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When Did America Forget That it’s America?: Natan Sharansky, Washington Post, Apr. 17, 2015 — On a number of occasions during the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the Israeli government has appealed to the United States and its allies to demand a change in Tehran’s aggressive behavior.
Strategic Folly in the Framework Agreement with Iran: Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaacov Amidror, BESA, Apr. 20, 2015 The nuclear framework agreement signed between Iran and world powers, namely the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, on April 2, was defined by U.S. President Barack Obama as an “historic understanding,”…
Iran’s Grand Strategy is to Become a Regional Powerhouse: Michael Morell, Washington Post, Apr. 3, 2015— One of the interesting aspects of international affairs is that states and nonstate actors will occasionally say publicly exactly what they are thinking, doing and planning to do. No need for spies, no need for diplomats — just a need to listen.
War in Yemen Is Allowing Qaeda Group to Expand: Saeed Al-Batati & Kareem Fahim, New York Times, Apr. 16, 2015— Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen took control of a major airport and an oil export terminal in the southern part of the country on Thursday, expanding the resurgent militant group’s reach just two weeks after it seized the nearby city of Al Mukalla and emptied its bank and prison.
Danger of Iran Deal is Not Because Tehran Lies, But Because it Doesn’t: Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, Apr. 16, 2015
Ten Maps That Explain Iran's Power Play in the Middle East: Patrick Martin, Tonia Cowan and Trish McAlaster, Globe & Mail, Apr. 14, 2015
Keeping up the Fight in Yemen: Eli Lake, Bloomberg, Apr. 17, 2015
The Ineffective Campaign in Yemen: Max Boot, Commentary, Apr . 17, 2015
WHEN DID AMERICA FORGET THAT IT’S AMERICA?
Natan Sharansky
Washington Post, Apr. 17, 2015
On a number of occasions during the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the Israeli government has appealed to the United States and its allies to demand a change in Tehran’s aggressive behavior. If Iran wishes to be treated as a normal state, Israel has said, then it should start acting like one. Unfortunately, these appeals have been summarily dismissed. The Obama administration apparently believes that only after a nuclear agreement is signed can the free world expect Iran to stop its attempts at regional domination, improve its human rights record and, in general, behave like the civilized state it hopes the world will recognize it to be.
As a former Soviet dissident, I cannot help but compare this approach to that of the United States during its decades-long negotiations with the Soviet Union, which at the time was a global superpower and a existential threat to the free world. The differences are striking and revealing. For starters, consider that the Soviet regime felt obliged to make its first ideological concession simply to enter into negotiations with the United States about economic cooperation. At the end of the 1950s, Moscow abandoned its doctrine of fomenting a worldwide communist revolution and adopted in its place a credo of peaceful coexistence between communism and capitalism. The Soviet leadership paid a high price for this concession, both internally — in the form of millions of citizens, like me, who had been obliged to study Marxism and Leninism as the truth and now found their partial abandonment confusing — and internationally, in their relations with the Chinese and other dogmatic communists who viewed the change as a betrayal. Nevertheless, the Soviet government understood that it had no other way to get what it needed from the United States.
Imagine what would have happened if instead, after completing a round of negotiations over disarmament, the Soviet Union had declared that its right to expand communism across the continent was not up for discussion. This would have spelled the end of the talks. Yet today, Iran feels no need to tone down its rhetoric calling for the death of America and wiping Israel off the map. Of course, changes in rhetoric did not change the Soviet Union’s policy, which included sending missiles to Cuba, tanks to Prague and armies to Afghanistan. But each time, such aggression caused a serious crisis in relations between Moscow and Washington, influencing the atmosphere and results of negotiations between them. So, for example, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan shortly after the SALT II agreement had been signed, the United States quickly abandoned the deal and accompanying discussions. Today, by contrast, apparently no amount of belligerence on Iran’s part can convince the free world that Tehran has disqualified itself from the negotiations or the benefits being offered therein. Over the past month alone, as nuclear discussions continued apace, we watched Iran’s proxy terror group, Hezbollah, transform into a full-blown army on Israel’s northern border, and we saw Tehran continue to impose its rule on other countries, adding Yemen to the list of those under its control.
