As U.S. Sanctions Bite, Iran Flexes Diplomatic Muscles in Iraq and Syria

Rouhani’s trip to Iraq and Assad’s to Iran show that Tehran and its allies are determined to maintain alliances.

With the administration of President Donald J. Trump applying greater pressure against Iran with renewed economic sanctions and other leverage, Tehran is seeking to push back against the United States and other adversaries, and even some erstwhile partners, and assert itself regionally by flexing its diplomatic muscles. The main themes are embodied in the visits by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to Iraq and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Iran. In both cases, Iran is seeking to communicate its central role in neighboring countries as they consolidate a post-Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant stabilization period and, in the case of most of Syria, a new postwar environment. Meanwhile, Iran’s Syrian and Iraqi allies are attempting to leverage Iran to play off various foreign powers – including the United States, Russia, Turkey, and the Gulf Arab countries – against each other and gain breathing space to pursue their own policies.

But both trips are also making it clear that, when push comes to shove, the Iraqi government is not prepared to bow to U.S. demands to actively cooperate in imposing new sanctions and restrictions on Iran, and that Tehran remains a key ally for Syria. This has significant implications for Gulf Arab policies, especially those of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, which are core members of the anti-Iranian alliance in the Middle East. These rare head of government diplomatic visits demonstrate that Iran retains enormous influence in both Syria and Iraq and feels the need to consolidate and demonstrate this clout.

The stakes are particularly high in Iraq, because anti-Iranian forces have made considerable political gains in that country over the past 18 months or so. The once solidly pro-Iranian Shia alliance in Iraq slowly fractured in recent years; now, some of the most influential factions, including that led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which won the most seats in the 2018 parliamentary elections, are openly skeptical of Iranian intentions and interested in building closer ties to other regional powers including Gulf Arab countries. The elections were not a disaster for Iran, with some of its closest allies coming second in the polling and a large bloc still beholden to Tehran’s influence. But the outcome was hardly ideal, and in fact both the voting results and the subsequent political negotiations were more satisfactory to Washington and Riyadh than they were to Tehran.

Still, the most important ministerial positions in terms of domestic political power remain unfilled. In addition, still unresolved is the disposition of the Popular Mobilization Forces, the mostly highly sectarian Shia Iraqi militias; they were formed ostensibly to combat ISIL but are now exercising authority in much of the country beyond the direct control of the government. While there is a general agreement that the PMFs should be incorporated into the national security structures run by the government, questions of how and when that happens are crucial. The answers will determine a great deal about the scope and degree of ongoing direct Iranian influence in Iraq, especially by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and hard-line factions in Tehran.

If the PMFs are simply folded into extant Iraqi national security structures with their own identities, hierarchies, and systems essentially intact, it will effectively mean that the government ministries will continue to subsidize de facto independent militias over which they exercise little control. In many cases, it would be Tehran rather than Baghdad that would have the most influence over these nominally Iraqi government forces. If, on the other hand, the existing PMFs are effectively broken up, placed under significant government control, and essentially dissolved with their members receiving new jobs in different national security entities in Iraq, it will be much harder for the IRGC and Iranian hard-liners to dictate policies and conduct inside Iraq.

Rouhani in Iraq

This dilemma was clearly on display at the remarkable meeting of Rouhani with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf. Sistani is the highest-ranking Shia cleric in Iraq and one of the most senior in the world, and certainly among the most influential. The meeting was a rare audience for a foreign leader with the senior cleric. His blessing is essential for power in most of Iraq, and he wields considerable influence in Iran as well. The messaging coming from this extraordinary meeting – Sistani has not met with foreign political leaders other than United Nations and other multilateral agency heads since 2015 – was multifaceted. Iran was clearly sending the message to Washington and its allies that it retains powerful influence in Iraq and that the Iraqi Shia clerisy is, ultimately, still more sympathetic to Tehran than to the United States or Sunni Arab countries. Sistani is, in effect, a card that Iran can play, and Tehran has waved that in the air fairly dramatically.

Yet there is a power struggle inside Iran between hard-liners suspicious of the outside world, especially the West, and those who continue to advocate for engagement, particularly with Europe. The recent resignation, which was not accepted by Rouhani, of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, appears to have been an important effort by the more “moderate” factions to push back against more “hard-line” elements like the IRGC. Indeed, it was also highly significant that Zarif won the explicit praise of the head of the IRGC regional expeditionary force and militia vanguard, the Quds Force, Major General Qassim Suleimani. It may have been an attempt to communicate relative unity to audiences inside Iran and to the outside world. But it was also widely viewed as at least a limited validation for Zarif himself and Rouhani, and their policies.

By meeting with Rouhani, Sistani, too, may have been sending important messages to audiences in both Iraq and Iran. In Iraq, it communicates his continued sympathy with Iran, when, as they now are, the chips are down. The meeting strongly suggests Sistani’s view is that Iraq should be dealing with the formal Iranian government, not the IRGC, and that both prominent citizens like himself and, especially, the government should be meeting with Iranian officials through formal channels.

This is also important for the elderly Sistani’s legacy. He is relatively apolitical compared to many of his fellow senior Shia clerics, especially in Iran, and has been politically cautious and moderate for much of his life. However, it was precisely a fatwa he issued when ISIL arose as a major threat, calling on Iraqis to join together in “popular forces” to oppose the terrorists, that was used by Shia sectarian forces and the highly pro-Iranian then-Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to create the PMFs. Since then, there has been widespread concern inside and outside of Iraq that these militias are becoming the equivalent of uncontrolled states within a state like Hezbollah in Lebanon, often beholden to the same foreign power, Iran. But because there are dozens of small PMF groups operating under various influences and agendas, there is concern that they could in many ways be even harder to deal with than a single, centralized substate actor.

The PMFs loom grimly, therefore, as a possible profound stain on his career, given that the proximate cause for their formation and often-cited justification for their actions was Sistani’s own notorious fatwa. Even though he has issued subsequent opinions that would encourage the PMF groups and their backers to undo the damage, he apparently understands that the best course for both Baghdad and his own legacy is to work with forces inside Iran that also want to control such groups and have their own fraught relationship with the IRGC.

