https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-18/mbs-is-both-saudi-autocrat-and-genuine-reformer?srnd=opinion


Westerners see a link between political, economic and social liberalization. Mohammed bin Salman doesn’t.

A growing body of evidence links the suspects identified by Turkey in the disappearance of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi to the Saudi government led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Suspicions about the prince’s involvement threaten to strain relations with the U.S., which had embraced his efforts to modernize Saudi Arabia’s society and economy and to play a strong regional role in Middle East affairs.

That explains why many prominent Americans eager to strengthen Saudi ties have cast him as a progressive, modernizing reformer. And that’s why it’s so significant that influential members of Congress are now talking about him as though he’s just another power-hungry autocrat.

Which is he?

When it comes to social change, the prince is unquestionably a major reformer and a largely progressive one.

Women are now allowed to drive and have many more chances to interact with men at work, in school and in public places. Saudi Arabia remains a very conservative country, even by Arab and Muslim standards, but in many ways its mores would be unrecognizable to a traveler who last visited, say, five years ago.

MBS, as the crown prince is known, has dragged Saudi Arabia into the 20th century, but not the 21st. As long as Saudi women suffer the guardianship laws that force them to secure the consent of a close male relative for many basic life decisions, it will remain a suffocating patriarchy. But with women driving and other gender-related transformations, one can sense that those guardianship codes are likely to be modified or eliminated in the foreseeable future.

On religion, too, MBS is spearheading major changes. The crown prince is trying to ensure that government-sanctioned interpretations of Islam are more tolerant, less literal and less extreme than in recent decades. The once-dreaded religious police have been stripped of enforcement powers, and the government is pushing Saudi Islam in a progressive direction.

At the economic level, MBS plainly wants to be a transformative reformer. But he’s not there yet. The effort to wean the Saudi economy off its near-total reliance on energy is still largely happening on paper. Two years after the prince raised the idea of selling shares in the state-owned oil producer Aramco to investors, a planned initial public offering seems only to be receding further into the future. The same goes for plans to curtail government handouts.

That’s not to say that economic reforms won’t take place. The prince sees his social changes, including unleashing the economic power of women, as crucial to securing Saudi Arabia’s economic viability by creating a new social compact that turns dependent subjects into productive citizens. So his ambitions to be an economic reformer shouldn’t be dismissed.

But politics are a different story. MBS is transforming some aspects of the Saudi political system, but not by liberalizing it. To the contrary, the political changes he’s enforcing are concentrating power in the royal court and within his inner circle, restricting the number of decision-makers and cracking down on even mild disagreement.

As a result, many Western commentators have dismissed the idea that MBS should be considered a reformer at all, even suggesting that he has conned Western sympathizers.

But that’s the wrong way to think about it. He just doesn’t accept the Western notion that political liberalization has to go hand-in-hand with social and economic progress.

The crown prince is aware that reforms have the potential to undermine his power. That’s doubtless the lesson he takes from the experience of modernizing 20th-century monarchs like Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and the Shah of Iran, who were violently overthrown after unleashing change in traditional societies that they ultimately could not control.

So while the Western instinct is to see political repression in Saudi Arabia as a threat to the social and economic changes underway, MBS almost certainly sees it as a way to protect his reform project.

This explains why he has arrested the women who campaigned for the right to drive at the very moment he granted that right. The dual message tells conservatives that change is here to stay whether they like it or not, while warning liberals not to get the wrong idea about challenging authority. Even if the government concludes that an activist is right, he or she can still be arrested for complaining.

But the power to have it both ways when it comes to reform is not completely in the prince’s hands.

The political crackdown has already spooked foreign investors and created domestic capital flight, and the Khashoggi affair has discouraged economic engagement by the Western private sector.

Maybe MBS thinks that’s a temporary problem as it was, for example, for the Communist Party in China as it cracked down on dissent while setting off reforms that produced an economic boom starting in the late 1980s.

The Chinese experiment in centralized control of socioeconomic liberalization continues today. Can a Saudi version succeed? The specter of Jamal Khashoggi is whispering, “no.”

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/nikki-haley-was-no-voice-of-reason-that-s-why-she-could-be-the-next-face-of-the-republican-party-1.780116

In the Middle East, she is widely believed to be the worst-ever US ambassador to the UN, but that only strengthens her politically

At the outset of the Donald Trump administration, it seemed his most likely successor was his vice president, Mike Pence. However, it quickly became apparent that his UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who resigned last week, was at least as plausible.

She has used the UN post with consummate skill to promote herself as a national leader on the American right. Indeed, Mr Trump passed her over for Secretary of State in part because she had become too prominent and popular.

Ms Haley and Mr Pence are both former governors, and hence considered well-qualified for the presidency.

