A nuclear Iran, answering Kenneth Waltz

In an opinion piece published in USA Today, under a title that can be mistaken for satire, Professor Kenneth Waltz of Colombia University suggests we shouldn’t worry about a nuclear Iran. His main argument, “Although it is impossible to be certain of Iranian intentions, it is far more likely that if Iran desires nuclear weapons, it is for the purpose of enhancing its own security, not to improve its offensive capabilities.”

Professor Kenneth Waltz of Colombia University 

As to what those security concerns might be he does not speechifies, however, unlike Israel Iran has a huge strategic depth. Its geography, its huge population, and its level of economic development, all adds up to a formidable deterrence; without any need for nuclear weapons. In short, Iran is a country that doesn’t have to worry about its own security, as long as it does not infringe on the security of others. Once it does that, it gives other countries a good reason to make a special effort in order to infringe on Iran’s security. Unfortunately for Professor Kenneth Waltz’s argument that is precisely the kind of Iran we have today. In Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Egypt, the Gaza Strip, and elsewhere. If Professor Kenneth Waltz wishes to reassure the world about a nuclear Iran he should first reassure the world about a non-nuclear Iran.

At another part of his article he argues that Israel’s nuclear capabilities are responsible for the instability in the Middle East. How does Israel’s, supposed, nuclear capabilities relate to the huge social gaps within the Arab world? How does it affect the total GDP of 22 Arab nations? Without oil this GDP is lower than that of Switzerland. How is that Israel’s fault? And what about illiteracy, high unemployment, the Sunna and Shia split, gross gender inequality, and other recognized internal causes of instability. Are they all because Israel has nuclear weapons? Under this type of reasoning, the moon landing is to blame for all the major airplane crashes that followed.
According to USA Today, Kenneth Waltz’s article is a condensed version of a paper that will be published in the July - August issue of Foreign Affairs, so maybe the answers will be there.

Geography alone debunks Waltz’s argument.

 See also Ira Stoll at Commentary Magazine.

Syria 2016 – An approximate map

An eyesore and a headache to come – soon

Syria is disintegrating. No news in that statement.

Like a clay vase cracking, we hear the cracks, but cannot see them, yet. Not all of them anyways. But just like Yemen, soon the body will collapse. Unlike Yemen there will be those that will pick up the pieces and try to hold the Syrian vase together.      

These are international and regional forces that are already been drawn into a mess no one is able to control or contain.

The above map is an assessment how Syria will look in the future, probably in the year 2016.

The main participants will be Iran and Turkey. Iran is heavily invested in Syria, and Turkey cannot afford an unstable border.

The Iranians have allies in and around Syria:

The currently ruling Alawites, with a center of power in the Nusariah mountains in the northwest near the Mediterranean.

Hezbollah - the terror organization that rules southern Lebanon.

And the Shia governed Iraq, on Syria’s long eastern border.

They are all useful as proxies that will hold onto Iranian interests in that country and in the region. And may even be able to expand Iranian influence within Syria.

Turkey may have eyes towards regional hegemony or leadership, but in broken clay Syria it will settle for her immediate security concerns. Concerns limited to the northern part of the country. In civilian communities it will be the protector and backer of political forces friendly to Ankara. Closer to the border and near the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, it will deploy its military. This is for the obvious reasons of preventing attacks and infiltrations from the Kurdish PKK, Al – Qaeada, and other Islamist terror groups.

This division will be the outcome of a brief but brutal Shia vs. Sunni war within Syria. A conflict that may have already begun and over time will resemble a similar conflict that took place in Iraq after the American invasion.

In this division Turkey is already the de facto leader of the Sunni Arab dominated Syrian opposition. This is because this opposition has no unified leadership. And it needs Turkey to represents their interest in front of the outside world and settle their internal disputes.

