WarSclerotic

6 ways the U.S. has faltered on Syria – CNN.com.

Editor’s note: Blake Hounshell is the managing editor at Foreign Policy.

(CNN) — As bloody month after bloody month goes by, the United States grows ever more committed to overthrowing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The cause is undoubtedly a just one: Avaaz, the human rights group that has been most deeply involved in the Syria crisis, reported Thursday morning that “17 civilians were beheaded or partially beheaded by regime security forces” outside of Baba Amro, the besieged Homs district that will likely soon fall to al-Assad’s tanks, if it hasn’t already.

Last week, Syrian activists reported that regime soldiers had ambushed and killed 64 men fleeing Homs, dumping their bodies outside the city.

And ousting al-Assad would bring strategic benefits, removing Iran’s only Arab ally at a time when the Islamic Republic is on its heels, and taking out a patron of hard-line movements like Hamas and Hezbollah that oppose a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But the United States has not done all it can to hasten al-Assad’s exit. Syria is unquestionably a hard problem — vastly more complicated than Libya: more ethnically diverse, with a far greater number of outside players involved.

Turkey shares a long border with Syria and a fear of Kurdish nationalism; Russia sees al-Assad as its last remaining friend in the Middle East; Saudi Arabia would like to see the majority Sunnis in power; Iraq, Israel and Lebanon fear the inevitable chaos that will follow al-Assad’s collapse; and, of course, Iran is deeply invested in the regime’s survival.

All this rightly makes U.S. policymakers queasy about getting sucked into a potential quagmire just as they are pulling out of two costly wars with little to show for it. Where advocates of military intervention see in Syria another Libya, or even a Kosovo, many see another Iraq in the making. It also means the United States has less leeway to pursue its interests (and values) unilaterally. As long as Turkey, for instance, opposes safe zones along the Syrian border, it’s a no go.

The man responsible for the carnage in Syria is Bashar al-Assad. Still, the Obama administration has made a number of blunders that, in hindsight, have made this problem harder to solve. Here are six:

1. Underestimating al-Assad. To its credit, the administration was quick to recognize that al-Assad was in serious trouble. Obama was one of the first world leaders to call explicitly for al-Assad’s ouster. But in doing so, was the administration too optimistic about his chances of survival, too naïve about the depths he would go to remain in power?

2. Taking force off the table. Yes, the Pentagon is reportedly preparing “detailed” contingency options for U.S. military action in Syria. That’s what militaries do, and it’s only prudent for the United States to monitor chemical weapons sites and eavesdrop on the regime’s communications. It’s also a good idea for the president to have a full understanding of what his options are and the risks and costs involved. But the administration has been unwilling to make the kind of threats that could make al-Assad think twice about what he’s doing. That’s understandable: It’s hard to make a threat credible if it’s obvious to all that you aren’t willing to carry it out. But earnest denunciations and multilateral conferences don’t seem to be working. Why undercut your diplomacy?

3. Handwringing about al Qaeda. The U.S. intelligence community is concerned about the presence in Syria of fighters from Iraq’s al Qaeda branch, who are thought to be behind a spate of bombing attacks in Damascus and Aleppo. That’s a reasonable worry. But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went beyond caution this week, tarring the Syrian opposition — which is overwhelmingly ordinary Syrians, conservative, yes, but not extremists — with the same broad brush. “We know al Qaeda [leader Ayman al-] Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria. Are we supporting al Qaeda in Syria? Hamas is now supporting the opposition. Are we supporting Hamas in Syria?” Clinton said. “If you’re a military planner or if you’re a secretary of state and you’re trying to figure out do you have the elements of an opposition that is actually viable, that we don’t see.”

4. Failing to engage al-Assad’s allies. If al-Assad is to fall, the pillars that prop up his regime must first be removed. Iran and Russia, both of which continue to send weapons and advice, if not more, must be convinced that a post-al-Assad Syria is something they can at least live with. Both countries have met with members of the Syrian opposition, indicating they want to explore their options. Perhaps these are merely insincere efforts to help al-Assad divide and conquer. But it’s worth exploring what’s real and what’s not. The same goes for al-Assad’s internal allies: Are we doing enough to convince senior military and security leaders that they’re better off without al-Assad?

5. Ignoring China. Even if you believe the Russians will never dump al-Assad, what about the Chinese? China also vetoed the most recent U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria, in tune with its habit of standing with Russia against encroachment on the principle of state sovereignty. But Washington has made little effort to engage Beijing on this issue, or to enlist Arab oil suppliers like Saudi Arabia to lobby on the Syrian opposition’s behalf. China has few tangible interests in Syria, and might be convinced that a post-al-Assad world is in its broader interest. That would leave Russia isolated and uncomfortable.

