Brookings: Experts - Michael Doran

Syria, the U.S., and Arming the Rebels: Assad’s Use of Chemical Weapons and Obama’s Red Line

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:30:00 -0400

Following confirmation that the Assad regime used chemical weapons in Syria, the Obama administration may send small arms, ammunition and potentially anti-tank weapons to the Syrian rebels. As the United States weighs its options, Foreign Policy at Brookings experts assess the situation in Syria and the Obama administration’s options going forward.

Tamara Wittes
Senior Fellow and Director, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

“Having apparently made the decision to provide lethal support to the Syrian opposition, the Obama administration must still make clear its ultimate interests and objectives. If the goal is limited to addressing the military imbalance to make way for a negotiated settlement, I fear they may be disappointed. For Assad, this is an existential struggle and the fighting will likely intensify. In addition, the more the sectarian aspect of the conflict deepens, the more existential the fight will be for Syrians on all sides of the conflict. The likely and unintended result? Making a negotiated peace very hard to achieve and creating a situation where the post-conflict phase will demand an intensive international presence.”

Michael Doran
Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

“President Obama has been extremely reluctant to get involved in Syria. But the combination of chemical weapons, pressure from allies, including the British and French, and the recent victories on the battlefield by Hezbollah have forced the president’s hand. In addition, there was a growing awareness in Washington that the Geneva II conference, the flagship of America’s Syria policy, would never take place without a greater commitment by the United States to strengthening the rebels.

“It remains to be seen, however, exactly what the United States has in mind when it says it will increase “the scope and scale” of aid. Leaks to the media suggest that this aid includes weapons, but as of yet we have no clear idea of exactly what the president has in mind. The provision of weapons alone is unlikely to drastically change the balance of power on the ground. What is needed, at a bare minimum, is a robust program of training and equipping the opposition, coupled with significant support in the areas of strategic planning, intelligence, and logistics. It is doubtful if at this stage the administration is considering such a broad package.”

Daniel Byman
Senior Fellow and Director of Research, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

“Regime change as the only way to end this conflict. And to go further, the United States wants this regime to fall. By comparison, regime change in Egypt was the right thing to support diplomatically and in terms of U.S. values, even though we were betraying an ally nonetheless. It was also a big strategic risk, but an important one to take. In the case of Syria, however, the U.S. would be undermining an enemy. The Obama administration has been slow to recognize that difference and has shown a preference for pursuing stability instead of making a full commitment to regime change.

“In addition, I increasingly worry that the opposition will turn on itself should it ever start to truly triumph. It’s inability to unify after over two years is staggering. At the height f the Libyan revolution, many in the U.S. administration complained about how poorly united the Libyan opposition was. Now Obama officials are saying, ‘if only the Syrians could be like the Libyans,’ reflecting how low the expectations have become for the opposition forces. If nothings else at this point, the U.S. needs to arm and train the Syrian rebels in order to create a stable post-Assad Syria. After Assad falls, there may be a fight among the opposition forces, and I would think the Obama administration would want someone who is not Jabhat al-Nusra to take power.

“It may be too little too late in terms of really affecting the military balance or, for that matter, scoring points with the Syrian people who will wonder why it took 90,000 dead for the United States to become more involved in the conflict. And as in Libya, the administration seemed to have waited until the forces it is backing are losing before becoming directly involved. But only by becoming involved can the U.S. help manage spillover of the conflict in the wider region and enable the U.S. to deal with a post-Assad Syria.”

Shadi Hamid
Fellow and Director of Research, Brookings Doha Center

“By itself, arming the Syrian rebels is unlikely to tip the balance in their favor. It might have made a difference a year ago, but, today, the Assad regime - particularly after re-taking Qusayr - has the advantage. With that, it is no surprise that Assad seems as confident as ever and, put another way, that the rebels are losing. At this point, a much more concerted effort is required for the Syrian rebels to regain momentum. That effort likely now would have to include the use of surgical airstrikes and the establishment of no-fly and no-drive zones.

“It is worth putting the Obama administration's decision into perspective. The U.S. will provide small arms and ammunition but not the more advanced weaponry that the rebels have been practically begging for. So not only is this a half-measure, it's a particularly weak half-measure. I worry that the Obama administration is doing this largely because of domestic and international pressure, and not because there's any real strategic vision or a re-think of what its wants to accomplish in Syria.”

Bruce Riedel
Senior Fellow and Director, Brookings Intelligence Project
Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence

“The United States is about to start arming and training the Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. If done well, this move can end a bloody civil war. If done poorly, it could lead to disaster. Will Obama and his team do the right thing?”

“It turns out Afghanistan of the 1980s is a terrific test case for how to handle the Syrian rebels. The Afghan mujahedin then and the Syrian rebels now both seem incapable of forming a broad national consensus or an effective united political and military organization. Both have a significant component of hard-core Islamist extremists in their midst who are fundamentally opposed to American interests. But both also have a legitimate cause that deserves our support. The issue is how to help wisely.”

Read Bruce Riedel's full op-ed on The Daily Beast website »

Authors

Image Source: © Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

The Price of America Not Leading in Addressing the Conflict in Syria

Michael Doran — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:00:00 -0400

This story has generated a buzz here at Doha, Qatar, where I've been attending the Brookings Institution's U.S.-Islamic World Forum. A number of well-informed people believe that President Obama is indeed inclined to begin arming the Syrian opposition.

Let's hope so. The hour is getting late. Last Wednesday, Hezbollah conquered the Syrian town of Qusayr. The week before, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, appeared on television and vowed to save the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The timing of the speech made it clear that taking Qusayr was crucial to that goal. The town sits on the most important route between the Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon and the Assad-controlled parts of Syria. In rebel hands it was a wedge driving the two apart.

Nasrallah’s speech thus betrayed a key vulnerability – and not just of Hezbollah and Assad. The Islamic Republic of Iran also sees the territorial separation of its two proxies as a grave threat. Therefore, all those who oppose Iran’s intervention in Syria should fix their sites on Qusayr. They should begin now to lay plans to retake the town or, at the very least, to make Hezbollah pay many times over for the right to occupy it.

President Obama would be wise to lead this planning effort. After all, every American ally in the Middle East – be it Israel or Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Qatar – is steadfastly opposed to the role that Iran is playing in Syria. But until now Obama’s key decisions on Syria have reflected nothing if not a firm commitment to remain aloof. Not only has he nixed all previous proposals for direct American actions, such as imposing a no-fly zone, but he has also objected to the indirect approach of arming the opposition, lest American weapons find their way into the hands of al Qaeda.

What's different now? Last year when Obama considered arming the rebels, it looked as if Assad might fall of his own weight. Now there is a clear recognition that he can hang on to power. Unlike the Americans, Iran and Hezbollah have no qualms about intervening on the ground. With their direct aid, Assad is carving out a rump Syrian state. Ethnic cleansing, aided by chemical weapons, is a primary tool for the job. Jordan is now awash in refugees, and the ongoing Syrian conflict threatens to destabilize the country. The conflict in Syria is also spilling over into Lebanon and Iraq, where sectarian tensions are at an all-time high since 2006. In the parts of Syria that are lost to Assad, an al Qaeda safe haven is rising up, smack in the middle of the Arab heartland. American inaction has thus enabled a simultaneous revitalization of Iran and al-Qaeda.

Until now Washington’s answer to this disaster has been to issue pious calls for a negotiated settlement between the opposition and the regime. But this idea is utterly fanciful, and the Obama administration is growing increasingly aware of the unreality of its policy. Assad will never negotiate himself out of a job. Even if he was inclined to do so – and he is not – a deal is a practical impossibility, due to the fractiousness of the opposition. Rebel leaders speak only for their own groups. An agreement by one leader would never be binding on the others. The war will go on no matter what.

Toppling Assad, therefore, is a necessary condition for peace. Unfortunately, the term “regime change,” has become nearly synonymous with direct American intervention on a massive scale. It need not be. As Senator John McCain explained in an important speech at Brookings on June 6, President Obama has options of a limited nature that would expose Americans to minimal risks. The president must simply explain to the American people and its allies that, while he is steadfast in his dedication to seeing the Syrian rebels dismantle the Assad regime, he also has no intention of taking responsibility for governing the entire country. Instead, he intends to offer the rebels assistance that is limited in scope yet highly effective.

Call it the pressure points strategy. According to this concept, the United States, together with its key allies, would seek to overcome the fragmentation of the rebels by building up a force of carefully vetted units. In effect, the United States would create the Free Syrian Army’s Special Forces. It would also function as their strategic brain, providing them with intelligence and logistical support – but all from outside of Syria and in concert with key local allies. These elite units would carry out assignments chosen to deliver maximum pain to the Assad regime at minimum cost.

Assad has numerous vulnerabilities that such a force could exploit. He is, for instance, desperate to ensure that the Alawite-dominated areas of the northwest Syria remain connected to Damascus. Fear of losing this connection was precisely why Hezbollah made an all-out effort to clear Qusayr, which guards the primary route between the two regions. The Assad regime is a wasp, and Qusayr is its tiny waist. A pressure point strategy would dedicate itself to hammering away at this point, cutting the wasp in half while also separating it from Hezbollah.

Qusayr is hardly the only point where the regime is vulnerable. Half of Aleppo and the entire countryside around it – reaching all the way to the Turkish border – are already in the hands of the rebels. Strong and effective external support, therefore, is all that is needed to remove Syria’s largest city from Assad’s grip.

A pressure points strategy will not strengthen al Qaeda. On the contrary, by building up only vetted units, arms will remain in the right hands. Moreover, the creation of an elite force, backed by the prestige of the United States – would strengthen the non-al-Qaeda rebels, who are desperately in need of rallying point.

Of course, the United States should form a supporting coalition to help implement a more aggressive strategy. France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Turkey are the obvious candidates for such a group. In one way or another, all of them have displayed clear dissatisfaction with the current American policy. The mere creation of such a coalition would therefore hearten both the Syrian opposition and the other regional allies of America. And it would probably also help to defray costs. Who knows? The Gulf Arabs might even foot the entire bill for a more aggressive American policy, just as they did in 1991, after the liberation of Kuwait. That war beat back a tyrant, and it cost the American taxpayer nothing – nothing, that is, but the price of leadership.

But if President Obama is briefed on something resembling the pressure points strategy, he will undoubtedly ask whether it puts the United States on a slippery slope to direct intervention. After all, the strategy does not outline a guaranteed route to victory. The only answer that his aides can give him is this: "Sir, this is not a recipe for winning; it's a recipe for not losing. Under the circumstances, it's the best we can do." Will that be enough to convince him? We'll soon find out.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article appeared in the Weekly Standard under the title "The Price of Not Leading".