Of course, even Rouhani and his faction will only go so far in that direction. The PMF coalition in Iraq – the United Iraqi Alliance list – is pushing strongly for the appointment of PMF Chair and Iraqi National Security Advisor Falih Alfayyadh as interior minister to oversee the terms of their “incorporation” into existing, or even new, state entities. Iran’s enthusiastic preference for this appointment was demonstrated by Alfayyadh’s prominent participation in the meeting between Rouhani and Sistani. It doesn’t necessarily mean Sistani is backing him, but Rouhani certainly is. For Sadr and other Iraqi Shias who are neither hostile nor beholden to Iran, but want to ease Iraq into a position of relative independence by playing off Iranian influence versus that of the United States and its Gulf Arab allies, it is apparently now necessary to bolster the Iranian presence in the country to push back against anti-Iranian forces.

Assad in Iran

A similar juggling act is being performed by the Assad regime in Syria. Beholden to its saviors – Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah – in the civil war that is effectively over in most of the country, the Syrian government now seeks to carefully pit those forces against each other to win its own breathing space and avoid becoming completely subservient to any of them. Damascus would probably prefer to be dependent on distant Moscow than any closer domineering patron. Yet the boots on the ground that have made the continuation of the Assad regime possible are primarily paid for and directed by Iran, although they are a motley crew of Lebanese, Afghans, and Pakistanis, in addition to Iranians and others. Damascus also must seek to placate and balance the interests of Turkey, which, after the government recaptured Aleppo, redefined its priorities to focus almost entirely on containing Kurdish influence in northern Syria. And the regime is conducting a partial rapprochement with Kurdish and other domestic militias that seem to be willing to accommodate a degree of regime authority in the once-liberated areas in order to avoid a devastating Turkish military onslaught.

So, it was striking that one of Assad’s first trips abroad, other than two brief trips to Russia, since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011 was to Tehran in February. The message the Syrian leader was sending both domestically and internationally was a continued insistence that, whatever the United States, Turkey, and even Russia might wish, Iran remains a vital regime ally and, as things stand, will be playing a major part in forthcoming reconstruction efforts in the country, mainly by profitably implementing projects financed by others. A year ago, the Syrian government might have been looking for Russian and Turkish reassurance that it would not fall under complete Iranian domination in the postwar stabilization period. But under the current circumstances, to the contrary, it is reminding all other players that Iran remains crucial to the regime’s interests, including balancing the influence of these other foreign forces.

Significantly, the Assad visit also played directly into the internal power struggle in Iran, because the proximate cause for Zarif’s abortive resignation was his purported indignation at not being included in high-level meetings with the Syrian president. Assad met Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Rouhani, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs bitterly complained it was not informed of the trip or the meetings at all. Zarif’s resignation was intended to send the message that Iran’s formal ministries and government agencies cannot be bypassed by the supreme leader and the IRGC in crucial foreign affairs matters.

There followed a period of recriminations with Rouhani complaining that he and Iran needed an empowered Zarif for foreign affairs – at least for outreach to Europe and, perhaps eventually again, the United States – and that he could not be so casually dispensed with. That prompted Suleimani’s “surprising” endorsement of Zarif and the resolution of the affair with the foreign minister continuing in his post. But the jockeying for position in Iran that was reflected in the handling of the Assad visit and its aftermath may have played into Sistani’s – and perhaps Rouhani’s – efforts to use the Iranian president’s subsequent visit to Iraq to reinforce the idea that Iran needs to deal with its Arab clients and allies mainly via the Foreign Ministry rather than the IRGC and its militia proxies. Ultimately, the Syrian and Iraqi governments will almost certainly want that too, especially as postconflict stabilization and reconstruction gains ground and they increasingly look for space to make their own decisions based on their political and national interests rather than always bowing to the imperatives of a foreign patron.

What these recent visits demonstrate is twofold: First, while progress has been made in Iraq by Gulf Arab countries, there is still a long way to go before Iran’s powerful hegemonic force is eased – especially among many of the Iraqi Shia factions that still dominate the politics and government, and the PMFs that remain largely uncontrolled. And, second, the Assad regime in Syria continues to regard Iran as not only a major source of support and reinforcement but also as a key player in rebuilding and reconstruction in much of the country as a prize for its crucial support in saving his regime. If Washington and its Gulf Arab allies are hoping to work with various partners including Russia, Turkey, and, eventually, the Iraqi and even Syrian governments, to limit Iran’s regional influence, that project is still at its relative infancy. Iran retains powerful regional muscles, particularly in Iraq and Syria, and, when pressured, is clearly happy to publicly flex them.

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2019-03-14/turkey-is-changing-the-middle-east-the-u-s-doesn-t-get-it?__twitter_impression=true

Leadership of the Islamic world is shifting, weakening the anti-Iran coalition.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/the-aftershocks-of-aleppo-s-fall-continue-to-shake-the-region-1.834896

From the establishment of the Turkey-Russia-Iran triumvirate to the ongoing Arab efforts to re-engage with Syria, everything can be traced back to the events of December 2016

In international relations, change is constant but often subtle. As in a kaleidoscope, patterns continuously, yet usually almost imperceptibly, readjust themselves via delicate and discrete shifts.

Occasionally, though, there is a dramatic twist and the whole constellation is suddenly rearranged.

Sometimes it’s obvious, as with the 9/11 terrorist attacks or the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. In other cases, the full significance only becomes manifest over time.

The fall of rebel-held portions of Aleppo to pro-regime forces in Syria in December 2016 is the most recent Middle Eastern example of a subtle political tremor that, perhaps surprisingly, has repositioned many tectonic plates underneath the strategic landscape.

At the time, most observers understood that it was a big deal, signalling the practical end of the major fighting in Syria and, therefore, the comprehensive victory of Bashar Al Assad’s regime and its Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah backers.

But the aftershocks have reverberated so powerfully that it is becoming difficult not to begin many conversations about Middle Eastern strategic realities without saying: “After the fall of Aleppo…”

Perhaps the most far-reaching impact has been the significantly transformed regional role of Turkey.

Ankara was already moving away from a commitment to regime change in Damascus and focusing on containing Kurdish gains in northern Syria. But Aleppo made Turkey’s altered profile practically irreversible.

From then on, Ankara no longer saw Tehran as a fundamental adversary, but reconceptualised Iran, along with Russia, as a necessary partner in ensuring an acceptable post-conflict stabilisation in Syria.

This intensified and accelerated the emergence of Turkey as a fully committed, leading regional power with its own distinctive orientation. And after the boycott of Qatar began in June 2017, it became clear that the Ankara-Doha axis was emerging as a third regional bloc, simultaneously competing with both the pro and anti-Iranian camps.

