Across the Bay

A new reality for Syria

2011-05-26T09:41:00.001-04:00

A new reality for Syria: "The ground under the Syrian regime is shifting rapidly, and relations with its precious few friends outside Iran have deteriorated dramatically. Perhaps none of these reversals in friendships has been as sudden and curious, but also as telling of the geopolitical flux underway, as the rift with Qatar."

An end to the Syria pipe dream

2011-05-19T17:37:00.001-04:00

An end to the Syria pipe dream: "At last it would seem the Obama administration is recognizing that its policy of “hope” toward Bashar al-Assad was a pipe dream. Now the administration needs to formulate an entirely new Syria policy to match this conclusion, no matter how reluctant it may be to abandon its old paradigm."

Delusional hope over reality

2011-05-09T18:54:00.001-04:00

Delusional hope over reality: "With every passing week, it becomes clearer that the Obama administration has no intention of revising its Syria policy and ending the delusional hope of reviving the Syrian-Israeli peace track and distancing the Assad regime from Iran. When it comes to Damascus, the administration is content to remain in its own echo chamber."

Behind the curve on Syria

2011-04-28T09:02:00.001-04:00

Behind the curve on Syria: "The Obama administration’s latest decision to impose targeted sanctions on Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle actually highlights that, even at this point in the game, the White House’s operating principle with the Syrian regime remains “behavior change.” Washington is continuing to hold out delusional hope that Assad will miraculously “reform.”"

Advocating for Assad

2011-04-27T19:30:00.001-04:00

Advocating for Assad: "As the Syrian popular uprising unfolded over the last month, one of the more remarkable things to witness has been the commentary of the majority of professional Syria watchers, many of whom have given public relations advice to the Syrian dictator and uncritical reproductions of official Syrian talking points."

Weekly Column

2011-04-27T19:28:00.004-04:00

This site has been on hiatus for a while now. If any of my readers still frequent or subscribe to this blog, I will be automatically linking my weekly NOW Lebanon column, which appears every Thursday, for those who are interested.

Saudi Arabia's Iraq Policy

2010-11-07T14:44:00.004-05:00

My latest article in the Weekly Standard examines the consequences of going on Iraq Study Group autopilot.

PS: For those who don't know yet, my columns now appear every Thursday over at NOW Lebanon.

Transferring the Yakhont to Hezbollah

2010-09-30T10:57:00.002-04:00

After meeting with Sec. Clinton on Monday, Syria's Walid Moallem came out with a brazen interview in the WSJ that trashed every single US item of concern. Most remarkable was his denial that Syria was passing weapons on to Hezbollah. Well, the newspaper owned by his boss's cousin says different. In fact, the Syrians have all but admitted their intention to pass along the Russian Yakhont anti-ship missile to the Shiite militia. I discuss that in my column today:

The first report came out in the Kuwaiti al-Rai in April, around the time when the story of Syria’s smuggling of Scuds to Hezbollah was still raging, along with assessments of growing military integration between Syria and Hezbollah in preparation for the next war with Israel.

The authors of the al-Rai report, known for their access to Hezbollah sources, quoted Syrian sources in laying out the shape of the military response to any Israeli attack against Syria. One element in this so-called “Syrian scenario” described in the report is of relevance here. It claimed that “Syria has prepared plans to hit the entire Israeli coast in case of a war against Lebanon and Syria, and Syria will use ground-to-sea missiles as well as imposing a blockade against Israeli naval targets, military and non-military, in order to shut down all Israeli ports.”

The report concluded with the Syrian sources warning Israel about the potency of the “unified military efforts” of the Syrian leadership and Hezbollah.

The theme of naval targets surfaced again about a month later in Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s “Liberation Day” speech. Nasrallah essentially echoed verbatim the Syrian claim reported in al-Rai, contending that his group possessed the capability to hit “all military, civilian and commercial ships” heading to “any port on the Palestinian coast from north to the south,” even threatening to target the port of Eilat on the Red Sea.

Then came the clincher. Immediately after Nasrallah’s speech, it was none other than the Syrian daily al-Watan, owned by Bashar al-Assad’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf, which offered the exclusive and detailed interpretation of what Nasrallah was referring to in his speech.

The paper’s report, headlined “Hezbollah possesses ground-to-sea missiles with a 300 km range,” described that the new missile was not the C-802, which Hezbollah had used to hit the Israeli Sa’ar warship, the Hanit, during the 2006 war. Rather, the new missile, according to “impeccable information” obtained by al-Watan, had a range of 300 kilometers, and covers the entire Israeli coastline.

Of course, it is precisely the Yakhont missile that has that range, as well as the capacity to carry a 200 kg warhead. In other words, the Syrians, by putting out an exclusive report, in their own media (and not through a leak to a Gulf newspaper, as is often the case), ahead of everyone else, were sending an unambiguous message regarding their intentions.

Musa Sadr and the Islamic Republican Party

2010-09-08T09:44:00.004-04:00

My column this week is on Musa Sadr's disappearance in Libya 32 years ago. I briefly note a couple of quotes by some authors about the possible role played by Khomeini and some of his lieutenants in the disappearance, while exploring the politics and history behind it.

Of course, there's much more. For instance, Dick Norton, whom I reference in the piece, cites in his book on Amal "one of al-Sadr's close associates, a man who was directly involved in investigating the disappearance, who believes that the imam was murdered as a result of a Syrian-Libyan-Iranian plot. ... According to the former associate, it was the Syrians, and particularly Foreign Minister Khaddam, who urged al-Sadr to accept the Libyan invitation..."

Other accounts claim that it was the Algerians who made the suggestion for Sadr to visit Libya in order to clear the air with the Libyans, whose media organs in Lebanon had been attacking Sadr incessantly. Of course, the Libyans, the Syrians, the Algerians and the PLO were the only Arab actors whose support the new Islamic regime in Iran was able to secure at the time.

You can also consult Peter Theroux's The Strange Disappearance of Imam Moussa Sadr for more. For instance, he references an article in An-Nahar that is relevant to my piece:

"The Sadr Brigades Organization [formed by the Imam's sister to avenge his disappearance] has revealed the following...

A certain Jalaleddine Farsi, who had run for president in Iran, then withdrawn his candidacy, as his great-grandfather was of Afghani origin, thus rendering him ineligible, by the terms of the Iranian constitution, and the late Muhammad Saleh Husseini, then Imam Khomeini's Mideast representative and director of Islamic liberation movements, met on August 26, 1978, with Major General Saleh Abu Shereida, chief of Libyan Intelligence and close confidant of Qaddafi at the Beirut International Hotel.

Abu Shereida had entered Lebanon that same day on a forged Moroccan passport. He had a lengthy meeting with the two men and left Beirut on the morning of August 28.

That afternoon, Husseini met an Amal official he knew slightly and told him, 'I'm heading to Libya -- is there anything I can do for you there?' 'No, have a good trip and give my regards to Imam Sadr,' was the reply. Husseini answered, 'Whatever you say, but you might as well know your friend isn't coming back.'

On the evening of August 27, 1978, Husseini and Farsi flew to Libya. We have documentary evidence that proces the two were among the kidnappers of the Imam and his companions, and thought it right to share it with the masses and the officials of the Islamic Republic.

Farsi [whose father, actually, was of Afghan origin] and Husseini were two figures in the Islamic Republican Party who were particularly close to Arafat's Fateh movement and allied with Mohammad Montazeri. Farsi in particular became a strong critic and enemy of Sadr and his ally in the Iranian regime, Mostafa Chamran. The mention of these two figures in particular by Musa Sadr's entourage works well with the thrust of my article and with the argument about the involvement of Iranian cadres close to the Libyans and the Palestinians.

Two Items on Hezbollah

2010-06-22T10:23:00.003-04:00

Here are my two latest pieces on Hezbollah. The first, from last week, analyzes aspects of Nasrallah's speech on the anniversary of Khomeini's death. The second, out today, looks into Hezbollah's financial networks worldwide, in light of two recent arrests of Hezbollah operatives in Ohio and Paraguay.

Before the Rockets Start to Explode

2010-05-25T18:46:00.002-04:00

Ron Ben-Yishai in Ynet today:

At this time, Hezbollah serves as Iran’s long strategic arm, aimed at deterring Israel from attacking Tehran’s nuclear program by threatening the Jewish State’s military and civilian home front. For the Syrians, Hezbollah constitutes an important component in its war plan, and therefore Damascus arms it with whatever it possesses. In Syrian eyes, the group’s aim is to pulverize the Israeli home front, while splitting the IDF’s offensive effort between Lebanon and Syria, thereby also preventing an outflanking operation on the west that would target Syria’s defensive posture in the Golan.

For that reason, a solution to the Lebanese problem cannot be found in Baalbek, in Beirut, or in Hezbollah’s fear of other ethnic groups in Lebanon. The root of the Lebanese problem is in Damascus and Tehran, and this is where Israel should be seeking a solution, with American help. If possible, this should be done via the combination of military deterrence and effective international pressure. Yet should this fail, the other option is a well-planned military campaign, which will be launched before the rockets start to explode in our territory.

The Flight of the Intellectuals

2010-05-20T09:50:00.001-04:00

In this week's column, I talk to Paul Berman about his new book.

The Shape of Things to Come with Iran

2010-05-20T09:48:00.002-04:00

My commentary on the recently-busted IRGC cell in Kuwait (and Bahrain), and its implications.

The Obama Administration's "Big Game"

2010-05-03T15:43:00.003-04:00

Here's my piece from last Tuesday on the recent House hearing on Syria. It saw the first time that an administration official, in this case, Asst. Sec. Jeffrey Feltman, actually spell out what the administration's held as its Syria policy. Basically, it's all about "linkage."

I should also note this piece by Elliott Abrams in the Weekly Standard. Abrams makes the following observation about the administration's position on Syria following the Scud crisis: "Having committed itself to the 'peace process,' the administration simply cannot afford to treat Syria as it deserves; Syria has too much clout now."

What Abrams means by "clout" is that the administration is inadvertently affording Damascus free leverage because it's approaching Syria within the framework of the peace process. I had made the same point just a day earlier in my piece:

As some of us reasoned, Bashar al-Assad made his gamble with the Scuds calculating that this peace processing impulse would be the administration’s default position. If the US endgame is a comprehensive peace deal, one that by definition involves Syria, then Assad can buy immunity and even leverage, simply by declaring he wants peace.

Thus, Obama becomes trapped by his own “big game”. If Syria is deemed necessary for his regional peace/containment edifice, then the US will not be able to declare engagement a failure and suspend it, or else the entire edifice collapses. The result is the confused paralysis evident in the administration’s reaction to the Scud crisis: doubling down on engagement and the need to convince Assad that his “real” interests lay not with Iran but with the US.

I was referring to my own analysis on April 13. Commenting on the Scud story, I wrote:

Depending on how the Obama administration deals with the situation, the risk is that Assad will draw the lesson that he enjoys impunity – especially if Washington’s impulse is to address the problem by calling for resumed peace talks between Syria and Israel.

Furthermore, the Syrian president may calculate that, in the event of a conflict, the administration will ultimately prevent the Israelis from going all the way with Syria and, instead, pressure them into entering negotiations. If Assad senses that he is protected, expect him to push the envelope even further – at Lebanon’s expense, of course.

... In his conceptual framework, the peace process is just warfare by other means.

Lee Smith on the Syria Policy

2010-04-21T11:27:00.001-04:00

An excellent piece by Lee Smith in Tablet Magazine today:

The argument over how to engage Syria encompasses, then, both sentimental and strategic logic. It’s a debate in which emotions run surprisingly high for a country that has nothing like the significance of China, Russia, or Iran, because finally the argument is little more than a shadow play. Washington doesn’t like the fact that Syria kills Americans and our friends, but since we are not willing to stop them by killing those Syrians responsible, there is little that we can do about it. So, we argue with ourselves about sending an ambassador to Damascus.

The reality is rather more consequential than the phony argument over Syria policy would suggest. The issue is finally about terrorism, which is not the work of shadowy networks hiding in caves and rogue operators whose grievances about the end of the Ottoman caliphate and the plight of the Palestinians can be soothed by an American public diplomacy campaign. This is a fiction, and the truth could not be any clearer. As Syrian support for Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and a host of other organizations shows, Islamic terrorism is how Middle Eastern regimes fight for their strategic interests. If we let Syria off the hook for its proven acts of terror against U.S. military and diplomatic personnel, as well as U.S. allies in Israel, Lebanon, and Iraq, we have all but announced that in the event of future attacks on the U.S. homeland we will never retaliate against the states without which so-called stateless terrorist organizations cannot exist. We will have effectively disabled any deterrence we have against our adversaries and make our cities vulnerable to anyone who can lie his way past the Transportation Security Administration.

Obama’s public diplomacy is premised on the notion of reaching out to the Muslim masses and encouraging moderate streams of Islam, a strategy that is incongruous with a diplomacy that also reaches out to Muslim states that not only breed and support extremism but also arm it to kill Americans.

Read the whole thing.

Peace Talks: Bashar's War by Other Means

2010-04-19T12:08:00.002-04:00

Here's, belatedly, my piece from last Tuesday on Syria's smuggling of Scuds to Hezbollah:

The Syrian president made a telling remark at the last Arab League summit to the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas. He observed that “the price of resistance is not higher than the price of peace.” And therein lays the problem. Assad has not been made to feel that the costs of continued destabilization can be prohibitive. Instead, all he gets from Washington are weak statements in response to his actions, and rarely from high-ranking administration officials.
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Assad’s mantra is that “peace and resistance are two sides of the same coin.” As he sees things, it’s not either peace or resistance. For him the two are simultaneous tools of attrition, with peace talks providing Syria with impunity as Assad pursues “resistance.” In his conceptual framework, the peace process is just warfare by other means.

Born-again "Resister"

2010-04-11T16:53:00.003-04:00

My column from Tuesday on the rumor that Walid Jumblatt has been asked by Hezbollah and Syria to allow Hezbollah to set up positions in the Barouk mountains, and its possible repercussions on the Druze in the event of renewed conflict with Israel.

Diplomacy as Missionary Work

2010-03-27T18:37:00.002-04:00

Here's my NOW Lebanon piece from Tuesday on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing with the nominee for US Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford. While Ford did note that sanctions will remain in place so long as Syria supports Hezbollah, the overall approach was one of pretending that we know Syria's interests better than its regime does and that the task of diplomacy is to remedy the regime's false consciousness. In other words, it's diplomacy as missionary work.

Who's Leading on Syria Policy?

2010-03-15T16:06:00.003-04:00

I'm very late posting this, but here's my piece from last Tuesday in NOW Lebanon about the John Kerry factor in the recent incoherent development in the US policy toward Syria.

My assessment of the Syrians' conception and cultivation of Kerry's role was further corroborated in a recent report in the pro-Syrian As-Safir, which contained the following quote by Imad Mustapha's lap poodle. This is essentially straight from Mustapha's desk:

Landis told As-Safir that Kerry's role is essential in Syrian-American relations because he carried messages from the US administration during his visits to Damascus and he is playing a role in reassuring the Syrians and in confirming that Syrian-American relations remain on the White House's agenda. [Landis] considers that Kerry is also trying to distance Obama from "the traditional policy at the State Department which is not eager to engage with Syria."

Similarly, another regime mouthpiece put this out in al-Hayat:

It was confirmed that Sen. John Kerry played a role in pushing up the date of the [Senate Committee on Foreign Relations] hearing in order to "confirm the continuation of the dialogue due to Syria's axiomatic role," after eight Republican congressmen asked Secretary of State Clinton to postpone the discussion of appointing an ambassador, noting the need "to not engage for the sake of engaging."

I had warned about this back in March of last year:

Syria will attempt to diversify its channels with as many American interlocutors as possible to play them off against each other. The Obama administration would do well to restrict the number of cooks in the Syria kitchen.

In the end Kerry can only carry the Syrians so far. More to come.

Juan Cole's Social Protest

2010-03-04T10:56:00.009-05:00

So who's more prone to terrorism and violence, people who are well off or poor people? Well if you're Juan Cole everything is flexible.

Cole is at his absolute funniest when he tries to project academic seriousness. And, once again, he does not fail to deliver. This time, it's a hysterical rant against Martin Kramer over a talk that Kramer recently gave.

After arguing that Kramer was a Nazi, a scientific racist and an advocate of genocide, Cole puts on his academic robe and belittles Kramer for his lack of depth in the "social sciences," (when in fact, Kramer relies on mainstream "social scientists" and ideas; maybe Cole thinks Alan Richards [pdf] also lacks that "depth") submitting the following dictum:

"Studies of groups that deploy violence against civilians for political purposes show that they are characterized by higher than average education and income, which correlate with smaller family size."

Needless to say, as with the rest of the post, this has nothing to do with what Kramer was actually talking about. However, I found that quote rather curious in that it struck me as undermining everything Cole and his ilk have been saying for years. For instance, wasn't Shiite "radicalization" supposedly a product of socio-economic deprivation?

To answer that question I went straight to the source. In 1986, Cole edited a book with Nikki Keddie entitled Shi'ism and Social Protest. In the introduction of the book, Cole and Keddie wrote:

The differential impact of capitalism, or of modernization, on various groups and classes, usually involving growing gaps in income distribution and life-styles, often brings forth protest, especially in a context of rapid social change. ... Similarly, economic development in Iraq and Lebanon did not proportionately benefit Shi'is, who remained predominantly proletarians and subproletarians or peasants. (Pp. 12-13.)

Then, the following corresponding remark was made about this "impact of modernization":

Fundamentalism and Khomeinism seem stronger in places that have undergone disruptive modernization. (P. 22)

So the "impact of modernization" led to "growing gaps in income distribution." etc., that "did not benefit Shi'is," which brought forth "social protest," and it was in this "social context" that "fundamentalism and Khomeinism" seemed "stronger."

I don't know about you, but it doesn't quite add up with Cole ca. February 2010: "Studies of groups that deploy violence against civilians for political purposes show that they are characterized by higher than average education and income, which correlate with smaller family size."

It does, however, enhance the overall comedic value of the post and of Juan Cole in general. But it creates a dilemma: which is more hilarious? Juan Cole blogger extraordinaire and El Presidente of the "global Americana institute," or Juan Cole the academic (whose bitterness that Kramer is somehow affiliated with Harvard while he was denied a position at Yale is quite palpable in the post)? It's a tough call. Either way, both characters offer the consistent delirious derangement that makes Cole such an endless source of entertainment if one actually had time to kill.

Obama's Incoherent Syria Sideshow

2010-02-26T13:12:00.006-05:00

I'm a bit late in posting this, but here's my piece in NOW Lebanon from Tuesday on Obama's incoherent Syria move. I argue that the Syria "policy" is neither a policy nor is it about Syria. It's an incoherent tactical move resulting from Obama's floundering Iran policy and lack of an overall strategy in the region. The justifications offered by the administration are so illogical that they crumble under their own weight. This is a failure before it even begins. Proof came rather swiftly at the Assad-Ahmadinejad summit in Damascus, where the two terror-sponsoring dictators publicly mocked Secretary Clinton and the US. We shall see how that will affect, if at all, the confirmation of the newly-nominated US ambassador. Already one Democrat has voiced his displeasure with Obama's move, and that was before the Damascus summit and Assad's statements.

Aside from mocking Clinton's statement, and reaffirming his strategic alliance with Iran, Assad also said:

"We discussed the situation of the resistance in the region and how to support these resistance forces. It is self-evident to say that this support is a moral and national duty in every nation, and also a religious legal duty, since we are today in a religious occasion [the birthday of Islam's prophet Muhammad]."

Other items critical of Obama's initiative include, aside from the Washington Post editorial posted right below, these two articles by David Schenker and Matt Brodsky.

Schenker raises an issue I've written about in the recent past -- the fate of Imad Mustapha:

The one potential benefit of a senior U.S. diplomat returning to Damascus is said to be a quid pro quo involving the imminent departure from Washington of Syria's longtime ambassador, Imad Moustapha. Since 2000, Moustapha has served as chief regime propagandist and spinmeister, and his incessant leaking and mischaracterizations of U.S. policy initiatives have proved a complicating factor in the relationship.

Finally, to revisit the nauseatingly repetitive argument of the Syria-Iran alliance, see this article and this old blog post of mine on the subject.

Addendum: Forgot to add this piece on the Damascus summit by Jonathan Spyer:

As such, the Ahmedinejad trip to Syria is not merely an opportunity for the two leaders to re-affirm the long-standing close ties between their regimes – and Syria’s links with the Islamic Republic of Iran date back to 1980, a year after the Iranian revolution. Rather, the visit represents a showcasing of the shared regional strategy of “resistance” to the US and its allies in the region.
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And all of this comes apparently with little cost. In spite of it, all the West, the US and Israel, still apparently want to be friends. Why then would Assad be inclined to “distance” himself from Iran? The answer is that he wouldn’t, and he won’t – as was on vivid display this week in the visit of the Iranian president to Damascus.

The Syria Gambit Never Works

2010-02-19T09:33:00.004-05:00

An excellent, must-read editorial in the WaPo today on the Obama administration's cluelessness on Syria:

Don't expect progress from talking to Syria

Friday, February 19, 2010

THE NOTION that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad can somehow be turned from his alliance with Iran and sponsorship of terrorism is one of the hardiest of the Middle East. No number of failed diplomatic initiatives, or outrages by Mr. Assad, seems to diminish its luster. The latest attempt to test it comes from the Obama administration, which this week nominated the first U.S. ambassador to Damascus since 2005 and dispatched a senior State Department official, William J. Burns, to meet with Mr. Assad. "I have no illusions," Mr. Burns said afterward, "but my meeting . . . made me hopeful we can make progress together."

We don't disagree with the administration's selection of an ambassador or Mr. Burns's visit; both represent a modest delivery on President Obama's campaign promise of "direct engagement" with regimes such as Syria. But it's worth noting that Mr. Burns has done this before: He met with Mr. Assad in 2004 on behalf of the Bush administration. Earlier, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell "engaged" Mr. Assad. So have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John F. Kerry, and numerous European notables, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy. When he was Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert negotiated extensively with Mr. Assad through Turkish intermediaries.

Not a few have come away hopeful, at first. Ms. Pelosi memorably declared that "the road to Damascus is a road to peace." Yet none so far has produced the slightest change in Mr. Assad's behavior or in his unacceptable ambitions. Having carried out a campaign of political murder in Lebanon, including the killing of a prime minister for which he has yet to be held accountable, Mr. Assad continues to insist on a veto over the Lebanese government. He continues to facilitate massive illegal shipments of Iranian arms to Hezbollah, dangerously setting the stage for another war with Israel, and to host the most hard-line elements of the Hamas leadership. He continues to harbor exiled leaders of Saddam Hussein's regime and to allow suicide bombers to flow into Iraq for use by al-Qaeda.

Mr. Assad wants the United States to lift sanctions; he wants the European Union to grant Syria trade privileges; he wants Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights and grant Syria the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee; and he wants Syria's check on Lebanese sovereignty accepted. In exchange for all this, he is offering -- well, not much, it always turns out. He told one group of Western visitors that he would no more break with Iran than the United States would break with Israel. He says that Syrian sponsorship of Hezbollah and Hamas is not on the table. He has promised to check suicide bombers bound for Iraq but has never done so.

The exercise of talking to Mr. Assad serves a certain purpose, since it allows a skilled diplomat such as Mr. Burns to lay out the administration's incentives for changed behavior as well as its red lines, and it might make Iran's paranoid leaders nervous. But anyone who thinks the Obama administration has come up with a way to change the Middle East through detente with Syria would do well to study the history of Mr. Assad's decade in power. That gambit has been tried, by more Western diplomats and politicians than can be counted, and the results are clear: It doesn't work.

Syria and the Axis of Proliferation

2010-02-16T13:18:00.005-05:00

My latest in NOW Lebanon on the recent report of the resumption of North Korean-Syrian cooperation on "sensitive military technology":

This weapons proliferation should make those who advocate “containing” Iran pause. If proliferation has been a feature of North Korea’s behavior, then supporting militant groups has been Iran’s path to center stage in regional politics, and Syria’s means of remaining relevant. For all the talk of threats by non-state actors, the basic fact remains that they are being supplied weapons and offered deterrence umbrellas only by states.

Iran's Arms Smuggling Network

2010-02-09T09:47:00.003-05:00

Here's my piece in NOW today on Iran's complex naval arms smuggling network:

Iran is playing an old game in Middle Eastern power politics: building regional influence through arms supplies to those who can further its agenda. For all the talk about non-state actors, the Iranian smuggling networks highlight that political violence and destabilization in the Middle East remain first and foremost a state enterprise.

Kissinger on Obama's Iraq Policy

2010-02-03T10:11:00.003-05:00

An extremely important piece by Henry Kissinger in the Washington Post today that you should definitely read.

[W]hile Iraq is being exorcised from our debate, its reality is bound to obtrude on our consciousness. The U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq will not alter the geostrategic importance of the country even as it alters that context.

Mesopotamia has been the strategic focal point of the region for millennia. Its resources affect countries far away. The dividing line between the Shiite and the Sunni worlds runs through its center -- indeed, through its capital. Iraq's Kurdish provinces rest uneasily between Turkey and Iran and indigenous adversaries within Iraq. It cannot be in the American interest to leave the region as a vacuum.
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But Iraq has largely disappeared from policy debates in Washington. There are special envoys for every critical country in the region except Iraq, the country whose evolution will help determine how American relevance to the currents of the region will be judged. The Obama administration needs to find its voice to convey that Iraq continues to play a significant role in American strategy. Brief visits by high officials are useful as symbols. But of what? Operational continuity is needed in a strategic concept for a region over which the specter of Iran increasingly looms.
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The outcome in Iraq will have profound consequences, above all, in Saudi Arabia, the key country in the Persian Gulf, as well as in the other Gulf states and in Lebanon, where Hezbollah, financed by Iran, is already a Shiite state within the state. The United States therefore has an important stake in a moderate evolution of Iraq's domestic and foreign policies.
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America needs to remain an active diplomatic player. Its presence must be perceived to have some purpose beyond withdrawal. An expression of political commitment to the region is needed.

