The Case for (Finally) Bombing Assad: Dennis B. Ross & Andrew J. Tabler, New York Times, Aug. 3, 2016— The Obama administration wants to reduce the violence and suffering in Syria and, at the same time, quash jihadist groups there.
The Destruction of Islamic State is a Strategic Mistake: Prof. Efraim Inbar, BESA, Aug. 2, 2016— US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter recently gathered defense ministers from allied nations to plan what officials hope will be the decisive stage in the campaign to eradicate the Islamic State (IS) organization. This is a strategic mistake.
The Most Dangerous Anti-American Force Isn’t ISIS, It’s Iran: Robert Spencer, New York Post, July 30, 2016— The greatest threat to national security today isn’t ISIS, or China, or Russia or even the administration’s favorite bogey, climate change.
Unhappy Anniversary: Thomas Joscelynm, Weekly Standard, Aug. 1, 2016— Ayatollah Khamenei, the "Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution," commemorated the end of Ramadan with a lengthy anti-American, antisemitic screed.
Iranians Execute Scientist Mentioned in Clinton’s E-mails: Jim Geraghty, National Review, Aug. 8, 2016
Report: U.S. Sent $400M Cash to Iran as American Detainees Freed: CBS News, Aug. 3, 2016
Iran Sells Weapons to ISIS' Sinai Branch: Ami Rojkes Dombe, Israel Defense, Aug. 8, 2016
Ethnic Opposition to Iran’s Regime Is on the Rise: Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, JCPA, July 24, 2016
THE CASE FOR (FINALLY) BOMBING ASSAD
Dennis B. Ross & Andrew J. Tabler
New York Times, Aug. 3, 2016
The Obama administration wants to reduce the violence and suffering in Syria and, at the same time, quash jihadist groups there. This is why the White House is now pushing a plan for the United States to cooperate with the Russian military in Syria, sharing intelligence and coordinating airstrikes against the Islamic State and the Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. In return, Russia would force the government of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, to stop using barrel bombs and air attacks in areas in which neither extremist group is present.
Wiping out terrorist groups in Syria is an important goal and, after years of death and destruction, any agreement among the country’s warring parties or their patrons may seem welcome. But the Obama administration’s plan, opposed by many within the C.I.A., the State Department and the Pentagon, is flawed. Not only would it cement the Assad government’s siege of the opposition-held city Aleppo, it would push terrorist groups and refugees into neighboring Turkey. Instead, the United States must use this opportunity to take a harder line against Mr. Assad and his allies.
Secretary of State John Kerry hopes that this understanding with Russia will help lead to progress on other issues, including restoring the “cessation of hostilities,” a partial truce that began in February and broke down in May, and returning to negotiations on a political transition. These are reasonable goals, which are also embodied in a United Nations Security Council resolution adopted last December.
But a leaked text of the proposed agreement with Russia shows that it is riddled with dangerous loopholes. American and Russian representatives are now delineating areas where the Nusra Front is “concentrated” or “significant” and areas where other opposition groups dominate but “some possible Nusra presence” exists. This will still allow Mr. Assad and his Iranian and Russian backers to attack the non-Nusra opposition in those areas, as well as solidify the Syrian government’s hold on power.
More worrying is that the Assad government lacks the manpower to hold rural Sunni areas and so will rely on Hezbollah and other Shiite militias to do so. These brutal sectarian groups will most likely force the Nusra Front and other Sunni rebels to decamp to Turkey, bringing them, and the threat of militant violence, closer to the West. The fighting will similarly displace Sunni civilians, leading more of them to try to make their way to Europe.
The administration’s initiative with Russia is driven by either hope or desperation, but surely not by experience. During the partial truce, Russia took advantage of similar loopholes that permitted it and the Assad government to keep fighting the non-Nusra and non-Islamic State opposition. Such violations have allowed Mr. Assad and his allies to gain territory and besiege Aleppo.
