Foreign Policy

[Whiskeyjack]

Starting a new thread for debate regarding American foreign policy.

The Atlantic's Robert Kaplan just published a compelling article titled "Warming to Iran":

Foreign policy is about necessity, not desire. And multiple necessities have been driving the United States and Iran toward a détente of sorts. Indeed, the American-Iranian estrangement, which has gone on a decade longer than America’s estrangement from “Red China” did, is anomalous in international relations, given how many amoral geopolitical interests the two nations share. The idea that the interests of Israel, even with Saudi Arabia alongside it, can indefinitely or even permanently override some degree of reconciliation between the United States and Iran—the ancient world’s first superpower—is problematic. Yes, Israel’s domestic lobbying machine is formidable, and yes, Israel’s prime minister is by some accounts a determined schemer, but they may not ultimately be able to prevent the American executive branch from seizing the kind of diplomatic opportunity that comes along only a few times a century. Whatever the eventual outcome of the long-running negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, Israeli interests cannot impede a warming of relations between Iran and the United States in the coming years, under either this president or the next.

The Obama administration’s reported hostility toward Israel is merely a reflection of the emerging geopolitics of the early 21st century, with its vast and changing undercurrents of culture, geography, economics, natural-resource supply chains, and military acquisitions. As globalization shrinks the world map and each portion of it becomes more ferociously contested, talking about the Middle East without taking Asia into account becomes impossible. So let me start there, because the administration’s intended “pivot” to Asia and the opening to Iran are inherently connected.

Despite its slowdown in growth, the Indo-Pacific region remains the heartland of the world economy, home to the most important sea lines of communication and many economic powerhouses, some of which (like Japan and South Korea) are treaty allies of the United States, and others of which (like Vietnam and Malaysia) are consequential de facto allies. Since Obama’s first term, his administration has rightly been determined to focus more on Asia, in order to both defend U.S. allies against Chinese naval expansion and protect global trade. Of course, turmoil in the Middle East has interfered. But the increasingly tense military standoff in maritime Asia demands that the United States find a way, at least over time, to reduce its granular involvement in the conflicts of the Middle East.

There is no more efficient way to do this than to enter into a strategic understanding with Iran. Like the understanding that the United States forged with China in 1972, this would be less a matter of treaty language than of mutual respect and of expectations quietly agreed to by leaders on both sides.

The United States needs Shia Iran to fight the extremist Sunnis of the Islamic State, and at the same time to pressure the Shia government in Baghdad to moderate its posture toward the Sunnis, in the name of internal stability in Iraq. Should the unhelpful Islamic government in Turkey grow more intractable, Iran could also prove helpful in balancing against it. (After all, Iran and Turkey have uneasily coexisted and offset each other since the Safavid-Ottoman War of the early 17th century.) In addition, Iran and the United States could potentially work in tandem in Syria to preserve the political power of the country’s ruling Alawites—the Alawite sect being an offshoot of Shia Islam—even as they work together to remove President Bashar al-Assad from power. Furthermore, Iran could help steady neighboring Afghanistan in the wake of an American troop withdrawal, by serving as a buffer against pro-Taliban Pakistani and Saudi elements. The American military has already quietly encouraged Iranian involvement there.

All of this would be in Iran’s interests, and in America’s too. And while Iran might do some of these things on its own, doing them in coordination with America would measurably help stabilize the greater Middle East.

The practical approach to Islamist terrorism is not always to fight terrorists everywhere, but to play Shiites against Sunnis and vice versa, depending upon the circumstances. By warming up to Iran, we would not be siding with the Shiites against the Sunnis per se, but rather manipulating both sides more effectively than we have in the past. Nor should ending our belligerence toward Shia Iran mean deserting our Sunni allies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Persian Gulf, and elsewhere. We must go to great lengths to reassure them, in fact. I am not endorsing a flip-flop—an exchange of one alliance for another. Handled properly, a détente with Iran need not jeopardize our relationships with Sunni nations. It could, however, motivate them to be more honest allies than before. For decades, the Sunni dictatorships in Egypt and Saudi Arabia took their military alliances with the United States for granted, even as they fostered the hateful climate that produced the 9/11 terrorists. As for the Sunni jihadists themselves, they are already our committed enemies. We must continue to deal with them through a combination of military strikes, support for Sunni moderates (where they can be found), and creative diplomacy (of the sort that might be exemplified by a rapprochement with Iran).

The Levant will likely be in a state of violent and chaotic conflict for decades, much as Afghanistan has been since the late 1970s. The more the United States and Iran coordinate with each other, the less chance there is that America will have to put additional boots on the ground in the Middle East. If the United States is serious about the pivot to Asia, its objective should be to get regional powers, including Iran, to carry the burden of stabilizing Syria and Iraq.

There is more. A future, relatively congenial Iran might be less inclined to make trouble through its Hezbollah and Hamas allies in southern Lebanon and Gaza. It might help secure al-Qaeda-infected Yemen, via Iranian-backed Houthi tribesmen (the Houthi are Zaidi Shiites who have been overrunning Yemeni territory). It could even counteract future Chinese influence in the Persian Gulf: Already, Iran and India have joined forces to develop the Arabian Sea port of Chabahar in Iranian Baluchistan. This port could one day compete against the nearby port of Gwadar, which China and Pakistan are working jointly to further develop. An American-Iranian understanding could also ensure the overall security of the Gulf sheikhdoms—an Iran in dialogue with America is an Iran less likely to be militarily aggressive toward its neighbors. And a more friendly Iran might conceivably help balance against Russia’s influence in the Transcaucasus, where Vladimir Putin has made a satellite out of Armenia, put troops near a weakened Georgia, and pressured energy-rich Azerbaijan into a closer relationship.

While the United States could use Iran for all of the above, Iran could use the United States, ironically, to give its regime legitimacy, thereby opening the floodgates of foreign investment and rescuing the Iranian economy. The mullahs’ deepest fear is that they will end up like the shah—toppled by a popular upheaval that is, in the main, economically driven. Of course, such an economic opening runs the risk of further emboldening hard-line elements in Iran, but over time it is more likely to move the country in a liberal direction.

Finally, an American-Iranian détente has all the force of culture behind it. Anti-Americanism has been in retreat in Iran for decades. Shia Iran is partially democratic and far more sophisticated, enlightened, and Westernized than benighted, culturally sterile Wahhabi Saudi Arabia. Americans would feel much more comfortable in Tehran than in Riyadh.

Iran is not an artificial construct like Saudi Arabia: a strong Persian state has existed on the Iranian plateau for thousands of years. If indeed the Levant has entered a decades-long period of violent upheaval, the chances of Saudi Arabia weakening or crumbling are far greater than the chances of Iran doing so.

The Israelis must understand much of this. They themselves had a useful relationship with Iran up until the Iranian revolution, and they know the country well. Whatever Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might tell journalists, I don’t think he actually believes that he can permanently prevent some degree of American-Iranian rapprochement. He may, however, be demanding a bribe for his eventual acquiescence: All right, you will have a deal with Iran. Now, what are you going to give me in return? More West Bank settlements, more and cheaper armaments, more intelligence-sharing? And the Obama administration, if it is smart, will give him at least some of what he asks for.

