Tag Archives: iran

Israel, Russia, United States

Obama’s top two foreign rivals could be vanquished in one week

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putinnetanyahuPhoto credit to Kobi Gideon / GPO / Flash90.

It’s still irresponsible chatter to suggest that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s nine-day absence from public view is anything more serious than the flu.USflagRussia Flag IconISrel Flag Icon

But as Julia Ioffe wrote Saturday in The Washington Post, even if Putin’s absence is, as very likely, caused by something as mundane as the influenza epidemic currently sweeping through Moscow, it is becoming a more serious event because of the highly personalized system of Russian government where everything has become so micromanaged by Putin and his close allies. The longer Putin’s absence, the greater the chances of an internal coup or putsch, perhaps by the internal security forces, the siloviki, upon whose support Putin rose to power in the 2000s:

You can see why some in Russia are panicking right now—or veiling their discomfort in humor. It certainly doesn’t help that Putin’s disappearance comes at a particularly nervous time for the country. It is at war in Ukraine, its economy is shuddering under sanctions and historically low oil prices, and the opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov, was recently gunned down steps from the Kremlin. There is a sense in Moscow that the wheels are coming off. To Moscow’s chattering class, Putin’s disappearance confirms that impression.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, in national elections, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s center-right Likud (הַלִּכּוּד) is set to win fewer seats in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset (הכנסת) than the center-left Zionist Union (המחנה הציוני‎) of Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog and former justice minister Tzipi Livni. Though it’s too soon to write off a third consecutive mandate for Netanyahu, the March 17 vote is the toughest electoral fight for Netanyahu since he lost his first bid for reelection in 2001.

Even if Israeli president Reuven Rivlin, a former Likud speaker in the Knesset, convinces Likud and the Zionist Union to form a national unity coalition, polls show that Herzog, and not Netanyahu, would become prime minister. That would place deadening pressure on Netanyahu’s leadership of Likud, where capable replacements, such as former interior minister Gideon Sa’ar, are waiting in the wings.

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Remarkably, that means that US president Barack Obama’s two most nettlesome rivals in international affairs could be sidelined in the course of the same week — or even the same day. Continue reading Obama’s top two foreign rivals could be vanquished in one week →

Iran, United States

On the matter of the ‘Cotton Letter’ to Iran

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J. William Fulbright.USflagIran Flag Icon

One of the great contrasts lurking underneath the latest outrage of the day in American politics is that Arkansas, the state that produced as its senator throughout the late Jim Crow era was a progressive Democratic voice and a crucial dissenting clarion on Vietnam. Fulbright, whose name is synonymous with thoughtful foreign policy in the 1960s and the 1970s, a multilateralist who helped midwife the United Nations and who stood up to the tyranny of Joseph McCarthy’s deranged anti-Communist witch hunts. He also thought the segregation of African Americans was perfectly fine, he joined the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and he opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He served as the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1959 to 1974. He was rumored to be John Kennedy’s top choice to be secretary of state, ultimately disqualified by the his shameful support for segregation.

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On Monday, Tom Cotton (pictured above), the heir to the other Arkansas seat in the United States Senate, and who won the seat as the darling of the ‘tea party’ movement on the American right, drew verbal missiles from much of the American left (and quite a few moderate Republicans) for organizing a purposefully inflammatory letter to Iran, just as US president Barack Obama and his administration enter a crucial period in negotiations over international sanctions against Iran, a country of over 77 million people, and its desire to build a nuclear energy program.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: As Rowhani takes power, US must now move forward to improve US-Iran relations

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The chasm between Fulbright and Cotton is amazing. It’s a lesson in the dynamism of American politics or, really, any political system. The same jurisdiction that just 60 years ago produced a Fulbright can today produce a Cotton. The same jurisdiction than seven years ago enthusiastically supported hard-line conservative ‘principalist’ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with his venal anti-Semitic rhetoric, can today embrace the liberal reforms of Hassan Rowhani.

It’s also a lesson that no single political leader or official is right all of the time. Just as Fubright’s record on civil rights appears to us today as inhumane and unjust, Cotton could one day emerge as a thought leader on any number of issues. (Though probably not on Iran, if his Monday letter is any indication).