However, Ms Haley has distinguished herself repeatedly from Mr Trump, including implicitly criticising him and robustly pushing back against his implied criticisms of her.

Mr Pence, by contrast, has basked in Mr Trump’s shadow. He is notorious for sycophantically praising Mr Trump and gazing at him with the puppy-eyed adoration Nancy Reagan reserved for her husband Ronald.

It is not clear when Ms Haley decided to resign, but there was virtually no advance warning from a White House that usually leaks like a broken bucket. But, whatever the proximate cause was, the obvious underlying reality is that Ms Haley is positioning herself for a presidential bid.

If Mr Trump continues to enjoy relative good fortune and virtually unchallenged support among Republicans, she will have to wait until 2024, when she will be just 52 years old. But, by leaving now, she is reserving the option of a 2020 bid, should one or more of the numerous potential crises on the horizon befall Mr Trump.

Leaving now is essential to preserving her viability as an alternative to Mr Trump, should he become embattled and weakened.

She would pose as a unifier in a post-Trump Republican Party, able to appeal simultaneously to the “America first” constituency because of her loyal service to his administration; to hawkish neoconservatives whose internationalist and engaged foreign policies she has supported; and evangelical Christians otherwise aligned with Mr Pence whom she has courted her entire career, beginning with a religious conversion to Methodist Christianity.

Ms Haley’s appeal will be considerable. Not only will she potentially be able to bring together the Trumpian, neoconservative and evangelical constituencies, she’s a potentially crucial symbol of diversity for a Republican Party now cripplingly identified mainly with white men.

She is also a relatively young woman of colour, an Indian-American of Sikh origin, and hence an important symbolic corrective to the Republican Party’s stronger-than-ever identification with older white males in a diverse society.

Americans generally look for a change after four or eight years, whether or not they’re switching parties, so Republicans probably need a striking contrast to Mr Trump to have a fighting chance after he goes.

And Americans may not relish following a white-nationalist President Trump with a Christian-nationalist President Pence, thus switching from ethnic to religious intolerance. Mr Pence’s Christian fundamentalism is very different to, and may be much less widely appealing than Mr Trump’s white ethnic chauvinism.

Ms Haley’s record on the Middle East is mixed but disturbing. Many Gulf audiences applauded her tough stance against Iran. In particular, she made the vital case that Iran is supplying the Houthis with the missiles being fired at Saudi cities.

Unfortunately, one way she used the UN post to further her political ambitions was by consistently and mercilessly bashing Palestinians. That pandered, at no political cost, to hawkish, neoconservative, evangelical and Islamophobic audiences.

Ms Haley scandalously blocked the appointment of former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as the UN special envoy to Libya, simply because of his Palestinian identity.

She strongly backed all of Mr Trump’s endless, vicious anti-Palestinian actions, including recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the US Embassy there, and slashing US funding for Palestinian refugees

But the Palestinian view that Ms Haley was “the worst ever” American UN ambassador may not last long if the national security adviser John Bolton plays a key role in choosing her successor.

Mr Bolton will try to ensure that, unlike Ms Haley, Washington’s next UN ambassador is a relatively junior figure aligned with him. Indeed, if he can, Mr Bolton will even deprive her successor of full cabinet-member rank, which would both ensure his primacy and further denigrate the UN’s role.

But all of that would only underline how effectively Ms Haley has used her UN post to transform herself into a major national and international figure, and become extremely popular with the American right.

Even many “Never Trump” conservatives are bemoaning her departure and lauding her as one of the last of the “grown-ups” in Mr Trump’s administration.

She did help keep the US internationally engaged, but often in an extremely destructive manner. And she never challenged Mr Trump’s white nationalism or, as Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has, fought for better policies within her own remit.

To the contrary, Mr Trump and Ms Haley generally seem to have brought out the worst in each other.

Nonetheless, she is now, more than ever, the clear heir apparent, and even a potential rival, to Mr Trump at the very top of the Republican party.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-12/journalist-khashoggi-s-disappearance-must-change-u-s-saudi-terms

The accusation that Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey shouldn’t end Washington’s ties to Riyadh, but it cannot go unanswered.

The disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and writer for the Washington Post, is the biggest crisis in U.S.-Saudi relations in years. While the Trump administration is resistant, unless the emerging narrative about what happened changes, a clear American response will be inevitable and warranted.

But we need to be clear about what we want and why we want it, and to accept our own responsibility for the international climate in which this has occurred.

Everyone agrees that on Oct. 2, Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Saudi government insists he left shortly thereafter, but can’t substantiate that. The Turkish government says it is sure that he was killed by a team of Saudi agents; Ankara has released fragmentary and circumstantial evidence to back that up.

Bipartisan pressure is mounting for the administration to demonstrate U.S. outrage. Business leaders are pulling out of Saudi investment conferences and breaking off negotiations for new deals. And the Post and other newspapers are rightly insisting that an attack on one journalist is an attack on us all.

