Valentine’s Day, and not a whole lot of love in the Middle East, as clashes between government forces and protestors broke out in Bahrain, Iran and Yemen.
Washington, as usual, did nothing right.
After hemming and hawing through the widespread Egyptian uprising against staunch US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak, the Obama administration leaped at the opportunity to support the Iranian demonstrators…and completely ignore those in Yemen and Bahrain.
Over the weekend, the US State Department set up a brand new Twitter account in the Persian language called @USAdarFarsi (which translates into “USA in Farsi”) and proactively busted out these gems in anticipation of Iran protests on Monday:
RT @USAdarFarsi: US calls on #Iran to allow people to enjoy same universal rights to peacefully assemble, demonstrate as in Cairo.#25Bahman
RT @USAdarFarsi #Iran has shown that the activities it praised Egyptians for it sees as illegal, illegitimate for its own people.#25Bahman
RT @USAdarFarsi US State Dept recognizes historic role of social media among Iranians We want to join in your conversations #Iran#25Bahman
RT @USAdarFarsi in English: Egyptians=Tahrir … Iranians=Azadi … freedom of peaceful assembly for all. #25Bahman #25Jan #Egypt #Iran
RT @USAdarFarsi in English: Iranians in Sadiqieh square should have same right to protest as Egyptians in Tahrir square. #25Bahman #Jan25
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton spent the weekend spinning her perspectives on Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and the US-funded Al Hurra, calling for political change in Iran, and openly supporting the aspirations of protestors there. Not a word on protests in US-backed Bahrain or Yemen however.
It is clear that Washington is irritated by Iranian government claims to have inspired the uprisings embroiling the Arab world right now, especially as these are taking place in countries the US once relied on to support its pro-Israel, anti-Iran regional policy positions.
But to actually come out in firm support of protestors in Iran, while remaining quiet about those taking place against their proxy Arab governments is also extremely hypocritical. It seems we never learn.
Western Media Toes the US Line
Worse yet were the media takes on events in Iran on Monday. With all the tweets and videos pouring in, there is still barely any verifiable information available – not that this has stopped both print and television media from jumping into the fray.
My favorite piece of disinformation is this MSNBC news segment where an Iran-based correspondent’s audio feed is juxtaposed with video footage of absolutely massive crowds streaming through central Tehran squares and monuments. My eyes popped until I saw the discreet “Friday” date on the video — the footage is from pro-government celebrations just three days earlier on the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution:
Another bit of disinformation — now quoted widely in the western media — came early on Monday with claims that one protester had already been killed by government forces. A closer look traces this tidbit to the semi-official Fars news agency which attributes the violence to protesters: “One person was shot dead and several were wounded by seditionists (opposition supporters) who staged a rally in Tehran.” (more…)
What do US comedian Jon Stewart and Hamas Chief Khaled Meshaal have in common? What does Stewart have in common with Syrian President Bashar al Assad or outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for that matter?
For starters, they’re all sick of waiting for the American government to do something useful. And just as critically, they are pretty tired of the “you’re either with us or against us” theme too.
Watching Jon Stewart speaking to more than 200,000 Americans who had traveled far and wide to attend Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” two weeks ago, I was struck by some themes that I repeatedly heard throughout the Middle East this summer.
In August during an <a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharmine-narwani/khaled-meshaal-on-hamas-a_b_738758.html” target=”_hplink”>interview</a> in Damascus, Hamas Chief Meshaal described a new trend in the Middle East where certain leaders and states were rejecting the notion of being stuck in “blocs” or political camps, always warring with the other side:
<blockquote>Why should we be dividing ourselves into two blocs — either being against America and the West, or acquiescing 100% to them? We do not want to wage a war against the world. Or to sever relations with countries. So the nations and the people of the region want a state model based on self respect — without any enmity with the world.</blockquote>
Not that we would know this back home. The divisive media that Stewart and Colbert rail against for partisan politicking in Washington is on hyper-drive when it comes to the Middle East — creating more fear, more hate than is good for us. It paralyzes our ability to act and ensures that we will have zero policy breakthroughs.
I am fairly sure that Stewart was not thinking about Meshaal when he said “we can have animus, and not be enemies,” but I am equally certain the core of his sentiment — the promotion of the kind of political maturity we used to see in politics where foes could sit around a table, break bread and try to find common ground — is absolutely relevant to our foreign policy breakdown, too. (more…)
This is the second installment of a two-part series. Read the first installment here.