Yes, Tom Cotton’s letter is basic

No one will remember this stunt a year from now or a decade from now. It probably won’t even have much of an impact by the time March 24 arrives, the latest artificial deadline established by the ‘P5+1’ group of countries reaching for a workable deal in respect of Iran’s nuclear energy program.

Part of that has to do with the letter’s amateur-hour tone: Continue reading On the matter of the ‘Cotton Letter’ to Iran →

Israel, United States

The real reason Netanyahu is coming to Washington

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netanyahucongressPhoto credit to AFP.

Washington, it’s not always about you. USflagISrel Flag Icon

For a week, US House speaker John Boehner’s decision to invite Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of the US Congress has stirred controversy in the capitals of both countries, but especially in Washington, where commentators of all political stripes are attacking the veteran Israeli leader for the breathtaking breach of protocol in bypassing the administration of US president Barack Obama and dealing exclusively with Obama’s political opponents in the legislative branch. The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg, perhaps the leading US commentator on Israeli affairs and the bilateral relationship, slammed the move in a piece on Tuesday headlined, ‘The Netanyahu disaster.’

Yes, Netanyahu wants to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power, and he’s made it clear that he will stop at nothing to thwart Tehran from enriching even the tiniest bit of uranium in its quest to develop its nuclear energy industry — to say nothing of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Yes, Netanyahu is a political foe of the Obama administration and, time after time, he’s gone out of his way to indicate his disapproval of its approach to Iran and other issues central to Israeli regional security. Netanyahu has increasingly developed common cause with the US right, and he has a fervent supporter in Sheldon Adelson, one of the wealthiest Republican donors in the United States (he almost single-handedly bankrolled former speaker Newt Gingrich’s 2012 presidential bid) and a top Netanyahu financier in his own right.

But neither of those are the real reason that Netanyahu is so eager to speak before the US Congress, now entirely controlled by the Republican Party. Nor will Netanyahu be dissuaded by arguments that it’s a fantastic breach of protocol that will make an already tense relationship with the Obama administration worse. After all, Netanyahu practically endorsed Mitt Romney, Obama’s Republican challenger for the presidency in 2012, and he easily won his own battle for a new term as Israeli prime minister two months after the American presidential election. The potential of alienating a sitting US president certainly didn’t harm Netanyahu’s own domestic political prospects two years ago. The fact that Netanyahu is one of the few US allies who so often publicly contradicts the US president might even boost his standing among Israeli voters.

The real impetus for Netanyahu?

His scheduled appearance comes just two weeks before he faces what will be his toughest election battle since 1999, when he lost an election to Ehud Barak, then the leader of the Labor Party (מפלגת העבודה הישראלית).  Continue reading The real reason Netanyahu is coming to Washington →

United States

Ashton Carter will be Obama’s fourth defense secretary

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Just a week after US president Barack Obama in essence fired his defense secretary, former Republican senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, he has apparently found a successor — Ashton Carter.USflag

Carter served as deputy secretary of defense between October 2011 and December 2013 under both Hagel and Hagel’s predecessor, Leon Panetta, a longtime Democratic operative, former budget chief, Clinton administration chief of staff and California congressman.

Carter, who graduated from Yale University with majors in medieval history and physics, has an extensive background as under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. He is a Rhodes scholar with a doctoral degree in physics as well.

As a defense secretary, he will be more like Panetta or Robert Gates, a master of the Pentagon and its bureaucracy and budget. He isn’t expected to be a visionary, like former Bush-era defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which is just as well, given that so much national defense policymaking is centered in the White House, not at the Pentagon. Nevertheless, The Atlantic‘s editor-at-large, Steve Clemons noted earlier on Tuesday on Twitter that Carter is hawkish with respect to Iran, which could nudge administration policy, a week after stalled negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons program were extended until July 2015.

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RELATED: Hagel’s exit symbolizes Obama policy shift

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Unlike Hagel (or even Panetta), Carter is not a politician, but rather a career technocrat and policy wonk.  As an assistant secretary of defense under US president Bill Clinton, Carter was responsible for international security policy, and he has written extensively on the topic of nuclear non-proliferation.

