https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/impeachment-trial-the-us-political-system-is-about-to-be-tested-in-an-extraordinary-way-1.930403

The president has effectively been caught in improper and probably illegal abuses. But can the system do anything about it?

US President Donald Trump has been caught, and is trapped by the facts. The question is what can and will be done about it.

With a likely impeachment trial looming – and potentially even subsequent criminal charges of abuse of power, extortion or bribery hanging over him, Mr Trump has, unsurprisingly, lashed out. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham described the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry as ‘secret, shady, closed-door depositions” by witnesses she calls “radical, unelected bureaucrats waging war on the constitution”.

Republicans have challenged the investigations at every step and some even staged a sit-in that delayed one hearing. Several current and former administration officials have failed to testify. Thursday’s vote in the House of Representatives to set out ground rules for the inquiry, which is not required by the constitution but should, as speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “eliminate any doubt”, is an attempt to ensure the White House does not continue to obstruct the process by withholding documents or preventing witnesses from giving evidence.

The US political system is about to be tested in an extraordinary way because Mr Trump remains, for now, overwhelmingly popular with Republican voters. Moreover, according to opinions from both Democratic and Republican justice departments of the past, a sitting president is immune from criminal indictment and the only remedy is congressional impeachment and removal from office.

Thanks to a whistleblower – reportedly a long-serving CIA official attached to the White House – the narrative developing in the House of Representatives’ inquiry suggests that Mr Trump sought to leverage US foreign policy for personal gain. It is claimed that he threatened to withhold aid, formal presidential meetings and other co-operation with Ukraine to pressure newly inaugurated president Vlodymyr Zelenskiy into announcing that his country was investigating business dealings by the son of Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Mr Trump’s officials, apparently in close co-ordination with the president, even attempted to negotiate the precise wording of such an announcement. Text messages between Kurt Volker, then Mr Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, show they discussed the wording of a potential statement with Ukrainian officials. A pledge to look into corruption was apparently not sufficient. A specific mention of the company that Mr Biden’s son had worked for was required, according to testimony from administration officials.

There is no national security or foreign policy rationale for this. Indeed, it runs counter to established policies. But it serves Mr Trump’s efforts to hobble his opponents.

This potentially damning testimony has been revealed by a parade of non-partisan, highly respected and experienced public servants, including former US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and current de facto US ambassador Bill Taylor, who fell afoul of the administration by attempting to maintain the long-standing US policy of support for Ukraine and its push back against Russia.

These career diplomats have, in their leaked opening statements at the confidential hearings, painted a detailed and stark picture of efforts by the Trump administration, allegedly at the president’s direction, to seek to use US foreign policy and military assistance to advance Mr Trump’s personal political interests.

They have amplified and explicated what was evident from the White House memorandum summarising a June 25 phone call between Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskiy, in which the American president appeared to strongly pressure Ukraine’s new leader to investigate the company that employed Mr Biden’s son and to look into a long-debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election on behalf of the Democrats, contrary to the earlier accusation that Russia had meddled in the election on behalf of Mr Trump.

Indeed, one of the most striking features of this imbroglio is how upright the US career diplomats and other professional government officials seem to have been been, particularly in contrast to the machinations of Mr Trump’s political appointees and the likes of his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Mr Taylor, whose opening statement was revealed to the media, laid out a highly detailed and effectively unchallenged narrative about how the president and his officials attempted to force Ukraine to make a statement that they were investigating Hunter Biden’s former company. He also demonstrated that he was, throughout that process, opposed to it. So did Lt Col Alexander Vindman, who listened in on the call personally and provided a first-hand account of Mr Trump pressuring Mr Zelenskiy and was appalled at how the president was twisting foreign policy for personal political ends.

There will probably be more to come in further hearings. But no more is required. A level of impeachable abuse of power was already virtually established by the White House summary of the June 25 telephone conversation. Under no circumstances would it be proper for a US president to ask a foreign government to effectively intervene in forthcoming election.

At first Republicans centred their defence, however weak, on the notion that there was “no quid pro quo”. This theory did not survive Mr Taylor’s and Mr Vindman’s testimonies. Republicans are now spending most of their time attacking the process rather than challenging the facts, and variously slandering those officials who are declining to lie to Congress about the president’s conduct.

For his part, Mr Trump has been even more feral than ever, including calling Mr Taylor – who is still in effect his ambassador – a “never Trumper”, adding that all “never Trumper Republicans” were “human scum” – undoubtedly the first time a US president has characterized one of his senior officials in such terms.

Impeachment was always looming for a president with no political background who, in his business career, typically played fast and loose with the rules at every stage. And perhaps once Democrats regained control of the House and its investigatory authority, it was bound to come to this. It is extremely difficult to imagine what might mitigate the severity of such allegations or create a sufficient counter-narrative.

While an impeachment trial seems almost inevitable, the question is whether enough Republicans in the Senate, who might not respect but certainly fear Mr Trump, would vote to remove him from office.

Twenty Republicans are needed to do so. If the vote were held today, the answer would be no. But the trajectory looks terrible for the president.

In recent weeks, a two-thirds Senate conviction vote has gone from being impossible to implausible and now merely unlikely. Public opinion, too, is consistently shifting toward broader support for the impeachment inquiry. Televised hearings, planned for the near future, could well create a snowball of support for the removal of Mr Trump.

What more pressure might it take to shift a Senate vote from unlikely to entirely possible, and then from entirely possible to likely? We might well soon find out.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-23/why-the-protests-in-lebanon-and-iraq-are-doomed-to-fail

Sectarian political structures will undermine the secular demands raised in mass demonstrations.

