No Western statesman has done more to promote the cause of Palestinian statehood than the charismatic Foreign Minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Store, a Labour politician who enjoys unrivalled popularity in his own country. Yet all his efforts over the past several years in favour of the Palestinians have ended in failure. He has been defeated by Israeli intransigence, by U.S. President Barack Obama’s collapse under Israeli pressure, and by Palestinian disunity.

After the Oslo peace accords of 1993, Norway felt it had a responsibility to see the peace process through to a satisfactory conclusion. It felt that its role was to bring a Palestinian state to life. But this depended on securing Israel’s agreement as well as American backing. Neither was forthcoming.

Norwegians distinguish between two parallel tracks of the peace process: a so-called top-down political track led by the United States which is meant to tackle final status issues such as borders, security, refugees and Jerusalem; and a bottom-up track, led by Norway, which has focussed on mobilising donors to help the Palestinians build the institutions of a state.

Foreign Minister Store has himself for years chaired a donors support group dedicated to this task. By preparing the Palestinians for statehood he hoped to counter Israel’s argument that it had no Palestinian partner for peace. His strategy was to present Israel with a fait accompli in the form of a virtual Palestinian state.

The Foreign Minister explained his position to me in an interview in Oslo on 19 June. “We had hoped,” he said, “that the top-down and bottom-up tracks would meet. We worked with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in helping him build the institutions of a state.

“The Palestinians had reached the threshold of a state in September 2011 when they made their bid for UN membership — only to be disappointed. Europe should have spoken with a clearer voice. What Israel is doing is against international law, and against its own interests. The two-state solution is fading away. We are today facing a very dangerous situation.

“The Palestinians are suffering a double tragedy — the tragedy of living under occupation, and the tragedy of being divided. In 2007, we decided to engage with the Palestinian national unity government. But the European Union made the mistake of deciding not to engage.

“We in Norway are prepared to talk to all Palestinian groups, including Hamas, even though we do not recognise its charter, which we find deeply disturbing. We are in favour of Palestinian national reconciliation.”

I asked the Foreign Minister whether he aspired to play a leading role in the Peace process, as Norway had played at the time of the Oslo accords:

“We have no nostalgia for such a leading role. In a world of deficits, we are fortunate in having an economic and a political surplus. We are simply looking for places where we can make a difference, with no strings attached. We have no second agenda. We are not there to put pressure on anyone but merely to mobilise networks for causes we believe in.”

I asked him how he viewed the rise of Islamist movements across the Arab world:

“It would be the height of hypocrisy,” he replied, “if we saluted the ballot box but refused its result. We must accept the results of the ballot box. But we must also hold accountable any majority which might emerge from elections. Any such majority must abide by international human rights standards.

“Countries like Egypt, which need to attract investment, must strive to be accountable and transparent. It is important to reduce the risk for investors. Who will invest in a country if there is a lack of transparency as well as a suspicion of corruption?”

It is well known that Foreign Minister Store engaged very early on with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. His policy has always been to engage with all actors, without necessarily endorsing their policies. To engage is a key principle of the foreign policy of Norway’s current centre-left government which came to power in 2005 and was re-elected in 2009.

The donors’ committee which the Foreign Minister chairs is called the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, or AHLC. Established after the Oslo peace accords, its task has been to mobilise financial support for Palestinian state-building.

The institutions Norway has helped create include security institutions dedicated to preventing attacks on Israel. But this has become a source of embarrassment for President Abbas. He was seen as doing Israel’s work without reaping any political reward in the form of progress towards statehood.

Norway supported Palestinian unity although it was well aware that Israel would not deal with any Palestinian government that included Hamas. It would withhold taxes it collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, and the United States would cut its aid. So, rather than encouraging Hamas to join a unity government, Norway’s policy has been to mobilise financial support for the PA. It has preferred to leave to Egypt the task of reconciling the various Palestinian factions.

Norway has frequently warned Israel that if it refused to move forward with the political process, it would face donor fatigue, and might itself have to assume responsibility for the West Bank Palestinians. But Israel has called Norway’s bluff. It has continued its relentless seizure of Palestinian land while counting on foreign donors to continue to finance the PA.

The Quartet — and the United States, its main power broker — failed to pressure Israel to consent to Palestinian statehood. Obama’s collapse was a huge disappointment for the Palestinians but also for Norway, which had invested so much in the creation of Palestinian institutions.

The AHLC activities reached their peak at the time the Palestinians made their UN bid for recognition of their state, But the United States killed it. The inescapable conclusion is that the AHLC no longer has a role to play in parallel with the political track of the peace process. This goes some way to explaining the foreign minister’s judgement that the present situation is one of extreme danger.

My interview with the Foreign Minister took place during this year’s Oslo Forum, a leading international gathering of mediators, now in its tenth year. Among the participants was the Burmese Nobel Prize winner, Aung Saan Su Kyi who called for change by non-violent means. Even though she spent decades under house arrest by the military, she said she admired the Burmese army — which her father had helped found. She also said she had confidence in the humanity of her captors!

The Norwegian Foreign Minister summed up the message of the Oslo Forum by declaring that “Dialogue is the strategy of the brave.” It is a message the Syrian regime and its opponents would be wise to ponder.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2012 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 20 June 2012
Word Count: 1,123
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It is undeniable that President Bashar al-Asad’s Syrian regime has, over the past 15 months, made many mistakes and committed many crimes. An early example was the savage punishment of a dozen children who had scrawled anti-regime graffiti on a wall in the southern city of Daraa in March 2011. This ugly incident was soon made far worse by the use of live fire against peaceful protesters.

Had the President raced to Daraa, apologised to the parents of the brutalised children, sacked the governor and severely disciplined his security services he would have been hailed as a hero. Instead, he adopted a policy of indiscriminate repression which has continued to this day. The large-scale killings have cast a dark shadow over his timid and long-delayed reforms, such as last month’s multi-party elections, which were held once the Constitution had been emended, putting an end — at least in theory — to the Ba‘th party’s half-century stranglehold over Syria’s political life.

The opposition has also made mistakes and been guilty of serious crimes. Its first mistake was to take up arms against the government. This may have been an understandable response to the regime’s repression, but it was also an act of political insanity since it provided the regime with the justification to crush any pocket of armed rebellion, wherever and whenever it might appear. The result was the tragedy of the Baba Amr quarter of Homs — seized by the rebels, then destroyed by the regime’s heavy weapons — a pattern repeated elsewhere.