When Obama was looking to replace Panetta two years ago, Carter was on the short list as well, and there were indications that Hagel and Carter didn’t always see eye-to-eye at the Pentagon, one reason why Carter may have stepped down as deputy secretary late last year.

His background from the immediate post-Cold War period makes Carter especially cognizant of many issues in the former Soviet Union, perhaps an especially relevant qualification as Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine (and perhaps the Baltic states and Georgia) increases.

Carter is easily expected to win confirmation by the US Senate, which will be Republican-controlled as of early January, following Republican gains in both houses of the US Congress in November’s midterm congressional elections.

United States

What a Republican Senate means for world politics

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On Tuesday, when tens of millions of US voters go to the polls, they are very likely to deliver a US Senate majority to the Republican Party.USflag

Six years into the administration of Democratic president Barack Obama and four years after the midterm elections that delivered control of the US House of Representatives to the Republicans and conservative speaker John Boehner, most polls and poll aggregate forecasts give the Republicans anywhere from a strong (70%) to moderate (74%) to an overwhelming (96%) chance to retake the Senate.

It’s not uncommon for the ‘six-year itch’ to reward the non-presidential party with gains in midterm elections. Throughout the post-war era, in every midterm election during the second term of a reelection president, the opposition party has made gains each time — with the exception of 1998, when the Democrats benefited from a strong economy and Republican overreach in pursuing  what would eventually become impeachment hearings against US president Bill Clinton over alleged perjury in the Monica Lewinsky affair.

It’s also not unheard of that foreign policy can drive larger narratives about presidencies.

Most recently, in 2006, Democrats recaptured both houses in midterm elections, forcing then-president George W. Bush to accept the resignation of his defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in light of the war in Iraq’s unpopularity and the unfolding sectarian civil war taking place there despite US military occupation. As it turns out, the 2006 midterms paved the way for a much more moderate tone to the final two years of the Bush administration and a change in strategy under Robert Gates, Rumsfeld’s successor, who ultimately stayed on as defense secretary until 2011, lending a sense of continuity to the Obama administration’s approach to defense policy.

So what exactly would a Republican Senate mean for US foreign policy in the final two years of the Obama administration? Continue reading What a Republican Senate means for world politics →

Iran, United Kingdom

Photo of the week: Cameron meets Rowhani

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379932_Cameron-RouhaniPhoto credit to PressTV.

In Iran, the United States may be the ‘Great Satan,’ but it’s the United Kingdom has an even longer and more complicated history with Iran.Iran Flag IconUnited Kingdom Flag Icon

It’s not uncommon, among the most conspiratorial Iranian politicians, to hear fulminations against British plots, even today. And to be fair, there’s some basis for Iranian antipathy toward nearly two centuries of antipathy between the Persian and British empires.

The British increasingly sidelined the Persian empire in the 19th century during the so-called ‘Great Game,’ as the Russian and Turkish empires increasingly encroached on historical Persia. In 1908, with the discovery of oil, British interests quickly swooped in to negotiate favorable terms for themselves, to the detriment of the Iranians. During World War II, though Iran was officially neutral, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union jointly invaded Iran in 1941 as part of efforts to secure Iranian oil, installing the young Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the country’s new shah. The resulting chaos led to famine, economic mismanagement and starvation throughout Iran for the rest of the war. Though the United States Central Intelligence Agency carried out the 1953 ouster of prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, British intelligence greatly facilitated the operation.

More recently, a mob invaded the British embassy in Tehran in 2011, setting fire to the British flag, which caused the United Kingdom to cut relations with Iran.

So it’s no exaggeration to say that the United Kingdom might today be even more hated in the Islamic Republic of Iran than the United States of America.

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RELATED: As Rowhani takes power, US must now move forward to improve US-Iran relations

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All of which makes this week’s bilateral meeting between Iranian president Hassan Rowhani and British prime minister David Cameron so fascinating. Continue reading Photo of the week: Cameron meets Rowhani →

Iraq

Meet Haider al-Abadi, Iraq’s likely next prime minister

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Abadi

With his appointment by Iraq’s new president Fouad Massoum, Haider al-Abadi (حيدر العبادي‎) is almost certain to become Iraq’s next prime minister — even as two-term prime minister Nouri al-Maliki continues to attempt to stop Abadi’s selection by any means possible. iraq flag icon

So who is Abadi? And what does his selection mean for Iraq’s political future?