Michael Young wrote last year about Obama's problematic approach in Iraq and the perils of the perception of an American vacuum. I have also touched on it in one of my pieces on Iraq:

As the United States, through its ongoing withdrawal, creates the perception of a growing vacuum, regional states are stepping in to grab a piece of the Iraqi pie. The lack of public attention paid in the US to the statements quoted earlier, and their implications, affirms how far Iraq has dropped in the American national consciousness. This can only be to the detriment of America’s interests and to those of its Iraqi ally.

The Fallacy of the Hezbollah/IRA Analogy

2010-02-02T08:11:00.001-05:00

Here's my piece today on the false analogy between Hezbollah and the IRA, often used to argue for "engagement" with Hezbollah and Hamas.

Lebanon's next war may also be Syria's

2010-01-26T12:48:00.001-05:00

Here's my piece in NOW today on the scenarios of the future conflict between Israel and Hezbollah -- and, likely, Syria.

US Diffidence in the Gulf is Not an Option

2010-01-19T16:34:00.003-05:00

Here's my piece today on what the Yemen conflict says about US policy and security architecture in the Gulf.

Strong Horse Politics

2010-01-12T09:11:00.009-05:00

Lee Smith has a new book out, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations, which was just published by Doubleday. I interviewed him for NOW Lebanon today, and talked about the book's thesis. Check it out.

Narrowing Options on Iran

2010-01-05T08:56:00.002-05:00

Here's my piece in NOW this morning on US policy toward, and the debate on, Iran:

Three years ago former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger posed a key question: “[P]ressure – the attempt to induce a decision the other party had not chosen initially – is a necessary component of almost any negotiation… If sanctions cannot move […] Iran, then what can? How else can the permanent members of the Security Council […] prevail, except by making clear the consequences of intransigence?”

Kissinger’s question remains unanswered today. The situation inside Iran has offered the Obama administration a number of possible cards, which it has yet to play in an effort to expand policy options beyond a military strike. The current path of watered-down, or even “targeted”, sanctions is unlikely to succeed. So the question remains: What now? When will one be able to say that engagement has failed?

The Geopolitical Context of the Iraqi Elections

2009-12-29T10:16:00.005-05:00

Here's my piece in NOW Lebanon today. It briefly goes into the converging interests of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria in defeating Nouri al-Maliki. However, contrary to their calculations -- including the Syrian campaign of violence designed to destroy Maliki (as Syrian regime mouthpieces like Sami Moubayed in effect openly and gloatingly say) -- Maliki remains the favorite to return as Prime Minister.

This is the third in my recent Iraq-focused pieces, and the three could be read together to get a broader picture of the regional dynamic in Iraq. The first two are here and here.

For more on Maliki, see this recent piece by Hussain Abdul-Hussain in The National.

Hezbollah's "Lebanonization" Once More

2009-12-27T16:08:00.004-05:00

Here's a short interview I did with Manuela Paraipan of The Middle East Political and Economic Institute on Hezbollah and its so-called "Lebanonization" (a subject I've covered repeatedly here and elsewhere).

Cold Water on US Amb. to Syria Speculation

2009-12-22T11:47:00.004-05:00

Laura Rozen writes:

Just fyi, since lots of speculation around. Have been very reliably told by two senior administration officials that U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain Adam Ereli is not going to be nominated to be the Damascus envoy. If you want to see him, you will have to go to Bahrain.

And separately was told by a third source that the speculation on Syria envoy is all a bit premature, and that nothing has been forwarded to the White House yet.

This shoots down the nonsense story by the oh-so-intrepid Joe Macaron in As-Safir, which he based on his "very trusted sources"! Mmm, yes indeed.

I recently wrote in the same vein about this issue when two other names were floated. Check out my NOW Lebanon piece from last week on the subject and on the rumors around Imad Mustapha (which I first blogged here).

Regime-Driven Violence

2009-12-22T09:46:00.002-05:00

Here's my piece today on the recent violence in Iraq. Bottom line:

These powerful statements by Iraqi and US officials ought to force us to reconfigure our entire thinking about so-called “non-state actors” and their behavior in Iraq, as well as on how to approach counterinsurgency there. Clearly, those killing Iraqis are doing so in conjunction with, and under the patronage of, outside states working to shape political outcomes through violence. In other words, this violence is mainly regime-driven.

Petraeus: Izzat al-Duri is Living Freely in Syria

2009-12-14T21:04:00.005-05:00

In addition to the strong statements made by Gen. Ray Odierno (see here and here), Gen. David Petraeus made some statements of his own in an interview with Al-Arabiya today.

Petraeus said, "What is worrisome about what's happening there [in Syria] is the presence of people like Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri and Muhammad Younis Ahmad, and these are persons who were close to Saddam, and they are now allowed to openly call for the toppling of the government of Iraq." He added, "they live freely in Syria, and some of them own satellite stations, and this creates an atmosphere of tension between the two countries."

Furthermore, Petraeus downplayed any Syrian role in the decrease in the numbers of fighters crossing the Syrian border into Iraq. Instead, he attributed this to the decrease in the capabilities of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and its desire to only recruit suicide bombers, whose numbers are much fewer, even if they cause a lot of damage. Moreover, Petraeus noted, the fighters' countries of origin have made it more difficult for them, prohibiting, for example, the travel of young males with one way tickets to Damascus.

Recently, Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, the Iraqi Interior Ministry's chief of intelligence and investigations, was quoted as saying:

Iraqi officials suspect the Aug. 19 and Oct. 25 bombings, which targeted the Foreign, Justice and Finance ministries, among other entities, were planned at a secret meeting in Zabadani, a city in southwestern Syria, close to the Lebanese border. He said al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders met with former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party on July 30 to chart out a new strategy.

"They made a plan to carry out major joint operations in central Baghdad targeting important buildings," Kamal said in an interview.

In a statement that seemed to support the Iraqi official position, Gen. Odierno noted that AQI and Baathists were essentially merging:

He said al Qaeda in Iraq has teamed up with remnants of the Baath Party -- a statement that gave more weight to the Iraqi government's claims.

"We have been able to significantly reduce the capability of several groups to include al Qaeda and some of the Sunni rejectionist groups, so what I think we have seen happen over the last year or so is that these groups have started to work together. And so they have started to coalesce, especially at the local level. ... So it blurs the lines sometimes. And I think sometimes it's semantics. Some people say al Qaeda, some people call them Baathists. I would argue that they are probably both involved, they are coordinating at the local level," Odierno said.

When asked if the investigations had indicated any links to Syria, he added, "My experience is there probably was some movement of fighters or explosives coming from Syria."

Update: From AFP: Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad Bolani told parliament on Monday that a suicide bomber who attacked the foreign ministry in August made a phone call to Syria before detonating his payload, an MP said.

"He told us that the security services found the SIM card of the bomber in the attack on the foreign ministry, and that the last number that appeared was a number in Syria," Shiite MP Abbas al-Bayati told AFP.

Guardian Hearts Mukhabarat Media

2009-12-12T11:58:00.007-05:00

Roy Greenslade, a professor of journalism and blogger for The Guardian, is celebrating "the latest stage in the liberalisation of the Syria's [sic] media." If your head spun in bewilderment, unable to recollect when the "first" stage of "liberalization" even began, or if your sides split with uncontrollable laughter, wait till you hear the rest. Greenslade wrote:

An English-language daily newspaper is being launched in Damascus tomorrow and will circulate throughout Syria. Baladna English, the country's first English-language paper, marks the latest stage in the liberalisation of the Syria's [sic] media. The publisher, United Group, already publishes the Arabic-language Baladna.

Yes, indeed. The United Group. After all, what better harbinger of liberalization than the group's chairman, Majd Suleiman? Who is he, you ask? Don't worry, Professor Roy Greenslade didn't have a clue who he was either.

Majd Suleiman is the son of Bahjat Suleiman, the Alawite former head of the internal security division of the General Security Directorate. Nothing says "liberalization" better than the Syrian mukhabarat.

Somehow, this already pathetic mess of a graph was made even funnier when The Guardian's Brian Whitaker intervened in the comments section to correct his colleague's factual mistake:

I think you mean it's the first non-governmental English language paper.

For many years there was a government-run daily, Syria Times, but it closed last year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Times

That's right, Mr. Whitaker: it's "non-governmental." Just like Al-Watan is Syria's first "independent" daily... owned by Assad's cousin, Rami Makhlouf. It's Syria's version of the MSM: Mukhabarat Security Media.

Keep that in mind the next time you read items in The Guardian or elsewhere about the "latest stage" of the "liberalization" of the media, the economy or whatever in Syria.

Addendum: Here's another little anecdote that I was told about Suleiman and the "liberalization" of Syrian media. You know Ibrahim Hamidi, the Syrian messenger/reporter for al-Hayat? Suleiman had bought him a Jaguar when Hamidi was his guy. Then, in a typical inter-mukhabarat power play, Asef Shawkat put Hamidi in jail, just to show him (and his sponsor) who's boss. After that, Hamidi became Shawkat's guy. Suleiman was also later transferred from his position at the internal security division.

Is the Syrian Ambassador being Recalled?

2009-12-11T09:23:00.023-05:00

Imad Moustapha's days in DC might be numbered. Rumor is that once the US sends an ambassador back to Syria, Imad Moustapha will be sent home.

A very well-informed source in Washington tells me that they've heard State Department officials declare openly that Moustapha has "zero credibility in this building" and that "all meaningful diplomatic communication [with Syria] is through [Syrian FM Walid] Moallem." It is in this context that Moallem's deputy, Faysal Mekdad, was invited to DC a few months ago.

I had noted before that rumors had it that Moustapha's standing in Damascus was shaky, especially for his mischaracterization of the Obama administration's approach to Syria, which he portrayed to his boss as a fait-accompli walk in the park. To that effect, my source adds that they think that Moustapha staying in DC was allowed by Assad "at Moustapha's repeated requests to remain" and "over Moallem’s repeated objections."

The rumor mill is now churning that the State Department has finally sent the name of the new US ambassador to the White House for approval. However, from what I've heard, the names listed by Josh Rogin in this report are inaccurate, though obviously I cannot say for sure. They are indeed names that are making the rounds in Washington, but a number of good sources tell me that neither Walles nor Khoury is the actual pick.

If the rumor of Moustapha's recall is true, then there is no telling how this will affect the standing of Moustapha's American circle -- the various analysts, journalists, bloggers (e.g., the "Friday Lunch Club") and academics, the Syrian ambassador has used over the past few years to put through the Damascus regime's message. Presumably, some frequent visitors to the Syrian embassy, like Seymour Hersh or Robert Malley, have their own outlets to the Assad family (including the ICG's Peter Harling's office in Damascus), but others, like University of Oklahoma professor Joshua Landis are wading in deeper water. Since Landis' position in Washington policy circles was a function of his proximity to Moustapha, as the Syrian ambassador's stature sunk so did Landis' and the invitations to speak around town became much less frequent (especially when it was realized that Landis had no added value, as he merely brought what Moustapha fed him). Now with Moustapha's departure possibly imminent, it's not clear if Landis is going to be making an exit as well, or if Moallem's new charge will find a use for the Norman, OK-based blogger.

Hezbollah's "New" Political Document

2009-12-09T09:31:00.002-05:00

In case you haven't seen it, here's my commentary on Hezbollah's "new" political document.

I will come back with a lengthier post to touch on some other points I wasn't able to include in the NOW Lebanon piece.

The Syrian Illusion Revisited

2009-11-22T14:41:00.012-05:00

Here are two excellent recent pieces by Emile Hokayem and Jonathan Spyer on the stale old illusion of a Syrian "peace track," and assessing the whole enterprise of engagement with Syria more generally.

Spyer explains why the so-called "Syria track" -- that most absurd leftover from the delusional 1990s "peace process" -- will, once again, lead nowhere. There are structural reasons, as I've argued repeatedly here and elsewhere, why this is so, and they have to do with the regional system overall and Syria's position as a second tier regional actor (its over-inflated self-image and role-conception notwithstanding) with no other assets to remain relevant save for its sponsorship of violence and alliance with other violent actors:

Why would such talks almost certainly fail? The formula for success in negotiations between Israel and Syria is no longer the '90s recipe of land for peace. A breakthrough in Jerusalem-Damascus negotiations would be predicated on the basis of "land for strategic realignment."

That is, Syria would be expected to abandon its regional alliance with Iran in return for Israeli territorial concessions on the Golan Heights.

Damascus, however, has made abundantly clear that such a realignment is not on the table. The reasons are fairly obvious. Syria's current stance of alliance with Iran gives the Damascus regime most of what it needs. Syria is seen as a vital part of any regional diplomatic process, because of its ability to spoil progress through its alignment with radical forces.

The 30-year old (and counting) illusion of distancing Syria from Iran, as well as the desire to counter Iranian influence in Iraq, is the driver behind Saudi Arabia's recent and ridiculously inept political moves. Both Spyer and Hokayem correctly identify the shared interest (which, ironically, is also shared by Iran!) in undermining Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq, something that I've written about at the time of the August bombings in Iraq, responsibility for which Iraq has, correctly in my view, laid at Syria's doorstep. General Odierno also agrees with the Iraqi accusation.

The French position is even more pitiful. France is a secondary world power that wishes to carve a "role" for itself in ME affairs and its only avenue to do so is through the so-called "peace process," and more specifically (by default) through Syria. How apt, therefore, for a secondary power to place its bets on a secondary regional actor in a process that will lead nowhere. The poseurs leading the pitiful on a bridge to nowhere, as it were. The Syrians, for their part, have no problem feeding the French delusion, while extracting real concessions, as the French paper, Liberation, recently noted in a stinging critique of Sarkozy's useless Syria policy.

Spyer accurately describes this dynamic, noting that Syria's recent limited diplomatic gains are "testimony not to any hidden diplomatic genius lurking among the Ba'athists of Damascus. Rather, it shows the weakness, confusion and disunity of those forces in the region and beyond it who might be expected to have an interest in challenging Iran and its allies in their bid for dominance of the Middle East."

US policy in contrast, as noted by both Spyer and Hokayem, has not jumped on this foolish bandwagon. Nevertheless, Spyer notes, the lack of a coherent and forcefully articulated strategy and understanding of regional dynamics on the part of the US (and, I would add, as Michael Young has done, US ambiguity on Iraq) has allowed for secondary players like France and Saudi Arabia to step forward in an exercise of virtual diplomacy, which nevertheless can potentially have a real impact on US interests.

Spyer's conclusion is worth repeating and applying to US policy as well:

The building of clarity in this regard represents a core strategic interest for Israel. It would be mistaken to sacrifice this interest on the altar of any short-term alleviation of pressure resulting from a revival of virtual diplomacy with the Assad regime.

The Hezbollah Model Revisited

2009-10-23T14:45:00.004-04:00

Following up on my previous post, here's a piece I co-authored with Mara Karlin that appeared in the Washington Times today.

I guess it was a fitting coincidence that it was published on the anniversary of Hezbollah's 1983 attack on the US Marine Barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 American servicemen.

The Hezbollah Model in Afghanistan?

2009-10-14T09:06:00.003-04:00

Over at the MESH blog, Matt Levitt has an excellent post on a recent report in the Washington Post that "[s]ome inside the White House have cited Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese political movement, as an example of what the Taliban could become."

Make sure you read Levitt's post, and then check out my own comment there.

Is the Obama Administration Fed Up with Syria?

2009-09-15T10:32:00.011-04:00

Hussain Abdul-Hussain has a very interesting report in the Kuwaiti Al-Rai today (Arabic): As a result of its frustration with Assad's negative behavior, Abdul-Hussain writes, the Obama administration has decided against sending its ambassador back to Syria at this time, in a reversal of the announcement made 100 days ago.

This report comes a few days after Jackson Diehl wrote in the Washington Post that "George J. Mitchell, the Middle East envoy, appears to have given up on including Syria in the Middle East negotiations he is preparing to launch." Mitchell did not include Syria on the itinerary of his current trip to the region.

Abdul-Hussain spoke to unnamed sources and US officials who expressed to him that the Obama administration has had it with the Syrians, who, according to one source, "don't know the difference between normalizing relations and [them] behaving like they've defeated the US in a world war."

Anyone who's read my commentary, whether here or elsewhere, knows full well that that's precisely how the Syrians were interpreting engagement. Remember Imad Shoueibi, the incomparable apparatchik who declared that Syria had "broken" the US, and that it was therefore "up to the defeated to present his menu and up to the victor to present his demands," even threatening then Acting Asst. Sec. Feltman?! And of course, who can forget the comedy classic, the list of conditions to "Abu Hussein" from the regime's most amusing clown, Sami Moubayed?

The sources go on to tell Abdul-Hussain, in an unamused tone, that "Assad had started to count the American eggs in his basket before offering anything in return," adding, "Assad fires a rocket here or there [in south Lebanon] and expects us to run to him... This kind of security blackmail no longer works on the United States."

However, the straw that broke the camel's back, according to Abdul-Hussain's sources, was the regime's behavior after special envoy George Mitchell's latest trip to Syria in July. Abdul-Hussain's sources provide us with a recounting of what happened at the meeting between Assad and Mitchell, and what ensued afterwards:

"During the meeting between Mitchell and Assad in Damascus, the Syrian president asked the American envoy to explain to him the articles in the Syria sanctions. Mitchell pulled out the sanctions draft and read it article by article, and explained it in detail to Assad, which took over an hour and a half... Mitchell concluded by explaining the mechanism of placing and lifting sanctions, and informed Assad that they were reviewed yearly, and that they could be lifted if and when the necessary conditions were met."

However, the Syrians, who are always eager to portray relations with Washington as being on an inevitable path of entente, leaked, either intentionally or by mistake, that the US had promised to lift the sanctions imposed on Syria. Before Mitchell's plane landed in Dulles airport... a wave of anger was sweeping through official hallways in Washington. The State Department had not given Mitchell any instructions that would give the impression that it had any intention of lifting the sanctions. Likewise, several members of Congress were angry, and quickly requested meetings with diplomats from State in order to be briefed on the US envoy's meeting with Assad.

Mitchell showed the official minutes of the meeting with Assad to his colleagues at State and to his former colleagues in Congress. "When we read what really happened between the two men, we reached a singular decision: Assad was always trying to play us, and we had to prove to him that Washington's plans in the region are not dependent on him," said one high-level US source.
...
But what really angered the US administration, according to the sources, was that "after months of dialogue with him (Assad), he hadn't changed an inch in his behavior, and offered us nothing of what we were asking. Instead, he always asks us about what we can offer him, under the mercy of blackmail and instigating [security] incidents in the region... America will not succumb to Syrian blackmail."

The bit about the Syrians eagerly and prematurely leaking the disinformation about sanctions is certainly true, and I've written about it recently. Essentially, it's Imad Moustapha's doing (via the WSJ), which didn't win him any chums here (not that the had many). And apparently, according to rumors, his standing in Syria is not that hot either, given the way engagement with the US has gone, after Moustapha and pals had portrayed it as a walk in the park, setting up what Andrew Tabler dubbed a huge "expectations gap."

Abdul-Hussain also asked unnamed US officials regarding any Arab role to bring Washington's and Damascus' viewpoints closer, and they replied that "Egypt is angry at Assad and shares our point of view that there is no use talking to the Syrian regime. As for Saudi Arabia, we watched it offer concession after concession to Assad -- in Lebanon and elsewhere -- and we have not seen any results so far." The officials added, "Israel is further today than ever from the idea of prying Assad away from Iran." The Syrian president, said the officials, had tried to use the card of indirect talks with Israel -- via Turkey -- in order to get to Washington, "but Israel categorically rejected what Syria and its Turkish sponsor had to offer."

Finally, Abdul-Hussain concludes that this tension might be escalating, according to his estimation of the mood in Washington. His sources conclude by saying: "we went to Assad because we believe he's the weakest link in the alliance hostile to us in the Middle East. But he behaves as though he were the strongest link and places conditions on us instead of seizing the opportunity of engagement. In the midst of these discrepancies, a return to sharp disagreement, and perhaps even a lasting break, became inevitable."

All in all some very interesting stuff. Let's see how it plays out. But overall, the mood reflected in Abdul-Hussain's report was mirrored in this recent piece by Andrew Tabler. It was also reflected in Diehl's column: "The problem is that none of this has brought any results. ... The results of the outreach to Syria were manifest a couple of weeks ago when the Iraqi government withdrew its ambassador from Damascus after blaming Assad's regime for continuing to foment terrorism in Iraq."

Following up on Tabler's analysis in the aftermath of the crisis with Iraq (see my commentary on that here), David Schenker put forward a rather sensible policy advice, proposing the US "reevaluate" and "review" its approach to Syria.

Perhaps the administration is on a similar wavelength in its overall approach to Syria? In the end, as Ziad Majed recently put it, Syria pretends to be a player but has "no real capacity" to deliver. It's a structural reality that the administration would do well to acknowledge.

Addendum: A very well plugged-in source in Washington writes in response to this post: "I too think the kerfuffle on the Hill over Mitchell's meeting revealed to State that any nominee to Damascus is going to get a great deal of Congressional scrutiny, and until State and their nominee have very good answers to the question: 'What has Syria done to deserve this?' there is little or no reason to go to the mattresses for Assad. So I do think [the Ambassador idea] is pretty dead right now."

Meanwhile, a propos Imad Moustapha, guess who's not on the guest list for Secretary Clinton's Iftar dinner tonight. For whatever that's worth.

Gen. Odierno on Syria and Iraq

2009-09-11T08:51:00.003-04:00

Important statements from Gen. Ray Odierno to al-Hayat (my translation from the Arabic):

General Odierno renewed accusations against Damascus of lending support to armed groups. He clarified in statements to al-Hayat that "during the past years Syria was lending indirect support to some of the fighters, on top of financial support." He added that Damascus "has not changed this type of interference and the American forces are watching that closely, and cannot interfere unless the Iraqi government requests it, that is for us to offer support and backup inside Iraqi territory and not outside it."

Regarding the evidence and documents displayed by Iraq in accusing Syria of supporting the perpetrators of the recent double bombings in Baghdad, and how convinced he was of that evidence, Odierno said: "there are armed groups that receive financial and logistical support from Syria," refusing to go into the evidence and confessions aired by the Iraqi government.

Regarding internationalizing the Syrian-Iraqi dispute, he said: "we support the Iraqi government's request that the UN moves to end the interference of all neighboring countries whose involvement in acts of violence or whose interference in Iraq's affairs have been proven." (Emphasis mine)

Update: Another major statement by Gen. Odierno:

"Syria continues to allow the facilitation of foreign fighters through Syria that both come into Iraq as well as, I believe, into Afghanistan," Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters after meeting with Biden late Tuesday.

"We do know that there are some ex-Baathist elements that are in Syria that are funding operations in Iraq, and we also know that they are operating Web sites that encourage attacks inside of Iraq," Odierno said.

Inglorious Baathists

2009-08-31T07:28:00.015-04:00

Here's my commentary on the crisis between Iraq and Syria. The Iraqi government has accused Syria of harboring and refusing to hand over figures who have played a direct role in the latest bombings in Baghdad.

The Syrians, I argue, are playing an old game of theirs, trying to create for themselves a political asset (where none exists in Iraq) using Muhammad Younis al-Ahmad, whom they cultivated in order to attempt and create a splinter faction of the Iraqi Baath party that they would control (think Abu Musa and Fateh Intifada, e.g.). I had blogged about him back in 2007.

The Iraqis are also shining the spotlight on Syria's sponsorship of Al-Qaeda in Iraq as well:

Shemari said when he arrived in Syria from Saudi Arabia, he was met by a militant who took him to an al Qaeda training camp in Syria. The head of the camp was a Syrian intelligence agent called Abu al-Qaqaa, he said.

"They taught us lessons in Islamic law and trained us to fight. The camp was well known to Syrian intelligence," he said.

For more on the infamous Abu Qa'qa', see my old post here.

You'll recall that in the case of al-Qaeda's Abu Ghadiyah, the Iraqis had told the Syrians numerous times to hand him over, to no avail, until the US raided his hideout in the Syrian border town of Al Bu Kamal and ostensibly took him out. Similarly today, the Syrians are playing the same game.

This type of transparent evasive trickery will have repercussions on the already cautious US engagement effort.

Finally, Arabic readers should also check out Hazem Amin's follow-up in al-Hayat:

لكلا التوجهين السوري والإيراني نتائجه الدموية، والمالكي يتلقى صفعاتهما بصفته واقفاً في نقطة وسط. فالبعث الذي يتحدث عنه المسؤولون في سورية هو غير البعث الذي يرغب المالكي في استدراجه الى العملية السياسية. فالبعث، عند الأخير، بعث الداخل، او بالأصح البيئة البعثية بعد سحب الجهاز الحزبي منها، في حين تتحدث دمشق عن الجهاز الحزبي المقيم عندها، والمتورط بأعمال عنف وقتل، قبل سقوط النظام وبعده. أما البعث الذي تسعى طهران عبر حلفائها العراقيين الى «استئصاله»، فلا يقتصر على الجهاز الحزبي الذي كان حاكماً، إنما أيضاً يشمل البيئة البعثية في العراق، وهو ما يعني حرباً أهلية جرب العراقيون بعض نُذرها.

وإذا أجرينا عملية حسابية لما تريده كل من سورية وإيران في ملف البعث في العراق، حصلنا على نقطة مشتركة. فسورية غير مكترثة بالبيئة البعثية، وتطالب باستيعاب الجهاز الحزبي، وإيران غير مكترثة بالجهاز الحزبي المقيم في دمشق، وتطالب بإقصاء «مجتمع البعث». إذاً، الحرب الأهلية في العراق هي ما يلتقي عنده كل من النظامين الجارين للعراق.
...
الأوراق الإيرانية في العراق واضحة، وطهران تجيد لعبها، بدءاً من ضغطها لإعادة إحياء الائتلاف الشيعي وصولاً الى إيوائها قيادات تنظيم «القاعدة» العاملين على خط كابول – بغداد. أما الأوراق السورية فهي، وإن كانت اقل تأثيراً، أكثر طموحاً. فزيارة المالكي الأخيرة الى دمشق لم تُخلف ارتياحاً سورياً بسبب شعور المسؤولين في دمشق انهم حيال ممثل لدولة بدأت تتحسس الطريق الى مصالحها.