But Turkey will not be able to rule its portion of Syria along. It will need the Arab League support as a seal of approval. And the Arab League will need presence on the ground to show that there is content, Arab content, to its statements and resolutions. Therefore they will be in charge on the majority of the Sunni Arab section of Syria. Most of it is the area between Damascus and Aleppo. The official control will be that of the Syrian state. But it will be a fragile control, a mostly nominal one. And the representatives of the Arab League will be constantly trying to strengthen it in order to keep it out of reach of Islamist terror organizations and criminal elements. These organizations are already there. Taking their share of Syria. The areas they’ll hold on to will most likely be the buffer zones between everybody else.

It is true that there is no one that is more ill suited to do this than the Arab League. But there is no one else. NATO is out of the question. Russia and China will never agree to it. Neither will the Arab world that sees NATO as ally of Israel. And NATO itself had enough in Afghanistan and Libya. The UN is less unlikely, but at the same time not very likely. Syria under the UN supervision is no longer a Syria that confronts Israel. Keeping the image, and position, of Syria as a major Arab opponent of Israel, on Israel’s border, will be the main reason for the Arab league to step in.

Russia is invested in Syria far longer than Iran. When Syria is in chaos they will need presence on the ground to secure their investment. There is also Russia’s agelong interest in keeping the waterways of the Black Sea open. Which always required presences in the Mediterranean. Both concerns will require at minimum, presence along the Syrian coastline. Not all of it, just in a portion that secures a port for a battleship or two. The West will have to agree because it’s either that or pirates.

The United State has its own concerns. Protecting the oil rich Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, and safeguarding the stability of the Kingdom of Jordan. Both are long time allies of the United States of America. Both are under threat from Sunni extremists and Iranian expansionism. The open question is how and how far will the United States go to protect them. Kurdistan is a part of Iraq and the United States had left Iraq. But did America abandon the Kurds in the process?

And how much will they leave for the Saudis when it comes to protecting Jordan from fundamentalists’ infiltrations from southern Syria?

Lebanon is already caught in a vise between Sunni extremists and Iranian expansionism. Traditionally it is a French zone of interest. The braek up of Syria will offer France new possibilities to protect those interests, as well as new threats. If France gets the co-operation of the EU its involvement can be more effective. Both France and the EU are not great fans of large-scale interventions. This means a mostly civilian presence in a small portion of Syria near the part of Lebanon that is not under Iranian influence. The need to provide security for that presence will increase its military aspect. But the success of the EU involvement will be determined by what will happen in Lebanon.

China will also be involved. Wherever Russia will be so will China. This will be a continuation of the co-operation they have today over the Syrian crisis.

The big unknowns are in the southwestern part of Syria. It contains the Israeli border, the Druze enclave of the Hauran (Horan) Mountains, and the bulk of the Syrian army, stationed in the Golan Heights. Israel will be in a tough dilemma. On one hand Israel does not want to be drawn into a sectarian conflict that will be worse than what she had experienced in Lebanon in the 1980’s. On the other hand allowing the Syrian border to be under Iranian control is unacceptable. Israel already has a border with Iran. (Through Hezbollah Iran already controls Lebanon’s border with Israel). To prevent that Israel may go to war. This will be a war to prevent a war under worse conditions. It is obvious that the United States and the EU do not want to see this border become volatile. And not just out of concern for the security of Israel. It is possible that Russia and China share similar interests in maintaining regional stability, though not necessarily at the same level of urgency. Since Iran needs their protection over the nuclear issue, they may pressure Iran out of that area. Since the UN is already there, (see UNDOF), its role may expand until a more agreeable and effective arrangement is reached.

There is virtually no information about the Druze minority in Syria. Even though the turmoil begun on their doorstep, in Daraa. Like most of the non-Sunni Arab minorities, they are a part of the regime’s ring of support. How that support manifests in the current crisis is unknown. As do the views and mindset of the people that make up the Druze of Mt. Hauran. Not to mention those of other minorities. This makes prediction impossible. But as the situation remains unsolvable, Syria’s minorities may opt to migrate, abandon Syria completely. The Druze may have an extra encouragement to do due to Syria’s growing water crisis.