The Obama administration appears to believe that President Vladimir V. Putin is looking for a way to limit Russia’s involvement in the Syrian civil war. We doubt it. Mr. Putin is more interested in demonstrating that Russia and its friends are winning in Syria and the United States is losing. He will not alter his approach unless he becomes convinced that it has grown too expensive. Instead, because Mr. Putin knows the United States will not take action to punish Russia for its support for the Assad government, he and Mr. Assad will probably treat the emerging agreement no differently from the previous ones.
There is an alternative: Punish the Syrian government for violating the truce by using drones and cruise missiles to hit the Syrian military’s airfields, bases and artillery positions where no Russian troops are present. Opponents of these kinds of limited strikes say they would prompt Russia to escalate the conflict and suck the United States deeper into Syria. But these strikes would be conducted only if the Assad government was found to be violating the very truce that Russia says it is committed to. Notifying Russia that this will be the response could deter such violations of the truce and the proposed military agreement with Moscow. In any case, it would signal to Mr. Putin that his Syrian ally would pay a price if it did not maintain its side of the deal.
If Russia does want to limit its involvement in Syria, the threat of limited strikes should persuade it to make Mr. Assad behave. Conversely, if the skeptics are right that Mr. Putin will get serious about a political solution only if he sees the costs of backing Syria’s government increasing, the threat of such strikes is probably the only way to start a political process to end the war. Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry have long said there is no military solution to the Syrian conflict. Unfortunately, Russia and Iran seem to think there is — or at least that no acceptable political outcome is possible without diminishing the rebels and strengthening the Syrian government. It is time for the United States to speak the language that Mr. Assad and Mr. Putin understand.
THE DESTRUCTION OF ISLAMIC STATE IS A STRATEGIC MISTAKE
Prof. Efraim Inbar
BESA, Aug. 2, 2016
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter recently gathered defense ministers from allied nations to plan what officials hope will be the decisive stage in the campaign to eradicate the Islamic State (IS) organization. This is a strategic mistake. IS, a radical Islamist group, has killed thousands of people since it declared an Islamic caliphate in June 2014, with the Syrian city of Raqqa as its de facto capital. It captured tremendous international attention by swiftly conquering large swaths of land and by releasing gruesome pictures of beheadings and other means of execution.
But IS is primarily successful where there is a political void. Although the offensives in Syria and Iraq showed IS’s tactical capabilities, they were directed against failed states with weakened militaries. On occasions when the poorly trained IS troops have met well-organized opposition, even that of non-state entities like the Kurdish militias, the group’s performance has been less convincing. When greater military pressure was applied and Turkish support dwindled, IS went into retreat.
It is true that IS has ignited immense passion among many young and frustrated Muslims all over the world, and the caliphate idea holds great appeal among believers. But the relevant question is what can IS do, particularly in its current situation? The terrorist activities for which it recently took responsibility were perpetrated mostly by lone wolves who declared their allegiance to IS; they were not directed from Raqqa. On its own, IS is capable of only limited damage.
A weak IS is, counterintuitively, preferable to a destroyed IS. IS is a magnet for radicalized Muslims in countries throughout the world. These volunteers are easier targets to identify, saving intelligence work. They acquire destructive skills in the fields of Syria and Iraq that are of undoubted concern if they return home, but some of them acquire shaheed status while still away – a blessing for their home countries. If IS is fully defeated, more of these people are likely to come home and cause trouble.
If IS loses control over its territory, the energies that went into protecting and governing a state will be directed toward organizing more terrorist attacks beyond its borders. The collapse of IS will produce a terrorist diaspora that might further radicalize Muslim immigrants in the West. Most counter-terrorism agencies understand this danger. Prolonging the life of IS probably assures the deaths of more Muslim extremists at the hands of other bad guys in the Middle East, and is likely to spare the West several terrorist attacks.