There are now said to be about 100 armed rebel groups engaged in urban guerrilla warfare against the Syrian regime. Money is flowing in from Gulf States and from Syrian businessmen abroad, fuelling a brisk black market in weapons. Large numbers of jihadis, armed Islamic extremists, have crossed into Syria from neighbouring countries — and also from Kuwait, Tunisia, Algeria and Pakistan — to swell the ranks of the fighters. Muslim clerics in several Arab countries are inciting young men to go to Syria to fight. Rebel groups conduct ambushes, attack check-points, destroy public property, kill government troops — about 250 were killed in ten days in late May and early June. They also kidnap, rape and slaughter pro-regime civilians.

The regime’s strategy is to prevent armed rebels seizing and holding territory, even if this means shelling residential quarters when rebels hole up in them. The rebels’ strategy is to trigger a Western military intervention to stop the killing on humanitarian grounds (although no one mentions the large numbers of civilians killed by U.S. drones in half a dozen countries, including 18 women and children in Afghanistan alone last week.) The rebels know they cannot defeat the Syrian army without outside help. The recent massacres at the villages of Hula and al-Qubair have raised their hopes that the United States and its allies are now one step closer to military action.

But who was really responsible for the reported smashing of skulls and slitting of children’s throats at these two villages? The opposition puts the blame squarely on the regime’sshabbiha, a notorious armed militia made up largely of Alawis — a view adopted uncritically by Western leaders and much of the Western press. The UN has been more cautious. After monitors reached al-Qubair, a spokeswoman for the UN supervision mission, Ms Sausan Ghosheh, said, “The circumstances surrounding the incident are not clear.”

Meanwhile, a very serious newspaper, the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Germany’s leading daily, has reported that the massacre was not carried out by the regime’s shabbihaafter all but by anti-Assad Sunni militants. According to sources FAZ interviewed, the victims were almost exclusively from the Alawi and Shia communities. The gruesome events took place after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside Hula. It was during the ensuing fire-fight of some 90 minutes that the massacre occurred. According to FAZ, the perpetrators then filmed their victims and, in videos posted on the internet, presented them as Sunni victims of the regime.

An independent investigation is clearly needed to establish which of these two versions is correct. It would not be surprising if both sides were found guilty of acts of savagery in what is fast becoming a sectarian civil war.

What role are outside actors playing? Each is pursuing its own strategic interest. The keys to the Syrian crisis lie outside Syria. Indeed, the Syrian crisis cannot be separated from the massive pressures being put on Iran. U.S. President Barack Obama is now fully mobilised against both regimes. He seems to have given up trying to secure a win-win deal with Iran over its nuclear programme, and he is sabotaging Kofi Annan’s Syrian peace plan by conniving in the arming of the rebels. He seems to want to bring down the regimes in both Tehran and Damascus — either because he sees Iran as a rival in the Gulf region or to win the favours of Israel’s American supporters in an election year.

Israel has openly declared its keen interest in Asad’s overthrow. President Shimon Peres — a wolf in sheep’s clothing whose deal with the French back in the 1950s provided Israel with its first nuclear weapons — declared that he hoped the Syrian rebels would win. Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu went one better. Borrowing a phrase from George W. Bush, he has called the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah resistance alliance an “axis of evil.” Clearly, Israel is pushing the United States and its allies to bring down the whole axis which has dented its supremacy in the Levant.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the main Arab backers of the Syrian rebels, seem largely driven by sectarian passions. They see Shia Iran as a threat to Sunni primacy. They, too, seek to bring down the regimes in Iran and Syria. However, it might be wiser for them to support, rather than subvert, these regimes, which have tried to stand up to Israel. Without the protection they afford, the oil-rich Gulf States might one day wake up to find themselves the next target of unchecked Israeli power.

Many problems in Syria remain to be solved. If Asad himself were toppled, would not the officer corps and the Ba‘th party carry on the fight? If the whole state were brought down — as happened in Iraq — what would the next regime look like? Would extremist Islamists, bent on revenge, come to power? Would the country be dismembered, with the Alawis driven into their mountains, as Iraq was itself dismembered by the creation of a Kurdish statelet? Who will protect the minorities? Will Syria’s Christians, 10 per cent of the population, suffer the same fate as Iraq’s Christians, dispersed around the world? And would Lebanon and Jordan, not to speak of the unfortunate Palestinians languishing under Israel’s occupation, survive the shock waves of a Syrian tsunami?

The Western powers would be well advised to unite with Russia and China in putting maximum pressure on both sides to put up their arms and come to the table. Diplomacy, rather than war, is the only way to preserve what is left of Syria for its hard-pressed citizens.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2012 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 12 June 2012
Word Count: 1,173
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President Barrack Obama’s Middle East policies seem increasingly problematic. His expanded use of missile strikes by Predator drones against targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere — now being launched at a rate of about one a week – seem certain to create more ‘terrorists’ than they kill. They arouse fierce anti-American sentiment not least because of the inevitable civilian death toll. Obama is said to decide himself which terrorist suspect is to be targeted for killing in any particular week, as if to confer some presidential sanction on operations of very doubtful legality.

Even more worrying is Obama’s apparently wilful sabotage of two diplomatic initiatives, one by Europe’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, the other by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. Ashton has been leading an attempt by the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) to negotiate a win-win deal with Iran over its nuclear programme, while Annan has been struggling to find a negotiated way out of the murderous Syrian crisis. Obama seems intent on compromising both initiatives.

Catherine Ashton managed to launch the P5+1 talks with Iran in Istanbul on 14 April once she had agreed the ground rules with the chief Iranian negotiator, Saeed Jalili. She pledged at that time that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) would be a key basis for the talks, thus sending a clear signal that Iran, as a signatory of the NPT, had the right to enrich uranium up to 3.5% for power generation and other peaceful purposes. She also declared that the negotiations would “be guided by the principle of the step-by-step approach and reciprocity,” thus giving a strong indication that sanctions would be lifted in stages once Iran gave up enriching uranium to 20% and provided convincing evidence that it was not seeking nuclear weapons. Iran responded favourably to this approach and the talks got off to a good start.