6. Focusing exclusively on the Syrian National Council. Underscoring its skittishness about the growing militarization of what is by now a civil war by any reasonable definition, the Obama administration has shied away from dealing with the Free Syrian Army’s leadership in Turkey. Perhaps more is going on behind the scenes, but the United States has clearly put its energies behind the SNC. But it is unclear whether this fractious body of exiles truly represents Syrians on the ground, and its relationship with the FSA is poor. The SNC on Thursday announced it was setting up some kind of “military bureau” to funnel weapons to the FSA, but it’s not yet clear the FSA is truly on board. The SNC has also had a hard time attracting support from minorities, who fear that al-Assad’s ouster will put their communities at risk.

These points are not an indictment of Obama’s Syria policy. There are no good options here, only bad and worse ones. As al-Assad moves to consolidate his brutal victory in Homs and put the rebellion down once and for all, there’s still time to rectify our mistakes and shape an outcome that saves lives and protects American interests. But not very much time.

DEBKA.

When President Barack Obama signed the latest round of US sanctions against Iranian oil on the last day of 2011, he and his advisers were careful to include Section 1245 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2012 (HR 1540) and to emphasize it will apply only if the president determines “the price and supply of petroleum and petroleum products produced in countries other than Iran is sufficient to permit purchasers… to reduce significantly in volume their purchases from Iran.”
This section and the intense discussions Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner led with Riyadh to secure alternative Saudi supplies to Iranian oil if needed ought to have capped the price spiral. But it did not.
An indirect explanation for this was discernible in the words of Saudi Deputy Oil Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman bin Abdulaziz upon arriving in New Delhi last Friday, Feb. 24.
He stressed his government’s concern to keep the global oil market well supplied, “…and that has always been our endeavor,” he said.
But when he was asked if oil prices would rise further if supplies from Iran dropped, the Saudi minister said cryptically: “We don’t engage ourselves in any of these discussions.”
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Gulf sources report that the Saudi deputy minister’s evasiveness gave an extra spurt to the rumors circulating in the international oil market that the Saudi royal court had decided to use oil as a tool of coercion against the US President and his policies on Iran and Syria.
US allows Iran to retain its nuclear achievements

Riyadh is playing a tit-for-tat game which goes like this: We (the Saudis) will increase oil production to make up shortfalls of Iranian supplies to the Chinese, Japanese, South Koreans, Indians and certain EU countries to induce them to subscribe to anti-Tehran sanctions – but you (the Americans) must in return dismantle Iran’s nuclear weapon program either by diplomatic means or military action.
When the Obama administration turned to a third avenue, international negotiations with Tehran, Riyadh reacted by readjusting its commitment to keep the world supplied with enough crude to overcome the boycott on Iranian oil: (See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 529 of Feb. 17: Obama Gets His Way – US and Iran Set to Resume Nuclear Talks) They shrugged off responsibility for prices.
The Saudis were especially incensed by the concomitant lure Washington offered Tehran for talks: a license to continue uranium enrichment regardless of the diplomatic process and maintain nuclear development at its present level. This left Iran sitting pretty with a short timeline for producing a bomb whenever Tehran so decides.
Enraged by US military inertia on Syria

Saudi King Abdullah is also hopping mad over the world powers’ military inertia on Syria where the continuous pounding of cities inflated the death toll this week past one hundred civilians per day and Bashar Assad faces charges of war crimes. The King has a bone to pick with Moscow as well as Washington. In fact, he slammed down the phone on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev Wednesday, Feb. 22, after being informed that Moscow would neither permit the overthrow of Bashar Assad in Damascus nor countenance any nuclear accord with Iran – whether it was reached in multiple negotiations or with the United States alone – which altered the current state of Tehran’s nuclear program.
“There is no going back,” Medvedev told the Saudi King.
Abdullah retorted sharply that Moscow’s approach was totally unacceptable to the oil kingdom, whether pursued by the United States, Russia or Iran.
“We (the Saudis) will force them to back away from the level they have currently reached,” Abdullah told Medvedev.
The Obama administration’s policy on Syria, epitomized in the repudiation of military force for removing the Assad regime, is just as unacceptable to Riyadh as its position on Iran.
(See a separate article in this issue).
Saudis to Obama: Oil could rocket past $150 unless he strikes Iran

