CONTENTS

1. “The worst agreement in U.S. diplomatic history” (By Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, July 2, 2015)
2. “How an Iran nuclear deal would upend U.S. non-proliferation policy” (By Ray Takeyh, Wall St Journal, July 4, 2015)
3. “The true winner in Syria: Iran” (By Ari Heistein, Haaretz, July 5, 2015)
4. “The Terrorist Challenge – Understanding and Misunderstanding” (By Amir Taheri, Asharq Al-Awsat, July 3, 2015)

 

ARTICLES

“THE DEVIL IS NOT IN THE DETAILS”

The worst agreement in U.S. diplomatic history
By Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post
July 2, 2015

WASHINGTON -- The devil is not in the details. It’s in the entire conception of the Iran deal, animated by President Obama’s fantastical belief that he, uniquely, could achieve detente with a fanatical Islamist regime whose foundational purpose is to cleanse the Middle East of the poisonous corruption of American power and influence.

In pursuit of his desire to make the Islamic Republic into an accepted, normalized “successful regional power,” Obama decided to take over the nuclear negotiations. At the time, Tehran was reeling – the rial plunging, inflation skyrocketing, the economy contracting – under a regime of international sanctions painstakingly constructed over a decade.

Then, instead of welcoming Congress’ attempt to tighten sanctions to increase the pressure on the mullahs, Obama began the negotiations by loosening sanctions, injecting billions into the Iranian economy (which began growing again in 2014) and conceding in advance an Iranian right to enrich uranium.

It has been downhill ever since. Desperate for a legacy deal, Obama has played the supplicant, abandoning every red line his administration had declared essential to any acceptable deal.

Inspections

They were to be anywhere, anytime, unimpeded. Now? Total cave. Unfettered access has become “managed access.” Nuclear inspectors will have to negotiate and receive Iranian approval for inspections. Which allows them denial and/or crucial delay for concealing any clandestine activities.

To give a flavor of the degree of our capitulation, the administration played Iran’s lawyer on this one, explaining that, after all, “the United States of America wouldn’t allow anybody to get into every military site, so that’s not appropriate.” Apart from the absurdity of morally equating America with the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, if we were going to parrot the Iranian position, why wait 19 months to do so – after repeatedly insisting on free access as essential to any inspection regime?

Coming clean on past nuclear activity

The current interim agreement that governed the last 19 months of negotiation required Iran to do exactly that. Tehran has offered nothing. The administration had insisted that this accounting was essential because how can you verify future illegal advances in Iran’s nuclear program if you have no baseline?

After continually demanding access to their scientists, plans and weaponization facilities, Secretary of State John Kerry two weeks ago airily dismissed the need, saying he is focused on the future, “not fixated” on the past. And that we have “absolute knowledge” of the Iranian program anyway – a whopper that his staffers had to spend days walking back.

Not to worry, we are told. The accounting will be done after the final deal is signed. Which is ridiculous. If the Iranians haven’t budged on disclosing previous work under the current sanctions regime, by what logic will they comply after sanctions are lifted?

Sanctions relief

These were to be gradual and staged as the International Atomic Energy Agency certified Iranian compliance over time. Now we’re going to be releasing up to $150 billion as an upfront signing bonus. That’s 25 times the annual budget of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Enough to fuel a generation of intensified Iranian aggression from Yemen to Lebanon to Bahrain.

Yet three months ago, Obama expressed nonchalance about immediate sanctions relief. It’s not the issue, he said. The real issue is “snap-back” sanctions to be reimposed if Iran is found in violation.

Good grief. Iran won’t be found in violation. The inspection regime is laughable and the bureaucratic procedures endless. Moreover, does anyone imagine that Russia and China will reimpose sanctions? Or that the myriad European businesses preparing to join the Iranian gold rush the day the deal is signed will simply turn around and go home?

Non-nuclear-related sanctions

The administration insisted that the nuclear talks would not affect separate sanctions imposed because of Iranian aggression and terrorism. That was then. The administration is now leaking that everything will be lifted.

Taken together, the catalog of capitulations is breathtaking: spot inspections, disclosure of previous nuclear activity, gradual sanctions relief, retention of non-nuclear sanctions.

