What's at Stake for the West in Lebanon?

A briefing by David Wurmser
March 6, 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1878 (includes an audio recording of this talk)
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David Wurmser is a specialist on the Middle East and served as an advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney until recently. His prior positions included special assistant to John R. Bolton at the Department of State and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Wurmser is the author of numerous influential papers and three books, including Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein (AEI Press, 1999). In 2000, he contributed to the Middle East Forum's Lebanon Study Group report, "Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role," which condemned Syria's occupation of Lebanon. He received a Ph.D. in international relations from Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Wurmser addressed the Middle East Forum on March 6, 2008 in New York City.

"Iran's Stake in the Levant"
Mr. Wurmser calls Lebanon a "key battleground between the West as a whole and the forces that seek to drag the Middle East down." The situation in Lebanon must be viewed in the context of the larger conflict in the region, which is becoming far more dangerous. Two years after the Cedar Revolution in March 2005, which was brought on by the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese are still living through a tragedy. The inability to install a new president today is indicative of the situation. It is because of the size and success of the popular demonstrations by the Lebanese, however, that Lebanon has become the focal point of the enemies of the West, namely Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.

Mr. Wurmser focused on the Iranian strategy toward Lebanon, arguing that Iran is undergoing a transformation, not in the direction of reform as the West hopes, but from a pure theocracy toward a "theofascist state on the edge of an even more aggressive foreign policy." This transformation in Iranian politics, according to Mr. Wurmser, is being played out in Lebanon and in Gaza.

Top American officials have made statements to the effect that U.S. and U.N. sanctions have hurt the Iranian regime, and that the support for former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and other figures deemed "moderate" in the December 2006 elections indicated the weakening of the Iranian regime. Mr. Wurmser asserts that this perception is false because it ignores the real indicators. Rather, a new power structure is emerging in Iran that is closely aligned with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For example, Ahmadinejad fired many government officials and replaced them with a group of hard-core members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Mr. Wurmser singled out Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehei, whom Ahmadinejad placed in control of Intelligence, who espouses an aggressive anti-Western foreign policy and supports terrorism; and Saeed Jalili, whom Ahmadinejad appointed as head nuclear negotiator for Iran, is a veteran of the IRGC who was mutilated in the Iran-Iraq war.

Mr. Wurmser traced several of Ahmadinejad's actions to Jalili's 1990 book, Foreign Policy of the Prophet, arguing that Jalili's writings, though they describe the time of Muhammad, are a blueprint for Iran today. Jalili cites an episode in which Muhammad told his followers to proselytize, not negotiate. In this spirit, Ahmedinejad has fired ambassadors and replaced them with more proselytizing ones. Jalili wrote about how Muhammad and his successors sent letters out to other tribes telling them to "convert or you will face the sword," as well as to major powers in Byzantium and Persia. Mr. Wurmser linked this to Ahmedinejad's sending similar letters to President Bush. He pointed out how the "language is lifted straight out of Jalili's book, and that, in fact, "Jalili is the mind behind Ahmedinejad."

Mr. Wurmser analyzed tensions between IRGC officers and the ayatollahs whom the officers believe "betrayed the will of Allah" when they signed the treaty ending the Iran-Iraq war. A separate group of ayatollahs, based in Mashhad in northeastern Iran, sees itself as true believers. This group considers the current state of Islam to be weak, and it seeks to expose the West as "a collapsing, hollow tree." It expects the imminent return of the Twelfth Imam, the hidden Imam at the center of the Twelver Sh'ia movement of Islam. Its version of Islam is messianic and apocalyptic, and according to Mr. Wurmser, it provides the ideological basis for Iran's shift to a more aggressive and risk-seeking stance against the West.

He also identified a radical change in Iranian's notion of Islam. While the Iranian revolution defended Shi'ite interests and opposed Arab nationalism, over the past four years, "Iran has made a bold move to co-opt Arab nationalism." The Arab-Israeli conflict has become a key issue on which Iran can attempt to seize leadership of the Islamic world from the Sunnis and Arabs. A central part of Iran's national policy, Mr. Wurmser asserted, is to have an active war with Israel, be victorious, and seize leadership of the Muslim world. Iran's success at assuming the mantle of Islam is evident in that in the past two or three years, Muslim Brotherhood leaders have recognized that Shi'ites are true Muslims, a concept that they had vehemently opposed previously.