Lebanon and Iraq are the Arab countries most disfigured by highly sectarian politics, and not coincidentally, dominated by Iran. So it is reassuring, even inspiring, that the mass protests rocking both countries are entirely secular in character.

Alas, they are probably doomed to fail. The protesters, lacking both organization and a programmatic agenda, have little chance of altering the political structures in both countries, which are entirely sectarian. To protect Iran’s influence, its proxies in both countries are reacting with threats and violence. In the recent history of rebellions in the neighborhood are any guide, the sectarian establishment will ride out the demonstrations, and hijack any concessions the protesters secure from the power-centers in Beirut and Baghdad.

Structural change needs a broad-based, organized and focused political movement that pursues not just better living standards but inclusive and tolerant national unity, as opposed to communal and transnational identities that outsiders easily exploit. It needs an identifiable and accountable political leadership that represents its base, negotiates with other groups and can engage in electoral politics. This is not what is happening in Lebanon and Iraq.

In Lebanon, the protesters have come from every religious community and walk of life, voicing unanimous rage against years of mismanagement, the lack of basic services and a looming economic catastrophe. They have aimed their wrath at their own confessional leaders, with Shiites denouncing Hezbollah, Christians railing against President Michel Aoun, and Sunnis blaming Prime Minister Saad Hariri for the sorry mess.

In Iraq, the protests were largely restricted to Shiite-majority cities like Baghdad and Basra. They have not spread to the Sunni-majority areas in the west, or to the Kurdish provinces in the north, both of which have different priorities. The Sunnis are still recovering from the depredations of the Islamic State, and the Kurds are preoccupied with building their own quasi-independent enclave.

But where the Shiite-led Iraqi government rules most directly, it now faces the anger of the majority sect, especially from unemployed youths. Shiites have not only condemned their political leadership, they have specifically linked their grievances—rampant corruption, poor services, unemployment—to Iranian meddling.

The reaction of Tehran’s local clients has been predictable. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has issued dire threats, sought to cow politicians and deployed mobs of counter-demonstrators to intimidate the protesters. To their credit, the Lebanese army has beaten back the motorcycle-riding thugs—for now. In Iraq, the reaction has been far more violent. Over 150 protesters have been killed, many by snipers; even the government admits that its security forces and pro-Iranian militias used excessive force.

Iraq remains tense, even though the protests have died down somewhat. In Lebanon, the demonstrations continue unabated.

But the spontaneity and momentum of these uprisings protests cannot mask their basic weakness: the protesters have no clear political goals, only socioeconomic demands. Most likely, they will eventually tire and be placated by promises of reform—of the kind announced by Hariri’s government—that will either go entirely unfulfilled, or be coopted by the usual process of patronage and corruption by existing elites.

That’s exactly what happened in the countries that experienced the Arab Spring protests. With the exception of Tunisia, they all failed to produce the democratic reforms demanded. Instead, they degenerated into tussles of power between the existing elites and Muslim Brotherhood parties. Eventually, the Islamists proved too unpopular to defeat what amounted to the old regimes posing in new garb.

That same dynamic is likely to thwart the aspirations of the Lebanese and Iraqi protesters. Because their protests are not an organized revolution, but rather a popular rebellion, their secular sentiments, no matter how widespread, are unlikely to prevail over entrenched sectarian power structures.

In both countries, sectarianism is hardwired into the underlying political structures—and in Lebanon, into the constitutional order. Lebanese politics are almost entirely confessional, with top jobs such as the presidency, premiership, and military and central-bank leadership reserved for particular sects, and almost all parliamentary seats allocated on ethnic or religious lines. In Iraq, an ethno-sectarian quota system similarly reserves key jobs for Shiites, Sunnis, Turkmen and Kurds respectively, and an informal communal patronage system takes care of the rest.

The protesters may be unhappy with this state of affairs, but they have not defined what they would like to see in its stead, much less demonstrated the ability to force a change.

In Lebanon, no one has envisioned a practical alternative to the prevailing confessional system, so the most that will be accomplished politically is a warning to Hezbollah of its growing unpopularity. Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s leader, must know now that he can no longer escape blame for the failure of the state. In Iraq, Shiite sectarian leaders are on notice that they must perform better. But there’s no real pressure on them to be more inclusive.

Some concessions on socioeconomic issues are likely—such as telecommunication privatization and tax reform in Lebanon, and jobs programs and unemployment stipends in Iraq. But eventually any benefits accruing from reforms will almost certainly be folded into the existing systems of patronage controlled by the corrupt, self-serving and sectarian powers.

Because there is no other system in these societies, the sectarian blob will eventually swallow everything it encounters.

And as long as Iran dominates Lebanon and Iraq, its proxies will vigorously—and if need be, violently—defend sectarian identity politics, ensuring that communal disharmony trumps the impulse for national unity among the Lebanese and Iraqi peoples.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/russia-s-resurgence-in-the-middle-east-has-been-inversely-proportional-to-a-us-decline-1.926636

After the 1973 war Washington sidelined Moscow, but now Russia has developed the regional centrality to balance and mediate.

The resurgence of Russian influence in the Middle East in recent years was highlighted by president Vladimir Putin’s visits last week to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Moscow and Riyadh are at a fairly early stage of building a new relationship. But the UAE-Russia connection is developing into a mature and strikingly extensive partnership.