President Donald Trump would love to ignore this, but Congress and the media aren’t going to let him. The administration is going to have to take some action. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Eli Lake outlined exactly what a smart but forceful response might look like.

But there is a big problem. The long-standing U.S. partnership with Saudi Arabia is entirely transactional. It’s certainly not about shared values.

Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are stuck with each other unless they want to completely rethink their strategic posture. The U.S. needs a local partner in the Gulf region, especially while Iran seeks to overturn the regional status quo that Saudi Arabia backs.

There’s is nothing much the U.S. gives Saudi Arabia we don’t need them to have, and taking it away for a long period of time would cause major problems for us too.

Therefore if Saudi Arabia can’t exonerate itself, the most likely scenario is some time in the doghouse. Weapons sales frozen or canceled. Technology transfers deferred. Investments postponed or abandoned. And diplomatic engagement greatly reduced.

But the essential aspects of the relationship – military-to-military and intelligence cooperation and work to stabilize the global energy markets – would continue as always because the price of not doing that is prohibitive.

After some period of penance and repentance, Saudi Arabia’s timeout would be lifted, and things would basically return to normal.

The relationship really is that indispensable. If it wasn’t shaken by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the war in Yemen, then fate of any one individual, no matter how appalling, isn’t going to reshape it either.

But there’s an additional complication. As F. Gregory Gause III points out, while Saudi Arabia still shares our basic strategic goal of preserving the regional status quo, the tactics being recently pursued by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are increasingly disruptive and, in their own way, destabilizing.

The point of any sustained U.S. pressure on Saudi Arabia in response to the Khashoggi affair must be to convince the Saudi king and crown prince that the mutual U.S.-Saudi strategy of defending the status quo and regional stability can’t be effectively pursued by reckless and destabilizing tactics. Indeed, when the tactics directly undermine the strategy, the whole project becomes self-defeating.

In part, these misguided actions are the result of Saudi Arabia assuming a regional leadership role for which it is not fully prepared. The collapse of traditional Arab power centers in Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad has left a vacuum that Gulf countries now attempt to fill. That’s exacerbated by the gradual pullback from the region by the U.S. And Saudi Arabia’s regional leadership learning curve appears steep.

Saudi recklessness is also partly driven by panic about the rising power of Iran, especially since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the proliferation of disruptive pro-Iranian nonstate actors in the Arab world.

Letting the Saudis know we’re serious about stability in the Arab world and defending our mutual interests is important, but part of that deal is insisting that Saudi policies don’t undermine the strategic goal of stability.

Finally, if Khashoggi was killed with Saudi involvement, that is a moral outrage. The U.S. can’t shrug at such conduct from anyone. But the laissez-faire attitude from Trump and his administration regarding human rights has encouraged friend and foe alike to disregard the most fundamental international norms.

We are not going to get very far in championing and protecting international norms and rules with friends like Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Turkey – or with adversaries like Russia, China and Iran – if our own president and policies derisively dismiss those standards. If Saudi Arabia has indeed “disappeared” Khashoggi, our own rhetoric and policies helped set the stage for that, and we, too, must change our ways.

The probable pressure, and likely period of relative estrangement, forthcoming between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is an important opportunity to reset some of the basic terms of the relationship. But it’s got to be done carefully and intelligently, and both sides are going to have to adjust their way of doing business.

https://agsiw.org/how-the-khashoggi-affair-may-affect-u-s-saudi-relations/

The disappearance of the prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi won’t completely upend U.S.-Saudi relations but will almost certainly have a significant negative impact on them.

The disappearance of the prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was living in self-imposed exile in the United States and writing for The Washington Post, is developing into a significant problem for U.S.-Saudi relations. The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is primarily transactional, and not sentimental or values-based on either side. Therefore, even if many Americans conclude that the Saudi government is responsible for Khashoggi’s disappearance or death, the fundamentals of the relationship are unlikely to be re-evaluated and transformed. However, it is likely that there will be a significant impact on the political and foreign policy conversation in Washington regarding relations with Saudi Arabia that could lead to repercussions in both the near and long terms. Saudi Arabia may have to deal with much more opposition in Congress to weapons sales and other forms of cooperation and far more skepticism and criticism in the mainstream U.S. media. At the very least, the tone and tenor of the relationship is likely to deteriorate reflecting a growing anti-Saudi sentiment in American public opinion.