Palestinian resistance group Hamas has beaten some unusual odds to survive today: Israel’s unlawful siege of Gaza has crippled the coastal strip’s economy and left Hamas scrambling to govern a restless population living under increasingly desperate conditions. Its officials and members are targeted by Israel and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) for detention, torture and extrajudicial killings. Pro-US Arab leaders undermine it at every turn, partly to satisfy American demands, partly because they fear the widespread popularity of any moderate Islamist resistance group among their own populations.
Classified by the US as a “terrorist” organization, Hamas has spent the past year battling armed Salafist extremists who want to enforce Islamic law in the Gaza Strip and who view the Hamas leadership as too weak-willed to challenge Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
It is ironic that Hamas today is criticized for being hardline — and liberal too. Militant — and not militant enough. Islamist — and not Islamist enough. Iranian stooges — and US pawns, both.
I expected to see some of these contradictions in Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas’ political bureau, when I interviewed him in Damascus recently. What I discovered instead is that, like a select crop of leaders we are seeing in the Middle East today, Meshaal refuses to be seen through one lens only. A real challenge for US policymakers with their unidimensional approach to regional politics.
The former high school physics teacher convincingly argues that the New Middle East is one where nations need to keep their “options open.” He rejects a regional status-quo where countries stay in “blocs” unthinkingly, and vehemently argues against the notion that Mideast democracy and reform cannot advance unless foreign intervention ends.
Meshaal may be more of a geopolitical strategist than suspected, but he also manages to stay infuriatingly “on message” most of the time — never a fun thing when you would love a stray impolitic anecdote. Toward the end of our discussion I asked him about his rumored stash of Dubya jokes, and received nothing but a twinkle in his eye in return, though I could swear he almost caved.
But Hamas’ goal to end Israel’s occupation of Palestine is no laughing matter, and Meshaal’s earnest focus reflects the gravity of events in the Mideast today. In Part 1 of the interview seen here, he addresses the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Hamas’ perspective on the recently launched peace talks. This time around, Khaled Meshaal talks about broader regional issues, including the emergence of the “Resistance Bloc,” the New Middle East, relations with Iran, the Ground Zero mosque…and on a more personal note, his relationship with his father: (more…)
With pundits in most capitals already predicting failure for the US-brokered Palestinian-Israeli peace talks to begin on Thursday, it seems only natural to start asking the question: “What’s next?”
To get a jumpstart on what surely will be an onslaught of new, competing narratives vying for prominence in the post-peace process era, I headed to Damascus to talk to a man who has predicted the failure of this process from the start. And yet who — against all logic — has never been invited to sit at the negotiating table.
Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas’ political bureau, is an unassuming man who sauntered into our interview room unattended and chatted with me in English while we awaited his staff.
The young father of seven — three daughters and four sons, in that order — is grounded, smart and energetic. We met at 1:00 a.m. when I was fading fast, and he was just getting started. There was a lot of ground to cover, but more than anything I wanted to leave the interview knowing what Hamas stood for. The resistance group, I felt, had left people confused in recent years. By moderating their stances and altering their language to accommodate changing realities in the Middle East, Hamas had become a bit blurry at the edges.
Do they recognize a two-state solution? Do they reject the peace process outright? What do they think about the role and imperatives of the international community in resolving the longstanding conflict between Palestinians and Israelis?
And most importantly for me — how does one today define an organization that has evolved so much since its inception?
Firstly, Hamas is clearly a national liberation movement that has at it roots a “resistance” outlook. It’s focus is the liberation of Palestine from Israeli occupation, and the group’s Islamist character complements rather than competes with Hamas’ political objectives.
Secondly, Hamas’ resistance of occupation is at the heart of its strategies — be they efforts to reach out and engage, or to take up arms. The strategy may change with evolving regional and global realities, but the group’s objectives stand firm.
In a nutshell: While the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority enables Israel to enjoy a pressure-free occupation, Hamas ensures that Israel’s occupation remains always under pressure.
And so we come to this last leg of the US-brokered peace process. Ostensibly, under the internationally-sanctioned land-for-peace formula, a major goal of negotiations is to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. So why then would Hamas not stand fully behind a peace process that sought to accomplish some of its very own goals? And why too would US mediators not invite the participation of a group that won the Palestinian popular vote in their last elections?