Authors

Michael Doran

Image Source: © Mohamed Azakir / Reuters

Enlisting Iran On Syria Will Backfire

Michael Doran — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:00:00 -0400

“There are few nations in the world with which the United States has less reason to quarrel or more compatible interests than Iran.” So wrote Henry Kissinger in 2001. The sentence is more than just the assessment of one man. It expresses the deep longing of much of the American foreign policy establishment. For more than three decades the United States as been at odds with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Throughout the entire period, however, a dream of cooperation has captivated even the most hard-bitten American realists.

This dream beguiled Ronald Reagan. He sent his national security adviser, Robert C. Macfarlane, to Tehran, carrying a key-shaped cake, which was meant to symbolize the unlocking of doors between the two countries. The very same vision also convinced Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 2000 to express regret for American meddling in Iranian politics back in 1953, at the time of the Eisenhower administration. The mea culpa was meant to elicit a reciprocal gesture from Tehran, which never materialized.

As Secretary of State John Kerry labors to organize the Geneva conference on Syria, he will undoubtedly hear advice from those who are captivated by the dream. The Russians, for their part, have explicitly called for Iranian participation in the conference, now scheduled for the second week in June. The French, by contrast, have flatly opposed the idea. "We do not want Iran," a foreign ministry spokesman said in Paris with admirable clarity. Meanwhile, Kerry and the State Department have remained mum. We must hope that their silence does not imply any agreement with the Russians. Any effort to enlist the aid of Tehran – direct or indirect – would backfire.

Violent sectarianism, Islamic extremism, and terrorism are stamped in the DNA of the Islamic Republic. It leads an anti-American coalition throughout the region. Its allies, Assad foremost among them, are the sworn enemies of the allies of the United States. Fruitful cooperation between Washington and Tehran is impossible.

More importantly, it is also harmful to American interests. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, entertains no reciprocal dream of friendship. He wisely recognizes that he is locked in a zero-sum game with the United States. He periodically responds to gestures of friendship from Washington, because he knows that sitting down with the Americans, if only to scorn them, is an effective asymmetric tactic. It allows him to affirm key planks of Iranian propaganda: that the United States is a country in decline, that it is searching for the exits in the Middle East, and that it has no choice but to cut a deal with Iran, the rising power. The Islamic Republic’s message to America’s Arab friends is crystal clear: “Obama is intent on courting us. He will sell you down the river just to get into our good graces.”

The Islamic Republic is the primary external enabler of Assad’s murderous policies. By seeking Tehran’s help, if only indirectly, at the Geneva conference, the United States would simply be embracing the role that Iranian propaganda has assigned it.

The Geneva conference itself is already being read in the Middle East as a sign of American backsliding. When Assad ignored explicit American red lines on chemical weapons, the Obama administration responded by calling on the Syrian opposition to sit down with his representatives. It reacted, that is, with what everyone in the Middle East sees as a gesture of renewed respect for a murderous regime.

Many in the Middle East see America’s erasing of its own red lines as part of a pattern of capitulation to Iran. Assad is Tehran’s best ally, so it is only natural that the Arab friends of the United States read American policies toward Syria against the background of the Iran problem. Over the last decade Tehran has repeatedly ignored explicit warnings regarding its nuclear program. But the West has greeted each transgression with a tacit acceptance of the fait accompli. No one today believes that the United States will actually deny Iran the complete nuclear fuel cycle. With or without Iranian participation, the Geneva conference already appears as yet another example of American retreat in the face of aggressive Iranian policies.

Authors

Michael Doran

Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:29:00 -0400

On August 28-29, 2012, the Saban Center at Brookings and the United States Central Command brought together analysts, officers, and policymakers to discuss the new and enduring challenges facing the United States in the Middle East.

The conference, Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East, explored security developments in key countries of the region, focusing on those issues where the risks and opportunities for the United States are the greatest.

General James N. Mattis, then CENTCOM’s commander, delivered opening remarks, and the Honorable Michèle Flournoy, formerly the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, deliver a keynote address. The conference also featured experts from the Middle East as well as senior American analysts and officials. Together, the speakers and conference participants offered insights that went well beyond conventional Washington wisdom and provided valuable lessons and ideas for the U.S. military and policy community.

The proceedings from this conference include summaries of the sessions and the full text of Dr. Flournoy’s keynote address.

Downloads

Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East

Authors

Around the Halls: Israel's Airstrikes in Syria

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:22:00 -0400

Following news of Israel’s weekend airstrikes in Syria, Brookings experts examine the implications of Israel’s actions, analyze Syria and Hezbollah’s possible responses, and offer foreign policy recommendations for the United States. Daniel Byman, Michael Doran, Suzanne Maloney, Kenneth M. Pollack, Natan Sachs, Salman Shaikh, and Tamara Cofman Wittes weigh in on the latest developments.

Natan Sachs
Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

The Israeli airstrikes in Syria over the past few days were an instance of a standing Israeli policy: preventing, by all means necessary, the transfer of “game changing” weapons to either Asad’s ally, Hezbollah, or—of increasing Israeli concern—to extremist groups among the Syrian opposition. Such weapons include not only chemical weapons from Syria’s large stockpile but also advanced conventional weapons such as Russian anti-aircraft missiles or the Iranian Fateh 110 surface to surface missiles Israel reportedly targeted this weekend (missiles with significantly larger payload, better accuracy and longer range than most existing Hezbollah weaponry, such that Israelis cities would be under considerably more threat from Hezbollah than in the past).

The Israelis are betting that their actions do not backfire, either by provoking a larger conflict with Hezbollah or the Asad regime or by influencing the Syrian civil war in unpredictable ways (see this piece Dan and I wrote in Foreign Policy). Israel, in its view, has no horse in the race in Syria. It has no love for the Asad regime but is deeply wary of the potential for chaos or for an extremist takeover of parts of Syria. The Israeli stance has been, therefore, to take action on tangible, operational intelligence as it emerges but to refrain from involvement in the civil war itself; to protect its vital interests while remaining largely outside the fray.

But acting on the tactical and operational level without influencing the situation at large can be a difficult balancing act. Israel would provide the perfect foil for the Syrian regime or for Hezbollah, both of whom are mired in a bloody civil war where they on the wrong side, in popular Arab eyes. A diversionary conflict with Israel would offer them an out from the ire of the Arab publics, as the renewed anti-Israeli rhetoric of the Syrian regime in the past few days has demonstrated. Indeed, Israel was on alert in its north, deploying Iron Dome batteries, temporarily closing off the northern civilian airspace and ramping down a planned military exercise, for fear of stoking the flames. But Israel remains relatively confident that the situation will remain under control—Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu departed the country for a state visit to China—with both the Asad regime and Hezbollah wary of opening a front with the vastly more powerful Israel, and especially its airpower, while they struggle to hold their positions on the ground in Syria.

Kenneth Pollack
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

First, I'd like to just note that three Israeli strikes with non-stealthy aircraft cast some doubt on the Administration's alarmism about Syria's vaunted air defenses. Indeed, I wonder if that isn't also in the back of Bibi's head—demonstrating just how poor Syrian air defenses actually are.

Second, I would like to resurrect some of my comments from my blog post from last week: namely that whether the regime retaliates against Israel will be driven by its assessment of the fight with the opposition. As long as the regime feels it has a prospect of beating the rebels, it won't retaliate for fear of an escalatory spiral with Israel. They are very wary of taking on the IDF while they are fighting for their lives against the Sunnis--as long as they think they can win that fight. However, once they become concerned that they cannot win that fight, then the regime's incentive structure flips and it becomes more likely that they will retaliate against Israel, since the possibility of transforming the contest into an Arab-Israeli war outweighs whatever damage the Israelis could do once they conclude that they are doomed anyway. Right now, I do not believe the regime has reached that level of desperation, so I doubt they retaliate.

Salman Shaikh
Director, Brookings Doha Center, Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

First, Israel seems intent on defending its "red lines" and has already acted to stop the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah; responded directly to fire from Syrian army units in the Golan Heights; and sounded the alarm on the use of chemical weapons.

With regard to the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah, it has shown that it is willing to change the 'rules of engagement' with the Assad regime and hit these weapons inside Syria. In doing so, it is seeking to establish a new level of deterrence with respect to such activities. Certainly, the latest strikes against weapons depots and reportedly the headquarters of the 104th Brigade of the Republican Guard as well as the 4th Division commanded by Bashar's brother, Maher Assad are punitive and painful. The psychological effects that such strikes could have on the senior officer core, particularly the Alawite officers, who form the backbone of the army and its security forces will be worth watching. In a short period of time, the certainty of the previous 40 years of "cold peace" has been replaced by the realisation that Israel will strike again and harder if Asad continues to supply Hezbollah.

The likely response from the Assad regime, as has already been the case since the strikes over the weekend, is to exploit the propaganda value of Israel's "aggression" and attempt to link it with efforts to aid the opposition's rebel forces. The Free Syrian Army has condemned the "Israeli aggression" but denied any connection to it. The Syrian National Coalition has responded by engaging in “verbal acrobatics” by condemning the attacks but also blaming Assad for weakening the country.

What will matter is the effect that this will have on the large number of people, particularly in the cities, who have not openly sided with either the regime or the opposition. If the situation escalates, the regime could gain ground by hammering the message that Israel has sided with rebels and extremists and that only the regime can protect the unity of Syria in this difficult period.

Key states in the Arab world, at least rhetorically, seem to be following suit. In addition to the predictable condemnations from the Syrian regime's supporters in Lebanon and Iraq, statements from President Morsi of Egypt and the Saudi government have condemned Israel's "violation of international law" and pointed to its dangerous consequences for the region. Meanwhile, the Arab League Secretary-General called it "a blatant aggression and a serious violation of an Arab country's sovereignty." He has also called for the UN to take action (never mind the League's silence over the recent massacres in Baniyas and the alleged use of chemical weapons).

Whether these statements reflect the views of Arab publics is debatable. For now at least, the focus will likely remain on the Assad regime's brutal use of force against its own people. The majority of Arabs, particularly Sunni Arabs are angry with Assad and resentful of the support that Hezbollah and the Iranians have provided to him. However, the suspicions that many in the region have towards Israel's actions will likely grow if the attacks continue and if these are perceived as only furthering Israel's interests.

Daniel Byman
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Director of Research, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

For U.S. policy, my concern is that several important U.S. allies—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, and now Israel— are involved in significant ways. And other neighbors, notably Lebanon and Iraq, are suffering increasing instability from the Syrian conflict. Meanwhile, the instability from Syria is steadily spreading beyond its borders. Even beyond the human cost, the United States has long had its own interests, including counterterrorism, in playing a more decisive role. Now the problem is metastasizing, and U.S. allies might work at cross purposes, and their actions may end up harming each other in the end.

