https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-19/a-compromise-prime-minister-won-t-end-lebanon-s-chaos?srnd=opinion

The Hezbollah-backed Hassan Diab is unlikely to satisfy protesters who want their political system transformed.

News that Lebanon may finally get a new prime minister, nearly two months after the last one quit, is unlikely to end demonstrations that have wracked the country for weeks. The protesters, who have remained in the streets since bringing down the previous government, have made it abundantly clear they want to see the back of the entire political elite. They will not be impressed by the nominee, former education minister Hassan Diab.

That Diab is backed by the two major Iran-backed Shiite factions, Hezbollah and Amal, will likely make him even less credible in the eyes of the protesters. Those two groups have in recent days been staging angry, raucous counter-protests, deliberately raising the specter of sectarian conflict in a country that bears the scars of previous such conflagrations.

Hezbollah, in particular, is desperate to protect the existing political order, one that maximizes its influence and minimizes its responsibility. No one stands to lose more from the sweeping reforms demanded by the protesters: a complete overhaul of the political system, undertaken by a government of unaffiliated technocrats.

This is anathema to Hezbollah and its allies, which have prospered from a political arrangement that apportions power along sectarian lines: the Maronite Christians have a lock on the presidency, the prime minister is always a Sunni, and the speaker of parliament is unfailingly Shiite. Any political reform that could change this cosy arrangement—and the rigid gerrymandering of parliament along communal lines—would threaten all sectarian parties. But Hezbollah is more likely than the others to resist such change with violence.

Hezbollah’s weapons, and its backing by Iran, allow it to blackmail the rest of the country. This sub-national and unaccountable group has its own independent foreign and defense policies. As long as that continues, the Lebanese state is fundamentally hollow and militants call the shots where and when they really want to.

Hezbollah and its allies—particularly President Michel Aoun and his much reviled son-in-law, Foreign Minister Gibran Basil—have rejected the protesters demands for a technocratic government of outsiders. In their desperation to preserve the old order, Aoun and Basin tried to persuade Hariri to stay on; he refused. They will likely throw their weight behind Diab. (The nominee doesn’t seem to have any backing from his fellow-Sunnis, which doesn’t help his credibility.)

And what if, as is likely, the new man is rejected by the protesters? It is conceivable Hezbollah will go back to the drawing board, and seek another compromise candidate who preserves the status quo.

But the portends from earlier this week are alarming. On Monday, groups of Hezbollah and Amal supporters rampaged in the streets of Beirut, attacking protesters and fighting with security forces. This continued unabated for three days. They were supposedly enraged by a video by an allegedly drunk Sunni man insulting Shiites, but this was plainly pretext; such insults are hardly uncommon, and the response was aimed directly at the protest movement that threatens Hezbollah’s interests.

The counter-protests suggest the political stalemate between the demonstrators and the most determined protectors of the sectarian order is coming to a head. Hezbollah’s message is clear: if it needs to use violence to prevent real reforms in Lebanon, it will.

For many Lebanese, this message is a frightening reminder of the 1975-1990 civil war. The non-sectarian nature of the current protests had revived the ideal of Lebanon as a modern national project that would eventually transcend communal and confessional disparities and suspicions. That vision was never fully realized, but nonetheless prevailed in the national discourse until it was crushed by the civil war and replaced with the rigid and corrupt sectarian order that the protesters are now challenging. But Hezbollah, formed after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, has no institutional memory of the pre-civil war Lebanon; it knows only the uneasy equilibrium of unstable forces that followed.

Nobody beholden to Hezbollah, as Diab will be, can be the agent of change Lebanon needs. The protesters know this, and will not stand down. Beirut must brace for more violence.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/freedom-to-criticise-israel-is-dealt-another-blow-in-the-us-1.952425

An unnerving exception to American norms and protections of free speech is being carved out to limit and punish criticism of Zionism, Israel and even the occupation that began in 1967. A new executive order signed last week by US President Donald Trump which redefines Judaism as a “race” or a “national origin” under the terms of the potent Civil Rights Act, rather than as a religion, is a turning point in efforts to use government authority to suppress criticism of Israel on university campuses.

Mr Trump’s appointment of Kenneth Marcus to head the Office of Civil Rights at the education department was bound to lead to this, given that he has a long track record as a pro-Israeli hardliner and is one of the most vociferous advocates of such suppression.

By redefining Judaism as a “national origin” in the eyes of the US government for the first time, Mr Trump is essentially handing Mr Marcus the means to crack down on criticism of Israel in universities – traditionally forums of academic freedom that might now be coerced into suppressing such speech on their campuses for fear of losing vital federal funding.

The new order also lends official US government endorsement to a fundamental, but highly debatable, assertion of Zionism: that Jews are not defined only by religion or ethnicity but as a national group.

Efforts to sanction Israel by enforcing existing university regulations forbidding investments in any country that practices apartheid, a holdover from the campaign against systematic racism in South Africa, have not stuck anywhere in the US

This claim is also at the heart of the “dual loyalty” smear that many US anti-Semites deploy against Jews, suggesting they are more faithful to Israel than their own country. Even Mr Trump has suggested as much on several occasions.

For the past decade, advocates of Israel and Palestinians in the US have attempted to weaponise institutional and national authorities against one another. In this most unequal of struggles, the Israeli side has proven much more successful yet again.

Numerous state legislatures have adopted laws that not only denounce but also sanction and punish anyone who actively supports or advocates the BDS movement, often by denying employment or contracts. Such measures invariably conflate Israel with its settlements in occupied territory.

Yet university campuses are the epicentre of this battle. Pro-Palestinian efforts in the US have largely centred around the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which encourages a boycott of Israeli products. It has generated a great deal of rhetoric and passion but little success.

Efforts to divest from Israel by enforcing existing university regulations forbidding investments in any country that practices apartheid, a holdover from the campaign against systematic racism in South Africa, have not worked anywhere. Even when student governments have endorsed this idea, university officials have refused to accept that Israel fits that definition.

Most US campaigns have sought to target Israel generally rather than the occupation and so have met with insurmountable opposition. Contrast that with potent initiatives by many European governments to oppose Israel’s illegal settlements by refusing to do business with them because they are a clear violation of Palestinian human rights under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

For their part, in addition to numerous lawsuits against the Palestinian Authority, pro-Israel groups have sought to stigmatise and even punish BDS advocacy and other criticism of Israel by asserting that it is inherently antisemitic.

The argument is in essence a dispute about Zionism, with each side accusing the other of racism by endorsing or opposing it.

BDS campaigners and many other pro-Palestinian advocates view Zionism as a political ideology or orientation, and hence just as legitimately liable to be critiqued or rejected as any other. But many supporters of Israel have increasingly adopted the view that any wholesale rejection of Zionism is not only antisemitic but a primary contemporary form of antisemitism.