Mr. Wurmser argued that Iran needs Syria in order to co-opt Sunni politics and Arab nationalism. He called Syria a "geographic gateway for Iran to be a player in the Arab-Israeli conflict," and through this, to maintain the appearance of a successful Iranian revolution. Ahmedinejad came to power because it was thought that the Iranian revolution was weak. If Syria collapses, Mr. Wurmser thinks Iran will implode and that Syria is the avenue through which to attack Iran. Gaza is also a battleground for Iran, said Wurmser, citing that 80% of terrorist activity in Gaza is committed by a force trained in Iran that answers directly to Damascus and Tehran.

Mr. Wurmser considers things to have gone well for Ahmadinejad in the last few months. He compared Ahmadinejad's bold opposition to the West and accusations of cowardliness on the part of followers who urge a more cautious policy to the way Hitler galvanized his generals in the 1930s by accusing them of lack of will. Disturbingly, each crisis increases Ahmadinejad's reputation as his supporters rally round him.

In his recommendation for American foreign policy, Mr. Wurmser stressed that the United States must take into account how its policies are perceived in the Middle East. In 2003, when the United States acquiesced to the European acceptance of the Iranian regime as a legitimate interlocutor on nuclear issues, the Iranians read this as tacit acceptance and, therefore, weakness. During the same year, when the U.N. sanctioned the American presence in Iraq, Iran saw this as weakness on the American part because the superpower asked for permission to strike. Mr. Wurmser described the summer of 2003 as a "key moment, because the momentum the Iranian people were building against the regime was punctured by perceived American weakness."

On the question of what concrete things the United States can do to support democracy in Lebanon, Mr. Wurmser emphasized the need for swift response to the assassinations of Lebanese leaders. At least six government officials have been killed since Hariri, but the U.S. response has been slow and ineffective. Meanwhile, Hezbollah and Syria are "killing the Lebanese government out of existence." Mr. Wurmser concluded that "the United States can have an effect if we show we are committed to acting to preserve what happened in March 2005" when the Lebanese staged the Cedar Revolution.

Summary account by Mimi Stillman

Exclusive: Ambassador Crocker Says Ready to Talk to Iran Again
Following Testimony on Capitol Hill, Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker Talk to 'Nightline'
By JULIA HOPPOCK
April 8, 2008—

In an exclusive interview with "Nightline's" Terry Moran, the American Ambassador to Iraq said he was concerned about Iranian influence in Iraq.

When asked if Americans were in a "proxy war" with Iran, Ryan Crocker said, "It may be that the Iranians see it in that light, we certainly do not."

But he also added that "we don't want to have just what you describe as a proxy war with Iran inside Iraq, and that is why we are willing to sit down with Iran face to face for talks on Iraqi security at the invitation of the Iraqi government. We've had three rounds of those talks and we've told them we are ready to again."

Watch the exclusive interview tonight on "Nightline" at 11:35 pm.

Both Ambassador Crocker and the top commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus stressed the importance of Arab involvement in Iraq and said American troops might be in Iraq for the long haul.

"We will need to be there for a while," Petraeus said, adding that "over time, the role of our forces and our presence will change."

Crocker described American involvement in Iraq as a "multi-year project."

In Senate testimony today, General Petraeus recommended suspending troop withdrawals after July, telling members of Congress that while progress in Iraq is "real," it was also "fragile and reversible."

But Petraeus told ABC news he was upbeat about gains Iraqis have made, citing rising oil revenues and participation in the global market as signs of improvement and steps toward self-government.

Crocker said that Americans were still a long way off from being able to withdrawal from Iraq. In testimony to the US Senate today, he told Presidential candidate Sen. Obama, D-IL, that withdrawal in Iraq could begin when there is a "fair certitude that Iraq is able to carry its own development forward."

Expanding on that thought, Crocker told Moran that American troops could begin to withdrawal when "at its most basic level, Iraq can deal with security challenges on its own."

While Petraeus admits that there is still plenty of work to be done in Iraq, he said that he was not holding out for unrealistic or unattainable goals.

"I think the ambassador and I are actually minimalists. We're not looking for Jeffersonian Democracy," but adding that "Iraq is not there yet right now, and there is certainly more work to be done."