Michael Doran
Roger Hertog Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

I agree wholeheartedly with Dan. The issue for me is the abdication of American leadership. I cannot remember another time when the United States was so noticeably absent from a major issue— the major issue— in Middle Eastern international politics. It's important to make a distinction between leadership and direct intervention. Often when people call for a more robust American policy, they are shut down with a pointed question: "What do you want, another Iraq war?" But there is much that the United States could do, short of military intervention, to coordinate the activities of its allies. Leadership requires, before anything else, a clear vision of the future— a picture of an end state that is both desirable and achievable. The United States has no vision whatsoever of the outcome that it would like to see in Syria. It does not even have a clear definition of its major interests in the conflict. The only interest that the Obama administration has clearly articulated is its desire to remain aloof.

Tamara Wittes
Director, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Program

Syrian activists on the ground and in exile are at least ambivalent about the Israeli strikes, and some are downright celebratory. But the Egyptian government and the Arab League were quick to issue statements denouncing Israeli interference. Given the involvement of Arab League members and the League itself in Syria’s internal crisis, the latter condemnation in particular was thick with irony. But just as the speedy criticisms from Cairo reflect the ongoing nationalist sensitivity there, the controversy in the rest of the Arab world over how to respond to the Israeli strikes likewise underscores the ways in which the Arab Awakening— and the Syrian conflict most pointedly— has upended once-comfortable principles regarding sovereignty, Arab nationalism, and non-intervention in internal affairs.

Suzanne Maloney
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

The Israeli air strikes have been interpreted by many as a message to Tehran, hardly surprising given Iran’s central role in providing materiel support to Bashar Al Asad and its reliance on Damascus as both a bulwark against regional isolation and a conduit to its proxies in the Levant. What is interesting is Tehran’s response – not simply the predictable fulminations from senior officials and clerics, but the stepped-up pace of Iran’s diplomatic outreach on Syria. Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi arrived in Amman today for talks, just in time to announce a visit to Tehran next week by Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani.

This is the latest indication of Iran’s underlying objective with respect to the conflict in Syria – ensuring that the Islamic Republic retains influence in Damascus irrespective of the outcome of the civil war. This imperative has shaped a hedging strategy from the outset of the unrest: Iran hopes to preserve at least a vestige of its ally Bashar, but has also sought a seat at the table in shaping post-Asad Syria in any formal regional dialogue. Tehran’s hedging here goes beyond protecting its equities and bolstering regime security; there is a genuine national interest in precluding the expansion of Sunni extremism, which Iran has rightly viewed as a threat since the emergence of the Taliban more than two decades ago.

The concept of Iranian engagement on Syria is anathema to Washington, for good reason. And yet it should not be reflexively blocked by an Obama Administration that is under fire for its absurd public dithering on Syria. Iranian diplomatic engagement on Syria will not preclude troublemaking by Tehran; however, excluding Iran from the contentious regional politics surrounding the conflict is a recipe for inflaming the situation even further. Any long-term stable outcome in Syria will require neutralizing Iran’s incentives for sabotage as well as stemming the sectarian violence brewing amidst the conflict.

Authors

Publication: The New York Times

Image Source: © Khaled Al Hariri / Reuters

Brookings Experts on Netanyahu’s New Coalition Government in Israel

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:59:00 -0400

Yesterday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled his new coalition government, seven weeks after his re-election. Following deadlocked negotiations, a slimmer government—with just 21 members—emerged and will be Israel’s first without ultra-Orthodox parties since 2005. Netanyahu’s announcement comes just days before President Obama is scheduled to visit the country. Martin Indyk, Tamara Cofman Wittes, Michael Doran, Khaled Elgindy, and Natan Sachs weigh in on the new coalition, and analyze the effect on the Middle East peace process.

Tamara Cofman Wittes
Director, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Program

Benjamin Netanyahu starts his new term as Prime Minister in a weakened position after he conceded essentially to all of Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid's demands (even yielding on education minister at the last minute) and still not getting an agreement for another week.

Lapid as finance minister, and Yesh Atid holding education and welfare, puts them in a strong position to fulfill campaign promises and position Lapid for greater gains in the next election. Indeed, the next election seems his primary concern. For Lapid, the peace process is not a priority issue.

Bayit Yehudi, for its part, received ministerial positions for Jerusalem, Diaspora, and religious services, all key for its constituency. A former head of the settler council, Uri Ariel, will run the ministry of housing and construction. No one expects this government to last a full term. Scenarios raised are either that it won't pass a budget or that Netanyahu will stymie Lapid so badly that it will drive him out of the coalition, allowing Netanyahu to bring in the religious parties and to shape the government he wanted all along. The latter could, I believe, only strengthen Lapid in new elections.

Aryeh Deri notwithstanding, the Haredis' attitudes on territorial compromise have changed. Netanyahu may not be comfortable with the status quo in Israel's relations with the Palestinians, given the price in international isolation and the harm to trade and relations with Europe. But beyond making some gestures, it's not clear how much he is willing to do. And with or without the Haredim, his coalition will not push him in a conciliatory direction.

Michael Doran
Roger Hertog Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

If the U.S. pushes Netanyahu on anything serious (not likely), then the coalition will fall, because Bennett will not be able to support. Which leads to a counterintuitive conclusion: you really need the ultra-Orthodox parties in the government to support serious moves on Israeli-Palestinian issues, because those parties give the government an extra margin of support.

I predict a short life for this coalition. This strikes me as a government in which everybody will be jockeying for position in the next election right away. The big issue will be Haredim in the military, and that will be very divisive.

Israelis love to complain about the Haredim, it's true, and everybody thinks they have gone too far. However, the secular-religious fight that is going to open up will be brutal. It's the biggest fault line in the society, and once the religious start hammering away at this government, I think we will see lots of cracks open up quickly—on lots of different issues.

The territorial questions are not central to the Haredim’s political identity and their participation in a government gives the prime minister more room to maneuver. They do not facilitate, and they have obstructionist tendencies, but they help to create an environment that is more propitious than what we get without them, which we see before us now. To me, it's a great irony of Israeli politics that I never contemplated before now.

Martin Indyk
Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy Program

The Haredim issue will not divide the government, but I don't doubt it will divide society. However, the bark is always worse than the bite in Israeli politics.

The proposition that the ultra-Orthodox parties need to be in the government for it to be able to make serious moves on Israeli-Palestinian issues is unsupported by any evidence. The Haredim have been one of the enablers of the settlement movement, and they moved progressively to the right on peace issues while they were in the government. Now in the opposition they'll be in bed with Labor and the Arab parties. Maybe that will bring them back to where they were during the Yitzhak Rabin years, but even then they were unreliable peace partners.

The Haredim are out of this government, so drafting them into the army will not divide it or bring it down. On the contrary: Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett are united on this issue, Tzipi Livni supports them, and Avigdor Lieberman’s side of the Likud is at least as hard line on it as they are. The rest of the Likud are secularist settler sympathizers. And the Haredim won't get much comfort from Shelly Yacimovich and their new leftist-secularist parties allies in the opposition. We are about to see a reasonable sharing of the burden. Good news for Israeli society even if it's bad news for the peace process.

Natan Sachs
Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

I agree that the Yair Lapid-Naftali Bennett alliance hides real differences between their parties, especially on issues of religion and foreign policy. In some respects, this is not a “natural” alliance; I'm actually very impressed by the discipline among the ranks of Bennett's Jewish Home party throughout these negotiations, sustaining the alliance with the secularist Yesh Atid. But the religious issues might not fracture the coalition in the short term; the main questions surrounding the Haredim have been agreed upon already and will be implemented before long, according the coalition agreement. In other words, that hurdle is largely passed. Now what remains is for Jewish Home to collect the benefits, in terms of jobs and influence within the religious community, from control over the religious affairs ministry and other positions of power. This they will be very happy to do.

One potential source of tension in the coalition is actually is the Bennett-John Kerry axis. If the United States pushes on the Palestinian issue, fissures can emerge between the core of the coalition and its far right. I agree completely that the Haredim are not a secure base for the Middle East peace process, but the Jewish Home is much less so. One of their central demands was to get the housing portfolio, with settlements in mind, and with the new, hawkish defense minister (Moshe Yaalon, from the Likud) there may be more activity on that front.

The potential silver lining for diplomacy is that some of the recent noises from the prime minister’s office are consistent with Tzipi Livni's more moderate approach. Even Yaakov Amidror, the national security advisor—probably as right wing as anyone—now reportedly sees the diplomatic price Israel pays over the settlements. The PMO's solution will likely be an attempt to garner support through talks--and through having Livni in place to lead them—whether or not these talks are meaningful or based on a true change in policy. But it's worth remembering that there is always discussion whether now—of all times—there is a change of heart in Netanyahu's circles on the Palestinian issue. This may well just be spin.

If and when the government falls, there could either be an alternative government, with the Haredim, or even new elections. A lot depends on whether Lapid sees an electoral opportunity and whether Livni is inclined to leave as well. If the center leaves en masse, Netanyahu will have a hard time, mathematically; the right + religious is likely too narrow for comfort. If Bennett's party leaves because of diplomatic developments, the Haredim may jump back in to get revenge on the Modern Orthodox, but if the mood is that Netanyahu is vulnerable, they may prefer elections to get their revenge on him too. In short, as is usually the case, the brand new government in Israel may not last its full term.

Khaled Elgindy
Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

It looks as though the new Israeli government intends to be quite active on the Palestinian issue after all—though not in the way most had hoped. With the appointment of Uri Ariel, former head of the settlers’ umbrella group known as the Yesha Council and himself a West Bank settler, to head the Ministry of Housing and Construction we can expect an even greater surge in settlement expansion in the occupied territories than we’ve seen in recent years. Ariel’s Bayit Yehudi party, the third pillar of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition and third biggest vote-getter in the Knesset, not only opposes territorial concessions to the Palestinians but openly rejects the two-state solution itself—sentiments shared by many in Netanyahu’s own Likud party. The strong pro-settlement bent of the new Israeli government is certain to alarm Palestinian leaders in Ramallah, who are sure to reiterate their message about the dangers posed by the settlements and the urgency of a two-state solution to President Obama directly on his upcoming visit to Israel and the occupied territories. Having withstood similar pleadings for much of the last four years, however, there is little reason to expect the administration to abandon its laissez faire attitude toward settlements or become more actively engaged in peacemaking any time soon.