They say a rejection of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state that dedicates itself exclusively for the exercise of Jewish national rights and identity – as Israel’s policies since its founding in effect have done and its recently adopted nation-state law overtly declares – is racist. And they say it denies Jews the right to national self-determination that all other people supposedly enjoy. Only Israel, they claim, is subjected to a widespread attack on its fundamental legitimacy, and they argue that can only be due to antisemitism.

Many supporters of Israel have increasingly adopted the view that any wholesale rejection of Zionism is not only antisemitic but the primary contemporary form of antisemitism

The BDS movement and many other pro-Palestinian groups often take the opposite view. They argue that support for Zionism is racist because it advocates Jewish supremacy over Palestinians. They point to the historic dispossession and exile of millions of Palestinians and the ongoing discrimination against and disenfranchisement of most Palestinians living under Israeli rule. Indeed, they claim, their support for a one-state solution in which all citizens will be treated equally is the only formula for averting racism.

This is hardly the only emotionally charged debate on US campuses but it might be the only one in which institutional and governmental power in the US is being deployed to muzzle one side.

Mr Marcus has already sought to use the power of the administration to coerce several universities into suppressing criticism of Israel, by professors and students alike. Federal funding is a powerful tool.

He and the US administration insist these efforts have nothing to do with clamping down on free speech – but of course they do. Indeed, that is their obvious intention. If one defines harsh criticism of Israel or opposition to Zionism as inherently antisemitic and attempts to punish it, a crucial channel of debate, thought and discourse is being officially and deliberately shut down.

Alarmingly, the very important and otherwise honourable movement to uphold traditional free-speech values on US campuses usually ignores this organised and official effort to police thinking on Israel and the Palestinians.

But one thing is certain: for supporters of Israel and the occupation, this effort to secure government protection from criticism is anything but a sign of strength. It is a howling cry of weakness.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-13/the-gcc-split-with-qatar-will-mend-but-slowly

It was too much to expect the feud, years in the making, to end at the Riyadh summit.

The 40th Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Riyadh this week did not, as some had hoped, bring to an end the isolation of Qatar. But it did show that relations between the parties on either side of the embargo continue to improve, suggesting that their dispute will be overcome as slowly and incrementally as it developed.

As with other recent summits, the Qatar’s ruler was invited to Riyadh; this time, there was some optimism Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani might attend, not least to reciprocate for the participation of other GCC soccer teams in the recent Gulf Cup in Doha. Instead, the emir instead sent his prime minister, Abdullah Bin Nasser Al Thani.

Was it, or was it not, a gesture of goodwill? On the one hand, it was the highest-level Qatari participation in a GCC summit since the start of the embargo. On the other, the prime minister has attended more routine Gulf Arab meetings. This perfectly sums up the state of tension between an ongoing stalemate and a slowly developing rapprochement.

First, a quick recap. In June 2017, three GCC states—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain—along with Egypt formally isolated Qatar, cutting diplomatic ties and transportation links. The embargo was more than a “boycott,” as the quartet put it, and less than a “blockade,” as Doha and its allies described it.

The goal was to force Qatar to abandon policies of support for opposition movements in other Arab countries, and its close relations with non-Arab regional powers such as Turkey and Iran. The quartet accuses Qatar of backing the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, left-wing Arab nationalists, and terrorist groups like the Taliban and Hamas. Also, Doha hosts Al Jazeera, the TV network with an editorial line that tends to favor all anti-status quo and oppositional forces in the region.

The embargo was the culmination of years of bickering, including an earlier break in relations in 2014 over much the same set of issues.

Each side hoped to force the other to capitulate by winning support from the U.S. Initially, President Donald Trump seemed to favor the quartet, while his Department of Defense was sympathetic to Qatar, and the State Department wanted to mediate between the quarreling Arabs.

After months of skillful diplomacy in Washington, and a series of agreements with the U.S., ranging from the monitoring of terrorism-financing to resolving civil-aviation disputes, Qatar was hopeful that Trump would intervene on its behalf. The quartet restricted its attentions largely to the White House while the Qataris also took their case to the broader Washington policy conversation, with considerable success.

In the end, however, both parties were disappointed: the U.S., mindful of its vital political, military, diplomatic and intelligence ties to them all, refused to take sides.

Meanwhile, Turkey and Iran came to Qatar’s aid, providing it with various forms of reassurance—ranging from new flight routes and emergency food supplies in the early days of the embargo to military displays of support. As a result, Qatar was able to weather the onslaught and find a way to live with the new normal of isolation from its immediate neighbors.

Still, the resulting stalemate has come at a cost to all the parties. If Qatar has survived, it can hardly be said to have thrived: billions of dollars were withdrawn from Qatari banks, its airline, airport and tourism were walloped, and economic growth slowed. The quartet, too, has incurred losses, particularly the UAE emirate of Dubai, which has suffered a significant blow to its brand as the regional hub of a system of global interaction: isolating a wealthy neighbor contradicts that ethos of interconnectedness.

So all the parties involved have been looking for a way out; Kuwait and Oman, caught in the GCC crossfire, have tried to mediate. The turning point may have been the severe crisis afflicting Iran, whose 1979 “Islamic” revolution was the proximate cause for the GCC’s founding. Recent protests in Iraq and Lebanon, and then in Iran itself, have challenged social and political orders designed to maximize the Islamic Republic’s regional hegemony. Tehran and its allies do not appear to have a plausible response, other than brute force and repression.

This crisis means that Iran’s regional rivals, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, no longer feel—as they have since U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003—that Iran is gaining strength at every turn, accumulating a disproportionate regional advantage.

The risks in inviting a regional rapprochement with Qatar, therefore, have decreased greatly. Add to this the fact that nothing further is to be gained from extending an isolation campaign that is yielding diminishing returns, and you understand why Riyadh, in particular, has been testing the waters for an end to the GCC dispute.

For now, the UAE remains a holdout, arguing that Doha has not adequately addressed the issues that led to its isolation. But the Emiratis have tended to follow the Saudi lead on GCC matters, and will likely do the same over Qatar.

None of this will happen in a hurry—maybe not even in time for the next GCC summit next year in Bahrain. But the dispute with Qatar grew over years and even decades, and will take time to resolve. But the fact that the Gulf Arabs are headed toward a rapprochement is cause enough for cheer

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/democrats-are-walking-into-a-trumpian-trap-by-rushing-the-impeachment-process-1.948433

Two weeks ago, I warned that the Democratic Party was making a big mistake by rushing to pass articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives and force a Senate trial of US President Donald Trump. The intervening days have greatly expanded the number of analysts agreeing that Democrats are mishandling the process of trying to hold Mr Trump accountable for allegedly trying to leverage US foreign policy to smear his political opponents.

