Agence Global

Patrick Seale, “The Gulf Cooperation Council and Iran”

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In spite of bluster from belligerent hawks in the United States and Israel, it is highly unlikely that either country will attack Iran in the near future. Israel will not dare attack Iran alone, while President Barack Obama has made it clear – if not perhaps quite clear enough — that, after its costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has no intention of allowing itself to be pushed or pulled into another disastrous Middle East war.

The United States is cutting $500bn from its military budget over the next decade. It is trying to get out of Afghanistan without admitting defeat. Instead of “boots on the ground,” it is switching to cyber warfare and unmanned drones in its counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist efforts.

Instead of a hot war against Iran, the United States and its European allies are waging economic warfare against Tehran with the declared aim of forcing it to suspend uranium enrichment. The undeclared aim would seem to be regime change.

On 31 December, Obama signed into law a new set of sanctions against Iran’s oil exports and Central Bank. On 23 January, the European Union followed suit. On the same day, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions on Bank Tejerat, Iran’s third largest bank. As the sanctions noose tightens, the Iranian rial has lost half its value since October.

Faced with this severe punishment of a neighbour, the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council need to ask themselves a number of tough questions. Is the economic warfare waged against Iran in the Arab interest? Economic warfare could spark something hotter. Any conflict in the region would inevitably expose the Arab countries, their populations and their vulnerable oil terminals and desalination plants to possible attack.

Arab leaders must surely be aware that if Iran is prevented from exporting its oil, it will do its utmost — as it has already threatened — to prevent its neighbours from making up the shortfall by increasing their own production. The situation is fraught with danger.

Iran may well view the sanctions and the boycott as an act of war. Seething with anger at the murder of four of its nuclear scientists — widely believed to be the work of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad — Iran may well retaliate. With tensions running high, there is always the possibility of war by accident, if not by design.

Negotiations not sanctions are the way to defuse the crisis. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, has suggested renewed talks between Iran and the P5+1 (The five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany). But the declared aim of these talks is to compel Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment. Iran will not submit meekly to such diktats and sanctions. No Iranian leader could survive if he agreed to give up the right to enrich uranium for peaceful industrial purposes — as is allowed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which Iran is a signatory. The humiliation would be too great.

In any event, whereas the NPT forbids the production of nuclear weapons, it does not forbid developing the capability to do so. Experts from the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are due to visit Iran from 29 to 31 January in an attempt to resolve this and other outstanding issues.

If the Western powers are unable or unwilling to start serious negotiations with Tehran, the Gulf Cooperation Council should seize the initiative and propose engaging talks itself. The Arabs and Iran have a strong common interest in safeguarding the security of the vital Gulf region. To open the way for GCC-Iranian talks, the Arab Gulf States might pledge not to allow their territory to be used for an attack on Iran. In return, Iran might pledge not to use the Shi‘a communities of the region to disturb the existing political order. That could provide the starting point for closer security cooperation. Would not this be the best way to protect the region from the fall-out of a possible conflict?

The region’s geography cannot be changed. Whether the Arab Gulf states like it or not, Iran is their neighbour. It has many common interests with them, as well as many trade and family ties. Both Arabs and Iranians should do their utmost to bridge the Sunni-Shi‘a divide. It is folly for them to allow events which happened fourteen hundred years ago to shape their present fears and dictate their current policies.

Israel has for years led the propaganda campaign against Iran. Its strategy has been to blackmail the United States and Europe into imposing crippling sanctions on Iran by threatening to attack Iran itself. Israel would dearly love the United States to destroy the regime of the Mullahs, in much the same way as pro-Israeli neocons in George W. Bush’s administration managed to push the U.S. into overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The consequences of that war were catastrophic for Iraq, for the Arab world as a whole, and for the United States itself.

What are Obama’s real motives in sanctioning Iran? First, he is seeking to maintain America’s hegemony over a region rich in oil and gas. Second, facing an election this year, he cannot afford to let his Republican rivals accuse him of being weak in support for Israel. He needs to placate Israel’s powerful friends in Congress, in the press, in the many pro-Israeli lobbies and think-tanks, as well as in his own administration. He must do nothing to offend Jewish American donors and voters. He is, in any event, committed to protecting Israel’s regional military supremacy. Although he may disagree with several aspects of Israeli policy and have no love for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, he is obliged by U.S. law to guarantee Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME) — that is to say its military superiority over all Arab states. U.S. arms sales to Arab countries have to be cleared with Israel, to ensure that they pose no threat to it.

Is American and Israeli hegemony over the Middle East in the Arab interest? Is it not time for Arab leaders to assert their independence from these powers and distance themselves from quarrels which do not concern them?

The astonishing aspect of the present highly dangerous situation is that there is absolutely no proof that Iran has decided to produce nuclear weapons. America’s National Intelligence Estimates for 2007 and 2010 — the joint work of its 17 intelligence agencies – concluded that Iran had ceased work on developing nuclear weapons in 2003. There was no conclusive evidence that it had resumed such work. The paradox, however, is that the more Iran is threatened and sanctioned, the more likely it is that it will seek the protection of nuclear weapons.

The security of the GCC must surely lie in engaging with Iran rather than allowing itself to be sucked into a quarrel which could end in bitter tears.

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 January 2012
Word Count: 1,139
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Patrick Seale, “Can the Assad Regime Survive?”

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President Bashar al-Assad of Syria does not seem to be in any immediate danger of collapse or overthrow. In spite of confronting a popular uprising at home and severe pressures from abroad, he has — for the moment at least — weathered the storm. His difficulties, however, are immense. In a speech on 10 January he described the crisis he is facing as “a battle unprecedented in Syria’s modern history.”

Several authoritative sources, both inside and outside Syria, share the view that, having held his enemies at bay since last March, Assad stands a good chance of survival for several more months. His longer-term prospects, however, remain uncertain.

As a skilful tactician, he has played for time. His agreement to allow in Arab League monitors has relieved him of some pressure for a month, and possibly two. In dealing with the protesters, he has used carrot as well as stick, such as his recent amnesty for political prisoners, his offer of an immediate dialogue with the opposition, and his renewed promise of a revised Constitution, to be put to an early referendum, followed by multi-party elections in the early summer. Two new parties were granted licenses this week.

Assad’s long-term survival, however will depend, sources say, on whether Syria’s close ally, Iran manages to stand firm. Already under crippling Western sanctions, Iran faces what looks like an attempt, not just to halt its programme of uranium enrichment — which Israel sees as a challenge to its own nuclear weapons monopoly – but to change the Tehran regime altogether. The United States and Israel — supported by a number of European and Arab nations, who have joined in for their own commercial, sectarian or strategic interests — have launched a determined assault on the tripartite alliance of Tehran, Damascus and Hizballah. The crime of this trio is to have dared challenge America’s military hegemony in the Gulf and Israel’s military hegemony in the Levant. The three allies – Iran, Syria and Hizballah – know that they stand or fall together. The battle is likely to be fierce.

