated youth who kicked off the revolutions of 2011 are not necessarily the vanguard of a new and more secular Middle East. They are one party in a bitter conflict over fundamental issues of identity and social order, a conflict whose outcome is far from certain.” He doesn’t believe that the Arab youth are necessarily progressive in the sense we in the west understand and expect them to be. As he puts it in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books, “Many of the young Gulf Arabs I know view the uprisings of 2011 with horror, and have become more convinced in their belief that the region is not ready for democracy anytime soon.” Furthermore: “Many of them are also just as passionately sectarian as their parents.” If that is true, and the ISIL crusade against Shias and other minorities, now joined passionately by many Sunni Muslim youth, would seem to give it some credence, the so-called Arab Spring that we witnessed briefly was a false dawn.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au       

Israel has the veto on US policy

Israel has the veto on US policy

S P SETH

Having recently pounded and pulverized Gaza in their military operations, killing more than 2100 Palestinians, and with no visible progress to lift blockade of the Gaza Strip after the ceasefire, Israel is now turning elsewhere to annex more of Palestinian territory. This time it is the proposed construction of 2610 homes in east Jerusalem, part of the continued expansion of Israeli settlements and consequent eviction of more Palestinians. The capacity of the Israeli state to ignore all the relevant UN resolutions and the general world opinion, which regards Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as illegal, is astounding believing that Israel is a special case over and above international law and conventions. Even its closest ally that underwrites its security and provides all the military and economic aid shows at times frustration with its wayward behavior and defiance of the Obama administration. The new tranche of settlement activity in east Jerusalem has drawn sharper criticism from the US than is usually the case. According to Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman of the US state department, “This development [of more Israeli settlements] will only draw condemnation from the international community, distance Israel from even its closest allies, poison the atmosphere not only with the Palestinians but also with the very Arab governments with which Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wanted to build relations, and call into question Israel’s commitment to a peaceful, negotiated settlement with Palestinians.”

It is rather surprising that after the collapse of the marathon peace initiative by John Kerry, US secretary of state, the US still somehow wants to believe that Israel might have some residual commitment to a peaceful and negotiated settlement of the Palestinian question. It doesn’t. Kerry expressed his despondency and frustration at the time, to the great irritation and anger of the Netanyahu government, when he said that Israel would soon face the choice between “either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens--- or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish [majority] state.” Philip Gordon, the White House coordinator for the Middle East, recently said that, “How will it [Israel] have peace if it is unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupation, and allow for Palestinian sovereignty, security and dignity?” And he added, “It cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely. Doing so is not only wrong but a recipe for resentment and recurring instability.” Most of all, as President Obama reportedly said that Israel’s decades’ long occupation of Palestine is simply “unsustainable”.

But despite strong reservations of the Obama administration about the efficacy and humanity of Israeli occupation, it still stands by Israel and tries to make excuses for it time and again. It has to stop making excuses and do something concrete to make Israel see some sense that its obduracy on Palestine is neither good for its own security and stability but also puts US relations with the Middle East in a state of continuous acrimony, if not crisis. The US, therefore, needs to approach the Palestinian question with great urgency because it alone has the necessary leverage and capacity to make Israel see sense as its chief patron and security guarantor.

But as we have seen in the last several decades that this is unlikely to happen any time soon, principally because of the enormous clout of the Zionist lobby in the United States. And its chief vehicle is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). A long article titled, Friends of Israel, by Connie Bruck in a recent issue of the New Yorker, has some interesting information about the AIPAC and its modus operandi to tilt the US political system in Israel’s favour. And for this it has a wide network at its disposal. For instance: “AIPAC has more than a hundred thousand members, a network of seventeen regional offices, and a vast pool of donors.” How does it work? Well, an important mechanism is funding the election of its chosen Congress members who are given a clear brief of what they are expected to say and how to vote on issues affecting the state of Israel. As Bruck says in her article, “AIPAC’s hold on Congress has become institutionalized.” It is difficult, if not impossible, to run for Congress without “hearing from AIPAC.” According to Brian Baird, a Congress member, “ And they [AIPAC] see us, members of Congress, as basically for sale. So they want us to shut up and play the game.” In their book, The Israeli Lobby and the U.S. Foreign Policy, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, created quite a storm by their searing critique of AIPAC. But, by and large, the US remains steadfast in its support of Israel when it comes to the crunch. As a result, there is no need for Israel to change or adjust its position on the Palestinian question.

Despite the solid US support for Israel, there still is a view in Israel and among its supporters in the US that it is precisely the US meddling and periodic peace initiatives that are at the core of the problem. It is argued that such initiatives stand in the way of other, less ambitious, approaches to the Palestinian issue. In his article, “Israel and the US: The Delusions of Our Diplomacy”, Nathan Thrall explores this in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books. He argues that Israel’s supporters have some difference of opinion as to how best Israel’s interests might be served but they all back “the Israeli demand to place severe restrictions on the sovereignty of a future Palestinian state, with limits on Palestinian armament, border control, and airspace, as well as the presence in the Palestinian state of international security forces, Israeli early-warning stations, routes for Israeli emergency deployments, and a continued presence for some considerable period of Israeli troops.” Which, in effect, means institutionalizing Israeli occupation and give it a legal cover with the US promoting its international acceptance.

