Obama’s Move: Iran and Afghanistan

By George Friedman
During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, now-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that like all U.S. presidents, Barack Obama would face a foreign policy test early in his presidency if elected. That test is now here.

His test comprises two apparently distinct challenges, one in Afghanistan and one in Iran. While different problems, they have three elements in common. First, they involve the question of his administration’s overarching strategy in the Islamic world. Second, the problems are approaching decision points (and making no decision represents a decision here). And third, they are playing out very differently than Obama expected during the 2008 campaign.

During the campaign, Obama portrayed the Iraq war as a massive mistake diverting the United States from Afghanistan, the true center of the “war on terror.” He accordingly promised to shift the focus away from Iraq and back to Afghanistan. Obama’s views on Iran were more amorphous. He supported the doctrine that Iran should not be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons, while at the same time asserted that engaging Iran was both possible and desirable. Embedded in the famous argument over whether offering talks without preconditions was appropriate (something now-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attacked him for during the Democratic primary) was the idea that the problem with Iran stemmed from Washington’s refusal to engage in talks with Tehran.

We are never impressed with campaign positions, or with the failure of the victorious candidate to live up to them. That’s the way American politics work. But in this case, these promises have created a dual crisis that Obama must make decisions about now.

Iran

Back in April, in the midst of the financial crisis, Obama reached an agreement at the G-8 meeting that the Iranians would have until Sept. 24 and the G-20 meeting to engage in meaningful talks with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (P-5+1) or face intensely increased sanctions. His administration was quite new at the time, so the amount of thought behind this remains unclear. On one level, the financial crisis was so intense and September so far away that Obama and his team probably saw this as a means to delay a secondary matter while more important fires were flaring up.

But there was more operating than that. Obama intended to try to bridge the gap between the Islamic world and the United States between April and September. In his speech to the Islamic world from Cairo, he planned to show a desire not only to find common ground, but also to acknowledge shortcomings in U.S. policy in the region. With the appointment of special envoys George Mitchell (for Israel and the Palestinian territories) and Richard Holbrooke (for Pakistan and Afghanistan), Obama sought to build on his opening to the Islamic world with intense diplomatic activity designed to reshape regional relationships.

It can be argued that the Islamic masses responded positively to Obama’s opening — it has been asserted to be so and we will accept this — but the diplomatic mission did not solve the core problem. Mitchell could not get the Israelis to move on the settlement issue, and while Holbrooke appears to have made some headway on increasing Pakistan’s aggressiveness toward the Taliban, no fundamental shift has occurred in the Afghan war.

Most important, no major shift has occurred in Iran’s attitude toward the United States and the P-5+1 negotiating group. In spite of Obama’s Persian New Year address to Iran, the Iranians did not change their attitude toward the United States. The unrest following Iran’s contested June presidential election actually hardened the Iranian position. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remained president with the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while the so-called moderates seemed powerless to influence their position. Perceptions that the West supported the demonstrations have strengthened Ahmadinejad’s hand further, allowing him to paint his critics as pro-Western and himself as an Iranian nationalist.

But with September drawing to a close, talks have still not begun. Instead, they will begin Oct. 1. And last week, the Iranians chose to announce that not only will they continue work on their nuclear program (which they claim is not for military purposes), they have a second, hardened uranium enrichment facility near Qom. After that announcement, Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy held a press conference saying they have known about the tunnel for several months, and warned of stern consequences.

This, of course, raises the question of what consequences. Obama has three choices in this regard.

First, he can impose crippling sanctions against Iran. But that is possible only if the Russians cooperate. Moscow has the rolling stock and reserves to supply all of Iran’s fuel needs if it so chooses, and Beijing can also remedy any Iranian fuel shortages. Both Russia and China have said they don’t want sanctions; without them on board, sanctions are meaningless.

Second, Obama can take military action against Iran, something easier politically and diplomatically for the United States to do itself rather than rely on Israel. By itself, Israel cannot achieve air superiority, suppress air defenses, attack the necessary number of sites and attempt to neutralize Iranian mine-laying and anti-ship capability all along the Persian Gulf. Moreover, if Israel struck on its own and Iran responded by mining the Strait of Hormuz, the United States would be drawn into at least a naval war with Iran — and probably would have to complete the Israeli airstrikes, too.