Moreover, a weak and lingering IS could undermine the attraction of the caliphate idea. A dysfunctional and embattled political entity is more conducive to the disillusionment of Muslim adherents of a caliphate in our times than an IS destroyed by a mighty America-led coalition. The latter scenario perfectly fits the narrative of continuous and perfidious efforts on the part of the West to destroy Islam, which feeds radical Muslim hatred for everything the West stands for.
The continuing existence of IS serves a strategic purpose. Why help the brutal Assad regime win the Syrian civil war? Many radical Islamists in the opposition forces, i.e., Al Nusra and its offshoots, might find other arenas in which to operate closer to Paris and Berlin. Is it in the West’s interests to strengthen the Russian grip on Syria and bolster its influence in the Middle East? Is enhancing Iranian control of Iraq congruent with American objectives in that country? Only the strategic folly that currently prevails in Washington can consider it a positive to enhance the power of the Moscow-Tehran-Damascus axis by cooperating with Russia against IS.
Furthermore, Hizballah – a radical Shiite anti-Western organization subservient to Iran – is being seriously taxed by the fight against IS, a state of affairs that suits Western interests. A Hizballah no longer involved in the Syrian civil war might engage once again in the taking of western hostages and other terrorist acts in Europe.
The Western distaste for IS brutality and immorality should not obfuscate strategic clarity. IS are truly bad guys, but few of their opponents are much better. Allowing bad guys to kill bad guys sounds very cynical, but it is useful and even moral to do so if it keeps the bad guys busy and less able to harm the good guys. The Hobbesian reality of the Middle East does not always present a neat moral choice.
The West yearns for stability, and holds out a naive hope that the military defeat of IS will be instrumental in reaching that goal. But stability is not a value in and of itself. It is desirable only if it serves our interests. The defeat of IS would encourage Iranian hegemony in the region, buttress Russia’s role, and prolong Assad’s tyranny. Tehran, Moscow, and Damascus do not share our democratic values and have little inclination to help America and the West.
Moreover, instability and crises sometimes contain portents of positive change. Unfortunately, the Obama administration fails to see that its main enemy is Iran. The Obama administration has inflated the threat from IS in order to legitimize Iran as a “responsible” actor that will, supposedly, fight IS in the Middle East. This was part of the Obama administration’s rationale for its nuclear deal with Iran and central to its “legacy,” which is likely to be ill-remembered. The American administration does not appear capable of recognizing the fact that IS can be a useful tool in undermining Tehran’s ambitious plan for domination of the Middle East.
THE MOST DANGEROUS ANTI-AMERICAN FORCE ISN’T ISIS, IT’S IRAN
Robert Spencer
New York Post, July 30, 2016
The greatest threat to national security today isn’t ISIS, or China, or Russia or even the administration’s favorite bogey, climate change. The greatest threat is the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime that has been on a war footing toward the United States since 1979, mandates chants of “Death to America” in every mosque in the country at Friday prayers, and now, thanks to President Obama and John Kerry, is on the fast track to obtaining nuclear weapons.
Iran is not as flashy as ISIS but is actively working now on numerous anti-American initiatives that could turn out to be even more lethal than anything ISIS has yet perpetrated. In June 2011 Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared: “Wherever a movement is Islamic, populist and anti-American, we support it.” In 2012, Khamenei called for terror attacks in the West — but now, because of Obama, Iran is newly flush with billions of dollars in sanctions relief to finance such attacks.
As I show in my new book “The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran,” the nation is a breeding ground for terrorist activity: funding and controlling a global network of jihad terror organizations with a truly global reach, ready to do Iran’s bidding up to and including the killing of its perceived enemies. Chief in this network is Hezbollah, a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Most notoriously, Hezbollah was responsible for the murder of 241 US servicemen in the bombing of military barracks in Beirut in 1983. Iran has also been implicated in the bankrolling of the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which housed members of the US Air Force, and in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which over 200 people were killed.
