Archive for the 'Security' Category

As the March 7 Iraqi parliamentary elections draw near, American media have focused on renewed allegations of Iranian meddling.  Over the past week General Odierno and U.S. ambassador to Baghdad Chris Hill presented a united front in accusing Iraqi officials Ahmed Chalabi and Ali Faisal al-Lami of being improperly influenced by Iran in their decision to disqualify some 300 Iraqi politicians for allegedly being too close to Saddam Hussein’s Bath Party.  (Reidar Visser has been exhaustively covering this saga on his blog).

But how is the story playing in Iran?  For one take, I made a quick scan of the past week’s Iraq coverage in Hossein Shariatmadari’s Kayhan , a stalwart pro-regime daily.  Rather than admitting (or even celebrating) Iranian influence in Iraq as one might suspect from Kayhan’s usual ultra-nationalist coverage, Kayhan’s editors seem most interested in exposing nefarious influences from Washington and other Arab states.

One article played-up a quote from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemning the millions of dollars in bribe money that Arab states (*Riyadh*, coughs the author a few paragraphs later)  have allegedly funneled into the country to support Sunni candidates.  Another piece took this narrative one step further, casting  ISCI leader Ammar al-Hakim as the protector of Iraqi sovereignty in the face of American occupation and sectarian Saudi meddling.

Kayhan never confronts the de-Baathification controversy head on, but works its agenda obliquely, reporting protests in five Iraqi cities against the “return of Baathists.”  Its coverage looks to take the spotlight off Iranian influence in Iraq, shining it instead on the American occupiers and neighboring Arab states.  Both Prime Minister Maliki and Ammar al-Hakim are quoted favorably, cast as leaders concerned with protecting Iraqi sovereignty from foreign designs — not at all surprising given they are both Shia politicians that enjoy warm relations with Tehran.

As Iraq’s elections season heats up, the Iranian position is more and more resembling a mirror opposite of the American one:  both states seek to position themselves as advocates of Iraqi sovereignty while casting the other as the meddling outsider (In recent statements Christopher Hill was careful to nuance his take on Iranian influence, but the overall U.S. messaging against Iranian meddling has not been so subtle).  Iran seems to have won the first round with the successful barring of alleged Baathist candidates, but we’ll have to wait a few more weeks to see if the pro-Iranian parties dominate at the polls.

With Obama committed to the U.S. troop drawdown, this will likely prove the most consequential Iraqi election (and post-election politicking) to date.  As this plays out, we hope to continue bringing you perspectives from Iranian media and elsewhere around the Gulf.

PS.  We’ve created a Twitter list of some of the key tweeters on Iran-GCC relations.  You can follow it here.

-WW

As the recent Saudi air and ground raids along the Yemeni border intensified, Egypt’s Nilesat TV network and Saudi-owned Arabsat simultaneously dropped Iran’s Arabic-language news station al-Alam (The World) from service.  When living in Cairo I would occasionally tune into the station and watch some of their bog standard pro-Iranian news coverage or a stale documentary about the Iran-Iraq war.  To me, the real surprise  was that Egypt and Saudi Arabia would continue to allow the Iranian propaganda station on their satellites at all during a time when the two states were locked in a media war with Tehran.

The “media war,” going strong since mid-2008, was equal parts vicious and absurd: for the absurd see my article at ISN from a while back on a bungled Iranian documentary film portraying Sadat’s assassin, Khaled Islamboli,  as a martyr, and for vicious, see the Egyptian accusations that radicalized pro-Iranian Egyptians  committed last year’s Khan el-Khalili bombing.  Another facet was Arab accusations of Iranian proselytizing of Shi’a  Islam around the Arab world.

Was al-Alam taking the Houthi rebels’  side in coverage of the current strikes?  A quick scan of articles on al-Alam’s front page indicates that they were, but the thrust was more anti-Saudi, casting Riyadh as the aggressor, than it was pro-Houthi.  But the anti-Saudi messaging is hardly stronger than the stuff that al-Alam had been broadcasting (on Saudi and Egyptian satellite bandwidth) for the last few years.

The question of  material Iranian aid for the Houthi rebels, which have been fighting the Yemeni central government in on-off wars since 2004,  is much more murky.  The Yemeni army has essentially blockaded the Sa’ada Governorate, and cut off access to independent  press or NGOs to the warzone for the last few years (Although HRW put out an excellent report on the situation a few years back, which is here).  Absent reliable information, accusations of Iranian funding for the Huthi rebels, who are Zaidi Shi’a (as opposed to Iran’s Twelvers), have flown and been multiplied amid tense regional circumstances.

But after spending several days protesting its own involvement, today, Iran’s Mottaki fired away at Saudi Arabia for its interference in Yemen.  BBC snippet:

A country which seeks a role to establish peace and stability in all countries in the region… cannot have a role in creating tensions,” Mr Mottaki said.

“We strongly warn the regional countries to be careful, to be vigilant,” he added.

