We welcome your comments to this and any other CIJR publication.
PLEASE SEE THE CIJR CALENDAR OF IRAN NUCLEAR “DEAL” EVENTS AT THE END OF TODAY’S DAILY BRIEFING—ED.
Farewell to the Era of No Fences: Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 7, 2015 — This was supposed to be the Era of No Fences.
The Horrific Results of Obama’s Failure in Syria: Michael Gerson, Washington Post, Sept. 3, 2015 — One little boy in a red T-shirt, lying face down, drowned, on a Turkish beach, is a tragedy.
The Disintegration of Syria and Its Impact on Israel: Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, JCPA, Aug. 31, 2015— The complex civil war in Syria keeps developing in ways that reinforce the trends that have been evident for some time.
Meet the Iran Lobby: Lee Smith, Tablet, Sept. 1, 2015 — Trita Parsi, the Iranian-born émigré who moved to the United States in 2001 from Sweden, where his parents found refuge before the Islamic Revolution, should be the toast of Washington these days.
European Import Policy: Drybones, Sept. 7, 2015
Help Refugees: Shut the UNRWA, Fund the UNHCR: Paul Gherkin, Jewish Press, Sept. 3, 2015
At Borders to Enter Europe, Suddenly Everyone is Syrian: Dusan Stojanovic, Seattle Times, Sept. 6, 2015
How Bad is the Iran Deal? Let’s Count the Ways: Amir Taheri, New York Post, Sept. 5, 2015
FAREWELL TO THE ERA OF NO FENCES
Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal, Sept. 7, 2015
This was supposed to be the Era of No Fences. No walls between blocs. No borders between countries. No barriers to trade. Visa-free tourism. The single market. A global Internet. Frictionless transactions and seamless exchanges. In short, a flat world. Whatever happened to that?
In the early 1990s, Israel’s then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres published a book called “The New Middle East,” in which he predicted what was soon to be in store for his neighborhood. “Regional common markets reflect the new Zeitgeist,” he gushed. It was only a matter of time before it would become true in his part of the world, too.
I read the book in college, and while it struck me as far-fetched it didn’t seem altogether crazy. The decade from 1989 to 1999 was an age of political, economic, social and technological miracles. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union dissolved. Apartheid ended. The euro and Nafta were born. The first Internet browser was introduced. Oil dropped below $10 a barrel, the Dow topped 10,000, Times Square became safe again. America won a war in Kosovo without losing a single man in combat. Would Israeli businessmen soon be selling hummus and pita to quality-conscious consumers in Damascus? Well, why not?
Contrast this promised utopia with the mind-boggling scenes of tens of thousands of Middle East migrants, marching up the roads and railways of Europe, headed for their German promised land. The images seem like a 21st-century version of the Völkerwanderung, the migration of nations in the late Roman and early Medieval periods. Desperate people, needing a place to go, sweeping a broad landscape like an unchanneled flood. How did this happen? We mistook a holiday from history for the end of it. We built a fenceless world on the wrong set of assumptions about the future. We wanted a new liberal order—one with a lot of liberalism and not a lot of order. We wanted to be a generous civilization without doing the things required to be a prosperous one.
In 2003 the political theorist Robert Kagan wrote a thoughtful book, “Of Paradise and Power,” in which he took stock of the philosophical divide between Americans and Europeans. Americans, he wrote, inhabited the world of Thomas Hobbes, in which “true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might.” Europeans, by contrast, lived in the world of Immanuel Kant, in which “perpetual peace” was guaranteed by a set of cultural conventions, consensually agreed rules and a belief in the virtues of social solidarity overseen by a redistributive state.
These differences didn’t matter much as long as they were confined to panel discussions at Davos. Then came the presidency of Barack Obama, which has adopted the Kantian view. For seven years, the U.S. and Europe have largely been on the same side—the European side—of most of the big issues, especially in the Mideast: getting out of Iraq, drawing down in Afghanistan, lightly intervening in Libya, staying out of Syria, making up with Iran.
The result is our metastasizing global disorder. It’s only going to get worse. The graciousness that Germans have shown the first wave of refugees is a tribute to the country’s sense of humanity and history. But just as the warm welcome is destined to create an irresistible magnet for future migrants, it is also bound to lead to a backlash among Germans.