The last thing you do when you reconcile with an enemy is throw your friend overboard—that would only make your former enemy (and all your adversaries, in fact) think that you are weak and unprincipled. As the United States and Iran try to narrow the diplomatic gap between them, Iran must be made to understand that a better relationship with America does not come cheap. Therefore, the White House needs to be seen reaching out to Israel and Saudi Arabia. If, in 2015 or 2016, Secretary of State John Kerry were to make a historic visit to Tehran, he would be wise to stop in Jerusalem and Riyadh on the way home. Détente is a major adjustment of policy, not a complete negation of it. The reconciliation with China brokered by President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger did not stop them from also reaching a landmark strategic arms pact with China’s nemesis, the Soviet Union.

In short, ending the American-Israeli special relationship would be imprudent in the extreme. The relationship has been a feature of U.S. policy for decades, and thus has all the legitimacy of American treaty alliances with Japan, South Korea, and so forth. A proud and powerful nation does not drop such an ally, no matter how inconvenient that ally’s behavior may be at times. Our allegiance to Israel is a matter not only of its being a democracy but also of its being a valuable chess piece—a pro-American military dynamo in the heart of the Middle East. Nixon was a most dependable friend of Israel in the White House precisely because he saw Israel in strategic as well as moral terms.

If any future rapprochement with Iran is to pay off, we must defend Israel as a means of keeping Iran honest. And yet, at the same time, we must continue to try to coerce Israel on its West Bank settlements in order to relieve some of the pressure on the United States in the Muslim world. As the communications revolution has helped to create, on one level at least, a single, globalized Muslim community, the Palestinian cause has acquired totemic significance for Muslims from North Africa to Indonesia. So even if peace prospects remain dim, America must always seem to be actively engaged in arm-twisting the Israeli government regarding its settlement activities in the West Bank.

If the Obama administration is wise, it will recognize that the opportunities of a historic shift in Middle East policy are far too great to be hindered by a who-insulted-whom soap opera between Obama and Netanyahu. It must disregard both the Israel lobby and Israel’s most determined critics. The mechanical verities of geopolitics matter much more. The United States will never be free of Middle East chaos, but if it can employ a new relationship with Iran to add a measure of regional stability, it can over time shift more of its attention eastward.

Détente with Iran should be our top foreign policy goal for the reasons listed above. Once that's accomplished, we can stop pouring obscene amounts of American blood and treasure into that miserable backwater and pivot towards Asia, where the survival of our empire is actually at stake.

 

[Buster Bluth]

Great thread.

I've found it wise to always search for John Mearsheimer's opinions on a certain foreign policy topic. On Iran, in 2007:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/8CRtO2oMTC0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

One I watched recently that I found succinct (for him) and worth the time:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/jwqqzh59sVo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

One more I love:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/sKFHe0Y6c_0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[bobbyok1]

Great thread.

I've found it wise to always search for John Mearsheimer's opinions on a certain foreign policy topic. On Iran, in 2007:<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8CRtO2oMTC0" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>



One I watched recently that I found succinct (for him) and worth the time:

<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/jwqqzh59sVo" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe>

One more I love:

<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/sKFHe0Y6c_0" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>

Buster thanks for posting these, really enjoyed hearing Mearsheimer's arguments. Actually found myself taking notes

 

[Buster Bluth]

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UaXXkRmDuLI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/29/obamas-pivot-to-iran/

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The Atlantic's Jonathan Rauch just published an article titled "Be Not Afraid":

It often befalls presidents to be most criticized in office for what later turn out to have been their particular strengths. Disparaged at the time as simplemindedness, timidity, and slickness, Ronald Reagan’s firmness, George H. W. Bush’s caution, and Bill Clinton’s adaptability look in hindsight like features, not bugs. (Unfortunately, George W. Bush’s bugs still look like bugs.) President Obama catches flak for his supposed underreaction to crises in the Middle East, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Instead of leading, the professorial president lectures the American public not to be so darned worried. “If you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart,” he said last August. “I promise you things are much less dangerous now than they were 20 years ago, 25 years ago, or 30 years ago. This is not something that is comparable to the challenges we faced during the Cold War.” Blame social media, he tells us, for shoving so much upsetting stuff in our faces.

Naturally, Obama’s pontifications draw protests. “I strongly disagree with the president’s assertion last night that America is safer,” said Senator John McCain. “By no objective measurement is America safer.” Danger abounds! In 2012, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pronounced the world “more dangerous than it has ever been.” That was before the Islamic State, or ISIS, took over swaths of Iraq. Senator Lindsey Graham has warned that failure to defeat ISIS “will open the gates of hell to spill out on the world.” Obama appears to have his doubts: a few months after Chuck Hagel, then the defense secretary, pronounced ISIS an “imminent” threat, not just to the United States but “to every stabilized country on Earth,” Obama sacked him.

The American people deserve to hear complex, multifaceted debates about any number of complex, multifaceted matters. This is not one of them. Obama is simply right. The alarmists are simply wrong. America is safer than it has ever been and very likely safer than any country has ever been, a fact that politicians and the public are curiously reluctant to believe.

Danger is a broad category. In principle, it includes everything from workplace accidents and natural disasters to infectious diseases and pollution. In pretty much all of those categories, we’re doing well, although we have much work to do. For present purposes, however, let’s limit ourselves to threats in the usual political sense: malevolent violence against Americans. The major menaces here would be warfare, crime, and terrorism.

Historically, warfare has been the biggest violent killer of humans. According to Steven Pinker, the author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, today is probably the most peaceful time in human history. By the numbers, he writes, “the world was a far more dangerous place” in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, armed conflicts have declined by almost 40 percent since right after the end of the Cold War. “Today,” write Micah Zenko and Michael A. Cohen in Foreign Affairs, “wars tend to be low-intensity conflicts that, on average, kill about 90 percent fewer people than did violent struggles in the 1950s.” War between major nation-states has dwindled to the verge of extinction. In the context of human evolution, this is an astounding development.

Of course, the world remains turbulent, but most of today’s military conflict, as in Syria right now, takes the form of civil war rather than war between nations, and implicates American interests but not American lives (unless America enters the fighting). The United States faces no plausible military invader or attacker. All we are really talking about, when we discuss threats from Iran or North Korea or ISIS, is whether our margin of safety should be very large or even larger. “No great power in world history comes close to enjoying the traditional state security that the United States does today,” writes Stephanie Rugolo in A Dangerous World? Threat Perception and U.S. National Security, a new collection of essays from the Cato Institute.

Here at home, criminal violence is, as ever, a serious problem. But its reduction over the past couple of decades is one of the great success stories of our time. The violent-crime rate (which excludes homicides) has declined by more than 70 percent since the early 1990s. The homicide rate has declined by half, and in 2011 it reached the lowest level since 1963. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, between 1995 and 2010 the rate of rape and sexual assault fell from five per 1,000 females to two.

And how do Americans celebrate this extraordinary success? By denying it. Every year Gallup asks whether crime has gone up or down since the previous year. Every year, rain or shine, the public insists, usually by overwhelming margins (63 percent to 21 percent in 2014), that crime has risen. “Most Americans Unaware of Big Crime Drop Since 1990s,” announced the Pew Research Center in 2013; only 10 percent of those surveyed knew that gun crimes had gone down since the 1990s. Criminologists say that many people get angry when told that crime is decreasing.

Perception is even more skewed where terrorism is concerned. “Terror-ism Worries Largely Unchanged,” ran another Pew headline, also in 2013. That year, 58 percent of the public was worried about another terrorist attack in the United States, a rate not all that much lower in October 2001, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, when 71 percent of the public was worried. A few months ago, perhaps influenced by ISIS’s atrocities, a large plurality of respondents told NBC News/Wall Street Journal pollsters that the country is less safe than it was before 9/11.