Martin Indyk

In addition to settler control of the Housing Ministry, the Interior Ministry will be in the hands of Likud and the Defense Ministry also. So the three critical ministries for settlement activity will be in the hands of those most committed to the settlement cause.

Authors

Is New Obama Direct Aid Policy to Syrian Rebels a ‘Nothing Burger’?

Michael Doran — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 12:52:00 -0500

The New York Times today reported that the United States, in a change of policy, is now providing direct aide to the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Coming as it does in the midst of John Kerry’s fresh look at the Syria question, this news appears as if it might signal a significant change in American policy. If so, Secretary of State Kerry should be warmly commended. But there are at least three reasons to be highly skeptical.

First, the Obama administration has a track record of turning nothing burgers into steak sandwiches. For instance, last June, when the administration first came under pressure to get tough on Assad, the Times published a story suggesting that Washington was on the cusp of arming the Syrian opposition. That momentous change, we now know, never took place.

Second, a close look at today’s story leads one to ask, yet again, “Where’s the beef?” The United States, we learn, will now provide direct food and medical supplies to the FSA. In addition, Secretary of State Kerry is increasing an American support by $60 million. This is hardly a significant shift. Most Americans probably already believe that we were providing non-lethal support to the opposition.

Today’s news reports also inform us that in a third country (presumably Jordan or Turkey) an American mission, whose size and scope “is not clear,” is providing “training.” But training in what? We are not told, except that it will help the opposition provide “basic services.” We also learn, by the way, that this mission “is already under way.” In other words, it is not news at all.

The Russians, meanwhile, did their level best to embarrass Kerry. They responded to his meeting in Rome by announcing their continued lethal support for Assad’s military. “Russia will fulfill its obligations on weapons contracts with Syria,” the secretary of Moscow’s security council said. The Russians are, of course, not the only ones providing such assistance. The Iranian regime sends regular weapons shipments to Assad, while also helping him to stand up a new Alawite-based militia. Hezbollah, in effect an arm of the Iranian Qods Force, is fighting on the ground in Syria.

Therein lies the problem with the U.S. policy. Russia and Iran, Syria’s patrons, are all directly helping Assad to stay alive in a fight to the death. Meanwhile, Washington produces happy talk about teaming up with the Russians to broker an agreement between this murderous regime and its opposition. This policy of seeking a peaceful transition is a fantasy, a snare, and a delusion. It is a fig leaf and a placeholder. It is, in short, a non-policy. The only way to get to a post-Assad Syria is to topple Assad. Until his regime is destroyed, the killing will continue.

Authors

Michael Doran

Image Source: © Stringer . / Reuters

Arm the Syrian Rebels. Now.

Michael Doran and Salman Shaikh — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 15:47:00 -0500

Until recently, among President Barack Obama's most senior advisors on national security, an ironclad consensus reigned: Arm the Syrian rebels. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 7, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, affirmed that they both supported the call by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and David Petraeus, former director of the CIA, to provide lethal support to the Syrian opposition.

What were the arguments that convinced Obama to overrule his advisors? We may never know, but one thing is clear: They were not based on a sober reading of the situation on the ground in Syria, where U.S. policy is caught in a contradiction between word and deed. Though the president has repeatedly called for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's ouster, he has proposed no credible plan for achieving that goal.

Last week, for instance, Obama stressed that the United States had "joined with nations around the world in calling for an end to the Assad regime." No sooner had he made this statement, however, than he dispatched Vice President Joseph Biden to attempt -- once again -- to engage Russia on a solution to the conflict. But reliance on mediation from Moscow -- with its emphasis on an Assad-led transition -- has proved to be fundamentally flawed. Assad will never preside over his own removal.

The diplomatic back-and-forth has come at the expense of decisive steps toward regime change. Obama has been right, after a decade of war, to ask hard questions about whether greater U.S. involvement can really work in the interests of either Syria or the United States. But his hands-off policy has now proved to be self-defeating. In the absence of American assistance, the rebels' momentum has stalled, and the battles for Damascus, Aleppo, and Syria's other strategic centers have devolved into a grim stalemate.

Meanwhile, Syrian society is fragmenting, and sectarianism is on the rise. While Jabhat al-Nusra, the local al Qaeda affiliate, is growing ever stronger, the Iranians and Hezbollah have doubled down on their support for the regime. Both have, for example, sent forces to fight alongside the Syrian army. In addition, they are training and equipping the Jaysh al-Shabi, a Syrian government-controlled force that, according to at least one Iranian source, is modeled on the Basij militia of the Islamic Republic. Iran is also providing economic aid and propaganda support.

The polarizing influence of Iran and al Qaeda portends a further escalation of sectarian violence, which will inevitably spill over into surrounding countries. To prevent the worst, the United States must assume a greater leadership role, which, as the president's advisors have made clear, means building the capacity of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a network of nationalist and secular-leaning rebel brigades. This would not necessarily require direct and sustained American military intervention, but it would entail arming the FSA and helping it to develop a countrywide military strategy.

From a purely military point of view, the rebels need help neutralizing the weapons that give the Syrian state its greatest advantages -- namely, armor and fixed-wing aircraft. The provision of light anti-tank weapons would go a long way toward stopping Assad's tanks. However, eliminating the regime's air superiority, which rebels and civilians fear the most, is a thornier challenge. Here the United States and the international community have a crucial role to play in projecting a credible threat of force to stop Assad from indiscriminate bombing. While it may not be necessary to impose a Libya-style no-fly zone (NFZ), it is imperative to keep the threat on the table and to be willing, if required, to carry it out. An obvious alternative to an NFZ is to provide man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADs). But the legal and prudential restrictions are considerable. The use of these systems would require a stronger partnership between the FSA and key regional allies than currently exists.

In addition to weaponry, the FSA needs training, resources, and intelligence support. It currently lacks a sound military strategy. Only the Americans, working together with Arab partner nations, have the requisite diplomatic and military resources to help the FSA develop this capacity. It is often said that the United States has no successful track record of providing this kind of assistance. But that is simply false. In fact, in recent months it has enjoyed a number of quiet successes in Yemen. With a very light footprint, the Pentagon has helped train and equip the Yemeni army, giving it the wherewithal to retake territory that it previously ceded to al Qaeda. While the American drone campaign has grabbed the headlines, the effort to build partnership capacity holds out the greatest long-term promise. The partnership being developed in Yemen is precisely the model that is needed in Syria.

It is important to remember that arming the FSA is a political act. The most important decision of all is simply to provide lethal assistance. The goal of the operation is to build a force on the ground that is more likely to respect American interests and that is committed to building a nonsectarian, stable Syria. Even the provision of light weaponry would be a good start to this project.

This policy does entail the risk of unintended consequences. Some arms may flow to al Qaeda. Some groups may take American aid and then turn against the United States. But inaction also carries risks. The current hands-off policy has hardly succeeded in preventing extremists from acquiring arms. It has simply given them time and incentive to develop their own independent sources of external support.

By establishing itself as the most important international player shaping the conflict inside Syria, the United States will lay the groundwork for helping the Syrian people forge a genuine national dialogue on the nature of their transition. This should include the creation of a national platform that brings together Syria's diverse ethnic and religious communities -- including Sunnis, Shiites, Alawis, Christians, and Kurds, as well as tribal and religious figures -- to discuss the future of the country. In particular, it should include Alawis who enjoy wide legitimacy within their community, but who are also willing to talk about a post-Assad Syrian regime.

At the same time, the United States should bring together key international and regional powers to create an international steering group. This group -- including China, Russia, Turkey, and key Arab and European states -- should agree on a number of basic goals for the transition and set benchmarks for their effective implementation. The immediate focus should be on protecting civilians, minorities, and vulnerable groups through the creation of an international stabilization force; addressing humanitarian issues; safeguarding chemical and other unauthorized weapons; and supporting Syrian-led transitional governance and transitional justice efforts.

For this to succeed, Obama must first persuade Russia to abandon its demand that Assad play a role in the transition. If Moscow remains defiant, however, the president must be willing to pursue an independent policy -- while still keeping the door open for Russian President Vladimir Putin to eventually join the international consensus.

The Syria challenge is difficult. Its intractability is what initially made nonintervention attractive. But developments on the ground have since made it an increasingly dangerous option for American interests. It's time Obama listened to his foreign-policy and national security advisors.

Authors

Publication: Foreign Policy

Hagel’s Misreading of How to Treat an Ally

Michael Doran — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Chuck Hagel likes Ike. That much has been apparent for some time. But thanks to David Ignatius’s Jan. 27 op-ed column, “Reviving Eisenhower’s doctrine,” we now know what he likes best: Eisenhower’s management of the Suez crisis. For Hagel, it is more than a shining example of past American leadership. It is a guide for future presidential behavior.

Dwight D. Eisenhower is certainly worthy of emulation, but Hagel has unfortunately learned precisely the wrong lessons. In 1956, Britain, France and Israel launched coordinated invasions of Egypt. To say that Eisenhower disapproved would be an understatement. He directed at his allies a level of hostility typically reserved for worst enemies. After demanding that the attacking forces evacuate Egypt immediately, he imposed crippling economic sanctions on France and Britain. Against Israel, he threatened sanctions while engaging in bare-knuckle diplomacy.

All three powers buckled under the pressure, which was particularly damaging to Britain. Although Prime Minister Anthony Eden was America’s closest ally, Eisenhower brought his economy to the verge of collapse. The pressure destroyed Eden’s career and drove the final nail in the coffin of the British empire.

Realists in the Hagel mold find this episode exhilarating. Eisenhower, they say, pursued the national interest without concern for “sentimental” attachments, to say nothing of domestic lobbies. When applied to the present, the analogy calls for dealing sharply with Israel. The United States, the implication goes, must not allow its client to drag it into conflict with Iran. Instead, Obama must treat Benjamin Netanyahu with the same grit that Ike flashed at Eden.

But this analogy omits a key fact: Ike came to regret those policies. “Years later,” Richard Nixon wrote in the 1980s, “I talked to Eisenhower about Suez; he told me it was his major foreign policy mistake.” By 1958, Ike himself had realized his error and reversed course.

Two primary considerations prompted Eisenhower’s reevaluation. First, the Suez policy simply did not work. By distancing the United States from Israel and the Europeans, Eisenhower believed he was stabilizing the region and laying the foundation for a strategic accommodation between the Arabs, as a bloc, and the United States.

But the anticipated benefit never materialized. Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged from the conflict much stronger and more adversarial to U.S. interests. The Soviet penetration of the Middle East deepened considerably. These trends had catastrophic consequences, chief among them the 1958 revolution in Iraq, which replaced the most pro-Western Arab government with a junta that migrated into the Soviet orbit.