Aleppo was the decisive turning point in transforming the Middle East from a binary to a ternary competition

Aleppo was, therefore, the decisive turning point in transforming the Middle East from a binary to a ternary competition, a new reality that is close to pervasive, albeit sometimes subtly, from Morocco to Iraq.

And because Egypt is so categorically opposed to the pro-Islamist orientation of this Turkish-led third camp, Cairo has increasingly emerged from its crisis-induced introversion and back into broader regional engagement.

As the victorious parties – Russia, Iran and Turkey – established the Astana conferences to try to negotiate the arrangements necessary to consolidate their gains, Ankara and Moscow, in particular, developed new levels of cooperation.

However, as Syria has more firmly entered into a post-war era, it is obvious that both Turkey and Russia are beginning to wonder if, and even when, Iran’s more far-reaching ambitions in Syria will begin to undermine their own, more limited, goals in the country.

In other words, the long-term impact of Aleppo and the end of the war could, however counterintuitively, signal at least a gradual erosion of the Russian-Iranian alliance that secured that victory in the first place.

Aleppo was also decisive in harmonising Arab and Israeli threat perceptions regarding Iran.

Before then, Israel largely saw Iran as a nuclear threat, while Arabs were more focused on Iran’s destabilising regional policies, hegemonic ambitions and support for non-state actors, such as militia groups.

The fall of Aleppo confronted Israel with its own, immediate version the same threat, with pro-Iranian and other militias far too close for comfort, Iran trying to establish itself as a dominant power in post-war Syria, and Hezbollah transformed from a Lebanese paramilitary organisation to the regional vanguard of the network of pro-Iranian militia and terrorist groups throughout the Middle East.

So, Iran’s victory at Aleppo brought its major Arab and Israeli antagonists closer together, despite ongoing divisions regarding Palestinian rights, which cannot be to Tehran’s benefit.

Because terrorist groups thrive on war, chaos and state failure, the fall of Aleppo was dreadful news for ISIS in the short run. It removed the final obstacle to a concerted international campaign to destroy its self-declared “caliphate.”

And while the regime victory in Aleppo meant that affiliates of Al Qaeda would dominate larger portions than ever of the remaining armed Syrian opposition, it might eventually mean that the terrorist organisation will find itself largely driven out of Syria.

In the longer run, however, after so much wanton violence, the regime is likely to find it difficult to rule Syria in peace and quiet. If it cannot and will not find a way to reconcile with so many of its own citizens, the terrorist groups may be back with a vengeance.

By signalling the end of the Syrian war, the fall of Aleppo also set in motion ongoing Arab efforts to re-engage with Syria, most notably illustrated by the recent reopening of the UAE Embassy in Damascus.

As in Iraq, most Arab states will now have to rely on political and economic outreach, soft power, and the gradual reintegration of Syria into the Arab fold, in order to secure their interests.

These are just a few of the major transformations that the fall of Aleppo set in motion or greatly accelerated. But they irrefutably establish that, over time, it has proven a significant Middle Eastern turning point.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-07/ilhan-omar-s-anti-semitic-oratory-hurts-the-palestinian-cause

It’s easy to be anti-Israel. But serious work, not divisive words, is what’s needed to make a difference.

Freshman Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar has wasted no time making a name for herself by generating a controversy about the motivations of pro-Israel organizations, individuals and politicians in Washington.

But here’s one group that will not benefit from the brouhaha resulting from Omar’s repeated use of familiar anti-Semitic themes, most recently questioning the loyalty of American Zionists: the Palestinians themselves. It’s a painful reminder that being anti-Israel is different from being pro-Palestinian.

If Ms. Omar wants to support Palestinians, there’s no end to the urgent tasks she could champion. Palestinians are enduring a crisis in relations with the U.S. and desperately need effective political support in Washington. A disastrous set of developments under President Donald Trump needs to be reversed, but no one in Congress is effectively addressing them.

A few days ago, the Trump administration merged the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem, which functioned as an embassy to Palestinians, with the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Both now report to Ambassador David Friedman, who is an avowed opponent of Palestinian statehood and supporter of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

When the administration closed the Washington mission of the Palestine Liberation Organization last year, the U.S. became the only major international power with no diplomatic representation to and from the Palestinians.

And by recognizing Jerusalem without qualification as “the capital of Israel,” and saying that this core final status issue has been “taken off the table,” the administration has destroyed the framework for peace negotiations established in 1993.

Washington no longer finances any program related to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, including health, education, and peace and reconciliation programs. Support has been cut off to the U.S.-trained and equipped Palestinian Security Forces on which Israel relies to combat terrorism in Palestinian population centers.

Last year, the Trump administration defunded the United Nations agencies that care for Palestinian refugees scattered around the Middle East.

Another urgent issue is the growing crisis in Gaza, especially the failure to bring humanitarian and reconstruction aid to that benighted, polluted and impoverished open-air prison of almost 1.5 million people, most of them also refugees.

Instead of championing the urgent Palestinian interest in any of those imperatives, Omar’s rhetoric has provoked a pointless debate over the motivations and national loyalty of Americans who support Israel.

This plays into the hands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing the most serious political crisis of his career. That’s crucial because as long as he remains in power, the revival of meaningful negotiations with Palestinians will be impossible.

Mr. Netanyahu can now mobilize Israelis and American Jews by claiming that they are under attack by Democrats, pushing those constituencies toward himself and his Republican allies.

Worse, enmeshing Democrats in a divisive, embarrassing internal struggle is a huge gift to Trump because it deflects attention from the impact of his destructive policies. Voters appalled by Trump’s trafficking in anti-Semitism now have reason to wonder whether the alternative might be just as bad.

The Trump era ought to stimulate the rise of a Jewish-Muslim coalition against intolerance, nativism and resurgent white supremacy as exemplified by recent Islamophobic attacks on Omar. A coalition of American Jews and Muslims should also be united in favor of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Omar is dividing communities that should be allied on both domestic and foreign policy.

She may be succeeding if she’s trying to establish herself as a star of the Democratic left, claiming to be “speaking truth to power.” The only real test of that will be when she runs for re-election.

For everyone else, however, her rhetoric is a disaster that reinforces divisive stereotypes about supposed Muslim hostility to Jews.

As someone who has spent more than 20 years in Washington working on Arab and Muslim-American problems and championing the Palestinian cause, I implore Omar to learn more about the issues at stake. In the meantime, I have one thing to say to her: Please, just stop it!