But, at the next meeting on 23 May, held this time in Baghdad, they ground to a virtual halt. No progress of any sort was made save for an agreement to meet again in Moscow on 18-19 June. The early optimism was dispelled because Obama had hardened the U.S. position. There was to be no recognition of Iran’s rights to enrich lower grade uranium — indeed the P5+1 refused even to discuss the subject — and no easing of sanctions. On the contrary, Iran was faced with the prospect of even stiffer sanctions coming into force on 1 July. The only sweetener was an offer of some spare parts for Iran’s civilian aircraft in exchange for an Iranian pledge to freeze 20% enriched uranium. Iran was asked, in effect, to give up its trump card in exchange for peanuts. It was no surprise that Tehran considered the miserly offer insulting.

Obama seems to have been persuaded that Iran, already reeling under crippling sanctions, would meekly submit to American demands if still more pressure were applied. This was a fundamental error of judgement. Far from submitting, Iran reacted defiantly. Hopes for a win-win deal evaporated. There are now no great expectations of a breakthrough at the Moscow talks.

What is Obama up to? He seems to have adopted Israel’s hard line view that Iran should be compelled to close down its nuclear industry altogether — a clear deal-breaker. It is not altogether clear whether he is doing so to counter accusations of weakness from his Republican challenger Mitt Romney or whether his hard, uncompromising line is intended to stave off Israel’s much-trumpeted threats to attack Iran in the coming months which, in view of the American electoral calendar, would inevitably suck in the United States.

Obama has already joined Israel in clandestine warfare against Iran. In a major article last week in the New York Times, David E Sanger revealed that “from his first months in office, President Barack Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities…” The United States and Israel then jointly developed the cyber-weapon Stuxnet, which caused considerable damage to the centrifuges in Iran’s Natanz facility.

By any standards, launching Stuxnet against Iran was an act of state terrorism. That Israel should engage in such practices is not surprising: Its entire regional policy is based on subverting and destabilising its neighbours so as to ensure its own supremacy. But how can the United States, which claims to be the supreme guardian of the international order, justify such base behaviour?

Not content with sabotaging Catherine Ashton’s efforts, Obama is also undermining Kofi Annan’s difficult mission in Syria. The American president pays lip service to Annan’s peace plan while, at the same time, secretly coordinating the flow of funds, intelligence and weapons to Bashar al-Asad’s enemies. Numerous sources attest that the United States has taken upon itself the role of deciding which among the various armed rebel groups deserve support. One must only suppose that, in his eagerness to bring about the fall of the Syrian regime, Obama will not fall into the trap of funding and arming jihadis, many of them linked to al-Qaida, who have flowed in from neighbouring countries to fight the Syrian regime.

In a word, Obama seems to have embraced the argument of Israeli hawks and American neo-conservatives that bringing down the Syrian regime is the best way to weaken and isolate the Islamic Republic of Iran, sever its ties with Lebanese and Palestinian resistance movements, and eventually bring about regime change in Tehran.

The puzzle is to understand what has happened to Obama. This former professor of constitutional law was expected to correct the flagrant crimes of the Bush administration — such as the horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the water-boarding, the network of secret prisons where torture was routine, the practice of extraordinary rendition. Instead, by his own violent and questionable acts, he is widening the gulf between the United States and the Muslim world.

No less a person than Henry Kissinger has, in a recent Washington Post article, reminded the United States of the dangers of humanitarian intervention in Syria. “If adopted as a principle of foreign policy,” he wrote, “this form of intervention raises broader questions for U.S. strategy. Does America consider itself obliged to support every popular uprising against any non-democratic government…?” If Asad were overthrown, he argues, a new civil war could follow as armed groups contest the succession. “In reacting to one tragedy, we must be careful not to facilitate another.”

Kissinger’s main point is that states are sovereign within their borders. The United States may have strategic reasons to favour the fall of Asad but “not every strategic interest rises to a cause for war; were it otherwise, no room would be left for diplomacy.” In other words, the world should support the Annan peace plan and give it time to work.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2012 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 05 June 2012
Word Count: 1,137
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The Syrian crisis has moved in recent weeks one dangerous step closer to civil war. The ceasefire which Kofi Annan, the UN and Arab League envoy, proudly engineered on April 12 is now barely alive. The presence of some 200 UN monitors, due to be increased to 300 by the end of the month, has somewhat reduced the violence, but has by no means put an end to it. While there are fewer large-scale battles, such as the one which destroyed whole quarters of the central city of Homs in March, clashes continue daily right across the country. If the violence is unchecked, the battle for Homs — with its tit-for-tat massacres — could come to seem a mere foretaste of the horrors to come. Sectarian passions are being fuelled and, for the moment at least, neither side is ready to put up its guns.

On the contrary, rebel fighters, increasingly well armed and funded from abroad, and more than ever determined to topple President Bashar al-Asad, have launched what amounts to an urban guerrilla war. They reject any negotiation that might leave him in place. In recent weeks they have been joined by dozens, possibly hundreds, of Islamist extremists, flowing into Syria across the Lebanese, Iraqi and Jordanian borders. Some of these jihadis, apparently loosely linked to Al-Qaida, are widely believed to have carried out the suicide bombings which have struck terror into the population. Of the eleven major incidents so far recorded, the two most lethal were in Damascus on May 10, which killed 55 people and wounded close to 400. The morale of the population has plummeted. No one is safe and nowhere is secure.

The violent emergence of the jihadis is by no means to the benefit of the opposition since it lends credence to the regime’s argument that it is fighting “terrorist gangs.” It tends to tilt the “silent majority,” ever anxious for security, to the government’s side. It also scares off some of the opposition’s Western backers.

The regime is evidently under great stress. It is finding it increasingly difficult to track down and destroy the swift-footed rebel groups, who carry out daring hit-and-run operations. For all its military superiority, Syria’s conventional army is not trained or equipped to fight a guerrilla war. Casualties among the military have risen, stoking a thirst for revenge. The hard men of the regime, who have borne the brunt of the fighting, see the situation as one of kill or be killed. Since the army and security forces remain loyal, the regime seems in no immediate danger of being overthrown. The result is a bloody stalemate, punctuated by acts of extreme violence by the regime and its enemies. Each side knows that whoever wins the battle will give no quarter to the other.

Meanwhile, the fighting has spilled over the border to Lebanon — especially to the mainly Sunni town of Tripoli, close to the Syrian border, which has become something of a rear base for the armed Syrian opposition. Gun battles have raged between pro- and anti-Syrian factions, and Beirut itself has not been spared.