The United States, Ike realized, was paying a heavy price for having broken the only immutable rule of a realist foreign policy: Support your friends and punish your enemies. It would continue to pay for years, and not just in the Middle East. When the United States became mired in Vietnam, Britain and France refused to help. Why should they? Eisenhower had taught them that membership in the NATO alliance imposed no binding obligations outside Europe.

As he contemplated these unintended consequences, Ike concluded that he had based his strategy on a false premise. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles expressed it with admirable clarity in the midst of the crisis. U.S. failure to compel Israel to withdraw its forces from Egypt, he remarked to an agreeing Eisenhower, would lead to a catastrophic defeat in the Cold War. It would, Dulles said, “make it almost certain that virtually all of the Middle East countries would feel that United States policy toward the area was . . . controlled by the Jewish influence in the United States and that accordingly the only hope of the Arab countries was in association with the Soviet Union.”

Eisenhower assumed that the Arabs behaved as a unified bloc, especially with respect to Israel. The fallout from Suez, however, taught him otherwise. The upheavals that accompanied Nasser’s rise shared one factor: They had no connection whatsoever to Israel. From this, Eisenhower learned that the alignment of the Arab states in the Cold War was a function of their own internecine conflicts.

This realization led to a paradigm shift. During Suez, Eisenhower had envisioned the United States as an honest broker, shuttling between the Arab world and the alliance of Britain, France and Israel. By 1958, he defined the American role in an entirely new way. The job of the United States, he now realized, was to balance the status-quo Arab powers against a set of revisionists, who were aligned with the Soviet Union. In that context, Israel was more an asset than a liability. Historians typically ascribe this intellectual innovation to Nixon and Henry Kissinger. They were the first to publicly articulate the perspective, but Nixon had absorbed it while serving at Eisenhower’s side.

Today, another revolutionary wave is sweeping the Arab world, driven once again by internal factors. Meanwhile, Hagel remains fixated on a U.S.-Arab-Israeli dynamic. This magical triangle has never had the all-pervasive influence ascribed to it. As long as Hagel remains in its thrall, Eisenhower’s true realism will elude him.

Authors

Michael Doran

Publication: The Washington Post

Image Source: © Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

The Road Beyond Damascus

Salman Shaikh and Michael Doran — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

If the United States does not take on a more active leadership role in Syria, the country will become a failed state, a second Somalia in the heartland of the Middle East. Michael Doran and Salman Shaikh drafted this memorandum to President Obama as part of Big Bets and Black Swans: A Presidential Briefing Book.

How can the United States provide greater leadership and concrete assistance including direct military intervention?
What other kinds of American-led international efforts are necessary?
How should President Obama engage with Russia President Vladamir Putin, who wants Assad as part of transition talks?

Download Memorandum (pdf) | Download the Presidential Briefing Book (pdf)

TO: President Obama

FROM: Michael Doran and Salman Shaikh

Syria is standing on a precipice reminiscent of Iraq in early 2006. The regime will likely fall, but the prospect now is one of a failed state that produces a toxic culture of extremism and lawlessness. If the United States does not take on a more active leadership role, the trend toward warlordism and sectarian fragmentation will likely prove inexorable. Syria will become a second Somalia, in the heartland of the Middle East and on the borders of Israel, Turkey and Jordan, the three closest regional allies of the United States. Conversely, through active intervention you can help ensure a more stable transition to a post-Assad order that will provide a better future for the Syrian people and a strategic gain for the United States and its regional friends.

In your first term, when it came to the Syrian revolution, you wagered that the risks of active intervention outweighed the risks of a more cautious approach. Now, however, we believe the massive toll of civilian casualties, the dismemberment of the country, and the intensification of the conflict along sectarian lines dictate a revisiting of your decision.

Recommendation:

To stave off disaster and play a leadership role in shaping Syria’s future, the United States should provide lethal assistance to the Syrian opposition, forge a genuine national dialogue that includes Alawis and Christians, and create an International Steering Group (ISG) to oversee and lend support to the transitional process, including the creation of an international stabilization force to provide protection to Syrian civilians. You will need to engage directly with President Putin to overcome already weakening Russian resistance to these essential endeavors.

Background:

A descent into chaos in Syria poses many risks to the United States. In particular, it creates opportunities for Iran and Hezbollah to safeguard their interests. Perhaps the greatest potential benefit to the United States of the uprising had been the damage that it did to the alliance system of Iran, the strategic adversary of the United States in the Middle East. For a time it seemed that Iran’s foothold in Syria would be washed away naturally by the tide of events. But as the conflict has deepened, Tehran has spared no expense to make itself an indispensable partner to a number of groups who seem destined to thrive in the growing chaos.

Secondly, the fragmentation of Syria means perpetual civil war. Violence is already developing along sectarian lines, between Sunnis and Alawis, Sunnis and Christians, and other religious communities; along intra-sectarian lines, particularly between al-Qaeda affiliates and their Sunni nationalist rivals; and along ethnic lines, as Arab-Kurdish violence spreads across the country’s north. Furthermore, this violence will increase the risk of spillover to neighboring countries: increasing refugee flows, the growing presence of rival Iraqi factions inside Syria, and growing tensions in Lebanon. Other, more dramatic forms of spillover are looming: direct intervention by Turkey, against the background of Kurdish problems, or by Israel, in an effort to destroy Assad’s chemical weapons.

Finally, the chaos is enabling al-Qaeda to gain a significant foothold. Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, is now recognized as one of the most potent fighting forces in the country.

Until now, the primary U.S. answer to the fragmentation has been to support the newly established Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), the umbrella organization that is trying to tie together many of the political strands among the opposition. As a result, the SOC has gained significant international recognition as “the sole representative” of the Syrian people. This support is timely and encourages greater opposition unity. But in the absence of a more robust American leadership, it will not stabilize Syria, because the writ of the SOC is limited by its failure to reach a national consensus and by the growing power of the warlords.

It is time to place a new bet on a more active American leadership role, one that seeks to protect civilians, hastens the fall of Assad, and shapes a new political order more amenable to the needs of the Syrian people and to American interests. A greater leadership role does not necessarily mean direct military intervention. Continuous U.S. airstrikes and large numbers of American boots on the ground should not be necessary. However, removing the threat of intervention entirely only emboldens Assad and his chief patron, Iran. If the scale of civilian bloodletting continues to escalate, the United States must be prepared to act decisively, in the spirit of “the responsibility to protect.” In this regard, we encourage you to communicate to Assad and his allies that the United States is willing to intervene to establish a no-fly zone with its European and regional allies to protect civilians in Syria. We believe this would hasten Assad’s demise, hearten the opposition, and significantly enhance American credibility in the region.

In 1995, President Clinton was forced to intervene militarily in Bosnia and threaten the greater use of military force. He did so after over 100,000 Bosnian men, women and children had been killed over a four-year period. Clearly, Syria is not Bosnia. But after nearly two-years, 60,000 killed (the UN thinks this is a conservative estimate) and the UN-Arab League Special Envoy warning that another 100,000 could be killed in 2013, the United States must not allow Assad’s killing machine to continue the slaughter with impunity.

Today, the United States simply does not possess an effective ground game in Syria. It needs to help the Free Syrian Army (FSA) develop a country-wide military strategy and insist that it forge stronger links with the Syrian Opposition Coalition. Like it or not, the FSA is the nucleus of the post- Assad military, which will be the most significant institution of the Syrian state. If the new Syria has any hope of being stable, more pluralistic, and friendly to the United States, then the effort to shape its institutions must begin now.

The centerpiece of that effort is the provision of lethal assistance by an American-led coalition. To be sure, the fragmentation of the rebels and the presence among them of al-Qaeda fighters present daunting challenges. There is no guarantee, for instance, that some weapons will not find their way to al-Qaeda. Nor will the internal divisions within the FSA be overcome without internecine bloodletting. However, a continuance of the current, hands-off policy will only make al-Qaeda stronger and the conflicts within the FSA more permanent. As daunting as the challenges in Syria are today, if the United States does nothing, it will face even more virulent problems tomorrow.

In addition, a continuation of the status quo will lead to a permanent diminishment of American influence. A reluctance, thus far, to provide lethal assistance has led to a growing sense of betrayal among Syrians. Many of them now argue that your faltering attitude — paired with your perceived responsibility for the inability to overcome the diplomatic impasse with Russia — has played a decisive role in the intensification of the Syrian conflict.

After establishing itself as the single most important player shaping the conflict on the ground, your administration should provide assistance to the Syrian people to forge a genuine national dialogue on the nature of the desired transition. This requires the creation of a national platform that brings together the diverse ethnic and religious communities of Syria — including Sunnis, Shia, Alawis, Christians and Kurds, as well as tribal and religious figures—to discuss the future of the country. Specifically, it should include Alawis who enjoy wide legitimacy within their community but who are also willing to talk about a post-Assad regime in Syria. As an exclusively Sunni club, the Syrian Opposition Coalition is not qualified to win the necessary trust of under-represented minorities and communities.

At the same time, the United States should bring together key international and regional powers to create an ISG for Syria that would work in close collaboration with a legitimate and empowered transitional Syrian executive authority.

The ISG should include Russia, China, Turkey, and key Arab and European states. It should agree on a number of basic goals for the transition and set benchmarks for their effective implementation. The immediate focus: protecting civilians, minorities and vulnerable groups through the creation of an international stabilization force; addressing humanitarian issues; safeguarding chemical and other unauthorized weapons; and supporting transitional governance and transitional justice efforts. This work should be followed by a longer-term commitment to assisting Syrians on security sector reform, the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) of combatants and supporting a transitional governance roadmap, including preparations for multi-party elections and a constitution-drafting exercise; economic recovery, including planning and coordination on infrastructure and reconstruction; and assisting national reconciliation efforts.

To succeed, this strategy will have to overcome the persistent Russian demand that Assad play a role in the transition. His absence from the process, however, is an equally firm demand of the rebels. In order to overcome this gap, you will need to engage with President Putin in an effort to persuade him that Russian interests are better protected by partnering with you in an effort to promote a stable post-Assad order than by resisting it. In the process, you will need to insist that removing Assad is a fundamental requirement for a successful transition. With reports now reaching President Putin that detail the collapsing control of the regime, he may be coming around to accepting that Assad is finished and may be willing to reconsider Russia’s role.

The Syria challenge is difficult. The very intractability of the problems is what made the original bet of avoidance of active involvement an attractive option. But developments since have made it an increasingly dangerous option for American interests; it’s time for a reassessment.