Petraeus acknowledged that even the most minimalist approach meant that the next president "is clearly going to have to deal with Iraq."

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

by Barnett from his blog

The Leviathan is in trouble: cost overruns, pressure to do better by the worn-out SysAdmin force, and impending loss of big war scenarios. Whenever advocates cite a percentage of GDP as a spending goal, they're shit out of scenarios--and luck.

New Taiwanese leader looking to cut all sorts of deals with the mainland--including on security ("Look Ma! No hands on that trigger!). Iran's bomb looking like fait accompli Bush leaves to next prez because his own national security establishment is in near open revolt against him on the subject of additional war on his watch. And Kim looking more and more like a goner thanks to China's quiet but unmistakable tough love policies (Bush does get some credit there).

In five years, the Leviathan could be bereft of all it's big war scenarios!

Don't worry. The professional fear-mongers and fantasizing academics are hard at work getting ready to sell you on future "resource wars!" and "climate change wars!" But guess what? Not a lot of Joint Strike Fighters or Future Combat Systems or Seawolf subs found there, just more peacekeeping and infrastructural development and humanitarian ops.

April 8, 2008

By George Friedman
The Arab-Israeli region of the Middle East is filled with rumors of war. That is about as unusual as the rising of the sun, so normally it would not be worth mentioning. But like the proverbial broken clock that is right twice a day, such rumors occasionally will be true. In this case, we don’t know that they are true, and certainly it’s not the rumors that are driving us. But other things — minor and readily explicable individually — have drawn our attention to the possibility that something is happening.
The first thing that drew our attention was a minor, routine matter. Back in February, the United States started purchasing oil for its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The SPR is a reserve of crude oil stored in underground salt domes. Back in February, it stood at 96.2 percent of capacity, which is pretty full as far as we are concerned. But the U.S. Department of Energy decided to increase its capacity. This move came in spite of record-high oil prices and the fact that the purchase would not help matters. It also came despite potential political fallout, since during times like these there is generally pressure to release reserves. Part of the step could have been the bureaucracy cranking away, and part of it could have been the feeling that the step didn’t make much difference. But part of it could have been based on real fears of a disruption in oil supplies. By itself, the move meant nothing. But it did cause us to become thoughtful.
Also in February, someone assassinated Imad Mughniyah, a leader of Hezbollah, in a car bomb explosion in Syria. It was assumed the Israelis had killed him, although there were some suspicions the Syrians might have had him killed for their own arcane reasons. In any case, Hezbollah publicly claimed the Israelis killed Mughniyah, and therefore it was expected the militant Shiite group would take revenge. In the past, Hezbollah responded not by attacking Israel but by attacking Jewish targets elsewhere, as in the Buenos Aires attacks of 1992 and 1994.
In March, the United States decided to dispatch the USS Cole, then under Sixth Fleet command, to Lebanese coastal waters. Washington later replaced it with two escorts from the Nassau (LHA-4) Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG), reportedly maintaining a minor naval presence in the area. (Most of the ESG, on a regularly scheduled deployment, is no more than a few days sail from the coast, as it remains in the Mediterranean Sea.) The reason given for the American naval presence was to serve as a warning to the Syrians not to involve themselves in Lebanese affairs. The exact mission of the naval presence off the Levantine coast — and the exact deterrent function it served — was not clear, but there they were. The Sixth Fleet has gone out of its way to park and maintain U.S. warships off the Lebanese coast.
Hezbollah leaders being killed by the Israelis and the presence of American ships off the shores of Mediterranean countries are not news in and of themselves. These things happen. The killing of Mughniyah is notable only to point out that as much as Israel might have wanted him dead, the Israelis knew this fight would escalate. But anyone would have known this. So all we know is that whoever killed Mughniyah wanted to trigger a conflict. The U.S. naval presence off the Levantine coast is notable in that Washington, rather busy with matters elsewhere, found the bandwidth to get involved here as well.
With the situation becoming tense, the Israelis announced in March that they would carry out an exercise in April called Turning Point 2. Once again, an Israeli military exercise is hardly interesting news. But the Syrians apparently got quite interested. After the announcement, the Syrians deployed three divisions — two armored, one mechanized — to the Lebanese-Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley, the western part of which is Hezbollah’s stronghold. The Syrians didn’t appear to be aggressive. Rather, they deployed these forces in a defensive posture, in a way walling off their part of the valley.
The Syrians are well aware that in the event of a conventional war with Israel, they would experience a short but exciting life, as they say. They thus are hardly going to attack Israel. The deployment therefore seemed intended to keep the Israelis on the Lebanese side of the border — on the apparent assumption the Israelis were going into the Bekaa Valley. Despite Israeli and Syrian denials of the Syrian troop buildup along the border, Stratfor sources maintain that the buildup in fact happened. Normally, Israel would be jumping at the chance to trumpet Syrian aggression in response to these troop movements, but, instead, the Israelis downplayed the buildup.
When the Israelis kicked off Turning Point 2, which we regard as a pretty interesting name, it turned out to be the largest exercise in Israeli history. It involved the entire country, and was designed to test civil defenses and the ability of the national command authority to continue to function in the event of an attack with unconventional weapons — chemical and nuclear, we would assume. This was a costly exercise. It also involved calling up reserves, some of them for the exercise, and, by some reports, others for deployment to the north against Syria. Israel does not call up reserves casually. Reserve call-ups are expensive and disrupt the civilian economy. These appear small, but in the environment of Turning Point 2, it would not be difficult to mobilize larger forces without being noticed.