On the early afternoon of October 2, Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and he has not been seen since. Saudi authorities insist he left the building shortly after entering, but have not released evidence of this, and Turkish authorities, in a swirl of complex and often contradictory leaked statements, have accusedSaudi Arabia of his premeditated murder. The United States is drawn into the controversy because Khashoggi was a resident of Washington, DC and writing for a major U.S. newspaper. Pressure is rapidly mounting, particularly from Congress and the media, especially the Post, on President Donald J. Trump to use U.S. leverage to press both Turkey and, especially, Saudi Arabia for evidence corroborating their competing claims. And there is mounting pressure for some practical consequences for Saudi Arabia from Washington if it is concluded Riyadh was responsible for his disappearance.

But the nature of the U.S.-Saudi alliance in all probability strongly limits the impact this event could have on the fundamentals of the relationship. Each side fulfills a core strategic need for the other, and there are no plausible alternatives for both. The key bases of the alliance are strategic and military cooperation, stability and order in the world’s energy markets, and maintaining security and stability in the Gulf region and the strategically crucial waters of the Gulf itself. As long as the United States wishes to remain the predominant outside power in the Gulf region and the guarantor of stability, it must rely on a partnership with a key local power. That means, in effect, that Washington must partner with either Saudi Arabia or Iran.

As the administration of former President Barack Obama discovered in the months after the nuclear agreement with Iran was concluded, Iran is not prepared to act as a stabilizing power in the region and remains fundamentally a revisionist actor challenging the status quo. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is committed to maintaining most aspects of regional stability and the status quo, and therefore Washington and Riyadh are largely in accord on most long-term goals in the Gulf region and the broader Middle East. Saudi Arabia, too, must partner with a global power that can help ensure its own security needs, which it cannot protect entirely on its own. Russia and China are unable, and probably unwilling, to play that role, because they lack the power projection capability under the current circumstances and also maintain strong relations with Iran.

Therefore, neither the United States nor Saudi Arabia can radically alter the basic equation in this transactional relationship without fundamentally rethinking their strategic posture. No amount of tension that has arisen in recent years, including from the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, or the war in Yemen, has come close to prompting such a fundamental re-evaluation. It is therefore unlikely that even if Washington concludes that Riyadh was responsible for Khashoggi’s disappearance or death, this incident would prompt a thoroughgoing reset, whether under the Trump administration or any potential Republican or Democratic successor.

However, if the narrative that is rapidly taking hold in Washington, that Saudi Arabia was responsible for Khashoggi’s disappearance, becomes the received wisdom, the relationship will undoubtedly suffer negative impacts if not a total re-evaluation. It would be widely seen in most U.S. political and foreign policy circles as a serious transgression of human rights and diplomatic norms, and part of a disturbing growing worldwide pattern of attacks on journalists. That Khashoggi was a U.S. resident and a columnist for a major U.S. paper intensifies the sense of U.S. investment in this issue, along with the close U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia. Trump has expressed concern but that is widely regarded as insufficient. Calls are already mounting in Congress for increased U.S. engagement and potentially pressure on Saudi Arabia.

Moreover, this issue plays into two existing political divisions in Washington, and will be used by anti-Trump forces in the Democratic Party to cudgel the president and the administration. This is already happening, and dovetails with major pressure on the administration regarding Saudi Arabia linked to the war in Yemen and other such criticisms. Republican critics of the administration’s foreign policy, such as Senator Bob Corker, or even those who try to nudge and harass the administration toward a more engaged and internationalist policy, such as Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, are already seizing on the issue as well.

The Senate and House of Representatives have many options for bedeviling U.S.-Saudi cooperation on a number of fronts. They can complicate and even, for a time, block weapons sales and other forms of military and intelligence cooperation and technology transfers, especially if Democrats regain a majority in the House or the Senate after the November midterm elections. Among the pending sales that could be interfered with to make such a point are thousands of precision-guided munitions needed for the war in Yemen and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system worth $15 billion. This last sale is especially sensitive given the spate of recent Houthi missile attacks on Saudi cities, which has refocused attention on missile defenses generally. There have already been several efforts to block or delay these sales in Congress, mostly linked to humanitarian concerns about the impact of the war in Yemen on civilians.

However, Democrats and friendly and unfriendly Republican critics of administration foreign policy understand the transactional and virtually indispensable nature of the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Therefore, they will not push for a complete rupture or fundamental rethinking of the relationship short of a major political or strategic earthquake that prompts a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of the bases of the U.S. strategic posture in the Gulf region. The fate of any one individual, no matter how distressing and disturbing, is unlikely to prompt that.

There is one final area in which the Khashoggi affair could reverberate and have a negative impact on U.S.-Saudi relations. The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act that was passed at the end of Obama’s second term, which allows U.S. citizens to sue foreign governments for alleged cooperation on deadly terrorist attacks in the United States (mainly prompted to allow 9/11 survivors to sue Saudi Arabia) is still in force. Several cases continue to wend their way slowly through the legal process. However, the working assumption has been that judges are most likely to refer the matter to the State Department, which can certify that the country in question is making a good-faith effort to resolve the issue and prevent the case from going forward.