Downloads

Authors

Image Source: © Youssef Boudlal / Reuters

Hamas Embroils Egypt in Gaza

Michael Doran — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Editor's Note: Last year, Michael Doran penned a seminal essay in Foreign Affairs entitled “The Heirs of Nasser,” in which he argued that, much like Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser did in the 1950s, Iran’s strategy today would seek to turn the region’s upheaval to the disadvantage of the United States. In Egypt, Doran contended, Iran would look to incite violence against Israel through Hamas, with the aim of driving a wedge between Cairo and Washington. It was Nasser who had perfected this strategy, which, Doran explained, is known in Arabic as tawreet (“embroilment”). The recent war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas proved the prescience of Doran’s important essay. Tony Badran of Now Lebanon spoke to Doran about recent developments in the Middle East.

Tony Badran: In your Foreign Affairs article, "The Heirs of Nasser," you explained the concept of tawreet ("embroilment"). You defined tawreet as "goading [someone] to take actions against a third party that will result in political effects beneficial to you." You then argued that the conditions are once again ripe for tawreet, especially in Egypt, "and that Iran would seek to embroil Cairo.” Do you see the recent conflagration in Gaza along those lines? Was this an attempt by Hamas, and perhaps behind it, Iran, to embroil Egypt? What was the calculus?

Michael Doran: Yes, I assume that one of the motives behind Hamas' escalation was an effort to shift the posture of Egypt, of President Morsi, so that it would be more supportive of Hamas and less cooperative with the United States and Israel. Provoking conflict with Israel was a means of appealing to Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood base, and Egyptian public opinion more generally, in an effort to pull him closer to Hamas.

Was it Hamas' calculation alone, or did Tehran also push for it? No American observer has very precise knowledge regarding the extent of Tehran's influence over Hamas. My working assumption is that the Iranians give Hamas the big arrow. Qassem Soleimani says, “We think some tension on the border would be advisable,” and then Hamas is left to translate this general advice into specific policies, determining the tactics and timing on its own.

The last report out of Israel on the bus bombing in Tel Aviv (which took place on the last day of the conflict) identified Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as a co-conspirator with Hamas. If true, that is significant evidence of a more direct Iranian role in operations. PIJ is very closely aligned, almost controlled, by Iran, so it’s safe to assume that any operation conducted by PIJ was ordered or sanctioned by Tehran. The timing of that particular outrage suggests that PIJ, meaning Iran, was trying to generate an Israeli escalation in the form of a ground incursion.

Personally, I find the question, "Did Iran give the order?" very interesting. But from a US policy perspective, the answer does not make much difference. For Washington, the strategically significant fact is that Hamas and Iran are still close, as evidenced, among other things, by the steady supply of rockets from Iran to Gaza. Therefore, it makes sense to treat Hamas' escalation as a joint Iranian-Hamas effort to shift the posture of Egypt.

Read the full interview in Now Lebabon.

Authors

Michael Doran

Publication: Now Lebanon

Image Source: © Mohamad Torokman / Reuters

Syria: The Path Ahead

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 09:30:00 -0500

Event Information

November 8, 2012
9:30 AM - 11:30 AM EST

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

As the Syrian conflict approaches its twentieth month, fears are mounting that Bashar al-Assad’s regime may stay in power or that Syria will collapse into sectarian war. An enduring conflict in Syria will have far-reaching consequences for the region, could threaten key U.S. partners, and may require urgent decisions. Has the struggle for democracy in Syria been lost? Is there more the United States could do to influence events there? What steps could the international community take to prevent strife and sectarianism from spreading throughout the region?

On November 8, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings will explored these and other questions about the conflict in Syria. Panelists Mike Doran, the Roger Hertog senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, and Director of the Brookings Doha Center Salman Shaikh, appearing by video conference, discussed policy options for the U.S. and international community, with a focus on Shaikh’s recently authored paper, "Losing Syria (And How to Avoid It)." Daniel L. Byman, senior fellow and research director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, moderated the discussion.

Romney’s Strategy for Syria

Michael Doran — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

On Syria, Mitt Romney won—but only on points, certainly not with a knockout blow. Mr. Romney addressed the question in a manner that showed a superior strategic vision. He framed the civil war in Syria as an opportunity, a chance to strike at Iran. “Syria,” Mr. Romney said, “is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world,” stressing the role the regime of Bashar al-Assad plays as Iran’s base for extending its influence in the eastern Mediterranean. Toppling Mr. Assad, Mr. Romney correctly explained, would deal a blow to Hezbollah and roll back Iranian influence throughout the region.

By contrast, President Obama listed a number of actions that his administration has taken, but failed to place them in a wider context. He did not even mention Iran in the course of the discussion.

Syria represents a very rare thing in international politics: a crisis in which our strategic interests and values are in perfect alignment. At least 30,000 have died, and millions have been made refugees. As the greatest power in the Middle East, the United States is untrue to itself if it fails to take decisive action against a dictator who murders civilians with impunity.

Yet in fact, the Obama administration has been relatively passive, as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey recently complained. “Right now,” Mr. Erdogan said, “there are certain things being expected from the United States,” but America has “not yet catered to those expectations.” In the debate tonight, Mr. Romney struck a similar note, stressing that America “should be playing the leadership role.”

But Mr. Romney did not define a clear path forward. The president claimed that Romney “doesn’t have different ideas, and that’s because we’re doing exactly what we should be doing to try to promote a moderate, Syrian leadership.” There was truth in the statement.

At a moment when there is no appetite among Americans for a new foreign adventure, Mr. Romney was careful to stress that he did not support deploying the American military in Syria. He even rejected the idea of enforcing a no-fly zone. Yet an American-implemented no-fly zone is precisely what is needed to turn the Romney strategic vision into a practical reality.

Mr. Romney displayed a much better grasp of the strategic stakes in Syria, but when it came to specifics, his policy differed little from the president’s.

Authors

Michael Doran

Publication: New York Times

Five Reasons to Intervene in Syria Now

Michael Doran and Max Boot — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Whether you agree or disagree with President Obama, there is no doubt that he has formulated a coherent approach to the use of American power. The Obama Doctrine involves getting into a conflict zone and getting out fast without ground wars or extended military occupations. This approach proved its effectiveness in Libya last year.

But the president is not applying his own doctrine where it would benefit the United States the most — in Syria. One can certainly sympathize with his predicament. Syria is a mess, and it is tempting to stay out, especially in an election year. Yet inaction carries its own risks. There are five reasons to bring down President Bashar al-Assad sooner rather than later.

First, American intervention would diminish Iran’s influence in the Arab world. Iran has showered aid on Syria and even sent advisers from its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to assist Mr. Assad. Iran knows that if his regime fell, it would lose its most important base in the Arab world and a supply line to pro-Iranian Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

Second, a more muscular American policy could keep the conflict from spreading. Syria’s civil war has already exacerbated sectarian strife in Lebanon and Iraq — and the Turkish government has accused Mr. Assad of supporting Kurdish militants in order to inflame tensions between the Kurds and Turkey.

Third, by training and equipping reliable partners within Syria’s internal opposition, America could create a bulwark against extremist groups like Al Qaeda, which are present and are seeking safe havens in ungoverned corners of Syria.

Fourth, American leadership on Syria could improve relations with key allies like Turkey and Qatar. Both the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his Qatari counterpart have criticized the United States for offering only nonlethal support to the rebellion. Both favor establishing a no-fly zone and “safe zones” for civilians in Syrian territory.

Finally, American action could end a terrible human-rights disaster within Syria and stop the exodus of refugees, which is creating a burden on neighboring states. Mr. Obama pledged earlier this year to strengthen the government’s ability “to foresee, prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.” Now he has an opportunity to do so. And by putting allies in the lead, Mr. Obama could act without sliding down the slippery slope toward a ground war.

Our closest friends in the region — including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and Israel — would like to see Mr. Assad toppled as soon as possible. France and Britain could also be counted on to help, as they did in Libya. Yet none of them will move until America does.

We cannot wait for the United Nations to act; that is highly unlikely. Nor can we expect the Free Syrian Army to oust Mr. Assad on its own; it is not a cohesive organization. Instead, America must identify those elements on the ground that are the most effective, easily supplied and amenable to help.

The focus should be on Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city and commercial hub. The F.S.A. already controls much of the territory between the city and the Turkish border, only 40 miles away. With American support, Turkish troops could easily establish a corridor for humanitarian aid and military supplies. Defeating the government’s forces in Aleppo would deal a serious blow to Mr. Assad and send a powerful signal to fence-sitters that the regime was dying.

Damascus, the capital, should be the second target. But unlike Aleppo, it can’t be easily reached from a Turkish base. It could, however, be supplied from Dara’a, which is 70 miles from Damascus and less than five from the Jordanian border. It has been at the forefront of opposition to Mr. Assad. Working with Jordan, the United States could create a second corridor to Dara’a, which could serve as the southern base for the insurgency. On Wednesday, by bombing a military complex, the rebels demonstrated their ability to strike in the heart of Damascus — though they have not yet been able to do so on a sustained basis.

To prevent Mr. Assad from staging a devastating response, the American-backed alliance would have to create a countrywide no-fly zone, which would first require taking apart Syrian air defenses. Mr. Assad has been using jets and helicopters to fight the rebels; a no-fly zone would quickly ground his entire air force. The zone could then be extended to provide the kind of close air support that NATO warplanes provided to rebel fighters in Kosovo and Libya.

While our allies could take the lead in maintaining the no-fly zone, it is necessary in Syria, as in Libya, for America to take the lead in establishing it; only our Air Force and Navy have the weaponry needed to dismantle Syria’s Russian-designed air defenses with little risk.

A “lead from behind” approach can work in Syria. President Obama need only apply it.

Authors

Michael Doran
Max Boot

Publication: The New York Times

Has the Arab Spring Made the World a More Dangerous Place?

Martin S. Indyk, Daniel L. Byman, Bruce Riedel and Michael Doran — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:00:00 -0400

Brookings experts examine the implications of the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and renewed unrest in Egypt and Yemen, exploring whether the Arab Spring has ushered in a new period of Islamist ascendency and resulting anti-American sentiment. Martin Indyk pays tribute to slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, while Bruce Riedel focuses on possible al Qaeda links to the attack in Benghazi. Daniel Byman examines the demonstrations in Libya and protests in Egypt and Yemen, and Michael Doran details the emergence of a new Middle East order.