Merciless as they are, these local skirmishes are overshadowed by the regional and international struggle for control of Syria. Two contests stand out: one which pits Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies against Iran, and another which pits the United States against Russia. A sub-theme is the tension between Iran and Turkey, the result of their alignment on opposite sides of the conflict: Iran is Syria’s main regional ally while Turkey is the leading external prop of the Syrian opposition, providing house-room to the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army and to large numbers of Syrian refugees.

American policy is showing alarming signs of incoherence. Washington supports the Annan peace plan while at the same time seeking to ensure its failure. While Annan is striving to make the ceasefire hold as a necessary prelude to “Syrian-led” negotiations, the United States, under pressure from Israel and a pro-Israeli Congress, as well as from Republican hawks, is unashamedly seeking Bashar al-Asad’s overthrow. The prime objective of U.S. and Israeli policy is to isolate and weaken Iran and sever its ties to the Lebanese Shia resistance movement Hizballah. Israel would like to bring down the whole Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah resistance axis, which has emerged in recent years as the main obstacle to its regional dominance.

By a curious twist of fortune, in opposing the Syrian regime the United States finds itself in the invidious position of being on the same side as Al-Qaida — a militant Islamist movement which it is fighting to the death in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere!

The United States is actively supporting the Syrian rebels, Islamists prominent among them, providing them with sophisticated communications equipment and intelligence, while pressing Qatar and Saudi Arabia to do more to help them. In fact, the United States seems to be coordinating the flow of funds and weapons to the rebel fighters. A Washington Post article on 15 May by Karen DeYoung and Liz Sly — based it would appear on an official leak — reported U.S. officials as saying that “the United States and others are moving forward toward increased coordination of intelligence and arming for the rebel forces.” Opposition figures were said to be in direct contact with State Department officials “to designate worthy rebel recipient of arms and pinpoint locations for stockpiles.” But one cannot arm the rebels while calling for a ceasefire!

There are limits, however, to what the United States is prepared to do to bring down the Syrian regime. It is not ready to commit its own forces – no U.S. boots on the ground and no strike aircraft attacking Syrian targets – and it will not risk an open clash with Moscow, which could have damaging repercussions on American interests elsewhere.

The United States is not the only country guilty of incoherence. It is surely not an Arab or a Muslim interest to deepen the centuries-old divide between Sunnis and Shi‘is. Only their common enemies benefit when they fight. Nor is it an Arab or a Muslim interest to make an enemy of Iran. As I have often argued in this column, the Gulf States would be wiser to keep clear of Israeli-Iranian or U.S.-Iranian quarrels. Geography dictates that Iran and the Gulf States, facing each other across the narrow strip of water, share many strategic and commercial interests. They are made to be partners, not opponents.

Surely the tragic history of Iraq and Lebanon underlines the urgent necessity to prevent Syria’s descent into the abyss of a full-scale sectarian civil war, which could have disastrous consequences across the region. Already, the fabric of Syrian society is being torn apart. The conflict must be demilitarised; the Annan peace plan must be given a chance to succeed; and every effort must be made to resolve the Syrian conflict by negotiations before it is too late.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2012 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 23 May 2012
Word Count: 1,149
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Both Algeria and Syria held elections this month — in Syria on May 7 and in Algeria on 10 May. Did these elections change the configuration of power in either country? There was evidently no such intention. If anything, the elections confirmed the continued political dominance of the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria and the Ba‘th Party in Syria. Alone or in coalition with lesser partners, the FLN has ruled Algeria in the half century since independence in 1962, while the Ba‘th in Syria has enjoyed a virtual political monopoly since seizing power in 1963.

Algeria has, however, moved towards something like a multi-party system over the past decade, while Syria has recently changed its Constitution, ending the Ba‘th’s political monopoly and opening the way for the licensing of eleven new parties. These reforms have been widely criticised as too little, too late. The United States dismissed this month’s Syrian elections as “ludicrous.”

Both the Algerian and Syrian regimes are, of course, fully aware that anything like a genuine process of political reform would eventually lead to the dismantling of the existing power structures, something neither is yet prepared to tolerate.

In both countries, the turnout for the elections was low, either because of considerable apathy as in Algeria, or in Syria because of continued violence. Nevertheless, 7,195 candidates in Syria from 12 parties competed for 250 parliamentary seats, while in Algeria — where 44 parties took part, as well as about 150 independents — the Ministry of Interior claimed that 44.38% of the electorate cast their vote, a figure the opposition promptly denounced as fraudulent. As the Algerian proverb has it, “It is when the voting booth is empty that the ballot box is full.”

Both regimes share a fear of radical Islam. In Algeria, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) has been dissolved and any reincarnation of it forbidden. When it was poised to win the 1991 elections, the regime intervened forcibly, scrapping the second round. This precipitated a savage 10-year civil war in the 1990s, which resulted in the death of between 100,000 and 200,000 people. Memories of that cruel contest are still fresh, which perhaps accounts for a certain disillusion with parliamentary politics.

To neutralise jihadi extremists, the Algerian regime has in recent years encouraged a number of moderate Islamist parties to emerge. Members of these parties have been included in coalition governments. Three moderate Islamic parties have formed a so-called Alliance for a Green Algeria (Green for Islam rather than ecology), which was widely expected to do well at this month’s elections. But, contrary to all predictions, the Alliance did poorly: The number of its parliamentary seats slumped from 72 to 48. It did, however, top the vote in capital Algiers — the country’s largest constituency — winning 15 out of the 37 seats. In contrast, the FLN won 220 seats, nearly doubling its representation. It will, as usual, dominate the 462-seat National People’s Assembly, as well as any future coalition government — if it decides to form one. Its potential partners are its sister party, the National Democratic Rally (68 seats) and the Alliance for a Green Algeria (48 seats). The premiership in the next government may even go to an Alliance member.

Some would argue that political Islam in Algeria has been tamed by inclusion in the system — unlike the situation in, say, Tunisia, Egypt and even Morocco where Islamists, repressed for decades, have emerged triumphant at elections. Algeria may indeed have broken the pattern of militant Islamic resurgence which has been such a striking feature of the Arab uprisings. Indeed, a remarkable result of the Algerian elections was the surge in women deputies. Women won 115 seats, some 30% of the total — surely a first in any Arab country.