And third, Obama could choose to do nothing (or engage in sanctions that would be the equivalent of doing nothing). Washington could see future Iranian nuclear weapons as an acceptable risk. But the Israelis don’t, meaning they would likely trigger the second scenario. It is possible that the United States could try to compel Israel not to strike — though it’s not clear whether Israel would comply — something that would leave Obama publicly accepting Iran’s nuclear program.

And this, of course, would jeopardize Obama’s credibility. It is possible for the French or Germans to waffle on this issue; no one is looking to them for leadership. But for Obama simply to acquiesce to Iranian nuclear weapons, especially at this point, would have significant diplomatic and domestic political ramifications. Simply put, Obama would look weak — and that, of course, is why the Iranians announced the second nuclear site. They read Obama as weak, and they want to demonstrate their own resolve. That way, if the Russians were thinking of cooperating with the United States on sanctions, Moscow would be seen as backing the weak player against the strong one. The third option, doing nothing, therefore actually represents a significant action.

Afghanistan

In a way, the same issue is at stake in Afghanistan. Having labeled Afghanistan as critical — indeed, having campaigned on the platform that the Bush administration was fighting the wrong war — it would be difficult for Obama to back down in Afghanistan. At the same time, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has reported that without a new strategy and a substantial increase in troop numbers, failure in Afghanistan is likely.

The number of troops being discussed, 30,000-40,000, would bring total U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan to just above the number of troops the Soviet Union deployed there in its war (just under 120,000) — a war that ended in failure. The new strategy being advocated would be one in which the focus would not be on the defeat of the Taliban by force of arms, but the creation of havens for the Afghan people and protecting those havens from the Taliban.

A move to the defensive when time is on your side is not an unreasonable strategy. But it is not clear that time is on Western forces’ side. Increased offensives are not weakening the Taliban. But halting attacks and assuming that the Taliban will oblige the West by moving to the offensive, thereby opening itself to air and artillery strikes, probably is not going to happen. And while assuming that the country will effectively rise against the Taliban out of the protected zones the United States has created is interesting, it does not strike us as likely. The Taliban is fighting the long war because it has nowhere else to go. Its ability to maintain military and political cohesion following the 2001 invasion has been remarkable. And betting that the Pakistanis will be effective enough to break the Taliban’s supply lines is hardly the most prudent bet.

In short, Obama’s commander on the ground has told him the current Afghan strategy is failing. He has said that unless that strategy changes, more troops won’t help, and that a change of strategy will require substantially more troops. But when we look at the proposed strategy and the force levels, it is far from obvious that even that level of commitment will stand a chance of achieving meaningful results quickly enough before the forces of Washington’s NATO allies begin to withdraw and U.S. domestic resolve erodes further.

Obama has three choices in Afghanistan. He can continue to current strategy and force level, hoping to prolong failure long enough for some undefined force to intervene. He can follow McChrystal’s advice and bet on the new strategy. Or he can withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Once again, doing nothing — the first option — is doing something quite significant.

The Two Challenges Come Together

The two crises intermingle in this way: Every president is tested in foreign policy, sometimes by design and sometimes by circumstance. Frequently, this happens at the beginning of his term as a result of some problem left by his predecessor, a strategy adopted in the campaign or a deliberate action by an antagonist. How this happens isn’t important. What is important is that Obama’s test is here. Obama at least publicly approached the presidency as if many of the problems the United States faced were due to misunderstandings about or the thoughtlessness of the United States. Whether this was correct is less important than that it left Obama appearing eager to accommodate his adversaries rather than confront them.

No one has a clear idea of Obama’s threshold for action.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban takes the view that the British and Russians left, and that the Americans will leave, too. We strongly doubt that the force level proposed by McChrystal will be enough to change their minds. Moreover, U.S. forces are limited, with many still engaged in Iraq. In any case, it isn’t clear what force level would suffice to force the Taliban to negotiate or capitulate — and we strongly doubt that there is a level practical to contemplate.

In Iran, Ahmadinejad clearly perceives that challenging Obama is low-risk and high reward. If he can finally demonstrate that the United States is unwilling to take military action regardless of provocations, his own domestic situation improves dramatically, his relationship with the Russians deepens, and most important, his regional influence — and menace — surges. If Obama accepts Iranian nukes without serious sanctions or military actions, the American position in the Islamic world will decline dramatically. The Arab states in the region rely on the United States to protect them from Iran, so U.S. acquiescence in the face of Iranian nuclear weapons would reshape U.S. relations in the region far more than a hundred Cairo speeches.