In Rememberance of Ambassador Christopher Stevens
Martin Indyk, Vice President, Foreign Policy

Chris Stevens was the ultimate foreign service officer. He reveled in his job. You only have to glance at his official photograph to get a sense of the character of the man: always cheerful, always enthusiastic, always professional. Like those more high profile ambassadors—Ryan Crocker (U.S. ambassador in Baghdad and Kabul) and Robert Ford (U.S. ambassador in Damascus)—Chris Stevens loved to be on the front lines of American diplomacy.

I remember when I was President Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs and Chris was my Iran desk officer how he came to me to ask permission to start learning Farsi. We were just in the opening stages of an initiative to normalize relations with the newly-elected reformist President Khatemi, an effort which benefited greatly from Chris’s input and management. Chris told me that he wanted to be the first person on the ground in Tehran when we established diplomatic relations.

That effort didn’t work out so well, but I was not at all surprised to hear that Chris was the first American diplomat on the ground in Tripoli when the George W. Bush administration established diplomatic relations with the Qaddafi regime. Nor was it surprising that Chris became the liaison to the Libyan opposition and moved back to Benghazi to be the lead U.S. official on the ground during the effort to overthrow Qaddafi. It was therefore only fitting that he should become the first U.S. ambassador to the free republic of Libya.

The courage and determination that he demonstrated in Libya was typical of the man. He lived on the frontlines of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East, and now he has died there on the frontlines in the pursuit of liberty – a great American has given up his life for a great American cause. May his memory be blessed.

Al Qaeda's Libya Vengeance Plot
The Daily Beast
Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

Every year al Qaeda issues a statement on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11 in which its leadership provides a “state of the jihad” review of the global war on America and its allies. True to form this year, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian amir of al Qaeda, released a message focusing on martyrdom and calling for attacks on Americans, especially in Libya. He may have hit the jackpot this time because of Islamophobia made in America.

Al Qaeda has used the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, for years to remind its supporters of the carnage it did that day and to promise more terror. This year al-Zawahiri focused his annual message on a discussion of the drone war and its impact. He eulogized a senior Libyan al Qaeda operative, Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was killed on June 4, 2012, in Pakistan.

Al-Zawahiri implicitly acknowledged the obvious: that al Qaeda’s core top leadership has been decimated by drone attacks and the SEAL mission that killed Osama bin Laden. But he also notes that the global jihadist movement has lost leaders for decades, some of whom have gone on to inspire generations of new jihadists. He specifically points to the Egyptian Sayyad Qutb, who was executed in 1966 by Gamal Abdul Nasser but whose writings inspired the development of the modern Islamic movement. And he mentioned a Palestinian, Abdallah Azzam, who encouraged Muslims around the world to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, created the first al Qaeda group with bin Laden, and was killed in a car bomb in 1989. Qutb and Azzam are the formative heroes of today’s jihadist world.

Read the full article »

Dangerous Consequences of the Arab Spring
Daniel Byman, Senior Fellow and Director of Research, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

The killing of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans in Libya is brutal proof that the turbulence that has shaken the Middle East since the Arab Spring began has dangerous consequences for the United States. Libya, of course, is a country that the United States helped liberate from Qaddafi’s tyranny, and Americans understandably expected that gratitude, not murder, would be the result. Counter-demonstrations in Tripoli suggest that many Libyans remain thankful for U.S. support and oppose the violence, but the scale of demonstrations in Libya as well as large protests in Egypt and Yemen suggest that the region remains a dangerous place for Americans and that many people in these countries have a hostile view of the United States.

The collapse of authority in many countries has led to lawlessness. Dictatorship, for all its brutality and many faults, meant that American officials were not harmed by angry mobs—unless the government wanted the mobs to do so. Dictators fell, but strong regimes have not always taken their place. Power vacuums replaced tyrannies in Iraq, Libya, and Yemen. Should Assad go, Syria too will probably have a weak government at best. As a result, even a small group of militants can wreak havoc.

Compounding this problem, the staggering unpopularity of the United States gives political actors of all persuasions an incentive to bring American into the picture when they can use it to tarnish their rivals. Often opposition groups will do so, hoping that the governments will be forced to choose between their Islamist and nationalist credentials and their relationship with Washington.

So even when this latest crisis ends, anti-U.S. demonstrations and violence are likely to recur in the years to come.

Shaping a New Middle East Order
Michael Doran, Roger Hertog Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

The old Middle Eastern order is rapidly crumbling and a new order is emerging, slowly and painfully. The key question is not whether the Arab Spring has made the world a more dangerous place but, rather, whether we are shaping the new order to the best of our ability.

In a period of revolutionary turmoil, it is easy to get distracted by the crisis of the moment. Today, our attention is focused on the assault on the American diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya. These attacks certainly deserve the attention they are receiving from the highest levels of our government.

Amid the turmoil, however, we must remind ourselves that it is Iran—not al Qaeda and certainly not Salafism writ large—that represents the paramount strategic threat to the United States. This is so, because the Islamic Republic is a state sponsor of terrorism that is developing a nuclear weapons capability. In addition, it leads an alliance system, the self-styled “Resistance Bloc,” which is dedicated to undermining the influence of the United States, its Arab allies, and Israel.

The Arab Spring has deeply complicated the American-Iranian contest. It has, among other things, empowered new actors—such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis—who pose independent challenges to the authority of the United States.

As Washington contends with these, it risks losing sight of the fact that the major allies of the United States—the Israelis and the Saudis—do not actually believe President Obama when he says that he will prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. Repairing this lack of confidence is the issue that should be at the top of the American agenda.

Authors

Syria's Coming Sectarian Crack-Up

Michael Doran — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The Obama administration has been decrying the spread of sectarianism in war-torn Syria and calling for the preservation of state institutions there. A "managed transition" is the new mantra in Washington. This isn't a policy but a prayer. Syrian state institutions are inherently sectarian, and they are crumbling before our eyes.

Syria is like Humpty Dumpty. Made up of four or five diverse regions glued together after World War I, the country is an accident of great-power politics. Like neighboring Lebanon, it has now dissolved into its constituent parts.

Read the full article at wsj.com » (subscription required)

Authors

Michael Doran

Publication: Wall Street Journal

Image Source: Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

Civil War in Syria

Michael Doran — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

There is something about Syria. It produces wishful thinking in the most surprising quarters. “We do believe,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated on July 24, “that it is not too late for the Assad regime to commence with planning for a transition to find a way that ends the violence and begin the serious discussions that have not occurred to date.” Really? Does the administration truly believe that a managed transition in Syria is possible?

Apparently it does. Five days after Hillary Clinton spoke, Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense also emphasized the need for an orderly transition of power. “The best way to preserve…stability,” he said, “is to maintain as much of the military and police as you can, along with security forces, and hope that they will transition to a democratic form of government.”

Anyone who thinks that this hope is grounded in reality should read the very clear-sighted analysis of my colleague, Ken Pollack. Syria, he explains, is in a civil war. Such conflicts have a logic all their own, one that we ignore at our peril. Ken’s analysis lays the basis for a realistic discussion of the stark choices that Washington truly faces. It is required reading.

Authors

Michael Doran

Image Source: Reuters

The Deteriorating Situation in Syria: A Discussion Among Four Brookings Middle East Experts

Michael Doran, Kenneth M. Pollack, Daniel L. Byman and Salman Shaikh — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 18:27:00 -0400

Editor's Note: Following the bombing that killed Syria’s Defense Minister and Deputy Defense Minister, British Foreign Secretary William Hague described the situation in Syria as "deteriorating rapidly," while Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel called on the United Nations to take “urgent” action and pass a new resolution on Syria. Brookings Middle East experts Michael Doran, Kenneth Pollack, Daniel Byman, and Salman Shaikh discuss the current developments in Syria and the implications for the United States.

Michael Doran: Today’s events in Syria are game changing. Bashar Assad might have to dump Damascus, because it lies outside the Alawite enclave. Take a look at this Washington Post article: http://t.co/lKqtR45p. Reacting to it, Michael Young (@BeirutCalling), tweeted the following question: “Will Assad's reserve elite units defend Damascus if all is near lost, or will they redeploy to defend Alawi heartland?” That is a great question. My theory is that, in fact, they will redeploy, and the elite security services will eventually become an Alawite militia, a Syrian form of Hezbollah, with or without Assad. At any rate, the battle for Damascus may give us some insight into future trends. All of this, of course, raises the question: what is Iran's Plan B? (The U.S. does not yet have a Plan A, so it is not worth asking what the Plan B is.)

Kenneth Pollack: I share Michael's perspective. Holding Damascus might prove too much for the rump Syrian Armed Forces--increasingly just an Alawite militia, like the Lebanese Armed Forces became during the 1970s-1980s. The obvious move for them is to hunker down in the mountains around Latakiya and defend the Alawi heartland. But, as we are seeing, they won't give up Damascus without a fight and their residual heavy weapons could make that a very long one. As I’ve said in the past, they might eventually end up as a Syrian version of the Northern Alliance, holed up in the Panjshir valley.

Daniel Byman: A question to me is whether the violence will spike dramatically -- far more than it has already. We have both desperation (defense of Damascus) and revenge (death of a very prominent figure) that could lead to the units being moved from the Golan to use their firepower and simply level rebellious neighborhoods rather than cordon them off.

My understanding is that Damascus is a very diverse city. Clearly, many regime supporters are in the capital. But there are also poorer neighborhoods, outskirts of the capital, etc. that house many Sunnis that are very hostile to the regime. And as the violence rises in the city, we will see “cleansing” of neighborhoods by partisans of each side. So there are, and may be more, areas in Damascus where the regime can (if it chooses) employ heavy force in a demonstrative way.

Salman Shaikh: I don't think the Alawi minority will stand with the regime to the end. At this stage, they cannot guarantee that there will be a "safe haven" in the mountains for the family. The environment around Latakia is increasingly hot with rebel penetration. There are also some indications of Alawis getting more and more nervous about this family's ability to save them.

Today's event means that we are on the road to the end of this regime. The one person whose name I have not seen is Mohamed Nasif - the "godfather" of the security apparatus. If he had gone, then really we would be talking about "game over". Makhlouf was probably the number two of the security apparatus.

Together, they are the "two legs" of Bashar Assad (the closest to him). I have been in Cairo with quite a few of the folks involved in the operations in Damascus, Aleppo etc. They are working feverishly (one predicted “a big event” would happen today last night over dinner). We may still be headed for a big, drawn out bloody battle (especially since the rebels are still poorly equipped; though there has been a relatively large infusion of arms courtesy of Q/KSA via Turkey over the past week), but other scenarios of a quick regime collapse cannot now be ruled out.