Iran is facing a systematic campaign aimed at subverting its nuclear facilities by cyber attack, the murder of its scientists, and the undermining of its economy by a boycott of its oil exports and Central Bank. Israel and its American friends are also sparing no effort to trigger a U.S. attack on Iran – much as they pushed the United States into invading and destroying Iraq. If Iran cracks under the pressure of sanctions and military threats, Syria could fall. Hizballah in turn, stripped of its external patrons, could then face another Israeli attempt to destroy it, as in 2006.

Bashar al-Assad’s attention is focussed on the danger to Syria from this ‘foreign conspiracy’. As he explained in his speech, it is only the latest of many such conspiracies: When Iraq was invaded in 2003, “Syria was threatened with bombing and invasion”; the same enemies exploited the assassination of Rafiq Hariri in 2005 to expel Syrian forces from Lebanon and attempt to bring down the Syrian regime; in 2006, Israel invaded Lebanon; in 2007, it bombed an alleged Syrian nuclear facility; in 2008, it attacked Gaza, each time exposing Syria to danger. But, Assad declared defiantly, “We will never allow them to defeat Syria… Resistance is the core of our identity.”

Assad sees his domestic opponents as allies of his foreign enemies, rather than as legitimate protesters against corruption, police brutality, severe youth unemployment and a lack of basic freedoms. That some of these opponents have taken up arms, killed soldiers and policemen and destroyed public property has served him well. He is resolved to “strike these murderous terrorists hard… There can be no compromise with terrorism.”

Such is his mindset, and such his justification for the bloody repression of the past ten months — the large-scale killings, mass imprisonment, beatings and torture. These brutal methods have opened up a profound rift in Syrian society; they have sharpened sectarian tensions. They have gravely damaged Syria’s image and its international reputation. The internal wound will be difficult to heal. How will Syrians learn to live together again? One Syrian source compared the situation with that which the French faced when, once the German occupation had ended, résistants and collaborators set about rebuilding their fractured society after World War 2.

Tourism in Syria has collapsed, the stock market has lost 50% of its value and the exchange rate for the dollar has fallen on the black market from 49 to 67 Syrian pounds. Fuel supplies are running short and the budget deficit has surged. But Syria enjoys a large measure of food autonomy and, if it tightens its belt, can probably survive sanctions and boycotts.

The most important asset which keeps the regime afloat is the continuing loyalty of the army and security services. Defections have been few. So long as this remains the case, the opposition will be unable to topple the regime. Nor can the opposition count on foreign military intervention: No Western or Arab nation is prepared to use force. Turkey might possibly consider intervening if its own vital interests were threatened — by, say, active Syrian support for the PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party which has taken up arms against the Turkish state.

At the UN Security Council, Russia and China will protect Syria by vetoing any resolution authorising the use of force. Syria can probably also count on Iraq, Algeria and Sudan to prevent any internationalisation of the crisis. America’s decline – its retreat from Iraq, its failure in Afghanistan, its weariness with foreign adventures, its defence cuts — are also much to Syria’s advantage.

The regime has two other important advantages: the opposition’s failure to unite behind a single leader or a single political project, and the fact that a good slice of the population still supports the regime. Minorities such as Alawis, Christians and Druze, as well as civil servants, officers, leading merchants in Damascus and Aleppo, and the new bourgeoisie — comprising some tens of thousands of people, created by the neo-liberal economic model of the past decade — are all wary of regime change. They do not feel represented by the street protesters or the exiled opposition.

When Syrians see the terrible devastation caused by the civil wars on their borders in Lebanon and Iraq, they dread suffering the same fate. The fear of a sectarian civil war is on everyone’s mind. The Syrian Muslim Brothers, by far the strongest element in the opposition, are evidently waiting to avenge the crushing of their uprising at Hama in 1982. Beginning in the late 1970s, they mounted a terrorist campaign against the regime of Hafiz al-Assad, Bashar’s father. In one of their terrorist operations, 83 Alawi cadets were gunned down in Aleppo in 1979. When they seized Hama, they massacred Ba‘th party members and officials. The government sent in troops to retake the town, killing over 10,000 people. The exact numbers are in dispute, but the spectre of Hama hangs over the scene to this day, inflaming passions on both sides.

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 January 2012
Word Count: 1,167
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Patrick Seale, “The Inexorable Advance towards a Greater Israel”

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This past year has dealt a heavy blow — perhaps even a terminal one — to the project, long supported by the international community, of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of two states. When the United States itself proved unable to halt Israel’s relentless land grab, it seemed that nothing and nobody could rein in Israel’s iron-willed ambition to expand its borders towards a “Greater Israel.”

What will the immediate future bring? In the continued absence of firm international intervention, the likeliest scenario is that Israel will seek to consolidate its hold over 40 percent of the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, either by settlement expansion or outright annexation. The main centres of Arab population, such as Nablus, Jericho and Ramallah, would be fenced off, although Israel might allow them corridors to Jordan. This first stage of the project would, of course, be portrayed by Israel as a painful concession.

If Israel managed to get away with it, the next stage could be a good deal more radical, and could possibly involve the expulsion of large numbers of Palestinians, probably under the cover of war as occurred in 1948 and 1967, so as to complete the creation of a Greater Israel between the sea and the river.

After the experience of the past two years, no one should have the slightest doubt that Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition is utterly determined to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank. Bantustans, for a while perhaps, but a Palestinian state, never! Netanyahu is known to be profoundly influenced by his father, the historian Benzion Natanyahu, now 101 years old, who was once the secretary of Ze’ev Jabotinsky – “the father of Revisionist Zionism” — and who remains a life-long passionate believer in a Greater Israel. He petitioned against the UN Partition Plan for Palestine of 29 November 1947 because he, and others like him, wanted the whole of Palestine for the Jews. That remains his dream.

Whether Israel seizes the whole of the West Bank or only 40 per cent of it, the immediate victim will be the Kingdom of Jordan, which is likely to be swamped with displaced Palestinians. Ariel Sharon, a passionate advocate of Jewish settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, used to say that “Jordan is Palestine.” Desperately concerned about its future — and with good reason — Jordan recently tried to revive the moribund process by hosting a meeting in Amman of Israel and Palestinians representatives, in the presence of the ineffectual Quartet. Predictably, the outcome seems to have been wholly without substance.

The biggest shock to the so-called peace process this past year was President Barack Obama’s collapse in the face of Netanyahu’s obduracy. Since Obama had raised hopes of a new, more balanced American policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict his defeat was all the more painful. When Israel refused to budge, he simply walked away, showing no hint of steel, not even of that “tough love” towards Israel which many observers of the conflict — including liberal American Jews — had hoped to see. Obama’s failure merely underlined the abysmal record of America’s monopoly of the peace process over the past several decades, which has simply provided cover for Israel’s expansion.

