Deep
undercurrents stir in the Middle
East By Victor Kotsev
On the surface, the Middle East is so
still it is almost unbelievable. Not that nothing
is happening, on the contrary, but the comparison
with just a few weeks ago is enough to raise an
eyebrow. Back then, amid military maneuvers and
loud threats, every other analyst (including this
one, though with some caution [1] was predicting
an imminent flare-up.
So far, not only has
the cataclysm not happened, but the voices have
quieted down somewhat. "Plainly I was wrong,"
writes Bret Stephens for the Wall Street Journal,
discussing his earlier prediction of an Israeli
strike on Iran [2].
There is some violence
in Gaza; recently, we hear a lot from Hezbollah in
Lebanon, too, as the Shi'ite organization keeps
getting entangled in various intrigues. There is
also vague talk
about conservative
pressure on US President Barack Obama and the
military option against Iran being back on the
table for the US administration.
An
American attack on Iran "seems inexorable", former
Central Intelligence Agency chief Michael Hayden
said on Sunday, but he did not give a specific
time frame. Moreover, we remain to hear anything
nearly as strong from a current administration
official, and there are good reasons to believe
that any American attack on Iran would be preceded
by a very clear public relations effort. (We do
hear a bit more in counter-threats from Iran,
whose President Mahmud Ahmadinejad proclaimed on
Tuesday that America was planning to attack two
Middle East countries in the next three months,
without offering any further details.)
In
other words, the focus of the discussion has moved
away from an imminent Israeli strike on Iran,
shifting toward a possible American operation. In
addition, much of what occupies the media
attention in the Middle East consists of the usual
rumors about the health of Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak, the Palestinian peace process, and
the tribunal into the assassination of former
Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. These, in turn, may
contain important clues about where things are
headed, but it's hard to avoid the impression:
business as usual.
Such a silence could
mean one of two things: either there is a chance
that the war clouds will blow away, or this is a
deceptive calm, intended to allow an opportunity
for some intense last-minute negotiations and
preparations for a strike. The former seems more
likely to happen by chance rather than
deliberation. At this point, all the main actors
have so much invested in a status quo that is,
essentially, a collision course, that a backing
down by any side is hardly conceivable.
For all its shows of strength, the Iranian
regime appears to be feeling the pressure of
sanctions and to be facing grave danger at home
[3]. This is hardly a moment when Ahmadinejad can
afford to back down on the foreign policy front,
particularly given that an attack on his country
is probably one of the very few things that can
rally Iranians behind him. The Israeli government,
although in a very different position, is also
trapped by its own promises to halt the Iranian
nuclear program.
Cracks are already
visible between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister Avigdor
Lieberman. Given how many compromises with other
parts of his pre-election program he has already
made, Netanyahu is no doubt haunted by the specter
of his own political calamity a decade ago, when
he tried to backtrack from some of his right-wing
commitments and was booted out of office.
Obama also has much invested in
frustrating Iran's nuclear ambitions. With
mid-term election season in full swing, he is
coming under increasing domestic fire from
conservatives. Moreover, key American allies in
the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia (and to a
lesser extent Egypt) see the Iranian nuclear
program as an even greater existential threat than
Israel, and consequently are doing their best to
spur the US administration into action. According
to Israeli intelligence analysis site Debka, the
Saudi king recently presented Obama with a stern
ultimatum: "We cannot live with a nuclear Iran."
It could be, nevertheless, that a
collision is being avoided by chance, or by
various unexpected circumstances and
misunderstandings. Bret Stephens' account of the
history of the Iranian standoff, cited above, is
particularly illustrative in this respect. What we
have before us is an intense conflict involving a
number of powerful interests, and it is good to
keep in mind the following principle of history
(passed down to the author by a mentor at Duke
University, who in turn inherited it from his
mentor, Harold Parker): "Very often, out of the
conflict of wills arose a result that no one had
willed." However, that said, we would be very
unwise to bank on a result nobody seems to want.
It is practically certain that intense
preparations for an attack and difficult
negotiations between all the major parties
involved are going on as we speak. It is hard to
predict the result of these, given how little
reliable information on them is being made public,
and this is perhaps the main reason behind the
comparative silence on this issue over the past
few weeks. However, it is safe to assume that all
the other issues that are made public reflect in
some way the course of the backstage bargaining,
and it is worth taking a look at these.
For example, there is Lieberman's Gaza
disengagement plan. Ten or so days ago, the
controversial Israeli foreign minister, known for
his right-wing views, surprised everybody by
suggesting that Israel disengage from Gaza
according to all regulations of international law,
that it close the land border and leave the
enclave to the Europeans to police [4].
The idea was practically drowned in
criticism from all sides, including Hamas [5]. Its
main supporter turned out to be Lieberman's
similarly controversial deputy, Danny Ayalon,
whose praise spurred Israeli journalist Doron
Rosenblum to write in the Israeli newspaper
Ha'aretz: "The more he spoke, the stronger the
impression that the summary rejection and the
hopelessness of the proposal were actually what
led to it being embraced by him so passionately."