It is therefore imperative that the opposition accelerate its readiness of to lead the transitional phase. They would need to form an as yet elusive coordination committee, involving the main opposition blocs (including Kurds and some folks from the inside) and get that committee to deepen their understandings on arrangements for the transition.

Daniel Byman: I think Salman has the key issue exactly right. The opposition’s ability to lead is what will determine whether this is a “win” for the U.S. (and Syria and its neighbors) in the long-term. And the opposition’s coherence will make it better able to topple Assad.

Kenneth Pollack: Salman, I hope that you are correct, but fear it will prove otherwise. I am afraid I have seen exactly the kinds of cross-signals too many times in the past. On occasion, and eventually they may prove correct (Yemen), but most of the time they are ultimately trumped by the fear of retribution for a failed coup and the sense that internal dissension would ultimately lead to collapse (Lebanon, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, etc.)

Michael Doran: Another question for you: Whither Aleppo? It's a mystery to me. I have never understood why the regime had such a good grip on it, and why Damascus would explode before it did. If by the end of the week, we have major violence in both cities, then the Alawis will certainly be heading for the hills. But I would like somebody with real knowledge to explain the stability of Aleppo.

Salman Shaikh: Aleppo: Huge number of detentions (thousands); regime economic investments; MB has not wanted Aleppo to explode (their strategy is to be ready for the day after); Turks don't necessarily want Aleppo to explode either (refugees). Also protests have become large recently but are not well covered by Arab media. Regarding Tlass - this is seen as a failed Russian/Iranian play for a "constructive" scenario. They are too late.

Michael Doran: Fascinating re: Aleppo. I'm sticking by my Alawite enclave theory, however. I'm sure the average Alawites dislike Bashar and feel caught between the regime and the Sunnis, but will they really be able to resist when Bashar's loyal divisions settle down in the north with Russian and Iranian backing? It's speculation on top of speculation, I do admit. But I don't know anybody who truly has a clue about intra-Alawite politics, so my speculation is as good as any!

Authors

Image Source: Reuters

Forum Provides a Glimpse into the New Middle East

Michael Doran — Tue, 29 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400

I just came out of the first session of the US-Islamic World Forum, and I followed the Twitter feed on the event as it unfolded in real time. For anybody under 35, such a Twitter-enhanced experience is hardly worth mentioning, but for me it was something new and exotic. I came away very impressed with my colleagues and fellow attendees, Shadi Hamid and Omar Ashour, who were tweeting in English and in Arabic. In Shadi’s case, he also fired off a tweet or two about Egypt. This ability to multitask in multiple languages is awe inspiring, and I hereby confess, with no little sense of failure, that I will never reach that level of proficiency.

The session was entitled “Political Change: The Dynamics of Domestic Transformations.” Here’s a small taste. Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the Islamic Nahda party in Tunisia, depicted the rise of the Islamists as a case of self-determination, pure and simple. An agreed article of the constitution, he explained, now defines the Tunisia, officially, as Arab and Islamic. It came as a surprise, he stressed, that the Western democracies refrained from supporting the tyrant, Ben Ali, and his counterparts in other countries. In doing so, the West established the basis for a better relationship with the Muslim world.

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Cardinal Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, asked about the status of religious minorities. Sheikh Ghannouchi responded that, as we have seen in Islamic Spain and in the Prophet’s state in Medina, Islam respects Christians and Jews. It was certainly gratifying to hear the Sheikh extol the virtue of tolerance. But he spoke in generalities and did not address the embattlement of Christians in, for instance, Egypt.

Hossam Bahgat, the Founder and Director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights spoke on related issues from a different perspective. He pronounced the Muslim Brotherhood the clear winner in Egyptian politics. That victory, he said, was a reversal of the revolution that he had supported—the revolution, I assumed he meant, that sought to enshrine the principle of individual liberty.

For me, the session reinforced the sense that a window onto a more tolerant and democratic Middle East has indeed been cracked, but it was in danger of being closed. History is replete with examples of beautiful windows being slammed shut violently. As if to remind me of this fact, my Twitter feed was packed with news of the Houla massacre in Syria, where, God forbid, the window might be closing before our very eyes.

Authors

Michael Doran

The Ghost of Iran’s Future

Michael Doran — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:37:00 -0400

Follow @BICampaign2012
Editor's Note: For Campaign 2012, Suzanne Maloney wrote a policy brief proposing ideas for the next president on Iran. The following paper is a response to Maloney’s piece by Michael Doran. Shibley Telhami also prepared a response arguing that the next president must address the concerns of key regional actors as he works to contain Iran’s nuclear program.

Get audio and video from our Campaign 2012 event on Iran »

When analyzing “the centrality of Iran in the Republican narrative,” Suzanne Maloney insightfully points out that the presidential candidates are playing to their conservative base. Note, however, that they are simultaneously exploiting a key vulnerability in the Obama campaign, which is haunted by a vision of the Iranian prime minister, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, standing next to a nuclear-tipped missile draped with banners and calling for the destruction of the United States and Israel. Surrounded by stern mullahs, imposing generals, and white-coated nuclear technicians, he has a broad smile on his face. Preventing this from happening—or allowing it—is the most consequential decision that President Barack Obama faces in this election year.

For the past eight years Americans have heard from two presidents that an Iranian nuclear weapon is “unacceptable.” Yet with each passing day they are closer to witnessing a celebration in Tehran. The Iranian centrifuges have been slowed by international sanctions and covert sabotage. Nevertheless, they continue to spin, and the stockpiles of enriched uranium steadily grow. According to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Iran will have the capability to build a weapon within a year or two—even faster if its supplies of enriched uranium are augmented by a foreign source. Panetta also says of the Iranians, “If they proceed and we get intelligence that they are proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon, then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop it.”

The implications are grave. President Obama will be forced either to accept the rise of a nuclear Iran or to launch a war to stop it. This is not a decision that this president—or, for that matter, any president—wants to make. But, above all, it is not a decision that Obama wants to make before November.

If Iran succeeds in gaining the use of nuclear weapons, Obama’s foreign policy will be fundamentally undermined, making him vulnerable to Republican attacks. The president summarized his achievements in the opening moments of the State of the Union address: “For the first time in nine years,” there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.” Boiled down to its essence, these statements tell a simple story that epitomizes the administration’s policy toward the Middle East: “By accepting limited goals, dialing back American pretensions, and focusing on counterterror tactics, I won the war against al Qaeda and brought the troops home.”

The apparent success of this approach protects the president from attack when the Republicans trot out their perennial accusation that Democrats are soft on defense. In fact, Obama has already been defending himself effectively. During a White House press conference in December 2011, the president was asked about the GOP candidates’ accusation that he is an appeaser in the Middle East. “Ask Osama bin Laden and the twenty-two of top thirty al Qaeda leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement. . . . Ask them about that,” said Obama.

It was a good answer, not only because the counterterror tactics have worked, but also because they shift attention away from war. The White House and its allies have nixed proposals for ticker tape parades for the returning troops. Obama is running not on victory in either Iraq or Afghanistan but, rather, on extrication. As the nation heads into the general election, his message will go something like this: “I got us out of the mess that my predecessor created. I am putting some distance between us and the Middle East and, therefore, we are safer.”

In many ways, this is a better story to tell than victory. In a year when the perilous state of the economy will dominate the election, it sends the right message about priorities: “I’m focused on our problems here.” It also insulates the president from the growing instability in Iraq. Some of the president’s critics believe that if Iraq falls into civil war—a very real possibility—the mess can be laid at his doorstep. They are wrong. Chaos will simply reinforce the basic wisdom of the decision to cut losses and pull back. In fact, bad news from anywhere in the Middle East strengthens the president.

From anywhere, that is, but Iran. The Islamic Republic with nuclear weapons undermines Obama’s message. For more than thirty years, Tehran has been working hard to establish itself in the American mind as a wily, malevolent, and dangerous villain. Some Iran experts reject this image, dismissing it as a pernicious caricature. Regardless of the merits of their position, the image exists. Americans will regard a nuclear Iran—or even a nearly nuclear Iran—as a direct threat to their personal security (and to the security of Israel, which is a deep concern to them).

The campaign’s goal, therefore, is to keep Iran out of the headlines until after November. But this may prove impossible, because the centrifuges continue to spin and the Israelis are planning—also according to Panetta—to attack Iranian nuclear facilities in the spring of 2012.

The electoral calendar in the United States may well be influencing the Israelis’ timing. It cannot have escaped notice in Jerusalem that Israel loses leverage over the United States if Obama is reelected. After the election, the president can continue to play for time: delaying the decision to take drastic action and at the same time forcing restraint on Israel. By contrast, if the Israelis push ahead with their plan to attack in the spring, they will compel Obama to make a clear decision.

The Israeli plan gives Obama three stark options: to restrain Israel, unleash it, or launch an attack himself. These all work against the administration’s efforts to make the extrication of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan the big and politically beneficial achievement of its Middle Eastern policy. The simplest solution for the president would be to persuade the Israelis, behind the scenes, to hold off. But if he tries, word will get out. The last thing Obama needs in a closely contested election is a debate about whether he is shielding Iran and placing Israel in harm’s way. That debate will cast him as an appeaser, even if he did kill Osama bin Laden and his deputies. Were it not for Iran’s relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons, Obama would have a good story to tell on foreign policy.

Downloads

Download Paper

Authors

Michael Doran

Brookings: Experts - Michael Doran

Syria, the U.S., and Arming the Rebels: Assad’s Use of Chemical Weapons and Obama’s Red Line

Authors

The Price of America Not Leading in Addressing the Conflict in Syria

Authors

Enlisting Iran On Syria Will Backfire

Authors

Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East

Downloads

Authors

Around the Halls: Israel's Airstrikes in Syria

Authors

Brookings Experts on Netanyahu’s New Coalition Government in Israel

Authors

Is New Obama Direct Aid Policy to Syrian Rebels a ‘Nothing Burger’?

Authors

Arm the Syrian Rebels. Now.

Authors

Hagel’s Misreading of How to Treat an Ally

Authors

The Road Beyond Damascus

Downloads

Authors

Hamas Embroils Egypt in Gaza

Authors

Syria: The Path Ahead

Event Information

Audio

Transcript

Event Materials

Romney’s Strategy for Syria

Authors

Five Reasons to Intervene in Syria Now

Authors

Has the Arab Spring Made the World a More Dangerous Place?

Authors

Syria's Coming Sectarian Crack-Up

Authors

Civil War in Syria

Authors

The Deteriorating Situation in Syria: A Discussion Among Four Brookings Middle East Experts

Authors

Forum Provides a Glimpse into the New Middle East

Authors

The Ghost of Iran’s Future

Downloads

Authors