The most dangerous unknown is the Syrian army in the Golan Heights, which is the bulk of its armed forces. Where its loyalty lies in this internal conflict? What is the situation of its current weaponry and ammunition? Again, no information is available to make predictions. It is possible that the soldiers and commanders hate the regime. But their commitment to the struggle against Israel overrides their emotions.

By 2016 those questions and others will be answered. Till then the approximate map will have to settle for question marks.

The final note is a note of hope. Damascus and Aleppo are Syria’s only hope for a better future in the long run, beyond 2016, beyond 2020. These two ancient cities were always centers of international trade. If they’ll be given effective protection and administration, they can reclaim that function. If abandoned, and allowed to became Mogadishus, Syria will be replaced by smaller political entities, mirroring the 2016 situation. In this scenario Syria will be a swamp of endless localized conflicts, and a safe heaven for terrorist and criminals. A destabilizing territory, regionally and internationally.

p.s. This map can be the reality in 2014.

The Egyptian revolution, the United States and Israel, testing old textbooks and writing new ones

I’m probably going against the current that dominated the pro-Israel blogsphere by saying that the American administration was right in supporting the largely peaceful ouster of president Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. But I do believe that to be the case.
In explaining my opinion it is important to point out that both this current and the said American policy are due to sound reasons. This current of Israel based skepticism exists mainly because of the crisis in US Israel relationships that took place last year over planned constructions in East Jerusalem. This crisis left many Israelis and supporters of Israel distrustful of the Obama administration. This mistrust was echoed in the concern some Israelis had that the abandonment of Mubarak preludes an abandonment of Israel. But there is no comparison between the American Middle East policy of March 2010 and that of February 2011. Then the United States acted as if it had a textbook of new ideas regarding Middle East peace making. But since those ideas were new, and with no relation to past experience, the textbook was actually a guessing book. However, during the more recent Egyptian crisis of January and February 2011, they did had a textbook to read from, an old and reliable one. It is called “How to address a dysfunctional allied dictatorship,” or “How not to get bogged down in another Vietnam.” It is an important book that proved itself in 1986 during the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. Then a pro-western tyrant was removed from power in a way that kept the country as an ally of the west without slipping into an endless civil war involving thousands of American troops.




The Vietnam war

 The American lesson from Vietnam is very clear; an unpopular allied dictatorship that lost its ability to enforce itself on its population is not a strategic ally but a strategic burden. But the Middle East is not Southeast Asia. In Southeast Asia as in Latin America, the United States of America earned the animosity of millions because it supported brutal unpopular despots. But in the Middle East the unpopularity of the United States predates the relationships with the tyrannies of the region, and even the United States itself. This animosity is an ideological one, an opposition to the American and western values of democracy and civil liberties and not just the policies. They are based on the widespread of popular intolerant ideologies, such as nationalism, pan-nationalism, and religious fundamentalism. These ideologies are rooted in the history of the region. It is a history of empires and kingdoms ruled by Arab dynasties and Islam as their official religion. These intolerant and even anti democratic ideologies are the legacy of that era. They had produced hostile anti democratic regimes such as that of Gamal Abdle Nasser in Egypt, and the Wahabi regime of the Saudis in the Arabian Peninsula whose origin goes back to 1744. Their starting position was that of hostility to the west and its democratic values. But as their own internal difficulties grow and as the region’s political arena changed, creating mutual threats to them and the west, the two sides got closer. It is a simple convergence of interests that created a near lose-lose situation for the west and in particular its leadership, the United States of America. The duration of these regimes, their corruption, and repression, undermined severely their popularity. Their new proximity to already hated United States, acted as a reconfirmation of the corruption of these regimes. Simultaneously it reaffirmed the bad image of the west.