Here is what Khaled Meshaal had to say about the prospects and challenges of peace, and where we find ourselves at this moment, on the eve of direct peace talks:
SN: The peace process has been going on for 19 years — what in your view has been the major reason for its failure thus far?
KM: Three reasons. First of all, Israel does not want peace. They talk about peace but they are not ready to pay the price of peace. The second reason is that the Palestinian negotiator does not have strong cards in his hand to push the peace process forward. The third reason is that the international community does not have the capability or the desire to push Israel towards peace.
I met with Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa at his elegant quarters in the heart of Cairo last week — on the eve of the League’s crucial meeting with Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas to decide on direct talks with Israel.
Moussa’s career has gone from strength to strength since I first briefly met him as Egypt’s ambassador to the United Nations in the early 1990s. He was named Egypt’s foreign minister not too long after, and then moved on to head the Arab League. Some say he had become too popular on the Egyptian street, and this was President Hosni Mubarak’s way of sidelining a potential competitor.
There have been whispers about Moussa running for Egypt’s highest political office in elections next year, particularly as rumors swirl about Mubarak’s losing battle with cancer. But the Arab League chief is firmly focused on the most contentious issue in the Middle East right now – the troubled, never-ending “peace process” between Palestinians and Israelis.
In a candid conversation with Moussa just hours before the first Arab foreign minister arrived, he addressed a broad array of hot issues in the region – carefully, but passionately too. A decade in this prestigious – though some may argue, largely impotent – post, Moussa, still has fire in his belly and the determination to do something about it.
What was clear from our discussions was that the Arab “world” is reaching the end of its patience with the regional status quo and the 19-year-long US-sponsored peace process. If genuine and well-intentioned negotiations do not emerge in the very near future, the direction of the region is up for grabs. And Moussa has some ideas as to where it should go.
First though, some thoughts on the Arab League itself – its accomplishments, and even its relevance in the face of decades-long regional stagnation and the difficulties in gaining consensus among 22 different nations: (more…)
In what was touted right here on the Huffington Post as “one of the few genuine debates on Israel-Middle East issues” in Washington, former US Ambassador Chas Freeman and WINEP Executive Director Rob Satloff tackled the subject of “Israel: Asset or Liability” at the Nixon Center last week.
Freeman, whose nomination as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council was scuttled by Jewish-American groups in the early days of the Obama administration, could well become their worst nightmare. On the inside, he would have had to toe the party line. But having been very publicly and unfairly discredited by the pro-Israel crowd, Freeman can walk that rare line and speak honestly about the Jewish state without drowning in the caveats that accompany most such attempts in Washington.
His post-resignation comments were not those of someone who had been cowed. Freeman slammed the “Israel lobby” for preventing “any view other than its own from being aired” and accused them of “an utter disregard for the truth.”
So who better to argue the “Israel as a liability” side than Freeman, who has shown a rare frankness on this subject over his career.
The Nixon Center event was timely. The debate on Israel’s strategic value was blown open by General David Petraeus’ testimony earlier this year linking lack of progress in Mideast peace talks to CENTCOM’s difficulties in the Iraq/Afghanistan military theater. Which naturally demanded a re-examination of Israel’s importance as a strategic ally of the United States.
And while others may carefully traverse these sensitive waters, Freeman clearly feels no such compunction. Which is what made this debate the “ticket of the month.”
Without further ado, here then is Freeman – unplugged – at the Nixon Center:
“Is Israel a strategic asset or liability for the United States? Interesting question. We must thank the Nixon Center for asking it. In my view, there are many reasons for Americans to wish the Jewish state well. Under current circumstances, strategic advantage for the United States is not one of them. If we were to reverse the question, however, and to ask whether the United States is a strategic asset or liability for Israel, there would be no doubt about the answer.
American taxpayers fund between 20 and 25 percent of Israel’s defense budget (depending on how you calculate this). Twenty-six percent of the $3 billion in military aid we grant to the Jewish state each year is spent in Israel on Israeli defense products. Uniquely, Israeli companies are treated like American companies for purposes of U.S. defense procurement. Thanks to congressional earmarks, we also often pay half the costs of special Israeli research and development projects, even when – as in the case of defense against very short-range unguided missiles — the technology being developed is essentially irrelevant to our own military requirements. In short, in many ways, American taxpayers fund jobs in Israel’s military industries that could have gone to our own workers and companies. Meanwhile, Israel gets pretty much whatever it wants in terms of our top-of-the-line weapons systems, and we pick up the tab.