Amin is wrong about one thing, however, and that is the notion that the US discussed with the Syrians the issue of drawing in Baathist clients they harbor into the political process and forcing them on Maliki. That's simply not true. It is however the false impression the Syrians want to give, as I noted in my piece about how the Syrians are putting out such nonsense as the US "inviting" them to play a "bigger role" in Iraqi affairs! That's King of Comedy material.

What this Syrian propaganda campaign shows is a perfect example of how Syria uses engagement to screw its enemies (US allies and friends). I.e., it uses US engagement to screw US interests. It targets it in media (or other) campaigns in order to demoralize and confuse US allies and friends, and in order to create impressions about the engagement with the US. This is done to extract concessions from US allies under the illusion of an American cover.

In reality, however, no such "discussion" exists with the US. It's a complete distortion of not just US intentions, but also the actual pace and substance of the engagement process. It's vintage Syrian trickery. It's also a good example of some of the public pitfalls of engagement.

Amin's main insight, however, is that he shows how terrorist extortion is in fact the Syrians' (only) foreign policy tool, which is what I have argued repeatedly. That is what I've dubbed structural and systemic reasons why Syria won't change its behavior, and why its relations with its neighbors and the US will continue to be tense and problematic. Syria cannot have the kind of influence it regards as its entitlement, commensurate with its grossly over-inflated self-image, without sponsorship of terror and extortion of its neighbors. As Amin put it in the conclusion of his piece, "the bombings... are part of the relations with the Iraqi government." I.e., terrorism as state policy.

Doran on the US and the Middle East

2009-08-13T15:51:00.005-04:00

I've added a new feature to the blog: the feed of Michael Doran's Facebook blog on the US and the Middle East. It is in the right sidebar on the home page, under my Twitter widget.

Doran is one of the sharpest and most original commentators on the Middle East and US policy in the region. I'm sure you'll learn much from his insights, as I do.

Across the Bay on Twitter

2009-08-10T12:34:00.005-04:00

So I've succumbed and decided to give Twitter a try following the advice of my friend Mustapha of Beirut Spring.

You'll see a Twitter widget in the sidebar to your right on the home page. It's for short notices (which I hope will be more frequent), whereas the longer posts will still be here and in my regular op-eds. For the time being I'm removing the Quick Links feature until I figure out if the Twitter thing works as an alternative.

Syria's Premature Triumphalism on Sanctions

2009-08-06T09:52:00.003-04:00

Here's my commentary on the US sanctions on Syria, which were recently in the news. I'll be back shortly with a post on Imad Moustapha and his hilarious statements on this issue.

The Syrian Mirage: All Bills and No Merchandise

2009-07-22T09:24:00.007-04:00

Here's my latest for NOW Lebanon, which in a way follows up on Michael Young's recent piece in The National.

Syria has long tried to convince the world that nothing could be done in the region without its help. But Syria’s regional relevance is on the decline, and while the US is re-engaging Damascus, the reality is that the Assad regime comes to the table with a weak hand.

I explore two recent headlines that draw attention to Syrian marginality and limitations: Farouq Qaddoumi's storm in a tea cup, and Moqtada Sadr's meeting with Assad.

Assad is looking anywhere and everywhere for the semblance of strong cards. Ultimately, this reflects the fundamental flaw in the Syrian mirage: For structural reasons the Syrians cannot deliver what the US expects of them. Therefore, they trade in snake oil to create the illusion of importance.

When it comes to describing what dealing with Syria is all about, we can borrow from the title of a song by the American soul singer Clarence Carter. It’s like “getting the bills; but no merchandise.”

The Syrians Have Nothing, and Demand Everything

2009-07-09T09:07:00.003-04:00

Michael Young absolutely nails it in his piece in The National, explaining how despite having nothing, the Syrians, as always, demand everything.

A must read.

'Death to the Rahbar': Iran, Hezbollah, Velayat-e Faqih, and Lebanon

2009-06-24T09:35:00.007-04:00

Here's my commentary on Hezbollah's recent statements about the Velayat-e Faqih concept, in light of what's going on in Iran.

Hassan Mneimneh's essay, "The Arab Reception of Vilayat-e-Faqih: The Counter-Model of Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din," that I reference in the article, appeared in Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, Vol. 8, along with a related essay by Hussain Abdul-Hussain, as well as my own essay on Hezbollah's Agenda in Lebanon.

As for the Ibrahim Mussawi episode with David Samuels, you can revisit that here.

Finally, for the record, and for those who read French, I'm also copying the L'Orient-Le Jour interview with Saoud al-Mawla referenced in the article.

Saoud el-Mawla : La wilayet el-faqih n’est pas une notion théologique

20/06/2009

INTERVIEW
M. Saoud el-Mawla a contesté les récents propos tenus par le leader du Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, au sujet de la wilayet el-faqih, soulignant notamment que la wilayet el-faqih est une théorie de jurisprudence et n'est nullement une notion théologique liée au dogme de la foi chiite, comme l'a affirmé Hassan Nasrallah dans son discours de mercredi dernier. Saoud el-Mawla, note-t-on, est un écrivain et professeur d'université chiite qui était conseiller de l'ancien vice-président du Conseil supérieur chiite, feu l'imam Mohammad Mehdi Chamseddine. En sa qualité d'intellectuel chiite, il a été l'un des fondateurs du congrès permanent du dialogue libanais et du groupe arabe pour le dialogue islamo-chrétien.

Dans une interview express accordée à L'Orient-Le Jour, Saoud el-Mawla a commenté la déclaration du leader du Hezbollah qui avait invité les journalistes, les responsables politiques et les forces du 14 Mars à s'abstenir désormais de soulever le problème de la wilayet el-faqih, sous prétexte que cette question relève du dogme chiite « que vous devez respecter », avait-il affirmé. M. Mawla a commencé par dénoncer sur ce plan « le mutisme des ulémas chiites et des hauts dignitaires religieux, et à leur tête Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, cheikh Abdel Amir Kabalan et tous les juges chériés et les muftis ». « Dans son dernier discours, sayyed Hassan Nasrallah a déclaré que la wilayet el-faqih fait partie du dogme chiite, affirmant que toute atteinte à cette notion ou toute discussion à ce sujet est une atteinte au dogme et à la religion. Hassan Nasrallah sait plus que tout autre personne que la notion de wilayet el-faqih générale est une théorie de jurisprudence et non pas une notion théologique ou dogmatique. Cela signifie que la wilayet el-faqih représente des dispositions et des mesures de détail en rapport avec l'organisation (de la vie de la communauté). Les musulmans chiites divergent au sujet de ces dispositions depuis l'occultation de l'imam Mehdi. D'où le fait que l'on a ouvert la voie au ijtihad (l'interprétation personnelle). »

Et Saoud el-Mawla d'ajouter : « Faire de la question de la wilayet el-faqih une affaire de dogme, c'est-à-dire prétendre qu'elle est au cœur de la croyance du musulman chiite et des fondements de la religion, constitue une atteinte à la Constitution libanaise ainsi qu'aux fondements de la coexistence, de la citoyenneté, de la démocratie et de la liberté au Liban, car adopter une telle attitude revient à brandir le spectre du terrorisme et de l'apostasie face à tous ceux qui rejettent la wilayet el-faqih (général, c'est-à-dire ayant une dimension politique globale). Or ceux qui rejettent la wilayet el-faqih (générale) représentent la grande majorité des ulémas et des dignitaires chiites en Iran, au Liban, en Irak et dans d'autres pays. Et cette position se retrouve à travers le siècles. »

L'attaque contre le patriarche maronite
« Les ulémas chiites, a ajouté Saoud el-Mawla, ont rejeté le principe de la wilayet el-faqih générale (englobant un pouvoir politique absolu) en lieu et place de l'imam Mehdi. Ils ont choisi d'accorder au wali (autorité religieuse) un pouvoir limité, c'est-à-dire celui d'un médiateur social, d'un conseiller, d'un juge, d'un cheikh. Les ulémas chiites n'étaient même pas d'accord sur les limites de tels pouvoirs. Certains d'entre eux ont englobé dans le pouvoir du wali le khoms (le cinquième des bénéfices du croyant payé aux imams), la zakate (taxe religieuse obligatoire), la prière du vendredi, ainsi que le fait de commander le bien et d'interdire le mal. D'autres ont donné à la wilayet el-faqih un pouvoir très restrictif n'incluant pas une autorité sur les individus, ce qui implique le rejet du recours à la force et de l'effusion de sang. »

Après avoir souligné que « la mise en place du gouvernement de la justice divine est du seul ressort de l'imam infaillible » (l'imam Mehdi), Saoud el-Mawla a relevé qu'« à travers l'histoire, aucun faqih chiite (savant de la foi) n'a prôné la wilayet el-faqih générale, à l'exception de cheikh Ahmad ben Mohammad Mehdi el-Nouraki (1245 de l'Hégire) dont l'imam Khomeyni s'est inspiré ».

Qualifiant d'« attitude répressive étrange » le fait de considérer la wilayet el-faqih comme un dogme, Saoud el-Mawla a relevé que « le peuple d'Iran ainsi que les hautes personnalités de la révolution de l'imam Khomeyni, ceux qui croyaient dans la wilayat el-faqih révolutionnaire font face aujourd'hui aux décisions du wali el-faqih » (l'imam Khamenei). « Sont-ils donc des mécréants ? » s'est-il interrogé. M. Mawla a appelé sur ce plan à la conciliation et au dialogue, à l'acceptation de l'autre et du droit à la différence, ainsi qu'au respect de la liberté d'opinion et d'expression. « Ce qui se passe aujourd'hui en Iran est la preuve la plus éclatante du fait que la wilayet el-faqih n'est pas agréée, même dans le pays d'origine, et donc à plus forte raison au Liban, en Irak et dans d'autres pays. »

Sur un tout autre plan, Saoud el-Mawla a souligné que les attaques de Hassan Nasrallah contre le patriarche maronite constituent « une calomnie et une injustice injustifiée ». « Ces attaques ne peuvent s'expliquer que par la volonté de justifier la défaite aux élections du fait que leur base populaire s'attendait à la victoire », a-t-il déclaré. Et de conclure que les accusations de traîtrise et les attaques personnelles lancées par les responsables du Hezbollah sont aujourd'hui déplacées car même l'Iran de Khamenei et d'Ahmadinejad pratique une politique d'ouverture en direction des pays arabes et de l'Occident.

Lebanon May Have Missed Going Iran's Way

2009-06-19T10:47:00.003-04:00

Michael Young in the Daily Star:

...

With the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad acting with great brutality to impose a doubtful election victory, we can legitimately ask, caveats notwithstanding, whether Hizbullah would not have used a win of its own to place a similar headlock on the Lebanese political system in the future. In that way, the party could have used its authority to predetermine the outcomes in next year's municipal elections and the 2013 parliamentary elections to guarantee a lasting majority for itself and its allies.

...

Ultimately, Hizbullah did not put so much money and effort into the elections merely to recreate the situation that existed before June 7. For Nasrallah, like for Ahmadinejad, if we recall the Iranian president's recent statements on Lebanon, the elections were supposed to bring about precisely what Hizbullah's secretary general spent weeks saying they would: a state structured around a paramount concept of "resistance," which would sanction Hizbullah's weapons in the context of an official national "defense strategy." There was in the party's actions a definite will to power - no less decisive than is Khamenei's and Ahmadinejad's defense of their power in the security-dominated, post-revolutionary Iranian order.

Once in office, Hizbullah would have regarded its victory as a mandate to turn state institutions around to implement its aims. Given its behavior in May of last year, and now that we know that Nasrallah, even in defeat, believes he represents a Lebanese majority, Hizbullah would likely have accelerated its takeover of the state. Aoun, given his limited means to counter such actions, would have ended up being a fig leaf.

In many respects Hizbullah is a Leninist organization, a vanguard party focused on implementing a revolutionary ideology. The revolutionary impulse has always been an essential part of Hizbullah's mindset, with the idea of "resistance" at its center. That's not to say the party is today seeking to introduce an Islamic Republic in Lebanon, as that would only undermine its broader objectives; for a revolutionary party to survive, it sometimes needs to make momentary compromises. But for the past decade and more, Hizbullah has pursued, with great clarity and steadfastness, the objective of making the principle of armed resistance against Israel, but also against the United States, the cornerstone of national policy both in Lebanon and the Middle East, whether through its own actions or those of likeminded groups. While this has served Iranian interests above all, it has also reflected an ideological worldview that can only truly see its finality in the context of a state - the institution best able to protect and develop the revolutionary impulse. Therefore, to assume that the party would not have taken advantage of an election victory to help fulfill that ideological commitment in Lebanon seems almost counter-intuitive.

Two things reinforce this conclusion. The first is that Nasrallah has never hidden his contempt for the Lebanese political system, nor his hubristic belief that he and his party can define a "better" Lebanon than the one we have today. That is one reason why he has been able so readily to exploit Michel Aoun, who, no less hubristically, if far less persuasively, also feels that he can change Lebanon to satisfy his preferences.

The second is that Nasrallah needs to alter the foundations of the Lebanese state in order for Hizbullah to survive. The secretary general knows very well that since the Syrian withdrawal in 2005, his party's future has rested on shaky foundations. A majority of Lebanese, and that includes Shiites, remains uneasy about the prospect of perpetual war against Israel. Yet without conflict Hizbullah could not survive, nor could it justify retaining its weapons; so the party needs to maintain the threat of conflict alive, just as it needs to more strongly anchor itself in the Lebanese state to ensure that such conflict, when it does come, will not unseat it from power. In this respect, Hizbullah sees things much in the same way as do its sponsors in Iran, particularly the Pasdaran, who have established a parallel authority in the Iranian state to guard against any possible counter-revolutionary urges from within the society.

Then again Lebanon is not Iran. What Hizbullah would have liked to achieve is not necessarily what it could have achieved. Had it tried to take over the state, the party would have met resistance, provoking civil unrest, if not outright civil war, because that is how Lebanese society reacts when its sectarian rules are broken. But as the events of May 2008 showed, Hizbullah can be recklessly indifferent to these rules. So, when the Lebanese voted against the opposition on June 7, they voted not only against the possibility of being ruled by Hizbullah; they also voted against an equally unpleasant alternative: sectarian conflict.

Why the Western Press Corps Botched Lebanon's Elections

2009-06-17T11:20:00.004-04:00

Here's my piece for NOW Lebanon critiquing the Western press corps' coverage of the Lebanese elections.

There are several reasons that explain the overall mediocrity. I highlight laziness and tendentiousness -- enthrallment with a romanticized idea of Hezbollah and Aoun. This sentiment was best expressed in a post-election blog post by the Charlottesville siren, who, after trashing the March 14 majority as "anti-democratic," expressed her disappointment at the election result -– something very palpably shared by those writers who were enthusiastically heralding a Hezbollah victory –- and managed to verbalize what was undoubtedly a common premise among many Western reporters in Beirut.

“Aoun,” she wrote, “offered a clear alternative to [Lebanon’s] system.” Similarly, she added, “Hizbullah … also supports a ‘de-confessionalized,’ one-person-one-vote system in Lebanon.” And, for those reasons, she concluded, “I wanted their alliance to win.”

One could find numerous incidents to support this, some of which are noted in the article. Or, just read any random posting by the crown jewel of the foreign press corps in Beirut, the incomparable Andrew Lee Butters.

Another factor in the overall mediocrity is ignorance. For example, and I'm not sure whether to classify the reliance and uncritical reproduction of partisan polls as an instance of ignorance or a conscious participation in disinformation, there were numerous other polls, none of which were cited. One poll, by Ijma' on May 25, came very close to accurately calling what ended up being the official result. It gave March 14 a 68-60 win. Of course, March 8 performed even poorer, winning only 57 seats.

Not only were such polls not cited, but to add insult to injury, the other, blatantly partisan polls by pro-Hezbollah types like Abdo Saad, were accompanied by reinforcing commentary from pro-Hezbollah "academics," like Saad's daughter, Hezbollah groupie Amal Saad-Ghorayeb! It was really a freak show.

A perfect example of pure ignorance, however, can only come from said Butters. Having decided to embark on the adventure of trying to understand the electoral billboard campaigns, Butters fell upon a challenge: a billboard that read, "Achrafiyeh is Not for Pussies."

After scratching his head real hard, Time's Wunderkind squeezes out the essence of his penetrating insight and understanding of all things Lebanese: "I thought this was amusing because chi-chi Frenchified Achrafiyeh, which happens to be home to Time Magazine's Beirut bureau and many a lady who lunches, is definitely for p#%%$*s."

That's the best this guy could come up with: Taking an oh-so-original swipe at the residents of Ashrafiyeh, without having the slightest clue what the reference in the billboard was all about (and he's been living in Beirut, presumably covering the country's political life). What this anecdote reveals is that Butters had no idea that an Aoun-supported candidate running for a Maronite seat in Ashrafiyeh is named Massoud "Poussy" Ashqar. And so, Ashrafiyeh is not for "Poussies," just as reporting is not for clueless buffoons -- at least in principle.

This is but one example. One could go on and on. And, I should note, this kind of subpar quality of reporting was not restricted to Western journalists, but extended to clownish hired pens of the Syrian regime, like the King of Comedy, Sami Moubayed. Witness this genius comment, e.g.:

The Hezbollah-led opposition, which had been expected to take the majority, emerged with only 50 seats, although eight seats are still to be announced in the Metn region. Early results show that of these eight seats, only two were taken by March 14 coalition candidates - Michel al-Murr and Sami Gemayel - while the remaining six went to Hezbollah.

Mmmm, yeeess. Apparently Hezbollah was fielding candidates in the Metn and none of us heard about it! The lazy, idiotic ignorance doesn't stop there. The King of Comedy proceeds: "There were no surprises in this regard on Sunday. Hezbollah and Amal candidates captured all 27 seats allocated to the Shi'ites." Right. I guess Okab Sakr, Ghazy Yousef and Amin Wehbe really are not Shiites. And so on and so forth.

Now that March 14 won, many Western analysts, "experts" and reporters are putting out a truly sinister line in relation to the upcoming cabinet formation, preemptively placing the onus of any Hezbollah or Syrian terrorist violence on the shoulders of March 14. Taking the lead from Muhammad Raad's threat, the tone was set by none other than Hezbollah's "academic," Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, in a piece by Massoud Derhally about how March 14 "must" give Hezbollah veto power... or else:

“If the pro-Western coalition is intransigent about not giving veto power to Hezbollah and its allies then we will witness a renewed political crisis, and a return to the period before the Qatar agreement,” Saad-Ghorayeb said.

This repulsive, not even veiled threat of violence (by an "academic," mind you; not to be confused with "Hezbollah flack") was shamefully repeated by Mona Yacoubian:

Should the March 14th coalition remain steadfast in its refusal to allow a blocking veto, Lebanon will once again find itself in the throes of a dangerous political stalemate that could easily spiral into violence.

Marvel at the modality in both quotes. The only active subject and verb are March 14 remaining "steadfast" and "intransigent" in refusing to hand over an unconstitutional device to those who have lost the elections. The rest of the sentence is completely in the passive voice, with the perpetrators of the potential violence not even named! And yet, Hezbollah is still dubbed a "political" (nay, reformist!) party that has "evolved" over the years -- but which of course reserves the right to use terrorist violence whenever it sees fit! Needless to say, the responsibility is laid at the feet of the recipients of the violence.

In other words, these people have totally internalized the Assad regime's and Hezbollah's thuggish style of issuing threats and blaming it on those who will be subjected to it (who were "stubborn" and thus, got their comeuppance). The Syrians are the masters of this type of thuggery. Recall Walid Moallem and Farouq Sharaa. The perfect wording for it came from that quintessential embodiment of all the ugliness of the Syrian system, Imad Shoueibi (emphasis mine):

If some attempt to hold on to their opinion in the framework of forming a government with a majority and minority, in the democratic representative sense, then they would be heading towards a major crisis in Lebanon.

فإن حاول البعض التمسك برأيه في إطار تشكيل حكومة بالأكثرية والأقلية بالمعنى الديمقراطي التمثيلي فإنه يذهب باتجاه أزمة كبيرة في لبنان

The Orwellian nature of this comment needs no elaboration.

In the end, it speaks volumes about the moral center of the people propagating this insidious line, or those who present a violent Islamist militia, who only last year stormed civilian neighborhoods by force of arms, as a democratic force of reform. As if that weren’t enough, some went on to explain the “unexpected” March 14 victory as being in part a result of campaign “scare tactics” – as though the violence wrought on the Lebanese by Hezbollah and Syria is a product of sinister March 14 propaganda.

I cannot think of a better example of depravity than what was and continues to be on display in the journalistic and policy analysis literature on Lebanon. And all this with Hezbollah having lost. Just imagine the nauseous nonsense that would have been written had they won.

More Lebanon Election Analysis

2009-06-10T15:47:00.006-04:00

Here's my latest piece on the election and post-election situation. See also Michael Young's column yesterday, as well as Emile Hokayem's editorial.

Arabic readers might want to check out the following op-ed by Elie Fawaz. Ziad Majed also draws some conclusions from the election result. Also, see this very sharp piece by Hazem Saghieh on the Aoun-Hezbollah alliance.

Finally, I'll be coming back to address the latest brazen nonsense being peddled by the March 8 crowd and their Syrian chums, about them winning the "popular majority." Stay tuned.

Update: A quick follow-up to something I wrote in my piece. I noted that "Already, the Syrians are voicing their opposition to majority leader Saad Hariri becoming prime minister, unless he sanctions the 'resistance,' and thereby hands Syria and Hezbollah unilateral domination of the country's security and foreign policy."

On cue, here's Syria's Faysal Miqdad: "Syria’s relations with the next Lebanese government will be based on two key issues, he said, 'The first is the way this government deals with Syria and its view of Lebanese- Syrian relations. The second is the way it deals with Hezbollah’s arms, which Syria sees as a necessity to Lebanon in the face of the Israeli occupation.'"

Mapping Out the Election Results

2009-06-07T19:54:00.018-04:00

Let's run through what seems to be the final result of the election. It seems, with the preliminary results, that the March 14 coalition and its independent allies have won 71 seats, adding one seat to their current total, despite what March 8 thought would be an electoral law advantageous to them (the 1960 law adopted in the now-defunct Doha Accord). This puts to rest the myth that in 2005, M14 won because of its alliance with Hezbollah and the gerrymandering of the electoral law of 2000. M14's victory is clear. It ran unified lists and wherever M14 won, the lists won in total without any breaches.

Who are the winners and losers?

Obviously, M14 as a coalition emerges victorious. The independents add a couple to the total number but M14 still maintains a majority on its own. It's a decisive majority trashing once and for all Bashar Assad's "imaginary majority" and "transient few" snide remarks.

Hariri reemerges with the biggest bloc and thus keeps his position as head of the parliamentary majority. The Future Movement sailed through in the north, Beirut, the Western Bekaa and Zahle, and swept two seats in Sidon. The Lebanese Forces performed very strongly in Koura and Batroun, with M14 sweeping both, and eliminating Aoun's son-in-law Gebran Bassil in what is a major symbolic victory.

Walid Jumblat sacrificed from his share for the sake of the M14 alliance, and he emerges with a slightly diminished bloc as a result.

On the other side, Michel Aoun took a hit with the loss of his son-in-law, and saw his huge margin in Keserwen dwindle down drastically to about 2,000 votes, with Mansour al-Bone and his list performing ably.

Furthermore, this was done with Aoun's preferred electoral law, which he had been bragging about since the Doha Accord saying that he "forced" it on the other parties, and that it would "liberate" the Christian vote, especially in places like Ashrafiyeh, and that he would expand his bloc to over 30 MPs. Well, his list was demolished in Beirut 1 (Ashrafiyeh), where M14 swept all five seats.

Also, his allies in Zahle (Elie Skaff and the "Popular Bloc") got smashed, with M14 performing very strongly there.

Nevertheless, Aoun scored big in districts with large Hezbollah votes, namely Baabda and Jbeil. While a victory in Jbeil was expected, the sweep in Baabda is a net win. Aoun also maintained his sweep in Keserwen, despite a dramatically narrower edge. He also did well in the Metn, winning 6 (in alliance with the Armenian Tashnag party) out of 8, with Michel Murr and Sami Gemayel getting the other two. As such, Aoun will still claim he is the strongest in the Maronite heartland. Nevertheless, the win is very obviously a lot shakier than the "tsunami" of 2005, and nothing made it clearer than his son-in-law's big loss in Batroun. Batroun, whose citizens lost an Army pilot, shot down in his helicopter by Aoun's Hezbollah's allies, threw out the Aounists completely.

In effect, the Christian vote, as always, is still split. Aoun and his allies (Frangieh, Tashnag) will still have the largest Christian bloc (the seats in Jezzine will not be counted because they were never in play for M14, and they were gifts from Hezbollah -- and, incidentally, a setback for Berri).

The Tashnag Party, which huffed and puffed (and was puffed up by Western journos) mightily before the elections, ends up with a dud, getting only two seats (keeping the seat in Metn, and gaining a seat in Beirut 2). The other Armenian seats (Zahle, Beirut 1) went to M14.

Similarly, Michel Murr didn't pull off the kind of performance many thought he would, keeping only his seat in the Metn. He fielded a candidate in Baabda (Gharios) who lost. His companion in the Metn, Sarkis Sarkis, also lost.

Similarly, the so-called centrist bloc that was touted before the elections, comes out decidedly smaller than even initially thought. The bloc was supposed to be affiliated with the President, Suleiman, with candidates close to him, or effectively putting themselves in his corner, not breaking through: Nazim Khoury in Jbeil, al-Bone and Farid Haykal Khazen in Keserwen, Edmond Gharios (and even perhaps Pierre Daccache) in Baabda, and even Murr himself. Although there are others who did make it (people like Robert Ghanem, etc. can still support the President), the bloc as initially conceived did not quite materialize.