Reality, once again, tells us otherwise. State-sponsored international terrorism, writes the intelligence analyst Paul R. Pillar in Cato’s A Dangerous World?, “is today only a shadow of what it was in the 1970s and 1980s.” As for the risk posed by terrorism inside the United States, to characterize it as trivial would be very generous. Americans are about four times as likely to drown in their bathtub as they are to die in a terrorist attack. John Mueller of Ohio State University and Mark G. Stewart of Australia’s University of Newcastle estimate the odds of such deaths at one in 950,000 and one in 3.5 million, respectively.

Surely we can at least agree to worry about a nuclear Iran, or nuclear terrorism, or ISIS? All are indeed worrisome, but Mueller persuasively argues that none merits the alarm it begets. Since Nagasaki in 1945, the few countries that have obtained nuclear weapons—including dangerous rogue states like Mao’s China, the Iran of its day—have consistently found them militarily and diplomatically useless, except as ego boosters and perhaps as defensive weapons to forestall attack. The odds of terrorists’ obtaining and deploying nuclear weapons are much lower than most people appreciate, for a host of technical and political reasons. ISIS, meanwhile, is an unusually vicious and destabilizing actor in a region that is full of them, but its menace has been almost entirely local. (In this issue’s cover story, Graeme Wood examines this threat, and the appropriate response, in detail.)

Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard, mused in a recent speech about Americans’ odd refusal to appreciate their security. The bad news for Obama, if Pinker is correct, is that presidential palaver will have no effect, because people are hardwired to overreact to threats, real or perceived. In today’s world, where intricate social systems keep us safer than our forebears could ever have imagined, overreaction is maladaptive: it is often more disruptive and damaging than whatever provoked it. In the world we evolved for, however, humans needed to be hyperalert. Something rustling in the bush was more likely to be a predator or an enemy than a friend with glad tidings. Moreover, Pinker says, people are biased to overestimate the likelihood of the sorts of events that stand out in our memory, as violence and mayhem do, and as peace and quiet do not. Add alarmism’s usefulness to politicians and pressure groups, and you have a standing order for overreaction—always, not just now.

Still, now is special. Given how safe we are, and how frightened people nonetheless feel, it seems unlikely that Americans’ threat perception has ever before been quite as distorted as it is today. Never have so many feared so little, so much. In an era of overreaction, a president who lectures the public about its insecurities, instead of pandering to its fears, necessarily seems impolitic, out of touch, tone-deaf, pedantic, negligent, complacent—choose your adjective. For precisely that reason, we can be grateful his instinct is to underreact. Historians will thank him, even if we don’t, for his steadfastness in the face of unprecedented safety.

 

[Grahambo]

The Atlantic's Jonathan Rauch just published an article titled "Be Not Afraid":

I disagree with Mr. Rauch here on several of his points.

 

[IrishinSyria]

I disagree with Mr. Rauch here on several of his points.

Me too. Lol at giving the man who put American Marines into Beirut without a clear mission and then withdrew them once the got hit with a terrorist talk credit for "firmness". Run away Reagan provided the inspiration for today's jihadists.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

I disagree with Mr. Rauch here on several of his points.

Me too. Lol at giving the man who put American Marines into Beirut without a clear mission and then withdrew them once the got hit with a terrorist talk credit for "firmness". Run away Reagan provided the inspiration for today's jihadists.

To clarify, do either of you disagree with the general thesis that Americans are safer today than at any previous point during our history? Because that's why I shared the article. I don't agree with all of his specific points either.

 

[Grahambo]

To clarify, do either of you disagree with the general thesis that Americans are safer today than at any previous point during our history? Because that's why I shared the article. I don't agree with all of his specific points either.

I responded to you via PM in detail but I don't like him using criminal violence and terrorists in the same article. To me, he grossly over simplified the issue while comparing apples to oranges.

Its clear to me that he wrote with a slanted view and disregarded certain facts.

 

[IrishinSyria]

To clarify, do either of you disagree with the general thesis that Americans are safer today than at any previous point during our history? Because that's why I shared the article. I don't agree with all of his specific points either.

O, I think the general thesis is dead on, and I would expand it. It is objectively better to be born in America today than to be born in any other place and/or at any other point in history.

(assuming a Rawlsian veil)

 

[DonnieNarco]

Fear sells. Fear cost the taxpayer a lot of money on a pointless invasion. People will look to waste more of our money on more pointless invasions. People accept their money being wasted and their privacy being invaded because of fearmongering. ISIS is no threat to the United States and will die out. What we spend on wars or supporting foreign governments is terrible when so much help is needed here. That's my opinion on foreign policy as a whole.

 

[BobbyMac]

A lot of smoke coming across the net that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei has died. Something to keep an eye on.

.

 

[kmoose]

A lot of smoke coming across the net that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei has died. Something to keep an eye on.

.

Seal Team Six, supported by Brian Williams, took him out.

 

[IrishinSyria]

Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei makes rare public appearance - CBS News

Looks like he made a public appearance today so...probably still alive. Either that or I need to convert stat.

 

[phgreek]

A lot of smoke coming across the net that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei has died. Something to keep an eye on.

.

...no cause for concern there...how bad could the next guy be? Perfect time to expand enrichment and delivery system development in Iran. Can't wait til the 2020 version of the Arab spring hits Iran...this is gonna be awesome to watch. This will go down as a nuclear Abbot and Costello routine...SMH.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The Economist just published a balanced article titled "Bargaining with the Great Satan":

FOUR places: four contrasting snapshots of a relationship. In Lausanne, Iranian and American delegations are ensconced as diplomatic partners at the Beau Rivage hotel: after eight days of talks, they reach agreement greatly limiting Iran’s uranium-enrichment programme in exchange for the gradual lifting of sanctions.

In Tehran, Iranians watch President Barack Obama in the White House explaining the reasons for the deal. It is the first time an American presidential speech has been shown live on Iranian television.

In Tikrit, and the skies above it, the two countries are undeclared allies: the war against the jihadists of the so-called Islamic State (IS) sees America providing air power while Iran marshals the ground forces, especially the Shia militias.

In Yemen they face off as adversaries in a proxy war: America provides intelligence and logistical help to the Saudi-led military intervention to repel the Houthis, Shia fighters backed by Iran.

Which snapshot gets closest to the truth: are America and Iran old-new friends, or fated always to be foes? The answer will colour any judgment on the outline of a nuclear accord reached by Iran and the so-called P5+1 powers—America, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany—in lengthy talks on April 2nd. If the Islamic Republic remains a regional threat, legitimising it as a threshold nuclear state is a high cost to pay for a slightly extended “breakout time” should it decide to cross that threshold. But if Iran is showing a new post-revolutionary responsibility, then the deal is the start of a rapprochement between countries whose rivalry has scarred the region but whose interests may, in at least some places, be aligned.

A deal that is far better than the alternatives

Provisions about centrifuges, fuel rods and inspection regimes, important as these are, are not the whole story. There is also much history. Iran’s Islamic revolution of 1979 transformed America’s dealings with the Middle East. The departure of the Shah, the triumphant arrival of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the seizure of more than 50 American embassy staff as hostages marks the start of modern Islamic radicalism. It turned America into a permanent military player in the Muslim heartland, and a permanent target of hatred. It was, after all, Iran’s proxies in Lebanon who introduced suicide-bombings to the region, with powerful attacks on American, French and Israeli forces in 1983.