Oil industrial sources in the Gulf say that King Abdullah is venting his displeasure selectively. Saudi Arabia will provide enough oil to replace the Iranian shortfall to Tehran’s biggest buyers in the Far East who are also good friends of Riyadh. But he feels no compulsion to abide by the other part of the Saudi-US understanding which is to keep prices down.
Soaring prices will carry an unsubtle Saudi message to President Obama, a very high-placed oil source in the Gulf told DEBKA-Net-Weekly: Either attack Iran and get the Islamic Republic off our backs, or we’ll let oil prices rocket up to $150 per barrel and beyond – and you won’t be re-elected in November.
This week crude oil prices hit a nine-month high.
American officials and oil industry figures offered various pretexts for the hikes, such as general concerns about Iran’s nuclear program or, according to Treasury Secretary Geithner, Iranian saber-rattling. None admitted that the dominant factor in the upwardly mobile price level is uncertainty over America’s next steps for handling the Syrian crisis and Iran’s fast-moving nuclear weapons program. The Obama administration is reported by our sources as being under heavy pressure from Saudi Arabia and Israel for a confrontation with Iran beyond diplomacy and the current sanctions.
The most recent news from Washington is that so far the president is holding fast to his standing policies despite efforts to pin him down to a harder line ahead of his critical White House meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on March 5. He may still change his mind.
Straws in the wind will be avidly sought in the major policy speech President Obama is scheduled to deliver at the opening of the AIPAC (pro-Israel lobby) convention in Washington Sunday, March 4.

Israel ponders Iran mission | The Australian.

• Michael Evans
• From: The Times
• March 03, 2012 12:00AM

Iran sanctions fail to make serious impact | The Australian.

• Bruce Loudon
• From: The Australian
• March 03, 2012 12:00AM

For Obama and Netanyahu, Wariness on Iran Will Dominate Talks – NYTimes.com.

By ETHAN BRONNER

Yossi Klein Halevi: Can Israel Trust The United States When It Comes To Iran? | The New Republic.

• Yossi Klein Halevi
• March 2, 2012 | 12:00 am

When Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Barack Obama on Monday, the main issue will be trust. Obama will ask that Israel trust America’s determination to stop Iran, and trust that when he says all options are on the table he means it. Netanyahu will likely be thinking about May 1967.

In late May 1967, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol dispatched his foreign minister, Abba Eban, to Washington. Egyptian and Syrian troops were pressing on Israel’s borders; Egypt had imposed a naval blockade on the Straits of Tiran, Israel’s shipping route to the east. Eban’s request of President Lyndon Johnson was that America honor its commitment to back military action if Egypt blocked the Straits of Tiran. That commitment had been made by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1957, to secure Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai desert following the 1956 Suez War. Only a declaration by Johnson that he intended to immediately open the straits to Israeli shipping even at the risk of war—one idea was for the U.S. to lead an international flotilla—could stop a unilateral Israeli strike. Though Johnson was viscerally pro-Israel, he proved unable or unwilling to honor Dulles’ commitment. Preoccupied with Vietnam, Johnson wasn’t ready to support another war, let alone initiate one.

Even if Barack Obama is truly the pro-Israel president his Jewish supporters claim he is, the Johnson precedent tells us that it may not matter. Like Johnson, Obama presides over a nation wary of another military adventure, especially in the Middle East. According to Israeli press reports, Netanyahu intends to ask Obama to state—beyond the vague formulation that all options are on the table—that the U.S. will use military force if Iran is about to go nuclear. But few here expect Obama to make that policy explicit.

What the world remembers of the Six Day War era is Israel’s military victory in June 1967. But these days Israelis are recalling the vulnerability of May 1967, in the weeks that preceded the victory.

To be sure, Israelis understand that, in several crucial ways, today is different from 1967. Then, Israel was entirely on its own in facing the threat on its borders. Today, by contrast, many countries, including in the Arab world, regard a nuclear Iran as a very real threat. In 1967, the war was localized, while this time the consequences of an Israeli preemptive strike will directly affect the international community and especially the United States—and perhaps not only economically. Iranian attacks against American targets—or Israeli difficulty in fighting a multi-front war—could draw America into conflict. And that could risk the stability of the American-Israeli relationship.

The Iranian nuclear threat could force Israel to choose between two of its essential national values. On the one hand, there is the commitment to Jewish self defense. On the other hand, there is the longing to be a respectable member of the international community. Allowing an enemy that constantly threatens Israel’s destruction to acquire the means to do so would negate Zionism’s promise to protect the Jewish people. And launching a preemptive strike without American backing could lead to Israel’s isolation and risk Zionism’s promise of restoring the Jews as a nation among nations.

In this excruciating dilemma, the question of whether Israel can trust the administration to act militarily against Iran becomes all the more crucial. Israeli leaders believe that their window of opportunity in launching a preemptive strike will be closing in the coming months. America, though, with its vastly superior firepower, could retain a military option even after Israel’s lapses. In other words: An Israeli decision not to strike this year will mean that it effectively ceded its self-defense—against a potentially existential threat—to America. When Obama tells Israel to give sanctions time, what he is really saying is: Trust me to stop Iran militarily when you no longer can.