This balance of power will now be transferred to the battle over the cabinet formation. M14 has a clear victory, and so will pick the Prime Minister. The battle, however, will be over the heresy of the "veto third" -- which has no existence in the constitution or the Taef Accord. Hariri has been consistently rejecting its continuation in the future cabinet, and he got support today from Jumblat as well, who called it a "fallacy." M14 will agree to a national unity government, though its principled position now is that it rejects the "veto third" formula. They are making plenty of noise about giving a boost to Suleiman, and how that will materialize remains to be seen. M8 is almost certainly going to reject it and will cite the relatively weak performance of the so-called independents/centrists as support for their position. This is a potential looming crisis on the horizon, as I argued in my pre-election briefing, especially since Hezbollah and the March 8 groups have shown themselves to be anti-democratic and violent forces who wouldn't hesitate to paralyze the country and ultimately attack people in their homes to get what they want.

Let's see how this plays out.

Major Victory for March 14

2009-06-07T16:57:00.022-04:00

March 14 is headed for an impressive victory in the elections. Michel Aoun's Wunderkind son-in-law in Batroun has lost, and there's a slight possibility that Aoun himself will not be reelected in Keserwen, though that remains to be seen.

Results so far (some final, some preliminary) have March 14 winning big in basically all the battle districts: all seven seats in Zahle, all three in Koura, both seats in Batroun, all five in Beirut 1, and it's looking very good in Metn, with only Baabda not looking good.

The big news so far is a very strong showing for the independent-M14 alliance in Keserwen, where Aoun has his seat, but the final results have yet to come out.

So much for Bashar's "imaginary majority" and "transient condition" (as he famously referred to M14), in spite of all his terrorism, bombing, murder, violence, intimidation, coup attempts and information warfare over the last four years. And cheers to Andrew Lee Butters, Mitchell Prothero, Hugh Mcleod, Robert Worth, et al. Good call there, gentlemen.

Hezbollah, showing its high democratic spirit, has spent the day assaulting rival Shiite candidates and clashing with the majority's supporters in some districts.

And now, as I noted in my pre-election briefing, for the real, post-election battle. Jumblat gives us a preview: He rejected the idea of having an obstructing third, calling it a “fallacy.”

UPDATE: Al-Arabiya is quoting sources "close to Hezbollah" as conceding that M14 has won circa 70 seats. In other words, they have kept the numbers they won in 2005, despite everything.

UPDATE 2: Alas, Keserwen was swept by the Aounists, despite a really strong showing for the independent-M14 list. Mansour al-Bone and his list put up a strong fight in Keserwen, losing by less than two thousand votes out of 30 thousand. Gone are the days of Aoun's "tsunami."

Hezbollah, the Elections, and Beyond

2009-06-05T18:23:00.004-04:00

Here are my two cents, amidst the plethora of unvaryingly crappy analysis and reporting as we draw close to Lebanon's elections on Sunday.

David Schenker also weighed in a couple of days ago. For more on this subject, see Jonathan Spyer's piece and Michael Young's interview as well as his latest column in the Daily Star yesterday.

Make sure you check them out as well.

More Undeclared Uranium Discovered in Syria

2009-06-05T17:04:00.003-04:00

Must be those Israelis throwing uranium-laced bombs to frame poor innocent, yet utterly genius, Bashar. After all, everyone knows that, as that flame of caricature brilliance, Imad Mustapha told us, "Syria has never, ever contemplated acquiring nuclear technology. We are not contemplating it today. We are not contemplating doing this in the future – neither for military nor for civilian purposes." I mean, duh!

Reuters:

More undeclared uranium discovered in Syria

International Atomic Energy Agency finds traces of processed uranium at second site in Syria, leading to fears of covert nuclear activity

The UN nuclear watchdog has discovered traces of processed uranium at a second site in Syria, the agency said on Friday, heightening concern about possible undeclared atomic activity in the Arab state.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has been examining U.S. intelligence reports that Syria almost built a North Korean-designed nuclear reactor meant to yield weapons-grade plutonium before Israel bombed it to rubble in 2007.

Inspectors who found uranium particles at the remote desert site a year ago also found similar traces at a small research reactor in the capital Damascus which the IAEA knew about and checks once a year, a IAEA report said. These traces were different from Syria's declared nuclear material inventory.

The IAEA said in February that inspectors had found enough traces of uranium in soil samples taken from the bombed site a year ago to constitute a significant find.

Friday's report said "anthropogenic natural uranium particles" had also turned up in environmental swipe samples taken from hot cells of the Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) facility in Damascus.

Syria, told of the IAEA's discovery last month, sent a written response to the IAEA on Monday. But this did not not address the presence and origin of the particles and the UN watchdog was investigating a possible connection with the uranium particles found at the bombed site, the report said.

The IAEA said previously satellite pictures taken before the Israeli bombing revealed a building resembling a reactor.

Syria still withholding evidence
But the new report said Syria, citing national security, was still ignoring IAEA requests for wider access and documentation to back up its assertion that Israel's target at Dair Alzour was a conventional military building.

The IAEA again urged Syria to provide additional data and trips to Dair Alzour and other, allegedly related locations to allow test-sampling of destroyed or salvaged equipment and debris removed before investigators were let into the country.

"It is clearly in Syria's interest to render to the agency the necessary cooperation and transparency if it wishes the agency to be able to corroborate its assertion about the nature of the Dair Alzour site," the report said.

Syria's only declared nuclear site is the old research reactor and it has no known nuclear energy-generating capacity.

The report said Syria was also refusing to discuss satellite pictures the IAEA had offer to share with it. Syria had provided information regarding procurement of certain equipment and materials including a large quantity of graphite and large quantities of barium sulphate", a compound sometimes used as a radiation shield in nuclear structures.

Syria had indicated the procurement efforts were civilian and non-nuclear, relating to water purification, the steel industry and shielding material for radiation therapy centers. It has claimed that the uranium particles retrieved from samples taken at Dair Alzour came from depleted uranium used in Israeli munitions, an assertion dismissed by the IAEA.

Syria has also suggested IAEA analyses were faulty and that satellite imagery Washington gave to the IAEA was fabricated.

Vienna diplomats said in March that Syria had told the IAEA it had built a missile facility on the desert tract hit by Israel, a disclosure apparently meant to reinforce the Syrian refusal to grant more IAEA access on national security grounds.

Recent Items on Hezbollah

2009-06-02T15:12:00.002-04:00

Here are a few recent items on Hezbollah: First, a discussion between Gary Gambill and myself on the subject of Hezbollah, its arsenal and its participation in politics.

Second, a sharp piece by Jonathan Spyer on what it would mean if the Hezbollah-led coalition won the elections.

This question is discussed in further detail in this CFR interview with Michael Young.

Lastly, add this item to the illustrious annals of Hezbollah's "Lebanonization" and its very clearly non-existent "global reach."

Young on the Der Spiegel Story

2009-05-27T09:39:00.003-04:00

Michael Young provides the best, in fact the only real analysis on the Der Spiegel story on Hezbollah. It's worth quoting in full:

Understanding the Der Spiegel upheaval
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The article published in Der Spiegel accusing Hizbullah of being behind the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, appears to use conceivably correct information to arrive at a conclusion the article itself never really substantiates: namely that "it was not the Syrians, but instead special forces of [Hizbullah] that planned and executed the diabolical attack." At most, the article declares that Syria "is not being declared free of the suspicion of involvement," but that "President Bashar Assad is no longer in the line of fire."

The author, Erich Follath, tells us what French journalist Georges Malbrunot already did in an August 2006 article for the daily Le Figaro. Malbrunot, like Follath, reported that the investigation of telephone intercepts after Hariri’s killing revealed that one of those involved in the crime had broken protocol by calling a friend outside the circle of assassins. This mistake led Lebanese investigators to discover that the alleged assassin had ties with Hizbullah.

Malbrunot did not name the person, but Follath does. He may be Abd al-Majid Ghamlush, he writes, whose "recklessness led investigators to the man they now suspect was the mastermind of the terrorist attack: Hajj Salim ... considered to be the commander of the ’military’ wing of Hezbollah ... [whose] secret ’Special Operations Unit’ reports directly to Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah."

The differences between Malbrunot’s article and Follath’s are essential. In his article, Malbrunot cited "someone close to Saad Hariri", as well as "a source close to the [Internal Security Forces]" who evidently had information on the telecommunication intercepts. At the time, the investigation of the intercepts was headed by ISF Captain Wissam Eid, later killed in a car-bomb attack in January 2008. Significantly, however, the Hariri source did not believe that Hizbullah had carried out the Hariri assassination on its own initiative. "Who had the capacity to bring the equivalent of 1,200 kilos of TNT into Lebanon", the source asked, before answering: "Syria, a Lebanese security service working with it, and Hizbullah." The direction of Malbrunot’s article was that the operation was Syrian, but that Hizbullah may have somehow been brought into it.

Follath’s informants appear to be different. He says his information comes from sources "close to the tribunal and [was] verified by examining internal documents." In other words Follath’s source appears not to be an employee of the tribunal, but someone who has contacts with it and access to documents the tribunal is working with. That leads to suspicion that the sources are Lebanese who, to corroborate their information, showed Follath Lebanese documents from, or on, the Eid investigation, copies of which must also be in the possession of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon - hence the vague formulation "internal documents."

Who would leak such documents, and why, remains to be seen. It seems improbable that this was done by a pro-Hariri source to affect Lebanon’s upcoming elections. After spending four years accusing Syria, the Hariri camp is not about to exonerate Damascus for uncertain electoral gains. The broader conclusions reached by Follath are his own, however, and are poorly argued. Nothing in his piece allows him to make the jump and push the burden of responsibility for the killing on Hizbullah. There appear to have been at least two "circles" participating in the crime; that Hizbullah members were, let’s say, in the second circle, which presumably was involved in shadowing Hariri, does not necessarily mean they were in the first circle, which supervised the actual assassination, whether directly or through a suicide bomber. Eventually, the Hariri tribunal may tell us the specifics of how Hariri was eliminated, but Follath’s article never even makes it clear which circle Ghamlush was in.

If Hizbullah did plan and execute the attack, a theory long discussed in Lebanon, it is virtually impossible to envisage that the party would have taken this action without receiving prior Syrian approval to do so. In fact, it is virtually impossible to envisage that it would have taken such action without Syrian direction to do so - direction that only Bashar Assad, given the centralized nature of Syria’s regime, would have signed off on.

Follath provides motives for the assassination that are laughable. He says that Hizbullah got rid of Hariri because his "growing popularity could have been a thorn in the side of the Lebanese Shiite leader Nasrallah. In 2005, the billionaire began to outstrip the revolutionary leader in terms of popularity." Hariri also stood for what Nasrallah hated, Follath continues: close ties to the West and to moderate Arab regimes, as well as "an opulent lifestyle, and a membership in the competing Sunni faith."

This is nonsense. Those who had an overriding motive to kill Hariri were the Syrians, because his expected successes in the summer 2005 parliamentary elections, so soon after passage of Resolution 1559 by the Security Council, would have seriously threatened their hold on Lebanon. Successive reports by the United Nations commission investigating the crime repeated that hypothesis, which has never been challenged.

Follath, intentionally or unintentionally, is being used to draw the light away from Syria by casting it on Hizbullah. However, all the evidence that has filtered out from the UN investigation, as well as circumstantial evidence, leads in the direction of a principal mastermind: the regime in Damascus, regardless of who was implicated in the crime to guarantee everyone’s silence. It was only Syrian participation that could have pushed the Lebanese security agencies, then completely dominated by Syria, to corrupt the crime scene; it was only Syrian participation that could lead a Lebanese security chief to distribute the video of Ahmad Abu Adas claiming responsibility for the crime; and it was above all Syrian insistence after 2006 that pushed Hizbullah and Amal to block the creation of the tribunal through Lebanese state institutions.

Recall this crucial exchange in April 2007 between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Assad in Damascus. The Shiite ministers had left the government, and there was talk of establishing the Hariri tribunal under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Ban asked Assad to support the tribunal. Instead, Assad replied that Lebanon was a country of instability, which "will worsen if the special tribunal is established. Particularly if it is established under Chapter VII. This might easily cause a conflict that would degenerate into civil war, provoking divisions between Sunnis and Shiites from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea ..."

Echoes of Assad’s message permeate the Der Spiegel article, which implicitly asks whether the truth about who killed Rafik Hariri merits a Sunni-Shiite war. The Damascus conversation was leaked by a UN source to the daily Le Monde, and stands as a telling document. For why would Assad have been so worried about a tribunal passed under Chapter VII authority had Syria been innocent of Hariri’s elimination?

If Follath was given documents from or on Wissam Eid’s investigation, that means someone may also be trying to discredit Eid’s work by generating such a furor now over the accusation against Hizbullah, that it will be very difficult in the future to use the disclosures in such a way that they won’t be tainted by politics. The article may also imply that Eid, unlike the UN commission, actually did his work properly, and that someone is worried about the results. Who showed the "internal documents" to Follath, and are they the same people who might have earlier revealed to Eid’s killers that he was on to something?

These questions will continue to remain unanswered, and the tribunal process will continue to be open to manipulation, for as long as the Special Tribunal for Lebanon does not come out with a formal accusation. We are witnessing the consequences of a slipshod UN investigation since 2006. The prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, may have lost control of his case, and those who leaked to Der Spiegel could well be pushing for its complete collapse.

Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.

Hezbollah's Agenda In Lebanon

2009-05-19T16:25:00.003-04:00

Here's my essay on Hezbollah, which appears in the latest issue of Current Trends in Islamist Ideology. It contains, along with my argument, a critique of prevalent theories that have dominated the literature.

Much in recent events and statements by Hezbollah officials, which I highlighted here and here, has bolstered a number of my conclusions.

Ibrahim Mussawi, or Hezbollah Disinformation 101

2009-05-13T11:56:00.019-04:00

Some of you may not know who Ibrahim Mussawi is. Others may have recently heard of him after the controversy surrounding his invitation to lecture in England, and his subsequent barring from entering the UK in March 2009.

Mussawi is essentially the head of disinformation and propaganda for Hezbollah, a.k.a, "media relations officer." He is the editor of the Party's weekly rag, al-Intiqad, and the head of political programs at the organization's TV station, al-Manar.

People like him, and Ali Fayyad for example (as well as Ghaleb Abu Zainab, et al.), are handlers who ensure that the party line is properly disseminated. I gave a rundown of this in a post last year about how Hezbollah ensured that pretty much the entire body of literature relating to its ties to Imad Mughniyeh toed the party line. That was the necessary "nihil obstat" to gain the group's imprimatur and guarantee continued access for the authors.

What this line is, however, is a flat out lie. And Mussawi gives us a perfect example of this in a recent article by David Samuels in TNR:

I ask Mousawi about a quote from Hezbollah's number two, Naim Qassem, in which he talked about submitting Hezbollah's decision to become a political party in 1992 to Iran. He reaches into his bookshelf and tosses me a copy of Qassem's book, translated into English. "Find it," he says. Score one for Mousawi.

This is quite remarkable, if only for its brazenness. The mendacious Mussawi tries to catch Samuels on the fly and imagines that nobody will have the wherewithal to sound him out in his lies. His request was clearly a tactic to throw Samuels off-balance and to change the subject. Samuels had the option of wasting 20 minutes trying to find the quote in the book, or proceed with the interview. Of course, he chose the latter option, but proceeded to show how much of a con artist Mussawi is.

But Samuels hardly made up the quote, which is why Mussawi's trick was so brazen, and so telling. Anyone who's read the book knows it's there. I reproduce it in the original Arabic (followed by my translation), for the record. The quote comes from the fifth chapter entitled, "Participation in the System's Institutions" (al-musharaka fi mu'assasat al-nidham), in the section entitled "Participation in the Parliamentary Elections" (al-musharaka fil-intikhabat al-niyabiyya), pages 257-263 in the edition I have, and pp. 277-283 in the 2008 edition of the book. Perhaps the most relevant quote comes on page 263 (or 283 in the 2008 edition):

ثم جرى استفتاء سماحة الولي الفقيه الإمام الخامنئي (حفظه الله) حول المشروعية بعد تقديم اقتراح اللجنة فأجاز وأيّد، عندها حُسمت المشاركة في الانتخابات النيابية، ودخل المشروع في برنامج وآلية عمل الحزب، فعقد الأمين العام سماحة السيد حسن نصرالله مؤتمراً صحفياً في ٣ تموز ١٩٩٣، أعلن فيه عن قرار حزب الله بالمشاركة في الانتخابات النيابية

Translation:

Then the legal ruling of the noble Jurisprudent [al-wali al-faqih] Imam Khamenei (may God keep him) was sought on the legality [al-mashrou'iyya] [of participation in elections] after the [Party's] committee presented its proposal, and he granted permission [ajaza] and support, and then the [decision of] participation in the parliamentary elections was settled, and the project was admitted into the Party's program and mechanism. And so, the Secretary General the noble Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah held a press conference on July 3, 199[2] in which he declared Hezbollah's decision to participate in the parliamentary elections... [Emphasis mine.]

Qassem earlier states clearly that, on its own, Hezbollah's own committee "cannot answer the question regarding the legality [of the participation]," since it is "the specialization of the Jurisprudent [al-wali al-faqih]." (p. 258 in my edition).

In other words, Mussawi engaged in deliberate disinformation, and his job is to ensure that Western journalists writing on the subject reflect the Party line, as was the case with Mughniyeh and Hezbollah's "global reach." He failed with Samuels. But he has other venues, such as the so-called "Beirut Exchange Program." And there is no shortage of compliant journalists, "experts," and flacks.

But now you know, whenever you read reports quoting him (or even presenting him as some sort of academic), or books where his "assistance" and "encouragement" are duly noted by the author, that you should always apply due caution. The man's job, after all, is to lie.

Update: The always gracious Barry Rubin picks up on this issue and offers his own unique take. For those of you who don't know, Barry now has his own blog, which you should all bookmark.

Addendum: The below statements by Mussawi (which set up the quote addressed in the post above) are equally remarkable for their blatant, yet hilariously transparent, dishonesty:

The formalities concluded, I ask Mousawi to explain the conditions under which Hezbollah asks Iran for advice. "It has nothing to do with Iran," he says. "These are purely religious questions. In Shia Islam," he continues, in his modest, scholarly way, "we have a concept called the Wilayat Al Faqih, the mandate of the jurisconsult, or Supreme Guide. I wrote my dissertation in England on this subject. The Wilayat Al Faqih is a concept that is central to Islam, but it was crystallized in the thought of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Even when the Ayatollah Khomeini was living in France, he was still the Wali Al Faqih. So you see that this is a purely religious question that has nothing to do with Iran. The followers of the Wali Al Faqih would emulate him wherever he is, and wherever they are."

This is amusing on a number of fronts -- and Mussawi lies on each and every one of them. First, the notion that the consultation of the Jursiprudent is somehow "purely religious" is utterly ridiculous. After all, as noted above, he was consulted on whether Hezbollah's participation in Lebanese parliamentary politics was permissible or not! Moreover, as Naim Qassem writes in his book, as I note in this essay, that "the al-wali al-faqih alone possesses the authority to decide war and peace" (huwa lladhi yamtalik salahiyat qarar al-harb wa as-silm), along with the authority “to make the major political decisions related to the interests of the umma” (ittikhadh al-qararat as-siyasiya al-kubra allati tartabit bi masalih al-umma), pp. 72, 76.

Secondly, the notion that somehow Khomeini's theory is "a concept central to Islam" but that somehow it was only "crystallized in the thought of the Ayatollah Khomeini", is your average boiler plate revisionism (which you can find in Qassem's book as well). If it were so, then how come all the other senior Shiite scholars, e.g., Kho'i, Fadlallah, Sistani, et al., who are superior to Khomeini's successor, the current Jurisprudent, Ali Khamenei, rejected Khomeini's thesis?

Moreover, the bit about France and how this has "nothing to do with Iran" is just beyond ridiculous. Yes, it's totally unrelated that the only figure to "crystallize" this theory was an Iranian cleric. It was also mere coincidence that its only application was in Iran. It is equally haphazard that the successor of the first Jurisprudent (Khomeini) is the current Supreme Guide of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Ali Khamenei)!

One could go on refuting this nonsense in more detail, but I'll spare you. (And the guy wrote a "PhD dissertation" on this!).

Hussain Abdul Hussain wrote to me commenting on the above quote. I'll conclude with his thoughts:

It does not look as though my friend Ibrahim Moussawi has a full grasp of the thought of Khomeini. Khomeini’s idea is based on what he called the Islamic Government [TB: Khomeini's book is entitled Hokumat-e Islami: Velayat-e Faqih], and when you give your ideology such a name, it hardly stays “purely religious” and rather becomes an issue of how Shiites perceive of themselves as citizens, or not, in the various states they live in around the world.

Even if we go by Moussawi’s definition of the concept of Wilayat Al Faqih, we will get a virtual Shiite state, unrestricted by geography or time. This undermines the idea of citizenship for every Shiite, in whatever state he or she lives in. It is the equivalent of demanding political allegiance of every Catholic in the world, regardless of their national identity, to the Pope in Rome. This undermines the allegiance of these Catholics toward their states and will inevitably bring them into clash with their co-nationals, exactly similar to the conflict that Khomeini has created for the Shiites with their co-nationals in the different countries around the world.

Khomeini’s concept of Wilayat Al Faqih is in contradiction not only with the idea of a nation-state, a product of centuries of human intellect and experiences, but also with whatever international conventions the different nation-states have drafted. Khomeini’s thought belongs to early political thought that renders individuals members of tribes assembled along perceived divine teachings. This kind of thought clearly has no place in the 21st century, and a clash between the followers of Khomeini and the world is apparent. Unfortunately there is no reconciliation between Khomeini’s thinking and world ideologies, and one of them should eventually cave or defeat the other, whether now or in the future.

Can We Finally Dispense with the "Lebanonization" Myth?

2009-05-12T12:20:00.004-04:00

To follow up on my previous post on this subject, check out the following interview with Naim Qassem in the FT:

FT: Let’s move on to the recent arrests of 49 men in Egypt who were alleged to be part of a Hizbollah cell there. Hizbollah has always said it gave only moral support to the Palestinians in Gaza but has that now changed? Are you helping on the ground? Are you expanding your operations?

We have always said that we supported the resistance in Palestine but we have not mentioned how or given details of such support, we have avoided giving details of our support. But Egypt has now revealed that we have given military support to Palestine. We have done so for a while but we have not talked about it. For us it is a great honour and not just an honour but a duty for us to support the Palestinians, and it should also be an honour and a duty not just for us but for all Arabs and all Muslims to support the Palestinians in their resistance. We are asked about our specific and limited support for Gaza while nobody questions the US about their total and unflinching support for Israel. We are always questioned but nobody questions the US.

FT: For how long have you been supporting the Palestinians in Gaza?

SNQ: It is one of the secrets of the resistance that we don’t talk about the details of our support, but suffice to say that we are giving them every type of support that could help the Palestinian resistance. Every type that is possible.

FT: Have you been giving them military arms? Rockets? Training? Logistical support?

SNQ: We don’t talk about the details of our support or how or what we support them with. We leave this to be seen in time to come.

It's well past due to relegate Norton's (et al.'s) "thesis" (if it can be called that), which always went against empirical evidence, to where it always belonged: the trash bin.

US renews sanctions against Syria

2009-05-08T10:20:00.007-04:00

Much to the chagrin of the Syrian regime and its flacks (such as the pathetic regime court jester cited in the article below), I'm sure, who have been flooding the media with leaks about how they "expect" the Obama administration to lift the sanctions.

The Financial Times:

The Obama administration has renewed its sanctions against Syria for another year, citing a continuing “national emergency” facing the US from Syria’s support for terrorist organisations and weapons trade.
...
The sanctions, which were introduced by the Bush administration in 2004, will remain in place for another year, a state department official told the Financial Times.
...
“The national emergency with respect to Syria remains in effect because Syria continued to not meet its international obligations. We continue to have serious concerns about Syria’s actions,” the US official said.

Oh and just for good measure, here's DoS spokesman Robert Wood the other day:

They know what they need to do...

Sounds rather familiar.

Update: More from Wood.

More on Hezbollah's "Lebanonization"

2009-04-24T21:38:00.005-04:00

Hezbollah's Naim Qassem has once again vindicated the perceptive scholarship of the likes of Dick Norton and, more recently, Joseph Alagha, who preached the "Lebanonization" of Hezbollah among other cute delusional fantasies. Here, can't you tell?

Qassem confirmed that “Hezbollah’s path goes beyond the electoral battle, and it crosses domestic boundaries to regional ones, because our enemy is Israel, and we must believe that the region will be exposed to Israeli attacks in the future. This enemy understands one language, which is the language of resistance.”

I explore all this in depth in an upcoming essay in Current Trends in Islamist Ideology. For an older critique of Hezbollah scholarship, see this post from February 2008, after the Mughniyeh assassination.

The latest journalist to carry water on behalf of Hezbollah is Borzou Daragahi over at the LAT, who, without blinking or offering a single critical qualifier, wrote the following even as a Hezbollah cell was arrested operating in Egypt: "[Qassem] rejected Western accusations that Hezbollah conducts operations overseas."

It was amusing, however, to see Qassem in that interview trash the basis of the British decision to engage Hezbollah's so-called "political wing," and along with it, trash the whole dominant "evolutionary" model which holds that somehow by "integrating in the Lebanese political process" Hezbollah "transitions away" from "the military option":

"All political, social and jihad work is tied to the decisions of this leadership," he said. "The same leadership that directs the parliamentary and government work also leads jihad actions in the struggle against Israel."

Instead, as we found out from the Egypt cell case, Hezbollah used its penetration of state institutions like the Surete Generale and the Foreign Ministry to subordinate them in the service of its external military operations, through the issuance of forged documents, carrying official seals.

The delicious irony (or hypocrisy) of the British position, of course, lies in the possibility that their overture towards Hezbollah may be directly tied to hostage negotiations involving Hezbollah operatives and British hostages in Iraq, all of which of course highlights and confirms, beyond any doubt, Hezbollah's "Lebanonization," its lack of global reach, its non-involvement in overseas terrorist activities, and all that jazz that since the 1990s has passed for "scholarship."

