Middle East: Israel's Troubles with a Turkish Ally

The Results of the Mitchell Israel-Palestine Trip: Nothing

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

On Sunday, Ankara made a dramatic last-minute decision to bar Israel from an international military exercise on Turkish soil. Israeli leaders see the decision as a political response linking to Turkey's continuing criticisms over Israel's military operations in Gaza.

On Sunday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spoke to CNN:

We hope that the situation in Gaza will be improved. The situation will be back to the diplomatic track. And that will create a new atmosphere in Turkish-Israeli relations as well. But in the existing situation, of course we are criticizing this ... Israeli approach.

On the same day, Several Israeli defense officials said advanced weapons sales to Turkey would now be reviewed, and a leading academic expert on Israeli-Turkish relations suggested ending support for Turkey on the Armenian genocide issue in Washington if the deterioration in ties continues.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry tried to minimise the issue on Monday:

The international part of the Turkish exercise had merely been postponed and it is inappropriate to draw a political meaning and conclusion from the postponement. it is impossible to accept the assessments and comments attributed to Israeli officials in the press. We invite Israeli officials to [use] common sense in their stance and statements.

This may have eased the situation, as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak responded:

Israel's relations with Turkey are strategic, and have existed for dozens of years. Despite all the ups and downs Turkey continues to be a key player in our region.

Yet nothing in Middle East is ever limited to straightforward bilateral exchanges. The Turkish-Israeli tension occurs as Ankara's extends its Middle Eastern presence with other ties. On Tuesday, ten Turkish ministers including the Foreign Minister travelled to Damascus for the meeting fo the Turkey-Syria High Level Strategic Cooperation Council, established last month.

The Latest from Iran (12 October): Green Shoots?

NEW Iran: The Politics of the Death Sentences
NEW Iran: English Text of Mousavi-Karroubi Meeting (10 October)
Iran: The Washington-Tehran Deal on Enriched Uranium?
Iran: So Who Controls the Islamic Republic?
The Latest from Iran (11 October): The Mousavi-Karroubi Meeting

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

1930 GMT: The reformist Assembly of Combatant Clergymen, paralleling the statements of Mohammad Khatami, have written an open letter to the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, warning about the consequences of the current lawlessness and stressing that the judiciary should be held accountable for crimes, violation of law, and injustices. Among these violations are detentions in solitary confinement and uncertainties about charges:

Our fear and concern is because of the reduction or even destruction of the peoples trust and faith in the judiciary system. How can it be that, with a simple gesture, a newspaper is closed down and thus the artery of information of a party or group is blocked instantly; however, hundreds of newspapers and [Government] media with different kinds of accusations and convictions in their evidence become richer in their unbounded cheek and still the judiciary system is unable to dispense justice and only casts some general conclusions about the reproach of lies?

1910 GMT: A Very Gentle Day. Gentle by post-election standards, with the big domestic news Parliament's approval of Government cuts in food and gasoline/petrol subsidies. Reuters is only now catching up with Saturday's Karroubi-Mousavi meeting, loosely translating Mousavi as claiming, "It seems some people are trying to take us back to the Inquisition era."

1340 GMT: Posturing. After the flurry of political movement over the weekend, relatively quiet today. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is making an appearance in Shiraz, hoping that he doesn't face too many demonstrators. Mohammad Khatami is celebrating his 66th birthday with friends.

Meanwhile, the Iranian Government continues the ritual tough-talk two-step with its US partner, covering up the private movement towards accommodation. Responding to Hillary Clinton's finger-shaking that "the world will not wait indefinitely" for Iranian movement on the nuclear issue, the spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry blustered on Monday, "So far, western powers have achieved nothing by using the language of threats and sanctions against Iran. The West, itself, knows that this language is useless. We have always announced that we advocate negotiations."

0905 GMT: We've posted a special analysis of the politics surrounding the four death sentences handed out by the regime in recent days. And we've updated our feature on "Who Controls Iran?".

0900 GMT: A new poster (left) for the 4 November demonstrations is circulating. It repeats the slogans of previous flyers and adds, "United, we will be on the streets.
Join our million-strong green crowd on 13 Aban [4 November] in support of freedom in Iran. Stay in your car in silence in the areas where people are sitting in."

0720 GMT: Iranian state media is trying to keep President Ahmadinejad firmly in the international arena rather than within internal difficulties. The President's latest statement was the reassurance that Iran, not "the West", was setting the agenda for the next round of talks on Tehran's nuclear programme:

We have already agreed to discuss Iran's latest package of proposals. I don't think there will be any problems in the next round of talks but if someone wants to cause problems, they will fail. And if they succeed to do so, they will harm themselves.