The most obvious explanation for
Lieberman's announcement was that he wanted to get
back at Netanyahu and to put pressure on him not
to part with right-wing policies. A month ago, the
prime minister went around Lieberman by sending
Trade Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer to secretly
negotiate the Free Gaza aid flotilla incident with
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
When Lieberman, who at the time was
advocating a hard line against Turkey, learned of
this, he went ballistic. It was "extremely serious
... that this was done without notifying the
Foreign Ministry," he claimed. "This goes against
all norms of government and does serious harm to
the trust between the foreign minister and the
prime minister."
Why exactly a Gaza
disengagement plan, however much of a bluff, would
be a way to get back at Netanyahu is a more
curious question. The answer is that this was
probably more of a warning than revenge per se.
Such a plan, if proposed seriously, would disturb
the Egyptians more than anybody else.
In
1967, Israel conquered Gaza from Egypt, and there
is a vocal Israeli right-wing minority that
advocates "the Egyptian option": leaving Gaza to
Egypt to be dealt with by Egypt's government.
Cairo, as it feels an intense internal threat from
the mother organization of Hamas, the Muslim
Brotherhood, is none too happy with this
possibility.
Consequently, such talk
coming from an Israeli minister could undermine
the relationship between the two countries. This,
in turn, is the last thing that Netanyahu wants,
particularly right after he has lost one key ally
in the Middle East (Turkey). Netanyahu badly needs
the support of Egypt to deal with Hamas in Gaza
and, to a lesser extent, with Iran's proxy
Hezbollah in Lebanon. Lieberman, on the other
hand, has little to lose (the Egyptians have
spurned him, in any case).
Lieberman also
could hardly have been oblivious to the peace
process when making his plan known, at the very
least including an element of a veiled threat
against Palestinian Authority (PA) President
Mahmoud Abbas ("we can further sever Gaza from the
West Bank and your authority").
In any
case, his announcement coincided with mounting
international pressure on Abbas to return to the
negotiating table. Recently, the Israeli newspaper
Yedioth Ahronoth reported that US officials had
said of Abbas, "If he wants Obama to help, then he
needs to go to direct talks."
Abbas, on
his part, has continued to resist. "The entire
world is asking us to go for direct negotiations,"
he claimed on Sunday, "but going to negotiations
without a clear reference might make them collapse
from the first moment." (By "reference" he means
"that he would enter direct talks only if progress
was first achieved on the future borders and
security of a Palestinian state," according to a
Jerusalem Post report [6].
Netanyahu
immediately slammed him. "[First] they said it was
the [settlement] freeze, now it's the borders
issue," he complained, quoted by Ha'aretz, adding
that "[the PA are] stalling direct talks and
relying on the Arab League for support".
This picture is curiously flipped over,
however, if we question what the relationship is
between the peace talks and an attack on Iran.
That depends, to a large extent, on if and how
Hamas gets involved, and on what happens to Gaza.
While a successful strike on Iran would
likely strengthen Abbas and the peace talks in the
long term, it is just as likely that the turmoil
would force a pause on this specific round of
negotiations. The Palestinian leader is
notoriously weak domestically; for him to
backtrack on his preconditions, in the face of
strong internal pressure to take a harder line,
would already be a major gamble.
For him
to do that and get nothing in return in the short-
to mid-term would be political suicide. Thus, if
he saw war was coming (or if he believed for some
other reason that the negotiations would go
nowhere), the best way for him to behave would be
as he is behaving now.
On the northern
Israeli front, too, there is tumult as Hezbollah
appears to have come under duress from several
sides. Firstly, there is the Hariri tribunal. "I
was personally informed by Prime Minister [Saad]
Hariri that the tribunal will accuse some
undisciplined members [of Hezbollah]," said the
organization's leader, Hassan Nasrallah. He
reacted hysterically, vowing to protect the
"resistance" and calling the investigation "an
Israeli project".
Secondly, Debka
reported, a Saudi initiative is afoot to "to tempt
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to phase out his
support for Hezbollah in return for Saudi and Gulf
recognition of his dominant role in Beirut" [7].
Nasrallah is expected to do his utmost to derail
the attempt.
Thirdly, a series of
incidents between Hezbollah-affiliated civilians
and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon
peacekeepers in the south forced Lebanese Premier
Hariri to beef up the army presence there, and
led to international condemnation.
Finally, Israel recently turned up the
heat on Hezbollah by circulating new accusations
backed by declassified intelligence of the group's
military buildup in Lebanon [8]. While this can be
interpreted as a warning rather than an
aggression, it is hard to avoid the fact that
Hezbollah is an important rung in Iran's defensive
strategy, and the warning might be part of the
pressure on the Shi'ite organization to keep its
cool in the event of an attack.
In brief,
despite a deceptive calm, the Middle East is very
much seething under the surface. It is hard to say
what exactly will happen and when exactly it will
happen, but it is reasonable to expect a flurry of
developments, many of them soon.
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