Identifiable U.S. government subsidies to Israel total over $140 billion since 1949. This makes Israel by far the largest recipient of American giveaways since World War II. The total would be much higher if aid to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and support for Palestinians in refugee camps and the occupied territories were included. These programs have complex purposes but are justified in large measure in terms of their contribution to the security of the Jewish state.
Per capita income in Israel is now about $37,000 — on a par with the UK. Israel is nonetheless the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, accounting for well over a fifth of it. Annual U.S. government transfers run at well over $500 per Israeli, not counting the costs of tax breaks for private donations and loans that aren’t available to any other foreign country.
These military and economic benefits are not the end of the story. The American government also works hard to shield Israel from the international political and legal consequences of its policies and actions in the occupied territories, against its neighbors, or – most recently – on the high seas. The nearly 40 vetoes the United States has cast to protect Israel in the UN Security Council are the tip of iceberg. We have blocked a vastly larger number of potentially damaging reactions to Israeli behavior by the international community. The political costs to the United States internationally of having to spend our political capital in this way are huge. (more…)
Fadlallah pictured in the background as mourners make their way toward his funeral procession
“Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” And so this is how an 86-letter Tweet ended the career of CNN’s veteran Middle East editor Octavia Nasr.
I grew up watching Octavia on the then-fledgling CNN, Ted Turner’s groundbreaking twenty-four hour cable news channel that brought the Intifada and Tiananmen Square into our homes, every half hour, around the clock.
To think an illustrious career could come undone because of respect paid to the “intellect and passion” of Ayatollah Fadlallah, “a surprisingly progressive thinker.” Oh, I didn’t say that. David Ignatius of the Washington Post did after his 2002 and 2004 interviews with the senior Shiite cleric in Lebanon.
Fire him too then.
An Israeli foreign ministry official quoted on Ynet thinks the fate of British Ambassador to Lebanon Frances Guy should be “interesting” to watch. Why? Because Ambassador Guy also thinks well of Fadlallah — so well in fact, that she paid a moving tribute to him on her personal blog on the Foreign Office’s website. A posting that was promptly removed a few days later.
In case you didn’t see the touching eulogy, here is what the highly respected British career diplomat had to say about the late cleric whose progressive influence pervaded the Mideast and beyond:
“One of the privileges of being a diplomat is the people you meet; great and small, passionate and furious. People in Lebanon like to ask me which politician I admire most. It is an unfair question, obviously, and many are seeking to make a political response of their own. I usually avoid answering by referring to those I enjoy meeting the most and those that impress me the most. Until yesterday my preferred answer was to refer to Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, head of the Shia clergy in Lebanon and much admired leader of many Shia muslims throughout the world. When you visited him you could be sure of a real debate, a respectful argument and you knew you would leave his presence feeling a better person. That for me is the real effect of a true man of religion; leaving an impact on everyone he meets, no matter what their faith. Sheikh Fadlallah passed away yesterday. Lebanon is a lesser place the day after but his absence will be felt well beyond Lebanon’s shores. I remember well when I was nominated ambassador to Beirut, a muslim acquaintance sought me out to tell me how lucky I was because I would get a chance to meet Sheikh Fadlallah. Truly he was right. If I was sad to hear the news I know other peoples’ lives will be truly blighted. The world needs more men like him willing to reach out across faiths, acknowledging the reality of the modern world and daring to confront old constraints. May he rest in peace.”
In case you’re wondering, the British Foreign Office sent me the “disappeared” text today. (more…)
In light of Turkey’s reaction to the Israeli attack on the Gaza-bound flotilla last week, media pundits and policy wonks are already underlining the demise of the US-Turkish special relationship. The growing chorus of critics miss one vital point. Turkey was criticizing Tel Aviv’s military overkill off the Gaza coastline, not Washington’s.
So closely aligned have we become to Israel since the Reagan era, we now find ourselves reacting on behalf of the government of Israel. Instead of basing our policy determinations and official statements on the US’s national security interests, we find ourselves uniquely defending the indefensible over and over again — expending precious global political capital on Israel and attracting the whispered derision of even our allies.
In their book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt claim that “since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members.”