Like many leading figures in the Shiite opposition movement, Abadi spent much of the Saddam Hussein era in exile, in his case in London. In 2003, like so many other exiles, returned to Iraq when the US military eliminated Saddam’s Baathist regime.

From the outset, Abadi took a leading role in Iraq’s new government. An electronic engineer, Abadi served as communications minister in the Iraqi Governing Council that reigned between September 2003 and June 2003. Most recently, Abadi was elected deputy speaker of Iraq’s parliament last month in what’s been a four-month process to elect new national leaders, following the country’s April parliamentary elections.

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RELATED: Latest Iraqi parliamentary steps
indicate Maliki’s replacement

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Abadi’s appointment has the support of a majority of the Shiite bloc that Maliki once led, the State of Law Coalition (SLC, إئتلاف دولة القانون), and Abadi himself is a member of Maliki’s party, Islamic Dawa (حزب الدعوة الإسلامية‎), the leading force in the SLC. Up until his appointment replacing Maliki, Abadi was as a key Maliki ally, for example, siding with Maliki against Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a former prime minister and former Dawa leader who was kicked out the party in  2008 when he moved to establish a competing group.  Continue reading Meet Haider al-Abadi, Iraq’s likely next prime minister →

United States

Six important points from Clinton’s foreign policy interview

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Hillary Clinton Speaks At USAID Launch Of U.S. Global Development

Over the weekend, US president Barack Obama gave a wide-ranging interview on foreign policy with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. USflag

But it’s the interview that The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg conducted with former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton that’s garnered much more attention. With Clinton leading polls for both the Democratic presidential nomination and general election in 2016, her interview was widely viewed as creating space between her own views on US foreign policy and those of the current president, who defeated her in 2008 for the Democratic nomination before appointing her as the top US diplomat in the first term of his presidential administration.

The most controversial comment seems to be Clinton’s criticism that the Obama administration’s mantra of ‘don’t do stupid shit‘ isn’t what Clinton calls an ‘organizing principle’ for the foreign policy of any country, let alone a country as important as the United States.

The headline in the The New York Times? ‘Attacking Obama policy, Hillary Clinton exposes different world views.’

Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post endeavored to explain ‘What Hillary Clinton was doing by slamming President Obama’s foreign policy.’

The Clinton ‘slam,’ though, is somewhat overrated. She admits in virtually the same breath that she believes Obama is thoughtful and incredibly smart, adding that ‘don’t do stupid stuff’ is more of a political message than Obama’s worldview. For the record, Clinton claims that her own organizing principles are ‘peace, progress and prosperity,’ which might be even more maddeningly vague than ‘don’t do stupid stuff.’ After all, who’s against peace, progress or prosperity? Even if ‘don’t do stupid shit’ is political shorthand, and even if you don’t believe that the Obama administration’s foreign policy has been particularly successful, it’s political shorthand that  represents a sophisticated worldview about the respective strengths and limits of US foreign policy.

In any event, there’s an awful lot to unpack from the Clinton interview, both on the surface and from reading between the lines. You should read the whole thing, but in the meanwhile, here are six things that struck me from the interview about Clinton and what her presidential administration might mean for US foreign policy. Continue reading Six important points from Clinton’s foreign policy interview →

Lebanon

Suleiman is gone, and Lebanon still has no president

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suleiman

Lebanon’s president Michel Suleiman left office on May 25, but even as the country struggles to contain the chaos — political, humanitarian and otherwise — that’s spilled over from Syria’s four-year civil war. Lebanon

Earlier today, Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanon’s national assembly (مجلس النواب), scheduled the seventh vote since April 23, to elect Suleiman’s successor.

Like the last six ballots, there wasn’t even be a quorum for the vote. Berri has scheduled the eighth attempt for July 2.

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RELATED: Lebanon’s parliament considers
presidential choice tomorrow

RELATED: In first ballot, Lebanon’s parliament fails
to elect new president

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Given that it took ten months for prime minister Tammam Salam to form a new government in February, and that Salam’s unity government came together almost solely for the rationale of getting Lebanon through the presidential election and through a new electoral law and fresh parliamentary elections, there’s no telling how long the standoff could last — perhaps months or even well into 2015.