Meanwhile the Iranian military is putting out its own tough reassurances, with a Brigadier General asserting, “Updating the defense systems is moving on an excellent progressive trend at present and (Iran’s systems) can compete with hi-tech systems of the world. Now we are in our best conditions of defensive preparedness."

0600 GMT:  Are we seeing an opposition revival? Consider that in the last 48 hours:

*Mohammad Khatami has made a high-profile appearance in Yazd Province and issued one of the strongest criticisms of the Government to date: “Be sure that people will never back down."

*Mehdi Karroubi, in a letter sent in his son's name, used the call for fairness from Iranian state broadcasting to attack the Iran judiciary's handling of his claims of detainee abuses;

*Karroubi has also re-established his web presence with the re-launch of Tagheer;

*Mir Hossein Mousavi, after seeing senior clerics on Thursday about his "social network", had a lengthy meeting on Saturday with Karroubi. In the summary of the meeting, both in Farsi and in English, their emphasis is on a renewal of pressure against the Government over electoral fraud, "legal" injustices, and abuses.

Add to this the re-appearance of Mousavi chief advisor Alireza Beheshti after the attempt to silence him through detention. Yesterday he issued a sharp response to Ahmad Khamati's Friday Prayer, deriding the cleric's claims of a US-sponsored "velvet revolution" (given that the Iranian Government had just sat across from US delegates at the Geneva talks) and calling for "rights" and "respect" for all Iranians.

Afghanistan: Did Clinton Just Say to the BBC, "Talk to the Taliban"?

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

UPDATE: Credit to the BBC for getting this much out of of Clinton. NBC didn't even get close to a statement beyond pitter-patter before moving on to the fatuousness of "Are you really important, Hillary?"

You had to have sharper ears than Spock, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have snuck in a huge revelation on Afghanistan in her interview with BBC national radio this morning.

If I heard this right, the big debate in Washington --- the one delaying any notion of a "strategy", let alone confirmation of military numbers --- isn't about troop increases. It's not even, as the media are framing it, whether the US should put emphasis on attacks on Al Qa'eda "sanctuaries" in Pakistan rather than a ramped-up counter-insurgency effort in Afghanistan.

No, it looks like Clinton is renewing the idea of talking to the bad guys, or at least "ex-bad guys", "minor bad guys", "not the biggest bad guys". After a few minutes of meaningless waffle to avoid being pinned down on the troop question, substance broke out (the passage  is  just after the 2:12:40 mark):

PRESENTER JOHN HUMPHREYS: You are changing the strategy, emphasising the campaigning against Al Qa'eda in Pakistan and arguing that the Taliban in Afghanistan don't pose a direct threat to the United States. Is that the case?

CLINTON: No, Mr Humphreys, it isn't....We are not changing our strategy. Our strategy remains to achieve the goal of disrupting, dismantling, and defeating Al Qa'eda and its extremist allies and denying them safe haven and the capacity to strike us here in London or New York or anywhere else.

It is fair to say that we are doing a much more careful analysis of who actually is allied with Al Qa'eda. Not everyone who calls himself a Taliban is necessarily a threat to the UK or the United States. I think there has been to some extent inherited from our prior involvement in Afghanistan a lack of clarity because there well may be a number of people who currently are considered Taliban who are there because, frankly, they get paid to fight or because they see no alternative.

Similarly in Iraq, when we began to more carefully parse out who was really with Al Qa'eda in Iraq and who had been coerced or intimidated, we began to make real progress on the ground in developing partnerships that led to a decrease in the violence and a glide path that we are all on to turning over the security to the people of Iraq.

So I think it is important to note that we are doing is bringing to bear information and evidence that needs to be part of our thinking as we implement in the most effective manner.

The general idea of talking to some of the Taliban, trying to split them off from the insurgency, is far from new. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was floating this in the final months of the Bush Administration. Clinton's Iraq analogy, however, takes this to a different level. In that case, the US military were not just talking (and giving significant amounts of cash) to "minor" members. They were talking to Sunni leaders to convince them that Al Qa'eda, not the US military, were the foe.

Since there is no Al Qa'eda in Afghanistan, Clinton's comparison confuses rathers than illuminates. With whom will the US military or US civilian officials or the Afghan Government be conversing? And who will they be putting as the "proper" target for these former enemies? Is the Secretary of State just talking about a "tactical" approach to break up groups of Taliban or is there a "strategic" approach considering a broad political settlement?