Assad's "Peace"

2009-04-09T18:56:00.004-04:00

Here's my latest commentary on Assad's recent interviews and his statements regarding "peace" with Israel. I note that not only do Assad's statements constitute a kind of throwback to the rhetoric of the Khartoum summit's three "no's", but also they publicly articulate for the first time what some of us suspected was the Assad's regime's (both under father and son) intentions all along.

More commentary to come.

Iran Financed Syria's Nuclear Project

2009-03-19T17:24:00.004-04:00

From a report in the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung (English precis via AP):

A top-ranked Iranian defector told the United States that Iran was financing North Korean moves to make Syria into a nuclear weapons power, leading to the Israeli air strike that destroyed a secret reactor, a report said Thursday.
...
"The biggest surprise, however, was his assertion that Iran was financing a secret nuclear project of Syria and North Korea," he said. "No one in the American intelligence scene had heard anything of it. And the Israelis who were immediately informed also were completely unaware."
...
US Intelligence had detected North Korean ship deliveries of construction supplies to Syria that started in 2002, and American satellites spotted the construction as early as 2003, but regarded the work as nothing unusual, in part because the Syrians had banned radio and telephones from the site and handled communications solely by messengers - "medieval but effective," Ruehle said.

Intensive investigation followed by US and Israeli intelligence services until Israel sent a 12-man commando unit in two helicopters to the site in August 2007 to take photographs and soil samples, he said. "The analysis was conclusive that it was a North Korean-type reactor," a gas graphite model, Ruehle said.

Other sources have suggested that the reactor might have been large enough to make about one nuclear weapon's worth of plutonium a year.

Just before the Israeli commando raid, a North Korean ship was intercepted en route to Syria with nuclear fuel rods, underscoring the need for fast action, he said. "On the morning of Sept. 6, 2007, seven Israeli F-15 fighter bombers took off to the north. They flew along the Mediterranean coast, brushed past Turkey and pressed on into Syria. Fifty kilometers (30 miles) from their target they fired 22 rockets at the three identified objects inside the Kibar complex.

Once I read the article in the original, I'll come back and add any interesting details missing from the newswire stories.

Engagement Minus Concessions

2009-03-16T08:21:00.020-04:00

My latest piece on the US engagement with Syria is out at NOW Lebanon this morning. It's a follow-up of sorts on my piece for Foreign Policy's website.

I had been planning on linking a number of good pieces on this subject that had come out earlier, but I haven't had the chance. But do check Emile Hokayem's piece in The National from a couple of weeks ago. Emile's piece contains what is perhaps the most insightful and important quote by a senior US official I've heard in a while: “Syria is trying to sell us the water to extinguish fires that it has lit but that we already put down.” (Readers of this blog are quite familiar with this argument and US military statements to that effect.)

There were also a couple of entries by Andrew Tabler and Reuel Marc Gerecht for a NYT symposium that are worth reading.

Tabler also wrote a Policy Watch on the need to maintain sanctions on Syria in light of the economic crisis as well as leverage in the engagement process. WINEP had two other related Policy Watches in late February by David Schenker on the US tentative engagement and Michael Singh on Syria's nuclear program scandal that you should check out. (Also, check out Schenker's piece on Syrian dissident Riad Seif in the LAT). Most recently, the Institute organized a panel on the Washington-Beirut-Damascus triangle with Tabler, John Hannah and Magnus Norell. (Update: Transcripts available here.)

You should also check out this piece by Amitai Etzioni in The National Interest on the myth that somehow a deal with Syria would affect Iran's nuclear ambitions, or that Iran would become "isolated" if Syria and Israel were ever to sign a peace deal. Syria's importance, as I and Emile Hokayem noted, is secondary at best, and what they have to offer, as I also note in my NOW piece, is snake oil, expired goods, or offering to get paid to help themselves, and not US interests.

Michael Young's piece from last week dealt with another set of pitfalls pertaining to Syria and Iran.

Finally, with regards to the Syria-Israel track, see this important interview with top Netanyahu aide, Uzi Arad: "No one in his right mind would do a deal with Syria, let alone do the concessions that Mr. Olmert alluded to, if it remained aligned with Iran. It would just bring Iran closer to us," Arad told Reuters. "It would be insane."

More to come, including a detailed commentary on Assad's latest threat-laced interview.

inFocus: Syria

2009-03-09T16:53:00.003-04:00

The Spring 2009 issue of inFocus Quarterly features a series of articles on Syria including an essay by me briefly overviewing the Syria-Iran alliance.

More to come.

Tonight's "Sami" Award Winner

2009-03-06T16:32:00.005-05:00

We have a doozie tonight. A well-deserved "Sami" goes to Claude Salhani for this bit of sheer brilliance:

Much of Syria's influence today lies in its alliance with Tehran. But as her advisers will no doubt tell Mrs. Clinton, the Syrian-Iranian marriage is one purely of convenience not of love. It was an alliance brought about as a result of the former U.S. administration's policy of isolating Damascus, which gave Syrian President Bashar Assad little choice.

I wonder if Mr. Salhani is familiar with the term "oxymoron." Apparently, the pull of blurting out shallow decades-old cliches, like "marriage of convenience," was too overpowering. So overwhelming, in fact, that Mr. Salhani forgot that the alliance is thirty years old. Ooops!

And it is precisely for this wonderful bit of pure comedy genius (in an op-ed packed with it from top to bottom) that Mr. Salhani is tonight's recipient of the prestigious "Sami."

Introducing "The Samis"

2009-03-05T17:40:00.007-05:00

I was going to post links and comments on a number of good pieces on the developments with Syria, as well as my own latest piece, but that will have to wait. There are more pressing items.

I am introducing a new feature on this blog: The Sami Moubayed Awards for most hilarious comment, known worldwide as "The Samis." Although not particularly about the King of Comedy himself, we would be paying tribute to the comedic genius of the man by recognizing and highlighting absurdly hysterical comments in the vein of that classic regime comedy which Sami has come to personify. Who can forget such classics as "Syria helped release the 15 British hostages," or the all-time favorite, "When all this is done, Syria would be willing to open its arms to Abu Hussein, receiving him perhaps as a guest of honor in Damascus, the way it did with Jimmy Carter"? Moments of pure gold in comedy history, all thanks to the work of a single, inimitable regime clown.

I have a bunch ready to roll, and I will be posting them in succession. But I figured, since we're talking about clowns, where better to start than with the top regime Court Jester?

Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for tonight's Sami Award winner, The Oklahoma Tishreen, for the most Samiesque of all comedy lines:

In addition to gaining greater co-operation on Iraq, Washington will also want Syria to accommodate Lebanon’s interests. This should not be an impossible task. Syria has already opened an embassy in Beirut, and the appointment of a Syrian ambassador is imminent. During the 1990s, Washington and Damascus found an agreement on Lebanon that allowed the country to rebuild its economy and repair the sectarian divisions that had all but destroyed it during two decades of civil war. Damascus has every interest in a prosperous Lebanon. The co-operation over Lebanon that marked the presidencies of George HW Bush and Bill Clinton can be resumed. Hizbollah’s refusal to be drawn into the Gaza conflict this January may indicate that it is more interested in becoming a contender in upcoming parliamentary elections and in the delicate political life of Lebanon than in fighting regional wars.

The Molotov Cocktail and the Fire Hose

2009-01-29T10:59:00.001-05:00

Jonathan Spyer once again pens an excellent analysis on Syria. Worth quoting in full:

The itinerary of newly minted US Middle East envoy George Mitchell is intended to give the American diplomat a chance to gain a broad picture of various regional perspectives - from Jerusalem all the way to Riyadh.

Mitchell's travel plans contain a notable gap, however. The new envoy will not - on this trip at least - be visiting Syria.

This omission is testimony to the ongoing disruptive role played by Damascus in the politics of the region. Mitchell's arrival this week coincides with the interception by the US Navy of an Iranian arms boat bound for the Syrian coast. The ship - which was later permitted to continue on its way - is reported to have contained armaments intended to find their way to Hamas.

Mitchell's bypassing of Damascus has, of course, been noted by Syrian officials. Still, Damascus remains generally optimistic regarding its chances of emerging from isolation to renewed dialogue with the US and its new president. The method to be used to achieve this will be the tried and tested Syrian practice of holding a Molotov cocktail in one hand and a fire hose in the other. That is - Syria will offer itself as the indispensable mediator for the solution of problems which Damascus itself has helped to create, and for which its clients and allies are directly responsible.

Syria's approach toward the situation in Gaza offers an example of how this process is supposed to work. Damascus, of course, played no mediating role during the recent fighting. Rather, it offered enthusiastic verbal support for Hamas.

President Bashar Assad was the first to congratulate the Damascus-based Hamas leadership following the conclusion of the latest round of violence. The Syrian leader hailed the "victory" of the "resistance."

In the aftermath, however, the Syrians have been keenly noting emerging calls in the West for "engagement" with Hamas. These are no longer confined to the world of think tanks and advocacy groups.

This week, a French-sponsored amendment at a meeting of EU foreign ministers sought to commit Europe to support any unity government achieved by the Palestinians. This would have offered implicit backing for engaging with a government including Hamas. The amendment was defeated. But the calls for engagement with Hamas will not go away, and are being heard insistently - and not only in Europe.

Such calls are music to the ears of Syrian officials. They consider - correctly - that any attempt to engage with Hamas will need to go through Damascus, where the group's leadership is domiciled. And if you want to "deliver" Hamas, what better way than to make friends with (and offer incentives) to the people who provide them with a home. President Sarkozy, who called Assad this week and visited Damascus last September, is already persuaded.

So the petrol bomb and fire hose method has already succeeded in landing France. The issue for the Syrians is whether the same method may now be applied to the bigger game in Washington.

The current situation is not comfortable for Syria. The country faces an ongoing investigation into the nuclear facility destroyed by Israel in September 2007. The tribunal on the 2005 murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri is due (finally) to begin to function in March of this year. The burgeoning alliance with Iran and the backing for Hizbullah and Hamas cannot by themselves protect Syria from these dangers.

Damascus needs friends in the West who can be brought to believe that hopes for regional stability depend significantly on not pushing the Syrians too hard. Mitchell is - for now at least - not coming to call. But there is evidence that any displeasure on the part of the new administration at Syria's role as cheerleader and arms conduit for Hamas may be short-lived. Recent reports suggest that Syria may be in line to be the first real-life beneficiary of President Obama's new policy of engagement with anti-Western forces in the region. The administration's thinking, such reports suggest, is along by now familiar lines. Namely, that Syria, as the weakest link in the pro-Iranian alliance, should be showered with incentives to tempt it away.

If the administration does indeed intend to adopt such an approach to Syria, then Damascus's response is likely to be to offer just enough hope so that the optimists in Washington and Paris stay optimistic - and therefore pliable.

Syria is familiar with the dictum that there are none easier to convince than those who want to believe. The widespread excitement at Assad's decision to send a message of congratulation to Washington following Obama's victory offered a touching example of this.

So with this in mind - don't be surprised to see the prospect of renewed indirect negotiations with Israel being dangled again. The process of indirect negotiations in Istanbul was called off by Syria in the course of Operation Cast Lead. But for Syria, the "peace process" card is endlessly replayable. And since it appears that the new US administration subscribes to the view of the centrality of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the region, it may acquire particular worth in the period now opening up. The petrol bomb and fire hose school of diplomacy, as pioneered in Damascus, has a long way to run.

That Ol' Assad Anti-Semitism!

2009-01-17T10:40:00.006-05:00

I've regularly highlighted the consistent legacy of rabid anti-Semitic statements by Bashar Assad, from his fabulous statements to the Pope in 2001 shortly after inheriting power, to countless priceless nuggets throughout the years, including his profound thoughts on Roger Garaudy, and not least, his stupendous speech in Doha yesterday.

Now Bashar has combined his sophisticated antisemitism with razor sharp political acumen. Pulling a regular Ahmadinejad, Bashar told the German Der Spiegel that the German government really has to get its act together:

"We can see the feelings of guilt evoked by your past. And we also see they influence Germany's Israel policies. They shouldn't anymore," the Syrian president said.

Just terrific. But you see, he and Ahmadinejad don't really have anything in common. Bashar, after all, is a "secular," "Western-educated" thug. Not just your average run-of-the-mill thug. As the genius "experts" on the Syrian-Iranian alliance tell us, he can't possibly have anything in common with Ahmadinejad in terms of world view. No, nothing at all.

Syria and the Gaza Crisis

2009-01-16T16:36:00.004-05:00

Here's my latest Policy Briefing on Syria's destructive role with Iran in the Gaza crisis.

More to come, including commentary on the Doha gathering and Assad's psychopathic speech there (and the important Lebanese rejection of the gathering's statement on withdrawing the Arab peace initiative).

Here's a sample of some of pearls of wisdom dispensed by Bashar, in a vintage Assad speech, glazed with his hallmark anti-Semitic touch:

"If the starting point of what we will decide today is based on our standing beside our people in Gaza in the face of the new Nazi Israeli Holocaust, in addition to our conviction in the justice of the Palestinian cause and the legal rights of the Palestinian people.. then this would not be complete without our understanding of the essence of the problem which resides not only in the occupation per se.. but in the nature and character of the enemy which we face, based on decades of various experiences with it which have vacillated between wars and failed peace attempts. This enemy which has built its existence on massacres.. and consolidated its continuity on violation and destruction.. and sketched out its future on mass extermination.. is an enemy that only speaks the language of blood.

And therefore, it only understands the language of blood. And the Arab blood that has been spilled since the establishment of Israel.. was for its [Israel's] owners the necessary fuel for their machine in the stages of the establishment of the pure Jewish state, which cannot be near, unless the process of displacing non-Jews from Palestine or exterminating what remains of them in it is completed.. Therefore, what is happening in Gaza is not just a reply to rockets.. If there were no rockets they would have created them and fired them in order to find a pretext.. Rather it is a link in a long chain that aims to attain the Palestine that they imagined or pretended to be a land without a people, after other states patriate them [the Palestinians] or by finding a substitute homeland for them.. Therefore, if we do not read the reasons well.. we would not be able to produce anything except lacking and temporary solutions, meaning ones that would quickly collapse."

Assad, Jalili, PFLP-GC, and the Rockets from Lebanon

2009-01-08T10:55:00.006-05:00

As expected, a few rockets were lobbed into Israel today. While no one has claimed responsibility, it's fairly clear a- who's behind it, and b- why.

The threat of rockets from Lebanon was delivered early on in the fighting when the Lebanese Armed Forces dismantled eight Katyusha rockets set for firing into Israel. The Lebanese authorities at the time openly suspected this to be the work of the Syrian proxy, the Damascus-based PFLP-GC.

Then, as the fighting went on in Gaza, the Iranians sent a delegate to Damascus, Saeed Jalili, to discuss the Gaza situation with the Syrians and the Palesitinian factions based there. After the meeting, the PFLP-GC's secretary general, Ahmad Jibril, declared that "new military fronts will be opened and the circle of war will be widened as long as the Rafah crossing remained closed."

Three days later, the PFLP-GC is once again suspected of being behind the rockets fired into Israel today. The PFLP-GC is even threatening targeting US interests (one more reason why Syria will remain on the US list of state sponsors of terror). Hezbollah, who are denying any responsibility, naturally knew about it and turned a blind eye, in order to conveniently maintain deniability, but also to try and avoid a massive Israeli retaliation, which speaks to the success of Israeli deterrence post-UNSCR 1701.

So why did they fire the rockets, and why now?

The Israeli operation in Gaza has clearly dealt a massive, crippling blow to Hamas. There was therefore a need to prevent a humiliating defeat for the Iranian-led "resistance" axis.

Nevertheless, opening a full-blown new front in Lebanon is not as easy as one might think given the known Israeli response, recently articulated as the "Dahiyeh doctrine."

So, as Jonathan Spyer wrote today in the Jerusalem Post, the rocket fire from Lebanon "is the first indication that Hamas's friends may be considering intervention to help their ally in its predicament. The performance of Hamas in the conflict so far gives little cause for celebration in the Iranian-led camp."

But there's another angle here as well. Hamas's humiliation (and that of its backers Syria and Iran) was going to be compounded by the fact that Egypt was still the main broker of any new security arrangement, a fact that Hamas couldn't get around -- despite all the anti-Egypt rhetoric emanating from Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. Since one central goal of the war (i.e. of Syria and Iran) was the undermining of the Egyptian position, this would've been tantamount to adding insult to injury.

Here's where the "engagement" fetishists should pay attention. Into this complex picture -- with the regional balance of power in play -- stepped the freelance crisis solver du jour, the international man of mystery, Nicolas Sarkozy.

In a particularly ill-advised move, Sarkozy went to Syria and asked Assad -- a mere subsidiary of the Iranian campaign -- to intervene with Hamas. Sensing the possibility of freely-donated leverage, Assad did the obvious and came out fully in support of Hamas, and declared that if France would ensure that all of Hamas's demands were secured (which would be an existential threat to Egypt), including lifting the siege and opening the Rafah crossing (i.e., affording Hamas the charade of declaring "victory" for the "resistance" axis), he would gladly "see what he could do" with Hamas.

Therefore, it was no surprise that the Damascus-based Hamas rejected the proposal put forward by Egypt (with the French tagging along). Not only would the humiliation be hard to swallow, but since Sarkozy gave Bashar an opening, then it would behoove the Syrian terror-sponsoring dictator to try and up the price and see what more he can get from the hapless French. What better way to set the stage for the incoming Obama administration, and screw the US-allied Egyptians?

A day later, the PFLP-GC fires rockets from Lebanon and even threatened to target US interests!

Bashar, therefore, is trying, in typical Syrian fashion, to opportunistically scavenge some gains by selling his usual snake oil. In other words, once again badly-conceived flashiness sold as "diplomacy" results not in security and stability, but more conflagration and the potential sabotage of allies. There's no "regional" framework here. There's an Israeli and an Egyptian framework involving the PA -- period. Martin Kramer explained it well:

It is the PA, for example, which could be reinserted at the Egyptian border crossing at Rafah (as already demanded by Egypt).
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Legitimation of Hamas could seal the fate of the "peace process," and give "resistance" the reputation of a truly winning strategy. The United States will have to assure that all contact with Hamas runs exclusively through the Egyptians, the Saudis, the Turks, and above all, the PA. Europe and the United States must stay well out of the diplomatic reach of Hamas, until it meets the Quartet conditions—a highly improbable prospect.

This also means that once more, the advice of the ICG should be safely discarded in the nearest possible trash bin.

Bashar is working for the diametrically opposite objective, and seeking the full legitimization of Hamas and the undermining of Egypt, which has been crucial in blocking the opening of the Rafah crossing, and his introduction as the sole interlocutor. He called the continuing closure of these crossings an act of war, thereby justifying and supporting Hamas's torpedoing of the truce (little surprise there, as it was all coordinated with the Iranians, including the Bahrain plot which I discussed here).

In fact, Walid Moallem recently revealed that Syria had been using its "indirect talks with Israel" fiasco in order to protect Hamas and allow it to build up its (Iranian and Syrian-supplied military capabilities). Moallem said that the Syrians had conditioned these bogus talks on Israel not launching attacks on Hamas. In other words, it's the vintage Syria policy of talking while simultaneously supporting terrorist groups, and using the talks to protect terrorists groups and prevent being held accountable for supporting them.

The Israeli response to the Katyushas from Lebanon has so far been limited to a strike against the launching site. The Israelis had been expecting, since the eight Katyushas were dismantled earlier in the fighting, the possibility that some Palestinian faction could fire from Lebanon, with Hezbollah's knowledge and acquiescence. As long as Iran and Hezbollah don't escalate further, the IDF might not either, while keeping an eye on the northern border, especially as Hamas continues to get pummeled to the ground.

In the meantime, what the US and its allies should ensure is that Syria is not afforded an opportunity to sell useless snake oil and embezzle gains from this episode in which it's been nothing but a supporter of Hamas and the Iranian campaign against US allies, Israel and Egypt.

Israel's Objectives in Gaza

2009-01-04T12:03:00.001-05:00

Once again, the best analysis of the situation in Gaza is offered by Martin Kramer.

A couple of quotes:

So Israel's war aim is very straightforward, and it is not simply a total cease-fire. At the very least, it is a total cease-fire that also leaves the sanctions against Hamas in place.
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A hint of the solution Israel envisions comes from a senior Israeli diplomatic source: "Israel cannot agree that the only party responsible for implementing and regulating the cease-fire be Hamas."
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It is the PA, for example, which could be reinserted at the Egyptian border crossing at Rafah (as already demanded by Egypt).

Read it all.

I'll have more to say on this shortly.

Syria: Terror Inc.

2008-12-28T11:27:00.010-05:00

The list of countries affected by Syrian terror sponsorship had (most recently) included states like Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the US, Germany (and US targets there), Spain, Israel and more. Now add Bahrain to the list (Arabic articles here and here).

The Bahraini (Shiites) who were arrested for plotting to carry out major terror attacks during Bahrain's national holiday on December 17, trained for their operation in Syria, adding further support to the charge that Syria is Terror Grand Central -- consciously using its territory as a safe haven, revolving door, and distribution/reorientation hub for terrorists of all stripes targeting Syria's enemies (which happen to be the US and its allies).

What's interesting about this latest episode is that it involves Shiite terrorists, highlighting how Syria works with terrorists of all stripes, while also further bringing into light the multiple functions of the Iran-funded Shiite centers now proliferating in Syria.

Furthermore, it sheds light on a pillar of the Syrians' 30 year-old strategic alliance with Iran (which some geniuseszzz today believe they can break through "engagement" over the Golan). The Syrian nexus with Khomeinist Shiite terrorism is chronic, dating back to the earliest days of the Islamic Revolution, even prior to the Khomeinist takeover in Iran, all the way to the current intricate and intimate relationship with Hezbollah, whose Imad Mughniyeh was killed in Damascus, where he was staying in a building owned by a business associate of Assad's cousin, Rami Makhlouf (meaning, he was personally patronized by Assad's inner-most circles).

The nexus also involved Mughniyeh and Hezbollah's training of Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army, whose fighters traveled to and via Syria to be trained by Hezbollah.

One of the essential aspects of the Syria-Iran alliance (which is the farthest thing possible from that ignorant cliche, "marriage of convenience" label), is how it allows Syria, a weak and resourceless Third World country, to blackmail, threaten and intimidate the far richer Gulf states, as well as to target Western enemies as well, thereby allowing Syria to punch well above its weight.

As such, and by way of example, Syria had a direct role in the attacks against the US and France in Beirut in 1983.

Furthermore, Mughniyeh, Hezbollah and Iran, all were directly involved in sabotage in Gulf states with substantial Shiite populations, and were behind groups like the Saudi Hezbollah and the Kuwaiti Hezbollah.

The Kuwaitis provide a recent example of how Syria benefits from Iran's muscle to blackmail and extort weak Gulf states like Kuwait. Earlier this year, around the time of the Arab summit, which was to be held in Syria for the first time, and was being boycotted by most Arab heads of state, the Kuwaiti embassy was threatened by Hezbollah, and other Mughniyeh-related problems surfaced in Kuwait, and lo and behold, Kuwait was one of the handful of Arab states who sent a high-ranking delegation to Syria.

And so, terror sponsorship and the alliance with Iran are not reactive Syrian policies remedied by the return of the Golan Heights. They are proactive policies by a regime whose only way to project influence well above its capacities is through violence, terrorism, intimidation and blackmail, as I emphasized in my most recent article.

This always was the case, as noted by Jubin Goodarzi, and the relationship with Iran afforded Assad possibilities on a number of regional fronts that would enable him to play out his regime's overinflated role conception, self-image and self-importance, and even possibly financing Assad's efforts to acquire a North Korean nuclear reactor (not to mention Russian advanced weaponry. See also the Syrian-Venezuelan-Iranian nexus in that regard). Michael Rubin recently discussed a variant angle of this function of the alliance, with regards to the chronic Syrian claims to Arab primacy.

Far from wanting to "flip" to the American side, Syria wants to enlist the US in its campaign to undermine US Arab allies -- as Lee Smith put it, to have Washington play "the bagman in an extortion racket" against US Arab allies -- while maintaining the alliance with Iran, as it did throughout the 90s.

The notion that Syria will abandon this long-held and overall successful symbiosis for the sake of a tiny piece of land betrays utter ignorance of the regime's nature and interests. Efraim Inbar said it well today:

The naïve belief that territorial concessions will dissuade Syria from continuing its cozy relationship with Teheran is baseless. Precisely those who belittle the strategic importance of the Golan Heights believe that Syria ascribes great importance to this piece of territory and its transfer to Syrian hands could change the foreign policy orientation of Damascus. Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, tried unsuccessfully to move Syria toward a pro-American orientation in 1976. Under more auspicious international circumstances, after the Cold War, the formidable US secretary of state James Baker tried again but failed. Even when Washington was the only game in town, the Syrians preferred no ties with the Americans.
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Similarly far-fetched is the expectation that Damascus would stop arms and cash flow to Hizbullah and would expel the Islamic Jihad and Hamas headquarters from Syria.
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The expectations that the Syrian regime will behave differently than in the past betrays an ignorance of Middle Eastern politics, and espouses unfounded optimism.

Terrorism is literally the Assad family business, and has been so since they came to power. The notion that the same policies that failed miserably in the 90s will result in the opposite outcome for reasons unbeknownst to all, is the best definition not just of delusion, but also of insanity. It's what Lee Smith dubbed "the Damascus Disease":

In the 90s, when the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations thought it was buying off the conmen in Damascus, instead it wound up with a strengthened Hezbollah, the consolidation of the Syria-Iran alliance, and the second intifada.

You'd think US policy speculators would've learned by now. But then again, many of them continue to confuse diplomacy with appeasement and inducement.

What the IAEA Report Tells us about Assad

2008-12-07T12:24:00.006-05:00

I've finally come around to posting this item as a follow-up to my posts on the Syrian nuclear facility. Here is the leaked version of the IAEA report [PDF] on Syria courtesy of the ISIS site.