And it is not just in the Gulf that Russia is extending its regional clout. Along with its strong alliance with Iran, Moscow is the key backer of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. Russia also enjoys much closer ties to Israel than it ever has during any previous era, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting Moscow more than Washington these days. Russia also has strained but important relations with Turkey, despite continued tensions over Syria. In short, everyone in the Middle East wants to talk to Moscow, a sharp contrast to just a few years ago.

For decades, Washington was the decisive outside power in the Middle East, holding sway over all parties and often serving the kind of balancing and mediating role that many now look to from Moscow.

It is a stunning reversal of the ascendancy Washington secured at Moscow’s expense in 1973, through the outcome and immediate aftermath of the Arab-Israeli war. That was arguably the deftest manoeuvre during Henry Kissinger’s stewardship of US foreign policy and it had massive ramifications for decades that are only now fading into history.

By closely managing Washington’s handling of the crisis, Mr Kissinger and his diplomats achieved three key goals.

Firstly, as Mr Kissinger wanted, Israel prevailed but emerged chastened, with a new sense of vulnerability and dependence on Washington. Secondly, Arab states did not win yet felt vindicated, especially Egypt, whose army performed far better at the outset of the war than expected.

This made a deal possible on both sides. Israel saw the need for territorial compromise. And Egypt had to accept that recovering territory lost in 1967 required an agreement, yet it experienced a restoration of national morale sufficient to allow concessions to Israel. The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was thereby conceived in the womb of time.

But Mr Kissinger’s third and most important achievement was manoeuvring during and immediately after the fighting to ensure that Washington and not Moscow played the key role at every stage. As the dust settled, all parties – with the exception of Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (both of which eventually came round) – determined to deal with and through the US, not Russia.

From then on, Russia’s influence steadily dwindled in the Middle East – until recently, that is.

Moscow’s resurgence in recent years has been inversely proportional to a US decline. It is linked not to military or economic power but to will and engagement. In several key ways, Moscow also benefits from merely not being Washington.

The story of declining confidence in the US by regional actors and the aversion to Middle East engagement by much of the US public and many politicians is a familiar tale.

It largely begins with the failure in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000. The 2003 Iraq invasion and the myriad missteps of the Barack Obama administration led to a conscious sense of a broad US drawdown with strong public backing.

Now US President Donald Trump has added caprice and unpredictability to the mix. His betrayal of the Syrian Democratic Forces has firmly cemented the impression that the US is an unreliable partner.

The resurgence of isolationist sentiments on both the political right and left in the US makes a dramatic reversal of this impression hard to imagine. Russia, by contrast, appears steadfast, loyal and tough in defence of its friends.

On paper, however, there is no parity between the two powers. The US has at least 50,000 troops and significantly more weapons, intelligence, infrastructure and other assets in the region than Russia.

The situation is even more imbalanced when it comes to trade. Russia’s main significance for many Middle Eastern countries centres on oil and energy pricing and production. The US, by contrast, is a major power in almost all sectors.

Russia is often used as a foil to pressure the US into co-operating, as when some countries have threatened to buy its S-400 anti-missile system, when what they really want is an American system that Washington is withholding.

Yet Moscow has regained the will to engage and influence the Middle East, just as Washington has lost it. Moscow might be a shadow of Washington but, as the thinking now goes, it at least fights what it wants.

In the diplomatic realm, Moscow now clearly wields superior effectiveness, having developed contacts with all parties and an ability to mediate, balance and help shape, rather than trying in vain to impose outcomes. Predictability and reliability, it emerges, are invaluable assets.

By pursuing limited goals with limited means and its interests with determination, Russia has returned to a major – and sometimes key – role in the Middle East. The US, by contrast, often lacks a consensus about what its aims and interests are, let alone how best to secure them.
From now on, though, Mr Putin might well begin to discover that some necessary tasks in the Middle East cannot be accomplished with limited means. Defeating with the disparate, fragmented Syrian opposition was not a major challenge. Other military and diplomatic aims won’t be the same.

As Russia re-emerges as a Middle East power in its own right, it might find itself hard pressed to deliver what many of its new friends are hoping for.

https://www.thenational.ae/uae/comment/donald-trump-has-handed-his-enemies-their-biggest-strategic-win-1.923495

The US president’s indifference is massively emboldening Iran and extremist groups such as ISIS.

We’ve seen this show before. It doesn’t end well. In fact, it doesn’t really end at all.

If US President Donald Trump hopes his decision to move US troops almost entirely out of Syria and allow Turkey to attack pro-US Kurdish forces will extricate the US from Syria, he is going to be disappointed.

In 2011, then president Barack Obama withdrew US troops from western Iraq, following the military surge that crushed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM). By 2014, the terrorist group had morphed into ISIS and created the “caliphate” that forced the US intervention Mr Trump is now vowing to end.

The US president, a former reality TV producer and star, does not think in policy terms. He is fixated on reality as refracted through television news and seems to care only about how his supporters will react to the 8-12 hour news cycle.

But when the dust settles, Washington is going to have to deal with the real world on a policy basis.

While decrying “endless wars”, Mr Trump has repeatedly identified two imperative US interests in the region: combating Iran’s expanding hegemony and defeating terrorist organisations like Al Qaeda and ISIS.

What he doesn’t seem to grasp is that the US presence in Syria – amounting to about 1,000 troops – is crucial to both of those agendas.

Turkey kept threatening to attack Washington’s Kurdish allies but would never have done so without Mr Trump’s acquiescence. It was bluffing but Mr Trump again proved an easy mark. Betrayed by the US, the Kurds have reluctantly struck a deal with the Assad regime in return for protection. Yesterday, Syrian troops were moving towards the Turkish border in what could become a bloodbath for civilians, especially those opposed to the regime.