Three major recent developments intensified these concerns.

First, important facts continue to come to light, including further evidence that the Ukrainian government was well aware of the withholding of US aid – through which Mr Trump allegedly sought to pressure Kiev to announce an investigation into unsubstantiated corruption claims against Hunter Biden, the son of his leading Democratic rival Joe Biden. There is also new evidence that Mr Trump and his associated had extensive telephone conversations most probably dedicated to this caper.

Second, Democrats have accelerated their rush towards impeachment by the House of Representatives possibly before Christmas.

By rushing, Democrats are playing into some of Donald Trump’s greatest strengths. He thrives on speed and chaos. One scandal follows so fast upon the next that no one can stay focused and it all becomes a dizzying blur.

Third, the baton has been passed from the house intelligence committee to the judiciary committee, which would adopt and forward impeachment articles to the full house.

The judiciary committee held its first hearing last week featuring four constitutional scholars. Three advocated impeachment with potent legal and analytical arguments. However, the fourth, Jonathan Turley, had warnings for both sides.

Although called by Mr Trump’s Republican allies, he did not support their main arguments. He agreed that Mr Trump might well have committed impeachable offenses, most notably during his July 25 phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, which he said was “anything but ‘perfect’,” as the president insists.

Most Republicans have dismissed the inquiry as a ridiculous waste of time. By contrast, Mr Turley argued that the Democrats can and should increase their efforts to develop the case. His legal arguments seemed weak compared to those of his colleagues. However, his political point that the general public has not been convinced and that much more testimony and documentation is required for impeachment to make sense was powerful.

His claim that by not suing for such testimony in court, Democrats are abusing their power is hugely overblown. But they are certainly abandoning the institutional imperative to re-establish the US Congress’s authority to compel testimony and obtain documents despite Mr Trump’s unprecedented stonewalling.

The White House has refused all congressional requests for documents and ordered all executive branch employees not to testify, although several have anyway.

But crucial testimony is required from acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and his aide Robert Blair, energy secretary Rick Perry and his former chief of staff Brian McCormack, secretary of state Mike Pompeo and his counsellor Ulrich Brechbuhl, defense secretary Mark Esper, national security council lawyer John Eisenberg and his deputy Michael Ellis, various officials from the office of management and budget, and, most notably, former national security adviser John Bolton (who has suggested he is aware of lots of undiscovered information about the Ukraine scandal).

Democrats have not subpoenaed most of these officials for fear of endless litigation, though there are potential ways around that pitfall.

It is also essential that they confront and defeat a series of interconnected claims being made by the White House that essentially place the president above the law. The administration claims the president not only cannot be charged with a crime but cannot even be investigated under any circumstance by any law enforcement authorities, state or federal. It also claims that only the executive, not Congress, can investigate any violations of law. And, finally, it claims the president has “absolute immunity” from congressional investigation and testimony applicable to all current and former employees and to all documents.

If Congress and the courts fail to quash such vast claims of executive impunity, the US will effectively have temporary, elected monarchs and impeachment will be meaningless because establishing the facts will be practically impossible.

The Democrats’ haste is especially troubling because it is so evidently political: a prolonged impeachment process does not fit their partisan schedule regarding the primary and general elections in 2020. They do not want their candidates mired in impeachment disputes while they are trying to secure the nomination and win back the White House. But this greatly bolsters the otherwise weak Republican case that this impeachment is essentially a political exercise. Legally, morally and constitutionally, it is not. Democrats have a devastating case against Mr Trump. However, tactically and strategically, it increasingly appears political.

Without the upcoming elections, Democrats would surely be hunkering down for an unyielding struggle to assert the rights of Congress and build the legal and political case against Mr Trump with the general public. And by rushing, Democrats are playing into some of Mr Trump’s greatest strengths. He thrives on speed and chaos. One scandal follows so fast upon the next that no one can stay focused and it all becomes a dizzying blur.

If Democrats were serious about impeachment, they would counteract this Trumpian fog of misdirection and information overload with clarity, repetition, persistence and endless amplification of the basic facts that are already established and certainly appear impeachable.

As Harvard professor Noah Feldman noted at the hearing, impeachment is part of the Constitution precisely because its framers feared that “a president might use the power of his office to influence the electoral process in his own favour”. That is precisely what Mr Trump appears to have attempted.

This is also the main argument Democrats use to justify their haste: if there is an ongoing corrupt effort to misuse the powers of the presidency to rig the upcoming election, it must be stopped immediately or the results will be tainted forever. They point to the president’s private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, continuing to ostentatiously meet with pro-Moscow Ukrainians to promote long-debunked conspiracy theories blaming Ukraine for meddling in the 2016 election.

Such fears are not ridiculous. But they are not sufficient either.

The purpose of protracted hearings would not be, as analyst Michael Tomasky suggested, to simply accumulate more articles of impeachment. It is to ensure that Congress establishes the facts, effectively communicates them to the public and reasserts its indispensable investigative authority.

If all that comes at a significant political cost, Democrats are duty-bound to pay it. Otherwise, it will be hard to counter the argument that for them this is indeed just another political game.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-07/lebanon-is-not-a-hezbollah-state

The country’s military has demonstrated reassuring independence from the Iran-backed militia, and deserves American support.

On Monday, the Trump administration finally released $105 million in annual aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces that had been appropriated by Congress but, like the more notorious hold on military assistance to Ukraine, was inexplicably delayed by the White House.

Better late than never, particularly since the Lebanese military has been protecting protesters in the streets of Beirut and other cities from intimidation by the pro-Iranian militias of Hezbollah and Amal.

The Lebanese protests, now coming close to their third month, are a powerful rebuttal to the pernicious notion that all of Lebanon, or even just the Lebanese state, is simply an extension or a tool of Hezbollah, and should be therefore treated as a terrorist entity and pariah.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, from all walks of life and throughout the country, have been protesting the entire socioeconomic and political establishment. Their anger isn’t directed primarily against Hezbollah or Iran, but against the entire power structure in the country, which they blame for mismanaging the economy and enriching itself at the expense of the general population.

Obviously, this threatens everyone who benefits from the status quo. But the threat to Hezbollah and its allies is particularly severe.

Through force and guile, Hezbollah has maneuvered over the decades to maximize its influence in Lebanon, ensuring that it remains the most potent armed force in the country, while minimizing its responsibility for the failures of the state.

It poses as a revolutionary group focused on combating Israel and only a small party of the government with a few minor ministries. In reality, it is by far the most powerful force in the country, maintaining its own foreign and defense policies, independent of the Lebanese government.