There are four permutations Obama might choose in response to the dual crisis. He could attack Iran and increase forces in Afghanistan, but he might well wind up stuck in a long-term war in Afghanistan. He could avoid that long-term war by withdrawing from Afghanistan and also ignore Iran’s program, but that would leave many regimes reliant on the United States for defense against Iran in the lurch. He could increase forces in Afghanistan and ignore Iran — probably yielding the worst of all possible outcomes, namely, a long-term Afghan war and an Iran with a nuclear program if not nuclear weapons.

On pure logic, history or politics aside, the best course is to strike Iran and withdraw from Afghanistan. That would demonstrate will in the face of a significant challenge while perhaps reshaping Iran and certainly avoiding a drawn-out war in Afghanistan. Of course, it is easy for those who lack power and responsibility — and the need to govern — to provide logical choices. But the forces closing in on Obama are substantial, and there are many competing considerations in play.

Presidents eventually arrive at the point where something must be done, and where doing nothing is very much doing something. At this point, decisions can no longer be postponed, and each choice involves significant risk. Obama has reached that point, and significantly, in his case, he faces a double choice. And any decision he makes will reverberate

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Netanyahu’s Quiet Success

Almost unnoticed, Binyamin Netanyahu won a major victory last week when Barack Obama backed down on a signature policy initiative. This about-face suggests that U.S.-Israel relations are no longer headed for the disaster I have been fearing.

 
Four months ago, the new U.S. administration unveiled a policy that suddenly placed great emphasis on stopping the growth in Israeli “settlements.” (A term I dislike but use here for brevity’s sake.) Surprisingly, American officials wanted to stop not just residential building for Israelis in the West Bank but also in eastern Jerusalem, a territory legally part of Israel for nearly thirty years.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched the initiative on May 27, announcing that the president of the United States “wants to see a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions,” adding for good measure, “And we intend to press that point.” On June 4, Obama weighed in: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. … It is time for these settlements to stop.” A day later, he reiterated that “settlements are an impediment to peace.” On June 17, Clinton repeated: “We want to see a stop to the settlements.” And so on, in a relentless beat.

Focusing on settlements had the inadvertent but predictable effect of instantly impeding diplomatic progress. A delighted Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority responded to U.S. demands on Israel by sitting back and declaring that “The Americans are the leaders of the world. … I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements.” Never mind that Abbas personally had negotiated with six Israeli prime ministers since 1992, each time without an offer to stop building settlements: why should he now demand less than Obama?

In Israel, Obama’s diktat prompted a massive popular swing away from him and toward Netanyahu. Further, Netanyahu’s offer of even temporary limitations on settlement growth in the West Bank prompted a rebellion within his Likud Party, led by the up-and-coming Danny Danon.
Poster showing Barack Obama in Arab headdress, seen in downtown Jerusalem on June 14, 2009.
 
The geniuses of the Obama administration eventually discerned that this double hardening of positions was dooming their naïve, hubristic plan to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict within two years. The One’s reconciliation with reality became public on Sept. 22 at a “summit” he sponsored with Abbas and Netanyahu (really, a glorified photo opportunity). Obama threw in the towel there, boasting that “we have made progress” toward settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and offering as one indication that Israelis “have discussed important steps to restrain settlement activity.”

Those eight words of muted praise for Netanyahu’s minimal concessions have major implications:

Settlements no longer dominate U.S.-Israel relations but have reverted back to their usual irritating but secondary role.

Abbas, who keeps insisting on a settlement freeze as though nothing has changed, suddenly finds himself the odd man out in the triangle.
The center-left faction of the Obama administration (which argues for working with Jerusalem), as my colleague Steven J. Rosen notes, has defeated the far-left faction (which wants to squeeze the Jewish state).
Ironically, Obama supporters have generally recognized his failure while critics have tended to miss it. A Washington Post editorial referred to the Obama administration’s “miscalculations” and Jonathan Freedland, a Guardian columnist, noted that “Obama’s friends worry that he has lost face in a region where face matters.”

In contrast, Obama critics focused on his announcing, just one day after the mock summit, that “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements” – a formulaic reiteration of long-established policy that in no way undoes the concession on settlements. Some of those I admire most missed the good news: John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, stated that Obama “put Israel on the chopping block,” while critics within the Likud Party accused Netanyahu of having “prematurely celebrated” an American policy shift. Not so. Policy winds can always change, but last week’s capitulation to reality has the hallmarks of a lasting course correction.