The report shows pretty clearly that the site destroyed in September of 2007 was a North Korean-style nuclear site and makes a mockery of the already pathetically hilarious Syrian statements on the site.

But one particular paragraph in the report struck me for what it tells us about Bashar Assad:

10. Analysis of the available satellite imagery shows that construction activities were started at the Dair Alzour site between 26 April 2001 and 4 August 2001. The images show ongoing construction until August 2007. Imagery taken prior to and immediately after the bombing indicates that the destroyed box-shaped building may have had underground levels. Its containment structure appears to have been similar in dimension and layout to that required for a biological shield for nuclear reactors, and the overall size of the building was sufficient to house the equipment needed for a nuclear reactor of the type alleged.

Construction started in 2001. That means that proceeding with a project for a clandestine nuclear site was among the very first acts Bashar undertook after coming to power. At the time, everyone was gushing over the garbage mythology about Bashar as a "Western oriented reformer." Meanwhile, what he was doing was setting up a secret nuclear program, continuing his father's policy. (For the history of Syria's nuclear ambitions, see here.) This was also around the time when tensions between the Bush Administration and North Korea over the latter's nuclear program were running high (here's a timeline of the North Koreans' program).

Furthermore, this means that he went ahead with this project before the Iraq war, before September 11, and during the era of the policy of active high-level US "engagement" with Syria, and when Syrian occupation of Lebanon was absolute and uncontested. Moreover, this also means that when Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair received Bashar in June 2001 and December 2002 respectively, in an attempt to encourage the young "reformer" to adopt more "constructive" policies and show him goodwill to nudge him closer to the West (snicker!), the terror-sponsoring dictator had already begun constructing the clandestine nuclear facility.

Aside from the sponsoring of al-Qaeda in Iraq against the US, the harboring of arch-terrorists like Imad Mughniyeh as well as al-Qaeda figures on Syrian soil, the attempt to station Russian ballistic missiles in Syria, the transfer of advanced Russian weaponry to Hezbollah from the Syrian military stockpiles, the attacks on UNIFIL, the alliance with Iran, the direct threats against, attacks on and destabilization of US allies, and the rest of the seemingly endless list, in many respects this little fact about when the Syrian nuclear project began is the most telling item (for all the enthusiastic "engagers" out there) about who and what Bashar Assad really is.

Syrian "Logic"

2008-12-02T15:16:00.014-05:00

A refreshing piece on Syria by Matthew Brodsky in the JPost describing what he calls "Syrian logic" -- what I've elsewhere dubbed Syria selling snake oil:

Sami Moubayed, a Damascus-based professor, analyst and regime mouthpiece, recently floated a quasi-official trial balloon when he declared that if relations with Washington were to improve, Damascus could use its influence with Hizbullah and Hamas, and help to find a solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. In reality, this is an empty offer. Syria, in effect, is proposing to prevent itself from arming the terrorist groups it already supports while offering the US a chance to end Syria's regional isolation. And in return, Assad wants "normalized" relations, a new US ambassador (recalled after Hariri's assassination in Lebanon in 2005), an end to the economic sanctions, compensation for the recent US air strike, and American sponsorship of indirect peace talks with Israel.

In other words, in return for agreeing to an increased regional role and an end to its isolation, the Assad regime would like to be offered an increased regional role, an end to their isolation - and a pile of cash to boot. This kind of circular reasoning might sound new and bizarre, but it is, in fact, the norm. Welcome to Syrian logic.
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Apparently, the hope of the regime in Damascus is that if it creates a regional problem, it should receive an international reward for fixing it.

The new overtures toward Damascus now being contemplated by some in Washington, then, are not motivated by hopes Syria can help, but simply a desire to have Syria sit out the fight. Needless to say, this amounts to a colossal perversion of diplomacy. Carrots, be they diplomatic or economic, should be offered to those who adopt genuinely helpful policies. Providing them to states that merely offer to temporarily reduce their degree of rogue behavior is not only bad policy; it is bound to lead Syria to light more fires and then ask for additional rewards for extinguishing them.

The Syrians' concept of dialogue was recently fully articulated by none other than Farouq Sharaa. Diplomats and engagers take heed of what Syria means by dialogue:

Those close to Obama say he wants a dialogue with Syria and that is very important. Obama had declared in his campaign that he wanted a dialogue with Syria and Iran as well, and that this dialogue would not be a dialogue of "compliance" such as the dialogue Bush wanted to have.

Sharaa demanded that the new American administration work on two essential points for Syria: first, have the US Congress lift Syria's name from the list of states sponsors of "terrorism." Second, repeal the law known as "[The] Syria Accountability [Act]," which was passed months after "the fall of Baghdad." Sharaa said: "If these issues were placed on the Congress's agenda, then that shouldn't be taken lightly, and as such, the dialogue would be one that doesn't target Syria, and after that we could seek settlements on various levels."

Get that? Read Martin Kramer's essay again. This is what the Syrians mean by unconditional dialogue. It means that no conditions (read: expectations) should be imposed on Syria, but Syria reserves every right to impose its own conditions for it to consider the dialogue to be "not targeting" Syria! And so, before doing anything, the US must give Syria everything it wants up front, then sit down and talk -- without conditions! Update: The memo has also been repeated verbatim by Walid Moallem.

Now, you'll note an intriguing resemblance between what Sharaa said and the article written by the regime clown Moubayed, which Brodsky cites. The comedian Moubayed recently fumed (in a non-denial denial) over the proposition that his pathetically laughable article was essentially a regime talking points memo (which applies to most everything he and his comrades write). Moubayed doth protest too much, however. Upon reading what Sharaa said, you realize that what this is is the Syrians placing their preconditions and setting the trap for the incoming administration to ensure that "unconditional engagement" would be -- to quote Martin Kramer -- "tantamount to accepting the enemy's conditions. ... [T]he prelude to unconditional surrender." Or if you prefer Syrian parlance: an "honorable exit."

This is related to another important point briefly touched on in Brodsky's article and that is the hilariously over-inflated Syrian self-image and role conception (see Jana Hybaskova's comments on that here) and what it can supposedly "offer" (hence, snake oil) even as it openly premises engagement on a US defeat and surrender -- honorable or not.

Staying with Sharaa for a moment, a particularly amusing example of Syria's over-exaggerated sense of self-importance was evident in how Sharaa explained his and the Syrians utter fury with the Iraqis over passing the SOFA (needless to say, this memo was channeled by the poodle Moubayed a few days ago, as usual). Sharaa explicitly expressed his ire with the Iraqis, stressing that "Syria has told many officials in the current Iraqi government that they should ask the UN Security Council to remove Iraq from under Chapter VII, and do so through Qatar, when it was the Arab member in the Security Council, or from Libya now, as the Arabs' representative in the Security Council."

This nonsense (which is nevertheless very brazenly and openly hostile to American interests -- for those who talk about "shared" and "converging" interests between the US and Syria in Iraq and the region) is an example of the Syrians' severely over-inflated sense of their own weight. It also highlights a point I've made repeatedly in the past, which is that Syria's claims of a "central role" and "influence" in Iraq are utter piffle. Their only "role" is what we saw last month: allowing free movement for foreign Jihadists and harboring senior al-Qaeda officials on their soil. And even there the US military has rendered their role secondary and secured gains with the Sunni tribes and the Iraqi military against al-Qaeda in spite of Syria's best, or rather, worst efforts.

One particular instance of hilarity involves, naturally, the aforementioned Moubayed (aka. the King of Comedy), who, in trying to doll up what Syria can supposedly offer, proceeded to repeat over and over again that Syria was instrumental (right after they finished inventing the internet) in releasing the British sailors that the IRGC held hostage in 2007. Moubayed kept including that in the memos he was putting out in Asia Times and Gulf News and it was just absolutely hilarious to behold how the Syrians were trying to find something, anything, to over-hype and sell in the hopes that some gullible Western official would take the bait.

Needless to say, of course, the Syrians had absolutely nothing to do with that entire episode, and Western officials in the know that I've spoken to about it openly laugh it off in ridicule -- that includes Brits.

This in fact can be said about another line of argument that's being sold now by regime flacks like Moubayed as well as some geniuszzes of the policy world. First we were told that engagement with Syria would lead to prying it away from Iran (uh huh). When it became apparent that not only was this utter fantasy, but that the Syrians were repeatedly and openly dismissing it as an option, the line changed to: no, what you should do is use Syria to help moderate Iran! Yeah! That's the ticket! I mean, look at the British hostages!

In reality, the Iranians put Bashar in his place very quickly. When it was floated that Assad was tasked by Sarkozy to relay some sort of message to the Iranians regarding their nuclear program, the Iranians came out and publicly ridiculed the notion that they needed someone like Assad to relay anything. "Our channels are open directly with the West," said an Iranian source back then. "We don't need a Syrian intermediary or any other." This same message was later repeated by Khamenei's advisor, Hussein Shariatmedari, who dismissed any notion that Iran needs a mediator, let alone Assad, whose role he belittled very blatantly: "We talk directly with the West. We tell them what we want directly. We declare our positions ourselves. We have spokesmen for Iran. But if Assad wishes to repeat Iran's known position, we have no objection. I don't know what's meant by a Syrian mediation. Do they want Syria to attend the meeting [between Solana and Jalili]? I believe Sarkozy asked Assad to relay to us the demand to halt uranium enrichment. Our position on this matter is clear: we will not accept halting enrichment."

Not only that, during his visit to Tehran, the Iranians made sure to have Assad publicly state in a press conference that he was not there to mediate or carry any messages, and that Iran doesn't need mediation. They also ensured that all he said about their nuclear program was exactly what they told him to say: the official Iranian line.

That's the extent of Assad's "influence" with Iran. The notion that the Iranians, who have an even more inflated self-image and role conception than the Syrians, and who see themselves as an unstoppable soon-to-be nuclear power on a mission to restore hegemony in the Gulf, would somehow listen to what a weak Arab dictator -- who relies on them and the proxies they create, finance and supply for any regional depth -- has to say about their nuclear program and regional interests, let alone "moderate" them (perhaps Bashar can fit that in with sponsoring al-Qaeda in Iraq, building a clandestine nuclear site with the North Koreans, passing along Russian weapons to Hezbollah, hosting Imad Mughniyeh, harboring Khalid Meshaal and the Palestinian terror groups, and ordering hits in Lebanon) is just laughable hallucinatory nonsense. You know, the kind of comedic material that is left for the likes of Moubayed to try and sell as "analysis."

Engagement of that type and on that basis is indeed a "perversion of diplomacy." Subprime engagement, as it were, with Sharaa and Moubayed junk repackaged as AAA rated securities with fake over-hyped value, is a sure path to serious damage.

Subprime Engagement

2008-11-26T10:17:00.004-05:00

Martin Kramer has a superb new essay on the "engagement" craze that is really essential reading:

Behind the financial crisis was a well-practiced mechanism for concealing risk. The risk was there, and it was constantly growing, but it could be disguised, repackaged and renamed, so that in the end it seemed to have disappeared. Much of the debate about foreign policy in the United States is conducted in the same manner: policymakers and pundits, to get what they want, conceal the risks.
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And in the best American tradition, these risks are repackaged as opportunities, under a new name. It could just as easily be called appeasement, but the public associates appeasement with high risk. So let's rename it engagement, which sounds low-risk—after all, there's no harm in talking, right? And once the risk has been minimized, the possible pay-off is then inflated...

The engagement package rests upon a key assumption: that these "radical" states, groups, and individuals are motivated by grievances. If only we were able to address or ameliorate those grievances, we could effectively domesticate just about every form of Islamism. Another assumption is that these grievances are finite—that is, by ameliorating them, they will be diminished.

It is precisely here that advocates of "engagement" are concealing the risk.
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We are told that the demands of Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran are finite. If we give them a concession here, or a foothold there, we will have somehow diminished their demand for more concessions and footholds. But if their purpose is the reversal of history, then our gestures of accommodation, far from enticing them to give up their grand vision, only persuade them to press on. They understand our desire to engage them as a sign of weakness—an attempt to appease them—which is itself an enticement for them to push harder against us and our allies. And since they believe in their narrative of an empowered Islam with the fervency of religious conviction, no amount of insistence by us that we will go only so far and no further will stop them.
...
In the Middle East, the idea that "there's no harm in talking" is entirely incomprehensible. It matters whom you talk to, because you legitimize your interlocutors. Hence the Arab refusal to normalize relations with Israel. Remember the scene that unfolded this past summer, when Bashar Asad scrupulously avoided contact with Ehud Olmert on the same reviewing stand at a Mediterranean summit. An Arab head of state will never directly engage Israel before extracting every concession. Only an American would think of doing this at the outset, and in return for nothing: "unconditional talks" is a purely American concept, incomprehensible in the Middle East. There is harm in talking, if your talking legitimates your enemies, and persuades them and those on the sidelines that you have done so from weakness. For only the weak talk "unconditionally," which is tantamount to accepting the enemy's conditions. It is widely regarded as the prelude to unconditional surrender.

Make sure you read the whole thing.

Syria Illusions

2008-11-20T14:18:00.002-05:00

Here's a pleasant surprise: an actually sober editorial on Syria in the Financial Times. Although the last graph on Iran and the SOFA is off, the editorial is overall quite decent in its reading of Syria and the many associated illusions and stupidities that are so much in vogue these days:

First France, and now Britain. The courtship of Syria proceeds apace. There is, of course, nothing wrong with engagement, as the Bush years have taught us. Ideally, however, robust diplomacy should be harnessed to a coherent strategy. That is what is lacking in the cosying up to Bashar al-Assad and his regime.

Mr Assad owes his re-entry into polite geopolitical society in the first instance to Nicolas Sarkozy. The Syrian leader became persona non grata under President Jacques Chirac after the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, which was linked by United Nations investigators to Damascus. Syria, above all, was on the US black list, not just for backing Hizbollah and Hamas but because the regime facilitated the passage of jihadis into Iraq - even allowing recruiting in full view of the US embassy in Damascus.

Western reappraisal of Syria began in May, after Mr Assad gave his blessing to the Doha agreement settling - at least for now - the stand-off Damascus had helped create in Lebanon. But he would, wouldn't he? The deal gave Syria's allies, led by Hizbollah, which had just overrun West Beirut, veto powers over the elected Lebanese government. The Syrian gambit is to obstruct, if it cannot prevent, the UN tribunal on Hariri's murder.

Syria's tentative reopening of talks on peace with Israel, through Turkish mediation, does address a strategic objective of enormous importance to the region. For the Assad regime, however, it looks like a get-out-of-jail-free card. Syria has not changed its regional behaviour.

Mr Sarkozy, nonetheless, invited him to a summit in Paris and sat him in the front row on Bastille Day. Mahmoud Abbas, who has taken great risks to try for peace with Israel to no avail, was sat at the back alongside a Somali delegate. The message this sends to the Middle East is disastrous. Now, David Miliband, UK foreign secretary, has journeyed to Damascus to call Syria a potential force for stability. Damascus is gleefully exploiting these vain attempts to peel Syria off from its alliance with Iran.

This tactic is an evasion. It avoids the need for a real strategy to deal with Iran. Tehran, empowered by the US upending of the Sunni order in Iraq, now holds high cards throughout the region. It has just played one: encouraging its allies in Baghdad to endorse a new deal on US troops in Iraq. That seems to respond to the election of Barack Obama, who called during the campaign for talks with Iran. The need is to get Iran interested in regional stability, not a dalliance with Damascus premised on an illusion.

If It Looks Like a Duck...

2008-11-20T09:56:00.007-05:00

From the Washington Post:

The first independent investigation of the suspected nuclear site in Syria that Israel destroyed last year has bolstered U.S. claims that Damascus was building a secret nuclear reactor, according to a U.N. report that also confirmed the discovery of traces of uranium amid the ruins.

Officials with the United Nations' atomic agency stopped short of declaring the wrecked facility a nuclear reactor, but they said it strongly resembled one. And they noted that Syria had gone to great lengths -- including elaborate "landscaping" with tons of freshly imported soil -- to alter the site before admitting outsiders.

Despite the apparent cleanup effort, environmental sampling by U.N. inspectors turned up traces of uranium, the fissile metal used in nuclear reactors, according to the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world body's nuclear watchdog.
...
[T]he senior U.N. official, in describing the finding, said soil collected from areas that had not been obviously landscaped contained "significant" amounts of uranium. Although uranium is present in nature, the particles discovered by the IAEA teams had been "chemically" manipulated by humans but not "enriched," he said, referring to the highly complex process of converting uranium into forms used in nuclear weapons.

"In our view, this kind of material should not be there," he said.

Some nuclear experts speculated that uranium may have been stored at the reactor site for future use. The experts noted that some nuclear reactors, such as the Yongbyon reactor built by North Korea, use a form of processed uranium that has not been artificially enriched. (Emphasis added.)

Rubin: Syria Can't Be Flipped

2008-11-13T17:30:00.003-05:00

Michael Rubin has an excellent article in Forbes arguing against the silly current fad -- the latest policy buzz, which has only been peddled for the last 30 years -- of how to "pry Syria away from Iran."

The added benefit of Rubin's article is that it includes an all-too-often neglected, yet crucial, angle: the angle of inter-Arab relations, and the regional balance of power effects thereof (one I always try to draw attention to). Michael offers a very interesting historical take on that.

For an earlier post of mine on the Syria-Iran alliance, see here. David Schenker also wrote about it here.

Terror 'n Nukes

2008-11-10T16:29:00.014-05:00

The IAEA has found uranium traces at the Syrian al-Kibar site destroyed in 2007:

A senior Western diplomat said that the inspectors' investigation was only partly based on the analysis of soil samples taken at al-Kibar. In addition, the IAEA had also received additional intelligence that pointed to a possible involvement of North Korea in the alleged Syrian project.

Reuters adds:

Moreover, Syria has been made an official agenda item at the year-end November 27-28 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors, unlike previously when IAEA officials said initial inquiries were inconclusive.
...
"The agency clearly thinks it has something significant enough to report to put Syria on the (nuclear safeguards) agenda right after North Korea and Iran," said a senior diplomat with ties to the Vienna-based UN watchdog.
...
Diplomats close to the IAEA say Syria has ignored agency requests to check three military installations that may have harbored materials connected to the alleged reactor site.

This is on top of aiding and abetting al-Qaeda and directing it against US troops, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, hosting Imad Mughniyeh, arming Hezbollah and a host of Palestinian terror groups, ordering the assassination of people in Lebanon and such. And you still don't understand just how much the peace-loving Assad wants to "realign" with the West!?

Addendum: Noah Pollak weighs in on this over at contentions.

Noah brings up Sy Hersh. It's an interesting coincidence given how the Syrian regime is reportedly once again using Sy Hersh for info ops (as they did in 2007). The regime pitbull/comedian otherwise known as Sami Moubayed recently brought up Hersh (as he did back in 2007 as per the information warfare the regime was launching against Lebanon at the time) to at once lend credence to the elaborate theatrics the regime was putting on display with regards to the recent bombing in Damascus and the supposed "confessions" of (who else?) the "Fateh Islam" cell (who laughably repeated what Rami Makhlouf's al-Watan printed right before the explosion!), and also to set the stage for an alleged upcoming piece by Hersh which will in all likelihood repeat the same regime disinformation which was fed to him by the regime in 2007 and which was then used as cover for the Syrian-sponsored operation in Nahr al-Bared, and which is now being peddled in Rami Makhlouf's paper and by the regime's little comical poodle, Moubayed.

I'll have more on this latest regime ploy in the next few days.

Update: Hussain Abdul-Hussain is on the Sy Hersh hype over at NOW Lebanon.

Syria Knowingly Harboring Al-Qaeda

2008-11-01T10:40:00.014-04:00

Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Abdulkarim Khalaf told NOW Lebanon that before the cross border strike into Syria on Sunday, his government had informed Syrian officials that a "terrorist cell" was operating in their territory.

Khalaf told NOW Lebanon, in an exclusive interview on Friday, that "Syria didn’t take any measures to uproot the terrorists in the Bou Kamal border region with Iraq."

For one, this confirms what Maj. Gen. John Kelly said last week:

But we do know that there are operatives that live, we believe, certainly -- let me say, the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi intelligence forces feel that al Qaeda operatives and others operate, live pretty openly on the Syrian side. And periodically we know that they try to come across.

But this also recalls, almost verbatim, what Jordanian intelligence officials had said about the Syrians and the Jihadis they harbor and redirect against neighboring countries:

Last year, an attempt on the Amman Airport was barely thwarted after the arrest of Mohammad al-Darsi upon his entry on Jordanian soil. He had left Libya a few days earlier to go to Damascus, where a jihadist recruiter dissuaded him from going to Iraq, directing him towards Jordan instead, where he was to self-detonate among the travelers at Amman Airport.

For the Jordanians, who had flagged -- in vain -- Darsi's arrival in Damascus, their neighbors [the Syrians] are buying their security by tolerating jihadists on their soil.

This is not to mention the case of Shaker al-Absi and other details which you can read about in the recent district court ruling against the Syrian regime.

So what we have here is a clear pattern -- a policy -- where Syria actively and knowingly allows freedom of movement and operation for Jihadis on its soil, and not only explicitly refuses to cooperate, but also redirects and uses these Jihadis to target neighboring countries, including allowing Zarqawi to plan operations on its soil against Jordan and against US diplomats in Jordan and to tolerate training camps as well as allow a logistical support line through Syria for foreign fighters headed for Iraq, not to mention redirecting these fighters into Lebanon, in what became known as Fateh Islam. Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon have all suffered from this Syrian-sponsored terrorism.

The Iraqi spokesman goes on to say: "Iraq is surrounded by Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, but we face the most serious problems along the Iranian and Syrian borders."

This again echoes Gen. Kelly's statement:

[T]he Anbar Province, which we all call home, has three national borders. One with the Saudi Arabians -- that border is actually quite tight. There is no regularly scheduled or regularly opened port of entry except for one place during the hajj period that's coming up. But that's -- that's a good solid border.

The Saudis are great soldiers and they take care of this side very well. We don't have to worry too much about that.

Same comments for the Jordanian border; we have a very, very active port of entry there. A tremendous amount of commerce goes in and out of that port of entry. And the Jordanian side for sure; have that, their side locked up. I would say that we have absolutely no issues of corruption or security really on the Jordanian border at all. There are very, very good soldiers and police services in Jordan.

Syria, different story... The Syrian side is, I guess, uncontrolled by their side. We still have a certain level of foreign fighter movement, not much, through Anbar because of our activities out there, with the police and with the Iraqi army and with the Iraqi border forces, so less and less of that kind of thing coming through.

Notice that the reduction in foreign fighter infiltration is not due to Syrian efforts, but to US efforts. In fact, the US has reduced that number and the death toll (which in October was the lowest since the war began), not because of any Syrian help, rather in spite of every effort by the Syrians to ensure failure and defeat for the US, its allies and Iraq.

As Farouq Sharaa said in 2003, "Syria's interest is to see the invaders defeated in Iraq." So much for all the hot air about "common interests" with the Syrians. The interests are diametrically opposed, which is why all engagement will fail (as David Schenker notes) as it has without exception in the past. And so, the US doesn't need to "reward" (after five years of direct war against the US and Iraq) Syria for "cooperation" -- a la the late and idiotic Baker-Hamilton report -- as it has been able to move towards its goals (thanks to the surge and its aftermath) despite Syrian sponsorship of al-Qaeda in Iraq. And the US has built good ties to the Iraqi Sunnis and the tribes, making the Syrians all the more irrelevant. The US didn't, as the Syrians had banked, come "crawling," begging for an "honorable surrender" as regime hounds such as Landis and Moubayed have been peddling.

If the Syrians continue to provide safe haven (in direct violation of UNSCR 1373) to senior al-Qaeda commanders, such as Abu Ghadiyah, the US military has shown that it will go after them inside Syria. As a senior US official put it: "As targets present themselves, and are identified... they become more and more at risk. Just like in Pakistan, there will be steps taken to deal with it."

Khalaf said that "the terrorists in the Bou Kamal region included Bou Ghadia, who is accused of murdering Iraqis in the Qaem border region, but the Syrians didn’t take any measures."

Yeah, so the US did -- five years past due, some would say.

Assad's Medicine

2008-10-28T08:46:00.001-04:00

A strong editorial in the Washington Post in response to the unbelievable chutzpah of the terrorist Syrian regime's apparatchiks:

IT WAS interesting to observe the wails of outrage from Syrian officials yesterday following a raid on a target near the country's border with Iraq, carried out by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos. "Criminal and terrorist aggression," charged Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem. "The law of the jungle," bemoaned spokesman Jihad Makdissi at the Syrian Embassy in London. This from a regime whose most notable activities of the past few years have been the serial assassination of senior Lebanese politicians, including former prime minister Rafik Hariri; the continuous and illegal supplying of weapons to the Hezbollah militia for use against Israel and Lebanon's democratic government; the harboring in Damascus of senior leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups; and -- most relevant -- the sheltering of an al-Qaeda network that dispatches 90 percent of the foreign fighters who wage war against U.S. troops and the Iraqi government.

The logic of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad seems to be that his regime can sponsor murders, arms trafficking, infiltrations and suicide bombings in neighboring countries while expecting to be shielded from any retaliation in kind by the diplomatic scruples of democracies. For most of this decade that has been lamentably true: U.S. commanders and Iraqi officials have over and over again pointed to the infiltration of al-Qaeda militants through the Damascus airport and the land border with Iraq, and Syria's refusal to curtail it, without taking direct action. Yet in the past year Israel has intervened in Syria several times to defend its vital interests, including bombing a secret nuclear reactor. If Sunday's raid, which targeted a senior al-Qaeda operative, serves only to put Mr. Assad on notice that the United States, too, is no longer prepared to respect the sovereignty of a criminal regime, it will have been worthwhile.
...
What Damascus should not be allowed to do is reap the diplomatic and economic rewards of a rapprochement while continuing to plant car bombs, transport illegal weapons and harbor terrorists. Israel has let Mr. Assad know that it is prepared to respond to his terrorism with strikes against legitimate military targets. Now that the United States has sent the same message, maybe the dictator at last will rethink his strategy.