Now that a massive Turkish attack against the Kurds is under way and the Syrian regime is on a collision course with Turkish-backed troops, the worst actors in the Middle East will directly and immediately benefit, starting with ISIS.

Tens of thousands of captured terrorists and their relatives are being guarded by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, who were the foot soldiers in the US-led campaign to crush ISIS’s so-called caliphate.

These dangerous extremists are already escaping and conducting terrorist attacks, primarily against their Kurdish former captors. As Turkey’s attack expands, the SDF cannot defend themselves and their villages while continuing to guard these prisoners.

On Saturday, a senior SDF commander said the coalition forces would be redeploying troops to defend against the Turkish attack and could no longer prioritise guarding ISIS prisoners. That was followed on Sunday by at least 750 ISIS sympathisers escaping a camp in north-east Syria. Many more of the tens of thousands of ISIS prisoners and their families currently being held are likely to escape, be released in desperation or be summarily executed.

Moreover, the sectarian, ethnic and communal violence being unleashed by Turkey in northern Syria will destabilise the area for many years to come. It has already led to a resurgence of violence by ISIS, which could not have asked for a better scenario to revive its fortunes.

As Mr Trump withdrew US troops to make way for the Turkish assault, there was a near-unanimous outcry in Washington and worldwide. Given that opposition, including from many of his own key Republican supporters, he might, for the third time, be forced to abandon efforts to pull all American troops out of Syria completely. For now, the position of the US administration is that all troops will be withdrawn, except for those in Al Tanf.

Mr Trump’s indifference, or even hostility, to the US mission in Syria is massively emboldening Iran in its strategically crucial quest to create a secure military corridor linking Iran to Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea via the Iraqi-Syrian border.

While the world’s attention has been understandably focused on the Turkish threats and subsequent invasion in Syria’s north, Iran has been intensifying its grip on strategic areas to the south, near key border crossings that it already controls on the Iraqi side.

It is constructing two new major military facilities in Mayadin and Abukamal. The goal is to control the existing road networks from Abukamal to the T2 oil pumping facility in Deir Ezzor near Mayadin, on to the T4 station and airbase in Tiyas, east of Homs, and then south to the Lebanese border and the Hezbollah-dominated Bekaa Valley.

Iran’s considerable and highly alarming progress in securing its control over these strategically vital routes was signalled by the re-opening, after more than five years, of the crossing between Al Qaim in Iraq and Abukamal in Syria. Pro-Iran Iraqi militias are now dominant on both sides.

The Al Tanf crossing and highway is even more important and only the US forces stationed there currently prevent Iran from doing the same there.

Mr Trump does not seem to grasp that removing the modest contingent of US forces from Syria would create ideal conditions for the resurgence of ISIS and for Iran to quietly consolidate its “land bridge” to Lebanon and the Mediterranean. Both scenarios are already happening.

By facilitating this attack on pro-US Kurdish-led forces, who lost up to 11,000 fighters in the battle against ISIS, and worse, by withdrawing US forces from Syria entirely, the American president is handing his two stated enemies the biggest strategic wins they have had in many years.

If the past is prologue, then the consequences of this fiasco are easily predictable.

The big winners will be ISIS and Iran. US forces might even have to return to the areas they are now leaving.

The world is being shaped by Mr Trump’s new reality show. Brace yourself for a rerun of a tragic and terrible episode. We have seen it several times before.

https://agsiw.org/gulf-arab-states-should-seize-opportunity-presented-by-iraqi-protests/

Iraqi social and economic grievances open possibilities for positive Gulf Arab engagement and investment.

Since the beginning of October, Iraq has been rocked by widespread protests and disturbances and an unprecedented violent crackdown from authorities. The uprising has been dominated by angry, alienated youths and has been largely confined to Shia-majority areas, including the capital Baghdad and other major cities such as Basra. As Iraq struggles to restore order and address the grievances that have fueled the demonstrations, all major internal and external players, including Iraq’s Gulf Arab neighbors, will be trying to make sense of the sudden conflagration and determine how to maneuver within the new environment to advance their interests.

This is complicated by the apparent spontaneity of the protests, which do not appear to have been organized by any specific political movement or guided by any major domestic or international political actor. The general grievances are easily understood. Iraq has a huge and growing youth population and high rates of unemployment along with inadequate education, health care, and other social services. Most expect to get a job in the corrupt state sector, but the applicants far outstrip the supply of new positions, many of which are doled out based on relationships, not qualifications. The country remains a very fragile state, as the government struggles to perform the most basic functions.

Youth without jobs, prospects, or hope for the future apparently ran out of patience with the authorities. The lack of basic services, including electricity and water, fueled large similar protests in Basra in the summer of 2018. In some ways the recent demonstrations appear to be an extension and amplification of those protests, but on a much broader set of themes and spread throughout much more of the country. However, these protests were very much an Iraqi Shia phenomenon. Similar protests did not erupt in the Sunni-majority areas in western Iraq, which are still struggling to recover from the era of rule by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and in many cases remain under a kind of military occupation by government or Popular Mobilization Forces troops. The population in the Kurdish northern areas have essentially a different society, economy, and government than the rest of Iraq and they also have not participated in the current unrest.