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/trump-s-troubled-bromance-with-kim-has-only-increased-north-korea-s-global-standing-1.832211

Throughout this bizarre relationship, the US president has dispensed with long-established diplomatic norms. Whether that will result in a safer or a more dangerous world is anyone’s guess

If US President Donald Trump was surprised by the dramatic collapse of his Hanoi summit with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, he’s probably the only one.

It’s an understatement to call this diplomatic failure predictable. Yet, despite his miscalculations, Mr Trump has generated the most serious US-North Korean dialogue in recent history.

Whether that makes the world safer or more dangerous remains to be seen.

For more than 100 years, the diplomatic norm between countries, especially those at odds, is that the substance of negotiations is worked out by diplomats quietly and in advance.

Political leaders are brought in, typically at the last minute, to formalise those agreements, or to make dramatic, and politically costly, concessions or initiatives that allow a broader understanding to be reached.

Dealing with North Korea, Mr Trump has dispensed with this time-tested formula for diplomatic success. Instead he has emphasised his relationship, which he characterizes in bizarrely romantic terms, with the North Korean leader Mr Kim, and the force of his own personality, as somehow decisive.

During the first North Korea-US summit in Singapore last year, that was risky but plausible, because that meeting was intended to initiate, and not resolve or conclude, a new dialogue.

However, even by then the problems with Mr Trump’s approach were obvious.

Pyongyang and Washington did not share any common understandings about the definitions of the terms they were discussing. It’s evident that they still don’t.

In particular, the parties do not share a common understanding of what “denuclearisation” of the Korean Peninsula might mean.

Like his predecessors in the White House, Mr Trump seems to mean the complete, irreversible renunciation by Pyongyang of all its nuclear weapons.

But, like his grandfather and father before him, Mr Kim clearly means a set of North Korean concessions short of completely divesting from its nuclear capabilities, but with the United States withdrawing its own nuclear – and eventually also conventional – military power from the Korean Peninsula altogether.

Similarly, there was an apparent misunderstanding about recent North Korean statements by Mr Trump and, especially, his special envoy to North Korea, Stephen Biegun.

North Korea was demanding the removal of most of the important sanctions against it and, in exchange, offered to “dismantle and destroy” its nuclear facility at Yongbyon “and more”.

Several close observers of the conversation were a lot less impressed than the Trump administration was about what “and more” might entail.

It seems Pyongyang was indeed only committed to an exchange involving the dropping of sanctions for the decommissioning of Yongbyon.

But that misunderstanding, which appears to be key to the failure of the Hanoi summit, is simply a microcosm of the deeper misunderstandings between Washington and Pyongyang.

There is, let’s face it, no real possibility that North Korea, of all countries, will become the first in history to become a nuclear weapons power and then, under massive pressure, relinquish that independent, decisive deterrent.

What Mr Trump doesn’t seem to understand yet is that what he has overseen in the two summits with Mr Kim is – whether he intended it, or likes it, or not – the effective recognition of North Korea as a full nuclear power.

Can Mr Trump really imagine he can cajole North Korea into forgoing the very capability that gained his obsessive attention in the first place?

There’s no doubt Mr Kim wants to now focus on national economic development. And he may well be willing to eschew most further nuclear and missile refinements to make that happen.

But there’s no reason whatsoever to believe that he may be willing to reverse what North Korea has achieved to protect his own regime, and at so much cost. That project is bound to fail.

Thus far, the ledger is entirely in Mr Kim’s favour. In exchange for steps that are either irrelevant or reversible, his odious regime has gained enormous credibility and international legitimacy.

And Mr Trump continues to lavish inexplicably generous personal affection and praise on Mr Kim, especially in contrast to his often-venomous treatment of democratically elected leaders allied with the United States.

Mr Trump appears to be intoxicated by his own rhetoric about his prowess as a “dealmaker”. But he has painted himself into a corner in this case.

He can either now admit that his curious “bromance” with Mr Kim has been a fool’s errand based on elementary misunderstandings and miscommunication.

Or he can retreat to the White House and let the professionals once again take over and try to repair the damage he’s done and, if possible, build on any progress with Pyongyang he may have made.

The bottom line is this, however: Mr Trump has essentially recognised North Korea as a nuclear power, and engaged with it and Mr Kim as relative equals.

Nothing can really reverse that, since Pyongyang is not going to give up its nuclear weapons. Any sensible US strategy must take that as given.

Lifting sanctions will remain an important goal for North Korea, but between Singapore and Hanoi, Mr Kim has already won a decisive, and probably irreversible, victory over Mr Trump.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/trump-s-u-turn-on-syria-is-a-victory-for-sanity-and-common-sense-1.830278

The president’s pattern of creating crises and demanding credit for stepping back from the brink is deeply troubling

In the most significant foreign policy reversal of his presidency, Donald Trump has agreed to keep at least 400 US troops in Syria. It’s a victory for sanity and sense in an administration that often seems driven by impulse and gives unquestioned primacy to politics over policy.

Mr Trump shocked the world when he announced via Twitter on December 19 that he was withdrawing all US forces from Syria immediately. His decision was so inexplicably wrongheaded that I, in these pages at the time, emphasisedthat the blunder could and must be reversed. And now Mr Trump is back-pedalling although as always, he denies he is doing so.

There was near-unanimous opposition from his officials, Congress (except for the isolationist right and the anti-interventionist left), the mainstream US media and America’s closest Middle East partners, including both Israel and Gulf Arab countries.

The US’s local Kurdish and Arab allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces, who did the bulk of the battlefield fighting against ISIS, were betrayed, abandoned and set up for a potential Turkish onslaught that could have degenerated into a massacre.

But Mr Trump’s nativist base seemed pleased. And given the quagmires that followed some recent US overseas adventures, it is appropriate to examine the cost-benefit ratio.

In the 1990-1991 liberation of Kuwait, for example, that balance appears satisfactory. But in others, most notably the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the costs seem exorbitant and the benefits questionable at best.

Still, it’s hard to imagine more “bang for your buck” than the extremely limited but impressively effective US engagement in Syria.

Deployments rarely exceeded 2,000 US troops and a total of seven have died. Under the Trump administration, US activities in Syria were financially underwritten by allies. There’s an extraordinarily impressive return on 2,000 troops deployed and little ongoing expenditure.

Mr Trump very reasonably insists his two biggest Middle East policy goals are combating terrorist groups and countering Iran’s hegemonic ambitions. And Syria has been the epicentre of both menaces in recent years.

In the battle against terrorism, this modest US military engagement was vital in the defeat of the so-called ISIS caliphate in Syria and drove the extremists back into the shadows.