The massive aid — financial, military and political — which the United States lavishes on Israel appears to have given it not the slightest leverage over Israeli policies. The influence has been all the other way. It is Israel that has managed to shape Washington’s Middle East policy, rather than the other way round. Rarely in history has there been such a flagrant example of the tail wagging the dog.

The Arabs are in no condition to check Israel’s expansion. The Arab Spring has weakened them. Their leaders, whether revolutionary or not, are struggling to cope with the fall- out from the popular uprisings. There is little time or energy to spare for the Palestine cause. The Palestinians themselves, whether under occupation or under siege, remain stubbornly divided. Amazingly, Fatah and Hamas are still squabbling and seem unable to put up a united front, although their country is disappearing before their eyes.

Little wonder that hard- line Israelis feel that Greater Israel is within their grasp. One more big push, they seem to think, and it will be theirs. This seems to be true of the ultra-Orthodox, who are more than ever concerned to put their fundamentalist stamp on Israeli society, and whose members are making deep inroads in the officer ranks of the IDF. It is true, too, of religious nationalists and their constituency of violent and fanatical settlers, and it is, of course, also true of hard-line politicians like Netanyahu himself, who seem to believe that weakening and subverting their neighbours — and harnessing American power to their hegemonic cause, principally at present against Iran — will enable Israel to continue to dominate the entire region militarily for the foreseeable future. Peace, territorial concessions and peaceful co-existence are simply not part of their mindset.

Leaders like Netanyahu have been responsible for overseeing very significant changes in Israeli society, including an alarming rise in intolerance, racism and brutality. Even Israel’s so-called liberal middle classes who camped out in tents in their thousands this past year to highlight their economic grievances, seem to show little interest in the hate Israel is piling up by its continued oppression and dispossession of the Palestinians.

The Arab-Israeli conflict — with the Palestine problem at its core — has been the cause of wars, massacres and countless other violent incidents throughout the 20th century. It now threatens to contaminate this century as well. Israel’s pitiless onslaught on Gaza in 2008-9 may turn out to have been but a precursor of even grimmer things to come.

In a speech at the London School of Economics last October, Dr Tony Klug, a leading British expert on the Middle East, described the growth of Israel’s settler population from fewer than 5,000 in the early 1970s to more than 500,000 today as “one of the longest state-suicide notes in history.” “Israel,” he declared, “now faces a stark choice: freeze all further settlement growth in preparation for swift and focused negotiations based on the pre-June boundaries with equitable land swaps, or prepare for permanent conflict and indefinite pariah status.”

Is regime change possible in Israel? A miracle cannot be excluded. But there is as yet no sign of the great popular awakening which such an outcome would require. Is it not time for the international community to put together a package of sanctions and incentives, which might induce Israel to change course? The aim must surely be, not only to save Israel from self-destruction, but to spare the Middle East the ordeal of what could be the most terrible war in its modern history.

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: 10 January 2012
Word Count: 1,124
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Patrick Seale, “Is War with Iran a Serious Option?”

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“The greatest threat that Israel faces, and frankly the greatest threat the world faces, is a nuclear Iran.” The author of this inanity is none other than Mitt Romney, the man the Republicans are likely to choose to challenge Barack Obama in this year’s presidential elections.
Can Romney really believe what he says? Is he reckless enough to push the United States into war with Iran? Or is he merely vying for Jewish votes — and Jewish campaign funds — by parroting the over-heated arguments of Israel’s lobbyists at AIPAC and the Washington Institute, and in much of the rightwing U.S. media?
What is Iran’s crime in the eyes of these hard-liners? It is that it has refused to submit to American military hegemony in the Gulf and, together with its allies — Syria, H|izballah and Hamas — has made a small dent in Israel’s military supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean. Does this make it a world-wide menace?
Are the United States and Israel really prepared to go to war over these issues? It does not appear so. All the indications are that war is not being seriously contemplated by the United States or by Israel — or for that matter by Iran either. In all three countries, the warmongers may already have lost the argument.
Washington sources report that Obama has long since ruled out a resort to force against Iran, which he considers far too risky. Having brought America’s calamitous war in Iraq to a close, he is now hoping to wind up the Afghan conflict by means of a negotiated settlement. The opening of a Taliban office in Qatar — as is now being proposed — would facilitate such contacts. It is self-evident that Obama will spare no effort to save the United States from being drawn into yet another costly, open-ended military adventure in the greater Middle East. 
Instead, he appears to have quietly chosen to opt for a policy of containment and deterrence. But, since he has no wish to be accused of being weak on Israel, this sensible policy has not been made public. The official U.S. line is that “all options are on the table,” but, for all practical purposes, the military option has been firmly dropped.
A hint that the hawks in the administration have been defeated may be seen in the recent resignation of Dennis Ross from his job at the National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President for the greater Middle East and South Asia. Ross has now returned to his old home at the Washington Institute — AIPAC’s sister organisation — which he founded with Martin Indyk in 1980, with the task of shaping America’s Middle East policy in a pro-Israeli direction, as well as placing its men in key government jobs — both of which it has done with great success. Back at the Institute, he is continuing to push his hard-line views, declaring in a recent speech that the aim of US policy should not be containment but prevention of Iran’s nuclear programme — if necessary by force.
Israel is not contemplating war against Iran, any more than the United States. Its noisy threats are, paradoxically, a signal that it is not planning to attack. When it bombed Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981, and Syria’s alleged nuclear facility in 2007, it did so in total secrecy and with no advance warning. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s fevered references to the ‘existential’ menace of an Iranian bomb should, I believe, be read, not as a prelude to war, but as an alternative to war. His intention is to frighten Iran and pressure the Western powers into imposing ever-tougher sanctions on it. The blackmail is working. This week Obama passed into law new unilateral sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank, the financial pivot of its oil transactions.
A lively debate has been taking place in Israel between generals and politicians. Warning of a new Holocaust, Netanyahu has likened Iran’s President Ahmadinejad to Hitler. His generals do not agree. An attack, they say, would at best set back the Iranian programme by a year or two, and might well, in fact, drive Iran to go all out for nuclear weapons. The generals understand that it would be the height of folly for Israel to make an ‘eternal’ enemy of a country vastly bigger and richer than itself, with ten times its population. 
Meir Dagan, Mossad’s former chief, has said that war with Iran would be a catastrophe. His alternative way of dealing with the problem has been to assassinate Iranian scientists, infect Iran’s computers with Stuxnet and other worms, sabotage its installations, and destabilise it in every way possible. He recommends a “stealth war,” not a shooting war.
In an address last week to a gathering of Israeli ambassadors, the current Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, was reported as saying that “The term existential threat is used too freely.” One of the envoys present was quoted in the Israeli press as saying that Pardo’s remarks clearly implied “that he doesn’t think a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel.” 
Even if none of the parties — Israel, the United States and Iran — actually want war or seriously anticipate it, there is always the possibility that war might break out by accident. Targeting Iran’s Central Bank and threatening to boycott its oil exports, as some Western nations are proposing to do, create a climate of hysterical nationalism that could trigger a clash. Iran has tried to call the West’s bluff by threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz, but a serious attempt to do so could set the whole region on fire — which is almost certainly the last thing Iran or the United States would want. In my view, not too much should be read into Iran’s recent naval manoeuvres in the Gulf, or its testing of new missiles. It has carried out such exercises in the past. 
Containment and deterrence are clearly better policies than war-mongering. But they are not without difficulty. Establishing the rules of a system of mutual deterrence can be tricky. The first months, or even years, can prove dangerous until the system is perfected and the rules fully understood by both sides. For the scheme to be safe, a “hot line” between the parties would need urgently to be established.
If Obama could summon up the political courage for a long-overdue dialogue with Iran — interrupted 32 years ago — the danger of war would be dispelled, to everyone’s relief.
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: 03 January 2012
Word Count: 1,069
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Patrick Seale, “This Year and Next in the Greater Middle East”