After former president Émile Lahoud left office in November 2007, it took another six month — until May 25, 2008 — to elect his successor, Suleiman (pictured above).

Though the Lebanese presidency is largely ceremonial, it’s a vital component of the fragile balancing of confessional interests in a country with 18 officially recognized ‘confessions’ — or religious groups. Lebanon’s president must be a Maronite Christian, while its prime minister must be a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of the Assemblée nationale (National Assembly) must be a Shiite Muslim. Of the 128 members of the National Assembly, 64 must be Muslim and 64 must be Christian.

In the meanwhile, Christian parties have said that they will boycott the national assembly’s sessions until a new president is chosen, arguing that the priority for Lebanon should be electing a new president, not routine legislation. That, in turn, makes it less likely that the Salam government can accomplish much of anything until Lebanon has a new president — and there’s no assurance that a new president will be in place in time for parliamentary elections scheduled (for now) to take place in November.

The problem is that Lebanon isn’t Belgium — on balance, it’s not great news for Lebanese governance that it has a caretaker government, with no hope of electing a president and no hope of holding parliamentary elections, which last took place in April 2009. That’s true in ‘normal’ times, but it’s especially true as Lebanon’s government works to hold off further violent spillover from the Syrian civil war, which has ignited sectarian tension in Beirut, Tripoli and elsewhere in Lebanon. The government is also struggling to accommodate over one million Syrian refugees currently living in Lebanon — that’s a staggering amount for a country that only had around 4.5 million people to begin with.

So why can’t Lebanon elect a new president?

Continue reading Suleiman is gone, and Lebanon still has no president →

Iraq

Don’t blame Obama for Iraq turmoil — blame Maliki

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whenISISattacks

A week ago, the biggest story in Iraq was the prospect of seemingly endless post-election coalition talks among Iraq’s secular political elite, negotiations that seemed destined to restore Nouri al-Maliki to the premiership for a third consecutive term.iraq flag icon

But the sweeping offensive last week by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL, الدولة الاسلامية في العراق والشام, ad-Dawla al-Islāmiyya fi al-’Irāq wa-sh-Shām‎), which burst out of Iraq’s western al-Anbar province, has now overshadowed Iraq’s April elections, bringing into serious existential question the concept of Iraqi nationhood altogether. ISIS previously took control of Fallujah and Ramadi in January, where it joined forced with Sunni tribal leaders and others angry with Maliki’s increasingly authoritarian rule. But with a force of just 700 insurgents, ISIS easily took Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, last week. It followed up by taking Tikrit, another Sunni-majority northern city and the hometown of former president Saddam Hussein. ISIS also briefly took control of oil refining center of Baiji, though government forces have now wrested control back. That leaves much of western and, now, northwestern Iraq, in the hands of ISIS and allied Sunni militias.

Sensing an opportunity, the Kurdish peshmerga quickly moved into Kirkuk, another oil-rich town historically claimed by Iraqi Kurdistan as its capital but controversially left outside of the formal borders of the Kurdish autonomous region in post-Saddam Iraq. Though it’s an embarrassment for the Maliki government to have ‘lost’ Kirkuk to the Kurds, it’s the least of his worries. Kirkuk is probably much better off under Kurdish control than under what ISIS hopes will become a jihadist caliphate that extends from northern and western Iraq through eastern Syria. It’s difficult to believe that the central Iraqi government will have enough power anytime soon to force the Kurds to relinquish Kirkuk (or its rich oil reserves).

The end result is something of an asymmetrical tripartite Iraq.  Continue reading Don’t blame Obama for Iraq turmoil — blame Maliki →

Italy

Who is Federica Mogherini?

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mogerhini

When Matteo Renzi, the 39-year-old former Florence mayor, pushed Enrico Letta out of power in February, I questioned the timing of his decision and noted that it was an arguably anti-democratic electoral coup against a prime minister of his own party that could easily backfire on Renzi.Italy Flag Icon

But among the most eyebrow-raising choices was Renzi’s decision not to reappoint the internationally acclaimed Emma Bonino as foreign minister, allegedly against the wishes of Italian president Giorgio Napolitano.