Unfortunately, the BBC's Humphries was so fixated with the narrative of the battle within Washington over troop levels that he did not follow up Clinton's statement. So the intriguing possibility --- that it's the politics that is preoccupying the Obama Administration and not the boots on the grounds --- goes unnoticed.

Bombings and Politics: The Violent Semi-Peace in Iraq

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

Iraq continues to be the forgotten American war, as attention turns to Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the always-excellent Juan Cole looks at the latest events to assess the significance of bombings, arrests, and power politics before the next elections:

Liz Sly reports from Baghdad on the three bombings that shook Ramadi, capital of al-Anbar Province, to its core on Sunday and left at least 26 dead and a hundred wounded. The first two bombings occurred outside the Governor's mansion where delegates from the Shiite-dominated government of PM Nuri al-Maliki were meeting with Sunni tribal leaders of the Awakening Council, which had turned against Sunni Muslim radicals and cooperated with US forces. Al-Zaman writing in Arabic says that the second bomb was timed to go off just as rescue workers arrived to deal with the victims of the first one, though another official said there were only 7 minutes between the blasts. A suicide bomber hit the hospital, perhaps timing his attack with the arrival of victims of the first two, though al-Zaman says that he initially tried to bring a truck bomb close to the hospital and was stopped by alert guards. He then came to the hospital wearing a suicide belt bomb and killed two persons when he detonated his payload.

According to al-Sharq al-Awsat, Ali al-Hatim, the paramount tribal leader or sheikh of the Dulaim tribe traded accusations with Gen. Tariq al-Asal, the head of al-Anbar's police force, over who was responsible for the lax security that allowed the bombings. Sheikh Hatim accused Gen. al-Asal of bearing responsibility for the bombings, and demanded his resignation. He said he has been buttering up PM al-Maliki by joining the Awakening Council to the central government, but that the cost of this policy was borne by ordinary residents of al-Anbar. Gen. al-Asal in turn accused al-Anbar's tribal leaders of maintaining secret ties to militants and to Syria, and blamed the bombings on Sheikh Hatim. Al-Zaman maintains that violence is back in the Sunni Arab areas, and that the lessened death toll of 2007-2008 has now been reversed by and that deaths are back up in Sunni Iraq.

Meanwhile, in the northern Sunni Arab center of Mosul (pop. 1.8 mn.), Iraqi security forces have recently made dozens of arrests, according to al-Hayah [Life]. Those taken into custody include many shopkeepers, and Sunni Arabs are accusing the government of taking a shotgun approach, arbitrarily rounding up people on the bsis of profiling, etc. A demonstration was mounted against the arrests.

As Liz Sly points out, the renewed violence comes on the backdrop of wrangling over Iraq's upcoming elections. In fact, presumably al-Maliki was trying to get Arab-Americans to join in his command. There are so many US troops in Iraq (130,000 or so) because it is thought they will be needed to close down the country for the elections. But parliament has still not passed an electoral law. It is thus unknown whether Iraqis will vote for individual candidates or for a whole party list. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is lobbying for an open system.

As Sly says, the US withdrawal timetable is premised upon there being elections in January, which may or may not happen. Or may or may not go smoothly.

The US media and public have taken their eyes off this ball. But if Iraq's elections don't go well, there could still be a lot of violence ahead.

Iran: So Who Controls the Islamic Republic?

The Latest from Iran (11 October): “Media Operations”

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

UPDATE 12 October 0845 GMT: EA's Mr Smith offers his reading of the Foreign Affairs analysis:

"I do not see what this adds to what we knew already. Besides making the silly mistake of identifying Mesbah Yazdi with Mohammad Yazdi, and stating that the former was head of Iran's judiciary (in reality his real influence and authority are, until proven otherwise, rather limited to "spiritual guidance" of Ahmadinejad), the rest are allegations that have been fed to him after having floated on the Web for months. The Taeb-Jalili-Khamenei trio was floated by Roger Cohen [of The New York Times] in one of his dispatches from Tehran.

The only tidbit that would be interesting, if verified, is the purge of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps and the removal of pro-Mousavi Guardsmen before the elections. That would make sense, and it would be interesting to have real statistics on that.
--
Earlier this week Foreign Affairs published an article by Jerry Guo on "the rise of a new power elite" of "the Revolutionary Guard and its allies" in Iran. The article raised points which have been discussed by Enduring America readers for several weeks, considering politics, the military situation, and the battle for control of key sections of Iran's economy. In addition to Guo's attention to the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, notice his inclusion of Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's National Security Council, and the Supreme Leader's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, amongst the "coalition of power".