Hezbollah initially pretended to side with the protesters. But its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, quickly changed his tune and decided that the protests were “inauthentic” and manipulated by foreign “hidden hands.”

This is because any profound change to the political order in Lebanon must have one of two negative effects for Hezbollah. If the upheaval leads to real change, the group’s leverage can only decrease. Alternatively, if things don’t change, Hezbollah will become increasingly associated in the public mind with the corruption and repression that props up the system that maximizes its influence. Hezbollah’s bluff will be called, and its role exposed. Either outcome is a long-term threat to Hezbollah’s credibility and power.

So, the organization has been trying to disrupt the protests through threats and intimidation by goons. Protesters from Shiite communities have been repeatedly filmed “apologizing” to Hezbollah and its leadership, or to the state, for “insulting” them in the demonstrations. This is a familiar strong-arm tactic, in which the gun behind the camera cannot be seen by the viewer but is clearly evident in the expression of the victim. It has also been deployed by the regime in Tehran to try and undermine recent protests in Iran.

This is why supporting the Lebanese army is urgent and important. The army is the primary national institution that can serve as a bulwark against thoroughgoing Hezbollah domination. In recent weeks, it has repeatedly intervened on behalf of the demonstrators when they were attacked by gangs of Hezbollah and Amal thugs.

It is likely that the original impulse to withhold the congressionally-appropriated U.S. aid to the Lebanese military originated from the wrongheaded notion that Lebanon equals Hezbollah and therefore shouldn’t get any American support. Senator Chris Murphy, who lobbied for the release of the funds, has said that “there is at least one person at the [National Security Council] who wants to punish Lebanon for having a political relationship with Hezbollah.” Given that numerous commentators with close ties to the administration have been pushing for just such a perspective, that’s not surprising.

But the protests, and the army’s performance in recent weeks, have shattered this myth.

The protests represent the rejection of the sectarian order in Lebanon, and the resurrection of the pre-Civil War vision of Lebanon as a modern, unified nation-state with a national consciousness beyond communalism. That threatens much of the power structure, but it is a mortal danger to Hezbollah and its nefarious state-within-a-state in Lebanon.

Everyone interested in combating Hezbollah domination of Lebanon and power in the Middle East ought to take advantage of this opportunity and understand that the Lebanese state isn’t equivalent to Hezbollah. To the contrary, it is the alternative to Hezbollah. As such, it deserves support rather than isolation.

Cost-sharing talks with South Korea and nuclear negotiations with the North both come due on Dec. 31. Then what?

Under the rubric of “America first,” the Donald Trump administration has pioneered a radical departure in US foreign policy from that of all its Democratic and Republican predecessors since the second world war. Mr Trump’s approach to international relations breaks with tradition by being willing to fawn over and coddle autocratic adversaries while taking a harsh, even bullying attitude towards traditional, democratic allies.

The downsides of both seem to be coalescing in the Korean Peninsula.

Mr Trump has generated an unprecedented crisis in relations with South Korea. And his vacillation between thundering threats and sentimental overtures towards North Korea appears similarly headed towards a potentially catastrophic meltdown.

The crisis with South Korea is particularly perplexing. South Korean President Moon Jae-in shares Mr Trump’s enthusiasm for improved relations with North Korea and he has showered effusive praise on the US president for facilitating greatly increased dialogue between Washington and Seoul with Pyongyang.

Moreover, recently Mr Moon and Mr Trump have been able to work together to avoid a looming meltdown in relations between Seoul and Tokyo, a crucial element in the tripartite alliance.

South Korea had been threatening to withdraw from the 2016 General Security of Military Information Agreement which provides for close intelligence sharing with Japan because of a burgeoning trade dispute. Under US pressure, Seoul also dropped a formal complaint against Japanese trade restrictions at the World Trade Organization, at least for now.

Continued tensions, some of which date back to the brutal Japanese occupation of Korea before and during the second world war, are likely and a trade war remains possible. Japan’s increasing uncertainty about US reliability and anxiety about North Korea are prompting new levels of re-armament and regional assertion that can only feed South Korean suspicions.

However, Mr Moon wisely placed national interests above his political interests and nationalistic sentiment in South Korea to drop the trade complaint, salvage the intelligence agreement and preserve the three-way alliance with the United States.

Rather than building on this significant achievement, Mr Trump is demanding that Seoul pay vastly more to support the US military presence in its country. Two years ago, South Korea agreed to pay just under $1 billion annually, about 20% of the US cost.

This year Mr Trump is demanding more than five times that. This isn’t just belligerent, unreasonable or designed to be humiliating, although it is all of those. It seems intentionally designed to be practically and, especially, politically impossible.

No matter how much he treasures the alliance with Washington, Mr Moon cannot accede to such a radical increase, especially when South Korea just paid 90% of the $11 billion cost for a new US military base at its largest overseas installation, Camp Humphreys.

To rub salt in the wound, the US delegation summarily walked out of the last set of negotiations, apparently in a theatrical huff representing Mr Trump’s pique at Seoul’s inevitable balking at what looks and feels like a protection racket shakedown.

Underlying all of this, of course, is Mr Trump’s long history of insisting that US troops ought to be entirely withdrawn from South Korea. That is the most obvious explanation for why he might make impossible demands on what is otherwise regarded as an old, crucial and trusted ally. (Similar extortionate demands for vastly increased funding of overseas US forces are being made of Japan, among others.)

South Korea is so alarmed by all this that earlier this month it signed a far-reaching defense agreement with China, an obvious act of considerable desperation.

The main beneficiary of any US military drawdown, let alone withdrawal, from South Korea – and even these tensions between Seoul and both Washington and Tokyo – is, of course, North Korea. The raison d’être of the Pyongyang regime is the expulsion of US forces from the Korean Peninsula and its reunification under the Kim dynasty.

Yet if South Korea is one of the prime examples of how Mr Trump’s bullying approach to traditional allies is leading to disaster, his love-hate relationship with Kim Jong-un is a textbook illustration of the pitfalls of his equally unorthodox approach to adversaries.

Mr Trump likes to claim that, had he had not been elected in 2016, the US would have soon been in a nuclear war with North Korea. That is absurd hyperbole, but he did inherit a tense situation from Barack Obama, who pointedly told him that Pyongyang would be his biggest international problem.

Mr Trump’s response to the ongoing conundrum of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile development and testing, was to threaten “fire and fury such as the world has never seen.” But then he initiated an affectionate dialogue with Mr Kim, even saying more than once that the two had “fallen in love,” and melodramatic but content-free summit meetings in Singapore, Vietnam and the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas.

All Mr Trump has been able to extract from Mr Kim were some human remains, possibly of US soldiers killed in the Korean War, and a few hostages. There has been no agreement by North Korea to nuclear disarmament, and not even an inventory of its nuclear assets.