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Historians will remember 2011 as the year when the Arabs rose against their dictators. The projection of ‘people power’ has been angry, impatient, astonishingly brave — and above all young. Exploding demographics have provided the motor of the Arab Spring. 
The figures tell the story. High fertility rates across the Arab world have led, within a single life-time, to a doubling, tripling and even quadrupling of populations, resulting in grossly over-stretched government services, in a huge inflation of student numbers and, inevitably, in frustrated expectations. 
In country after country, a vast new generation of educated — or semi-educated — youngsters has emerged into adult life, only to discover that no jobs are available for them. Hence, they have no access to the consumer goods so blatantly displayed on TV screens, no decent lodgings, no possibility of early marriage, no prospect of a better life. Youth unemployment is the fuse which lit the fires of revolution.
Inevitably, the targets of these frustrated youngsters were the fat cats and crony capitalists who, in every Arab country, have thrived from proximity to the centres of power. The rebels demand an end to corruption and a fairer distribution of wealth. They want their share of the national cake. 
It was but a short step from there for them to challenge the political regimes under which they and their parents have lived and suffered: the arrogant, puffed-up ruling families and their patronage networks; the stale one-party systems; the brutal security forces imposing stifling controls; the total lack of basic freedoms. There has been much talk of the revolutionaries wanting dignity – that is, the respect which governments owe their citizens, but which has been sadly lacking.
When economic grievances turn political, regimes begin to crumble. By their very nature, revolutions tend to be violent and destructive. Once they bring down the human and material pillars of a state, they create a void which it is often difficult to fill. A house can be destroyed in an hour, but might take months, if not years, to build. The next phase of the Arab revolutions must surely be devoted — slowly, painfully and inevitably with many false starts — to devising and creating the new state institutions which will replace the ones which are being swept away. 
Each Arab country will proceed at its own pace. The more violent and prolonged the revolution, the more difficult the reconstruction — as countries like Syria and Yemen will no doubt discover. Each country has its own history, its own power structures, its own unique characteristics. But one theme seems present in the revolutions of this past year. It could perhaps best be described as a profound desire to express the Arab and Muslim identity of the local populations, free from foreign cultural and political tutelage. 
Across the greater Middle East — from Tunisia to Afghanistan and the many places in between — one senses a rebellion against foreign attempts to impose on the Muslim world a Western model of society, together with a submission to Western strategic interests. We may indeed be witnessing a new chapter — perhaps a final one — in the Arabs’ long struggle against Western imperialism, which began after the First World War, was defeated in the 1920s and 1930s, only to be frustrated again by the emergence of Israel after the Second World War — and of the Arab dictatorships which followed. 
A new phase of the struggle is now beginning. Is not this the explanation of the remarkable electoral success of Islamic parties? These parties are close to the common people and provide welfare services which the state has often failed to supply. But their immense appeal must surely also stem from their defence of Islamic traditions — social, cultural and religious — and their expression of an authentic national identity. 
We don’t yet know how the Islamists will behave in government. Will they adopt the Turkish model of Islam allied to secular democracy, or will they slip back into Salafi fundamentalism? Whatever the answer, I suspect that their prime goal will be good governance rather than Western-style liberal democracy.
America’s decline in influence and reputation is likely to continue this coming year. It is the inevitable result of Washington’s grave foreign policy errors. Pro-Israeli neoconservatives in George W. Bush’s administration played a large part in launching the destruction and dismemberment of Iraq. Israel wanted Iraq permanently enfeebled: It has been the main beneficiary of the Iraq war. The same forces are now driving the current U.S. confrontation with Iran and the shameful abandonment of the Palestinians. To this catalogue of failures should be added America’s costly embroilment in Afghanistan; its quarrel with neighbouring Pakistan; and its use of unmanned drones to carry out targeted killings of doubtful legality.
The Arab world — whether under new or old leaders — must now assume responsibility for the grave problems it faces. Three require urgent attention: First, the need to protect the Egyptian and Yemeni economies from collapse; second, the need to build bridges across the Sunni-Shi‘a divide so as to protect the region from further civil wars; and third, the need to use every bit of Arab leverage and every ounce of revolutionary fervour to assist the Palestinians in their long-delayed quest for independent statehood. 
In pursuit of these important goals, the Gulf States under Saudi leadership have a vital role to play. They are the new pole of Arab wealth, education, stable government and international influence. Much is expected of them. A union of Gulf Cooperation Council member states — as recently proposed by King Abdallah, the Saudi monarch — has much to commend it. It might even provide a model for a divided Europe.
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 © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 27 December 2011
Word Count: 934
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Patrick Seale, “The Failings of British Foreign Policy”