Bracketman

2008-10-28T07:57:00.006-04:00

The mendacious court jester over at Tishreen Comment is doing what he does best: lie, lie, then lie some more. The latest blatant lie involves this regime poodle's spin campaign targeting Gen. Petraeus and the Syrian sponsorship of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

In a post yesterday, the Oklahoma Tishreen wrote the following:

This hack is claiming that Gen. Petraeus said that it was the Syrians who were responsible for the reduction in the infiltration of foreign fighters from Syria into Iraq. To that effect, the actual text of the LAT report was intentionally distorted by inserting an edit -- [Syrian] -- that was not in the original.

It was nothing but a straight-out brazen lie. Here's what the original actually says:

Military units in Iraq have focused on shutting down the "rat lines" that shuttled militants from the Syrian border to the city of Ramadi and on to Baghdad.

This month Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former top commander in Iraq, said those efforts had helped cut the number of foreign fighters crossing the Syrian border from about 100 to 20 a month. But he made it clear that more needed to be done.

Very clearly, Gen. Petraeus made no positive reference whatsoever to the Syrians in any way, shape or form. Clearly, "those efforts" refer to the "[m]ilitary units in Iraq" (emphasis mine). For more Gen. Petraeus on Syria, see this post of mine from September of 2007.

In fact, reading what Maj. Gen. John Kelly, Commander of the Multinational Force-West, said a few days ago (H/T Bill Roggio), you'd know that the US military holds a very different view on Syria's behavior (emphasis mine):

The Syrian side is, I guess, uncontrolled by their side. We still have a certain level of foreign fighter movement, not much, through Anbar because of our activities out there, with the police and with the Iraqi army and with the Iraqi border forces, so less and less of that kind of thing coming through.

But we do know that there are operatives that live, we believe, certainly -- let me say, the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi intelligence forces feel that al Qaeda operatives and others operate, live pretty openly on the Syrian side. And periodically we know that they try to come across.

This [regime clown 's] astounding dishonesty, blatant lying and shameless shilling on behalf of the al-Qaeda-sponsoring regime in Syria never cease to amaze. As for the rest of his, uh, "analysis," it just highlights how much of a clueless propagandist [bozo] this guy is. I don't know about you, but I don't know many tactical commanders that take orders from the Office of the Vice President over the head of their theater commander. What a total wingnut.

It's just his job, five days a week. A bracket man, a bracket man... Bracket man burning out his fuse out here alone...

US Strike Targeted Abu Ghadiyah?

2008-10-27T11:03:00.004-04:00

Addendum: This AP report seems to confirm Bill Roggio's post.

My friend Bill Roggio has the best report so far on the US raid on an al-Qaeda target harbored by Syria:

The US military incursion into Syria was aimed at the senior leader of al Qaeda's extensive network that funnels foreign fighters, weapons, and cash from Syria into Iraq, a senior intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

US special operations hunter-killer teams entered Syria in an attempt to capture Abu Ghadiya, a senior al Qaeda leader who has been in charge of the Syrian network since 2005. US intelligence analysts identified Ghadiya as the leader of the Syrian network, The Washington Post reported in July. Ghadiya was identified as a “major target” by the US military in February 2008.

The raid to capture Ghadiya occurred in the town of Sukkariya near Abu Kamal in eastern Syria, just five miles from the Iraqi border. Four US helicopters crossed the border and two of the helicopters landed to drop off special operations forces, who then proceeded to clear structures.
...
US officials contacted by The Long War Journal would not comment if Ghadiya was killed or captured during the raid.

The US military has officially refused to confirm or deny the raid took place. But several senior intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject told The Long War Journal that the raid was indeed carried out inside Syria.
...
The cross-border raid took place just three days after Major General John Kelly, the commander of Multinational Force - West, said Syria is "problematic." Kelly said the Syrian the government refused to secure the border and al Qaeda operatives are openly working inside Syria.

"The Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi intelligence forces feel that al Qaeda operatives and others operate, live pretty openly on the Syrian side," Kelly said. "And periodically we know that they try to come across."
...
The military is also rebuilding a berm along the Syrian border in an effort to stop infiltration into Iraq from Syria. "We're doing much more work along the Syrian border than we've done in the past," Kelly said.

Bill goes on to discuss details of Syria's sponsorship of al-Qaeda, a theme that my regular readers are familiar with, and which I've addressed recently as well.

PS: On a separate note, Bill and I had recently worked on a batch of intercepted letters from al-Qaeda leaders on the current state of the organization in Iraq. You can check Bill's post on that here, and my translation of the documents here.

Hezbollah's "Pure" Money

2008-10-23T11:04:00.003-04:00

Nasrallah wasn't joking when, back in 2006, he spoke of the party's access to "pure" money. Pure Colombian cocaine, that is (LAT report, here):

Reuters on Tuesday also reported Colombian authorities as saying they “broke up a drug and money-laundering ring in an international operation that included the capture of three people suspected of shipping funds to Hezbollah guerrillas.”

Three of those arrested were suspected of coordinating the smuggling to send profits to Hezbollah, among other groups, according to the officials.

So much for lack of "global reach" (on Hezbollah's South American operations, see here, and for a background report from June, see here) and the "purity" of Hezbollah's "incorruptible" image, and the "social services network," and its "evolution" to a "political party" and "nationalist insurgency group" and other such brain-numbing, idiotic, pseudo-intellectual diarrhea.

Another entry in the illustrious encyclopedia of cliches on Hezbollah is shown to be the utter trash it always was -- not that it ever stopped the "experts" from regurgitating the party line in full.

Unless you read this blog. Then you'd know better.

Syria and Islamist Terrorism

2008-10-17T10:19:00.001-04:00

Hassan Mneimneh's article in The Daily Standard today is well worth reading in full. You will note many points of intersection with arguments I've made here in the past:

Damascus has long epitomized a "nuanced" understanding of Islamist terrorism. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah have earned Syria's endorsement and significant material backing. Similarly, authorities in Damascus have fueled the insurgency in Iraq, a platform championed as praiseworthy "resistance to U.S. occupation." Under the watch of Syria's intelligence services, the most virulent radical jihadist networks have relied on Syria as a thoroughfare through which to channel streams of suicide bombers and other jihadists into Iraq. And while they have vociferously denied official leverage over such networks, Syrian authorities, when exposed, have displayed an astonishing ability to redirect radical jihadists to less conspicuous terrain such as to Northern Lebanon.

Damascus has nurtured jihadism as a bogeyman at home and abroad, an insurance policy against the specter of regime change, and a scapegoat for crimes otherwise traceable to its state security forces.
...
The Syrian regime perfected its bifurcated approach to Islamist militancy over the course of its decades-long occupation of Lebanon. Groups such as Hezbollah were managed by the dominant Syrian security services. Other factions such as Asbat al-Ansar and the 2000 Dinniyeh group were deemed more useful when employed as proxies from controlled enclaves--Palestinian refugee camps and remote mountain refuges--to be unleashed at key tactical moments. The February 2005 assassination of Syrian rival and former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri occurred in an environment saturated with Syrian services, though in the pro-Syrian narrative it was a crime attributed to a jihadist cell.
...
In the Syrian government's lengthy record of employing radical jihadism, it has deemed the repercussions of this approach counterproductive only when its interests have in turn been targeted. And even then, attacks inside Syria have been intentionally recycled to tighten the regime's grip on Syrian society and to underline Syria's notional role in fighting global terrorism.
...
And what do all these machinations matter to Washington? Assad and his circle see a possible rapprochement with the United States playing into a new role for the regime: partnership in the war on terror. But Condoleezza Rice, her employees and her successors should remember that as Syria turns the full force of its tyrannical regime on one jihadist enemy, reinserting itself into the frail democracy that is Lebanon, it will continue to nurture Hamas, Hezbollah, and others who are little different. Syria's choice should be simple: an end to support for all terrorism and respect for Lebanon's independence, or America will sit on the sidelines and watch a dictatorship that lived by the sword
die by it.

Two American Journalists Detained in Syria

2008-10-09T08:56:00.004-04:00

Thankfully, the two missing American journalists have been found. And it turns out, the story is very different from how it's been portrayed for the last few days as somehow having to do with (what else?) "Islamists" in Tripoli.

In fact, they were held by the Syrians for supposedly entering the country without a visa. The Syrians have had them for a bit, it turns out. Usually, they're required to let the American embassy know when they detain American citizens. Instead they let it simmer for days.

More to come.

Making Mischief in Damascus

2008-10-02T13:54:00.004-04:00

I'm posting this excellent article by Jonathan Spyer in full (see also my own post along similar lines the other day):

As the days pass since the car bombing in the southern suburbs of Damascus, furious speculation is continuing as to who was responsible.

No organization has taken responsibility - leaving the rumor mill free to grind on.

The Syrian authorities, following an initial attempt to point the finger at Israel, have now concluded that Sunni jihadists carried out the bombing. The Syrian al-Watan newspaper is claiming that the authorities have located and detained members of the cell responsible for the attack. According to al-Watan, none of the individuals being held are Syrian citizens.

The Syrian government may now be expected to cast itself in the role of an ally of the west in the War on Terror. We will be reminded in the coming weeks of the "secular" nature of the Syrian regime. Hafez Assad's fight with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s will be recalled.

However, the true relationship between the current Syrian regime and the forces of the Sunni jihad is as opaque and ambiguous as might be expected from the Assad regime.

A Federal District Court in Washington DC last week issued an opinion in favor of the plaintiffs in a case brought against Syria by relatives of Jack Armstrong and Jack Hensley.

Armstrong and Hensley were US civilian engineers who were kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq in 2004 by the al-Tawhid wal-Jihad organization. This group, headed at the time by the Jordanian Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is also known as "al-Qaida in Iraq."

The court found evidence of substantial assistance given by Syria to this organization.

Syrian assistance to Zarqawi included providing him with a Syrian passport. The court found that Syria acted as a "logistical hub" for al-Qaida in Iraq, providing safe haven for training activities and facilitating the transport of fighters overland en route to Iraq.

The Zarqawi organization planned some of its most notorious operations from Syrian soil. These included the murder of American diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan in 2002, and a failed plot in 2004 to destroy Jordanian intelligence headquarters using a chemical weapon. The latter operation, if it had succeeded, would have resulted in tens of thousands of fatalities.

The court found that Syrian President Bashar Assad personally appointed the head of the Iraqi Ba'ath party, Fawzi al-Rawi, to meet with Zarqawi's lieutenants to discuss operations against the Americans.

Rawi, who drew a Syrian government salary, was also responsible for channelling funds to al-Qaida in Iraq.

A Salafi preacher, Abu Qaqa'a, who was also a Syrian government employee, was permitted to conduct recruiting activities for al-Qaida in Syria. In addition, training camps were maintained in Syria, according to the testimony of al-Qaida fighters captured by US forces in Iraq.

Senior operatives of the Zarqawi group crossed to their main training camp in Rawha, Iraq, with the assistance of Syrian Military Intelligence officials.

In finding for the plaintiffs, the US District Court ordered Syria to pay them the sum of $412,909,587.

The evidence produced in this trial indicates Syria's willingness to make alliance with jihadi terror groups in the furtherance of its policy goals. The alliance with Zarqawi, of course, was intended to bring about a defeat of the US project in Iraq.

It is also noteworthy that some of the names of the operatives recalled in the trial later surfaced in a different context.

The court notes that the individual responsible for financing the Zarqawi operation to kill US diplomat Lawrence Foley was one Shaker al-Absi, a Palestinian.

Following the murder of Foley, Absi fled to Damascus, from where Syria refused Jordanian requests for his extradition. The court notes that Syria claimed to be holding Absi in custody. In fact, he was running a training camp for fighters bound for Iraq.

Absi then re-surfaced two years later, as the head of the mysterious "Fatah al-Islam" group in the Nahr al Bared refugee camp in Lebanon. This previously unknown organization engaged in a bloody and protracted fight with the Lebanese army in 2007.

At the time, Fatah al-Islam was depicted in the western media as an independent jihadi organization. The evidence now suggests that its leader, in addition to being an operative of the global jihad, was also acting on behalf of the Syrian regime.

A number of Lebanese commentators believe that the latest bombings in Damascus are part of a larger Syrian plan to facilitate a climate whereby Syria may re-introduce its forces into Lebanon, under the pretext of acting to restore order.

It is impossible, of course, to confirm these theories. However, the bomb in Tripoli on Monday, along with the gathering of Syrian forces along the Syrian-Lebanese border indicate that such thoughts should not be dismissed out of hand.

What may be said with certainty is that Syria, which is now seeking to portray itself as the victim and target of Sunni jihadi terrorism, has been an enthusiastic sponsor and supporter of groups belonging to that trend in the very recent past.

Now, it appears, this particular golem has risen against its master. Or has it?

Middle East analyst Fouad Ajami once said that Syria's main asset, which enabled it to play a role in regional affairs out of proportion to its size or wealth, was its "capacity for mischief." Observation of Syrian activities in Iraq and Lebanon over the last half decade indicates that this capacity remains undiminished.

Decoding Moallem's "Security Cooperation"

2008-10-01T17:18:00.003-04:00

With every passing day, the Syrian agenda becomes clearer, vindicating the analysis I laid out a couple of days ago regarding Syrian designs and objectives.

Walid Moallem has now formulated (Arabic original here) the practical meaning of the Syrian declarations regarding Lebanon and the alleged (but mythical) "Salafi threat." The formulation is, once again, nothing new and spells the never-ending Syrian quest for forceful domination of Lebanon:

"The question of the border between Syria and Lebanon needs two actions: delineation (of the frontier) and Syrian-Lebanese security cooperation ... Nobody can control the borders with Lebanon."

Decoder, please. The key term here is "security cooperation." Once you understand what this means, the statement's sinister implications become clear. To understand the reference points, whenever you hear that term, "cooperation," uttered by a Syrian official, always think along the lines of the "Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation and Coordination" that the Syrian regime forced upon a vassal Lebanon under the boot of Syrian military occupation in 1991. That Treaty essentially codified the complete Syrian domination and dictating of Lebanese affairs. That's Assad's view of "normal" relations with Lebanon. As he put it earlier in the year, and again to recent visitors, the normal state of these relations, in Assad's mind, is "how they were a few years ago" -- i.e., when Syria military occupied Lebanon.

What Moallem is proposing here is also not new. This is what the one-track minded regime has been trying to impose since its forced withdrawal in 2005. Specifically, this dates back to January 2006.

On January 8, 2006, Assad flew to Jeddah for a meeting with King Abdullah, at the height of the Mehlis probe and request to interrogate the Syrian dictator over the Hariri assassination.

During the talks, Assad presented a series of "proposals" to "reduce tensions" with Lebanon, such as reactivation of the bilateral security committee, coordination on foreign policy, and an end to the Lebanese "media campaign" and "inflammatory statements by politicians." When news of the proposals leaked, Lebanese officials flatly rejected them, while Saudi and Egyptians officials denying any support for them.

In mid-January, the Syrians tried again. Farouq Sharaa gave Saud al-Faysal, who was leading an initiative at the time, a paper with the Syrian demands. First and foremost on that paper was a demand for "security and foreign policy cooperation and coordination."

Lebanese politicians, led by Walid Jumblat, shot down this transparent attempt at reestablishing Syrian hegemony. Jumblat said that what the Syrians were trying to get with this clause of "coordination" was the reinstatement of the Anjar mukhabarat headquarters -- the notorious seat of Gen. Rustom Ghazaleh, where Lebanese politicians were handed threats and orders, and where countless Lebanese were tortured and murdered.

Given that the Syrian intention towards Lebanon has not changed one iota, Moallem now is repeating the same sinister line. This also comes after the Syrians insisted on not abolishing the 1991 Treaty of Cooperation or the Syrian-Lebanese Higher Council which emerged from it -- both symbols of the hated Syrian occupation and plundering of Lebanon, even as they nominally and theoretically accepted the demand to set up an embassy in Lebanon for the first time since independence.

There might be more at play here. Moallem's statements came after two events involving the US and France.

First, during his stay in NY for the UN General Assembly, Moallem insistently requested a meeting with Sec. Rice. She gave him a brief meeting (a public 10-minute chat on the sidelines of an Iftar dinner with Arab Foreign Ministers), which he, and Syria's hounds and poodles predictably then tried to spin out of proportion as a "thaw" in relations and other garbage of that nature.

In reality, however, not only did Rice (and then Welch, in a very short meeting) repeat the exceedingly long list of complaints about subversive Syrian behavior, and delivered a very tough message, but, importantly, they made sure to specifically warn Moallem against any Syrian thought of using the pretext of "Salafist terrorism" in order to intervene militarily in Lebanon.

This was important since all the propaganda campaign regarding the "jihadist threat" in Lebanon was pitched in large part to the US -- in order to revive the old (nothing with the Syrians is new) canard of "intelligence cooperation against terror." (On this see the illustrious garbage of the caricature-thug Imad Mustapha and the geniuszzz Bashar groupie Flynt Leverett, et al.).

It was telling to read how a Syrian source put it to an-Nahar:

Muallem came to tell the United States "in a positive way" Syria's stand on the developments in the region after these developments – and as a result of the U.S. policy – had a "dangerous" effect on more than one country Washington claims to be working to maintain its sovereignty and independence.

Muallem, according to the sources, also came to inform the U.S. administration that terrorism – which the U.S. claims to be fighting -- has reached an extent that requires change in America's strategy in countering terrorism based on "mutual work" with the various victims, including Syria.

The sources stressed that Muallem presented a "reading" that showed the U.S. administration's "fault" in its efforts to weaken Syria "since the beneficiary of weakening Syria is terrorism."

It doesn't get any clearer than this. Plainly, Moallem insisted on meeting Rice in order to try that sales pitch once again, in light of the explosions in Damascus and Tripoli. It's glaringly transparent. And the Syrians got rebuffed and warned not to think of interfering militarily in Lebanon.

The US wasn't alone. In a very important, timely and telling move, the French also issued a number of public statements to three different papers, warning the Syrians on several points, including, specifically, on military incursion in Lebanon (thereby expressing timely unity with the US position):

France on Tuesday has reportedly warned Syria against any military intervention in north Lebanon in the wake of repeated bomb attacks in Damascus and Tripoli.
The daily As Safir, citing French sources, said Paris has advised Syria against allowing recent bomb attacks in Damascus and Tripoli to "affect Syria's commitment to Lebanon or allowing change in French-Syrian priorities that have been agreed on toward strengthening stability in Lebanon."
...
The source said France is relaying "letters" to Damascus warning it against any intervention "which could take the situation in Lebanon back to square one, in addition to the collapse of the understandings in which a roadmap had been drawn to strengthen stability" in the country.

The reference to the "priorities that have been agreed on" is also significant. It was the subject of another French statement, expressing a growing French impatience with the typical Syrian doublespeak and tricks aimed at avoiding any serious concession on Lebanon:

France believes Syria is stalling in implementing commitments to Lebanon, especially the issue of setting up diplomatic ties, but reassures Beirut that no settlement would be achieved with Damascus at Lebanon's expense.
A ranking French diplomat who accompanied President Nicolas Sarkozy to the United Nations General Assembly deliberations told Naharnet a "sharp pulling of ropes is underway between Paris and Damascus" over implementation of Syria's commitments in Lebanon.

He spoke of a "new" French policy towards Syria, terming it a "new style aimed at implementing the same targets and aims."
...

France believes Syria is trying to stall on implementing the issue of setting up diplomatic ties with Lebanon by keeping them within the framework of the declaration of principles.

"France wants a quick Syrian shift into practical implementation of the commitment, which is not in line with the Syrian concept outlined by President Bashar Assad who said the issue requires several months and might spread to after New Year," he explained.

Delaying accepting credentials of the new Syrian Ambassador to France was a "clear message by the French administration to Assad" protesting against the delay in setting up diplomatic ties with Beirut, according to the ranking French diplomat.

Accepting credentials of the new Syrian Ambassador to Paris would be "directly linked to practical and tangible (Syrian) steps along the track of setting up diplomatic ties between Damascus and Beirut," he promised.

French sources have confirmed to me that the French position on Syria is hardening, partly as a result of the sharp criticism that followed Sarkozy's trip to Syria.

But the issue of the "priorities" that the Syrians told the French they would do is of significance here, in how it relates to Moallem's statement.

Hence, it is instructive to read what Bernard Kouchner said today regarding the Syrian troop deployment along the Lebanese border:

"I don't know why they deployed these troops. And you [reporters] say 'along the borders.' What borders? There are no [delineated] borders, and they have to be demarcated."

When the Syrians agreed nominally and theoretically ("in principle") to the exchange of embassies (which they followed by a series of demands, conditions and hurdles), they insisted, as I noted above, on retaining the Syrian-Lebanese Higher Council, in a highly telling move.

Now, Moallem has intentionally linked the issue of border demarcation with a "security cooperation" agreement. In other words, he's saying: "you want embassies and border demarcation ("in principle," of course)? Then you need to hand us security and policy domination over Lebanon according to the terms of the 1991 Treaty which we imposed during our occupation. In other words, Anjar redux."

Lastly, Moallem's seemingly laughable comments about arms smuggling to Hezbollah are also an example of Syrian doublespeak. "Nobody can control the borders with Lebanon" is not just an affirmation that Syria will continue to violate the UN Security Council resolutions, and its empty promises to anyone foolish enough to "engage" it, but it also prepares the ground for continued support for Hezbollah and other terrorist groups regardless of any future "engagement" or "peace process" or even a theoretical "peace deal," since "nobody can control the border," even as he ties the total political and security domination of Lebanon as conditions for any "engagement" or "peace talks," leaving it up to the sinister, the clueless and the gullible alike to read into this doublespeak what they please.

The bottom line is that Syria is hellbent on redominating Lebanon, by force. That's the meaning of Moallem's statement and the campaign on the heels of the latest explosions. That's why we've maintained over the years that engagement with this regime is a dead end, as the interests are diametrically opposed. To quote from Moallem's own interview, "there is no common ground."

Syria Complicit with Al-Qaeda in Iraq in Killing Americans

2008-09-30T14:41:00.016-04:00

A propos my post yesterday, and Syria's, uh, "complex ties" with al-Qaeda, check this out from the ExportLaw Blog (emphasis mine):

A federal district court in Washington, D.C., issued an opinion* last Friday awarding significant compensatory and punitive damages in a law suit against Syria brought by relatives of Jack Armstrong and Jack Hensley. Armstrong and Hensley were two U.S. civilian engineers who were kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq in 2004 by al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (“al-Qaeda in Iraq”). This incident gained worldwide notoriety after the terrorists released a gruesome video of the beheadings on the Internet.

Normally the sovereign immunity doctrine prohibits claims in U.S. courts against foreign nations. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (”FSIA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1602 et seq., however, permits such actions arising out of acts of terrorism where the foreign nation through official action has provided material support for extrajudicial killings, where the foreign nation was a designated state sponsor of terrorism at the time, and where the victim was a U.S. national. The court found that all these conditions were met with respect to Syria and the two beheadings at issue by al-Qaeda in Iraq. The court entered judgment against Syria in the amount of $412,909,587. This total award included separate awards for loss of income from the two decedents, pain and suffering by the two decedents, solatium to the immediate family members, and punitive damages. The award for punitive damages made up $300,000,000 of the total award.

Read all the damning details of the case in this file (PDF). The thing is, much of this information was available in open source media -- including the reports of a Zarqawi training camp in Syria and Abu Qa'qa's possible ties with the Zarqawi crew (which regime clown Moubayed even admitted in one of his hilariously diverse "versions" of Abu Qa'qa'). On this, see also the column today by Meshari al-Dhaydi in Asharq al-Awsat. (Update: Al-Dhaydi's column is now available in English).

In fact, it has been reported that it was during his stay in Syria that Zarqawi planned the murder of the US diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan. Shaker al-Absi, who later appeared with Fateh Islam, was convicted in Jordan for his role in this murder. Syria refused to extradite him, and ended up giving him freedom of movement after a supposed detention of two years (which is clearly ridiculous and transparent) -- see here, e.g. -- facilitating his entry into Lebanon where he stayed in the bases of the Syrian-created, -trained, and -supplied proxy, Fateh Intifada, before "appearing" later on as the face of the heretofore unheard-of Fateh Islam (whom it was first said was headed by Abu Khaled al-Amleh, who is a Fateh Intifada official still harbored in Syria as far as everyone is concerned).

Here's a little more on this from an otherwise (typically) awful, confused and glaringly lacking report by Nir Rosen (emphasis mine):

The newcomers began to arrive in the camps under the name of Fatah al Intifada during the July 2006 war. They were led by Shaker al Absi, an officer of Fatah al Intifada who was trained as a pilot in Libya and served as one in North Yemen, in addition to fighting in Nicaragua. Al Absi was in his 50s. A Palestinian born in Jordan, he had spent most of his life in Syrian and Lebanese camps. He was said to have been very religious for a long time. In 2002 he was arrested by the Syrians with fifteen others for trying to infiltrate the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. He spent two and a half years in jail and, upon his release, was said to have gone to Iraq, eventually making his way to the Helweh camp in the Lebanese Bekaa Valley, near the Syrian border. There, he and his followers trained tough men from the slums of Tripoli to fight in Iraq. Gulf Arabs who flew in to Beirut to go to Iraq also gathered there. They were segregated from the rest of the camp and better financed, eating better food, such as lamb.

Abu Yasser, the Fatah al Intifada leader for northern Lebanon, was surprised because the newcomers were bearded, prayed five times a day, and abstained from smoking. He was also surprised by the presence of foreigners among them. And while Fatah al Intifada was known to pay low salaries, some of the newcomers had laptops and went around on motorcycles. He asked the Syrian-based Abu Khaled al Omla, deputy commander of Fatah al Intifada, who the newcomers were. “We have new fighters,” Abu Khalid said. “We must learn from Hezbollah’s military and discipline. They are destined for Gaza.” Abu Khalid was using his organization to reorient the networks sending fighters to Iraq and sending them to Lebanon instead.