This year, some 800,000 newcomers are expected in Germany—about 1% of the country’s population. Berlin wants an EU-wide quota system to divvy up the influx, but once the migrants are in Europe they are free to go wherever the jobs and opportunities may be. Germany (with 4.7% unemployment) is going to be a bigger draw than France (10.4%), to say nothing of Italy (12%) or Spain (22%).
If Germany had robust economic and demographic growth, it could absorb and assimilate the influx. It doesn’t, so it can’t. Growth has averaged 0.31% a year since 1991. The country has the world’s lowest birthrate. Tolerant modern Germany now looks with justified disdain toward the petty nationalism, burden-shifting and fence-building of the populist Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán. But it would be foolish to think of Hungary as a political throwback rather than as a harbinger. There is no such thing as a lesson from the past that people won’t ignore for the sake of the convenience of the present.
Is there a way out? Suddenly, there’s talk in Europe about using military power to establish safe zones in Syria to contain the exodus of refugees. If U.S. administrations decide on adopting Kant, Europe, even Germany, may have no choice but to reacquaint itself with Hobbes by rebuilding its military and using hard power against unraveling neighbors.
Europeans will not easily embrace that option. The alternative is to hasten the return to the era of fences. Openness is a virtue purchased through strength.
THE HORRIFIC RESULTS OF OBAMA’S FAILURE IN SYRIA
Michael Gerson
Washington Post, Sept. 3, 2015
One little boy in a red T-shirt, lying face down, drowned, on a Turkish beach, is a tragedy. More than 200,000 dead in Syria, 4 million fleeing refugees and 7.6 million displaced from their homes are statistics. But they represent a collective failure of massive proportions.
For four years, the Obama administration has engaged in what Frederic Hof, former special adviser for transition in Syria, calls a “pantomime of outrage.” Four years of strongly worded protests, and urgent meetings and calls for negotiation — the whole drama a sickening substitute for useful action. People talking and talking to drown out the voice of their own conscience. And blaming. In 2013, President Obama lectured the U.N. Security Council for having “demonstrated no inclination to act at all.” Psychological projection on a global stage.
Always there is Obama’s weary realism. “It’s not the job of the president of the United States to solve every problem in the Middle East.” We must be “modest in our belief that we can remedy every evil.” But we are not dealing here with every problem or every evil; rather a discrete and unique set of circumstances: The largest humanitarian failure of the Obama era is also its largest strategic failure.
At some point, being “modest” becomes the same thing as being inured to atrocities. President Bashar al-Assad’s helicopters continue to drop “barrel bombs” filled with shrapnel and chlorine. In recent attacks on the town of Marea, Islamic State forces have used skin-blistering mustard gas and deployed, over a few days, perhaps 50 suicide bombers. We have seen starvation sieges, and kidnappings, and beheadings, and more than 10,000 dead children. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has changed her country’s asylum rules to welcome every Syrian refugee who arrives. Syrians have taken to calling her “Mama Merkel, Mother of the Outcasts.” I wonder what they call the U.S. president.
At many points during the past four years, even relatively small actions might have reduced the pace of civilian casualties in Syria. How hard would it have been to destroy the helicopters dropping barrel bombs on neighborhoods? A number of options well short of major intervention might have reduced the regime’s destructive power and/or strengthened the capabilities of more responsible forces. All were untaken. This was not some humanitarian problem distant from the center of U.S. interests. It was a crisis at the heart of the Middle East that produced a vacuum of sovereignty that has attracted and empowered some of the worst people in the world. Inaction was a conscious, determined choice on the part of the Obama White House. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and CIA Director David Petraeus advocated arming favorable proxies. Sunni friends and allies in the region asked, then begged, for U.S. leadership. All were overruled or ignored.
In the process, Syria has become the graveyard of U.S. credibility. The chemical weapons “red line.” “The tide of war is receding.” “Don’t do stupid [stuff].” These are global punch lines. “The analogy we use around here sometimes,” said Obama of the Islamic State, “and I think is accurate, is if a JV team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” Now the goal to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State looks unachievable with the current strategy and resources. “The time has come for President Assad to step aside,” said Obama in 2011. Yet Assad will likely outlast Obama in power.