Iran’s Hezbollah doesn’t just operate in Lebanon. It continues to target the United States through Mexico, where it has teamed with drug cartels along the US border. This partnership is mutually beneficial: Hezbollah gets massive amounts of cash to finance its jihad operations, and the drug cartels receive extensive training in ways to strike terror into the hearts of their enemies. That is one principal reason why the Mexican drug cartels have adopted what up until recently had been two trademarks of jihad groups: kidnapping and beheading.
It’s not just Hezbollah that Iran bankrolls. Despite the Sunni/Shiite divide, the Sunni jihad groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as the Shiite Houthis in Yemen and the Iraqi Shiite group Kata’ib Hezbollah are all funded by the Islamic Republic. Nor does it work only through jihad terror groups: It has funded the Spanish left-wing populist party, Podemos — a vivid illustration of how the international left and the global jihad movement can and do make common cause against the West.
Iran was even involved in planning the 9/11 terror attacks: in the months leading up to the attacks, at least eight of the hijackers traveled repeatedly to Iran and met with Iranian agents there, who facilitated their travel to Afghanistan for training. Their passports were left unstamped by Iranian border guards so that they would be able to enter the United States undetected.
Iranian adventurism has continued. In 2012, the government of Canada closed Iran’s embassy in Ottawa and recalled its own diplomats from Tehran in protest of subversive activities by Iranians in Canada, directed from the Embassy. Former Iranian diplomat Abolfazl Eslami admitted that Iran had been plotting subversive activities through their embassies in Canada and other countries. And earlier this year, the US indicted seven Iranian hackers linked to the government of the Islamic Republic for cyber attacks on US banks and a dam in New York State.
As a result of Obama’s supine appeasement policy toward the Islamic Republic, Iran is bolder and more belligerent than ever — as evidenced by its capture and public humiliation of US Navy sailors last January. But it is not too late. While a new president will not be able to recover the money that Obama has showered upon Iran, the next chief executive can and should repudiate the nuclear deal and put the Iranian regime on notice that not only its pursuit of nuclear weapons, but its global adventurism will no longer be tolerated.
The Iranian opposition, however imperfect, that Obama refused to support in 2009 must be given active aid of all possible kinds. And any future negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran should only be entered into with a clear-eyed understanding of that regime’s bloodthirstiness, willingness to deceive and unshakable hostility to the United States. Iran is more dangerous than ISIS, but the Iranian people are the heirs of one of the oldest civilizations on earth. They deserve better than the Islamic Republic. As do we all.
Thomas Joscelyn
Weekly Standard, Aug. 1, 2016
Ayatollah Khamenei, the "Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution," commemorated the end of Ramadan with a lengthy anti-American, antisemitic screed. Khamenei has repeatedly accused the West and Israel, rather than Muslim-majority forces, of sponsoring violence in the region, and the title of his sermon, "American, Zionist and English Intelligence Services Created Terrorism in the Islamic World," reinforced his favorite talking point. Khamenei blamed these actors for a string of high-profile terrorist attacks during Ramadan—in Iraq, Istanbul, Bangladesh, Yemen, and elsewhere—all of which were carried out by the Islamic State and its followers. "This is the work of intelligence services—particularly the dangerous hands of American, Zionist, and English intelligence services—which have cultivated terrorism," Khamenei said July 6. "It is they who have created terrorism in the world of Islam."
Just over one week later, on July 14, Secretary of State John Kerry celebrated the first anniversary of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. The agreement "guaranteed to the world that Iran would not be pursuing a nuclear weapon," Kerry declared. The administration believes, Kerry added, "that the door that has been opened as a consequence of this dialogue gives us an opportunity" to discuss various "continuing issues" with Iran, including "in Syria or Yemen, on terrorism." The two views could not be more diametrically opposed. Khamenei claims the United States and its allies are responsible for terrorism throughout the Muslim-majority world, an absurd claim to American ears. Kerry, meanwhile, believes he can now engage in constructive dialogue with the Iranians about their own ongoing sponsorship of terrorism. Clearly, there is a disconnect.