In other words, this well-known Syrian proxy was part of the regime-sanctioned network of transit and "reorientation" for Jihadists. They could be sent to Iraq to kill Americans, but also redirected into Lebanon or, e.g., Jordan. Here's an example of the redirection to Jordan:

Last year, an attempt on the Amman Airport was barely thwarted after the arrest of Mohammad al-Darsi upon his entry on Jordanian soil. He had left Libya a few days earlier to go to Damascus, where a jihadist recruiter dissuaded him from going to Iraq, directing him towards Jordan instead, where he was to self-detonate among the travelers at Amman Airport.

For the Jordanians, who had flagged -- in vain -- Darsi's arrival in Damascus, their neighbors [the Syrians] are buying their security by tolerating jihadists on their soil.

The regime's fingers in these networks extends to European cells as well. Hence the German authorities' disclosure that recent planned attacks against American targets in Germany led back to Syria, which was also the source for the fuses of the bombs that were to be used in the attack.

Since Syria also served as the transit stop for European Jihadi-wannabes en route to either Afghanistan or Iraq, some of them could also be "redirected," as happened, e.g., with a few French ones, and the Syrians would also be able to use them to offer "intelligence cooperation" to European countries if the opportunity arose. It's a mafia terror racket in every sense of the word, using terrorist blackmail. It's more than "buying security." Terror sponsorship is the regime's principal, if not the only, foreign policy tool.

This regime is now convicted in a US court for providing material support for al-Qaeda terrorists in the murder of American civilians, not to mention soldiers.

Now they're trying to lay the groundwork with a bogus story to seek renewed security domination in Lebanon under the pretext of fighting Jihadists -- in Northern Lebanon! -- when they've been the Grand Central of terrorist networks of all stripes and colors.

The Syrian Memo and Order of Operations

2008-09-29T10:59:00.023-04:00

Close observers of the Syrian modus operandi once again see that the Syrian regime is following its standard operating procedure with the latest blast in Damascus, followed by the blast today in Lebanon. The patterns are all exactly the same, the flacks are the same, and the message is the same.

Let's start with some context: Assad's clear focus on Tripoli as a potential window for a desired military comeback in Lebanon. This, as I noted before, started well before this year, all the way back to 2006 and after it with the regime info operations with the participation of people like Sy Hersh (not to mention utterly dishonest and/or idiotic pieces about "al-Qaeda in Lebanon," which echoed propaganda by flacks like Fidaa Itani et al.), which was followed by the Fathi Yakan and Fateh Islam fiasco, to the concentrated attacks against the Army in the north, including the assassination of Gen. Francois Hajj, to the Syrian-instigated clashes in Tripoli, all the way to Assad's comments to president Suleiman about "terrorists running around in your country" being responsible for the assassination of Gen. Muhammad Suleiman (which is total nonsense of course -- not to mention Baradei's comments about his assassination) and his comments at the Damascus summit dictating to Suleiman that he should crack down on "extremists" in the north, followed by the Syrian troop movements at the border, and then the recent (nothing is coincidental) renewed campaign by Rami Makhlouf's paper against Bandar Bin Sultan -- right before the attack -- how he had really orchestrated the assassination of Hariri by bringing in a Salafist cell into Lebanon.

Then came the explosion in Damascus, which was, predictably (and oh so transparently), immediately followed by yet another attack against the Lebanese Army in northern Lebanon. And today, Rami Makhlouf's paper once again immediately repeated the Bandar-Lebanon line regarding the Damascus explosion.

The Syrians immediately tampered with the facts of the explosion and quarterbacked, albeit clumsily, what leaked and what the emerging talking points that would be disseminated by regime tools, flacks and hired pens (Landis, Moubayed, and the Bouthaina Shaaban-Michel Smaha machine) and picked up by the media (more on that below).

For instance, as columnist Fares Khashan chronicled, the news that the attack was made to be more against the Shiite shrine as opposed to the Palestine Branch of Military Intelligence, not to mention that its timing was officially changed from 7:30 to 8:45AM. The claim, by an eyewitness, that a general was killed in the explosion was muzzled. That the general may very well have been the deputy chief of the Palestine Branch, Gen. Abdel Karim Abbas -- one of the Syrian officers interrogated by the Hariri probe for their suspected involvement in the murder -- was obviously buried by the regime. However, it's now being picked up by European agencies, such as AKI, and that fact is generating curiosity in European diplomatic circles.

Khashan lists a number of illogical, buried, suspicious or manipulated elements, all of which pose serious questions to the official regime talking points which is being disseminated by its tools like Landis and Moubayed. This is not to mention other scenarios that have floated, including eyewitness stories that this was a "work accident," as it were. Other eyewitness accounts were also dumped.

In the rush to disseminate the regime memo from Syria, Landis took the lead, but Moubayed soon followed, crystallizing the official talking points. Here's the king of comedy with his "analysis":

Another observer, who declined to give his name, had a different theory.

"This is either Israel, or a certain Arab country that has had nothing but scorn for Syria since 2005. I don't want to mention names; everybody knows who I am taking about," he said.
...
The attack ... might harden Syria's position on Lebanon and what it sees as the rise of militancy in the north of its smaller neighbour. (Emphasis mine.)

Yes, "another observer." Riiiiight. That "other observer" just "coincidentally" happened to regurgitate verbatim what the editorial in Rami Makhlouf's al-Watan said, what the Bouthaina-Smaha propaganda outlets have put out, and what the official regime rags also put out: that this is a Lebanese-Saudi-Salafist conspiracy!

However, even assuming that this line of reasoning -- that Jihadis are behind this -- is accurate, why is the focus on Lebanon, as opposed to, say, Iraq or Syria itself? Well, the king of comedy has the answer ready: "Syria's ties with militants including Al Qaida-linked groups is complex and complicated."

You don't say! Let's review some of that -- in the very words of this regime clown and his fellow court jester, Landis -- shall we?

Here's a sample of good ol' Sami's dizzying accounts of those "complex" ties, which change according to the particular regime memo at the time.

What about the fellow flack, Landis? Well, in 2006 he wrote: "Syria has the ability to funnel arms to Hezbollah and Palestinian groups as well as radical Sunni groups which allows it to destabilize Lebanon if its interests are ignored."

Ain't that the truth. More on that in a second. But before that, let's see what he said about the regime's cooperation with al-Qaeda: "The al-Qaeda type jihadist groups are not emerging in Syria because Syria encourages them in other countries." Indeed. Now compare that with the Zisser quote I used in my October 2007 post:

Damascus started to see the Islamists as perhaps the only possible means by which to enhance its regional standing, gain influence in neighboring countries and bring domestic tranquility to Syria itself.

Landis pushed it further in a June 15, 2007 post, where he adopted and justified Syria's attack on UNIFIL and Lebanese figures: "Syria seems willing to play this game of chicken. It believes it can survive it. The fact that there have been no successful acts of terrorism in Syria for 20 years has produced a sense of invulnerability."

Now we are being told that the "threat" of "Salafists" is coming to Syria from... Lebanon! Riiiight.

Once again, here's Moubayed issuing threats and regurgitating the Syrian order of operations in a remarkably poor, even shameful report by Nick Blanford, which does nothing but uncritically advance the official Syrian talking points -- which are orders of operations and threats:

"We have extremists in Iraq and in Lebanon. Any one of them can be suspects," in the Damascus bombing, says Sami Moubayed, a Syrian political analyst. "If an intelligence war has been waged by any of the usual suspects against Syria, we are in for difficult times since security is a red-line in Syria."

So Iraq is casually thrown in there, but as Moubayed had said earlier, the real regime order of operations is against Lebanon. After all, the regime's ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq are "complex and complicated." Moubayed repeated the same regime talking points in a pathetic piece written by the often-ridiculous Borzou Daragahi of the LAT, which quotes another flack, Ahmad Moussalli (a hack belonging to Fouad Makhzoumi, another insignificant, but wealthy, clown of the Syrians):

"The handwriting has been on the wall for a while," Sami Moubayed, a political analyst in Damascus, the Syrian capital, said Sunday. "There have been signs of trouble coming in from Iraq or Lebanon."

Daragahi, playing water carrier, makes sure to uncritically frame his piece around the official Syrian talking points which he was fed and which he regurgitated verbatim. He was rewarded by having an earlier, equally piss poor and sinister report, quoted back by "Syria's privately owned newspaper," i.e., Rami Makhlouf's paper, in a way that suits the narrative which they had fed him, verbatim. Hence, the paper's headline reads: "... The American Los Angeles Times pointed out that the north [Lebanon] extremists have received Saudi money to enhance their armament in the face of Hezbollah."

This circular "reporting" is a standard MO of the Syrians' info ops (see examples here and here), which they've used with Sy Hersh when they fed him that garbage about Fateh Islam, and then quoted it back as authoritative, "objective" Western reporting. This is how Western journalists become (willingly or not) water carriers and useful idiots and participants in the info ops of a violent terror-sponsoring regime.

Again, all of this now has been keeping with the theory that this is the work of Jihadists, which is by no means established. Nick Blanford's laughable citing of "initial suspicions" (defined by whom!? Why is it given uncritical credit?! Based on what, other than the regime's talking points, which are unchallenged in Blanford's report?! The "initial suspicion" was also "Israel"; is that supposed to be given credence too? Why isn't it being given such credence?) notwithstanding.

But even if we play on that turf, the notion that the threat comes from Lebanon's Salafists is absurd for the very simple reason that aside their utter marginality, the recent events in Tripoli have shown just how weak and scattered and ineffective the Salafists are in Lebanon (see here and here).

In fact, a recent report by none other than Nick Blanford ironically (if perhaps unintentionally) highlighted this fact. Bakri, for instance, is a clown in Tripoli. Blanford's piece by and large affirms that the Salafists aren't much in Lebanon, but at the same time he, or his editors, are trying to sell a more dramatic story, namely that we're on the verge of the worst because of the Salafists.

What is never explained is something I've written about repeatedly on the blog. Aside from the argument that there are many types of Salafists, and that most in Lebanon are non-violent, even if they are backwards, the fact is (as noted by the regime clowns above) several Salafist or Islamist groups, like Fathi Yakan's, Bilal Shaaban's, and Hashem Minqara's, are allied with Syria and Iran, while others in the Palestinian camps are handled by Hezbollah. (See here, here, and here, e.g.). These are the people nobody mentions (including luminaries like Hersh and Rosen). This is not to mention the Salafists' actual operational capabilities, especially inside Syria, which somehow no one bothers to critically examine.

And so, at the end, the "Salafist" talking points of the regime is irreparably punctured, especially given the regime's own collusion with jihadi groups and its "Grand Central" policy. But then again, it's merely an order of operations, and that's the light in which it must be read and nothing else. Hence the explosion in Lebanon today.

The NOW Lebanon editorial today sums it up, recalling what I started this post by dubbing the predictable Syrian modus operandi which they've been using for years:

It is prime time for Damascus to flash its credentials to the international community as the neighborhood cop, doing its bit for the war on terror.
...
Therefore, it is not in the realm of science fiction to posit that Syria is trying to create an in into Lebanon by claiming that Sunni terror groups – read Salafists – are destabilizing northern Lebanon. It will also argue that, since the Lebanese army cannot perform its national duty and crack down on these insurgents, the onus is on Syria to snuff out what Damascus is peddling as an odious threat to regional, not mention Syrian, security.

What the world forgets, or doesn’t even know for that matter, is that the Lebanese Salafists are overblown as a threat, and that any attempt by the army to go chasing ghosts in the North will only create dangerous tensions with Lebanon’s Sunnis. It is easy to tar the Salafists, rather than the Assad regime, with the al-Qaeda brush and suggest links between North Lebanon, rather than Damascus, and the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. But the reality is that they are by and large impoverished clerics eking out a living by seeking funding from benevolent Gulf nations. The criminal Salafist element, those who are recruiting for, and operating in, Iraq are either already known to the Syrian authorities or languishing in Lebanese jails.

Analysts who said that Syria had taken a page out of Moscow’s book and seen Russia’s behavior in South Ossetia and Georgia as a template for a similar show of regional strength must be more convinced than ever, especially in light of last week’s deployment of Syrian troops on Lebanon’s northern border, that a worrying jigsaw is falling into place.

Indeed. And it's a transparently obvious one, too, regardless who perpetrated the attack.

Boss! The Planes, The Planes!

2008-09-24T10:24:00.029-04:00

As you know, per the wisdom of regime hacks, Syria "analysts" and their fellow travelers, US sanctions on Syria are "meaningless" and merely "symbolic." And so, we're told, the US should really do itself a favor and lift these sham measures already!

As such, it has been purely "symbolic" that the Syrian regime essentially no longer has an operating airline fleet (Boeing is an American company, after all). And that's why it was purely "symbolic" when it was frantically declaring in the media (as Bashar himself did during his visit to France, and was followed by Dardari) that, as a result of the pathetic French opening, Airbus was going to sell and/or lease it new planes.

The Airbus deal was very clearly a high priority for the regime (one apparatchik put it on a par with signing the EU association agreement in terms of priorities). Regime hired pens, like the King of Comedy, regime clown Sami Moubayed, pompously declared that the purchase would be "in defiance of the Syria Accountability Act" (which he elsewhere called a "crippling reality" -- in a "meaningless, symbolic" way of course)! Of course, since Airbus planes contain more than a "symbolic" 10% American component, the "symbolic" sanctions "symbolically" terminated any such deal. EADS, Airbus' parent, is now even denying any talks are taking place with the Syrians on any deal. And while we're at it, the EU Association Agreement is not any closer to being signed this year either. Just ask Javier Solana.

Moreover, in an act of absolute "symbolism," news from Europe has it that Syrian Air sent an Airbus engine to Lufthansa in Germany for refurbishing and now can't get it back because the Germans, "symbolically," won't re-export.

The Syrian Air-Airbus wild speculation fest continues, and the Syrians have since adjusted their prospective dates of when they will supposedly get the Airbus planes to Spring 2009, (wink wink, when, in the Syrian narrative, an engaging Obama will come to the rescue and lift all sanctions, humbly apologizes, and accepts the generous Syrian offer of an "honorable defeat" and asks for forgiveness on both knees) but nothing, either concrete or "symbolic," has (or, I suspect, will anytime soon) come of it.

PS: I recently touched on the issue of the sanctions, and how they shouldn't be lifted unconditionally, as per the advice offered by the engagementitis-fever "experts" who cluelessly counsel unconditional engagement while simultaneously having the audacity to pose as "realists."

Apparatchik Genius!

2008-09-24T10:16:00.002-04:00

Tariq al-Homayed captures the genius of the Syrian regime apparatchik in this biting, hysterical column (English) in Asharq al-Awsat. It also gives one measure of the great economic reforms introduced by Bashar Assad!

The Syrian Minister of Finance, Doctor Mohammed al Hussein, wrote an article for the Syrian Al Thawra Newspaper entitled, ‘Syria: The Country Least Affected by the Financial Crisis…The Reasons Lie in its own Capitalism,’ in order to reassure citizens and investors that Syria is the state least affected by the financial crisis and if only he didn’t write!

In the article, the minister said, “We can confirm that the Syrian economy, out of all the regional economies, has been least affected by this crisis.” He added, “The reason for this goes back to restricting the channels through which this crisis could pass to enter Syria…some of the best ways of which are through financial institutions, financial markets, investments, foreign currencies and foreign trade.”

Please pay attention to the minister’s explanation: “The Syrian financial market is yet to be born, and the financial institutions and banks are still in their infancy, the capital of which is mostly domestic and even if there is non-Syrian capital, in most cases the source is Arab.”

What the finance minister is trying to say, in simple terms, is that Syria has been saved from this international financial crisis because his country has no financial market and because of the regression of banks and financial institutions in Syria, as well as the lack of foreign investments. Any Arab investments are merely grants or accompanied by political motives.

Therefore, the finance minister is attributing his country’s escape from the international financial crisis not to the strength of the Syrian economy but to its deterioration and underdevelopment.
...
The question that should be put to His Excellency, the Syrian minister of finance, is: If you do not have a financial market or strong and dynamic banks and financial institutions, or foreign investments, then what need is there for a ministry of finance?

And here I was thinking Sami Moubayed was the undisputed King of Comedy! Another entry in the annals of Syrian regime apparatchik genius.

CIA Director on Syria's Nuclear Site

2008-09-18T08:02:00.001-04:00

CIA Director Michael Hayden discussed the other day the role of US and other friendly foreign intelligence services in the operation that destroyed Syria's clandestine nuclear facility:

Thanks to some outstanding intelligence work, we were able last year to spoil a big secret, a project that could have provided Syria with plutonium for nuclear weapons. I’d like to cover it here because it’s an excellent example of how CIA and our Community colleagues attack the problem of nuclear proliferation.

It was reported in the press last April, and you’re probably familiar with its outlines. We knew that North Korea and Syria had been cooperating since the late 1990s in the nuclear field. The depth of that relationship was revealed in the spring of last year, when we identified a nuclear reactor at Al-Kibar in the eastern desert of Syria. It was similar to the one at Yongbyon in North Korea, but with its outer structure heavily disguised.

The situation became critical late last summer, when we judged the facility could be nearing operation. The Al-Kibar reactor was destroyed the morning of 6 September 2007. The Syrians immediately cleared away the rubble and every trace of the building, stonewalling the IAEA when asked to explain. Their cover-up only underlined the intense secrecy of this project and the danger it had posed to a volatile region.

I want to focus briefly on two important aspects of this intelligence effort: the quality of tradecraft, in terms of collection and analysis, and the value of collaboration, both with colleagues in our government and with foreign services.

More than anything else, our work was a classic example of multidisciplinary, blue-collar analysis. We had a group of officers who started working overtime on this issue in April 2007 and kept at it for months. Virtually every form of intelligence—imagery, signals, human source, you name it—informed their assessments, so that they were never completely dependent on any single channel.

For instance, a report from a foreign partner initially identified the structure at Al-Kibar as a nuclear reactor similar to one in North Korea. But even without that piece of the puzzle, it wouldn’t have been long before we reached the same conclusion. We had previously identified the facility on imagery as a suspicious target. When pipes for a massive cooling system were laid out to the Euphrates River in the spring of 2007, there would have been little doubt this was a nuclear reactor. We would have known it was North Korean, too, given the quantity and variety of intelligence reports on nuclear ties between Pyongyang and Damascus.

Still, our analysts were open to alternative possibilities at every juncture. Early on, they applied a methodology that laid out the inconsistencies in each competing hypothesis. They carefully examined whether the building might be for another purpose, like a conventional power plant, or a water treatment facility. In each case, the arguments simply didn’t add up. The reactor hypothesis was the most difficult to refute with the available evidence.

We then stepped back and tried to turn the basic premise on its head: OK, we’ve got a nuclear reactor in Syria built with North Korean help, but is it necessarily for a Syrian program? Might it have been built by North Korea for its own use, to secretly replace the Yongbyon reactor they had pledged to shut down? We took that hypothesis and worked very hard on it, but the mainstream theory held sway.

Finally, this was a success reached through close collaboration across agencies, departments, and governments. Dedicated officers at CIA, DIA, the Department of Energy, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and NSA came together as a team, each bringing a specific expertise to the table. And this was an intelligence problem that required a wide range of knowledge. I already mentioned all the different forms of collection, but it also drew from a remarkable diversity of analytic firepower—everyone from nuclear technology and weapons experts to political and leadership analysts.

Our foreign partnerships too were critical to the final outcome. These relationships aren’t a matter of occasionally passing along a report that may or may not be useful. They’re more akin to working together on a complex equation over a long period. Each tries to solve a variable that in turn helps a partner solve another, and so on until we’ve cracked the case. That’s what good intelligence is all about.

I hope my remarks today have given you a better idea of how CIA is meeting the counterproliferation challenge. The Intelligence Community as a whole has taken great strides since the pre-war NIE on Iraq to strengthen our tradecraft, and I think it shows with both the Iran estimate and the Al-Kibar effort. The rigor of our sourcing, the emphasis on alternative analysis, and the integration of our expertise with those of our colleagues have never been greater.

From Russia with... Not Much

2008-09-11T16:35:00.007-04:00

Here's my op-ed in tomorrow's Daily Star on Assad's recent trip to Moscow. Make sure to also read the following piece by Guy Bechor, which I reference in my article.

The Syrian bluster is all about trying to re-brand their relationship with Russia in order to alter perceptions about Syria's -- not Russia's -- role in the region. Instead, as Ron Ben-Yishai put it, Assad ended up "sounding like a bumbling fool."

More to come.

"Lebanonization" and "Global Reach"

2008-08-31T08:35:00.005-04:00

Quick, someone call Augustus Richard Norton to urge him to contest the following reports. For Norton has assured us over the years that Hezbollah has been "Lebanonized" and did not have "global reach." Or, as it has been put often, Hezbollah has "evolved" from what it used to be in the 80s. Right.

Witness the extent of their "evolution" and lack of "global reach."

The National follows up on a story that I've blogged in the past:

Fighters from Iraq’s Mahdi Army have detailed how they are receiving training from Lebanese Hizbollah in advanced insurgency tactics to use against US troops, even as Washington continues to negotiate a pact that may see most American soldiers leave Iraq by 2012.

At least 100 militants from the Mahdi Army, a powerful militia that opposes the American presence in Iraq, went to Lebanon earlier this summer to receive the training, according to two fighters who claim to have taken part.

In a series of interviews, they described being instructed in leadership methods and religious indoctrination techniques, as well as how best to ambush US troops and evade American air strikes. Their claims have not been independently verified and Hizbollah denies any such link with the Iraqi group.

US intelligence officials, however, say there are strong ties between the Lebanese and Iraqi militants and last week accused Hizbollah fighters of training Iraqis in camps inside Iran.
...
Sayed Ali said he was “one of at least a hundred” fighters who travelled to Lebanon via Syria in May. The passage was organised by Hizbollah, he said. He returned to Iraq almost two months later.

And now, across the globe to Venezuela:

Western anti-terrorism officials are increasingly concerned that Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shiite Muslim militia that Washington has labeled a terrorist group, is using Venezuela as a base for operations.

Linked to deadly attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina in the early 1990s, Hezbollah may be taking advantage of Venezuela's ties with Iran, the militia's longtime sponsor, to move "people and things" into the Americas, as one Western government terrorism expert put it.
...
"It's becoming a strategic partnership between Iran and Venezuela," said a Western anti-terrorism official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the issue's sensitivity.
...
Those deepening ties worry U.S. officials because Iranian spies around the world have been known to work with Hezbollah operatives, sometimes using Iranian embassies as cover, Western intelligence experts say.

In June, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon said Iran "has a history of terror in this hemisphere, and its linkages to the bombings in Buenos Aires are pretty well established."
...
The most concrete allegations of a Hezbollah presence in Venezuela involve money-raising. In June, the U.S. Treasury Department designated two Venezuelan citizens as Hezbollah supporters and froze their U.S. assets.
...
Agents of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah have allegedly set up a special force to attempt to kidnap Jewish businesspeople in Latin America and spirit them away to Lebanon, according to the Western anti-terrorism official. Iranian and Hezbollah operatives traveling in and out of Venezuela have recruited Venezuelan informants working at the Caracas airport to gather intelligence on Jewish travelers as potential targets for abduction, the Western anti-terrorism official said.
...
Hezbollah has long operated in the Lebanese communities of Latin America. In addition to receiving a multimillion-dollar infusion from Iran, the militia finances itself by soliciting or extorting money from the Lebanese diaspora and through rackets such as smuggling, fraud and the drug and diamond trade in South America and elsewhere, Matthew Levitt, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Congress in 2005.

This is not to mention the Tri-Border area, where Hezbollah has long been entrenched (Jeffrey Goldberg wrote about it in The New Yorker back in 2002). The LAT report continues:

Three years ago, police in Colombia and Ecuador broke up an international cocaine-smuggling ring that functioned in Latin American countries, including Venezuela, and allegedly sent profits to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The lawless "tri-border" region connecting Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina has been a center of organized crime activities and finance linked to Hezbollah, Western anti-terrorism officials say.

Hezbollah operatives based there participated, along with Iranian spies, in the car bombings in Buenos Aires of the Israeli Embassy in 1992 and a Jewish community center two years later that killed a total of 114 people, an Argentine indictment charges.

In the aftermath of that indictment, filed in 2006, Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors, chiefly the Revolutionary Guard, decided to shift from the increasingly scrutinized tri-border area to other countries, including Venezuela, Western anti-terrorism officials say.

"It preserves the capability of Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guard to mount attacks inside Latin America. . . . It is very, very important to Iran and Hezbollah right now."

So yeah, Norton is quite obviously right, they have no global reach! And of course, as you know, General Aoun in his famous Memorandum of Understanding (aka. Toilet Paper) has already "Lebanonized" Hezbollah (perhaps he didn't read Norton to find out that Hezbollah had already been "Lebanonized" well beforehand by Hezbollah "experts"!).

"Lebanonized"? What a joke...

Yet Another Message to the Army

2008-08-29T17:36:00.002-04:00

An excellent editorial from NOW Lebanon on Hezbollah's latest murderous attack against the Lebanese army.

At best, Hezbollah must accept the fact that, either its fighters are incompetent, or, if was another group, that its influence in the South is not as far reaching as they claim. At worst, it was a deliberate act, one designed to send a message to the army on the eve of the cabinet meeting. Hardly the actions of a super-patriotic organization that wants to coordinate defense issues with the same army. But then again, we have known since early May where Hezbollah’s true allegiances lie, and if it were the latter, the implications of the act are almost too disturbing to dwell on.

It also no coincidence – for there are none in Lebanese politics – that the incident came amid an atmosphere of US and Arab eagerness to support and assist the Lebanese army, such as was expressed by the recent visits of the Egyptian foreign minister and US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Asia and the Near East David Hale, who’s visit with the Department of Defense’s delegation was aimed at providing the Lebanese army with aid. Naturally, this support is not welcome by those who are working to weaken state institutions, including the army. But then again, the battle today appears to be between two schools: One aimed at building strong state institutions and another that wants to pervert the same institutions into tools working for political agendas.

Read it all. More to come.