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Addressing the nation in the run-up to Christmas, Prime Minister David Cameron lamented Britain’s “moral collapse,” and called for a revival of traditional values. He might have considered that Britain’s foreign policy, marred by a recent catalogue of failures, was a good place to start.
In three important areas of policy — relations with the Palestinians, with the Islamic Republic of Iran and with the European Union — Britain has displayed a dismaying mix of hypocrisy, ineptitude and bluster. 
It is widely recognised that, of all the conflicts in the Middle East, the unresolved Palestine problem is one of the most deserving of urgent international action. But it has been allowed to fester, inflicting great suffering on the captive Palestinian population and poisoning relations between the West and the Arab and Muslim world. 
Britain bears a historic responsibility for the problem since, having assumed a Mandate over Palestine after the First World War, it then encouraged and protected Jewish immigration, leading to the creation of the State of Israel. Over the past several decades, the Palestinians have struggled to recover for themselves some small part of historic Palestine. Their failure to do so in the face of Israeli obduracy has unsettled the whole region and been the source of repeated clashes, massacres and full-scale wars, as well as an uncounted number of violent incidents.
Despairing of reaching a negotiated settlement with Israel’s right-wing government and its constituency of violent, land-grabbing settlers — and abandoned by the United States, more than ever in thrall to pro-Israeli lobbies — the Palestinians turned in recent months to the United Nations Security Council. Their aim was to become the UN’s 194th member state, in the belief that this would help free them from Israeli occupation and hasten their long-delayed independence.
Had Britain shown any courage or clarity of vision — let alone a sense of history — it would have taken the lead in supporting the Palestinian bid. Instead, it decided to abstain at the Security Council. In Parliament, Foreign Secretary William Hague repeated the old bankrupt adage that Palestinian statehood “could only be brought about by negotiations with the Israelis.” This is blatant hypocrisy since Israel, by far the stronger power, is totally opposed to Palestinian statehood and to a negotiated peace, which would mean ceding territory. It wants land — and still more Palestinian land. Only serious international pressure, including sanctions, might make Israel yield. 
When last November 107 countries voted to admit Palestine to full membership of the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO, Britain abstained, joining, in doing so, with such international movers and shakers as Andorra, Cape Verde, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, San Marino, Togo and Tonga. Such is the company in which Britain evidently finds itself comfortable, rather than with Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, France, Spain, Ireland, Norway and the Arab countries, who all voted in favour of Palestinian membership. Britain’s shameful abstention can only be explained as a moral collapse to U.S. and Israeli pressure. 
Britain’s hostile policy towards Iran is even more baffling than its abject Palestinian policy. Ahead of other Western hawks, it has ordered British banks and financial institutions to sever relations with Iran’s Central Bank, thereby adding to international tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme. When angry Iranian students stormed the British embassy, Britain closed its mission in Tehran and ordered the closure of the Iranian embassy in London. Relations are now at a 20-year low. 
What purpose has been served by Britain’s intemperate action? It has killed Britain’s trade with a leading Gulf economy of close to 80 million people and it has reinforced the image Iranians have of Britain as a bullying and manipulative old fox. If you trip over a stone in the road, warns a Persian proverb, it was put there by an Englishman — as the Financial Times reminded its readers in a recent leader. 
Will Britain’s action persuade Iran to give up its nuclear activities? Nothing is less likely. Economic sanctions such as Britain has adopted are unlikely to deflect it from seeking to defend itself in what is a hostile strategic environment. Surrounded by nuclear-armed states and under constant threat of attack by Israel and its U.S. ally, Iran seems determined to acquire a measure of protection, most probably by moving closer to a nuclear-weapons capability — but short of actually building a bomb. 
Israel, however, wants no challenge to its regional nuclear monopoly. Backed by the United States, it is determined to maintain its local hegemony and its freedom to strike its neighbours at will. Its policy is clear: The West must ratchet up crippling sanctions on Iran to put an end to its nuclear ambitions or Israel will itself attack. Britain has, alas, succumbed to this blackmail.
Just as Britain should take the lead in putting serious pressure on Israel to concede Palestinian statehood — for Israel’s own ultimate good — so it should seek by creative diplomacy to tame the dangerous tensions with Iran, which threaten to lead to war. 
Iran’s geographical location, its oil resources and sheer size contribute to making it a major Gulf power. Rather than seeking to sanction and isolate it, Britain and its allies should engage with it, beginning with an admission of its regional importance and its legitimate security concerns. 
Saudi Arabia should cooperate with Iran in stabilising this vital region and should not allow outside powers to cast them as rivals. Members of the Gulf Cooperation Council should be encouraged to draw Iran into the region’s security architecture. It is surely time for London to break with the stale and dangerous thinking of the United States and Israel on this important subject.
Britain’s European policy is as much of a fiasco as its policies in Palestine and Iran. At a European summit in Brussels in early December, France and Germany proposed to tackle the EU’s sovereign debt crisis and save the euro with a treaty providing for greater economic discipline and closer fiscal integration between EU members. But David Cameron, unable to secure the exemptions he wanted for the City of London, cast his veto against the plan. The eurozone’s 17 members then decided to ignore Britain and press ahead with drafting a ‘fiscal compact’ by next March, outside the EU’s legal framework.
What has ‘bulldog’ Cameron achieved? He has largely excluded Britain from economic decision-making in Europe and diminished its influence in the rest of the world. At home, he has opened up a rift in his governing coalition between euro-sceptics in his Conservative party and pro-European Liberal Democrats. If the euro-sceptics get their way, they could take Britain out of the EU altogether. Above all, Cameron has dealt a major blow to the dream of a united and powerful Europe able to hold its own in a world of emerging giants like China, India and Brazil. So much for the triumphs of British diplomacy!
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 © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 20 December 2011
Word Count: 1,141
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Patrick Seale, “Is Iran the Enemy of the Arabs?”