Mr Kim is increasingly showing every indication of running out of patience waiting for sanctions relief. North Korea recently tested new rockets and has shown signs of activity at several nuclear weapons centers. It appears Mr Kim is ready to return to a policy of provocations if he remains frustrated, and he does seem to be in a position to squeeze Mr Trump, his “beautiful letters” notwithstanding.

Bullying allies for extortion payments creates senseless crises. Alternately threatening and cajoling adversaries, and relying on Mr Trump’s personality and television imagery, does nothing to extract concessions from hostile tyrants.

Both burden-sharing negotiations with the South and nuclear talks with the North expire on December 31. Mr Trump doesn’t seem to have an alternative plan in either case.

The wrongheaded ineffectiveness of trying to coerce friends while seducing enemies is becoming readily apparent in both halves of the Korean Peninsula.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/impeachment-inquiry-a-senate-trial-is-likely-to-backfire-on-democrats-1.943038

Passing the baton to the Senate would invite a perfunctory trial and acquittal. There are better options.

For Democrats, these are the best of times and the worst of times.

Two weeks of impeachment inquiry testimony by administration officials have painted a stark picture of a US president who allegedly tried to leverage US foreign policy to smear his political opponents. Few facts in the case are disputed, although Donald Trump denies any wrongdoing.

Yet Republicans remain unmoved. A vote on articles of impeachment is currently anticipated in December in the Democrat-controlled House. That would mandate a trial in the Senate but as things stand, it would receive few, if any, Republican votes.

The president has claimed immunity and directed current and past officials not to testify, congressional subpoenas notwithstanding. He has flatly refused to co-operate with the investigation, despite US district judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ruling that “no one is above the law” and that “presidents are not kings”.

Ms Jackson was ruling in the case of former White House counsel Don McGahn in relation to the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election but it could have implications for those subpoenaed to testify in the impeachment hearing.

Despite White House stonewalling, a series of witnesses have given a detailed account of how Mr Trump empowered his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to try to leverage promises of a potential White House meeting and $400 million in US military aid for political gain. The president allegedly threatened to withhold the aid from newly elected Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy if he failed to announce an investigation into unsubstantiated corruption claims against Hunter Biden, the son of his leading Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Earlier this month acting Ukrainian ambassador William Taylor and state department official George Kent testified that the Trump administration urged Ukrainian officials to announce such an investigation, as well as another into a long-debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 US election on behalf of Democrats. Mr Kent was the first of many witnesses to dismiss that theory.

During the lengthy hearing, Marie Yovanovich, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, described a campaign of personal vilification against her by Mr Giuliani and his Ukrainian associates because of her efforts to combat corruption. As she took the stand, Mr Trump even fired off a tweet in real time that read: “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” leading the visibly shaken envoy to admit: “It’s very intimidating” when his message was displayed on screens in the hearing room. In the eyes of many, that constituted unlawful witness intimidation in real-time.

Several days later, four witnesses described the July 25 phone call with Mr Zelenskiy, which forms the crux of the case. They said they found it shocking, improper and possibly illegal when Mr Trump demanded the investigations.

And last Wednesday, US ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland confirmed that there had been a quid pro quo demanded of Ukraine, and that he told Ukrainian officials the aid and White House meeting would not be forthcoming without an investigation announcement. “Everyone was in the loop,” he said. “It was no secret.”

He said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and US Vice President Mike Pence were all aware of, and party to, this alleged attempted shakedown.

Meanwhile former national security staff expert Fiona Hill has confirmed all senior officials were fully aware of the effort, which she called “a domestic political errand” entirely unrelated to national security. She rebuked Republican committee members and, implicitly, Mr Trump, for promoting the conspiracy theory about Ukrainian interference and advocating “politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests”.

There does, however, remain one significant hole in the case against Mr Trump.

No senior official has yet confirmed that the president specifically told them there was a quid pro quo required of Ukraine. Indeed, Mr Sondland testified that Mr Trump had denied there was one.

However, almost all of the witnesses, including Mr Sondland, stated that it was understood by everyone that a quid pro quo was implicit in the demands from the White House.

Republicans emphasise that Ukraine eventually received the aid in September without any investigations being announced.  But two days before the aid was released, the whistleblower account of this scheme and plans for a congressional investigation were made public. The timeline indicates that the president’s plan was abandoned only because it was exposed.

Still, the withholding of documents and senior witnesses puts Democrats in a real bind. Do they proceed without so much critical evidence or allow themselves to be dragged into endless court battles?

They appear inclined to press forward with what evidence they have. But for all its heft, it isn’t swaying Republicans.

Mr Trump used to boast that if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, he wouldn’t lose supporters. That certainly seems to include Republicans in Congress.

It has been deeply alarming to watch the entire GOP circle the wagons around him and effectively defend the idea that leveraging US foreign policy for personal political advantage is acceptable presidential conduct.

As Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell insists, as things stand, there is little chance Mr Trump would be convicted and removed from office by a Republican-majority Senate.

Democrats need to urgently reconsider options other than rushing headlong towards an impeachment trial. Despite the upcoming election season, Democrats could continue with the impeachment inquiry without a strict deadline to develop the case.

They need to secure sworn testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton, who has asked a court to decide if he should testify, as well as Mr Pompeo, Mr Giuliani, Mr Mulvaney and Mr Pence. With patience, Democrats could probably obtain most key testimonies, as suggested by the ruling in the case involving Mr McGahn.

They could also expand the inquiry into numerous other areas of possible presidential malfeasance.

One obvious example is pay-offs to various mistresses in the run-up to the 2016 election in violation of campaign finance laws, acts for which Mr Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, is serving a lengthy prison sentence.

They could scrutinize shady and suggestive dealings between Mr Trump, Mr Giuliani and former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

Additionally, Mr Trump may have lied in written answers to former special counsel Robert Mueller. There are dozens of allegations of sexual assault against him. The possibilities abound.

Expanding the scope and length of the inquiry has downsides but it increases the chance that, at some point, Republican patience with Mr Trump may evaporate, as happened with Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s.

Or the House could simply censure the president rather than adopting articles of impeachment. That would denounce his conduct but not seek to remove him or hand control of the process to the Senate.

Passing the baton to the Senate would, under current circumstances, invite either a perfunctory trial and acquittal, or a through-the-looking-glass procedure in which Democrats and the Bidens could be placed on trial instead.

Seeking a political death by a thousand cuts for Mr Trump, rather than a take-down in one fell swoop, might be more effective with the public.