By another count, between 1984 and 2006, the US has used its UN Security Council veto privilege 27 times on resolutions criticizing illegal Israeli actions or demanding Israel’s adherence to international law – even when the resolutions were consistent with our own official policy. In all 27 instances, we were the solitary veto in the Security Council.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the last time a permanent member cast a lone veto was France, which refused in 1976 to recognize its former colony Mayotte as part of newly-independent Comoros. (more…)
It’s official. There is no longer any serious “cost” for defying the United States in the global arena. Unable to win wars or deliver diplomatic coups – and struggling to maintain our economic equilibrium – Washington has lost the fundamental tools for global leadership. And no place does this impotence manifest more vividly than the modern Middle East.
Our pointless and protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will be the last time we will launch a major battle in the region. That massive show of flexing brawn over brain burst a global perception bubble about our intentions, capabilities and reason.
This credibility was compromised further with our irrational support of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza in 2006 and 2008/9 respectively. And by the double standards employed over Israel’s violations of international law and its illegal nuclear weapons stash – particularly when viewed against the backdrop of our startling rhetoric over Iran’s nuclear program.
But nothing highlights our irrelevance more than two recent developments:
1) The US’s inability today to convene even perfunctory peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, let alone push through a negotiated solution – and this after 19 years of a “US-sponsored” peace process.
2) The US’s inability to achieve a resolution with Iran over its nuclear program. The only breakthrough in this long-winded effort to tame Iran’s nuclear aspirations was struck by Turkey and Brazil last week.
In short, the US seems incapable of resolving even a traffic dispute in the Middle East. It is Qatar that stepped in to broker a deal between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government in 2008, and is knee deep in negotiating a solution to the conflict in Darfur. Syria helped gain the release of prisoners in Iran and Gaza. And now Turkey and Brazil have cajoled Iran into accepting an agreement that the US, France, England, Germany, Russia and China could not.
We have been rendered irrelevant, despite our insistence on involving ourselves with every peep heard in the Mideast. (more…)
Ninety-eight percent of American Jews do not rank Iran as a major factor influencing their vote in the 2010 midterm elections, according to a poll sponsored by the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J-Street group.
The J-Street poll, announced on Monday, comes on the back of the highly publicized AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) conference this week, where speakers ranging from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to congressmen and other dignitaries, spent three days loudly warning about an Iranian nuclear threat.
But only two percent of American Jews said Iran actually figured into their votes.
This is the first time that a J-Street poll has included “Iran” as an option in this capacity. Most polls ask Jewish Americans how they “feel” about aspects of Iran, as opposed to whether it enters into their voting deliberations.
Jim Gerstein, the public opinion research specialist who conducted the poll on behalf of J-Street, agreed that this result was unexpected: “It caught my attention as well – I didn’t expect it to be that low.”
Gerstein points out that Jewish Americans consistently prioritize US domestic issues over a foreign policy focus – something not reflected in the rhetoric of many major national groups representing this constituency.
The J-Street poll results reflect his claim to a large extent. The top priorities of respondents were the economy, healthcare, the deficit/government spending and social security/ Medicare. Immediately following were three foreign policy hot buttons issues – terrorism/national security, Israel and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – trailed by a range of other domestic concerns.
Iran was at the very bottom of the list, and ranked even lower on the radar of Jewish-Americans than the issue of separation between religion and state. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percent.
J-Steet’s Director of Policy and Strategy Hadar Susskind also found the poll’s result on Iran to be noteworthy. “It’s not what you heard at the AIPAC conference,” he says. His guess is that Iran won’t play a role in the Midterm elections for a variety of reasons, one being that both Republicans and Democrats agree on a tough sanctions regime – if that comes to pass.
J-Street does not support either US or Israeli military intervention in Iran as a policy option.
Susskind also explains that AIPAC – and the deafening anti-Iran rhetoric that was voiced at its recent conference – only represents a “subset” of the American Jewish community. He adds:
“Broadly, they (American Jews) do think there is a threat from Iran. There is a large number, however, who don’t think that the apocalyptic political rhetoric serves us well.”
Gerstein, who has conducted extensive public opinion research within the American Jewish community and in Israel, says of the J-Street poll’s result: “There’s definitely a gap between the priorities of American Jews and the priorities of some of the organizations lobbying in the name of American Jews.”
First published on the Huffington Post, March 23, 2010
Valentine’s Day, and not a whole lot of love in the Middle East, as clashes between government forces and protestors broke out in Bahrain, Iran and Yemen.
