To Those Predicting Changes in the Middle East
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/August 16/15
Confusing between end results and facts produces myths. This has been especially evident in much of the news that has circulated lately regarding impending changes in the region. According to these reports the situation in Syria is starting to improve and Russia is finally altering its attitude towards Iran and Bashar Al-Assad. We have also heard that the Houthi retreat in Yemen is the outcome of a deal with ally Iran. Saudi Arabia is abandoning the Syrian opposition and reconciling with Assad. And the Lebanese can now elect a president following the Iranian nuclear deal. Some have even claimed that some of the new stances taken by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi are the result of an Iranian–Gulf reconciliation package and that Saudi Arabia has started to favor Hamas and turned its back on the Palestinian Authority.
Until now, there is no compelling evidence that these changes have indeed taken place and I personally do not believe that any major political or military shifts will take place either. Those who hurried to analyze the increased political activity over the past few weeks went on to preach that regional and international powers have finally decided to resolve all matters related to Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Gulf. The problem is that some of us often confuse between information and analysis, between news and opinion. For example, the recent meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Gulf ministers does not necessarily mean there has been a change in attitudes towards the Syrian conflict.
As for Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s statements about Tehran seeking to cooperate and reconcile with the Gulf states, they remain until this moment mere words without anything tangible to back them up—and are most likely a response to US calls for Iran to show a more positive spirit towards its Gulf adversaries so that the latter stop criticizing the nuclear deal. Zarif did not propose anything specific. We are only witnessing a flurry of diplomatic activity, which includes Qatari and Omani efforts to reconcile with Iran. The Iranians themselves do not wish to relinquish their influence in Syria and Iraq, nor do they want to cooperate to resolve the dispute over their position on Lebanon, comparatively a much easier task. As for Yemen, improvements on the political scene were generated by military advances on the ground such as the liberation of Aden and the defeat of the Houthi rebels. It had nothing to do with Iranian political stances.
The most important piece of evidence that proves all these rumors are bogus came from Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir. Speaking in Moscow last week, he said the Kingdom does not accept any solution to the Syrian conflict that involves Assad remaining in power. He said those words quite clearly, while sitting next to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, who in turn maintained his country’s own position, contradicting the view from Riyadh. As for the news that a Syrian security official recently visited Jeddah, this should be seen as being part of routine communications that take place between adversaries. Even if the government in Damascus offered to present a new solution that Saudi Arabia may eventually welcome, the Kingdom does not necessarily have to accept it. The same goes for the visit of exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mishal to Saudi Arabia. It does not mean a change in Riyadh’s position, which is based on a legal foundation and clear political interests. Legitimacy goes to the Palestinian Authority; the Hamas government residing in Gaza appears to be a “lame duck” administration. Here it is in the Saudi interest to support the legitimate authority and cooperate with other countries in the region, particularly Egypt. Rumors that Iran is unhappy with communications between Riyadh and Gaza are merely a product of Hamas propaganda to make the Saudis turn to them.
It is Iran that does not want a relationship with Hamas, as it is seeking to pass the nuclear deal and offset Israel’s opposition to it. Tehran, formerly a member of the “axis of evil,” now wants Riyadh to take its place and become a state cooperating with internationally reviled organizations so that Saudi Arabia stands in the extremist camp while Iran joins the moderates!Let’s go back to the surge in fake scenarios about impending major changes in the Middle East. The only new fact is Iran’s nuclear deal with the West, and we are yet to know how that will affect the region in the future, whether positively or negatively. The contentious issues between the countries of the region are deep-rooted. In Syria, the system collapsed with pro- and anti-Iranian terrorist organizations residing there. The war has swept all over the country from Zabadani to Deraa. In Yemen, the Saudi-led campaign has succeeded in helping liberate Aden while the capital Sana’a is about to be besieged. The situation in Iraq is still volatile with fighting going on every day in the west of the country and in parts of Iraq still controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). These conflicts are real and need more than a few diplomatic visits and the fertile imaginations of some journalists in order to be adequately resolved. Only changes in attitudes can produce tangible results.
When Obama Adopts the Mullahs’ Style
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/August 16/15
Those who are sucked into big adversarial situations in history always run a number of risks. However, the biggest risk, I believe, is to have an evil adversary and end up looking, behaving and even thinking like them. If that happens to anyone, they could be sure that even if they win many battles, they would end up losing the war. In contrast, one might be lucky enough to end up resembling an adversary that is better than oneself. The effect that “the other” has on one has been observed throughout history, even at the level of great empires. When ancient Rome and Iran became adversaries each learned a number of things from each other. Rome was a republic in conflict with Iran, a monarchy. When Marcus Licinius Crassus, in his time the greatest of Roman generals, was killed by the Persians in the battle of Harran in 53 BC, the Roman elite started thinking of adopting the monarchic system which they eventually did under Julius Caesar. At the other end of the spectrum, unlike the Romans, Iranians did not have a standing army. In time, however, they decided to imitate their adversary by creating precisely such a war machine.