I have repeatedly expressed deep worries about Obama’s policy versus Israel, so when good news does occur (and this is the second time of late), it deserves recognition and celebration. Hats off to Bibi – may he have further successes in nudging U.S. policy onto the right track.

Next on the agenda: the Middle East’s central issue, namely, Iran’s nuclear buildup.

Obama and Israel, Into the Abyss

What I dubbed the Obama administration’s “rapid and harsh turn against Israel” has had three quick, predictable, and counter-productive results. These point to further difficulties ahead. Read more

Avigdor Lieberman’s Brilliant Debut

Avigdor Lieberman became foreign minister of Israel yesterday. He celebrated his inauguration with a maiden speech that news reports indicate left his listeners grimacing, squirming, and aghast. The BBC, for example, informs us that his words prompted “his predecessor Tzipi Livni to interrupt and diplomats to shift uncomfortably.”

 
Too bad for them – the speech leaves me elated. Here are some of the topics Lieberman covered in his 1,100-word stem-winder: Read more

Israeli foreign minister warns concessions to Palestinians will invite war

By JOSEF FEDERMAN

JERUSALEM – Israel’s new hard-line foreign minister delivered a scathing critique of Mideast peace efforts Wednesday, rejecting the past year of U.S.-led negotiations and telling a room crowded with cringing diplomats that concessions to the Palestinians only invite war.

Avigdor Lieberman’s first speech since taking office, along with accusations by the moderate Palestinian president that the new Israeli government opposes peace, signaled tough times ahead for the Obama administration’s regional diplomacy.

“Whoever thinks that concessions … will achieve something is wrong. He will bring pressures and more wars,” Lieberman said. “What we have to explain to the world is that the list of priorities must change.”

Read More…

Hamas refuses to free Israeli soldier in return for lifting Gaza blockade

Hamas has flatly rejected Israel’s demand that it free a captive soldier in return for lifting the blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian movement called instead for international pressure on Israel to force the borders open to relieve the humanitarian crisis after last month’s war.

Mousa Abu Marzook, the deputy leader of Hamas, accused Israel of backtracking over a truce agreement and warned that Corporal Gilad Shalit would only be released in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. “We will not change our position,” he told the Guardian in Damascus yesterday.

On Wednesday Israel’s security cabinet agreed to maintain the blockade and to hold back from any truce until the release of Shalit, who was captured in June 2006 near the Gaza boundary fence. Until then it seemed a new truce was imminent.

Hamas and Egypt, which is mediating between the Palestinians and Israelis, had been treating the two issues as separate. But Ehud Olmert, Israel’s outgoing prime minister, has been pressing to put Shalit at the heart of any deal. Olmert has just weeks left in office following this month’s elections and is keen to secure the soldier’s freedom before his term is up.

“Israel and Egypt and Hamas have known for two years that the Shalit file is completely separate from other issues,” protested Abu Marzook, just back in the Syrian capital from the truce talks in Cairo. “We are ready to start negotiating about Shalit, but the issue is not linked to any other as far as we are concerned. This is not acceptable to us.”

The soldier is believed to be alive but his whereabouts are unknown and he has not been seen by the International Red Cross. “It’s good that they [the Israelis] don’t know where he is, otherwise they would have killed him,” he claimed.

Abu Marzook signalled however that fresh information about Shalit might be provided if Israel moved Palestinian prisoners being held in solitary confinement to normal cells, released unwell female prisoners and published information on the Hamas fighters Imad and Adel Abdullah, said to have been abducted by Israeli forces.

He said contacts between Hamas and European and US representatives had multiplied since the war, despite Hamas being formally designated as “terrorist” by the US and EU over its refusal to recognise Israel, renounce violence and abide by interim peace agreements. “There’s been a big change since the war. But a lot of the people we’ve met have asked us to keep the talks confidential.”

Hamas has sent a letter to President Barack Obama via US senator John Kerry who yesterday visited Gaza, the BBC reported. There was no information about the letter’s contents.

Abu Marzook welcomed Obama’s appointment of George Mitchell as special envoy for Middle East peace, describing the former senator as a “non-Zionist American representative” who had criticised Israeli settlements and helped to broker peace between Britain and the IRA. But despite hints of a potential shift in Washington, there was no sign that Mitchell would meet Hamas; he failed even to visit Syria on his first regional tour this month.

Abu Marzook said Hamas favoured reconciliation talks with Fatah, led by the western-backed Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank. Ending internal divisions is seen as key to lifting the Gaza blockade, enforced since the Islamist movement won elections in 2006, and tightened the following summer.