What’s left? A surrender document of the kind offered by defeated nations suing for peace. Consider: The strongest military and economic power on Earth, backed by the five other major powers, armed with what had been a crushing sanctions regime, is about to sign the worst international agreement in American diplomatic history.

How did it come to this? With every concession, Obama and Kerry made clear they were desperate for a deal.

And they will get it. Obama will get his “legacy.” Kerry will get his Nobel. And Iran will get the bomb.

 

THE END OF U.S. NON-PROLIFERATION POLICY

How an Iran Nuclear Deal Would Upend U.S. Non-Proliferation Policy
By Ray Takeyh
Wall Street Journal
July 4, 2015 (posted online, not yet in print)

The specter haunting negotiations between Iran and the U.S. is neither congressional hawks nor alarmed Israelis. It is Lyndon Johnson. Although the Johnson administration is better known for the Vietnam War and the Great Society, it was also the architect of contemporary U.S. non-proliferation policy. And that sensible policy stands to be eviscerated by a deal over Iran’s nuclear program.

In October 1964, China detonated an atomic bomb, sending shock waves throughout the U.S. government. Suddenly it was not just selective Western nations that possessed the bomb but a revolutionary Asian power. Fears of nuclear know-how proliferating from East Asia to Latin America gripped U.S. policymakers. Under the direction of Roswell Gilpatric, former deputy secretary of defense, U.S. policy toward the bomb was evaluated and assessed. A report by the Gilpatric committee established parameters of U.S. policy toward proliferation that would guide successive administrations for the next five decades.

In the wake of the committee’s recommendations–accepted after spirited debate–the U.S. took a firm line on access to sensitive nuclear technologies by both adversaries and allies. It sought to prevent all countries from enriching uranium or reprocessing plutonium. Under the new strictures should, say, West Germany, Taiwan, or South Korea be tempted to pursue the technological precursors to the bomb, they would be risking their security ties to the United States. In short, it was in the 1960s that the United States became a proliferation hawk.

In 1968 President Johnson signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that was to regulate civilian nuclear programs. Peaceful nuclear energy has industrial uses, but the U.S. government position held that there was no need for states to enrich uranium to benefit from atomic power. It was U.S. policy that becoming a signatory of the NPT meant that a nation could use nuclear energy but not necessarily develop certain technologies that could easily be converted for military purposes. The U.S. also went on to institute rigorous export controls and established the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which restricts nuclear commerce. The efforts of several U.S. administrations–Republican and Democratic–were among the reasons that more states did not build the bomb after China.

U.S. actions on non-proliferation strained relations with many allies, including the enterprising shah of Iran. It is a talking point of the Islamic Republic today that Washington looked the other way and even assisted the shah as he sought to develop a nuclear weapon capability. This claim has been accepted as a truism by many U.S. policymakers and analysts. But the historical record belies such assertions. The Ford and Carter administrations opposed the shah’s quest for completion of the fuel cycle and refused to give him access to sensitive nuclear technologies. Washington insisted that the shah, then head of a regime considered a reliable U.S. ally, forgo the capacity to either enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium.

Any impending nuclear agreement with Iran would indeed be a landmark accord – for it would upend 50 years of U.S. policy. To be sure, there were failures along the way as India, Pakistan, and North Korea defied the U.S. and built their own bombs. But Washington did not facilitate their programs and, in each instance, tried to derail their efforts.

Today, by contrast, the U.S. appears poised to concede to an adversarial regime not only an enrichment capacity but also one that is likely to be industrialized after the expiration of a sunset clause. This would have been like Washington aiding the Soviets in constructing the bomb in the 1940s or helping China in the 1960s. There is no dispute between the Obama White House and its critics that Iran is a revolutionary regime seeking to expand its influence in the Middle East. Tehran’s destabilizing regional activities come at the detriment of the United States and its allies. The baffling part of all this is that Washington is seeking to conclude an agreement that envisions this radical regime gaining access to a sophisticated nuclear infrastructure that will not permanently be limited to peaceful exploitation of atomic power.

(Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.)