However, if this incident is in the long run widely regarded by Americans as an assassination of a government critic by Saudi Arabia, the chances that a judge will use the authority provided by JASTA to try to allow a case to go forward to discovery without giving the State Department a chance to block it may be increased. JASTA continues to be a ticking time bomb in the back of the U.S.-Saudi closet, and it could explode at some point into a major diplomatic incident.

Therefore, while the Khashoggi affair, however it plays out, will not lead to a fundamental rupture or re-evaluation of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, it is also unlikely to have no impact or be dismissed as an unfortunate incident. Congress can act on its own, and pressure from Congress and the media may prove irresistible, forcing the administration to take a stronger stance than it wishes. Finally, the reputation of Saudi Arabia, and especially Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is likely to be severely damaged if Americans conclude he ordered or permitted the abduction or killing of Khashoggi. A tremendous amount of time, effort, and money spent on generating goodwill in the United States for the Saudi government, and particularly the crown prince, and the major social and economic reforms currently underway in Saudi Arabia would be greatly undermined in a manner seriously deleterious to relations. Riyadh will find U.S. goodwill in general a lot harder to come by, to the extent that it’s going to be much more difficult in the coming months for Americans to even speak positively about the Saudi government without facing serious pushback.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/kavanaugh-s-confirmation-is-just-the-start-of-this-sorry-story-1.777956

The Senate may have voted in the favour of President Donald Trump’s nominee, but the Democrats still have options to explore

This weekend the US Senate confirmed Judge Brett Kavanaugh, 53, to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. But this story won’t end there.

His will be the decisive fifth vote in a new conservative court majority that could be dominant for decades. Conservatives have been trying for more than 30 years to control the court, and now they will.

But liberals won’t simply accept that.

On both procedural and substantive grounds, a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives – poised to emerge following the November midterms – can launch a real inquiry.

Questions regarding Judge Kavanaugh’s conduct, truthfulness and temperament have steadily grown.

The FBI’s “investigation” was a pitiful charade. Neither the judge nor his primary sexual assault accuser, Dr Christine Blasey Ford, were interviewed. Scores of people are on the record saying they have relevant information for the authorities, but were ignored.

The FBI was restricted to questioning a tiny handful of approved persons to seek implausible corroborative eyewitness testimony to two alleged incidents, and nothing more.

There’s obviously a mountain of relevant information, but the White House didn’t let the FBI go near it, since White House counsel Don McGann, Mr Kavanaugh’s primary booster, controlled their activities.

The New York Times reports that he warned President Donald Trump that a broad inquiry “would be potentially disastrous for Judge Kavanaugh’s chances.”

That dovetails with a disturbing pattern.

Ms Ford and the Democrats pressed for a serious FBI investigation, while Mr Kavanaugh and the Republicans resisted it. Senate Republicans fast-tracked the nomination, demonstrating an appreciation that time was not on their side and the less people knew, the better.

Ms Ford’s Senate testimony was straightforward, clear, and manifestly honest. Mr Kavanaugh’s was emotional, elusive, misleading and even downright dishonest. Her testimony bore all the hallmarks of truthfulness, whereas his, for all its passion, betrayed evasion and deception.

There are also troubling indications that he and his supporters knew about or anticipated accusations before they were made and prepared advance defences in a highly suspect manner.

The FBI report, which remains hidden, hasn’t answered any questions, because it wasn’t designed to. It was obviously just intended to give Republicans a fig leaf for confirming the nominee.

Most of the story may still be unknown, but a great deal is probably discoverable, and bad for Judge Kavanaugh.

So there are ample factual grounds for Democrats to reopen the case, as well as powerful political and procedural reasons.

The Kavanaugh nomination followed the scandal of Mr Trump’s first Supreme Court appointment, Neil Gorsuch. Senate Republicans refused to consider then-President Barack Obama’s candidate, Merrick Garland, for almost a year until after the next presidential election.

This unprecedented manipulation of majority power to essentially steal a Supreme Court seat is part of a larger picture.

Mr Trump lost the popular vote by almost three million to Hillary Clinton, while the Republican Senate majority represents a shrinking minority of Americans, heavily concentrated in smaller and rural states.

Republicans disproportionately benefit from a range of deviations in the American system from “one man, one vote” democracy, including heaps of “dark money” from unidentified donors, voter suppression, partisan gerrymandering and similar undemocratic distortions.

Republican control of the White House and Senate, if not the House of Representatives, represents the growth of what amounts to minority rule in the United States: the predominance of a right-wing government in what is increasingly becoming a majority centre-left country.

The House of Representatives is the least susceptible to such distortions, and appears to be about to fall back into Democratic hands. Both the Senate and the White House could easily follow. US politics isn’t just cyclical. It’s pendular, and Democrats will eventually come back to power.