As things stand, a Senate trial is likely to backfire on Democrats. Since they have several viable options, it would be a far, far better thing for Democrats to avoid such a blunder.

https://agsiw.org/tehrans-woes-open-diplomatic-opportunities-for-riyadh/

Tehran’s difficulties, including major unrest at home and in Iraq and Lebanon, could make the Islamic Republic more amenable to a real compromise with its Gulf Arab neighbors.

Saudi Arabia has begun to explore the potential for easing, or even resolving, a number of long-standing regional confrontations. In Yemen, regarding Qatar, and exploring prospects for bilateral and multilateral talks with Iran, Riyadh is showing signs of a new sense of confidence regarding the potential for new understandings. In part, each of these projects is prompted by a growing sense that these ongoing confrontations have begun to accumulate diminishing returns. And all three initiatives appear to be linked to growing signs that Iran’s fortunes and regional standing are beginning to fray badly. This has led to hopes that Tehran’s difficulties, including major unrest at home and in Iraq and Lebanon, could make the Islamic Republic more amenable to a real compromise with its Gulf Arab neighbors.

For much of the past 15 years, as Iran’s regional fortunes appeared to only go from strength to strength, in large part as an unintended consequence of U.S. policies, Iran has shown more willingness to enter into direct talks on regional arrangements with Gulf Arab countries. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in particular, have generally avoided anything that smacked of far-reaching negotiations with Iran. They have maintained that the Islamic Republic cannot be trusted because of its foundational commitment to export its revolution, and that Iran often behaves like the vanguard of a regional movement that threatens their interests, rather than a “normal” neighboring state.

But the deeper concern has been that Tehran gained undue advantage largely as an unintended consequence of contingent events that were originally unconnected to Iran. From the Saudi and Emirati perspectives, Iran was the primary beneficiary of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the earlier ouster of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Moreover, Iran was seen as benefiting from the destabilization of leading Arab republics in the Arab Spring uprisings that began in 2010. And, finally, Iran has been widely viewed as a primary beneficiary of a perceived U.S. disengagement from the Middle East, the Gulf in particular, and the concomitant rise in Russian influence, particularly in Syria. Yet all of these developments were regarded as distortions, rather than reflections, of the actual balance of power in the region and as reversible if not simply unsustainable. Iran had gone from strength to strength for more than a decade, but, it was widely felt in Gulf states, Tehran was also overconfident and overextended, benefiting more from its adversaries’ mistakes than its own achievements.

Therefore, Saudi Arabia has been, in effect, postponing the inevitable dialogue with Iran, hoping to enter into talks that reflect what Riyadh regards as the actual balance of power in the region and that would involve serious compromises rather than an effort by Tehran to get Arab states to effectively acknowledge Iran’s hegemony in large parts of the Arab northern Middle East. That moment may have arrived, given a series of setbacks besetting the Iranian regime.

“Maximum Pressure” versus “Maximum Resistance”

Since the administration of President Donald J. Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement and instituted the “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, there has been a powerful momentum against the fortunes of the Iranian government. The economic sanctions imposed by Washington since May 2018 have badly damaged the Iranian economy. Iran is estimated to be on course for a 9.5% economic contraction in 2019, with only Libya and Venezuela suffering greater economic declines. Iran’s ability to sell its oil has been reduced dramatically, and it is increasingly frozen out of the international, dollar-based economy. The efforts of European governments to encourage their multinational corporations to continue to trade with Iran largely failed due to threats from the U.S. Treasury Department. And the European effort to create a special purpose vehicle to facilitate payments in nondollar denominations has so far proved unsuccessful.

Yet sanctions, no matter how effective, were never likely to produce regime change and, indeed, on their own were not even likely to produce positive policy changes. As long as Iran did not feel that its strategic regional gains were threatened, financial warfare was always more likely to prompt more obdurate policies than lay the groundwork for compromise.

Iran’s Crisis in Lebanon and Iraq

Nonetheless, Iran’s position in the Arab world has been suddenly threatened by widespread and sustained political protests in Iraq and Lebanon. These movements are very different and cannot be conflated. While in neither case is Iran a primary target of the demonstrators, the regional impact of the uprisings directly threatens Iran’s influence in two of the Arab countries in which it is most powerful. Lebanese and Iraqi demonstrators began by condemning their own leaders and pursuing a set of socioeconomic and governance grievances. Yet in both cases, to address these concerns, demonstrators are demanding substantive and even structural changes to the existing political order. This is a profound threat to Iranian hegemony because in Iraq and Lebanon the existing arrangements effectively maximize the potential influence of Iran’s clients and interests.

Therefore, Iran and its local clients, such as Hezbollah and Amal in Lebanon and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, have increasingly adopted a belligerent attitude toward the demonstrators. All have increasingly denounced the protesters as seditious and disloyal agents of nefarious foreign influence. In Iraq, a brutal crackdown by the state and pro-Iranian militia groups has taken over 320 lives, while Hezbollah and Amal have thus far largely restricted themselves to threats and intimidation. However, the political impact of all of this on Iran’s long-term interests in Iraq and Lebanon can only be extremely negative. A November 19 news dump of hundreds of Iranian intelligence cables illustrating Tehran’s intensive efforts to influence and even control Iraqi domestic politics and policymaking will certainly not help matters.

Iran and its local clients are now much more firmly associated with the corrupt, dysfunctional political order being roundly rejected in both societies and also with the crude, sectarian, and, in the case of Iraq, brutal measures being employed to maintain them. The campaign of repression has the makings of a disastrous turning point in attitudes toward Iran among large parts of the Lebanese and Iraqi populations, including many Shias, that may linger for years. Iran’s influence in both societies seems far more fragile than has been assumed in recent years and Iran was indeed overextended and vulnerable in these Arab countries.

Iran’s Worries in Syria and at Home

Iran’s influence in Syria had appeared to be far less threatened, given its strong alliance with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and powerful presence on the ground in much of the country. However, recent developments in northern Syria have raised the prospect that other parties, including Russia, Turkey, the United States, and even the Assad regime, might agree to postconflict or deconfliction arrangements that would squeeze Iran out of positions of influence insofar as possible. Russia and the Syrian government still remain dependent on Iran and Hezbollah on the ground in some areas and Iran is continuing to try to build a military infrastructure in key parts of Syria. However, as the postconflict scenario begins to take shape, marginalizing Iran’s role appears to be developing as a common interest for Moscow, Washington, Ankara, and, to the extent possible, Damascus. And Israel has repeatedly demonstrated that it has enforceable redlines about Iranian and Hezbollah activity in Syria and, more recently, parts of Iraq as well. Again, Iran appears to be overextended, including in Syria.