While it is hard to read a coherent and united political intention, if any, on the part of the protesters, two major targets are clear. This uprising has been aimed at the Shia political leadership in the country. The government, led by Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi since October 2018, immediately came under enormous pressure from his own largely Shia constituency to more effectively combat corruption and deliver services to the public. But there was also a clear undercurrent of anger against pro-Iranian forces that tend to dominate much of political, social, and religious life of Iraqi Shias in the post-Saddam Hussein era and are often connected to the local militias that run day-to-day affairs in many neighborhoods and villages. Protesters have expressed anger against the corruption of these groups, which often shake down businesses, logistics shipments, and even average travelers. While the protesters have not explicitly called out Iranian interference, they have attacked the local militias which act to help Iran implement its strategic objectives across the country in addition to their profound dissatisfaction with the government and its failings.

What’s most extraordinary is the violence and intensity of the crackdown against the disturbances. More than 100 people have reportedly been killed, although the actual figure may be higher, and thousands have been injured in efforts by the authorities to suppress the protests. Authorities also shut down the Internet in much of the country for several days, instituted wide-ranging curfews, and disrupted apps such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram, among others. On October 7, the Iraqi military admitted that security forces had used “excessive force” against the demonstrators. Nonetheless, the government – and, according to many accounts, also pro-Iranian Shia militias, some of which now have quasi-official status and are being transitioned into the national security forces in a manner that is still being contested and negotiated – responded with an unusual degree of alarm, ruthlessness, and determination.

Even though some of the public anger appears to have been directed against them, pro-Iranian militias and political forces have been trying to leverage the disturbances to their benefit. They were never fully comfortable with the leadership of Abdul Mahdi, a compromise prime minister after an indecisive election, who they feel is insufficiently supportive of their more sectarian and often pro-Iranian agenda. Indeed, Abdul Mahdi has maintained good relations with the United States and Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and appears to be trying to steer Iraq toward a more neutral path.

Abdul Mahdi has been seeking to incorporate the Popular Mobilization Forces into state structures to prevent them from maintaining independent decision-making authority and turning, in effect, into an Iraqi version of Hezbollah. The Popular Mobilization Forces, particularly those who have received Iranian support and their sectarian political allies, would prefer to see someone else, such as former Transportation Minister and militia commander Hadi al-Amiri, as prime minister to secure their interests. These interests include protecting the independence of the groups from the authority of the national government even as they become quasi-official or official organs of the state.

This is all happening against the backdrop of the U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions against Iran and Tehran’s counteroffensive of “maximum resistance,” including military provocations in the Gulf region, most dramatically the September 14 attacks on Saudi oil facilities. Under a generalized campaign of pressure, Iran’s regional influence and proxies, especially quasi-state armed militia groups like the Popular Mobilization Forces, are among its main assets. The maximum pressure campaign has also forced Iran to reduce its financial support to proxies in Iraq, causing them to expand extortion and other criminal activities to continue to fund their operations. The strong influence Tehran has developed in much of Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein is critical to Iran’s regional clout, especially its access to and presence in Syria. Anything that threatens Iran’s position in Iraq under the current circumstances qualifies as a nightmare from Tehran’s perspective.

So, for Iran and its Iraqi Shia allies, these disturbances pose a challenge, particularly insofar as they point to Iraqi Shia public opinion growing ever more concerned about the militias’ mafia-like tactics and skeptical of their loyalty to Iraq. This may account for much of the brutality of the response to the protests. Yet it is also an opportunity for sectarian Shia to push back against a government that is insufficiently sympathetic to their communal interests and attempt to either press it to be more cooperative or replace it with another government that will be more closely aligned with the sectarian Shia parties. Thus far, the government has responded only with a promise of more jobs, some stipends, and a reshuffle on the margins of the cabinet.

This pressure on Abdul Mahdi is alarming from an Arab and U.S. point of view, since these powers are unlikely to have a more receptive prime minister emerge from the current Iraqi political milieu. However, the evident growth of anti-militia sentiment among Iraqi Shias, especially the youth, and the fact that the protests are aimed primarily at the leadership of Shia-majority Iraq presents a potential significant opportunity to promote independent Iraqi nationalism and an Iraqi Shia ethos that emphasizes Iraq’s historical role as the center of Shia Islam, its regional role, and its Arab character. The need and opportunity to gain more of a foothold for Gulf Arab countries in Iraq and develop a more positive relationship with the Iraqi government has been evident since the resignation of the sectarian Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in 2014. Yet Gulf Arab efforts have been fitful and insufficient, despite an ongoing opportunity for progress.

In recent days Iraq appears to be somewhat calmer, although the potential for more large protests is evident. What is also clear is that any party that is associated with the grim conditions that have given rise to the protests is not likely to benefit from the discontent. Since the grievances and demands of the protesters are largely related to economic injustice, lack of opportunities, corruption, government dysfunction, and lack of social services, any party that can demonstrate an ability to address these problems will likely benefit. Gulf Arab countries could profit from the conditions created by these disturbances, especially in Iraq’s mostly Shia south, by demonstrating their ability to help create economic opportunities, provide jobs, and foster hope, particularly among unemployed youth. Simply providing alternatives to the Iranian imports that dominate southern Iraqi markets could be seen as positive.

This is an ideal potential opening for projecting soft power, largely by financial means that are available to many Gulf Arab countries. In addition, there is an opportunity to promote greater trade and economic infrastructure between Iraq and Jordan, which was once Iraq’s largest regional trading partner (as opposed to Iran under current circumstances). A full reopening of the Amman to Baghdad highway, and the potential Basra-Aqaba oil pipeline, for example, would help to bind Iraq much more closely economically to the Arab world and deliver it much more economic independence from Tehran. It could also provide much-needed help to Jordan, which is struggling economically and also needs urgent attention.