But the conservative movement has secured the Supreme Court majority that has been its primary focus for decades. One can easily imagine that, soon enough, Democrats, perhaps with some liberal Republicans, will lead a progressive government while the emerging right-wing Supreme Court majority, largely shaped by Mr Trump, tries to block its every move.

Since this is what both sides are also imagining, Democrats will explore every option to prevent it. There’s never been a successful impeachment of a Supreme Court justice. But there’s always a first time, especially since the new Supreme Court majority will be widely and plausibly regarded as tainted and illegitimate.

Whether or not they can remove Judge Kavanaugh, a new Democratic-controlled government is also likely to try expanding the Supreme Court by several new members. Expect that, too.

The bottom line is, Republicans don’t have a defensible narrative. They are either saying, in effect, that Ms Ford is a crazy person who has been manipulated into spreading outlandish lies. Or they are saying that even if she’s telling the truth, with all that implies, they don’t care.

Both arguments are utterly indefensible. In this giant swirl of contested claims, that these are the only two positions available to them has been lost. But if tested against the facts and more rational interpretations, they’ll both collapse spectacularly.

So, his confirmation will be just the beginning of the already sordid Kavanaugh saga.

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/how-iran-and-the-gulf-arab-states-can-start-a-dialogue-again

It’s hard to overstate the regional impact of the rivalry between Iran and several Gulf Arab states—most notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—bordering in recent years on enmity.

While these countries haven’t come close to direct warfare, tensions have impacted many regional conflicts in the Middle East including in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, and festering instability in countries like Lebanon, Bahrain, and even among the Palestinians.

More even than the struggle against terrorist groups like al-Qaeda or Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Turkish-Kurdish struggles, the confrontation between Iran and Gulf Arab countries has provided an ideological framework that generated proxy conflicts and greatly exacerbated existing ones. As a result, this has caused Iran and Gulf Arab countries to search for every opportunity to bedevil each other, and expand their own influence while limiting the other side.

These contradictions boiled over with the execution of the Saudi Shia dissident and secessionist cleric Nimr al-Nimr in January 2016, and the subsequent mob attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran, which led Riyadh to end its ties with Tehran. But tensions have been a constant feature of the relationship since the 1979 Iranian revolution, and particularly following the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

From a Gulf Arab perspective, since the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Iran hasn’t only gone from strength to strength in the Middle East, but has been systematically encroaching into the Arab world through a campaign of destabilizing Arab countries and utilizing proxies and militias to exploit or create chaos in Arab societies in order to expand its influence. Iran sees itself surrounded by enemies and casts its role in Arab countries like Syria and Iraq as combating terrorism in order to enhance stability and security.

Two recent conflicts have brought them closer than ever before. In Syria, Iranian forces and Iran-backed militias engaged in direct combat against Gulf Arab-sponsored rebel groups. And in Yemen, Gulf Arab forces have battled Iran-sponsored Houthi rebel fighters. In each case, one side has been directly confronting clients or proxies of the other.

Conventional wisdom suggests that relations are presently as bad as ever, if not worse. Tehran has blamed the United States and Gulf Arab countries for terrorist attacks inside Iran. Riyadh and Washington blame Iran for a series of missile attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen against Saudi cities.

Both countries are reacting to a new campaign of maximum pressure against Iran unleashed by the Trump administration following its withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement. The Iranian leadership feels angry and alarmed, particularly since sanctions have helped greatly exacerbate a serious economic crisis in Iran which, in turn, intensified a range of social and political tensions within the country.

Saudi Arabia and its allies, by contrast, feel that Washington is once again fully on their side, which will lead to a reversal of strategic victories for Iran in the Arab world since 2003.

Yet few believe there is a military solution to the tensions between Iran and Gulf Arab countries. Tehran may wish to become a revolutionary regional superpower, but its leaders understand that its appeal is limited to certain, largely majority Shia or Shia-dominated areas.

Therefore, it’s not surprising that Iran has been more open to dialogue in recent years, believing it’s entering any such discourse from a position of strength.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, by contrast, are resistant to a direct dialogue under the current circumstances, believing Iran would be shaking with one hand and sticking the knife in with the other. And, of course, they hope that Washington’s newly aggressive posture towards Iran will lead to strategic setbacks that allow them to negotiate with Tehran on more equitable terms, if not from a position of relative advantage.

So, eventually, dialogue will be necessary. But it’s impossible to imagine a leap from the current estrangement and widespread proxy confrontation to a new norm of cooperation and comity. To put it plainly, any rapprochement will have to be realized in stages, and the creation of a functional dialogue itself would be a major accomplishment.