Finally, anti-government protests that have caught fire in Iran in recent days underline the political difficulties besetting the regime. Ostensibly sparked by a 50% gasoline price hike and the imposition of rationing as a result of sanctions, the protests, which have spread to a hundred Iranian towns and cities and resulted in dozens of deaths, actually reflect much more deep-seated discontent. While the protests in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon differ greatly, the Iranian protests certainly represent a further intensification of the woes of the regime and are the most direct part of the political crisis facing it. The clearest indication of how threatened the regime feels by these protests is the countrywide Internet blackout imposed on November 17.

Opportunities for Regional De-escalations

This is the context in which Saudi Arabia seems to be exploring diplomatic options for resolving regional disputes. In each case, the conflicts themselves have generated sufficient incentives to pursue compromise. Yet the regional context in which Iran appears to be struggling is a key factor linking all three initiatives.

The Riyadh agreement Saudi Arabia brokered between the Yemeni government and the pro-secession Southern Transitional Council reflects Saudi interests in stabilizing the situation and extricating itself from what has become a quagmire in Yemen. The UAE has already taken the lead in disengaging, and the agreement demonstrates a Saudi desire to stabilize the situation in the south, presumably as a prelude to further disengagement. Reports that Saudi Arabia has begun a quiet dialogue with the Houthis in recent months add to the sense that Riyadh is looking for a way out of Yemen and may be prepared to compromise with the Houthis, particularly if the Saudis feel Iran is not in a position to take advantage of the postconflict situation in Yemen.

Much the same applies to the boycott of Qatar, which began in June 2017. This, too, is a stalemate, although the costs to Qatar have been more serious than to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt. However, Doha has developed effective workarounds that have allowed it to endure the boycott as a “new normal,” with continued U.S. support and the help of Turkey and Iran. Whatever the boycott was supposed to accomplish, therefore, has either been secured or is not going to be secured by these means. There is little cachet in continuing for any of the parties, especially given that, again, Iran is hardly in a position to take advantage of diplomatic openings among Gulf Arab countries and Turkey appears highly focused on events in northern Syria.

The most significant gesture toward a reconciliation within the Gulf Corporation Council is the announcement that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain will be participating in the Gulf Cup in Doha beginning November 26. Given that restrictions on travel and trade are at the heart of the boycott, if this participation involves significant levels of travel and trade it could signal a significant easing of the boycott, which in any event was never total. It did not extend to restrictions on shipments of and trade in energy, nor to GCC military cooperation. Apart from continuous U.S. pressure to heal the rift within the GCC and since little more is likely to be secured by the continuation of the boycott, a key argument for reconciling would be that Iran has been a major beneficiary of the split and, to take advantage of Tehran’s woes, Gulf Arab countries ought to be as united as possible.

Finally, there are indications that Saudi Arabia, like the UAE before it, has for several months been cautiously exploring the potential for dialogue with Iran, albeit indirectly. Riyadh never wanted its own or a U.S. war with Iran. The “maximum resistance” campaign, especially the attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure, has served as a potent reminder of how much all parties stand to lose from a conflict in the Gulf. Given that the most important reservations holding Riyadh back from a serious dialogue with Tehran in recent years now appear to be significantly attenuated, there is all the more reason for Saudi interest in talks.

Indeed, the deeper question is whether reticence will now have transferred to hard-liners in Tehran, who may suddenly be the ones feeling that the time is not right for a dialogue with regional rivals. However, Iran’s political leaders, including President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, continue to advocate for regional and international dialogue, including via their new Hormuz Peace Endeavor (HOPE), an ambitious program for regional security and cooperation. Whether Iran’s elected leaders are sincere in this agenda, and, more importantly, whether it also has the backing of Iran’s far more powerful unelected leadership in the Supreme National Security Council and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as, of course, the supreme leader, remains to be determined. And, of course, the goal of the initiative, as Iran acknowledges, is splitting Washington’s Gulf Arab allies from the United States and securing the removal of U.S. military forces from the region altogether.

Yet, assuming it’s not merely a stunt, the HOPE initiative must be viewed as an opening bid made under increasingly difficult circumstances. There are ample grounds for mutual suspicion, but also clearly a need on all sides to move away from the atmosphere of the zero-sum confrontation that has prevailed in recent years. The stalemate between “maximum pressure” and “maximum resistance” illustrates the dangers of confrontation for both Iran and Saudi Arabia and spurred an evident interest in dialogue on both sides. That, combined with the strategic and political crisis facing Iran, may make Riyadh more willing to engage in dialogue about long-term regional arrangements and Tehran more willing to accept reasonable limitations on its ambitions in the Arab world and strategies that involve destabilizing neighboring states.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-11-20/israeli-settlements-u-s-reversal-contrary-to-international-law?srnd=opinion

The Trump administration signals to the world that it’s fine to gain territory through war.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent announcement that the U.S. no longer views Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as illegal isn’t just a disaster for peace. It’s an all-out assault on international law and human rights.

What usually gets forgotten is when and why the international community outlawed settling occupied territories in the first place.

The prohibition comes from the Fourth Geneva Convention, adopted in the aftermath of World War II, which for the first time outlined the rights of civilians during war. According to Article 49, paragraph six of the convention, an occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Subsequent UN Security Council resolutions and international court rulings leave no doubt that Israel is the occupying power in the territories that came under its control in 1967. Indeed, when justifying its military activities in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel frequently cites the rights of occupying forces, especially as defined by Article 43 of the Hague Regulations.

But the introduction over decades of more than 700,000 Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is a clear-cut and massive violation of Article 49.

Some Israelis have tried to argue that Article 49 only prohibits the forced transfer of civilians into such settlements. However, as the definitive 1958 commentary on the convention by the International Committee of the Red Cross makes clear, the Article does not refer to compulsory transfers but any transfers at all. According to the ICRC:

It is intended to prevent a practice adopted during the Second World War by certain Powers, which transferred portions of their own population to occupied territory for political and racial reasons or in order, as they claimed, to colonize those territories. Such transfers worsened the economic situation of the native population and endangered their separate existence as a race.

In other words, people living under military occupation have individual and collective human rights not to be colonized, not to have their land taken away from them, and not to have civilian settlers from the occupying power impose themselves by force.

This is precisely what Israel has done in the occupied territories, and it is not primarily a political problem or a peace-process conundrum. It’s a serious human rights abuse.

The Israeli government has understood this all along. In March 1968, Theodor Meron, then the legal adviser to the Israeli foreign ministry, authored an internal memo on the legality of settlements. He noted that, because the “prohibition” on settling occupied territories “is categorical and not conditional upon the motives,” settlement could only be “carried out by military and not civilian entities” and must be “temporary.”

Despite this clear understanding, Israel began settling the occupied territories in the late 1960s and continues to expand its military and civilian matrix of control. Even the era of the peace process didn’t slow down this inexorable colonization.