Much like the FIS in Algeria, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is also banned — indeed it has been outlawed since its armed uprising against President Hafiz al-Asad in 1976-1982, which was brutally crushed at Hama in February 1982 with the loss of at least 10,000 lives, and possibly many more. Many Muslim Brothers fled abroad at that time, where they continued to harbour a virulent hatred of the Asad regime. The memory of these violent events still haunts the country. Fear of a radical Islamist movement bent on vengeance goes some way to explaining the Syrian regime’s ruthlessness in dealing with the uprising.

A revived Muslim Brotherhood is today the most powerful element in the opposition to President Bashar al-Asad. The exiled Syrian National Council, the Turkey-based umbrella group under which the Muslim Brothers operate, has come out openly in favour of arming the opposition, while also calling for foreign military intervention. Jihadi terrorism — such as the two massive blasts in Damascus on May 10 which killed 55 people and injured 372 — has become an ugly fact of life.

Syria has evidently been destabilised by the opposition’s hit-and-run guerrilla campaign, but it has not yet experienced a civil war on the Algerian model. That may well be what awaits the country if the opposition and its foreign backers continue their efforts to topple the regime — and thereby weaken its Iranian ally — whatever the cost in Syrian lives. These foreign backers include the United States (with Israel in the background), Qatar, Saudi Arabia and France (when Nicolas Sarkozy was President. François Hollande, France’s new President, is thought to be less hostile to Syria and Iran than his predecessor.)

Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria and Bashar al-Asad in Syria are incumbents of a powerful institution — the Presidency. They occupy the front of the political scene in their respective countries. But behind the presidency — and propping it up — are the intelligence services, both civilian and military. In Algeria, military intelligence is thought to be the place where all major decisions are taken and all senior appointments made. In Syria, the civilian intelligence services seem the more influential, but this is an opaque and changing scene.

Compared to Syria, which is now in torment, Algeria gives an image of relative stability, no doubt due to its massive oil revenues of some $60bn last year. This has allowed the regime to buy off some of its critics. Syria can only dream of such wealth. Both countries, however, live in a dangerous environment: Algeria is flanked by Libya, still alarmingly awash with guns and gunmen; by Morocco, with which it is still at odds over the future of the Western Sahara; and further south by Mali, now in the grip of a Tuareg rebellion and of terrorist Islamist groups.

Syria’s situation is even more perilous. The armed uprising it is facing at home is only one of its problems. It also finds itself confronting powerful external enemies who are striving to bring down not only the Syrian regime itself but the whole Tehran-Damascus-Hizbullah ‘resistance axis’. Overshadowing Syria’s fortunes — as it has for the past six decades — is the menacing presence on its borders of an expansionist Israel, armed to the teeth, determined to impose its will on all its neighbours. Neither in Algiers nor Damascus is political life much of a holiday.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2012 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 May 2012
Word Count: 1,175
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Is the Sahel about to become the new Afghanistan? A band of territory immediately south of the waterless Sahara, it has become a lawless haven for smugglers, kidnappers, armed Islamist groups and hungry nomadic tribesmen. It is one of the poorest regions of the world.

An unforeseen consequence of NATO’s intervention in Libya has been further to destabilise the Sahel, creating new opportunities for criminals and terrorists. Tens of thousands of men from the Sahel, who had gone north to work in Libya or had been recruited as mercenaries by Muammar al-Qadhafi, headed for home when Libya sank into chaos. Many took with them weapons plundered from Qadhafi’s stores.

The impact on Mali — a hinge state between North Africa and West Africa — has attracted the anxious attention of neighbouring states and of Western counterterrorist forces, such as America’s Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP), part of the US Africa Command, which is thought to spend $100m a year in boosting the anti-terrorist capability of the Sahel.

Large numbers of Tuareg were among the men returning from Libya. These nomadic Berbers, dispersed between southern Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, have long yearned for an independent homeland of their own. Mali has been particularly vulnerable. Over the past half-century, the Tuareg have risen several times against the government in Bamako — and been put down or bought off. The first Tuareg rebellions in Mali occurred in the 1960s, when several of the countries of the region became independent. They were followed by several others, with settlements usually brokered by Algeria. Each time, the Tuareg were promised development projects, but these never materialised. Mali simply did not have the means.

Mali is not alone in suffering from hardship. Right across the Sahel, millions of families are undernourished. Anthony Lake, head of UNICEF, has said that the drought-stricken region is today threatened by famine as never before. A World Bank consultant, Serge Michailof, has estimated that rural development in the Sahel would require an investment of 1.5bn Euros a year for ten years.

Such is the background to the Tuareg rebellion which broke out in Mali‘s vast northern region on 17 January this year. Bamako’s small, ill-equipped army was in no state to engage the rebels. Its senior officers, grown rich by corruption, had no appetite for a perilous campaign.

It was then that a group of junior officers made a violent entry on the scene. Outraged at the inaction of their government, they mutinied at the Kati military base, some 15 kilometres from Bamako. Marching on the capital, their mutiny turned into a coup d’etat, which on the 22 March overthrew President Amadou Toumani Touré, widely known as ATT. (A loyal officer managed to smuggle him out of the presidential palace to safety abroad.)

Naming his junta the “National Committee for the Revival of Democracy and the Restoration of the State,” the leader of the revolution, Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, 39, called on the people of the north to resist the Tuareg rebels. He was no semi-literate hot-head, but a former instructor at Mali’s military academy who had attended several military courses in the United States. He knew English and had been awarded a diploma as a military interpreter.

Unfortunately, the coup in Bamako seems to have fired Tuareg ambitions. Little more than a week later, Touareg rebels, calling themselves the MNLA (Movement National de Liberation de l’Azawad) — their forces stiffened by defectors from Qadhafi’s army — took control of the whole north of the country. As they advanced, the Mali army fled.

Sanogo’s coup and the Tuareg rebellion alarmed Mali’s neighbours. When President ATT fled the country, ECOWAS, the 15-member Economic Community of West African States, chaired by President Alassane Ouattara of the Ivory Coast, pressured Captain Sanogo to agree to return Mali to constitutional rule. A deal on 6 April provided for the appointment of an interim president — the former speaker of Parliament, Dioncounda Traoré – and of a prime minister — Sheikh Modibo Diarra – whose task was to form a national unity government and conduct elections. (Prime Minister Modibo Diarra is, in fact, a distinguished French-trained astrophysicist who spent 13 years working for NASA, America’s space agency, and later headed Microsoft Africa.) The idea was to ease Capt Sanogo and his junta out of power.