Then there is the question of human rights. When American negotiations with the Soviets reached the issue of trade, and in particular the lifting of sanctions and the conferring of most-favored-nation status on the Soviet Union, the Senate, led by Democrat Henry Jackson, insisted on linking economic normalization to Moscow’s allowing freedom of emigration. By the next year, when the Helsinki agreement was signed, the White House had joined Congress in making the Soviets’ treatment of dissidents a central issue in nearly every negotiation. Iran’s dismal human rights record, by contrast, has gone entirely unmentioned in the recent negotiations. Sadly, America’s reticence is familiar: In 2009, in response to the democratic uprisings that mobilized so many Iranian citizens, President Obama declared that engaging the theocratic regime would take priority over changing it. Reality is complicated, and the use of historical analogies is always somewhat limited. But even this superficial comparison shows that what the United States saw fit to demand back then from the most powerful and dangerous competitor it had ever known is now considered beyond the pale in its dealings with Iran.
Why the dramatic shift? One could suggest a simple answer: Today there is something the United States wants badly from Iran, leaving Washington and its allies with little bargaining power to demand additional concessions. Yet in fact Iran has at least as many reasons to hope for a deal. For Tehran, the lifting of sanctions could spell the difference between bankruptcy and becoming a regional economic superpower, and in slowing down its arms race it could avoid a military attack. I am afraid that the real reason for the U.S. stance is not its assessment, however incorrect, of the two sides’ respective interests but rather a tragic loss of moral self-confidence. While negotiating with the Soviet Union, U.S. administrations of all stripes felt certain of the moral superiority of their political system over the Soviet one. They felt they were speaking in the name of their people and the free world as a whole, while the leaders of the Soviet regime could speak for no one but themselves and the declining number of true believers still loyal to their ideology.
But in today’s postmodern world, when asserting the superiority of liberal democracy over other regimes seems like the quaint relic of a colonialist past, even the United States appears to have lost the courage of its convictions. We have yet to see the full consequences of this moral diffidence, but one thing is clear: The loss of America’s self-assured global leadership threatens not only the United States and Israel but also the people of Iran and a growing number of others living under Tehran’s increasingly emboldened rule. Although the hour is growing late, there is still time to change course — before the effects grow more catastrophic still.
STRATEGIC FOLLY IN THE FRAMEWORK AGREEMENT WITH IRAN
Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaacov Amidror
BESA, Apr. 20, 2015
The nuclear framework agreement signed between Iran and world powers, namely the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, on April 2, was defined by U.S. President Barack Obama as an “historic understanding,” while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defined the deal as “bad.” Both leaders are right: The deal has radically changed Iran’s position in the global theater in exchange for Iran temporarily slowing down its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and in this respect it is indeed “historic.” However, the agreement affords Iran the status of a regional power and legitimizes it as a nuclear threshold state. It is now up to Iran to decide when to cross this threshold, and in this respect it is a “bad” deal.
The U.S. changed its policy mid-negotiations, at first demanding that Iran be stripped of its nuclear weapons production capabilities but later agreeing only to place limitations and supervision on these capabilities. The framework deal clearly indicates that the U.S. has come to accept that Iran will one day possess military nuclear capabilities, and that at the end of the supervision period there would be nothing stopping the Islamic Republic from realizing this potential. Obama told the American people as much in a radio interview, before his spokesmen rushed to say he was misunderstood. But even if that was the case, Obama’s statements reflected the reality which may arise from any final agreement with Iran. This reality entails three scenarios. The first may see the Iranians relinquish their nuclear efforts, willingly or otherwise. Some in the U.S. administration believe this is a viable option, and that bolstering the moderate forces within Iran will eventually effect change. The second scenario may see the Iranians diligently follow the agreement, while stabilizing their economy, reinforcing their regional status, strengthening their allies, such as Hezbollah, and enhancing their nuclear expertise. Then, once the agreement’s sunset clause comes into effect, the Iranians will resume the military aspects of their program with renewed zeal.