The Syrians already were deeply concerned by the Israeli exercise. Eventually, the Lebanese government got worried, too, and started to evacuate some civilians from the South. Hezbollah, which still hadn’t retaliated for the Mughniyah assassination, also claimed the Israelis were about to attack it, and reportedly went on alert and mobilized its forces. The Americans, who normally issue warnings and cautions to everyone, said nothing to try to calm the situation. They just sat offshore on their ships.
It is noteworthy that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak canceled a scheduled visit to Germany this week. The cancellation came immediately after the reports of the Syrian military redeployment were released. Obviously, Barak needed to be in Israel for Turning Point 2, but then he had known about the exercise for at least a month. Why cancel at the last minute? While we are discussing diplomacy, we note that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney visited Oman — a country with close relations with Iran — and then was followed by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. By itself not interesting, but why the high-level interest in Oman at this point?
Now let’s swing back to September 2007, when the Israelis bombed something in Syria near the Turkish border. As we discussed at the time, for some reason the Israelis refused to say what they had attacked. It made no sense for them not to trumpet what they carefully leaked — namely, that they had attacked a nuclear facility. Proving that Syria had a secret nuclear program would have been a public relations coup for Israel. Nevertheless, no public charges were leveled. And the Syrians remained awfully calm about the bombing.
Rumors now are swirling that the Israelis are about to reveal publicly that they in fact bombed a nuclear reactor provided to Syria by North Korea. But this news isn’t all that big. Also rumored is that the Israelis will claim Iranian complicity in building the reactor. And one Israeli TV station reported April 8 that Israel really had discovered Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which it said had been smuggled to Syria.
Now why the Bush administration wouldn’t have trumpeted news of the Syrian reactor worldwide in September 2007 is beyond us, but there obviously were some reasons — assuming the TV report is true, which we have no way of establishing. In fact, we have no idea why the Israelis are choosing this moment to rehash the bombing of this site. But whatever their reason, it certainly raises a critical question. If the Syrians are developing a nuclear capability, what are the Israelis planning to do about it?
No one of these things, by itself, is of very great interest. And taken together they do not provide the means for a clear forecast. Nevertheless, a series of rather ordinary events, taken together, can constitute something significant. Tensions in the Middle East are moving well beyond the normal point, and given everything that is happening, events are moving to a point where someone is likely to take military action. Whether Hezbollah will carry out a retaliatory strike or Israel a pre-emptive strike in Lebanon, or whether the Israelis’ real target is Iran, tensions systematically have been ratcheted up to the point where we, in our simple way, are beginning to wonder whether something has to give.
All together, these events are fairly extraordinary. Ignoring all rhetoric — and the Israelis have gone out of their way to say that they are not looking for a fight — it would seem that each side, but particularly the Americans and Israelis, have gone out of their way to signal that they are expecting conflict. The Syrians have also signaled that they expect conflict, and Hezbollah always claims there is about to be conflict.
What is missing is this: who will fight whom, and why, and why now. The simple explanation is that Israel wants a second round with Hezbollah. But while that might be true, it doesn’t explain everything else that has happened. Most important, it doesn’t explain the simultaneous revelations about the bombing of Syria. It also doesn’t explain the U.S. naval deployment. Is the United States about to get involved in a war with Hezbollah, a war that the Israelis should handle themselves? Are the Israelis going to topple Syrian President Bashar al Assad — and then wind up with a Sunni government, or worse, an Israeli occupation of Syria? None of that makes a lot of sense.
In truth, all of this may dissolve into nothing much. In intelligence analysis, however, sometimes a set of not-fully-coherent facts must be reported, and that is what we are doing now. There is no clear pattern; there is no obvious direction this is taking. Nevertheless, when we string together events from February until now, we see a persistently escalating pattern of behavior. In fact, what we can say most clearly is that there is escalation, without being able to say what is the clear direction of the escalation or the purpose.
We would like to wrap this up with a crystal clear explanation and forecast. But we can’t. The motives of the various actors are opaque; and taken separately, the individual events all have quite innocent explanations. We are not prepared to say war is imminent, nor even what sort of war there would be. We are simply prepared to say that the course of events since February — and really since the September 2007 attack on Syria — have been startling, and they appear to be reaching some sort of hard-to-understand crescendo.
The bombing of Syria symbolizes our confusion. Why would Syria want a nuclear reactor and why put it on the border of Turkey, a country the Syrians aren’t particularly friendly with? If the Syrians had a nuclear reactor, why would the Israelis be coy about it? Why would the Americans? Having said nothing for months apart from careful leaks, why are the Israelis going to speak publicly now? And if what they are going to say is simply that the North Koreans provided the equipment, what’s the big deal? That was leaked months ago.
The events of September 2007 make no sense and have never made any sense. The events we have seen since February make no sense either. That is noteworthy, and we bring it to your attention. We are not saying that the events are meaningless. We are saying that we do not know their meaning. But we can’t help but regard them as ominous