What explains Obama’s high tolerance for humiliation and mass atrocities in Syria? The Syrian regime is Iran’s proxy, propped up by billions of dollars each year. And Obama wanted nothing to interfere with the prospects for a nuclear deal with Iran. He was, as Hof has said, “reluctant to offend the Iranians at this critical juncture.” So the effective concession of Syria as an Iranian zone of influence is just one more cost of the president’s legacy nuclear agreement.
Never mind that Iran will now have tens of billions of unfrozen assets to strengthen Assad’s struggling military. And never mind that Assad’s atrocities are one of the main recruiting tools for the Islamic State and other Sunni radicals. All of which is likely to extend a war that no one can win, which has incubated regional and global threats — and thrown a small body in a red T-shirt against a distant shore.
THE DISINTEGRATION OF SYRIA AND ITS IMPACT ON ISRAEL
Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser
JCPA, Aug. 31, 2015
The complex civil war in Syria keeps developing in ways that reinforce the trends that have been evident for some time. Despite the reports on a number of proposals for ending the conflict, the chances of fostering a breakthrough remain unclear. The recent period has seen the following notable developments:
The Assad regime, with the help of Hizbullah, continues to entrench its control of areas it regards as vital, namely, the Damascus-Homs-Hama coastal axis and the vicinity of the Lebanese border. To secure its control over these territories, Syria continues to employ every tool in its disposal, including the use of chlorine gas barrels and bombing civilian population as was the case in Douma recently. Following the takeover of Qusayr and with the conclusion of the battles in the Qalamoun Mountains (with gains by Hizbullah but without a clear victory), the battle for Zabadani began. Although the regime and Hizbullah forces have made gains in this theater, where they enjoy a clear advantage, they have not yet been able to defeat the opposition, which in this area comprises local, relatively less extreme forces. In any case, the regime and Hizbullah, like the opposition, have been taking heavy casualties. In an unusual speech on July 26, 2015, President Bashar Assad explained that in light of a manpower shortage, the regime’s army is unable to reconquer all the territories that the opposition has seized, and accordingly he has to prioritize which territories to contest based on military, demographic, and economic considerations.
Turkish involvement is growing. Following the Islamic State terror attack in the Turkish town of Suruc on the Syrian border and the spate of terror attacks by the Kurdish underground within Turkey, the Turks decided to attack targets of the Islamic State and of the Kurdish underground in Iraq and to allow the United States to strike Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq from the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. The United States and Turkey have also agreed to set up a safe zone along 95 kilometers of the Syrian border, thereby making it possible for Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria. Meanwhile, Turkey is concentrating on attacking Kurdish targets, actions that, some believe, were approved by the Americans. In the face of Kurdish criticism, the U.S. Administration was forced to deny that the actions had received Washington’s approval…
Against this backdrop, tension is mounting in the Kurdish part of Syria. The area has been taken over by the PYD – the Syrian sister movement of the Turkish PKK, which cooperates with the Assad regime and is successfully fighting the Islamic State in the areas of Kobani and Tall Abyad. Its military force, the PYG, is being aided by Peshmerga forces sent from Iraqi Kurdistan. In light of Turkey’s actions against the PKK, there are signs of stronger unity among the different Kurdish factions in Syria. Considering, however, that these factions tend to be suspicious of each other, this may be a temporary phenomenon…
The nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers has boosted Iran’s capacity to support the Assad regime. The anticipated lifting of the sanctions on Iran is set to enable it to funnel additional resources to this purpose, to which Iran assigns a very high priority. In addition, some believe that the United States now sees Iran as a subcontractor that will fight the Islamic State, which imperils Assad, and is ready to accept a central Iranian role in dealing with the crisis. Not surprisingly, then, the regime feels that it has been strengthened and is waiting for its expectations to materialize. Noteworthy in this context are the increasing contacts among supporters of the Assad regime, including the recent visit to Tehran by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who holds the Syria portfolio, apparently to discuss how the nuclear deal affects Syria and the various proposals for a settlement…
Meanwhile, the regime keeps losing assets in areas it does not regard as strategically crucial. That is especially the case in the areas south and east of Damascus, including the Daraa, Sweida, and Tadmur (Palmyra) regions, and also in the north and particularly the Idlib and Aleppo regions. Recently the important city of Qaryatayn to the east of Homs (where many Christians live) fell to the Islamic State, and battles are raging around Hama, in which control of the territory keeps shifting back and forth. Many analysts have hastened to conclude from this phenomenon that the regime’s demise is now inevitable, its remaining days rapidly dwindling. It is doubtful, though, that this perception is accurate and even more doubtful that the perception has trickled down into the ranks of the regime. There appears to be no increase in the rate of senior figures’ desertion from its ranks.