Throughout the negotiations, that U.S. has attempted to prolong the period during which Iran would be unable to pursue nuclear capabilities, saying that if Tehran complies with the agreement, it would buy the West more time, at least a decade. The administration’s excuse was that a deferral of the matter was preferable to the alternative, a military operation, which may not buy the West the same amount of time, making the deal a better option. The third scenario may see the Iranians bide their time and wait for the right moment to violate the deal. This will probably happen only after all the sanctions are lifted, and after enough countries have vested financial interests in Iran, which would deter them from targeting its economy. The U.S., for its part, has pledged to put in place rigorous inspection practices, which would guarantee the West at least a year to detect any violation of the agreement.
Would such an agreement guarantee, to any extent, a change in Iran’s nuclear aspirations? It seems the opposite is true. In the near future, the agreement will only fuel Iran’s desire to realize the potential outlined and legitimized by the deal. The hope that the agreement will somehow breed a positive process in Iran has no hold in reality. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appears eager for his country to obtain nuclear weapons. In fact, there is no debate within the Iranian leadership on whether or not such capabilities are necessary, only about the best way to go about achieving them. Only a profound misunderstanding of the nature of the Iranian regime could lead anyone to believe that this or any deal will somehow satisfy the ayatollahs’ nuclear ambitions, to the point of becoming a game changer.
Is there really no military alternative that could result in a longer setback to Tehran’s nuclear program, one that could outweigh the delay outlined in the current deal? After all, it was under orders from Obama that the U.S. developed a weapon that could seriously compromise Iran’s nuclear facilities. The argument that any military strike would result in only a short-term setback in Iran’s nuclear endeavors is wrong, because the seemingly professional American calculation on the matter is purely technical. This calculation is flawed because it fails to account for the effect a successful strike would have on Tehran’s willingness to invest in rehabilitating a program that could be destroyed in a matter of several nights, which is how long the U.S. said it would take to strike all of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
I believe that Iran, subject to crippling sanctions, would not rush to resuscitate its nuclear program in the event it was destroyed by the U.S. It also stands to reason that Iran’s actual ability to retaliate over such a strike, other than by putting Hezbollah in play, would be limited. An American strike could buy the West more than just a few years, but its reluctance to assume the risks involved in a military operation is understandable. Regardless, the reality is clear: The U.S. can forcibly bring the Iranian nuclear program to a halt; it simply chooses not to do so…
[To Read the Full Article With Footnotes Click the Following Link—Ed.]
IRAN’S GRAND STRATEGY IS TO BECOME A REGIONAL POWERHOUSE
Michael Morell
Washington Post, Apr. 3, 2015
One of the interesting aspects of international affairs is that states and nonstate actors will occasionally say publicly exactly what they are thinking, doing and planning to do. No need for spies, no need for diplomats — just a need to listen. In the mid-1990s, Osama bin Laden said repeatedly that he saw the United States as his most important enemy and therefore as his key target. Bin Laden delivered on these warnings in August 1998 in East Africa, in October 2000 in Yemen and in September 2001 in New York and Washington.
In a hotly contested election campaign in early 1998, India’s Bharatiya Janata Party told voters in its platform that, if elected, it would openly deploy nuclear weapons. Once the BJP was in office, analysts played down the nuclear plank as campaign rhetoric. They were proved wrong in May 1998 when India conducted multiple underground nuclear tests, becoming a declared nuclear weapons state.
The world recently witnessed another moment of such candor — and it came just weeks before Iran and world powers agreed to a framework for how to handle Iran’s nuclear program over the next 10 to 15 years. Last month, a senior adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke at a conference in Tehran on “Iran, Nationalism, History, and Culture.” The adviser made clear that Iran’s ambition is to become a regional hegemon — in short, to reestablish the Persian empire. The adviser, Ali Younesi — who was head of intelligence for former president Mohammad Khatami — told conference attendees, “Since its inception, Iran has [always] had a global [dimension]. It was born an empire. Iran’s leaders, officials and administrators have always thought in the global” dimension.
Younesi defined the territory of the Iranian empire, which he called “Greater Iran,” as reaching from the borders of China and including the Indian subcontinent, the north and south Caucasus and the Persian Gulf. He said Iraq is the capital of the Iranian Empire — a reference to the ancient city of Babylon, in present-day Iraq, which was the center of Persian life for centuries. “We are protecting the interests of [all] the people in the region — because they are all Iran’s people,” he said. “We must try to once again spread the banner of Islamic-Iranian unity and peace in the region. Iran must bear this responsibility, as it did in the past.”