A longtime leader of the Radicali Italiani (Italian Radicals), a group of reform-minded, good-government economic and social liberals, Bonino had a long career in Italian and international politics as an inaugural (and subsequent) member of the European Parliament,  international trade minister under center-left prime minister Romano Prodi, and European commissioner for health and consumer protection in the late 1990s. A longtime  international activist for human rights, Bonino surfaced briefly as a potential Italian presidential contender in May 2013, though the electors  ultimately decided to reappoint Napolitano.

Instead, Renzi appointed Federica Mogherini, a previously little-known international affairs expert and legislator in Renzi’s Partido Democratico (PD, Democratic Party).

Of course, youth need not prevent an official from becoming foreign minister (it hasn’t stopped Austria’s 27-year old foreign minister Sebastian Kurz). Nonetheless, it was a risk to replace such a renowned official like Bonino with an untested foreign minister like Mogherini (pictured above). Even before Bonino, the foreign ministry is a role that’s been held by some of Italy’s most senior politicians — Gianfranco Fini and Franco Frattini on the right, and Massimo D’Alema and Lamberto Dini on the left.

Mogherini, in her first trip abroad, was received by US secretary of state John Kerry yesterday, and she appeared briefly at the Brookings Institution today to share thoughts about European relations with Russia, Ukraine, North Africa and the Middle East.

Mogherini is impressive, even to those of us who regret that Bonino’s time as foreign minister was truncated to just 10 months. At her discussion at Brookings, she was more forthright and authoritative than one might expect from such an untested foreign minister.   Continue reading Who is Federica Mogherini? →

Iraq

Competing Shiite groups to determine Iraq’s next government

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maliki

It’s been barely over two years since all US military personnel left Iraq in December 2011, but you could be forgiven if you think that it feels much, much longer. iraq flag icon

When Iraqis go to the polls to vote today, it won’t likely make front-page headlines in the United States, even as Iraq moves away from national unity and toward growing sectarianism once again.

The last time that Iraqis went to the polls, the country seemed like it was on the mend. The destructive civil war from 2006 to 2008 that divided Baghdad (and much of the rest of Iraq) on Shiite and Sunni lines had subsided, thanks in part to a ‘surge’ of US military force and the ‘Awakening,’ a movement Sunni Iraqi leaders to combat radical elements like al-Qaeda. Iraq’s prime minister since 2006, Nouri al-Maliki, was running for reelection on a nationalist platform just as much as he was running to emerge as the leading Shiite power broker.

Fast forward four years, and Iraqis now seem less sanguine about the future than at any time since 2008. Even though Maliki (pictured above) is favored to win a third term as Iraq’s prime minister, Iraq’s future is an uncertain as ever. Exacerbated by the three-year civil war in neighboring Syria, sectarian tensions are once again on the rise. Corruption and mismanagement among Iraq’s ruling class has corroded the ability of its government to deliver even the most basic of public services, to maximize oil revenues or to provide sufficient power in Baghdad or elsewhere in the country. Members, both Sunni and Shiite, of Maliki’s ‘national unity’ government have spent the past four years fighting over access to power rather than working on policy solutions. In reality, the ‘national unity’ government, as headed by Maliki, has contributed to Iraq’s growing disunity. What’s more, it’s brought a disturbing lack of accountability — because everyone’s inside the government, there’s no opposition to hold the government accountable and there’s no credible alternative-in-waiting.

Dissatisfaction is growing at an alarming rate among Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority — note that Sunni Arabs roughly constitute around 20% of Iraq’s population, with Shiite Arabs comprising around 60% and Iraqi Kurds comprising 20%.

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That’s left much of the western al-Anbar province under the control of more radical Sunni groups that are also fighting against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Clumsy attempts last December by the Maliki government to assert control over Fallujah and other cities in the Sunni-dominated west only served to empower Sunni resistance, including a fair share of radical jihadists, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL, الدولة الاسلامية في العراق والشام, ad-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi al-’Iraq wa-sh-Sham‎), which formerly held itself out as Iraq’s homegrown branch of al-Qaeda, and which is active in Syria as well. But the violence is no longer confined to the west — an alarming number of suicide bombings and other attacks are on the rise all across Iraq, from Baghdad to Basra, the oil-rich province in the far south.