As for the opposition, the Islamic forces keep gaining strength. The blow dealt by the Al-Nusra Front to Division 30 rebel troops, some of whose fighters were trained by the Americans, is further evidence of this fact. Although the Americans, nonplused, assert that from now on they will also protect the forces they have trained against their foes even within the opposition, it is doubtful that they will be able to do so. Meanwhile, the significance of the name-change for the grouping of Islamist factions that are less extreme than the Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State is still unclear. At first this grouping called itself Jaish al-Fatah (the Army of Conquest/Victory), and it made gains in the Idlib region. Later it changed its name to Jaish al-Umawayn (the descendants of the house of Umaya that ruled from Syria over the upcoming Islamic Caliphate or the Army of the Sons of the Nation), emphasizing its members’ Syrian identity. Forces belonging to this grouping have been playing a central role in the fighting in the Zabadani area.
The contacts between Saudi Arabia and Russia, particularly the visit to Moscow by Defense Minister Muhammad bin Salman (the son of King Salman), are also viewed as potentially affecting the course of the Syrian imbroglio. Some see the beginnings of a Saudi-Russian understanding where, in return for the huge deal with Russia involving military purchases and the building of a nuclear power station, Russia will loosen its support of Assad and agree to his being replaced. Others see indications, conversely, that the Saudis have despaired. It is unclear to what extent either evaluation has any real basis. In any case, most of the reports claim that Saudi Arabia is offering to stop backing the opposition in return for certain concessions by Assad and his supporters…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Lee Smith
Tablet, Sept. 1, 2015
Trita Parsi, the Iranian-born émigré who moved to the United States in 2001 from Sweden, where his parents found refuge before the Islamic Revolution, should be the toast of Washington these days. As I argued in Tablet magazine several years ago, Parsi is an immigrant who in classic American fashion wanted to capitalize on the opportunity to reconcile his new home and his birthplace. And now he’s done it: The founder and president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), the tip of the spear of the Iran Lobby, has won a defining battle over the direction of American foreign policy. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action not only lifts sanctions on Iran, a goal Parsi has fought for since 1997, but also paves the way for a broader reconciliation between Washington and Tehran across the Middle East.
In Washington, to have the policies you advocate implemented with the full backing of the president counts as a huge victory. Winning big like this means power as well as access to more money, which flows naturally to power and augments it—enhancing reputations and offering the ability to reward friends and punish enemies. And yet, Parsi (who declined comment for this story) has got to be frustrated that very few in the halls of American power—either in government or in the media—are celebrating the Iran lobby for its big win. It seems the only thing people can talk about is the big loser in this fight over Middle East policy—the pro-Israel lobby, led by AIPAC. It’s as if Parsi and NIAC had nothing to do with the Obama Administration’s decision to move closer to Iran while further distancing itself from Israel.
“It’s a huge win for NIAC,” said one Iranian-American analyst who requested anonymity. “Every other part of Iranian-American advocacy—from the Mujahedin-e Khalq, to the washed-up old monarchists—is useless, and then in comes Trita and he’s slick, presentable, and knows how to build an impressive network.” So, why is the rise of the Iran Lobby both Washington’s biggest and also its least-heralded success story of the past six years?