Younesi said that the aim of Iranian actions in “Greater Iran” was to ensure the security of the people there, adding that Saudi Arabia has nothing to fear from Iran’s actions because the Saudis are incapable of defending the people of the region. He also said that anything that enters Iran is improved by becoming Iranian, particularly Islam itself, adding that Islam in its Iranian-Shiite form is the pure Islam, since it has shed all traces of Arabism. These are not the views of a single individual. They are shared widely among Iranian elites. They are also not new. They stretch back decades and are deeply rooted in Iranian society and Persian culture.
Younesi’s speech was an outline of Iran’s grand strategy. And, most important, it puts into context Iran’s behavior in the region — largely covert operations to undermine its Arab neighbors, Israel and the United States, the countries that stand in the way of its pursuit of hegemony. Iran conducts terrorism as a tool of statecraft — it is one of the only countries in the world to do so — largely against its neighbors. An Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States in a Georgetown restaurant was foiled in 2011. Iran supports international terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, which was behind the 1983 attacks on the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 258 Americans. These attacks are seen as the beginning of Islamic jihad against the United States as well as the start of the use of suicide car and truck bombs.
Hezbollah’s stated reason for its existence is to destroy Israel. This is also Iranian state policy. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the most powerful person in the country, said in a speech in Tehran in late 2013, “Zionist officials cannot be called humans; they are like animals, some of them. The Israeli regime is doomed to failure and annihilation.” Iran also provides support to Shiite groups in the region with the intent of reinforcing Shiite-led governments or overthrowing Sunni Arab regimes. Tehran’s extensive support has assisted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s killing of more than 100,000 of his own citizens. Iran’s support to Shiite militia groups during the Iraq war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of U.S. servicemen there. One of Iran’s proxies, the Houthis, recently overthrew the popularly elected government in Yemen.
This grand strategy, of course, is inconsistent with U.S. interests, and Iran knows that. At the conference, Younesi said that Iran was operating in Greater Iran against Sunni Islamic extremism, as well as against the Saudi Wahhabis, Turkey, secularists, Western rule and Zionism. The nuclear framework agreement announced Thursday is a good deal for the United States. If fully implemented by Iran, it will push Iran’s breakout time to produce a weapon from just a few months to beyond a year, while making it difficult for Iran to cheat. But it will also, once sanctions are lifted, give Iran more resources to pursue its grand strategy, as outlined so clearly by Younesi. It has always been important that the United States and our allies have a policy to counter this strategy and contain Iran — and now it is even more important that we do so.
WAR IN YEMEN IS ALLOWING QAEDA GROUP TO EXPAND
Saeed Al-Batati & Kareem Fahim
New York Times, Apr. 16, 2015
Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen took control of a major airport and an oil export terminal in the southern part of the country on Thursday, expanding the resurgent militant group’s reach just two weeks after it seized the nearby city of Al Mukalla and emptied its bank and prison. Local officials said that fighters belonging to the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, also known as AQAP, took control of the Riyan Airport and a nearby military base outside Al Mukalla, the fifth-largest city in Yemen. The group also seized the Dhabah oil terminal on the Arabian Sea coast, which the group had tried to capture before, according to Yemeni officials.
Al Qaeda is capitalizing on the expanding multisided war in Yemen and the collapse of its government to carve out territory for itself. When its fighters stormed Al Mukalla, the capital of Hadhramaut Province, they seized government buildings, looted the central bank office and freed hundreds of inmates from the city penitentiary, including a senior leader of the group. Al Qaeda’s adversaries in Yemen are largely in disarray or distracted by other fighting. Military units have melted away or put up little resistance as Al Qaeda has advanced. The Houthis, a militia movement from northern Yemen that is considered Al Qaeda’s most determined foe, have been preoccupied with battles against rival militias across the country, and their fighters have been battered by aerial assaults from the Saudi-led Arab coalition, which is trying to restore the exiled government to power.