The chain of events to today’s troubles runs thus: seeking to avoid the spread of the revolution, Western and Arab states backed the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, in the war he launched against Iran in 1980; Western navies patrolled the Gulf to protect oil tankers; after that war ended an emboldened Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990; some of the American forces that led the alliance which removed him stayed in Saudi Arabia to contain Iran and Iraq; that presence was used as justification for al-Qaeda’s attack on September 11th 2001; George W. Bush rashly decided to finish the job that his father had supposedly left undone and invaded Iraq to get rid of Saddam in 2003; the subsequent occupation brought forth a jihadist resistance that transformed itself into today’s IS.

If a nuclear agreement could begin to reverse this baleful dynamic, it could help push the Middle East to the “new equilibrium” Mr Obama talked about to the New Yorker last year. As he told another interviewer, political engagement might also moderate Iran over time.

A secret longing?

His harshest critics think Mr Obama is pursuing a reckless grand bargain to turn Iran into a partner, an arrangement in which America could set aside some of the burden in the region and Iran would take up the role as regional hegemon that it enjoyed in the days of the Shah. Iran’s political and military influence is already palpable across the region, and growing.

America’s military collusion with Iran in Iraq; its reluctance to act against Iran’s Syrian client, Bashar Assad; its silence about the encroachment of Iranian power in Yemen—all this suggests that Mr Obama wants “to encourage and augment Iran’s potential as a successful regional power and as a friend and partner to the United States,” according to a recent article by Michael Doran, a Bush-era Pentagon and National Security Council official. In his enthusiasm, the charge goes, Mr Obama is forsaking long-standing alliances with Israel and the Arab monarchies. Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has no doubt this is the case. He was cheered in America’s Congress last month when he said that a deal in Lausanne would pave Iran’s path to a bomb. Iran had already “devoured” four Arab capitals—Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sana’a. The Yemeni adventurism, he argued, could let Iran threaten the entrance to the Red Sea, as well as the entrance to the Gulf which it already overlooks, thus putting its fingers on two of the world’s naval choke-points.

Arab leaders are quieter about making such points, but agree with them wholeheartedly. According to a leaked diplomatic cable, in 2008 King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was already urging America to attack Iran and “cut off the head of the snake”. In March the Saudis cast off their usual caution and took on the snake, or at least its tail, in Yemen. They are leading a ten-member coalition of Sunni states that is bombing the Houthis.

The Muddled East strategy

A less hostile interpretation of Mr Obama’s actions is possible, and more persuasive. Mr Obama was elected promising to reduce America’s role in the Middle East, and sees no evidence that changing tack would actually do much good. Thus his decision to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan; his “lead from behind” policy in Libya in 2011; and his reluctance to strike Syria in 2013 without congressional approval.

When he has acted, it has been to stave off disaster at minimum cost. So he ordered air strikes, with a small ground presence, to halt the march of IS when it seemed Baghdad might fall. And he has come close to a deal that may substantially delay, but will not necessarily halt, Iran’s nuclear ambition. By supporting the Saudis in Yemen, he proves that he is not beholden to Iran.

On this analysis the blame for Iran’s increased power goes not to Mr Obama’s caution, but to his predecessor’s toppling of Saddam and the Taliban with insufficient thought of the consequences. Gary Samore, a former Obama administration nuclear negotiator, reckons that Mr Obama’s strategy is “a reflection of the crazy, mixed-up Middle East. He is trying to muddle through a mess of unresolvable problems, most of which are the consequence of the Arab spring.” Unwilling to commit troops, the only option is “to let them fight it out, and occasionally place his thumbs on the scale.” Now that Iran is fighting IS, and Saudi Arabia the Houthis, Mr Obama’s attempt to let the countries of the region deal with their problems might seem vindicated—though it condemns many to untold violence which may well turn against America, or its interests.

It is certainly true that, in the aftermath of the occupation of Iraq and the Arab spring, the region is a bloody mess. Some compare the agonies of the region to Europe’s calamitous Thirty Years War: a bewildering conflict involving religion, meddling outsiders and great cruelty.

There are four Arab civil wars under way—Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen—with multiple divisions over religion, ideology, ethnicity and class. The sectarian rift—in which Iran supports the Shias and their allies, while Saudi Arabia backs at least some of the Sunnis—has become more pronounced. It is most apparent in Iraq, where the government is dominated by Shias and is closely aligned with Iran; most Sunni areas have been taken over by IS jihadists.

In Syria President Bashar Assad’s Alawite minority sect, regarded as an offshoot of Shia Islam, dominates the government and is propped up by Iran and is Lebanese proxy, Hizbullah. The Syrian rebels are mostly Sunni and but fragmented into myriad groups, among them IS, Jabhat al-Nusra (affiliated to al-Qaeda) and many more. Many of the rebels are supported by America and Sunni states in often murky relationships.

In Yemen the link between the Houthis (followers of the Zaydi branch of Shia Islam) and Iran (devotees of the Twelver branch) is perhaps least clear. The former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Zaydi who is now allied with the Houthis, was previously backed by Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, Syria has drawn a red line in Yemen and all sides now see it as the newest battleground between Sunnis and Shias. That said, the first Saudi intervention after the Arab spring, in 2011, was on behalf of the Sunni monarchy in Bahrain, where the Shia-majority population was demanding more democratic rights.

Where there is no sectarian divide and Iran does not play a role, the Sunni powers are often divided among themselves, particularly over the role of political Islam. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates support the Egyptian strongman, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, against the Muslim Brotherhood, which is backed by Turkey and Qatar. The same two groupings support rival governments in Libya. But in Yemen they have all united to confront the Houthis. The rise of Iran has even pushed the Sunni Arab regimes closer to Israel.

Iranian pragmatists like to boast of their country’s growing influence, even as they claim that its belligerence is a response to Western and Arab pressure. Nevertheless, a nuclear deal, says Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian diplomat, “will make Iran less aggressive”, and strengthen moderates around President Hassan Rouhani, whose primary concern is to revive the sanctions-crippled economy. Some think Mr Rouhani might even succeed the ailing Ayatollah Khamenei as Supreme Leader. For now, though, Mr Khamenei is adamant that a deal will not lead to a rapprochement with America: “No way!” he told a crowd of students chanting “Death to America” last month.

A nuclear deal might over time help to moderate Iran. But it also might increase the region’s instability. One risk is that Iran will cheat, or that hardliners will test the limits of the commitments. Another is that Mr Obama may be prevented by a sceptical Congress from delivering the relief from sanctions that he has promised, or that his successor will repudiate the deal.

Freed from some sanctions, and perhaps feeling immune from an American (or Israeli) military strike, Iran might be emboldened to extend its reach even further, an option which Mr Khamenei might see as a way to mollify hardliners. Or perhaps America’s allies, feeling estranged, will turn more aggressive. In Israel, there is renewed talk among military officers of bombing Iran’s nuclear sites at the first sign of a violation. John Bolton, a hawkish former Bush administration official, has urged Israel to attack soon. Saudi Arabia and the other Arabs might do more to confront Iran, perhaps by trying to strengthen rebels in Syria that have made recent gains. Saudi Arabia has given notice that it will seek to match whatever uranium-enrichment capability Iran is allowed to keep—legally, of course. It lacks skilled engineers, but it might be able to buy the know-how from, say, its close ally, Pakistan (whose scientists sold centrifuge designs to Iran and Libya). Turkey is unlikely to want to be left behind. So a nuclear deal designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons might instead promote the proliferation of nuclear threshold states. Some argue that America should extend its nuclear umbrella to its Middle Eastern allies to reassure them.

Negotiating the nuclear agreement might be the easy part for Mr Obama. Harder will be the task of selling the deal to sceptics at home and in the region. Harder still might be to manage the political and military fallout.