It is no secret that President Obama and other top administration officials hoped the nuclear accord with Iran would lead to a new era of improved relations between the two foes. At times, Obama even entertained the idea that the Iranian regime could evolve beyond its aggressively anti-American origins. Take off the rose-colored glasses Kerry donned in Paris, however, and a stark reality comes into focus. In the year since the United States and several other countries agreed to the JCPOA, the Iranian regime's terrorist tentacles have grown longer and thicker. Iran remains the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism, backing anti-American, anti-Israeli, and anti-Sunni-Muslim forces throughout the world. In every country where Iran and its paramilitary agents operate, American interests are damaged, not advanced, by the supreme leader's Islamic Revolution. And the Iranian regime continues to harbor some of al Qaeda's most dangerous terrorists.
Consider what Kerry's own State Department had to say this spring. "Iran continued its terrorist-related activity in 2015, including support for Hizballah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and various groups in Iraq and throughout the Middle East," reads Foggy Bottom's Country Reports on Terrorism 2015, released June 2. Iran even "increased" its terrorist activities in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. government has designated Iran a state sponsor of terror every year since 1984. The State Department's bottom line: Iran's behavior in 2015, the year of the landmark nuclear deal, was no better than that of the previous three decades.
A brief overview of several key issues demonstrates just how unhelpful Iran's ongoing anti-American revolution still is…Iranian-backed forces frequently battle the Islamic State in Iraq, but the net effect of Iran's growing presence is negative. "Look, we have challenges with Iran as everybody knows and we are working on those challenges," Kerry said at the Aspen Ideas Festival on June 28. "But I can tell you that Iran in Iraq has been in certain ways helpful, and they clearly are focused on ISIL-Daesh, and so we have a common interest, actually."
In fact, just weeks earlier, the State Department itself recognized why Iran's leadership position on the ground in Iraq is so harmful. In 2015, a summary in Country Reports on Terrorism notes, Iran "increased its arming and funding of Iraqi Shia terrorist groups in an effort to reverse ISIL gains in Iraq." The report continues: "Many of these groups . . . have exacerbated sectarian tensions in Iraq and have committed serious human rights abuses against primarily Sunni civilians."
Iranians Execute Scientist Mentioned in Clinton’s E-mails: Jim Geraghty, National Review, Aug. 8, 2016—Yes, the Iranian regime executed a nuclear scientist who reportedly helped U.S. intelligence who was mentioned in Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. From this, one might think that Clinton’s insecure server got the man killed. It probably didn’t help Amiri, but the story is a bit more complicated than that.
Report: U.S. Sent $400M Cash to Iran as American Detainees Freed: CBS News, Aug. 3, 2016— When Iran released four American prisoners in January, including journalist Jason Rezaian and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, it was heralded as a diplomatic breakthrough, CBS News' Margaret Brennan reports.
Iran Sells Weapons to ISIS' Sinai Branch: Ami Rojkes Dombe, Israel Defense, Aug. 8, 2016—A publication on Twitter (oryxspioenkop) reveals photos of ISIS activists holding the Iranian-made AM-50 Sayyad rifle (which is based on the Steyr HS .50). In the past, such weapons were spotted in Gaza, Syria and other places in the Middle East. The capacious10 website adds that the ISIS' Sinai branch is also in possession of Kornet missiles and armored vehicles taken from the Egyptian army. All of the published photos are taken from a video released by the ISIS' Sinai branch.
Ethnic Opposition to Iran’s Regime Is on the Rise: Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, JCPA, July 24, 2016—Since June 2016 and to a lesser extent before then as well, Iran has been enduring terror attacks and assassinations by ethnic-opposition elements operating within its territory and adjacent to it. These include Kurds in the north and near the Iraqi border, Salafi Sunnis near Iran’s eastern border with Pakistan, and Sunni Arabs in the Khuzestan province near the Iraqi border in the southwest.