 

“PURE AND UNABASHED SELF-INTEREST”

The true winner in Syria: Iran
The gruesome images coming out of Syria make it hard to imagine it in such terms, but Tehran sees Damascus as an investment.
By Ari Heistein
Haaretz
July 5, 2015

While many in the United States discussed the ramifications of Iran losing Syria, Tehran was busy taking it. The Islamic Republic’s aid to the Syrian regime is not about cutting its losses, but about achieving economic, political and strategic goals that had previously been out of reach. There is nothing ideological about this alliance – it is and always has been pure and unabashed self-interest. The gruesome images coming out of Syria make it hard to imagine it in such terms, but Iran sees Damascus as an investment.

The Iranians have capitalized on the Syrian civil war to solidify their political control over the Syrian regime, changing a shaky ally into a dependable proxy. The origin of the Syrian-Iranian alliance is the Iran-Iraq war, as Syria was one of just two Arab countries to support the Iranians in their fight against Saddam Hussein. Syria’s support for Iran throughout this conflict was not about the ideological affinity of the two regimes but rather a shared interest in weakening Iraq. In fact, Syria and Iraq were much more culturally and ideologically aligned than Syria and Iran; Syria and Iraq were controlled by secular Arab Ba’athist regimes, while the government of Iran was a theocracy.

In the wake of the collapse of its longtime Soviet patron, there were several indications that Syria would try to follow in the footsteps of Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat by making peace with Israel and reorienting itself towards the U.S. and away from Iran. Serious peace talks were held between Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and the Israeli leadership in 1993 under Yitzhak Rabin, in 1995 under Shimon Peres, and in 2000 under Ehud Barak. The negotiations were unsuccessful largely due to the inflexibility of both countries regarding Syria’s demand that Israel fully withdraw to the pre-1967 boundaries, based on the precedent set by the Israeli peace accords with Egypt.

Though U.S.-Syrian relations did improve in the 1990s and later included some cooperation against al-Qaeda after 9/11, the 2003 Iraq war and Syrian assistance to those resisting the U.S. occupation of Iraq caused the thawing relations to freeze over. Hopes for an Israeli-Syrian peace were revived one last time when negotiations resumed in 2007 with the help of Turkey. The following year, the U.S. State Department reviewed its Syria policy, “leading to an effort to engage with Syria to find areas of mutual interest, reduce regional tensions, and promote Middle East peace.” Tehran was obviously concerned enough about the prospect of Syria “flipping” that Hussein Shariatmadari, an advisor to Iran’s supreme leader, publicly warned against it. However, U.S.-Syrian relations would soon sour as a result of Assad’s crackdown on Arab Spring protests, and since then the U.S. has withheld diplomatic efforts to put a crack in the “axis of resistance.”

By 2012, Iranian concerns regarding the blossoming of U.S.-Syrian relations or the signing of Israeli-Syrian peace accords were little more than a memory. As the conflict in Syria took on more sectarian and violent dimensions, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) supported an increasingly dependent and brutal Assad in his suppression of dissent. By January 2013, the Iranians had so much influence over the Syrian agenda that in a prisoner swap between the regime and the rebels, Assad did not demand the release of local loyalists but of 48 IRGC commanders in exchange for more than 2,000 rebels and anti-regime activists.

Also, the economic gains that Iran stands to make from this conflict have often been overlooked, as most assume that Tehran is just willing to stomach billions of dollars in financial losses in exchange for strategic benefit. Though Iran was often pushing to exert greater influence over Syria in their marriage of convenience, the Assads made sure to minimize their economic dependence on Iran, a fact evident in the extremely small volume of trade between the two countries in the years leading up to the Arab Spring.

While trade between the U.S. and Syria reached $940 million in 2010, the volume of trade between the supposed “Tehran-Damascus axis” was less than one-half that. One could argue that this was merely incidental or that economic cooperation between the countries simply wasn’t necessary, but counterbalancing Iranian influence by strengthening economic ties to other countries was Damascus’ unofficial state policy rather than coincidence. For example, out of six cellular companies vying for the rights to operate a third mobile network in Syria in 2010 (including companies from Qatar, the UAE, Turkey and Saudi Arabia – ostensibly more hostile to the “axis of resistance”), the only bid rejected was from an Iranian company rumored to be connected to the IRGC.