Regarding Iran, US support for the SDF left Washington in de facto control of strategically vital but sparsely populated chunks of northern and eastern Syria and, therefore, positioned the US to be part of the political resolution of the Syrian conflict.

Most importantly, the American base at Al Tanf, manned by about 200 US personnel, has effectively blocked Iran from creating a secure military corridor through Iraq and Syria, into Lebanon and down to the Mediterranean coast.

Similarly, US and allied forces are a major part of the ongoing struggle for another less ideal but potentially usable Iranian military crossing point, Abu Kamal. In short, this small contingent of Americans and local allies are effectively blocking Iran from securing its most significant geostrategic acquisition in the last 40, if not 400, years. And clearly a Syrian landscape without an American presence and with the SDF abandoned and in disarray would be much more firmly in the grip of the Assad regime, Russia, Hezbollah and especially Iran.

The US once again has leverage and breathing room. It needs to use them to continue to block Tehran’s expansion, support Arab re-engagement with the Syrian regime and back Israel’s “red lines” regarding Iranian and Hezbollah activities in the southwest.

Washington should attempt to broker a reasonable territorial and political arrangement between the SDF forces and the Damascus government, also insured by Russia, that so far as possible isolates Iran and restrains Turkey.

The US can now also once again induce European powers to contribute their own forces, which they refused to do if all Americans were leaving.

Washington’s long-term goal must be to work with other powers, especially Russia, to ensure that Iran is not allowed to emerge as the big winner from the Syrian conflict.

Had all US troops left Syria shortly, such an outcome was exceedingly likely.

It’s typical of the US president. With a single tweet, he initiated a major crisis and is now demanding – and getting – effusive praise for backing away from an incalculable blunder. It’s eerily reminiscent of his infantile war of words with Kim Jong-un, which spawned fears of a US-North Korean war, and his subsequent plea for a Nobel Peace Prize for defusing the very conflict he conjured. He even boasts that without him, the US and North Korea would have gone to nuclear war.

Everyone is right to be relieved. But the cost of all this tomfoolery is enormous. This administration cannot afford to lose such rare, outstanding officials as former defence secretary James Mattis and Brett McGurk, former special envoy to the global coalition against ISIS, who both resigned on principle after Mr Trump’s Syria decision.

Allies remain deeply troubled, while Iran claims vindication in painting the US as feckless and unreliable.

There’s reason to think this pattern of creating a crisis out of nothing and then demanding credit for stepping back from the brink will continue because Mr Trump finds it politically expedient. But one day, his luck and ours will run out.

Warsaw Ministerial Highlights Challenges Facing Anti-Iran Coalition

Western cohesion on Iran and Arab-Israeli cooperation both seem stalled as headaches mount for Tehran.

On February 13 and 14, officials from over 60 governments gathered in Warsaw, Poland for a U.S.-organized “Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East.” From the start, it was obvious that Washington and many of its allies conceptualized the event as primarily designed to strengthen the international coalition to confront Iran on issues – notably missile development and destabilizing regional policies – not dealt with in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal, which Washington withdrew from in 2018. A strong subtext, too, was efforts to lay the diplomatic groundwork for a new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan being drafted by President Donald J. Trump’s key advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and to try to bring Israel and Gulf Arab countries closer together. At the request of the United States’ European allies, such as Britain, issues involving the wars in Syria and Yemen were eventually added to the agenda. But, as the conference wound down, it was highly questionable whether any of its ambitious goals had been achieved, and, indeed, it seems possible that in some ways the event demonstrated more weakness and division than strength and solidarity.

Ever since Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA, Washington has been trying to develop a broad international coalition to pressure Iran to come back to the negotiating table and eventually agree to much tougher restrictions on its nuclear activities, missile program, and regional policies. The Trump administration has been strongly encouraged in these efforts by Israel and several Gulf Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Those governments participated enthusiastically, with Israel even dispatching its head of government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But the real target for that part of the agenda was the European countries that are continuing to try to ensure that the JCPOA can survive and continue to function despite U.S. opposition. Their determination was recently demonstrated by the creation of the Instrument for Supporting Trade Exchanges, a “special purpose vehicle” to facilitate payments from Iran to European companies and other multinationals in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, bypassing the U.S. banking system and avoiding U.S. sanctions.

But these European countries ­– particularly Britain, France, and Germany – as well as the European Union’s administration were distinctly cool to the Warsaw agenda. Only Britain dispatched its foreign minister, Jeremy Hunt, to the conference, and he made it clear that he was primarily attending to participate in the meeting of the “Yemen Quad” – the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – to discuss the conflict in Yemen. With Russia and Turkey also declining to attend the conference and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad pointedly excluded, any consultations on Syrian affairs were effectively pro forma and inconsequential. There is no evidence that the United States, Israel, or Gulf Arab countries made any progress in wooing important European states away from their efforts to salvage the JCPOA or adopt a more confrontational attitude toward Iran.

To the contrary, the strong divisions within the Western alliance on how to deal with Iran were on full display, especially given the relatively low level of most of the European delegations. The Europeans, including Britain, were sending a polite but pointed message that they still do not agree with the “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions and other leverage over Tehran and will be trying to continue to work with Iran to preserve the nuclear deal. Moreover, the absence of Russia and China was a reminder that Tehran has significant global support as well.* Meanwhile, Russia, Turkey, and Iran underscored their disdain for the Warsaw effort by holding a rival summitof their own in Sochi, Russia, ostensibly about Syria (where all three countries have a large military presence). The summit was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Therefore, the global and regional fissures regarding Iran were on full display in Warsaw, and Tehran has likely concluded that the coalition against Iran is in serious disarray, and that opportunities exist to work with many of the countries assembled in Warsaw, as well as those that declined to participate or were excluded.

Anxieties over Iran’s Middle Eastern activities and ambitions are largely shared by Israel and Gulf Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain. And, since the fall of Aleppo in early 2016 to pro-regime forces in Syria, Israel’s perspective has shifted from a focus on Iran’s nuclear program to pressing concerns about the on-the-ground activities of Iran and its various nonstate militia proxies, including Hezbollah. In short, Israel and several Gulf Arab countries not only see Iran as the primary menace, they also now share a mutual definition of what, precisely, constitutes the proximate Iranian threat. On both general and specific terms, there is now very little daylight between these powers regarding the nature and degree of the challenge posed by Tehran. But despite almost complete agreement on Iran as the paramount regional menace, Israel and these Arab countries remain deeply divided over the ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands that began in 1967.