Learning the lessons from Vietnam and adapting them to a different region.
That is the American challenge in the Arab spring of ‏2011

This fundamental difference does not suggest that the Vietnam experience is irrelevant here; after all there are similarities. It does suggest that some adjustments are needed. This rises equally from the Israeli textbook. Like the American textbook it is based on sound experience, however there isn’t a lot of text in it, just a few lines. ”Avoid another Iran, beware of the Muslim Brotherhood, remember how Hamas, one of their offshoots took over Gaza, both by elections and by force.” In the leaderless revolution that took place in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is the most likely opposition group to benefit since it is the largest and most organized. Along with its anti-democratic and anti-Israeli platform, which it had obscured but not abandon, it is a genuine threat and not just a bogyman in quotations. This suggests that the best course of action based on the Israeli warning signs is to crash the Lotus revolution. But that runs into conflict with the next line in the Israeli textbook. “Beware of another Lebanon, were a civil war created Hizbullah and gave the hegemonic seeking Iran a major foothold in that country.”

What these two textbooks tell us is that they are not in conflict with one another. Rather they are in the same place, in need of new ideas. In a situation like this the events on the ground are the ones that are writing the new textbooks, events that are being shaped by the political forces currently working in Egypt. These forces are the ruling military elite, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the general public who only began to be an active political player.

The questions are what each of them want, what are their goals, concerns, and priorities:

What does the current regime see as a greater threat, Iran, Islamization, anarchy, or the spread of democracy?

What does the Muslim Brotherhood want? To hijack the revolution the way Khomeini did in 1979 Iran, or use the democratic process the way Hitler did? Or do they intend to leave things as they are so they can enjoy the new opportunities without risking loosing their gains by starting political upheavals whose final outcome cannot be predicted?

And what are the priorities of general public, democracy or jobs?

These unanswered questioned are the making of uncertainty. And there is no need to list its drawbacks, especially in the Middle East, where the stakes are high. Here chaos and bloodshed can be no more the one mistake away. Writing damn good textbooks for everyone involved.

Qatar after the ‘Palestine Papers’ leak

‘Iran on the other side of the gulf.’

This is the best way to describe the oil emirate of Qatar after the publication of the ‘Palestine Papers’ by Al-Jazeera.
Since Qatar control Al-Jazeera but Iran is the only one to benefit from damaging the peace process.

War World One, the 92nd anniversary of the Armistice Day. What if they had nuclear weapons?

A few days ago the world commemorated the most senseless large-scale slaughter of human beings by mediocre politicians and heartless glory hungry generals. This was the First World War, which ended on "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of the year 1918. A suitable baptizing of what was to become the bloodiest century in human history, the 20^th century. It is a century that from a bloodshed point of view has not ended yet.

Now here is a suggestion for a thought experiment to stretch our brains with, and our nerves. What if the leading powers at each side to that conflict had nuclear weapons?

Would that have stopped the war, or annihilate Europe and its vicinity?

Would the leaders who had no scruples in deploying the first modern weapons of mass destruction develop a conscience when faced with the terror of such a weapon?

Or would they be captivated by the promises of strength these weapons contain?

Do you have a quick answer or do you need some time to think about it?


Before you do, lets look at the current regime in Iran. A regime that in the early days of the Iran-Iraq war, sent kids carrying Korans and Taiwanese made plastic keys to open the gates of heaven; to detonate minefields with their bodies.


The point of the exercise suggested here is to show that the likelihood of a Cold War like scenario repeating itself in the Middle East is far from certain. It certainly was not certain when the Cold War begun. What the First World War had taught us, the members of the general public, is the value of human life. To the politicians it taught the value of good judgment, a lesson that was largely practiced during the Cold War. The likelihood of this repeating itself in current and future regional standoffs depends on a range of factors. One of them is the nature of the regimes involved, and the Iranian regime has more in common with the European leadership of 1914, than with the American and soviet leaders of the Cold War.