However, after the uprising against Assad began and Syria’s trading partners abided by the sanctions against it, Iran was not placed “in a foreign-policy predicament” but rather was positioned to exploit the fact that Assad no longer had the luxury to keep it at arm’s length. Despite Syria’s declining economic state, Syrian-Iranian trade has tripled since 2010, reaching $1 billion in 2014, and is expected to continue growing. Also, Iran’s close ties to the regime and its status as the Middle East’s largest producer of cement and iron mean that it is well-positioned to benefit from Syria’s ongoing destruction and reconstruction.

Though Iran has largely planned its strategy under the assumption that the Assad regime would survive, it has also trained and armed Syrian militias to serve Iranian interests long after state institutions have collapsed. Iran has invested a great deal in keeping Assad afloat while preparing for his fall, and as part of a “plan B” to maintain influence in case the Assad regime collapses, Iran and Hezbollah are cultivating relationships with minority-based militias fighting on Assad’s side. These militias include the shadowy criminal network with close ties to the Assad family known as the shabiha as well as the jaysh al-sha’bi which have been trained, and supplied by Iran and Hezbollah based on the model of the Iranian Basij militia. The more loosely affiliated militias will likely prove durable allies should Iran decide to cut costs by supporting a Shi’ite insurgency in a post-Assad Sunni-controlled Syria, rather than continuing to prop up the Syrian government. In essence, Iran has used the Syrian civil war as an opportunity to both nurture Assad’s political, economic, and military dependence and simultaneously support and train militias that can serve the interests of the Islamic Republic should Assad’s government prove unsustainable.

Granted, the fragmentation of Syria translates into only partial Iranian control of the country. Yet, in spite of the fact that it holds only about 50 percent of the territory, the Assad regime controls between 55 and 72 percent of the remaining population. ISIS may hold a great deal of territory in Syria, but it is clear from the sparsely dotted cities in the maps of its territory that it controls mostly Syrian desert and rural areas rather than urban centers. Provided the joint Syria-Iran-Hezbollah efforts can hold a few key areas like the road between Damascus and Beirut, the Assad regime’s ability to serve as a conduit for weapons flowing from Iran to Hezbollah will remain intact.

The Syrian civil war is approaching its fifth year and the P5+1 is hammering out a nuclear deal with Iran that could potentially unfreeze hundreds of billions of dollars in assets. Due to Tehran’s backing thus far, the numerous predictions that Assad could fall any minute remain unfulfilled. Though there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding the final outcome of the Syrian civil war, one thing is clear: Iran will be ready.

(Ari Heistein is a research associate in the Middle East Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.)

 

“UNDERSTANDING AND MISUNDERSTANDING”

The Terrorist Challenge – Understanding and Misunderstanding
By Amir Taheri
Asharq Al-Awsat
July 3, 2015

Faced with the growing threat of terrorism, Western officials and analysts seem hard put as to how to deal with something they find difficult to understand.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has advised the media not to use the term “Islamic State” for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – known as “Da’esh” in Arabic – because, he claims, the “caliphate” based in Raqqa in Syria is not Islamic. In other words, Cameron is casting himself as an authority on what is Islamic and what is not. At the other end of the spectrum, French Premier Manuel Valls speaks of “Islamofascism” and claims that the West is drawn into a “war of civilizations” with Islam.

Cameron continues Tony Blair’s policy in the early days of Islamist attacks on Britain. Blair would declare that although the attacks had nothing to do with Islam he had invited “leaders of the Muslim community” to Downing Street to discuss “what is to be done.”

As for Valls, he seems to forget that Islam, though part of many civilizations including the European one, is a religion not a civilization on its own. He also forgets that civilizations, even at the height of rivalry, don’t wage war; political movements and states do.

While it is important to understand what we are dealing with, it is even more important not to misunderstand the challenge.

To circumvent the hurdle of labeling the Da’esh-style terror as “Islamic,” something that runs counter to political correctness and could attract cries of Islamophobia, some Western officials and commentators build their analysis on the “sectarian” aspect of the phenomenon.

Thus, we are bombarded within seminars, essays and speeches seeking to explain, and at times explain away, the horrors of ISIS and similar groups as part of sectarian Sunni–Shi’ite feuds dating back to 15 centuries ago.
However, the “sectarian” analysis is equally defective.