“Monetary aid, providing arms to extremist and terrorist groups or actually taking action against them and crushing those groups or the people and embarking on military operations – these all will have negative consequences.”

In an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia, with whom Tehran has had hostile relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Mr Mottaki said there were “certain people who add fuel to some crises”.

“Those people should be assured that the smoke and the fire they have ignited will entangle them themselves,” he added.

This incident, far from over, has taken Saudi-Iranian tensions to their highest point in years.  At very least, the episode will further hamstring those who seek to integrate Iran into the region and help those pushing the Sunni-Shia strife narrative.  At worst, we could have a potentially destabilizing conflict in Southern Arabia.  Either way, the citizens of Sa’ada will continue to pay a heavy price, as international attention is focused elsewhere.

-WW

In the latest issue of In the latest issue of The Atlantic, staff writer Jeffrey Goldberg asks his readers to imagine the possibility of a Jewish-Sunni alliance. At a moment in history when both Israel and the Middle East’s predominantly Sunni states are ostensibly threatened by Iran, Goldberg posits that such a configuration would effectively challenge Tehran’s rise. It would be “grand, if necessarily implicit” alliance.

Goldberg is correct in that Iran’s ambitions, when coupled with the instability and fallout of its elections, are already forcing a recalibration of interests among regional policymakers. We may yet see surprises. We will not, however, see a Jewish-Sunni alliance. If we were to draw on the lessons of 1991– when American policymakers scrambled to stop Israel from entering, and possibly fracturing, the Gulf War coalition– a military alliance with Israel would, at this time, be hard-pressed to move from the realm of the implicit to the practical. In the practical, a Jewish/Sunni fighting force would surely threaten the internal stability of the participating Sunni regime. And if an alliance is not practical, then what good is it?

Instead forging an alliance with Syria is worth much more. The struggle for Syria is alive and well, it is only the players that have changed. Iraq is no longer vying with an ascendant Egypt for control of Damascus. Instead Cairo and Baghdad have been eclipsed and then enveloped, if only imperfectly, into the larger Saudi-Iranian rivalry. Syria is Iran’s most important and longstanding regional alliance– one forged and maintained more out of pragmatism than shared ideology. And as such it may now be appropriate to ask if Tehran has overstretched, if the alliance doesn’t project to be far more trouble than it’s worth, and if Damascus is nearing the borders of the Riyadh camp.

For now Asad is safely perched on the fence. Ahmadinejad visited Damascus as recently as May but Riyadh has also made significant overtures. In March Asad met alone with Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah ahead of the Doha Summit and reports suggest that the Saudi King offered Damascus aid that would offset that already being given by Tehran, an estimated $1 billion (Qatar’s investment of $4 billion might also be jeopardized by a shift). A further promise of mobilized Arab backing in the peace process was extended. And for as much as the Iranian-Syrian relationship has given Damascus vital strategic depth in the Levant, if past is precedent, then even a temporary détente with Riyadh could act to improve the Syrian position in Lebanon. Of course, a full break– a grand shift– would mean abandoning Damascus’ Lebanese and Palestinian proxies, an unlikely outcome unless accompanied by tangible American and Israeli assurances. The significance of even a partial break in the Syrian-Iranian alliance should therefore not be underestimated.

Yet a grand shift in Syrian strategy becomes conceivable when considered against the backdrop of economic crisis and a long-stalled local economy. Tens of thousands of Syrians working in the Gulf have lost their jobs this year and will have to return home. Syrian expatriates remitted an estimated $850 million in 2008. Syria could reasonably calculate that a move away from Iran would relieve anxieties among Gulf policymakers and perhaps convince Washington to lift its policy of economic sanctions. The June visit of Mid East envoy George Mitchell, and the announcement of the return of an American ambassador to Damascus may suggest that the Obama administration is willing to chart a new path with Syria and bring actual pressure to bear on Israel over the Golan.

There is little to suggest that Syria could survive a face-to-face confrontation with Israel and as Israel becomes more bellicose toward Iran, Damascus may be looking for a way out of its alliance. But such a grand shift in strategy is almost always precipitated by an economic crisis. When Egypt left the Arab Camp it was facing the failure of socialist economic policies at home. When Syria last faced a grave economic test with the fall of the Soviet Union, it willingly committed 19,000 of its troops to fight another Arab state and, in so doing, win back financial support from the Gulf as well as improved relations with the West.

With a politically unstable and diplomatically overstretched Iran offering little to boost a floundering Syrian economy, Damascus could increasingly look to Riyadh and Washington. It would have to be convinced, however, that the Obama administration, unlike the Bush administration, operates independently of the wishes of Tel Aviv. Goldberg’s Jewish-Sunni alliance is fanciful. But a Washington-backed Damascus-Riyadh-Cairo axis– as briefly existed just after the first Gulf War– could be the unexpected outcome of disorder in Iran and the new struggle for Syria. -SW