From its earliest days, the Trump administration has hoped that this shared view could form the basis of a new strategic relationship between Israel and Gulf Arab countries, along with Arab states with existing cooperation with Israel such as Egypt and Jordan. Yet, because of the lack of diplomatic relations between these countries and the ongoing categorical Arab objections to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands that began in 1967, any collaboration between Israel and Gulf Arab countries has been limited, tactical, and largely behind-the-scenes. Both sides agree that a stronger and more open relationship is theoretically desirable. But the extent of disagreement regarding the terms on which this can be developed became increasingly obvious in 2018 and, again, was on full display in Warsaw.

The Israeli perspective, essentially, is that there should be no real obstacle based on the ongoing occupation. Indeed, for years Israeli officials have spoken in terms of “our Sunni Arab allies” and similar hyperbole. However, while there is obvious interest in many Gulf Arab countries in pursuing a deeper partnership with Israel in confronting Iran, as well as economic development and other concerns, progress on the Palestinian front is essential for any major step forward. While there has been some quiet and unofficial progress, Saudi officials, beginning with King Salman bin Abdulaziz, have been very clear, particularly at the last Arab League meeting, that the Saudi and Arab position is still essentially based on the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. It’s clear there is a new potential for reciprocal trust-building gestures between the parties, but they have to involve progress on the Palestinian issue.

But the Israeli government does not appear to be capable of or interested in any significant concessions to the Palestinians. For their part, Palestinians have been utterly alienated by a political, diplomatic, and economic war against them by the Trump administration, which developed since they strenuously objected to the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the “capital of Israel.” Given these realities, U.S. ambition to use the Warsaw ministerial meeting to nudge Israel and Gulf Arab countries together and lay the groundwork for the rollout of the Trump-Kushner peace plan after the Israeli elections scheduled for April appears to have fallen flat. Hopes for enticing pictures of Netanyahu meeting with Arab leaders were not realized, except with the foreign minister of Oman (a country he recently visited). Netanyahu was not standing nearby any key Arab leaders in the group photos, and no progress appears to have been made on either securing Arab buy-in for the potential peace plan or developing another way of promoting and publicizing Israeli-Gulf Arab dialogue.

To the contrary, while the foreign minister of Bahrain reiterated that he expects his country and others to develop full relations with Israel “eventually,” a much more cautious note was struck in an interview with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid by the Saudi former intelligence chief and, effectively, unofficial spokesperson Prince Turki Al Faisal. He warned Israelis that Netanyahu is “deceiving them” by suggesting that Saudi Arabia is ready to forge stronger ties with Israel without significant movement toward a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Prince Turki insisted that there is no daylight between King Salman’s stance on this issue and that of his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Prince Turki emphasized that he was in close contact with the government on these issues and implied he had a green light to make these statements. He accurately summed up the diplomatic and political equation by noting: “From the Israeli point of view, Mr. Netanyahu would like us to have a relationship, and then we can fix the Palestinian issue. From the Saudi point of view, it’s the other way around.”

There is, of course, a middle ground between the two, which would involve reciprocal small steps forward with both full peace and full recognition secured at the end of the process. But there is no sign of any such virtuous cycle between Israel and the Palestinians at this stage. To the contrary, the Palestine Liberation Organization also boycotted the Warsaw conference in order to express its profound opposition to U.S. policies. So there is no indication that the Warsaw ministerial in any meaningful sense helped to set the stage for a successful rollout of a new U.S. peace proposal or was the venue for either private or public progress between Israel and Gulf Arab countries. If anything, it emphasized the profound remaining difficulties facing any such efforts.

Finally, not everyone in Warsaw was on the same page rhetorically. Netanyahu, in particular, roiled international public opinion by appearing to call for a “war” with Iran, a phrase the Israelis quickly corrected, apparently at U.S. insistence, recasting it as “combating” Iran. This may have been a translation or transcription blunder, as Israel insists. Or it may have been primarily for Israeli domestic political consumption, as Netanyahu is running for re-election as a nationalist hard-liner who is advancing Israel’s campaign against Iran in coordination with both Washington and Arab countries. Indeed, the whole conference seems to have served, in part, as a way for the Trump administration and its allies to aid Netanyahu, who is facing serious legal and political challenges, in his re-election bid. Whatever its purpose, such rhetoric, coupled with the conference itself, would appear to be fueling a more paranoid and belligerent attitude in Tehran.

A major suicide bomb attack on February 13 that killed at least 27 elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces in southeast Iran, near the Pakistan border, will also certainly raise regional tensions. That the second such attack in recent weeks coincided with the Warsaw ministerial, and occurred shortly before Mohammed bin Salman is due to visit Pakistan (the base of the Baluchi group that claimed responsibility) prompted Iranian officials and media to portray the attack as an effort by the United States and Israel to turn Iran’s Baluchis into violent separatists. Whatever the cause of the attack, Iran is contending with efforts, however thus far unsuccessful, to consolidate the global and regional coalition against it, even as it is also confronting domestic, violent nonstate militias of its own, precisely the kinds of groups Iran stands accused of subsidizing, training, and arming in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and many other Arab countries. Calls by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, for “regime change” in Tehran, only serve to heighten temperatures.

Nothing was resolved in Warsaw, and not much progress appears to have been made on any front, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Iran’s economic, political, and even strategic situation continues to deteriorate and the headaches are only mounting for Tehran. At least in the short run, the stage seems set for a long and bitter series of cold and proxy wars rather than the “future of peace and security in the Middle East” to which the Warsaw conference aspired.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-10/what-iran-means-to-the-arab-world

The Islamic Republic represents a danger, but it’s also a convenient excuse for the region’s rulers.

Iran has represented many things to many people during its 40 years of Islamic revolution. To the Arab world that surrounds it today, it’s both a danger and an excuse.

Arab reaction to the 1979 Iranian revolution was split from the onset, and still is. Arab governments, particularly in the Gulf region reacted in a panic, hurriedly forming the now barely functional Gulf Cooperation Council for collective self-defense.

The Arab states of North Africa, notably Egypt, barely noticed the upheaval in Tehran, with one important exception: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Shiite revolution radicalized and emboldened Sunni Arab Islamists throughout the region.

The new Islamic Republic in Iran gave those Arab Islamists, ranging from Muslim Brothers to those who would eventually emerge as al-Qaeda and Islamic State, a model of success. From their perspective, Iranian Islamists may get many aspects of the religion wrong, but if they could overthrow a strong government of a powerful state against the wishes of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, then surely the sky was the limit for those with a better version of religious fundamentalism and revolutionary politics.