The 22-day war, which Israel launched with the aim of halting Palestinian rocket fire, killed at least 1,300 Palestinians, many of them civilians, destroyed about 5,000 homes and ruined much of Gaza’s already rickety infrastructure. But it was a Palestinian victory because Israel failed to achieve its goals, argued Abu Marzook.

“Now there is global support for Hamas and not just in the Arab and Muslim worlds,” he said. “This is a moral judgment against Israel. Israel has had moral support and legitimacy since the second world war and its propaganda has described Hamas as a terrorist group. There’s been a real change on those two points – but this mass support has not managed to break the blockade of Gaza.”

Read More…

Clerics urge new jihad over Gaza

At a weekend meeting in Istanbul, 200 religious scholars and clerics met senior Hamas officials to plot a new jihad centred on Gaza.

The BBC’s Bill Law was the only Western journalist at the meeting.

In a hall crowded with conservative Sunni Muslim sheikhs and scholars, in a hotel close to Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport speaker after speaker called for jihad against Israel in support of Hamas.

The choice of Turkey was significant. Arab hardliners were keen to put aside historic differences with the Turks.

As one organiser put it: “During the past 100 years relations have been strained but Palestine has brought us together.”

Many delegates spoke appreciatively of the protest by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who stormed out of a Davos debate on Gaza two weeks ago.  
 Gaza gives us power, it solves our differences… Palestine is a legitimate theatre of operations for jihad

Mohsen al-Awajy, Saudi religious scholar

The conference, dubbed the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign, also gave impetus to Sunni clerics concerned about the growing power of Hezbollah, the Shia movement backed by Iran, which rose to international prominence in its own war with Israel in 2006.

“Gaza is a gift,” the Saudi religious scholar Mohsen al-Awajy told me. He and other delegates repeatedly referred to the Gaza war as “a victory”.

“Gaza,” he continued, “gives us power, it solves our differences. We are all now in a unified front against Zionism.”

Read More…

Netanyahu: Palestinians should have sovereignty, but not at our expense

In his address before a delegation of visiting American Jewish leaders on Monday, Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu indicated that his offer to the Palestinians should he be appointed prime minister would be considerably less than a sovereign state.

Netanyahu told about 100 leaders from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that while he would not want to govern the Palestinians, Israel must maintain control of all borders, airspace and electronic traffic.

“Regardless how the solution is achieved, the Palestinians should run their lives,” he said. “They should govern themselves, but they shouldn’t have certain powers that would threaten the state of Israel.” 
  
Netanyahu also ruled out unilateral territorial pullbacks, charging that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 has allowed the Islamic militant Hamas to take over the coastal territory.

Prior to Netanyahu’s speech, the American Jewish delegation heard an address from Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the leader of Kadima and Netanyahu’s rival to the premiership.
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Israel: Two-thirds of Palestinians killed in Gaza fighting were terrorists

Israel says that about two-thirds of the Palestinians who were killed in the Gaza fighting were members of terror organizations who took part in the fighting, Channel 2 News reported Thursday.

These include the Hamas police cadets who were killed in an Israeli air strike at the beginning of the operation.

Channel 2 cited a report issued by Military Intelligence and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, listing 1,134 Palestinian fatalities, 673 of which belonged to Hamas and other groups.
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Only 288 were innocent civilians, the report says. The Palestinians reported 1,330 fatalities but did not submit their names.

The intense three weeks of fighting, which erupted on December 27, has killed more than 1,300 people and injured thousands in Gaza. A shaky cease-fire was being implemented by both sides and a formal deal for a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas could be signed by next week, according to Hamas officials.

Read More…

Gaza victory was a miracle: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

TEHRAN – Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, likened the victory of the Palestinian resistance movement against Israel in the 22-day war to a “miracle”.
“What really happened in Gaza was truly like a miracle,” the Leader noted in a meeting with visiting Palestinian Islamic Jihad chief Ramadan Abdallah.

“The Gaza events were in fact at the hands of God which came true through the faith and firm determination and the jihad of resistance forces and the Gaza people,” the Leader noted.

The Supreme Leader again congratulated Palestinians on their victory over the Zionist regime’s army and praised the resistance movement’s leaders for their “decisive and united” position.

“Truly, the people of Gaza took a good test and the officials and managers also emerged successful in this test for their good performance and decisive and united position.”

Ayatollah Khamenei also said the effect of the world public opinion was very influential in the Gaza event.

Read More…

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