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The United States and some of its European allies, notably Britain and France, are piling the pressure on Iran, claiming that its behaviour “constitutes a grave and urgent threat to peace,” as the Elysée Palace in Paris put it in a communiqué last week. The charge is that Iran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. 
Sanctions are being stiffened, trade crippled, financial ties severed, isolation enforced: Indeed, a range of punitive measures are being put in place which are just short of all-out war against Tehran.
But the latest report on Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency contains no hard evidence that Iran has decided to manufacture atomic weapons. It contains suppositions and speculations that Iran is concealing part of its nuclear activities, but few new facts. Even if Iran were to acquire a nuclear capability, most experts agree it could only be for defensive purposes.
Nevertheless, the United States and Israel have chosen to portray the Islamic Republic as a deadly threat to the world. Iran, in response, has thrown the accusation back at them. Washington sees Iran as a challenge to U.S. control of Middle East oil, while Tel Aviv sees Iran as a threat to Israel’s military supremacy and to its nuclear weapons monopoly. In blatant violation of the UN Charter, Israel repeatedly threatens to strike Iran and destroy its nuclear facilities, while doing its utmost to incite — or indeed blackmail — the United States into doing the job for it. 
Following the U.S. lead, the British government has this week rashly ordered UK banks and financial institutions to cut all ties with Iran. They have been ordered “to cease business relationships and transactions with all Iranian banks, including the Central Bank of Iran.” In response, the Iranian Majlis has called for the expulsion of the British ambassador, while British trade with Iran has slumped by nearly 50% this past year. France is also calling for a halt of all purchases of Iranian oil and a freeze of the assets of Iran’s Central Bank.
The Arabs are being urged to join in this hostile campaign against the Islamic Republic, largely stirred up by Israel and the United States. But is making an enemy of Iran in the Arabs’ interest? 
The Saudi Kingdom and the Islamic Republic are often considered to be rivals for regional influence. This, however, is a relatively new development. In the past, when the Shah ruled in Tehran, the two countries were partners, working jointly to ensure the security and stability of the Gulf region. More recently, under the Iranian presidencies of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997) and Muhammad Khatami (1997-2005), Riyadh and Tehran were on reasonably good terms. It was only with the advent of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 that relations have soured.
I would argue that Riyadh and Tehran should be partners, not rivals. Good relations between them are essential to protect the region from the many dangers threatening it and from the intrigues and ambitions of external powers. The U.S.-Iranian quarrel has nothing to do with the Arabs. They should resist being dragged into it. 
Iran well remembers America’s role in overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Muhammad Mossadiq in 1953, as well as its support for Saddam Hussein in his eight-year war of aggression against Iran, 1980-1988. The U.S. Navy shot down an Iranian civil airliner in the final stages of that war. For its part, the United States has not forgotten the holding hostage of its Tehran embassy staff in 1979, and the attack on a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 by Iran-backed guerrillas. 
It would be wise for the Arab states to look to their own interests in this matter, rather than follow the bellicose lead of the Western powers and Israel. The Arabs must surely be aware that a military clash between Iran and the United States or Israel could be disastrous for the Arab Gulf region. Sensitive installations such as oil terminals and desalination plants could come under fire. The achievements of recent decades could be wiped out.
Looked at positively, Iran and the Gulf States — notably Dubai — have been natural trading partners for many years. The Arab and Iranian shores of the Gulf are linked by a great many financial, commercial and family ties. Iran and Oman have long been strategic partners in ensuring the security of the Straits of Hormuz, a vital choke point for much of the world’s oil trade. Rather than allowing the enemies of the Arabs to exploit tensions between Sunnis and Shi‘is, bridges should be built across the sectarian divide.
It is worth remembering that Iran has no history of aggression. It has never attacked another country in modern times. The international commission headed by Cherif Bassiouni, which investigated the quelling of the protests in Bahrain, failed to discover any Iranian role in the unrest. No evidence has been found of an Iranian hand in the Zaydi revivalist movement led by the al-Huthi family in North Yemen. The Shia in Bahrain and the Huthis in Yemen deny any link with Iran and proclaim their loyalty to their own states.
Saudi-Iranian relations have been severely strained by the American claim to have uncovered an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in Washington. But few experts believe the American accusation. No convincing evidence in its support has yet been produced. The plot — if there really was a plot — reeks of a “sting” operation by America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), or of a “false flag” operation by a third party, designed to set Riyadh against Tehran.
Rather than demonising Iran and severing links with it, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners would be well advised to draw Iran into the security architecture of the region. Iran and its Gulf neighbours share a common interest in the security of the region and a common responsibility for ensuring it.
Rather than being unduly influenced by anti-Iranian propaganda, the Arabs should take note of the sensible views expressed in a joint communiqué on 24 November by the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. These five powerful countries “stressed the necessity to build a system of relations in the Gulf region that would guarantee equal and reliable security for all States.” They “emphasized that imposing additional and unilateral sanctions on Iran is counterproductive and would only exacerbate the situation.” They advocated “settling the situation concerning Iran’s nuclear programme only through political and diplomatic means and establishing dialogue between all the parties concerned.…”
A Saudi-Iranian strategic dialogue is an urgent necessity to dispel mutual fears and misunderstandings and to agree on common security policies. This would be the best way to protect the Gulf region from what could, at any moment, escalate into a catastrophic clash of arms.
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 © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 29 November 2011
Word Count: 1,126
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Patrick Seale, “Averting Civil War in Syria”

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Syria is heading for a bloody sectarian civil war. The mutual kidnappings, torture, beheadings and displacement of populations taking place between the Sunni and Alawi communities in the central city of Homs — often described as “the capital of the revolution” — send a fearsome signal of what might be in store for the rest of the country.
To avert this descent into hell must surely be the immediate priority of Arab leaders and the international community. 
The Iraqi example next door is there for all to see. The Anglo-American invasion destroyed a major Arab country. The country’s institutions and infrastructure were shattered; sectarian demons were released, triggering a civil war. Hundreds of thousands died and millions were displaced from their homes or forced to flee abroad. The country was dismembered as the Kurds established their own semi-independent statelet.
Syria needs the intervention of a high-powered, neutral, contact group to stop the killing on both sides. There must be a pause in which tempers are cooled, demonstrations and counter-demonstrations are halted, and a climate created in which a real dialogue can take place and real reforms agreed and implemented. The aim must be a peaceful transition to a different sort of regime, with effective guarantees for all sides.
The Arab states and the Western powers are ill-suited for this task. The latter are not trusted. Too many of them have taken sides. The United States, in particular, has been discredited by its blind support for Israel. Rather than bringing peace, Washington’s spectacular failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, or indeed its own 32-year conflict with Iran, has prepared the ground for future wars.
Who then could form the necessary contact group? My choice would be the BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India and China — countries with real economic and political clout and a strong interest in the region. Brazil, for example, has close historical ties with Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Millions of Brazilians have grandparents who emigrated from these countries.
The present Syrian regime has been one of the most durable in the Middle East, lasting for almost half a century, ever since the Ba‘th party seized power in 1963. The Asads — father and son — have ruled since 1970. However, the current crisis poses a particular danger to the regime because, almost for the first time, it faces a conjunction of internal and external challenges. 
The last big internal challenge occurred in 1977-1982, when an uprising by the Muslim Brothers threatened to topple the regime. It was crushed at Hama with the loss of perhaps 10,000 lives — a brutal repression which continues to resonate to this day, as Islamists dream of revenge.
External challenges to Syria have been far more frequent. They include Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which was aimed at expelling Syrian influence as well as the PLO, and drawing Lebanon into Israel’s orbit; the 1998 crisis when Syria faced the possibility of a two-front war with Turkey and Israel, and was only resolved when Syria expelled the Kurdish PKK leader Abdallah Ocalan; then came the biggest challenge of all: the 2003 invasion of Iraq, conceived and driven by America’s pro-Israeli neo-conservatives. Had it been successful, Syria would undoubtedly have been the next target.
When Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, was murdered in 2005, Syrian troops were forced out of Lebanon and the Syrian regime threatened with overthrow by U.S. President George Bush and French President Jacques Chirac. In 2006 Israel’s attacked Lebanon to destroy Syria’s ally, Hizbullah; it then attacked Gaza in 2008-9 to destroy another Syrian ally, Hamas.
The mentality of the Syrian regime — the mind of President Bashar al-Asad himself — has been shaped by these recurrent life-threatening crises. They were largely responsible for making the regime what it is: authoritarian, defensive, brutal, neglectful of political reforms, over-anxious to exercise control over the citizenry, the media, the universities, the economy, over every aspect of society. 
The continuing threat from Israel and its American patron led to the creation of the Tehran-Damascus-Hizbullah axis — a defensive alliance which emerged as the main obstacle to Israeli-American regional hegemony. Not surprisingly, Israel and the United States want the axis destroyed. Syria is now under extreme pressure, but Iran, too, has for years faced systematic demonization, intimidation and sanctions. Determined to protect its own nuclear monopoly, Israel is attempting to push America into war against Iran — and if not war then still more sanctions — while Hizbullah, the third member of the axis, continues to be treated like a terrorist organisation because it managed to expel Israel from Lebanon after an 18 year occupation.
The Syrian regime’s instinct has been to interpret the current uprising as one more conspiracy. Taken by surprise, its immediate response was brutal repression: the use of live fire from the very beginning at Dar‘a in mid-March. No doubt, President Bashar had imagined that his nationalist stance gave him immunity from popular uprisings. But, faced by the escalating crisis, his leadership has been wanting; his speeches and promises of reform were late and unconvincing. His failure to seize the initiative with radical proposals showed a lack of political imagination. The killings have fatally undermined his legitimacy.
Who are the revolutionaries and what do they want? They are the rural poor, who have suffered from drought and government neglect; the urban poor and small businessmen, crushed by corrupt, crony capitalists close to the centre of power; and the armies of unemployed youth. Like many Arab countries, Syria suffers from a population explosion. In 1965 (when I wrote my first book about Syria) there were 4m Syrians; today there are 24m. With a fertility rate of 3.26, the population could reach 46m within 20 years. These figures are catastrophic. Economic growth simply cannot keep pace.
The revolutionaries want jobs, good governance, a fair distribution of the country’s resources, an end to corruption, arbitrary arrest and police brutality. They want dignity and respect. They have had no experience of democracy and have little knowledge of what it means. About 40% of the population are under 14, and only 3% are over 65 — with faint memories of a pre-Ba‘th, pre-Asad rule, which in any event was not all that democratic.
Although isolated, sanctioned and internationally condemned, the regime still has several assets. So long as the army and security services remain loyal, it will be difficult for the opposition to topple it. The more the opposition takes to arms, the more the regime will feel justified in crushing it. Meanwhile, there is no appetite in the West for military intervention in Syria. Russia and China will protect it from any UN Security Council resolution authorising the use of force. The opposition remains divided, while the regime still enjoys the support of a large slice of the middle and upper classes in the big cities, of minorities such as Alawis, Christians and Druze, of large numbers of civil servants, and also no doubt of a silent majority, fearful of suffering the dreadful fate of Iraq.
As the death toll rises, the thirst for revenge becomes sharper and the sectarian divide deeper. Civil war looms and, with it, the urgent need for measures to avert it.
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 © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 22 November 2011
Word Count: 1,191
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Patrick Seale, “America’s Unhealthy Obsession with Al-Qaeda”