Sunni Arab Islamists both emulated Iranians and competed with them. The first major test came with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which occurred just a few months after the Iranian revolution.

Guided by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the U.S., Sunni Islamists from around the Arab world and beyond converged on Afghanistan to fight the godless communists. When they emerged “victorious,” fanatics believed they had demonstrated their superiority. Some of them went on to found al-Qaeda.

For years, they convinced themselves they could also crush the U.S., and some still believe that.

U.S.-aligned Muslim countries, notably Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, tacked sharply to their own versions of the religious right to avoid being outbid by a local Khomeini analog—again setting the stage for the rise of violent extremists.

Convincing Arab Shiites to embrace revolutionary Iran proved more difficult. But Iranian revolutionaries found they could rely on the support of their enemies at every stage.

Seeking to export their revolution, Iranian agents tried to use non-state Arab actors to do their bidding. The first and still most successful experiment came with the sponsorship of Hezbollah in Lebanon following the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982. Hezbollah remains the model that Iran continues to follow in the Arab world.

To much of the Arab world, especially to Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Israel, the Iranian threat is defined by the perennial strategy of promoting chaos through terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Shiite militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen.

During the 1980s, Arab countries sought to contain Iran through its war with Iraq, and then in the 1990s through the U.S. policy of “dual containment” of both Baghdad and Tehran.

But 9/11 changed everything.

With the 2003 invasion of Iraq and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, the U.S. unwittingly set in motion developments that may be propelling Iran to regional-superpower status.

Saddam’s Iraq was the bulwark blocking Iran’s strategic access to the rest of the Middle East. But with Saddam and the old Sunni-dominated Iraqi state and army gone, Iran’s influence spread.

From 2005 to 2010, Iran’s influence with the Arab public reached its pinnacle; Hezbollah’s popularity rose as well.

But when the pro-democracy agitation of the Arab Spring caught fire in 2011, sectarian tensions boiled over. The Syrian war broke the alliance between Iran and Muslim Brotherhood groups like Hamas, while Arab public opinion quickly soured on Brotherhood parties where they had come to power, most notably in Egypt.

Tensions boiled over in January, 2016, when Iranian mobs ransacked Saudi diplomatic missions following the execution of a dissident Saudi Shiite cleric. They’ve remained at a rapid boil since then. And given continued victories by pro-Iranian forces in Syria, Israel has increasingly come to view the Iranian threat in the same light as many Arab countries had.

During this decade, a powerful Arab discourse has developed that holds Iran responsible for all the biggest problems in the region. And they are, to be sure, a major contributor. But malignant Iranian influence is a secondary infection, not the mortal cancer Arab leaders like to portray.

Iran didn’t create the space for Shiite militia groups in Lebanon, Iraq or Yemen. It played no significant role in starting the war in Syria. It simply took advantage of chaos that arose independently of Tehran.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman likes to say that the Saudi religious extremism that animated al-Qaeda really began in 1979 as a consequence of the Iranian revolution. But that’s not true. Arab Sunni political and religious extremism arose indigenously, without help from outsiders.

The final refutation of the Arab fantasy that everything is basically Iran’s fault is Libya. Libya didn’t have any of the major factors that are supposed to produce Arab state failure: sectarian divisions, ethnic strife, major geographical distinctions or foreign interference. And it certainly didn’t have Iranian meddling.

But Libya under Colonel Moammar Al Qaddafi did suffer from an acute case of misrule typical of many Arab republics. It caught fire, and continues to burn brightly, without Iran’s intervention.

Iran is undoubtedly a problem for the Arab world. It might even be the biggest single external problem. But the internal problems remain the greater challenge.

Much of the Arab world would be a mess with or without the Iranian revolution that happened 40 years ago.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/trump-s-transformation-of-the-republican-party-is-not-as-complete-as-it-seems-1.823570

Many of the president’s supporters are willing to let him get away with anything, but it turns out that his own members of Congress are less malleable.

For the past two years, it seemed that US President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party was virtually complete, if not irreversible. But setbacks for his administration in recent months suggest otherwise.

The massive Republican defeat in the midterm elections and the disastrous government shutdown have created a growing space for those Republicans working towards a post-Trump era.

These circumstances also invite a serious re-evaluation of subtle but crucial Republican party dynamics during Mr Trump’s presidency.

The 2016 Republican primaries involved a hostile takeover of the party by Mr Trump. Most of the GOP establishment was unenthusiastic about the sudden rise of such a political outsider, and many were plainly appalled. But he won the nomination convincingly, and they all got into line, braced for defeat.

During the presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton, Mr Trump emerged as the uncontested new face of the party, which was increasingly starting to look more like a personality cult, built around him, than a recognisably conservative movement.

Since then, he has only consolidated his support among rank-and-file Republicans. In poll after poll, 80 per cent of Republican voters approve of his performance, and it’s clear that 30-40 per cent of them are the kind that, as he has boasted, wouldn’t turn against him even if he “shot someone on Fifth Avenue”.

As a result of this overwhelming popularity, most other Republican politicians have been loath to challenge Mr Trump. A failure to embrace him invites a primary challenge from his fanatical followers and the possible end of a political career.

So, virtually all Republican officeholders have publicly embraced Mr Trump as if their political lives depended on it, because they did.

But a careful review of what the 2016-2018 Republican-dominated Congress did with extraordinary majorities in both houses complicates this picture.

The two main “achievements” for Mr Trump in Congress during this extended period of total control – conservative judicial appointments and tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy – are standard Republican fare.

Any of his numerous primary opponents could, and probably would, have overseen both of them. And many of them probably would have succeeded where Mr Trump failed, particularly in the botched effort to repeal the increasingly popular Obamacare health law.

Mr Trump the candidate promised many things that made traditional Republicans in Congress uneasy. He advocated a $1 trillion infrastructure spending programme, strong support for entitlements, and a number of working-class oriented initiatives, including on healthcare, all of which utterly failed to materialise.

As Mr Trump increasingly struggles, it’s hard not to read the past two years through two parallel narratives.

The first, public and manifest plot line has Mr Trump in total control of all things Republican. But the second, quieter story shows Republicans in Congress limiting their practical, voting support of Mr Trump only to agenda items they already embraced, rendering him more figurehead than leader.

Mr Trump has certainly altered standard Republican rhetoric on populist issues, including immigration, trade, Russia, and alliances, such as Nato.