But Sanogo was no push-over. Resisting attempts to unseat him, in mid-April he arrested 22 political and military opponents and transferred them to the army camp at Kati. He also made sure that three key ministries in the new government — defence, security and territorial administration – were in the hands of his men. He rejected an ECOWAS plan to send 3,000 peacekeepers to Mali and opposed the extension of the transitional phase to 12 months saying that the new president and prime minister would have to leave office within 40 days.

Faced with this challenge, ECOWAS could not decide what to do. Was it to go to war? Even if Sanogo were removed, who could recapture the North from the Tuaregs? It could not be done without French, American, or perhaps Algerian air cover, but none of these powers was eager to intervene. Reports that the rebels were resorting to pillage, rape and the recruitment of child-soldiers struck terror in Bamako. Some 300,000 people were said to have fled the fighting and were living rough along the borders of Algeria, Mauretania, Burkina Faso and Niger.

The real fear, however, is not so much of the Tuaregs as of armed Islamist groups operating in the same northern region. Of these the most alarming is AQIM (Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb) which, under its three ‘emirs’, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, Abu Zayd and Yahya Abu al-Hammam, has recruited fighters from Algeria, Mauretania, Libya, Tunisia and Nigeria. Afrique Asie, a well-informed monthly, reported that AQIM’s hostage-taking has yielded $183m in ransom money!

Another radical group is Ansar al-Din, which, under its Tuareg chief Iyad ag Ghali, was set on establishing an Islamic state in Mali and indeed an Islamist caliphate across the whole Sahel. It has already captured the northern Mali towns of Kidal, Timbuktu and Gao. A third more shadowy group is the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, which has claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on 3 March against a police post in Tamenrasset in southern Algeria, and for the kidnapping of the Algerian Consul at Gao in Mali on 5 April. Algeria is clearly worried at the emergence on its borders of an independent Tuareg republic, harbouring militant Islamists. Memories are still fresh of its bitter war of the 1990s against its own Islamists, which led to the death of some 200,000 people.

The Sahel is evidently in a deeply disturbed state. Millions are close to starvation. Weak regional states are desperately in need of aid. Violent groups conduct their violent business unchecked. But the world looks elsewhere.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2012 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 08 May 2012
Word Count: 1,138
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Israel’s hard-line Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is facing an unprecedented challenge. In office for more than three years, he had come to seem immovable. But leading figures of Israel’s security establishment, as well as prominent American Jews, have started openly to contest two of his most fundamental policies: his portrayal of Iran’s nuclear programme as an ‘existential’ danger to Israel, raising the spectre of an imminent Holocaust; and his steady expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, with a view, as many suspect, of creating a ‘Greater Israel’.

The challenge to Netanyahu could have far-reaching consequences. For one thing, it appears to have removed any likelihood of an early Israeli attack on Iran, such as Netanyahu has threatened and trumpeted for a year and more; for another, it has revived the possibility of a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a solution many had thought moribund, if not actually dead.

Netanyahu’s most virulent critics happen to be some of Israel’s most decorated army and intelligence chiefs. For example, Yuval Diskin, recently retired as the head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, told a meeting in late April that he had “no confidence in the current leadership of the State of Israel, which could lead Israel into a war with Iran or a regional war.” He accused Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak of taking decisions “based on messianic sentiments. …I saw them up close, they are not Messiahs…These are not people whose hands I would like to have on the steering- wheel.” Far from ending Iran’s nuclear programme, Diskin predicted that an Israeli attack on Iran could result in “a dramatic acceleration of Iran’s nuclear programme.”

Israel’s current Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Benny Gantz, is another senior officer who has openly contested Netanyahu’s apocalyptic rhetoric. “I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people,” he told the Haaretz newspaper in April, adding that he did not believe Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would “want to go the extra mile” to acquire nuclear weapons. Mossad’s current chief, Tamir Pardo, has also contradicted Netanyahu by stating that Iran did not pose an existential threat to the Jewish state.

For his part, Meir Dagan, a celebrated former Mossad chief, has ridiculed Netanyahu’s war-mongering by saying that the idea of attacking Iran was “the stupidest thing I have ever heard,” and that a pre-emptive Israeli strike would be “reckless and irresponsible.” In an interview with Ben Caspit of Ma’ariv on 27 April, he also inveighed against the small parties in Natanyahu’s coalition which, with their own narrow agendas, rob the Prime Minister of any real freedom of action because, to keep his coalition alive, he must bow to their wishes.

Dagan was particularly critical of the Haredim, members of the most conservative form of Orthodox Judaism, who do not serve in the army, pay less tax than other Israelis, and seek to promote sex segregation in Israel — and also in New York! Dagan believes that “the spirit of the law” demands “an equal distribution of the burden among all the citizens.” The Haredim, he declared, should be compelled to serve in the army, while the Arabs of Israel should also serve, if not in the army, then in the police, the fire brigade, or in Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross or Red Crescent. Ephraim Halevy, another former Mossad chief, has also stated publicly that “ultra-orthodox radicalization poses a bigger threat than [Iranian President] Ahmadinehad.” He, too, has declared that Iran poses no existential danger to Israel.

Shaul Mofaz, a former chief of staff and defence minister and now the new head of Kadima, Israel’s centre party, said recently on television that an attack on Iran could be disastrous. Netanyahu, he argued scathingly, “wants to create an image that he is the protector of Israel.” He accused the prime minister of using Iran as a tool to divert attention from last September’s protests, when 450,000 Israelis poured into the streets of Tel Aviv to demand social justice.

Such recent statements by Israel’s former and current security chiefs show how seriously Netanyahu’s views are being challenged and how impatient many Israelis are for change.

On the Palestine question, two remarkable articles, published in the International Herald Tribune on April 25 (reproduced from the New York Times), also point to a wave of new thinking among prominent Jews. In one article, Ami Ayalon, a former commander of the Israeli Navy and a former head of Shin Bet, advocates a “radically new unilateral approach” to the Palestine problem, which would set “the conditions for a territorial compromise based on the principle of two states for two people, which is essential for Israel’s future as both a Jewish and a democratic state.”

To promote his ideas and rally supporters, Ayalon has created an organisation called Blue White Future. He argues that Israel does not need to wait for a final-status deal with the Palestinians. Instead, it should renounce all territorial claims east of the West Bank security barrier, end all settlement construction there, as well as in Arab East Jerusalem, and plan to re-locate to Israel 100,000 settlers who live beyond the barrier. Israel, he says, should “enact a voluntary compensation and absorption law for settlers east of the fence.” In the absence of an accord with the Palestinians, he believes Israel should begin to create a two-state reality on the ground.