There is no doubt that much of the violence in the Middle East today does have a sectarian aspect.

However, what we have is not a war of Islamic sects but wars among sectarian groups. Nobody has appointed ISIS as the representative of Sunnis, some 85 percent of Muslims across the globe. And, in fact, so far ISIS has massacred more Sunnis than members of any other sect or religion. The Internet “caliph” and his cohorts have beheaded more of their own comrades than any kuffar (Infidels).

At the other end of the spectrum no one has appointed the Khomeinist mullahs in Tehran as leaders of the Shi’ites. The Khomeinist regime has killed many more Shi’ites than members of any other sect or religion. (Human Rights groups put the number of those executed since Khomeini seized power at over 150,000.)

Equally absurd is to present the Alawite (or Nusayri) community in Syria as a branch of Shi’ism, something that no Shi’ite theological authority has ever done. Even then, the Ba’athist regime led by President Bashar Al-Assad has never claimed religious credentials, boasting about a secular, supposedly socialist ideology. In Shi’ite theology, the Alawites are classified among the “ghulat” (extremists) with a host of other heterodox sects.

The Khomeinist regime’s backing for the Houthis in Yemen cannot be explained in sectarian terms either. The Houthis belong to the Zaydi sect which, though originally exported from Iran to Yemen, has never been regarded by Twelvers (Ithna-’ashariyah), who make up the bulk of Shi’ites across the globe, as being part of the Shi’ite family.

In the 1970s Iran’s Shah bribed a few ayatollahs in Qom to issue declarations in favor of Zaydis – which they did, without however providing definitive theological endorsement.

In any case, the Houthis, though representing a good chunk of the Zaydi community, cannot be equated with that faith as a whole. Tehran’s support for them is politically motivated as it is in the case of Assad in Syria and the various branches of Hezbollah, notably in Lebanon. (The other night in a discussion circle in London a self-styled expert was mistaking Zaydis with Yazidis, insisting that former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh was a Yazidi!)

There is no doubt that Tehran arms and supports a number of Shi’ite groups, ranging from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hazara in Afghanistan. However, it also supports some Sunni groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Tehran also did all it could to help the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, including the sending of a high-level mission with offers of billions of dollars in aid provided the brotherhood agreed to purge the Egyptian army.

In Afghanistan, Iran sheltered and, for years, financed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Sunni Hizb Islami, although it had massacred quite a few Afghan Shi’ites in the early 1990s. Since 2004, Tehran has also maintained contact with the Taliban, a militant anti-Shi’ite Afghan terror group. (At the time of this writing Iran is preparing to allow the Taliban to open an unofficial embassy in Tehran.)

Iran is also training and arming Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga, almost all of them Sunnis, to fight ISIS, which casts itself as the standard-bearer of Sunnis.

At the other end of the spectrum, various opponents of the Khomeinist regime, among them some Sunni powers, have supported anti-regime Shi’ite groups at different times. Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein protected, financed, and armed the People’s Mujahedin, an Iranian Shi’ite group, for decades, and at one point sent them to fight inside Iran itself.

Pakistan, a Sunni-majority country, has become a base for anti-Iran terror groups which, according to Iranian Border Guard, have been responsible for more than 80 deadly attacks over the past 12 months.

At one end of the spectrum it is not enough to be Shi’ite of any denomination. Unless you also worship the “Supreme Guide” you are worse than the “infidel.” At another end, being a Sunni Muslim is not enough to let you live a reasonably human life in areas controlled by ISIS; you must also pledge fealty to the self-styled “caliph.”

The Khomeinists, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS, Boko Haram, Hizb Islami, and a whole host of other outfits may try to market their discourse with a religious narrative. They may even be sincerely motivated by rival interpretations of Islam. What they cannot claim is the exclusive representation of Islam as such or a particular sect. They are part of Islam but Islam is not part of them. These are political movements using violence and terror in pursuit of political goals. They pretend to be waging war against the “infidel” and may even be deviously sincere in that claim. But they are primarily waging war against Muslims, regardless of schools or sect.

(Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979.)