In part, Parsi and NIAC’s relative anonymity is the work of a White House that would rather pretend that there is no Iran Lobby, in accordance with the standard Beltway wisdom that a “lobby” is any group of people who advocate things that you are opposed to (lobbies that advocate things you are for are known as “supporters”). But the White House surely knows better, in part because so many friends and graduates of the Iran Lobby now staff key Iran-related government posts. The White House’s Iran desk officer, Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, for example, is a former NIAC employee. NIAC’s advisory board includes two former U.S. diplomats, Thomas Pickering, a former ambassador to Israel, and John Limbert, who was held hostage by the revolutionary regime in 1979. Past speakers at NIAC leadership conferences include Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Colin Kahl, and the White House’s Middle East Director Rob Malley. Other past speakers from the political realm include: Robert Hunter, former U.S. ambassador to NATO; PJ Crowley, State Deptartment spokesperson under Hillary Clinton; Hans Blix, former director general of the IAEA. Other reputable names include figures like Aaron David Miller from the Wilson Center, Robert Pape from the University of Chicago, and Suzanne Maloney from the Brookings Institution.
Indeed, the impressive roster of speakers at NIAC events is evidence of Parsi’s assiduous cultivation of friendly contacts, both here and in Iran. The biggest NIAC booster in academia is the author of The Israel Lobby himself, Harvard University’s Stephen Walt. The in-house portion of Parsi’s network also includes public intellectuals, like Iranian-American authors Hooman Majd and Reza Aslan, as well as figures from Iranian business concerns, like Atieh Bahar, who are reportedly close to the Iranian regime, especially former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
According to a deeply informed video series posted earlier this month by Iranian-American activist Hassan Dai, Parsi has partnered with Atieh Bahar since the very beginning of his career as an Iran lobbyist in order to promote a pro-trade agenda, which of course will inevitably help the regime. (In 2008, Parsi sued Dai, claiming he had “defamed them in a series of articles and blog posts claiming that they had secretly lobbied on behalf of the Iranian regime in the United States.” The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found in 2012 the work of NIAC, which wasn’t registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, “not inconsistent with the idea that he was first and foremost an advocate for the regime.”) “Parsi believed that what stood between U.S.-Iran trade and dialogue,” said Dai, “was AIPAC.”…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
European Import Policy: Drybones, Sept. 7, 2015
Help Refugees: Shut the UNRWA, Fund the UNHCR: Paul Gherkin, Jewish Press, Sept. 3, 2015 —There is a mass migration occurring in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa). People are fleeing their home countries due to turmoil and are crossing land and sea to escape to more stable societies.
At Borders to Enter Europe, Suddenly Everyone is Syrian: Dusan Stojanovic, Seattle Times, Sept. 6, 2015—A Pakistani identity card in the bushes, a Bangladeshi one in a cornfield. A torn Iraqi driver’s license bearing the photo of a man with a Saddam-style mustache, another one with a woman in a scarf displaying a shy smile.
How Bad is the Iran Deal? Let’s Count the Ways: Amir Taheri, New York Post, Sept. 5, 2015 —A fatwa that doesn’t exist, a wish list that no one signed, a resolution that contradicts the wish list, a protocol that no one has seen…
“Day of Jewish Unity” Ahead of Congress Iran Vote: Tues., September 8, 7:00AM-12PM, Everywhere!
Tuesday, September 8, 12:30 PM Washington, D.C.
Iran Deal Press Conference, featuring Members of Congress, Americans effected by Iranian terrorism, and luminaries to speak out against the Iranian Nuclear Deal.
Where: Washington DC: "West Grassy Area," facing the ellipse, in front of the Capitol building.
Wednesday, September 9, Toronto, ON, 4:30-6:30PM
Rally to protest the proposed agreement with Iran and the relentless ISIS genocide of the Yezidi people.
Where: in front of the US Consulate at University and Queen Streets in Toronto.
Wednesday, September 9, Washington, D.C.
Tea Party Patriots, Center for Security Policy, Zionist Organization of America To Host DC Rally
Where: West Lawn of the Capitol, Washington, D.C.
Keynote speakers: Sen. Ted Cruz , Donald Trump
Wednesday, September 9, 8:00 PM – New Jersey
Where: Congregation B'nai Tikvah, 1001 Finnegan Lane, North Brunswick Township, NJ