Whether or not the protests flare up again, the underlying political, social, and economic realities they have exposed will remain. There is a significant opportunity here for Gulf Arab countries, and the United States, to encourage Iraqi Shias and the Iraqi government to view Iraq’s future through a broad regional prism, not primarily in close collaboration with Iran. The Iraqi protesters, and probably most Iraqis in general, are fed up with economic, social, and political dysfunction and seek answers and opportunities. Any outside party that can help provide those answers and opportunities through positive inducements such as investments and targeted economic support should be able to benefit politically, as well as economically. That plays to the strengths of the Gulf Arab countries. It is an opportunity they would be well advised not to squander.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-10/trump-reinforces-middle-easterners-view-of-u-s-as-unreliable?srnd=opinion

If the U.S. can abandon the Kurds to a Turkish attack, will it also abandon other allies in the region?

President Donald Trump’s decision to move American troops out of Syria to make way for a Turkish attack on pro-U.S. Kurdish forces cements America’s growing reputation in the Middle East for being unreliable, unpredictable and, increasingly, even weak.

Unreliability was the first thing noticed — by America’s biggest critics, such as Iran; its main competitors, including Russia; and even its allies, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. The impression began to form during President Barack Obama’s first term, when Washington, after a period of dithering, abandoned Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, allowing his ouster after huge street protests. Was this America’s way of showing solidarity with friends?

Such questions grew into serious doubts when Obama, with five other international powers, signed a nuclear agreement with Iran. Israel expressed alarm, and more quietly so did Gulf Arab countries. All feared it might even be the start of a broader U.S.-Iranian rapprochement that would replace their longstanding U.S. partnerships.

It didn’t help when Obama called Gulf Arab countries “free riders,” and suggested they “share” the Middle East with Iran. To Saudis, especially, who had sided with the U.S. for decades, that felt like a betrayal.

After the 2016 U.S. election, America’s Middle Eastern partners hoped President Donald Trump would improve matters. Instead, he kept up the unreliability, and added a heavy measure of unpredictability.

Trump famously finds it advantageous to keep friends and foes alike off balance. Such unpredictability may be useful in the real estate business. It may also work in international relations for small, disruptive states like Iran and North Korea that rely on chaos and destabilization to further their agendas. But for a global power looking to preserve stability in a volatile region like the Persian Gulf, unpredictability is self-defeating.

Even the Israelis, who benefited from Trump’s unpredictability when he recognized their annexations of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, have been unnerved by his sudden reversals on North Korea and other global challenges. As they watch him abandon the Syrian Kurds to Turkey, some are wondering if they might be next.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries have concluded that Trump sees them mainly as arms purchasers. So they have little difficulty imagining him making friends with Iranian leaders, and reaching for photo-ops and small diplomatic victories largely at their expense.

Added to all this is the growing perception in the Middle East that the U.S. is losing, or has lost, the will to fight. While no one doubts America’s military and economic power, it has also, in the aftermath of disastrous campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, demonstrated serious conflict fatigue. That became evident when President Obama declined to enforce his own “red line” against the use of chemical weapons in Syria. And it appeared twice more recently when Trump essentially ignored Iran’s downing of an American drone and audacious attacks on Saudi oil facilities.

But no action, or non-action, has been as stark as this week’s abandonment of the Kurds, who have been the key allies in the American battle against Islamic State terrorists. Now it appears to friend and foe alike that the U.S. has fundamentally lost its nerve in the Middle East. It will fight only in self-defense, and only as a last resort.

All this calls to mind the 1956 Suez fiasco, which resulted in a collapse of British and French authority in the Middle East that presaged a broader loss of global clout for those declining European powers. At the time, they were being superseded by the rise of American and Soviet dominance.

The U.S., in contrast, has undermined its own authority with no help from any other country or competitor. This only reinforces its image as a global power that, especially in the Middle East, is growing ever more unreliable, unpredictable and weak.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/as-allegations-mount-up-where-are-the-checks-and-balances-on-those-in-power-1.920658


If there is no pushback against Trump’s behaviour, there will be a new set of norms and expectations.

Americans face an historic test of their vaunted political freedoms. At stake are the fundamental norms of democratic governance, and the outcome is greatly in doubt.

The crisis is both complex and extremely simple. Last week, a dizzying torrent of revelations emerged at an alarming frequency.

But underneath the whirlwind of details, Mr Trump stands accused of leveraging the vast power of his office and the weight of US foreign policy for personal political gain, especially seeking foreign investigations against a likely 2020 election opponent; and of soliciting interference in domestic politics over several months from Ukraine by effectively making military aid and potential presidential-level meetings for that beleaguered country conditional upon investigations into former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who once served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

All this is thoroughly documented in a White House memo, a whistleblower complaint and text messages between senior administration officials. At least one additional whistleblower has reportedly stepped forward and “multiple” others might apparently follow.

The CIA’s head lawyer Courtney Simmons Elwood even made a criminal referral to the Justice Department as far back as August 14 – a complaint that appears to have been summarily dismissed – about Mr Trump’s conduct, based on the whistleblower’s account.

It is not a question of whether Mr Trump did this or even if he broke the law. The American system must instead determine if he abused the powers of his office and violated standards of acceptable presidential conduct.

Meanwhile, not only is there no evidence against the Bidens, there isn’t even a concrete accusation. Mr Trump and his allies speak vaguely about “corruption” but they offer no specific allegations. This is nasty innuendo, apparently unsupported by any evidence.