If my choices are Iranian proxies or ISIL/ AQAP, I'm picking the former every time.

 

[Grahambo]

If my choices are Iranian proxies or ISIL/ AQAP, I'm picking the former every time.

Good article. Accurate.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The Economist published another relevant article titled "Negotiating with Iran: Is this a good deal?"

FOR years Iran has lied about its nuclear plans. The Islamic Republic insists that it wants peace, but it has built secret, bomb-proof facilities for enriching uranium and, most outsiders conclude, begun work on designs for nuclear weapons. At the same time, it has spouted anti-Semitism and sponsored terrorists and militias in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It is fighting directly or by proxy in Syria, Iraq and now Yemen, often supporting vicious sectarian clients. And yet, despite Iran’s transgressions, this week’s progress towards an agreement to limit its nuclear programme is still welcome.

The declaration that emerged on April 2nd, after marathon negotiations between Iran and six world powers in Lausanne, was surprisingly comprehensive. Iran will curb its programme and open it to inspection in exchange for a gradual lifting of sanctions. Speaking at the White House, President Barack Obama called it a good deal that will make the United States, its allies and the world safer. However, the details remain to be thrashed out by the end of June. The president warned that this process could still fail—and hardliners in both Tehran and Washington will do their damnedest to see that it does.

Failure would be a grave loss. This agreement offers the best chance of containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. And it also offers the faint promise of leading the Middle East away from the violence that has been engulfing it.

Must try harder

The best reason for wanting the next three months to produce a deal is that the alternatives are so unattractive. Military action to destroy Iran’s programme would have only a temporary effect. Air raids cannot annihilate know-how, but they would redouble the mullahs’ determination to get hold of a weapon, further radicalise Muslims, and add to the mayhem in a part of the world that is already in flames.

Then there are sanctions. Some people, such as Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, argue that Iran is too malign to be left with anything but a symbolic ability to enrich uranium. He recommends redoubling sanctions and holding out until Iran is forced to concede to the world’s demands. But there is a contradiction here. On the one hand, Iran is so bent on destruction that it cannot be treated as a normal negotiating partner; on the other it is so pliant than more sanctions will make it give up a nuclear programme that it has defended, at great cost, for many years.

Besides, waiting for Iran to make concessions does not have a good record. In 2003 the Bush administration ignored tentative Iranian signals that it was ready to talk. Since then, the mullahs have enhanced their expertise and increased their count of centrifuges from 164 to 19,000 or so. As Mr Obama argues, this second option very quickly leads back to either war or negotiations—and on worse terms.

By contrast the deal that has comes out of Lausanne is at least attainable. Iran will cut its capacity to enrich by two-thirds compared with today for a minimum of ten years; it will radically shrink its stockpile of enriched uranium for a minimum of 15; and it will permanently cut off the route to a bomb placed on plutonium. Iran will also submit itself to intrusive inspections throughout the nuclear supply chain. In exchange, the outside world will lift economic sanctions and agree to Iran’s right to enrich uranium.

That compromise contains a prize worth having. Verification makes it easier to catch Iran cheating. And it the country is indeed caught working on a bomb, sanctions would snap back into place. Most important of all, the world would also have a year to muster a response—compared with a few months today.

The region burns

The harder argument is whether the gains from a nuclear deal will come at the expense of regional stability. Israel and America’s Sunni allies contend that the Obama administration is going easy on Iran. Some say that this is in order to secure a deal. Others think that the nuclear diplomacy is part of a grand plan to turn Iran into a strategic partner of America to help it manage the Middle East. That would count as an act of betrayal made all the worse by the threats that Iran habitually makes against them.

How a deal might affect the tangle of Middle-East conflicts
The coming months may indeed deepen the hatreds that are raging from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea. You could imagine Iranian leaders stepping up their meddling in the region—to show, perhaps, that supping with the Great Satan has not made them soft. It is no accident that the Sunni monarchies have been turning away from America: backing an army coup against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, attacking fighters in Libya without forewarning America and, rushing into Yemen to take on Iranian-funded Houthis.

But before blaming this mess on Mr Obama’s nuclear diplomacy, consider two arguments. First, the catastrophe in the Middle East has its own, murderous dynamic that is quite separate from the nuclear deal. Iran has set out ruthlessly to exert control over neighbouring Iraq, to protect its links to Hizbullah in Lebanon and to shore up Bashar Assad in Syria. Deal or no deal, this meddling is driven by a desire to support fellow Shias, to exert regional influence and to keep conflagrations far away from its own borders. There is no sign that, as yet, sanctions or the talks have made much of a difference.

Second, the idea that America is being treacherous does not add up. Blame Mr Obama for standing back when the uprising in Syria was still peaceful, and again when Mr Assad gassed his own people. But the time is long gone when America alone could manage the conflict devouring the Middle East. Today regional mayhem is tugging the United States every which way. In the cross-currents of a sectarian war, America is working against Iranian-backed forces in Yemen and Syria, and with them in the war against Islamic State. That is not treachery, but pragmatism born out regional collapse.

The fallout of a deal

Amid the chaos, a nuclear could deal actually help--by enabling America and Iran to develop a pragmatic relationship. Overseeing an agreement would not be easy. Iran would chafe; there would be rows and disputes. But nuclear diplomacy could force America and Iran to work together after 35 years of enmity that thrust America firmly into the Sunni camp. At worst relations with Iran would remain dysfunctional; but at best America would for the first time in decades find itself in a position to mediate between Sunni and Shia.

That matters, because Iran and its Sunni rivals must themselves rein in their proxies and militias so that local people can begin to put their communities back together. Such a process would get a further boost if a deal brought change within Iran. Most Iranians are young and disillusioned with their leaders. They want normal, prosperous lives. In non-stop wrangling between factions in Tehran, a deal could strengthen Hassan Rohani, who has staked his presidency on it and who is thought to favour engagement with the world. In a deal’s decade-long first phase, Iran is likely to see a new supreme leader. Nobody knows who will take over—it may even be Mr Rohani himself—but the new leader is more likely to work with the West if America and Iran are no longer riven by mutual hatred.

A thaw between Iran and America is not guaranteed, obviously. The possibility of wholesale moderation within Iranian politics is even more remote. But neither does a nuclear deal depend on such things to be successful or to be worth having. On the contrary, success relies on the routine of inspections and the slow accumulation of confidence; and the deal will be measured chiefly on whether it puts a bomb out of reach. Everything else is a bonus.

Some people think that any deal must be wrong because it turns Iran from an international pariah into a partner. But that world view leads inexorably toward war—and an Iranian bomb. Well-founded mistrust of Iran is a reason to be vigilant, but in the real world the most important diplomacy takes place between enemies.

The exhausted negotiators in Lausanne took a valuable step this week. They must finish their work.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

TAC's Kelley Vlahos just published an article titled "Our Bad Friends, the Saudis":

Before most Americans could even pronounce the name “Houthi,” much less tell you who they were, Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham were on a dais chastising President Obama for his unwillingness to bomb them into the ground.

Mere hours after the Saudis (armed with $90 billion in U.S. weaponry and more on the way) began pounding Shia Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, the two senators were lamenting that Washington had not been let in on the operation.

“The fact that the Arab coalition no longer trusts us, or feels they need to inform us as what they’re about to do, is chilling,” Graham said on March 26. “They no longer have confidence in the United States of America,” McCain enjoined. “The Saudis did the right thing.”