In more recent times, the Soviet Union and the United States, two great powers engaged in the Cold War, reciprocally adopted aspects of each other’s system. The Soviet defense doctrine has been built on the deployment of mass armies, scorched earth and prolonged fighting on land that had been tested with success during the Napoleonic wars. The American doctrine was woven around the motto: Get in, Kill the enemy, Get out! It found its most tragic expression in the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. Six years later, the Soviets had built their own atom bomb. The Soviets had a vast and brutal intelligence-security system built around the KGB, itself heir to the Tsarist Okhrana and the Leninist Cheka. In 1945, having disbanded the OSS, their wartime intelligence service, the Americans had nothing of the sort. Soon, however, they created the CUA which was to imitate the KGB in as many ways as America’s open society could tolerate. The Soviets practiced the black arts against their opponents in Eastern and Central Europe. Americans did similar things in Latin America.
Trouble for the Soviets started when more and more of their people, including some in the leadership, started to talk like the Americans. In 1989 together with four European newspaper editors we held a number of meetings in Moscow with Soviet leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Alexander Yakovlev and Yevgeny Primakov. We were all surprised how all of them talked like western Social Democrats, especially when they held forth about “universal values.” “They have been contaminated by the Western bug,” I wrote at the time, only half in jest. “Let’s see if they really mean what they say.”All that came back to my mind when reading the speech that US President Barack Obama gave in Washington the other day in defense of his “nuke deal” with the Islamic Republic. The first thing that struck me was how his discourse echoed that of the mullahs. He started by building a metaphysical heaven-and-hell duality about a very this-worldly issue. He warned that the choice was between accepting his deal (Heaven) and war (Hell). The beauty of life, however, lies in the fact that it is full of endless possibilities, including doing nothing when doing anything else could cause more harm.
Next, he imitated the mullahs by practicing “taqiyah” (dissimulation). He diligently avoided delving into the details of a convoluted “deal” every part of which is designed to deceive. He also hid the fact that his much advertised “deal” has not been officially accepted by the Iranian state. More broadly, he practiced another mullahs’ trick known as “mohajah” which means drawing your adversary into the simulacrum of a battle which, even if they won, would offer them nothing but the simulacrum of a victory. Having already committed his administration through his sponsorship of a United Nations’ Security Council resolution endorsing the “deal”, Obama pretended that his fight with the Congress might end up conjuring some meaning. Another mullahs’ tactic he used is known as “takhrib” which means attacking the person of your adversary rather than responding to their argument. Those who opposed the “deal”, he kept saying, were the same warmongers that provoked the invasion of Iraq and the “Death to America” crowd in Iran. The message was simple: Those are bad guys, so what they say about this good deal does not count!
He was repeating a favorite dictum the mullahs say: Do not see what is said, see who is saying it! That dictum has generated two immense branches of knowledge: The Study of Men (Ilm Al-Rejal) and the Study of Pedigrees (Ilm al-Ansab). Prove that someone is a good man with a good pedigree and you could take his narrative (hadith) on the most complex of subjects at face value. On the contrary, he who is proven to be a bad man with an inferior pedigree should be dismissed with disdain even if he said the most sensible thing. Obama forgot that among the warmongers who pushed for the invasion of Iraq were two of his closest associates, Joe Biden, his vice president, and John Kerry, his secretary of state, along with the entire Democratic Party contingent in the Congress.
On the Iranian side, he forgot that President Hassan Rouhani and his patron former President Hashemi Rafsanjani built their entire career on “Death to America” slogans. Rouhani and his “moderate” ministers till have to walk on an American flag as they enter their offices every day. The official Iran Daily ran an editorial the other day in support of Obama’s “campaign for the deal.” “Obama is the nightmare of the Republicans because he wants to destroy the America they love,” it said. “His success will be a success for all those who want peace.” In other words, the Tehran editorialist was echoing Obama’s Manichaean jibe. In any case, name-calling and accusing critics of harboring hidden agendas is another tactic of the mullahs known as “siahkari” (blackening) of the adversary.
I am embarrassed to talk of myself, but I have been more of “Long Live America” crowd than the “Death to America” one. And, yet I think the Vienna deal is bad for Iran, bad for America and bad for the world. I also think that it is possible to forge a deal that is good for Iran, good for the US and good for the world. I have also never asked the US or anybody else to invade Iran or any other country. I have also never been a Republican if only because I am not a US citizen, and never studied, worked or resided there. I could assure Obama that, as far as I can gauge public opinion, the majority of Iranians have a good opinion of America and a bad opinion of the “deal”. This is, perhaps, why, like Obama, the Rafsanjani faction, of which Rouhani is part, is trying to avoid the issue being debated even in their own ersatz parliament. This is also why Iranian papers critical of the deal are closed down or publicly warned. Rather than depending on the Khomeinist lobby in Washington, or even assertions by people like myself, Obama should conduct his own enquiries to gauge Iranian public opinion. He might well find out that he is making an alliance with a faction that does not represent majority opinion in Iran. His “deal” may disappoint if not anger a majority of Iranians who are still strongly pro-America. Rouhani’s Cabinet is full of individuals who held the American diplomats hostage in Tehran for 444 days. Yet, they support Obama. Those who oppose the “deal”, however, include many Iranians who genuinely desire the closest of ties with the US. Finally, another mullah concept, used by Obama, is that of “End of Discussion” (fasl al-khitab) once the big cheese has spoken. That may work in the Khomeinist dictatorship; it is not worthy of a mature democracy like the United States.