Mr Trump and his aides are also fixated on two preposterous conspiracy theories. The first holds that Ukraine rather than Russia intervened in the 2016 US election. The second imagines that the Russia investigation was a set-up by anti-Trump “deep state” US officials working with British, Australian and possibly Italian agents, who supposedly lured Mr Trump’s convicted former aide George Papadopoulos into a trap laid by Maltese-born academic Joseph Mifsud, who has denied the accusation.

Chasing after such follies is now a key priority of US foreign policy.

Additionally, Mr Trump last week publicly urged China to investigate the Bidens. He also allegedly made similar requests of Britain, Australia and Italy on these matters. So after years of insisting that there was “no collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016, Mr Trump is openly attempting collusion with numerous countries for 2020. Now, as then, his defenders claim he is just joking but that is absurd.

An enraged Mr Trump has described the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry as a “coup”, branded his critics “traitors” and even warned of “civil war” if he is constitutionally and lawfully removed from office.

He insists he cannot be criminally investigated by either Congress or authorities in various US states such as New York, where prosecutors are trying to examine his taxes, effectively placing himself above the law. And he has reportedly extended that supposed impunity to subordinates by offering them pardons if they break the law at his behest, such as by seizing land to build his border wall with Mexico or shooting at migrants’ legs, according to the New York Times.

The Trump presidency has gone through three phases in its three years.

The first was marked by uncertainty and incompetence. The second mainly reflected traditional Republican priorities like tax cuts and confirming conservative judges.

But in the third year, Mr Trump is unrestrained, newly confident and increasingly aggressive and transgressive. He is effectively daring everyone: “Stop me if you can.”

While public support for impeachment has significantly increased, his base remains mostly loyal and unmoved, with only three Senate Republicans so far expressing concern about the president’s actions. It is not clear what could possibly break that spell.

As Mr Trump notes, at present House Democrats can impeach him but have no path for getting the Republican-controlled Senate to convict and remove him from office. And, while he looks increasingly vulnerable in next year’s election, there’s no guarantee he will lose.

Yet if this unprecedented behaviour is not punished and Mr Trump remains unchecked and unrebuked, any abuses of power will intensify, probably exponentially. Far worse, a new set of norms, expectations and precedents will have been established and effectively rewarded.

Misusing state authority to smear opponents, inviting foreign governments to interfere in US politics, blatantly gaming the system and severely eroding checks on presidential power will be hard to reverse. If there is no effective pushback, this is how future presidents will behave – simply because they can.

The Republican Party has completely succumbed, with next year’s nominating convention carefully rigged to eliminate any hint of dissent. But broader American institutions are now buckling under the pressure.

What looms is not the victory of a noxious ideology. That would be bad enough.

This is far more tragic. The venerable foundations of the American republic are being shaken to their very core by nothing more than the squalid, petty and personal pursuit of power.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-04/france-s-macron-has-a-way-out-of-the-u-s-iran-impasse?srnd=opinion

Macron’s four-point formula is vague and aspirational, but it is the surest way to avoid war.

The U.S. and Iran are both looking for a diplomatic off-ramp from their intensifying confrontation. France may have found a way out. President Emmanuel Macron has developed a four-point framework that looks like a plausible basis for a resumption of US-Iranian dialog.

It is clear that, without talks, the Islamic Republic will not stop with its calibrated program of military provocations, which culminated in the strikes on Saudi oil facilities on Sept 14 that temporarily halved that country’s oil production. As with previous attacks on energy shipping in the Persian Gulf, the latest strikes restate Tehran’s consistent message: If we can’t sell oil, we’ll make sure nobody can.

Generating a crisis is Iran’s chosen strategy to restart diplomacy. But Tehran doesn’t want a war, knowing it will surely lose. Trump has made it clear he doesn’t want a conflict either.

But who will blink first? For more than a year, each side was convinced it had the upper hand, overvaluing its own leverage while underestimating the endurance of the other side. Iran believed it could wait out the Trump presidency in the hope that a more conciliatory administration would follow. The American strategy, since Trump abrogated the 2015 nuclear agreement, has been to exert pressure through economic sanctions and force the Iranians to negotiate a new and better deal.

The sanctions have severely damaged the Iranian economy, but the regime in Tehran has not shown any signs of bending. Recognizing the impasse, both sides have been looking for an opportunity to resume dialogue, but neither has been willing to make opening concessions.

Enter Macron.

At the G7 meeting in Biarritz in August, the French president came close to persuading Trump to meet Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif. At the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month, he came even closer to arranging a phone call between Trump and Rouhani.

Those failures belie the real progress Macron has achieved in creating a framework that Washington and Tehran might be able to accept as a basis for resumed negotiations.

Iran would again agree never to build nuclear weapons, and forswear other forms of aggression in its neighborhood. The latter may imply restricting some aspects of its missile-development. In return, the U.S. would agree to lift all sanctions imposed since 2017, freeing Iran to once again sell its oil and spend money.

It’s not as easy as all that. Rouhani reportedly backed out of the phone call after demanding that the U.S. lift all new sanctions before any talks. Hardliners in Tehran will resist any new dialogue. Iran hawks in Washington, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, will likewise argue against any outreach until the Islamic Republic shows it is mending its behavior.

Some sweeteners will be required. As an initial inducement, France proposed giving Iran a $15 billion line of credit; Trump seems open to the idea. Can the U.S. also lift some sanctions in order to resume talks, on the understanding others will be removed only after an agreement is reached? Or would a promise to ease the pressure suffice? And what steps might Iran be willing to take on nuclear or regional issues to demonstrate its own good faith?