This has been a common refrain from the senior senators, who have become as predictable as the tides when it comes to blaming the president for “leading from behind,” or not showing the appropriate obeisance to certain foreign allies—whether Israel on the Iran nuclear deal or Ukraine in their struggle against Russia.

But that Obama should be admonished for a perceived laggardness in the Sunni Gulf states’ swift intervention in Yemen, in what has been called a battle for sectarian dominance in the region, shows how little these men think of the American public. After 14 years of fighting Sunni insurgencies with no end in sight (Iraq and Afghanistan, al-Qaeda everywhere, now ISIS), the idea the U.S. could be shamed into joining a coalition of countries espousing highly questionable motives and human rights records, in an intervention no one can rightly explain, should raise a few red flags.

And one question—what do we get out of it?

There are, of course, two prevailing boilerplate explanations for why the U.S. should intervene more strenuously: 1) Yemen is boiling over in a proxy war in which the bad guys are power-hungry Iranians seeking to establish Persian-led Shi’a hegemony across the region, and/or 2) Washington must support “pillars” of stability like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, else the Middle East will go up in flames. Both claims have been deemed exaggerated and oversimplified in varying degrees by national security experts who see the events in Yemen as nothing more than a civil war that could turn into a sectarian blow-out across the region if airstrikes continue and Iranian proxies get further enmeshed in the situation.

The Saudi government has just hired two top Republican political spin doctors for tens of thousands of dollars to ensure that the above narratives stick, however, and to make sure that U.S. elected officials react in a matter consistent with the Saudi point of view on Yemen and the Gulf states’ desire to see President Bashar al-Assad deposed in Syria.

While U.S. lawmakers and the constellation of Washington think tanks can always be persuaded, the American people are far from convinced that Saudi Arabia, a monarchy that beheads people for blasphemy, covers women from head to toe, keeps its people largely unemployed and poverty stricken, and exports the kind of terror-inspiring Wahhabism that makes suicide bombers out of boys, really has American best interests at heart.

Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia has done a stellar job at maintaining the fiction that even while it is everything that America is not, the kingdom is worthy of unconditional support. The same goes for places like Egypt and like Bahrain, which itself has largely escaped U.S. censure in its violent (Saudi-assisted) crackdown on the country’s oppressed Shi’a majority.

Aside from regional “stability,” the sword of Damocles ostensibly hanging over Washington until now has been oil (though the U.S. imports less oil from Saudi Arabia now than it does from Latin American countries and Canada), and U.S-global economic concerns linked to Saudi investments in the U.S. and the preservation of dollar as the world reserve currency. Those cringeworthy kisses and hand-holding with the man in the flowing robes weren’t for nothing.

After all these years of this ill-fitting alliance, the U.S. has demanded little in return. The Saudis allowed access to installations and air space after 9/11, and the CIA has a drone base there. U.S. forces work closely with the Saudi military, but more permanent U.S. assets are parked in other Gulf States, like the Navy’s 5th fleet in Bahrain.

Meanwhile, Washington continues to demur on the possible Saudi connection to 9/11, and has been tepid in its criticism of Saudi support of Sunni extremists in Syria and Iraq, including ISIS. All this makes the McCain-Graham insistence that Washington “prove” its loyalty so mendacious. Who should prove what to whom?

Conservative columnist Trudy Rubin raised these contradictions in an April 11 column about Riaf Badawi, the Saudi Arabian blogger whose case went viral after he was sentenced to 1,000 lashes for advocating free speech in the kingdom. He got 50 of those lashes before an international outcry forced the government to postpone the rest, yet he still languishes in a 10-year jail term and is in danger of being retried on apostasy charges, punishable by death (likely a public beheading, of which there have been 54 already in 2015).

“[Badawi] was trying to encourage the kind of peaceful debate that is essential if Arab nations are ever to emerge from the backwardness that fueled the failed Arab Spring,” wrote Rubin.

When asked why the Saudis would display a level and kind of intolerance similar to the Islamic State, “Saudi officials insist they won’t tolerate any interference with their ‘independent judiciary,’” she continued. “This is a thin cover story designed to stifle debate about the impact of Saudi religious ideology at home and abroad.”

Badawi’s wife, who fled with their young children to Canada, has spoken publicly for his release. Saudi Arabia has responded by “warning” Canada not to interfere. The Saudis have been even tougher on Sweden, recently cowing the country’s officials into walking back criticism made by their own foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom.

Wallstrom had spoken out against Badawi’s flogging and called Saudi Arabia a dictatorship. The House of Saud responded by scrapping a major arms deal with the country, barring her from talking about democracy and women’s rights at a speech of the Arab League in Cairo, recalling its ambassador to Stockholm, announcing it would no longer issue business visas to Swedes or renew the visas for Swedish citizens already there, and blocking the recent transfer of Swedish monkeys to a Riyadh zoo.

One would think Washington was in a much better position to pressure the Saudis on this point, but as foreign policy analysts (especially of the old Cold War ilk) are wont to say, “it’s complicated.” It’s especially complicated by the amount of money and the number of top-drawer lobbying firms Saudi Arabia employs to do its bidding in U.S. centers of power.

Therefore it’s not surprising that the Obama administration has been criticized for its lackluster appeals to the kingdom on its human rights record. When the White House failed to mention Badawi during the elite-studded Washington pilgrimage to King Abdullah’s funeral in January, Obama insisted that “a balance” is required.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf was less nuanced: “I don’t think we’re in the business of demanding things.”

When U.S. Senators weighed in urging the Saudis to desist in the flogging, it was six Democrats and two Republicans (Marco Rubio and Mark Kirk) who signed a letter. Graham and McCain, who was forced to fire a top fundraiser during his 2008 campaign for president because his firm collected $15 million in lobbying work from the Saudis, were absent.

The fact is, Badawi was espousing the same arguments against the Saudis’ harsh interpretation of Islam that McCain and Graham have made in justifying the expensive, endless U.S. war on radical jihadism overseas. Many Americans are waking up to the fact that there is little difference between the two, and that Washington looks hypocritical when it coddles one purveyor of Wahhabism while sending U.S. troops into harm’s way to spill blood over another.

“This is an old story, that the U.S. puts aside human rights when it does not coincide with its own strategic interests,” Phyllis Dennis, activist and Middle East commentator for the liberal Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), tells TAC

“The disempowerment of women, the truly abysmal version of a so-called justice system that includes flogging bloggers and beheading people, the government’s definition of ‘terrorism’ which includes advocacy of atheism – this is the so-called stabilizing instrument of U.S. foreign policy in the region we are supposed to be supporting in this moment of instability?”

At least 90 people were publicly executed in Saudi Arabia in 2014. According to Sevag Kechichian, the Saudis have been defiant in the face of criticism, insisting such beheadings occur only after the strictest fair trial standards are upheld. Kechichian points out, however, that “suspicion, it seems, is enough for a judge to order putting an end to someone’s life.” Half of the announced executions in 2014 – and so far in 2015 – are for non-lethal offenses, he said. The vast majority are drug related, including mere possession. Meanwhile, religious minorities, including Christians, are routinely persecuted by the country’s religious police.

Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, a convert who wrote The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role In Terrorism (2002) and founded the Center for Islamic Pluralism, says “Wahabbism is entrenched” in the kingdom and that reforms are in motion, but “it’s going to be slow.”

Unlike Dennis, Schwartz believes there is good reason to push back against Iranian influence in Yemen, and believes Obama could be more active in supporting the Gulf states against Assad’s crackdown on the Sunni opposition in Syria. However, “the U.S. should be more active is supporting reforms in Saudi Arabia,” he tells TAC. “That should be key to our policy in the Middle East. I am in favor of more active criticism of Saudi Arabia. I am also realist about how societies change.”

Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of Saudi nationals are under the age of 30 and three-quarters of all unemployed are 20-somethings. Millions of Saudis are living on less than $530 a month, even while, thanks to the monarchy’s spoils, Saudi Arabia has one of the highest concentrations of wealth on the planet. There is a pressure cooker here, one that also includes a restive Shi’a minority, and a radicalized segment of the population that sees the House of Saud as aberration.

Afshin Shahi writes that with its aggression in Yemen, new King Salman and the country’s elites are either ignoring these domestic struggles or using foreign policy “as an effective tool to control internal dynamics. “(The) ‘external enemy’ can be used to generate unifying nationalism or to legitimize a security state,” he says. “It’s an especially useful tactic for authoritarian regimes.”

But as one Reuters analysis warned on April 10, this strategy may have unintended consequences, as “nationalist fervor is sweeping the conservative Sunni Muslim kingdom, bringing with it a sharp sectarian edge.” The Saudis may call it a war against Tehran’s influence, but it appears to be translating into a religious war that abides no territorial boundaries.

So far, Pakistan has sensed that, too, refusing a Saudi request to send any troops with Riyadh and Egypt for a potential ground war in Yemen.

It’s hard to think this is what McCain and Graham truly want, but maybe they’ve been in league with Saudi interests against Iran for so long that putting American forces in the middle of an 1,300-year-old sectarian schism that Americans can’t even begin to untangle, doesn’t strike them as ill-conceived. For McCain, who has raved more than once, “thank God for Saudi Arabia and (former intelligence chief and ambassador) Prince Bandar, ” that point may be long lost.

It may be music to the kingdom’s ears, but for America’s sake, its lawmakers should reconsider their blessings before blundering into the next war.

 

[IrishinSyria]

Good article. I haven't been able to figure out why the Houthis have been getting such a bad rap in the US media lately. It's not like Yemen has been anything but a disaster since unification.

 

[Grahambo]

Good article. I haven't been able to figure out why the Houthis have been getting such a bad rap in the US media lately. It's not like Yemen has been anything but a disaster since unification.

Didn't read the article yet but here are the Huthi's in a nutshell:

1. Recognized as a terrorist organization by the US government despite them also being a political organization.

2. Controlled by Iran.

3. Wants to cross into Saudi Arabia and take by land they believe belongs to Yemen.

4. Is fighting AQAP and ISIL.

5. Gets bombed by the Arab states.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The Economist just published an article titled "Peaceful or Belligerent? Iran sends mixed signals about its regional policy after a nuclear deal":

TO HEAR Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tell it, the nuclear deal with the world’s powers that he is trying to conclude next month is just the start of a wider process of regional co-operation to soothe the turbulence of the Middle East. As he put it in a recent op-ed in the New York Times:

A regional dialogue could help promote understanding and interaction at the levels of government, the private sector and civil society, and lead to agreement on a broad spectrum of issues, including confidence- and security-building measures; combating terrorism, extremism and sectarianism; ensuring freedom of navigation and the free flow of oil and other resources; and protection of the environment. A regional dialogue could eventually include more formal nonaggression and security cooperation arrangements.

But if Iran is preparing to normalise relations with its Arab neighbours, and with the wider world, it has a strange way of showing it. It is menacing two of the world’s vital shipping lanes that run up either side of the Arabian peninsula, like carotid arteries of the world economy. The most overt pressure is being applied in the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Gulf, where Iranian naval forces seized a passing container ship, MV Maersk Tigris, and forced it to divert to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas on April 28th. Both Iran and Maersk, which charters the ship, say the affair is linked to a commercial dispute from 2005.

Mr Zarif insists that Iran is committed to freedom of navigation in the strait, where the shipping lane enters Iranian territorial waters under the right of innocent passage. But Iran’s move has sufficiently worried America, which responded by deploying warships to the strait to stand guard over passing American-flagged vessels.

On the other side of Arabia, meanwhile, Arab and Iranian forces are shadow-boxing around the Bab al-Mandab, the strait leading into the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. A Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen in March to try to halt the advance of Shia rebels, who are seen as a proxy for Iran in Saudi Arabia’s back yard. Arab navies are blockading Yemen’s ports as their air forces pound the rebels, known as Houthis, and army units loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's former president, who was ousted in 2012. The coalition intervened when the rebels moved to take over the country from the internationally recognised government of Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

An Iranian convoy had at one point seemed ready to run the blockade, then backed away when America mobilised an aircraft carrier to shadow the Iranians and support Arab forces. But on April 30th Iran announced two of its destroyers had deployed at the entrance to the Bab al-Mandab, the strait leading into the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. "We are present in the Gulf of Aden in accordance with international regulations to ensure the safety of commercial ships of our country against the threat of pirates," said the head of the Iranian navy, Rear-Admiral Habibollah Sayari.

Separately, Saudi jets bombed the runway of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, to prevent an Iranian plane from carrying a cargo of humanitarian aid. Gulf officials said the Iranian jet ignored requests that it land first at a Saudi airfield to be inspected to ensure it was not carrying weapons.

Iran denies Arab accusations that it is supporting the Houthis with weapons and training. But it has certainly turned up the war of words against Saudi Arabia. Take recent comments by the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari:

Today, Saudi Arabia is brazenly and obnoxiously bombarding and massacring a nation, which is seeking the denial of the hegemonic system…Today, Al Saud is teetering on the edge of collapse
Though they will not say so publicly, Gulf monarchies are as worried as Israel about the “bad deal” that America is negotiating with Iran. In their view America would, in effect, be recognising Iran as a regional hegemon; and with sanctions lifted, Iran would have more resources to support its allies and proxies around the Arab world. As Gulf rulers prepare to meet Barack Obama in Camp David later this month, they want some kind of formal commitment that America will endeavour to help contain Iran.

Iran’s sabre-rattling will make it harder for Mr Obama to sell the agreement to a hostile Congress. But Iran’s signals are, as ever, contradictory. For all of his suspicions about America’s intentions, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said that a nuclear deal with America may open the way to co-operation in other areas.

At home he has tried to dampen the enthusiasm after ordinary Iranians joyfully took to the streets last month when Iran and world powers signed the “framework” of the deal. Chants of “Death to America” remain part of Iran's political ritual. That said, there are tentative signs of efforts to prepare Iranians for better relations with the Great Satan.

Last month, for instance, a group of two dozen American businessmen, academics and other visitors turned up in the Iranian capital. Unusually, they were allowed to visit the former American embassy in Teheran where more than 60 diplomatic staff members were infamously held hostage by revolutionary students in 1979. The visitors also met clerics who told them anti-American rhetoric was outdated. Iranian officials were keen to promote the virtues of investing in Iran.

But as ever, the opaque and factional political system makes Iran hard to read. While President Hassan Rohani may be seeking accommodation with America, the Revolutionary Guards boast of extending their influence in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and of dominating vital waterways. Ayatollah Khamenei hovers inscrutably over them all.

As one reform-minded analyst with close ties to the government of President Rohani puts it: “There is so much distrust that the regime thinks America will interfere and try and change the factional relationships in Tehran. If America supports Mr Rohani that will only add to the fear. So while Mr Rohani may be opening the gate to cooperation, Mr Khamenei will always be close enough to close it to preserve unity.”

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The Week's Michael Brendan Dougherty just published an article titled "How Jeb Bush blundered into making the Iraq war his problem":

Jeb Bush has taken three attempts at answering the following question: "Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion of Iraq?"