Since 1978 at the very latest, the U.S. government has been clear that Israeli settlement is inconsistent with international law. Pompeo’s claim to be overturning a last-minute decision made at the end of Barack Obama’s second term is disingenuous. And while the State Department claims to have a 40-page legal opinion justifying this policy shift, it hasn’t been made public and couldn’t possibly be persuasive.

As usual with the Trump administration, the motivations here are nakedly political. They are trying to help save the political fortunes of their ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and help keep him out of prison. And it’s another sop to Donald Trump’s most ardent domestic fan base: the pro-occupation and pro-settlement Christian evangelical right.

Pompeo, for his part, insists he has only “recognized the reality on the ground,” since he believes Israel shouldn’t have to withdraw from settlements or other parts of the occupied territories if it doesn’t want to.

But his announcement will have consequences far beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the fate of the seemingly doomed two-state solution, or prospects for wide-scale Israeli annexations. It even goes beyond the question of Palestinian human rights.

Its message to the world is clear: colonizing occupied territories is no longer forbidden. By inviting predatory powers to create new “realities” to be “recognized,” this blunder guts another key aspect of international law: the prohibition against acquiring territory by war.

Apparently, now all you need do is seize an area, hold it for long enough, colonize it thoroughly, and then demand international endorsement. The last obstacles to predatory territorial expansion and conquest have just been jettisoned in favor of “realities on the ground.”

Welcome to the jungle.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/why-the-demonstrators-in-iran-may-drive-the-regime-to-the-negotiating-table-1.939626

US and its Gulf allies have a window of opportunity to get a deal with a country that finds itself mired in economic, political and strategic problems

When Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and imposed new sanctions against its regime, he said the objective was to secure a better agreement. That was always an ambitious goal but, thanks to the strategic and political crisis facing Tehran due to recent ongoing protests in the region, Washington and its Gulf allies may have an opportunity to secure a new understanding with Tehran.

US-led sanctions have no doubt had a hugely adverse effect on Iran’s economy. Its petroleum exports are at a fraction of their previous levels. Few multinational corporations are willing to do business with Iran and risk the wrath of the US treasury department. In their attempts to salvage the nuclear agreement, European governments have sought to find a special purpose vehicle to bypass sanctions, largely to no avail. As a result, the country is experiencing a severe financial crisis, projected to contract the economy by 9.6 per cent this year, with only Venezuela and Syria having suffered worse declines.

However, sanctions against a country can make its citizens even more dependent on the regime that runs it, and encourage competing factions within it to circle the wagons against outside pressure, often by rallying around hardliners. This was certainly Tehran’s initial response, with the regime deciding its best option was to endure the fallout of the sanctions – just as North Korea, Cuba and Iraq under Saddam Hussein have done in the past. And with Iran determined to develop its sizeable internal market, economic warfare alone was unlikely to radically alter its calculations and return it to the negotiating table.

As I argued at the outset of the sanctions, for Tehran to change its behaviour it would have to experience significant strategic and political setbacks in the region in addition to economic distress. Only such pressure could press regime leaders to try to protect as many of their assets as possible through a new understanding rather than facing continuing losses. Yet the Trump administration has no appetite for the kind of bold steps in regional battlegrounds like Syria and Iraq that would have generated such alarm in Iran. Attacks on pro-Iranian militia groups in Iraq, unclaimed but widely attributed to Israel, are only one example of the kind of pushback, which should also include political and soft-power engagement, that can undermine Iran’s destabilising encroachments in the Arab world.

In response to Washington’s “maximum pressure” policy, Tehran also initiated a campaign of “maximum resistance” which included low-intensity military attacks on Gulf– and US-related interests. It carefully calibrated and steadily increased the intensity of these attacks in an effort, thus far without success, to provoke a military response from the US and its Arab allies and generate a diplomatic crisis. Tehran knows it has no leverage with Washington but hoped that a military crisis could prompt European, Arab and Asian powers to convince the United States to ease the sanctions in order to restore calm, thereby loosening the financial noose. Meanwhile, Tehran has also gradually resumed its nuclear enrichment activities, losing the sympathy of European states as well as multilateral agencies. All this produced an impasse that persisted for months.

However, a major strategic and political crisis for the Iranian regime has suddenly erupted on the streets of Lebanon and Iraq. Protests in both countries are driven largely by socioeconomic and governance issues, with constituencies lashing out at their own nominal leaders, only some of whom are beholden to Tehran. But in both countries, demonstrators have become increasingly convinced that their grievances cannot be addressed by the existing political systems.

The problem for Iran is that it has nothing to gain and everything to lose from major changes to the political power structures in Iraq and Lebanon. Consequently, the regime and its proxies in both countries have dropped any pretence of sympathy for the protests and relied on threats, intimidation and deadly force – particularly in Iraq – against unarmed civilians to try to crush the uprisings.

As demonstrations continue undaunted, Tehran is increasingly being associated with the corrupt establishments and the brutality being deployed to defend them. So even if Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq are able to avoid the structural reforms that would inevitably weaken their respective positions, anger and resentment towards the Iranian regime among populations in those countries could lead to a decline in its influence in the long run.

To make matters worse for Tehran, protests have erupted in Iran itself. Demonstrations have rocked more than 100 cities, with the public rejecting a 50 per cent hike in petrol prices – no doubt a symptom of more deep-seated dissatisfaction among ordinary Iranians. The uprising is partly driven by economic pain from sanctions and partly by long-standing discontent with theocratic despotism. In all likelihood, it has also been partly inspired by the protests in Iraq and Lebanon.

While regime change in Tehran remains unlikely, prolonged unrest across the region has produced precisely the kind of strategic crisis that sanctions alone could not achieve. Sanctions might have been a factor in the uprisings – particularly in Iran – but they are not the fundamental cause. Tehran is over-extended and the ruthless and corrupt orders it has propped up at home and abroad are buckling under the weight of their own contradictions.

The regime’s response in all three cases has included repression, threats and force while painting demonstrators as thugs controlled by nefarious foreign manipulators. And in Iran its alarm is demonstrated by a total shutdown of the internet – a drastic step that borders on panic. It is likely to be similarly obdurate and defiant in its diplomatic reaction as well. However, it now faces precisely the combination of economic misery and strategic and political crisis that might induce it to talk seriously to its adversaries. It must, after all, staunch the bleeding and prevent even more serious damage.

Purposive negotiations are, and should be, the strategic choice in such circumstances. The US and Arab countries should use whatever positive and negative inducements they can to encourage Iran to reach this conclusion. Given the regional strategic crisis Tehran faces, it might at last be willing to seriously discuss not only its nuclear and missile programmes but also its support for armed militias and terrorist groups in the Middle East.

Tehran increasingly needs a new deal, which means that the negotiations that Mr Trump called for 18 months ago no longer seem implausible.