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RELATED: What is happening in Iraq, Fallujah and al-Anbar province?

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Radical groups have warned Sunni Arabs against participating in today’s elections on threat of violence. But parts of the Sunni west are so dangerous that the central Iraqi government won’t even be able to conduct elections there. The unrest follows Maliki’s systematic exclusion of top Sunni figures from government, including Iraq’s vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, who fled to Iraqi Kurdistan and then Turkey after Maliki’s forces tried him for murder and sentenced him to death. From the army to the central bank to the oil ministry, Maliki has skillfully excluded his ostensible Sunni partners in favor of Shiite allies.  

Meanwhile, in the north, Iraqi Kurdistan has forged ahead with an increasingly autonomous government that’s avoided many of the missteps of the central government, even as Iraqi Kurdistan pulls further away from Baghdad. For example, the Kurdish government is now shipping 100,000 barrels of oil a day through a pipeline to Turkey, thereby exacerbating relations with Baghdad to the point that Maliki has suspended  the 17% of the Iraqi budget allocated to the Kurds. As Iraqi Kurdistan continues to prosper as an oasis of stability with a relatively successful democracy and a strong economy that is attracting a growing amount of foreign investment, it’s sharing less and less in common with the rest of Iraq that seems to be heading into turmoil.

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RELATED: Bordered by chaos, Iraqi Kurdistan holds elections in relative oasis of peace and democracy

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So amid all the gloom, what should you expect from the voting in today’s parliamentary election? Continue reading Competing Shiite groups to determine Iraq’s next government →

France, United States

Can the Obama administration save François Hollande?

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2ckb1152No one could miss the undertones of yesterday’s op-ed, co-written by US president Barack Obama and French president François Hollande, in The Washington Post and Le Monde:France Flag Icon

A decade ago, few would have imagined our two countries working so closely together in so many ways. But in recent years our alliance has transformed. Since France’s return to NATO’s military command four years ago and consistent with our continuing commitment to strengthen the NATO- European Union partnership, we have expanded our cooperation across the board. We are sovereign and independent nations that make our decisions based on our respective national interests. Yet we have been able to take our alliance to a new level because our interests and values are so closely aligned.

It was one of the biggest, wettest, sloppiest kisses that the Obama administration has given a foreign leader — and it’s not something that this administration does often.  It’s part of the red-carpet treatment that Obama is rolling out for Hollande, who visited Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, in Virginia on Monday, and will be the host of a state dinner tonight at the White House.

It’s clearly an opportunity for the newly single Hollande to move on after a dismal January, when sensational headlines over his trysts with a French actress overshadowed his his attempts to introduce a new economic reform package.  It became a nearly monthlong saga that sent Hollande’s partner, Valerie Trierweiler, to a Paris hospital for over a week, and that ended with their breakup.

Time magazine, which a wide-ranging interview, asks this week on its cover whether Hollande can fix France.  It’s worth asking whether, first, the White House is trying to help fix Hollande.  Polls routinely show Hollande with an approval rating in the low 20s (or even high teens), making him the least popular president in the history of the Fifth Republic, not even two years into his five-year term.

The White House treatment, including Monday’s joint editorial, undoubtedly hopes to share of Obama’s star power with the widely derided president.  Obama needs Hollande’s help to finalize the US-EU free trade pact, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, even though it could harm French farmers and wine producers by opening the European Union to cheaper US exports.  Obama will also need Hollande’s help to win a long-term nuclear energy deal with Iran while the temporary six-month deal remains in effect.

It’s true that France has been, surprisingly, almost as reliable a partner on US foreign policy as the United Kingdom in recent years.  Hollande has deepened France’s 21st century internationalism, of course, most notably through his decision to mount a largely successful intervention to keep northern Mali from falling to foreign Islamic jihadists, thereby giving Bamako the space to hold new elections and build a stronger national government.  French peacemakers in the Central African Republic may have also helped limit violence between Christians and Muslims in December and January and smoothed the way for Michel Djotodia’s resignation.  Hollande was willing to back a US military attack on Syrian president  Bashar al-Assad last August when the United Kingdom and the US Congress were not.