On the same page of the International Herald Tribune, Stephen Robert, a prominent Jewish philanthropist and former investment banker, now chairman of the Source of Hope Foundation, calls for a “reset” in Jewish thinking. Israel, he argues, is no longer “a vulnerable little state.” It has become “the most powerful military force in the Middle East.” Its existence is threatened, however, by the fact that it “has occupied the territory of 4 million Palestinians for over 40 years. Virtually imprisoned the Palestinians lack freedom of movement and civil or political rights. They are subject to imprisonment without charges. They often lack water and jobs and are citizens of nowhere…”

In a passionate appeal, he added: “Israelis must understand that in liberating the Palestinians they will also liberate themselves… A state that persecutes, deprives and denies its neighbours in a manner so similar to what our tormentors did to us cannot be acceptable.”

Peter Beinart’s recent book, The Crisis of Zionism (Times Books, 2012) provides yet another indication of the growing realisation among Jews that Israel has taken a wrong turn and must urgently change course. Beinart advocates boycotting products from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied territories — as a UK supermarket chain, the Co-Operative Group, the country’s fifth largest food retailer, has just done.

At a time when Israel is celebrating its 64th birthday, something like a wind of change is blowing through the minds of its most senior security officials and some of its most fervent overseas supporters. The Palestinians, and the Arab world as a whole, should hurry to respond positively to this most welcome development.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2012 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 May 2012
Word Count: 1,233
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The gloomy topic of Afghanistan is expected to dominate the NATO summit in Chicago on 20-21 May, when the assembled leaders will have to wrestle with three uncomfortable facts:

• The first is that talks with the Taliban have broken down, removing any immediate prospect of a negotiated exit from the conflict. This conjures up the spectre of a forced NATO retreat — in other words of a humiliating defeat.

This month provided worrying evidence of the Taliban’s growing ability to mount coordinated attacks all over the country, even in areas of maximum security. On 15 April, Taliban suicide fighters infiltrated into Kabul and attacked the heavily-defended Embassy Quarter and Parliament. In the ensuing gunfights, some 36 insurgents were killed as well as 11 members of the Afghan security forces.

• The second uncomfortable fact is that public opinion in the United States and its allies is weary of the war and seems unconvinced that fighting and dying in distant Afghanistan makes them safe from terrorist attack. The Obama administration has not yet come round to this view, as may be seen from a recent statement by Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Kabul: “To get out before the Afghans have a full grip on security, which is a couple of years out, would be to invite the Taliban, Haqqani [a Pakistan-based Islamist network], and Al Qaeda back in and set the stage for another 9/11. And that, I think, is an unacceptable risk for any American.”

But is Crocker right? Some U.S. allies clearly do not think so. One or two of them have already announced their decision to quit before the previously agreed 2014 deadline. Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard said this week that Australia’s 1,550 soldiers would shift from a front-line role to a largely support function by mid-2013. At Chicago, she is expected to try to persuade her fellow leaders that mid-2013, not end-2014, should be the date to end NATO’s combat role in Afghanistan. France’s François Hollande has gone one better. If he is elected President of France on May 6 — as is widely expected — he has pledged to bring France’s 3,550 troops home by the end of this year.

• Thirdly, because of what it sees as a continuing terrorist threat, the United States seems determined to maintain some sort of long-term presence in Afghanistan — much to the displeasure of Iran and Pakistan. NATO leaders are bound to squabble in Chicago over who will foot the bill for continued assistance to Afghanistan after 2014. Because budgets are tight, NATO members have agreed that it will no longer be possible to fund and equip an Afghan army of 352,000 — an overly-ambitious target which is expected to be reached this year. Instead, the force is to be reduced to 230,000, at a cost to donors of about $7bn a year. The United States will probably have to pay the lion’s share, with the rest coming from other NATO countries.

But if the Afghan army is slimmed down, as is proposed, what will happen to the 120,000 men laid off? Armed and trained, they might join the insurgents — a nightmare scenario for NATO. A disturbing development this year has been a rash of incidents in which Afghan soldiers turned their guns on their NATO trainers. Since January, 16 NATO troops have been killed by Afghan soldiers.

Agreement was reached last weekend on a draft U.S.-Afghan strategic pact, providing for counter-terrorist cooperation and U.S. economic aid for at least another decade after 2014. In the lengthy negotiations, two contentious issues were resolved which opened the way for agreement on the strategic pact. First, the United States agreed to hand over to Afghans the detention centre at Parwan, where suspected insurgents are held and interrogated, and secondly, the United States agreed to give Afghans control over night raids on houses of terrorist suspects by U.S. Special Forces. To the outrage of many Afghans, these night raids often involve the forced entry into houses where families are asleep. The violation of the privacy of women has caused particular anger.

One wonders when the United States will grasp that its counter-terrorist policies create more terrorists than are killed by its drone attacks, air strikes and other violent acts. America’s ongoing ‘war on terror’ has aroused fierce anti-American feeling in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and other Muslim countries, undermining the legitimacy of leaders in these countries, who are seen to be collaborating with the United States in waging war on their own people.

Earlier this month, the United States offered a $10m reward for information leading to the arrest of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group. Apparently undaunted, Hafiz Saeed continues to criss-cross Pakistan making fiery anti-American and anti-Indian speeches. He does not seem to be in danger of arrest. Pakistani opinion is still inflamed by a U.S. air strike last November which accidentally killed 24 Pakistani border troops. A Financial Times report from Islamabad this month noted that United States-Pakistan relations had sunk to their lowest ebb in a decade.

Several shocking incidents have greatly damaged America’s reputation and seem to point to poor training of young American soldiers and a breakdown of discipline. In January, a video was released showing American soldiers urinating on dead Afghan insurgents; in February, the accidental burning of Korans at Bagram Air Base led to widespread rioting. In March, a U.S. sergeant went on a rampage killing 17 Afghan civilians, including women and children; in April, the Los Angeles Times published photos (allegedly taken in 2010) showing grinning American soldiers of the 82nd airborne division posing with mangled body parts of Afghan insurgents.

The United States might perhaps ask itself why it has aroused such hate in the Islamic world and what it might do to restore its reputation. It might care to consider the following suggestions: Wind down the ‘war on terror’ and stop killing Muslims; put a firm check on Israeli settlement building and promote the creation of a Palestinian state; reduce the U.S. military presence in the Gulf States by reverting instead to an ‘over the horizon’ naval presence.