Efforts by Kuwait and others to engineer that have failed spectacularly. The key may be to develop a sequential process, in which successfully dealing with one issue leads logically to the next, until the most damaging regional problems are dealt with and the basis for greater stability is restored.

Such a framework for progress could form by demonstrating the mutual gains, building confidence, and laying the groundwork for the next constructive step, as well as reducing the chances of additional irritants and sources of tension.

Ending the war in Yemen is an obvious first step in the process, given its centrality to Saudi concerns and Iran’s limited interests in the country. It’s hard to imagine a working dialogue going forward until this conflict is contained and possibly resolved.

Second, both sides can and should agree on the political independence, territorial integrity, and need for stability in Syria and Iraq. This would reflect a generalized understanding of spheres of influence and a balance of power in the region that is mutually acceptable, sustainable and reflective of the actual conditions in the countries in question. In effect, Saudi Arabia and its allies will have to tolerate a more powerful and influential Iran than they would like, but Tehran cannot continue to impose its will by force on parts of the Arab world in which it currently operates as a hegemonic power.

Finally, it’s essential that Hezbollah return to serving its constituency in Lebanon and stop acting as an international revolutionary vanguard supporting a range of militias and proxies throughout the region. Ending Iran’s support for militias and strategy of promoting and exploiting state weakness in much of the Arab world will have to be a central theme, and of any successful process. This third stage would represent, in effect, Iran agreeing to move away from its reliance on proxies to pursue its interests at the expense of its Arab neighbors while others recognize its legitimate regional role and interests.

Such a sequential framework is potentially realistic and practicable, and it’s hard to imagine a more ambitious approach succeeding under the current circumstances. And it may be that such a dialogue cannot be entertained now. However, sooner rather than later the limitations of what all sides can achieve in the era following the US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement will become evident. Regime change in Iran is highly unlikely, but Tehran won’t be able to isolate Washington and its allies or keep the nuclear deal afloat for long.

When the dust settles, Iran and Gulf Arab countries—as well as United States—will have to confront the limitations of what can be achieved under these circumstances and once again look for a plausible modus vivendi. Then a constructive dialogue should become possible, particularly if Iran suffers strategic setbacks in the Arab world where it has overreached.

That could help ensure Iran’s negotiating positions are more realistic and that Gulf Arab countries can enter such a dialogue with more confidence and, therefore, realism. That would help set up the long-term compromise described above where both sides get less than they want, but as much as they need, from each other.

Iraq’s New Government: Balancing Allies and Neighbors

With the new government, Iraq could be a major arena for those seeking to roll back Iran’s influence in the region.

The formation of Iraq’s new government under the prime minister-designate, Adel Abdul Mahdi, could represent another small step forward in the incremental process, being led by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, of counterbalancing Iran’s hegemonic influence in Iraq and reintegrating that country into its broader Arab milieu. Much depends on the nature of the government Abdul Mahdi will assemble in the coming weeks, and how the division of power plays out as various Iraqi leaders orient themselves in the postelection environment.

Abdul Mahdi is a consensus choice that points to continuity rather than reform and avoids consolidating or institutionalizing the rise in power of the Popular Mobilization Forces pro-Iranian sectarian militia groups that, along with their allies, represent Tehran’s strongest assets in Iraq. As The Washington Post reported, “A pro-Iran bloc of lawmakers, led by [PMF] militia commander Hadi al-Amiri and former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, tried to block Abdul Mahdi’s nomination but eventually dropped their opposition once they realized they did not have enough seats for a parliamentary majority.” Eventually Amiri joined Muqtada al-Sadr, head of the largest bloc in Parliament, in backing Abdul Mahdi, presumably in exchange for key posts in the forthcoming Cabinet.

Abdul Mahdi’s elevation, therefore, is a compromise everyone can live with, including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Sadr, Kurdish parties, and even Iran. Indeed, he is a formerly sectarian Shia politician who once had deep ties to Tehran, but has since become much more of a nationalist nonsectarian figure. He therefore represents many of the same tendencies as Sadr – Iraqi nationalism and outreach to Kurds and Sunni Arabs but from an unmistakably Shia communal basis. The days in which the United States and Iran could essentially cooperate in Iraq, for example to maintain the status quo and stability or, especially, to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, are long gone. However, the appointment of Abdul Mahdi as prime minister, with Sadr lurking closely behind him in a position of authoritative kingmaker power doesn’t particularly favor either Washington or Tehran, the two outside powers that have dominated Iraqi politics since the ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003.