But in his very first year, Congress pressured Mr Trump to enforce more sanctions against Russia, and the Republican Senate has just voted to disapprove of his plans to remove US troops from Syria and Afghanistan and called for an end to most US military involvement in Yemen.

He has encountered significant Republican congressional pushback to his condemnations of Nato and embrace of Russia.

He has received some grudging support on tariffs and trade wars, but some of his most passionate encouragement has come from union-oriented Democrats, such as Sherrod Brown of Ohio. He certainly doesn’t seem to have transformed the core attitudes of most elected Republicans on free trade or turned them protectionist.

With a few exceptions, his trade actions have been mostly showy declarations without much substance, partly because of congressional resistance.

Immigration may be most revealing. Mr Trump has severely damaged his presidency with the government shutdown he engineered to try to force Democrats to grant him funding to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.

He is even threatening to declare a “national emergency” to seize money without the approval of Congress, preposterously insisting that there is an unprecedented “crisis” at the border.

But why didn’t Mr Trump simply order Republicans to fork over this money in the first two years of his presidency, when they controlled the House and Senate? Why didn’t he even ask them for it?

It’s probably partly because Mr Trump doesn’t particularly care about building an actual wall. What he really wants is a wrestling match with Democrats over the wall, which is a proxy for immigration, and, more deeply, for white communal power.

But it’s also partly because a fight over wall funding with an all-Republican Congress would have revealed the gulf between the president’s populist and nativist rhetoric, and the continued traditional conservative orientation of most elected Republicans. Besides, Congress cares that the wall is widely unpopular.

Given the dual drubbings of the midterm elections and the shutdown fiasco, a Republican primary challenge to Mr Trump next year is now virtually certain.

If his legal and political difficulties mount, the economy takes a nosedive, or both, it’s easy to imagine a serious and successful one.

Mr Trump retains a powerful hold on the imaginations of most Republican voters. But his grip on the party may be starting to slip.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/trump-s-attack-on-his-own-intelligence-services-was-both-extraordinary-and-expected-1.820751

He clearly has little appetite for the unvarnished, fact-based assessments offered by his own intelligence agencies

This week starkly illustrated a remarkable feature of Donald Trump’s administration: this president does not do policy; he only does politics.

Policy professionals always struggle to square sound foreign policy with the effective domestic politics that political leaders require. This tension cannot be completely resolved, although its intensity varies, depending on circumstances and personalities.

This conundrum has now sunk to its American nadir.

It’s not just that most current administration officials are internationalist hawks, while the president has neo-isolationist impulses.

It’s that Mr Trump simply does not see international strategic problems as arising against a backdrop of verifiable realities. Instead of a realistic representation of circumstances as they are, akin to a photograph, he sees a blank canvas, on which he can paint whatever surrealist landscapes best suit his agenda.

Hence, this week’s bizarre confrontation between Mr Trump and all 17 US intelligence agencies, led by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

On January 29, Mr Coats, flanked by the CIA and FBI chiefs, presented their 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment to Congress.

The annual National Intelligence Strategy document, on which it is based, is usually released in a redacted public version and a classified one for those with clearance.

This year, intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of issuing their entire strategy publicly.

Mr Coats said that they wanted to reassure the public that the agencies remain committed to producing “nuanced, independent, and unvarnished intelligence”, and not serving any other purpose.

That honesty and independence has been repeatedly questioned by Mr Trump who routinely denigrates US intelligence services, dismisses their findings, has compared them to Nazis and even sided with Russia’s Vladimir Putin over them.

The intelligence chiefs were essentially saying that, in light of the accusations the president has leveled against them, transparency was their best defense.

They knew they were provoking an argument they needed to win.

Certainly, they will have anticipated howls of protest from the White House, given that so many of their “independent and unvarnished” findings contradict core assertions that the president frequently cites as political rationalizations.

While Mr Trump constantly hypes the “progress” he has made with Pyongyang, the assessment finds that North Korea is “unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons” because its leaders view them as “critical to regime survival”.

It states that Russia has, indeed, engaged in election meddling, information warfare, and efforts to divide the West and undermine the post-Second World War international order. Mr Trump disputes all of this. He welcomes the division of the West, denigrates the international order, and dismisses allegations of Russian interference.

The assessment holds that, for all its other malign behavior, Iran has not yet violated the terms of the nuclear agreement, which the president cites as a major reason for withdrawing from the deal.

While Mr Trump insists that ISIS has been thoroughly crushed to justify his order to withdraw all US forces from Syria, the assessment finds that it remains a potent threat.

And, most damningly, it makes no mention whatsoever of the entirely fictional “national security crisis” that has prompted Mr Trump to deploy thousands of US forces at the Mexican border and supposedly justifies building his wall.

The fact-based reality offered by the Annual Threat Assessment flatly refutes many fundamental claims Mr Trump relies on to justify his actions.

After the gauntlet was thrown down by the intelligence community, Mr Trump, inevitably, picked it up and hurled a series of insults, via Twitter, back the agencies he characterizes as the “deep state”. These included saying the intelligence services were simply “wrong” and that they “should go back to school”.

This is a particularly disturbing aspect of the relentless campaign of deinstitutionalization this column has been consistently tracking. Yet again, Mr Trump is lashing out at another authoritative source of information and analysis that remains free of – or is actively resisting – his control.

He has admitted that he denounces the “fake news media” to blunt bad news or criticism of him by the press. He attacks his own intelligence services to rebut their contradictions of his ceaseless false claims.

As for the FBI and other police, Mr Trump is evidently concerned about what they may uncover about his activities, and those of his associates who have not yet been arrested or imprisoned.

Astonishingly, but true to form, he quickly compounded his assault on reality by tweeting that the intelligence chiefs’ statements had been “totally misquoted”, that they never really debunked his fraudulent claims, and that this profound and serious dispute isn’t real and was fabricated by the press.

Mr Trump’s biggest advantage in political and rhetorical fights seems to be his unique shamelessness and boundless willingness to lie when almost anyone else would at least think twice.

Clearly, there’s no room for “unvarnished intelligence” and other inconvenient facts that interfere with his political imperatives.

Mr Trump only does politics, but he heads a government full of highly competent experts. For their continued professionalism, they are traduced and abused by their own chief, who then blames journalists.

During an actual crisis – and there will eventually be one – the president and intelligence services must support each other with trust and confidence. But how can they, when the chasm between them is only widening as Mr Trump’s term staggers on?