Saudi Arabia has focused on crippling the Houthis, leaving Al Qaeda all but unopposed around Al Mukalla, though the group was dealt a setback this week when a top figure and several other members were killed in an American drone strike. Still, the Saudi assaults on the Houthis have indirectly helped empower Al Qaeda in ways the group had not enjoyed before. Its fighters are now developing relations with Yemeni tribal leaders who share antipathy for the Houthis and their allies, said Jamal Benomar, the United Nations diplomat who had unsuccessfully sought to achieve a political reconciliation in Yemen. “For the first time, Al Qaeda is building a strategic alliance with the tribes,” Mr. Benomar, who has requested a reassignment, said in an interview at The New York Times on Wednesday. “It is a strengthened and dangerous Al Qaeda. This is what worries everybody.”
In Washington, Pentagon officials acknowledged that the American-backed Saudi airstrikes have created more space for Al Qaeda to gain territory. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, in a news conference, called gains by the group “of serious concern” to the United States. “It’s obvious that it’s easier to do our counterterror operations when there’s a settled government” in Yemen, he said. “In the meantime, we need to, and do, protect ourselves against AQAP. Because they are dangerous.” Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of the United States Central Command, was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Thursday for meetings with Saudi officials. Mr. Carter said that the United States would continue to support the Saudi campaign, calling the kingdom “a longstanding friend and ally,” and that the United States was trying to “help them protect themselves and their own border.” Mr. Carter characterized the Saudi objective in Yemen as restoring “a political process there in which a legitimate government can be established.”
With growing alarm over the extremists’ gains and the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, Khaled Bahah, a top official in the exiled government, called on Thursday for the Houthis to halt their offensive as a condition for peace talks. Speaking in Saudi Arabia, where the government has taken refuge, Mr. Bahah said the “language of reason and dialogue must be given priority.” But first, he said, the Houthis must halt their attacks and “stop tampering with the destiny of the nation and destroying its institutions.” Mr. Bahah was appointed vice president on Sunday by President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled Yemen shortly before the Saudis began bombing.
Mr. Bahah, who served as Yemen’s last prime minister, is widely viewed as a conciliatory figure among the country’s increasingly fractured and polarized political elite. His appointment as vice president was seen as an attempt to bridge the divisions fueling the war and to provide alternative leadership to that of Mr. Hadi, who lacks any significant base of support. But a senior Houthi official, responding to Mr. Bahah’s comments on Thursday, told Reuters that the Saudi-led bombing campaign had to stop “immediately and without conditions.” The political deadlock has contributed to increasingly dire assessments from international aid agencies about the toll on civilians in Yemen, a country that must import nearly all of its food. The Saudi-led military coalition has imposed an air and sea blockade, which, along with the fighting, has caused critical shortages of food and fuel in many cities, including Sana, the capital, and Aden, a southern port gripped by combat for weeks…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Danger of Iran Deal is Not Because Tehran Lies, But Because it Doesn’t: Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, Apr. 16, 2015 —Who trusts Iran? Most Americans don’t. According to two new polls, a majority of the public strongly doubts the ruling theocrats in Tehran can be counted on to keep their end of any nuclear deal negotiated in the US-led “P5+1” talks in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Ten Maps That Explain Iran's Power Play in the Middle East: Patrick Martin, Tonia Cowan and Trish McAlaster, Globe & Mail, Apr. 14, 2015 —Iran and Saudi Arabia, which have been at odds for decades, view themselves as defenders of Shia and Sunni Islam, respectively. Today, flashpoints in their regional power struggle stretch from Yemen to Syria as Iran supports Shia minorities and Saudi Arabia mobilizes to check Iran’s growing influence.
Keeping up the Fight in Yemen: Eli Lake, Bloomberg, Apr. 17, 2015 —When U.S. special operations forces exited Yemen last month, it was seen as a severe blow to the fight against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which U.S. President Barack Obama had previously held up as a success in the global effort against terrorism.
The Ineffective Campaign in Yemen: Max Boot, Commentary, Apr . 17, 2015 —Almost a month ago, on March 25, the Saudis launched what they called Operation Decisive Storm to stop the onslaught of the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen. It turns out that, to no one’s surprise, Decisive Storm isn’t actually decisive.
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