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The Unites States’ obsession with the threat from Al-Qaeda urgently needs debunking. It has led national security chiefs and politicians dangerously astray — including President Barack Obama himself.
Traumatised by the terrorist attacks on the American heartland of September 11, 2001, the United States launched two catastrophic and unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, at great cost to its armed services, its finances and its reputation. That was by no means the full extent of the damage. 
The War on Terror also caused the United States to create a monstrously-inflated national security-industrial complex, that today employs nearly a million people with high security clearances, seriously eroding America’s precious civil liberties; it caused the CIA to become a para-military organisation as concerned with extra-judicial assassinations as with its traditional intelligence-gathering; and it has driven President Obama to rely on missile strikes from unmanned drones which, as well as killing the occasional Islamic fighter, slaughter large numbers of innocent civilians, arousing fierce hostility to the United States.
The drone strikes are widely thought to create far more militants than they kill. Barbara Bodine, who served as U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 1997 to 2011, says that drone attacks “most assuredly do far more harm than good.”
All these subjects and many more are explored in detail in The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda (Oxford University Press), an important new book by Fawaz Gerges, Professor of Middle East Studies and International Relations at the London School of Economics. It should be required reading in the White House. In an ideal world, his scathing critique of American security policies should induce American officials and politicians to change course.
I must declare an interest. I strongly recommend Professor Gerges’ book because he expresses, better than I could have done, many of the ideas which I have put forward in my columns over the years.
His basic argument is that Al-Qaeda is by no means the strategic, existential threat it is made out to be by the pundits of terrorism. It is a small, weak organisation, with limited tactical aims — “more of a security irritant,” Gerges maintains, “than a strategic threat.” The figures are striking. At the height of its powers in the late 1990s, Al-Qaeda comprised some 3,000 to 4,000 armed fighters. Today, its ranks have dwindled to 300, if not fewer. In Afghanistan, there is now, for all practical purposes, no Al-Qaeda. 
The mistake the United States continues to make in Afghanistan is to link the Taliban to Al-Qaeda, rejecting any separation between them. But they are very different. The Taliban are a local, essentially Pashtun force, dedicated to protecting the country’s tribal and Islamic traditions and ridding it of foreigners. Al-Qaeda — at least in its heyday — aspired to be a transnational jihadi movement.
Yemen is another country where Al-Qaeda is usually said to pose a major strategic threat. But, as Gerges argues, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) — formed by the 2009 merger of the Saudi and Yemeni branches – has no more than between 50 and 300 core operatives, mostly semi-literate rookies with little combat experience. 
Yet, a decade after September 11, overreaction is still the hallmark of the U.S. War on Terror. Americans and Westerners are fed a constant diet of catastrophic scenarios and scare tactics. The result, Gerges says, is that Americans have internalized an exaggerated fear of terrorism. Obama himself has bought “the doomsday scenario offered by his national security team.” This American overreaction provides the oxygen that sustains Al-Qaeda.
The fear of terrorism has not only taken hold of the imagination of Americans, it also drives government policy. But all the War on Terror really does, Gerges maintains, is legitimize Al-Qaeda’s failed ideology and expand the worldwide circle of the West’s enemies.
In the Muslim world as a whole — in Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the Maghreb, in Indonesia and elsewhere – Al-Qaeda now faces a hostile environment with fewer recruits and shelter. Ordinary Muslims join the authorities in chasing al-Qaeda away from their neighbourhoods and streets.
AQAP has attempted to carry out a few terrorist acts abroad — such as the attack on the Saudi counter-terrorism chief Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, the failed underwear bomber, the would-be New York subway bomber, and the foiled Times Square bomber – but its real focus is local. In Yemen, for example, it is attempting to use its tribal connections to gain a foothold in the southern secessionist movement, one of the several rebellions threatening the regime of President Ali Abdallah Salih. It remains first and foremost a Yemeni problem, one that must be tackled from within.
Gerges cites two incidents among many, which have inflamed Yemeni opinion against President Saleh and his American allies. The first he mentions occurred in December 2009 when a US Navy ship off the coast of Yemen fired a double cruise missile, loaded with cluster bombs, at what it thought was an Al-Qaeda training camp. Instead, the strike killed 41 members of the Haydara family in a Bedouin encampment. In May 2010, a U.S. cruise missile killed Jabir al-Shabwani, deputy governor of Ma’rib province, and four of his escorts. He had reportedly been seeking to persuade the militants to lay down their arms. The killing sent shock waves through the Saleh regime, undermining its legitimacy in the eyes of the tribes and the public at large. Saleh paid blood money to Shabwani’s family to avoid a bloodbath. 
Gerges might have added that on Match 17 this year, a U.S. drone killed forty people in Pakistan, dealing a blow to U.S.-Pakistan relations. How many of the forty victims were innocent civilians? Of all Arabs, Yemenis currently voice the strongest anti-American sentiments. But such incidents also trigger a backlash among scores of disillusioned and frustrated young Muslims, living in Western societies. 
Instead of investing in economic development and good governance in Yemen, the United States has squandered precious resources combating AQAP. In 2010, for example, the United States gave Yemen $250m to fight Al-Qaeda, but only $42m for development and humanitarian assistance. Clearly, the figures should be reversed.
What is to be done? Plots against Western societies will persist, Gerges believes, so long as the United States is embroiled in wars in Muslim lands. The root causes of many recent home-grown terror plots lie in the raging conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere. 
The longer the United States wages war on terrorism in Afganistan-Pakistan, the more durable the threat. Pakistan’s slide into anarchy will be a far greater catastrophe for American interests and regional stability than the current mess in Afghanistan. There is an urgent need, he writes, to speed up the withdrawal of Western, and particularly American, boots from Muslim territories.
What other lessons does he recommend? The first is that US policymakers must bring a closure to the War on Terror. Second, there must be a concerted effort to debunk the terrorism narrative and break Al-Qaeda’s hold on the American imagination. And third, the United States should stop viewing the Middle East through the terrorism prism, the Israeli prism and the black-gold prism — oil.
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 © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 08 November 2011
Word Count: 1,178
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Patrick Seale, “America’s Defeat in Iraq and Beyond”