 

But credit for the hard work of repairing US-French relations, insofar as it relates to the newly muscular tone of French foreign policy, more appropriately rests with former president Nicolas Sarkozy, whose administration marked the true pivot on foreign policy.   Continue reading Can the Obama administration save François Hollande? →

Iran, United States

Ten reasons why the Iran sanctions Senate bill is policy malpractice

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Iran nuclear talks: Kerry and Zarif meet at the UN

Iran is quickly moving to the front of the ever-shifting foreign policy agenda in Washington at the end of this week, with 59 members of the US Senate, including 15 Democratic senators and the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, supporting the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013.Iran Flag IconUSflag

The bill would impose additional sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran in the event that the current round of talks fail between Iran and the ‘P5+1,’ the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China and Russia), plus Germany.  US president Barack Obama met with the entire Democratic caucus in the US Senate Wednesday night to implore his party’s senators not to support the bill.  Senate majority leader Harry Reid opposes the bill, and he hasn’t scheduled a vote for the new Iran sanctions — and even some of its supporters may be backing off as the temporary six-month deal proceeds.

But with 59 co-sponsors, the bill is just one vote shy of passing the Senate, and it would almost certainly pass in the US House of Representatives, where the Republican Party holds a majority.  In the event that the Congress passes a bill, Obama could veto it, but the Senate is already precariously close to the two-thirds majority it would need to override Obama’s veto.

The Obama administration argues that the bill is nothing short of warmongering, while the bill’s supporters argue that the sanctions will reinforce the Obama administration’s hand in negotiations.  Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister (pictured above with US secretary of state John Kerry), has warned that the bill would destroy any chances of reaching a permanent deal, and it’s hard to blame him.  Under the current deal, reached in November, the P5+1 agreed to lift up to $8 billion in economic sanctions in exchange for Iran’s decision to freeze its nuclear program for six months while the parties work through a longer-term deal.  The deal further provides that Iran will dilute its 20% enriched uranium down to just 5% enriched uranium, and the P5+1 have agreed to release a portion of Iran’s frozen assets abroad and partially unblock Iran’s oil exports.

So what should you make of the decision of 59 US senators to hold up a negotiation process that not only the Obama administration supports, but counts the support of its British, German and French allies?

Not much.

And here are ten reasons why the bill represents nothing short of policy malpractice.   Continue reading Ten reasons why the Iran sanctions Senate bill is policy malpractice →

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Sharon’s most enduring legacy? Hezbollah

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hezbollah

As the world remembers former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who died today at age 85, I write this morning for The New Republic that his most enduring legacy is the emergence of Hezbollah, the Shiite Lebanese militia: LebanonISrel Flag Icon

By occupying southern Lebanon, a region that even today remains less economically developed than the rest of the country, Israel inadvertently pushed Lebanon’s Shiite population toward the radical leadership that Hezbollah embodied. Had Israel not done so, Nabih Berri, a relative moderate who’s served as the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament since 1992, might today be the dominant spokesman for the Shiite Lebanese population instead of Nasrallah, and Berri’s Amal Movement might be the dominant Shiite Lebanese political force, not Hezbollah. As Labor Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin succinctly put it in the years before his own assassination, Israel’s 1982 occupation “let the genie out of the bottle.” Israel’s invasion spawned an 18-year occupation that allowed Hezbollah to transcend its role representing the Shiite Lebanese community into a force fighting for the sovereignty of the Lebanese state, cheered by Israel’s enemies from Damascus to Tehran.

It’s not an argument that is necessarily pro-Sharon or anti-Sharon, though he was a polarizing figure in life and promises to continue to be so in death.  But I argue that Sharon, even in a coma, outlived most of the accomplishments of his premiership, and his military exploits (or crimes) will fade, leaving his decision in 1982 as Israel’s defense minister to invade Lebanon — and its direct influence on empowering Hezbollah — as the most significant, if unintentional, ‘accomplishment’ of his career.  After all, Hezbollah today remains a key player in regional politics — it is a vital actor in internal Lebanese affairs and the Syrian civil war, and it significantly affects  Palestinian relations with Israel and Iran-Israeli relations.

Photo credit to AP/Hussein Malla.