On the other hand, the US advocacy of a peace process where Palestine might have attributes of a sovereign state, in Thrall’s view and many other Israeli supporters, is problematic. Because: “It deprives any other third party--- whether European or Arab [and religious Zionists and ultra-orthodox Jews]--- of a meaningful part in the peace process.” He believes that, “… most Israeli voters, and many among the Palestinian elite, are quite at ease with existing conditions…” And his advice to the US government is that it should better leave the Palestinian issue alone because: “The potential benefits of creating a small, poor, and strategically inconsequential Palestinian state are tiny when compared to the costs of heavily pressuring a close ally wielding significant regional and US domestic power.” With views like this seemingly vetoing US policy on the Palestinian issue, it is no wonder that it will remain a festering sore in an already volatile Middle Eastern region.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

IS: it will be a long war

S P SETH

The world is everyday learning the scope and complexity of the situation in Iraq and Syria where Islamic State militants are apparently not deterred by the air strikes launched by the United States and its allies. While they have been contained in some places in Iraq, they have made advances in some parts of Syria, threatening the Kurdish town of Kobani starting an exodus of an estimated 200,000 Kurds across the border into Turkey. Indeed, the IS’ sudden emergence as a significant force, posing serious threat to regional stability and becoming a magnet for international jihadists, has taken much of the world by surprise, causing trepidation. In a recent television interview, President Obama admitted that the US intelligence agencies had under-estimated IS. On the other side of the equation, they had over-estimated the Iraqi army and state as capable of dealing with terrorism in all its forms. The ease with which the IS forces were able to occupy Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city with the Iraqi army making a run for their lives and abandoning the US-gifted arsenal for the IS, proves the point.

To quote Obama from his interview: “Over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swathes of the country that are completely ungoverned [ISIL was] able to reconstitute themselves [from the shattered al Qaeda outfit it was] and take advantage of that chaos.” And: “This became ground zero for jihadists around the world”. They advanced so fast that even Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region, seemed within their reach, only saved by US aerial intervention. While the IS is consolidating and even, at places, strengthening its hold in Iraq, the situation in Syria is even more dire. It is a witches’ brew of terrorist activity with the IS clearly the dominant jihadi group. The US aerial bombing there seems to have, for the time being, brought together the feuding terrorist groups behind IS.

And then there are the so-called moderate rebels that are preferred US choice to fight both IS and the Assad regime on the ground. They were supposed to be vetted by the US intelligence to qualify for US military assistance because of the fear that military weapons and equipment for them might fall into militant hands. But they reportedly would now receive an estimated $500 million worth of weaponry to confront apparently both the IS and the Assad regime. This looks like US policy on the run because nothing has really changed to ensure that they would be an effective force or, for that matter, their weapons wouldn’t fall into the militants’ hands. To further add to the confusion, there is the Assad regime, which the US is committed to overthrow with the help of the secular/moderate rebels.

In the present circumstances, the Assad regime would be a natural ally of the US against Islamic State. But such tactical arrangement against IS is virtually vetoed by the US’ Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia. This is because of the larger Sunni-Shia sectarian divide in which the Syrian regime of the Alawite (Shia) sect is regarded by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchs as the Iranian dagger pointing into the heart of Sunni Arab lands. This larger sectarian power play led Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies into funneling funds and weapons into the hands of militant groups of which Islamic State has now grown into a monster threatening both Sunni and Shia regimes alike. And this is also preventing the US and Iran from cooperating fully against the common threat of Islamic State. Therefore, despite the US success in creating a broad international front against IS, including some Arab kingdoms, it is not making things any easier. Which brings home the bitter truth that air strikes by itself won’t stop IS, suggesting that combat troops would need to be deployed sooner, rather than later.

The Turkish government could play an important role to thwart IS advances, now that its parliament has approved its participation in the international coalition. But, despite all the international pressure to help the beleaguered Kurds in Kobani, just across the border, it is dragging its feet because it wants the US to undertake to simultaneously overthrow the Assad regime by putting up a no-fly zone in Syria as well as to create a security cordon across the Turkish border for Syrian refugees. At the same time, it worries that the focus on fighting IS might strengthen the Kurdish autonomy movement that Turkey has been trying to suppress over decades.

As pointed out earlier, the aerial war against IS would need to be supplemented with ground warfare. But there is still no consensus about who, among the coalition partners, will contribute the ground troops. The US and its western allies contend that it is the Arab’s fight and that they should be doing the actual fighting on the ground. And indeed the Iraqi military and the Kurdish Peshmerga are engaged in the operations against IS. But the Iraqi forces, despite all their training by the US over the years and with US-supplied weaponry, have been more adept at fleeing rather than fighting, though there are recent reports that their morale has improved and things might change for the better. This would remain to be seen. The Kurdish Peshmerga, on the other hand, are said to be motivated fighters and have been doing their bit, but they lack high caliber weaponry to confront IS.  In other words, the ground forces that are supposed to take on IS militants are not battle ready yet. That would leave the US and its allies to fill the gap at some point. But President Obama has made it clear that the US wouldn’t put boots on the ground, even though he has already sent 1500 combat ready experts as advisers and trainers.

One just has to wonder what would they do new in terms of training and equipment, which was not done during the time they were in Iraq from 2003 to 2011? Would that mean that the US might, at some point, put its own troops on the ground, as it considers IS a threat to its own security? The IS might even be goading the US in that direction if its recent statement is anything to go by. The statement said in part that, “You will pay the price when your economies collapse. You will pay the price when your sons are sent to wage war against us and they return to you as disabled amputees, or inside coffins, or mentally ill…”

Whether or not the US will put boots on the ground would remain to be seen. One thing though is clear. Which is that it will be a long drawn-out war.

Note: This article was first published in th Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au