Global poverty to halve by 2015 but Africa lags: report

Tue Apr 8, 2008 3:15pm

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The world is on course to halve extreme poverty by 2015, but Africa will fall far short of the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.

A new report by the global institutions also warned that urgent action was needed to tackle climate change, which threatens to exact a hefty toll on particularly poor countries and reverse progress in fighting poverty.

The 2008 Global Monitoring Report, released ahead of the IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington this weekend, said strong economic growth in much of the developing world had contributed to the decline in global poverty.

It said the number of extreme poor -- those living under $1 a day -- declined by 278 million between 1990 and 2004, and by 150 million in the last five years of that period.

Globally about 1 billion people still live in extreme poverty, the report added.

The largest reduction in poverty rates was in regions with the strongest growth, in particular in East Asia, including emerging powerhouses China and India, the report said.

Still, in Africa progress to cut poverty rates has been uneven, it said, with 18 countries showing strong economic growth of about 5.5 percent over the past decade. Twenty others in Africa, however, many hit by conflict, were trapped in low growth, averaging around 2 percent annually.

The report also said that while some progress had been made in meeting eight globally agreed development goals by 2015, prospects were gravest for reducing child and maternal mortality, with serious shortfalls also likely in primary school education, nutrition and sanitation.

Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president, said he was personally worried about shortfalls in fighting hunger and malnutrition, which he termed "the forgotten" millennium development goal.

He said high global food and energy prices had focused increased attention on the issue, but more was needed, especially since higher prices were likely to last for several years.

Zoellick and IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, also pointed to dangers for growth in the developing world from recent financial market turbulence, which began with subprime mortgage market problems in the United States.

Turning to the environment, the report said poverty reduction may not be sustainable if forests are lost, fisheries depleted, water or air is polluted and soil degraded.

It said water scarcity and deforestation were already a factor in the developing world and are valuable assets and sources of income to poor countries.

"The depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation undermines the long-term growth prospects of many developing countries," the report said.

It called for coordinated global action to avert further climate change, adding that extreme climatic events such as droughts and floods in the world's poorest countries may also exacerbate conflicts and cross-country migration.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Tom Hals)