Above all, the United States should strive with maximum goodwill to reach a fair settlement with Iran over the nuclear issue. In return for a verifiable Iranian pledge to stop enriching uranium above the limit allowed by the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, the United States should end its economic warfare against Tehran. Instead of inciting the Arabs against Iran — and thereby fuelling Sunni-Shia antagonism — the United States should encourage Arab Gulf States to include Iran in the region’s security architecture.

Washington seems unaware that it will need Iran’s help if peace and stability are ever to be established in Iraq and Afghanistan. Crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic are unlikely to win its cooperation. This is not the least of the many incoherent features of American policy.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2012 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 24 April 2012
Word Count: 1,141
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Although it is too early to make a judgement, it looks as if Israel’s Iran policy has back-fired and may result in a very different outcome from the one Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has long sought.

Israel’s thinking these past three years has been that punitive sanctions, cyber warfare and the assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientists must eventually force a crippled Islamic Republic to agree to ‘zero enrichment’ of uranium – that is to say to dismantle its entire nuclear programme. This, it was hoped, would open the way for ‘regime change’ in Tehran.

To bring about sufficiently severe pressure on Iran, Israel’s strategy has been to threaten to attack. It calculated — rightly as it turned out — that the United States and its allies would not dare call its bluff. Instead — to head off an Israeli attack, which they feared could trigger a regional war with unpredictable and potentially catastrophic consequences — they worked to bring Iran’s economy to its knees.

Israel’s strategy was working. Everything seemed to be going its way. Punitive sanctions on Iran were beginning to bite. Impatient for regime change, pro-Israeli propagandists in the United States had even started to call for covert action in support of the Iranian opposition.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, then stepped into the fray. Confounding the hawks, she made an offer to Iran to restart negotiations, using a conciliatory tone quite different from the usual hectoring heard from Washington, Paris and London, and wholly at odds with Israel’s relentless sabre-rattling. Iran responded positively to Ashton’s invitation. Its first meeting with the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) took place in Istanbul on 14 April, and, by all accounts, was a surprising success.

Saeed Jalili, the chief Iranian negotiator — who had joined Catherine Ashton for an informal dinner at the Iranian consulate the previous evening — spoke of “a positive approach.” She, in turn, called the discussions “constructive and useful.” As a framework for the talks, she listed a number of principles, which must have reassured the Iranians and caused Israeli hawks to grit their teeth.

The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, she declared, must be a key basis for the talks. But the NPT allows signatories to enrich uranium on their own territory up to 3.5%, for power generation and other peaceful purposes. Ashton thus seemed to be sending a signal that Iran’s right to do so would be recognised. It looked as if the P5+1 had dropped Israel’s demand for zero enrichment. Instead, the suggestion was that the focus would be on getting Iran to stop enriching uranium to 20%, once it was guaranteed supplies for the Tehran Research Reactor, which needs uranium enriched to this level to produce isotopes for the treatment of Iran’s cancer patients. Since President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said that Iran would stop producing 20% uranium if it was assured of supplies from abroad, the glimmer of a settlement seemed in sight.

Moreover, Catherine Ashton also said that the negotiators would “be guided by the principle of the step-by-step approach and reciprocity.” This reference to a gradualist approach and to mutual concessions gave a strong indication that sanctions would be lifted in stages once Iran provided convincing evidence that it was not seeking nuclear weapons and would accept intrusive inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. She had evidently decided to give some credence to the 2005 fatwa issued by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which he forbade the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons.

At the close of the 10-hour Istanbul meeting, Iran and the P5+1 agreed to hold their next meeting in Baghdad on 23 May, in what promises to be a prolonged series of talks.

Netanyahu’s angry reaction was fully in character. “Iran has been granted a ‘freebie’” he declared sourly, “to continue enrichment without any limitation, any inhibition. Iran should take immediate steps,” he stormed, “to stop all enrichment, take out all enrichment material and dismantle the nuclear facility at Qom. I believe that the world’s greatest practitioner of terrorism must not have the opportunity to develop atomic bombs.”

This shrill accusation seemed to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Quite apart from its continued oppression and dispossession of the Palestinians, Israel has a long record of murdering its political opponents, and is widely believed to have been responsible for the assassination of five Iranian nuclear scientists in the last two years, as well as for introducing the Stuxnet virus into Iran’s computer systems — clear acts of state terrorism.

With crucial help from the French, Israel built its first atomic bombs in the 1960s, nearly half a century ago. They were ready for use if the 1967 war, which Israel launched against the Arabs that year, had turned against it. Most experts today estimate Israeli stockpile of nuclear weapons at between 75 and 150 warheads. Israel also has a second strike capability in the form of nuclear-tipped missiles on its German-built submarines.

Netanyahu claims that the Islamic Republic poses an ‘existential threat’ to Israel. There is not a scrap of evidence to support this claim. The Iranian President did say something to the effect that Israel would one day “pass from the pages of time” — a phrase Israel miss-translated, no doubt for propaganda purposes, to mean an Iranian plan to “wipe Israel off the map.” Quite the contrary, it is Iran that would risk annihilation if it ever attempted to attack Israel. In addition to its large nuclear arsenal and sophisticated delivery systems, Israel has a vastly more powerful conventional military capability than Iran, largely supplied by the United States. The U.S. has indeed pledged to maintain Israel’s military superiority over all regional states — its so-called Qualitative Military Edge — a pledge which has been written into U.S. law.

What, therefore, is the reason for Israel’s anxiety? It fears that if Iran were to build a nuclear weapon — or merely acquire the ability to do so — Israel’s freedom of action would be restricted. It would no longer be able to strike its neighbours at will without risking being hit back. The simple truth is that Israel wants to deny its neighbours the ability to defend themselves. None is to be allowed to acquire a deterrent capability! Israel detests Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza because these resistance movements have acquired some limited capacity to retaliate against Israel’s assaults. For this reason Israel calls them terrorist organisations and blames Iran for arming them.

Netanyahu has long opposed talks between Iran and the international community, and no doubt prays for them to collapse. The pro-Israeli lobby in the United States will very probably be mobilised in this cause. But if Catherine Ashton gets her way, if the negotiations with Iran are successful and the spectre of war is dispelled, Israel may have to live with a small dent in its regional supremacy.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2012 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 17 April 2012
Word Count: 1,150
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