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America’s nine-year adventure in Iraq is drawing to a humiliating close. President Barack Obama has said that “the last American soldiers will cross the border out of Iraq” on 31 December. Most Iraqis — those who have survived the nightmare of the past decade — will heave a great sigh of relief, but healing the wounds of their stricken country will be neither quick nor easy.
Nor, it appears, will the United States be gone from Iraq altogether. Some 16,000 U.S. personnel are due to remain behind in the form of diplomats, Defence Department experts, military and police trainers, and a large number of contractors, of whom some 5,000 will be armed to protect the U.S. mission. They will provide attractive targets for anti-American militants of various sorts.
History’s verdict on America’s Iraqi war is likely to be severe. The United States may not have suffered a military defeat in the conventional sense of the word, but the damage to its reputation, moral stature and political influence is irreparable. It may take a generation to set right. 
The Iraq war will be seen as a landmark in the downward slide of the United States from its once pre-eminent place in the community of nations. After the Soviet collapse in 1991, the United States was the world’s unchallenged hyper-power. Today, twenty years later, it seems to have lost its way. Even its closest friends look at it askance and wonder what has become of it.
The invasion was launched on fraudulent premises; the occupation grossly ill-managed; the cost in human lives and treasure immense. Some 4,500 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq and tens of thousands more were wounded. The cost to the American taxpayer has been estimated at $700 billion and upwards. The economist Joseph Stiglitz believes the ultimate cost will be $3 trillion. As for the Iraqi victims of the American onslaught, they have died in the hundreds of thousands, while another four to five million have been internally displaced or driven abroad as refugees. The material damage to the country, including its vital oil industry, will take decades to repair.
America’s war released sectarian demons in Iraq, triggering a savage civil war between Shi‘is and Sunnis. This has heightened tensions between these two Islamic communities and their various offshoots in countries as far afield as Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen. Once a strong and united country, Iraq is now a weak and querulous federation. The Kurds have broken loose and enjoy something close to independence under their own regional government, while Sunni Arabs, outraged at the discrimination they suffer at the hands of the Shi‘i Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, are threatening secession in a northern province around Irbil.
An unintended consequence of America’s war was to put the Shi‘is in power in Baghdad, thereby opening the door to Iranian influence; and in the wider Gulf area, the destruction of Iraq overturned the regional balance of power to Iran’s advantage. Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s leading Sunni power, is understandably perturbed. Saudi-Iranian rivalry is now intense while relations between Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iraq are close to breaking point. 
To ease the tensions, Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Shaykh Hamad bin Jassem — a leading mediator of regional conflicts — has proposed that Saudi Arabia and Iran hold talks over American allegations of an Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Few experts believe the American accusations have much substance, but they have served to destabilise an already volatile region. Overall, therefore, the geopolitical costs of the Iraqi war have been very great indeed.
Not the least astonishing aspect of the Iraqi adventure is that the United States has made no systematic attempt to establish who was responsible for the catastrophe. No one has been held to account. 
The prime responsibility must rest with former President George W. Bush, together with his Vice-President Dick Cheney, and his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. After Al-Qaeda’s devastating attacks on the American mainland on 11 September 2001, their overwhelming urge was to teach the Arabs a lesson about American power which they would never forget. Cheney may have dreamed of extending American control over Iraq’s oil, while Rumsfeld may have dreamed of setting up American bases in Iraq from which to dominate the region.
However, the prime architects of the Iraqi war were not Bush and his close colleagues but the neoconservatives — Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon, David Wurmser in the Vice-President’s office, Richard Perle, chairman of the Defence Policy Board, and many others embedded in the administration and in right-wing think tanks. In seeking to destroy Iraq, their principal aim was to protect Israel from any possible attack from the east. 
A study group chaired by Perle, and including Feith and Wurmser, produced a strategic paper for Israel’s incoming Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Notoriously, it was entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” It recommended that a key Israeli objective should be the removal of Saddam Hussein. The neocons then set themselves the task of getting America to do the job instead.
Intelligence about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was forged. Skilful propaganda roused American opinion in favour of war. Iraq was attacked, occupied and fatally weakened. Israel’s interests were satisfied, but the human, financial and political costs for the United States were beyond measure. 
On coming to office, President Barack Obama seemed determine to throw off George Bush’s legacy, tame the pro-Israeli neocons, and change course. His Cairo speech of June 2009 was a call for friendship with the Arab and Muslim world and a pledge of American support for the Palestinians. As recently as September 2010, he was still expressing the hope that an independent Palestinian state would emerge within a year.
But pressure from Israel and its American supporters have forced him to eat his words. He has had to sabotage his own policies. He has abdicated America’s once dominant role in the failed peace process and now opposes Palestinian statehood. He has allowed Israel’s far-right government to dictate American policy in the Middle East. This is a strategic blunder of historic proportions. How are the mighty fallen? 
The outcome has been to destroy Obama’s reputation and isolate the United States. This week 107 countries defied the United States and voted to admit Palestine to UNESCO. The United States promptly suspended its funding for the organisation. But pandering to Israel’s fanatical settlers and their expansionist ambitions will speed the decline of America’s regional influence and makes Israel less, rather than more, secure.
Can America chance course? Nothing is less likely. It is widely predicted that if the Republican Mitt Romney wins the White House, the pro-Israeli neocons will be back in power in Washington. Their target this time will be Iran.
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 © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 01 November 2011
Word Count: 1,129
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