However, it could represent a significant step forward for the newest external players in the Iraqi political scene, the Gulf Arab countries – particularly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Saudi Arabia, of course, has a long history with Iraq, but essentially walked away from efforts to seriously engage with Iraqi domestic politics during the premiership of Nuri al-Maliki, who pursued an increasingly sectarian and pro-Iranian policy. In the past few years, however, Riyadh has made a major effort to re-engage with Iraq largely through incentives and positive diplomacy, seeking to foster Iraqi policies that are more balanced between Arab and Iranian influences and interests. For instance, Sadr and Saudi Arabia publicly built strong channels of communication in the run-up to the Iraqi election, as the Shia cleric was representing himself as a nationalist alternative to unwaveringly pro-Iranian policies by the PMF groups or Maliki.

Therefore, that Tehran, Amiri, and Maliki all have found it advantageous to help Abdul Mahdi secure his position, after initially trying and failing to block him, opens even further precisely the space within Iraqi politics in which Saudi Arabia operates: promoting Iraqi nationalism and reintegration in the Arab world as opposed to the country operating as a colony or satellite of Iran. Saudi Arabia’s room to maneuver in Iraq seems to be growing, especially as the election results and Sadr’s successful campaign suggested that many Iraqis are looking for alternatives to Iranian or U.S. hegemony. This is underscored by offers from Iraq to mediate between Washington and Tehran as tensions rise in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear agreement and the administration’s campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran.

Major political unrest and mounting U.S.-Iranian tensions in strategically and politically crucial parts of Iraq in recent weeks have also created new opportunities for Gulf Arab engagement. In early September, mobs of angry protesters in Basra, chanting “Iran out, Iran out,” torched the Iranian Consulate in the heavily Shia and traditionally pro-Iranian city. At least 15 people died in the unrest, which went on for many days and appeared targeted at both Iran and the local government. Grievances included lack of clean water, an electricity crisis exacerbated (if not created) by Iran, and abuses by pro-Iranian militia groups. As tensions rose, the United States was forced to close its consulate in Basra due to threats from Iranian-backed extremists. The outpouring of popular anger against Iran and its local Iraqi clients in the heartland of Shia Iraq was the most dramatic of many indications in recent years that Iran has overplayed its hand in Iraq and that, even among Iraqi Shias, the constituency for greater distance from Iran is powerful and growing.

Iran helped provoke this crisis through a clumsy and heavy-handed tactic: cutting off electricity supplies to the Basra area in the midst of Iraq’s sweltering summer heat. Iran provides an estimated third of all electricity supplies to Basra, and the resulting crisis focused much attention on Iran’s accumulation of power and economic, political, and military stranglehold on much of Iraqi life. It seems clear that the move, ostensibly based on nonpayment of bills, was actually designed to send a message to Iraqis, and especially the outgoing government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, as well as all those involved in the formation of the new government, that Iran has tremendous power in Iraq and is willing to use it to make a point, even in Basra and at the expense of the Iraqi public. None of these messages went down particularly well. The term “political blackmail” was leveled by more than one official, and that seemed to represent much of public opinion.

Into the breach immediately stepped Gulf Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Saudi Arabia agreed to sell electricity, as well as a large solar power plant, to Iraq for heavily discounted prices, and Kuwait, which has long been involved in investments and other major projects in southern Iraq, also moved to help replace Iran’s corner on this market. As Evan Langenhahn has argued, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait “together have the resources to provide Iraq with the electricity it requires, diminishing Iranian control over Iraq’s economy, depriving Iran of hard currency, and bolstering political stability through economic development.” Saudi Arabia’s position in Iraq is also strengthened by the selection of Kurdish leader Barham Salih as Iraq’s new president. Salih has few ties and no history of cooperation with Tehran and favors a strong Kurdistan Regional Government within Iraq but is not a major proponent of Kurdish secession, which dovetails well with Gulf Arab interests. Saudi Arabia is also increasingly looking to the KRGas a vital entry point to the broader Iraqi economy and increased investments in the country.

In order to offset or balance Iran’s influence in Iraq, however, the Gulf Arab countries don’t only need each other. They will also rely on a partnership with Washington, which still has a considerable economic, military, and political presence in Iraq, to complete the assemblage. Tehran has a unique degree of leverage and influence in Iraq, unmatched by any other outside power. But if Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United States coordinate their efforts to undermine Iran’s hegemonic influence, and promote a more independent Iraqi nationalism and Iraq’s reintegration in the Arab world, Tehran would be facing a combined effort that could well match its prowess. The elevation of Abdul Mahdi hardly guarantees this will happen or would succeed. But, along with the Basra unrest and many other recent indicators, it does suggest that the conditions for such an initiative are ripe as ever, and that Iraq can, and should be, a major arena for those seeking to roll back the disproportionate influence Tehran has accumulated in the Arab world over the past 15 years.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/editorial/two-states-one-state-in-the-end-trump-has-destroyed-the-palestinian-peace-process-1.775160

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/the-supreme-court-controversy-is-testing-the-raison-d-etre-of-trump-s-presidency-1.772806