US Israel relationships: the making of the Israeli exclamation mark, part 1, Obama’s triple inheritance

Fifth in a series of seven

parts: 1  2  3  4  5  6  7

Why Israelis don’t trust president Obama?
Why the most likely answer to the question, “Do you trust president Obama?” coming from Israel, especially during mid 2010, is not just ‘no,’ but ’no!’?
A part of the explanation is the role of the media and the Internet, explained here and here. The other part is the Palestinian component. Two other parts have to do with president Obama, and they are explained in this article and the following one.

The survey quoted by Katie Couric in the Benjamin Netanyahu interview on July 7 2010, said 71% of Israeli Jews don’t like president Obama. The word ‘like’ is a general term that does not disclose the causes of this emotion. Another survey made around that time by the 'Dahaf Institute', had found out that 24% of Israelis consider president Obama an anti-Semite. A finding that is considered unprecedented.

[The 'Dahaf Institute' is a leading Israeli marketing and research firm known for its political and social surveys. This survey was published in the current affairs program ‘Shovrim Kelim’ in the Knesset Channel, the cable channel of the Israeli parliament. This TV program is hosted by the head of the institute Dr. Mina Tzemach and Roni Milo, the former mayor of Tel – Aviv and former government minister.] 

Given the history of the Jewish people, there are always those who see all foreign heads of states as anti-Semites, so some percentage of suspicious people is always expected, but 24% is considered to be higher then usual. At the same time it hardly represents the entire 71%. What it is more likely is that this is an indicator of the general feelings at the time of the survey, June 2010. If the majority of Israeli Jews don’t trust president Obama, a greater percentage than usual is more likely to believe he is an anti Semite. Others will see him as pro-Palestinian, or point to the ideological differences between him and Prime Minister Netanyahu as the source of policies many couldn’t understand and could not trust. And the lack of it is what all these explanations have in common.

Those who are writing off the entire 71% as people that regard president Obama as an anti-Semite are making life easy for themselves. Just as they do when they put heavy weight on the president’s middle name, Hussein, as the cause of the Israelis’ apprehension. Hussein is a common name in the Middle East, and Israelis encounter it on many different occasions. On one side there was Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who promised to burn half of Israel, after his long war with Iran ended. On the other side there was the late king Hussein of Jordan. He is the second Arab head of state to sign a peace agreement with Israel, and a moderate ruler who survived most of his radical enemies. This achievement gave him the respect of many people including a lot of Israelis. When on March 13 1997 a Jordanian soldier murdered 7 Israeli schoolgirls in Naharayim on the Israeli Jordanian border, the king came to Israel with his royal entourage to visit the families of the victims, to express his condolences and to condemn the act. It was an act that showed determination, courage and leadership and left a strong impact on the Israeli public, even among those who hate Arabs.

So while this middle name did create some unease, it did not create the wave of panic the extreme right in Israel tried to make from it, and that the Israel-bashers claim exist. There were other more serious factors. As explained earlier in this series some of the causes are inherited from the previous administrations. The collapse of the Oslo accords during the tenure of Bill Clinton, and Hamas’ takeover of Gaza after the disengagement from Gaza, had demonstrated to the Israelis the limits of the power of the office of the American presidency. It cannot make the Palestinians want peace. Since eventually all peace processes boils down to the intentions of the adversaries.

But just as Barack Obama is the heir of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, he is also the representative of the large camp of George W. Bush’s critics. And that large camp wasn’t made up just of the American Democratic Party and its supporters. As the protest against the Iraq War grew in the United States and across the world, the Democratic Party and most of the mainstream American left failed to distinguish between those who opposed the war because of reasons of legality and strategic wisdom, and those who opposed it simply because they hate America and oppose everything the United States does. An important characteristic of that last group is that they hate Israel as well, burning Israeli flags alongside American flags. But Israelis did notice this. They saw on television and on the Internet, George W. Bush subjected to vile spectacles of hatred, were his effigy was burned, lynched, and he himself was compared to Hitler. All that was done by people that hated Israel and its elected leaders in the same fashion. This naturally created sympathy for him and helped bolster his image as the only foreign had of state sticking up for Israel at a time Israelis were attacked at their streets and in their homes. But the inability of the mainstream American left to separate themselves from those expressions of hate created suspicion towards them. And since Barack Obama is the elected leader of the Democratic Party, he inherited that as well.