Once talks begin, it is not hard to see where the two sides may agree, and where the sticking points lie. In negotiations with the administration of former President Barack Obama, the Iranians had insisted on the ability to enrich uranium at low levels. Trump, too, may have to accept that some level of low and closely-monitored enrichment is unavoidable. Equally, it’s probable that Tehran would have to accept limitations on the range of its missiles, especially in terms of range.

The more difficult challenge will be getting Iran to scale back its support for terrorist groups and armed gangs in neighboring Arab countries—including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen—and to create a system of verification and enforcement of such terms. Such regional issues might only be resolvable through direct negotiations between Iran and its Arab neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia.

The biggest challenge for Washington and Riyadh right now is to prevent further Iranian attacks, given the likelihood that the next provocation might require a military response. Opening a dialog might accomplish that.

Macron’s formula is vague and aspirational, but it meets the basic demands of Washington and Tehran. Rouhani’s reluctant to deal directly with Trump could be overcome by holding new talks between Iran and all the P5+1 signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal. That would include the U.S., without giving the appearance of a climbdown by Iran.

Whatever its flaws, it’s hard to imagine a better off-ramp. Since the likely alternative is a devastating conflict nobody wants, the parties ought to take it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-02/don-t-abandon-lebanon-to-hezbollah-and-iran?srnd=opinion

Punishing the country for the sins of the Iran-backed militia would be make it an even greater threat.

Lebanon is transfixed by reports that Prime Minister Saad Hariri gave $16 million to a South African model with whom he was romantically linked. The money transfers began in 2013, when Hariri was not in office, and no laws appear to have been broken. For some, it is a welcome diversion from a deepening economic crisis, for others, a reminder of the yawning gap between Lebanese, who are struggling with a serious currency crunch, and their leaders.

But neither the state of the economy nor the louche behavior of prominent politicians can long distract Lebanese from their greatest fear—of their country becoming a battleground in the geopolitical contest pitting Iran against the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.

In a country scarred by too many proxy battles, there’s a persistent nightmare of being dragged into an armed conflict in which most Lebanese have no stake. Short of that, there is a real risk of being regarded as little more than a Hezbollah front state—by both sides. That would mean being treated as a kind of colony by the Islamic Republic, and being ostracized and sanctioned by much of the Arab world and the West.

The first gambit in the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran was a concentrated salvo of new sanctions against Hezbollah that intensified throughout 2017 and 2018. Marshall Billingslea, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing, led the push to isolate Hezbollah and convince Lebanese bankers and state institutions to stop doing business with the pro-Iranian group. In August, the US sanctioned the Jammal Trust Bank in August for facilitating banking for Hezbollah; the Lebanese central bank has since allowed it to be liquidated.

As Billingslea and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have acknowledged, many of the Lebanese they engaged have tried to cooperate. But Hezbollah has a wide range of options, in both the formal and informal sectors. The group also has substantial public support, especially among Shiites and Christians, which gives it an important role in parliament, and in any governing coalition.

Most important, it has a powerful, well-armed militia. Having been blooded but also honed in numerous conflicts with Israel, its military capabilities have recently been greatly refined in the Syrian war, where it is heavily engaged on the side of the Assad regime. As a result, Hezbollah’s military has evolved into, arguably the world’s most potent non-state armed force.

This makes Hezbollah an important sanctions target for the U.S.: it is no longer merely a Lebanese militia and political party but a regional factor, a transnational revolutionary vanguard that trains, supplies and directs pro-Iranian groups throughout the Arab world, from Syria to Yemen. And there is the constant threat of another war between Israel and Hezbollah, with both sides issuing dire threats.

Hezbollah’s military power and belligerent rhetoric makes it almost impossible for the other Lebanese to restrain the group. Frustrated, some in Washington and the Gulf Arab capitals are inclined to throw their hands up and simply brand all of Lebanon as a de-facto terrorist entity. That would mean defunding or sanctioning virtually anything connected to the Lebanese state.

Tony Badran and Jonathan Schanzer of the influential Foundation for the Defense of Democracies think tank recently argued it was “time acknowledge Lebanon as the Hezbollah state, and act accordingly.” The authors are openly expressing an agenda that is quietly gaining ground in the US, Israel and Gulf Arab countries in the context of the confrontation with Iran and its network of regional proxies.

But this approach would be deeply unfair. After all, the countries that are now conflating all of Lebanon with Hezbollah played important roles in enabling the militia’s rise. The 1989 Taif Agreement which ended the 15-year civil war was essentially an Iranian-Saudi accommodation brokered by the U.S. In effect, it disarmed all armed groups except Hezbollah. The 1996 Israeli–Lebanese Ceasefire Understanding, also brokered by Washington, left Hezbollah in a dominant national position. Hariri is right when he protests that it’s not his fault Hezbollah has become so powerful.

Besides, abandoning Lebanon now to Hezbollah domination would effectively cede control of the country to Iran. There’s a real risk Lebanon could return to the state of violent anarchy that characterized its civil wars, or lapse into a failed state. In any of those eventualities, it would represent a much greater threat to the region than Hezbollah does now.

It makes much more sense for the U.S. and other Arab states to redouble support for those parts of Lebanon—and in particular, civil society and political groups—that oppose Hezbollah and urgently need strengthening. Lebanon also deserves help in dealing with the 1 million Syrian refugees (compared to its native population of 4 million) it has absorbed, effectively on behalf of the rest of the world.

Lebanon is not a Hezbollah state, but treating it like one risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.