Here are my three translations of his answers:

First attempt: Of course, I would bring about the same disaster for my nation and several others. Did you think I was going to disrespect my brother?

Second attempt: Well, I don't know what I would have done about Iraq. Hypotheticals only tell us that we can't really know anything for sure. Did you really think I was going to disrespect the laws of logic and epistemology?

Third attempt: Actually, I can't answer hypothetical questions because so many people paid the ultimate sacrifice. Did you really think I was going to disrespect our dead soldiers?

Feel free to check the above against the originals. In fact, it was even worse than that, with him adding, "The simple fact is mistakes were made, and we need to learn from mistakes of the past to make sure we're strong and secure going forward."

Besides being the most shopworn cliché of moral cowardice, "mistakes were made" is not even an answer an insurance agent would accept for a home flood. Why should we accept it from a man who has the benefit of hindsight and the ambition to be commander-in-chief?

It is a little disconcerting that Jeb Bush, who has so far run the smoothest, most professional, and well-conceived campaign in the Republican field, has given so little thought to the most easy-to-anticipate policy question about making another Bush president.

Let's take his first attempt. Bush is essentially more loyal to his brother's legacy than his own brother is. In a rare moment of near candor for a presidential autobiography, George W. Bush wrote about his own anguish over the war, given what we now know. "No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn't find the weapons. I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it," he wrote. "I still do."

Peter Baker's sympathetic treatment of Bush's time in office portrayed him as disillusioned with the unanimous advice of the members of his administration, none of whom expressed any doubts whatsoever about the decision to go to war. This disappointment was sharply aimed at Dick Cheney.

Jeb Bush's third attempt is perhaps his most egregious. In fact, what is most disrespectful to soldiers is not silence about how they and their friends might be used. Respect for the living and the dead requires the kind of reflection that Bush now disavows.

As for hypotheticals: The easiest and politically safest option is to coach Jeb Bush into saying something like this: "Barack Obama should have negotiated an agreement that would have allowed U.S. troops to stay and nip ISIS in the bud. But if you're asking me if the world is better off without Saddam Hussein…" and then trail off into the obvious, empty-calorie rhetoric about American leadership that the nation grows fat on in every election.

But for a moment, let's just think through the different hypotheticals and consider what an honest answer would have looked like. We don't really know if the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. And we certainly know that we would have been better off if we hadn't launched a war to remove his government.

If Hussein really was the madman the last Bush administration claimed him to be, sure, we could absolve ourselves. If Hussein was a key player in the 9/11 plot, if he was rapidly developing weapons of mass destruction that could deliver a mushroom cloud on United States soil, if he regularly made use of a human shredder machine for sport, absolutely, the world would be better off without him.

These were lies. Hussein was just another awful Middle Eastern autocrat, a man whose state was gelded by a no-fly-zone, a dictator with an expansive taste in '80s tween erotica. But he was also a holdover of Baathist pan-Arabism, serving as a counterweight to Iran's regional ambitions and an obstacle to Sunni radicalism. So, no, we don't know that the whole world is actually better off without him.

But I do know that after the war in Iraq America's credibility, its military capability, and its military personnel and their families, not to mention Iraq's religious minorities, the Sunni Triangle, and Northern Syria, are worse off than they otherwise would have been. And I wait for a Republican candidate to say as much, and as clearly.

 

[Emcee77]

The Week's Michael Brendan Dougherty just published an article titled "How Jeb Bush blundered into making the Iraq war his problem":

He just has to dodge the question till he gets to the general election, and then he can answer, "No, I would not have gone to war in Iraq knowing what we know today, but my brother didn't know what we know today, and I would have gone to war based on the intelligence he had--even my opponent wanted to go to war based on that intelligence."

 

[Emcee77]

He just has to dodge the question till he gets to the general election, and then he can answer, "No, I would not have gone to war in Iraq knowing what we know today, but my brother didn't know what we know today, and I would have gone to war based on the intelligence he had--even my opponent wanted to go to war based on that intelligence."

Jon Stewart To Jeb Bush: 'Thank You. Was That So Hard?'

He went ahead and bit the bullet. Credit to him; but like Jon Stewart said, "was that so hard?"

 

[kmoose]

Jon Stewart To Jeb Bush: 'Thank You. Was That So Hard?'

He went ahead and bit the bullet. Credit to him; but like Jon Stewart said, "was that so hard?"

Question: Who gives a rat's @ss what Jon Stewart thinks about politics?


People do realize that Jon Stewart is (nominally) a comedian, right? He's not a politician, he's not a public (or foreign) policy expert......... it's like people thinking that South Park is serious commentary on social issues.

 

[Buster Bluth]

Question: Who gives a rat's @ss what Jon Stewart thinks about politics?


People do realize that Jon Stewart is (nominally) a comedian, right? He's not a politician, he's not a public (or foreign) policy expert......... it's like people thinking that South Park is serious commentary on social issues.

 

[woolybug25]

Question: Who gives a rat's @ss what Jon Stewart thinks about politics?


People do realize that Jon Stewart is (nominally) a comedian, right? He's not a politician, he's not a public (or foreign) policy expert......... it's like people thinking that South Park is serious commentary on social issues.

What makes someone an "expert" anyways? The guy's show, while using a satirical platform, has been a politically driven show since '99. He has done interviews with Pres. Obama, John McCain and a litany of other political figures. He's been on other "true" news shows as a guest and has gone toe to toe with guys like Tucker Carlson in political debate.

The guy has two Peabody Awards and wrote a best selling book (America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction) on the history of American politics.

Just because he uses satire as a method of delivery, doesn't mean that his views don't have merit. He is just as qualified as some of the weirdos other networks put on their "serious news" programs.

 

[Emcee77]

Question: Who gives a rat's @ss what Jon Stewart thinks about politics?


People do realize that Jon Stewart is (nominally) a comedian, right? He's not a politician, he's not a public (or foreign) policy expert......... it's like people thinking that South Park is serious commentary on social issues.

I don't think that response is unwarranted, unless it it is kmoose's intention to go off on a tangent. I certainly never meant to take the thread in this direction.

I didn't post the HuffPo piece describing Jon Stewart's reaction because I thought he raised a serious new insight about Jeb Bush that no one had thought of before. I'd admit that such a post at least might be out of place in this discussion; Jon Stewart makes some great points now and then (I'm not disagreeing with wooly about that), but still he is essentially a comedian.

But in this case Jon Stewart made the same point that many serious commentators, including the one Whiskey linked in this thread, had made over the last week or so, about the absurdity and disingenuousness of Jeb Bush's refusal to say that he wouldn't go into Iraq knowing what we know now, and I posted the HuffPo piece just because I wanted to update the thread with the info that Jeb Bush now DOES admit that he wouldn't have gone into Iraq knowing what we know now, and that HuffPo piece was the first item I found that referenced his most recent statements on the matter, and I thought the Jon Stewart comments reflected the tenor of our conversation in this thread and were pretty obvious and unobjectionable and amusing to boot. But if that offended you, kmoose, I'm sorry.

 

[dshans]

Question: Who gives a rat's @ss what Jon Stewart thinks about politics?

I, for one, do. More precisely I appreciate his (and his writers') willingness and ability to cut through the fog/bullshit spread by either side of the aisle.

Granted, and clearly, the majority of their barbs are aimed at Republicans and conservatives in general. The target is larger, softer and easier to poke.

Are the comedic schticks of Limbaugh, Fox, Coulter, Beck, etc. any more valid or reliable than Stewart or Colbert?

Sheesh ...