Letter from Tehran: Iran's New Hard-Liners

The headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are in a European-style palace, replete with Greek columns and a grand staircase, in the eastern suburbs of Tehran. From here, the IRGC orchestrated the crackdown that followed Iran's disputed presidential vote in June, beating protestors on the street and torturing those behind bars. More ominously, the IGRC and other extreme hard-liners have sidelined fellow conservatives in the Iranian government, carving out their own power base in a regime that is becoming increasingly insular, reactionary, and violent.

So far, much of the analysis of the emerging Iranian power struggle has focused on the clash between the country's conservatives and reformers, pitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his patron, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, against Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, two thwarted presidential candidates, and Mohammad Khatami, a former president. (Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and seasoned kingmaker has eased toward the reformists in the election's aftermath.)

The real struggle, however, is the conflict among the hard-liners themselves, many of whom operate behind the headlines in unseen corners of the state machinery. Although Iran's opposition movement has witnessed an unprecedented surge in public support, the election and its aftermath mark a radicalization of the system not seen since the early days of the Islamic revolution.

In the reformist era of Khatami, and to some extent during Ahmadinejad's first term, the country's conservative theocrats and technocrats -- such as Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, and Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ejei, the ousted intelligence minister who criticized the state's use of forced confessions -- held much of the power over the executive and legislative branches. Although they were entrenched status quo forces, these pragmatists believed in the dual nature of the Islamic Republic's statehood -- a country with religious and political legitimacy.

But now such figures are losing their influence to a new breed of second-generation revolutionaries from Iran's security apparatus known as "the New Right." They are joined in the emerging power structure by ultraconservative clerics and organizations such as the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran. These neo-fundamentalists call for the "re-Islamization" of the theocracy, but their true agenda is to block further reform to the political system in terms of reconciling with both domestic opponents and the West.

This coalition includes Hassan Taeb, the commander of the Basij, the paramilitary branch of the IRGC; Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's National Security Council and the country's chief nuclear negotiator; and Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader's second son, a man so feared that his name is not often uttered in public.

Hard-line figures such as the younger Khamenei and the IRGC leadership are granted religious legitimacy through the support of the most radical mullahs in the theocratic establishment: Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, the committee that certified the election tallies, and Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi, a former head of the judiciary and Ahmadinejad's spiritual adviser. Yazdi is affiliated with an underground messianic sect called the Hojjatieh Society, which hopes to quicken the coming of the apocalypse. Democratic reforms, the Majlis (parliament), and elections are mere annoyances under this radical Islamic worldview.

It is not surprising, then, that Yazdi issued a fatwa shortly before June 12 that gave authorities tacit approval to fudge the vote. Indeed, the clerics seem to have gotten the intended result: after the election, a number of employees at Iran's Interior Ministry released an open letter stating that "the election supervisors, who had become happy and energetic for having obtained the religious fatwa to use any trick for changing the votes, began immediately to develop plans for it."

Yazdi's influence on Ahmadinejad became pronounced in the early days of the president's first term, when Ahmadinejad declared that the return of the apocalyptic 12th imam would come within two years. Now, his second term will likely be marked by even more radical behavior: in a meeting with Yazdi in June to discuss his domestic agenda, Ahmadinejad promised to Islamize the country's educational and cultural systems, declaring that Iranians had not yet witnessed "true Islam." Then, in August, amid calls to purge reformist professors, a presidential panel began investigating university humanities curricula deemed to be "un-Islamic." Several progressive students told me that they have been barred from returning to campus this semester, including a top law student at Tehran University. "I was going to continue the protests with my law degree in a more effective manner," he said. "But now I am just a simple pedestrian."

But ideology remains secondary in the struggle to maintain and consolidate control within the fractured regime. It is becoming increasingly clear that Ahmadinejad and his associated faction of neo-fundamentalists no longer aim to take on the mantle of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolutionary ideals. As Khamenei's representative to the IRGC put it, "Some people are sticking to Imam Khomeini's ideas ... [but] the situation has changed." Accordingly, religion and revolutionary ideology have become convenient means to an end, but not the end themselves. Purges of un-Islamic faculty and students are meant to target the organizers of mass protests; the arrests and subsequent trials of political opponents, meanwhile, act to shield the financial interests of the IRGC and its hard-line partners.

Read rest of article...