Bush-hate fest, a small sample


And then there is Barack Obama’s personal inheritance, the only one discussed in the mainstream media. That  inheritance is his past association with the reverend Jeremiah Wright, a known Israel-basher, and former PLO adviser and major BDS campaigner professor Rashid Khalidi.

            Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi

Were president Obama and his advisers aware of these apprehensions?
The later? Most likely. The others? Unknown.

The desire to bridge this suspicion is probably part of the reason for the huge military and political investment in Israel’s security. This investment includes weaponry, joint training of the two countries armed forces, the acceptance of Israel to the OECD, the financing of Iron Dome, And the backing Israel’s policy of nuclear ambiguity. The most important support is the constant pressure on the international community regarding the Iranian threat. Part of the reason for all of this is to overcome the said mistrust. But the huge effort behind them shows a commitment to Israel’s security, because without it such an effort would not have been possible. Others may dispute this, but this dispute is largely due to ideological convictions, and as consequence of the turmoil that had taken place in March 2010. Turmoil that had taken place because commitment is not enough to win over a people’s trust, understanding them is needed in order to translate that commitment to tangible terms. This, the American administration failed to do. They understood that Iran is the biggest strategic threat to Israel, but sidelined the fact that most of the actual killing of Israelis was done by Iran’s Palestinians and Lebanese proxies.

Dvar Dea

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US Israel relationships a seven parts series:
The public debate, correcting a favorable picture
The public debate, Israel and the war on terror
The Palestinian component
The right wing component
The Israeli exclamation mark, Obama's triple inheritance
The Israeli exclamation mark, unbalancing outreach w go-between
The peace process' beggars' choice

Anti-Semitism: Sweden boxed in neutrality

Sweden’s historic neutrality during the Second World War and the Cold War was rightfully hailed by those defending the position of the Swedish government in its recent row with Israel, regarding the blood libel published by the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet where it had accused Israel of organ theft from dead Palestinians.
What they fail to realize is that in this case what is in the past stays in the past and the present is quite different. If during the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, neutrality was an act of courage with moral credit attached, by the end of the Cold War it was a status symbol, a high up on the mountain position for Swedish politics from which to look down at the world. Removed from its crisises and challenges, a taking a stand neutrality became a do nothing neutrality. It was a neutrality that in order to avoid tension worked with tyrannies rather then facing them, but it used the aura of old times, when it was one of a handful of pioneers that opposed South Africa’s apartheid regime, to cloth these new associations with morality. So boxed in was Swedish politics in this newly defined neutrality that when the crisis did call, and thousands of Swedish nationals were stranded in the tsunami stricken shores of south east Asia, many wounded, many dead, all lost, its government didn’t move an inch, while the whole world around them rushed to the rescue.
That may seem unrelated to the topic at hand but that administrative inaction was also a moral inaction, since people’s lives were involved. And just as the tsunami killed a lot of innocent people so does Anti Semitism. One tremor can cause tidal waves of hate and destruction that will engulf the world several times before subsiding. Governments may had changed in Sweden between that disaster and now, but for the current government whose delegates set through a demented lecture of the world’s most famous anti Semite, reciting old conspiracy theories, the waters are just as calm as they were four years ago for its predecessors. Thus giving the evidence that Swedish politics is in a chronic crisis of moral leadership. As Israelis, and other non-Swedes there is little we can do a bout it. The main victims of this boxed in neutrality are the Swedish people and the Swedish state, whose neutrality is no longer a commodity this battered world needs.