Yet the message from Washington in the last few weeks has only reinforced Israeli suspicions that we are back in May 1967. The spate of administration leaks to the media questioning Israel’s military capability in confronting Iran has undermined Israeli confidence in American resolve. An adminstration serious about stopping Iran to the point of military intervention would convey messages that raise Iran’s anxiety, not Israel’s. By insisting that Israel’s military threat isn’t credible – without at the same time explicitly stating that America’s military threat is—the administration reassures Iran that it has little to fear from military action. The Israelis can’t and the Americans won’t.

Then there was the comment by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, to the effect that Iran hasn’t yet decided to build a bomb. If Dempsey’s point was to reassure Israel, he managed the opposite. Dempsey reinforced a long-standing Israeli fear that the administration is prepared to live with nuclear ambiguity—that is, a situation in which Iran could quickly assemble a bomb while choosing for the time being not to. According to this scenario, Obama would negotiate an agreement that would allow him to claim he’d stopped Iran while in fact ensuring its nuclear capability. For Israel—and for Arab countries—that outcome would hardly differ from an explicitly nuclear Iran. In either case Tehran could credibly threaten Israel and blackmail the Arab world.

In the last few days, in anticipation of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, Washington’s tone has finally begun to change. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that America’s goal is to prevent Iranian nuclear capability, period. And U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz announced that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have a detailed plan to strike Iranian nuclear sites should that become necessary.

While those statements help ease the tension between Washington and Jerusalem, they don’t go anywhere far enough. Israel needs a public, unambiguous warning from Obama to Iran that, if sanctions fail, America will use military force—that a nuclear Iran is as much a red line for this administration as, say, an Iranian blockade of the Straits of Hormouz. Only that kind of threat has the chance of restoring American credibility—not only for Israel, but also for the Arab world and, not least, for Iran.

Given that Obama is unlikely to make that threat, Israel will hope, at least, for a change in the administration’s signals about an Israeli strike. Iranian leaders need to hear from Obama that Israel has the right to defend itself against a nuclear threat.

And if that message, too, is not forthcoming? Faced with an imminent existential dilemma, Israel will probably opt for preemptive self-defense, even if that means risking its special relationship with America—a different kind of existential threat.

The precedent of the two Israeli attacks against Arab nuclear facilities—in Iraq in 1981 and in Syria in 2007—reinforces Israeli determination to stop Iran, unilaterally if necessary. Israel, after all, prevented a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein and a nuclear-armed Bashar Assad. And it did so without asking America’s permission. Yet the administration can credibly counter that in neither case did Israeli unilateralism threaten to draw America into an armed conflict, as it does now.

In the end the dilemma for both Israel and the U.S. isn’t only strategic but ethical. Israel has a moral responsibility not to surprise its closest friend with an initiative that could drastically affect American well-being. And the U.S. has a moral responsibility not to pressure its closest Middle East ally into forfeiting its right to self-defense against a potentially genocidal enemy.

In better times, the two allies might have been able to navigate these conflicting needs. But in the absence of mutual trust, what could remain are conflicting perceptions of interest.

Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor for The New Republic and a fellow of the Engaging Israel Project of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerualem. He is completing a book about the Israeli paratroopers who fought in Jerusalem in the Six Day War.

Obama, Israel and the Mullahs | FrontPage Magazine.

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu will be meeting in Washington, D.C. on Monday March 5th. This meeting is likely to be their most critical one to date. The Iranian nuclear problem, and the need for a definitive response, are expected to dominate their discussions. Israel believes that time is quickly running out for non-military means such as economic sanctions to stop Iran from being able to build a nuclear bomb at will. The Obama administration is saying “not so fast” and to give sanctions more of a chance to work.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is expected to publicly express a hard line against Iran during the meeting, according to a senior Israeli official quoted by Haaretz. Netanyahu will reportedly press for American support for firm action beyond the vague declaration that all options remain on the table. He wants Obama to state unequivocally that the United States is preparing for a military operation in the event that Iran crosses certain “red lines,” according to this Israeli official. Obama is unlikely to go anywhere close to making such a public declaration or to openly back Israel if it decides to launch a pre-emptive attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The United States and Israel do agree on two basic points. They agree that Iran is intent on achieving a nuclear arms capability and is moving full-steam ahead with its nuclear program. They also agree that there will come a point when it will probably be too late to stop Iran from achieving its objective.

Inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have confirmed that there is a sound basis for these concerns in their latest report. They concluded that Iran is pushing ahead with its nuclear program while stonewalling the agency’s efforts to investigate allegations that Iran’s scientists had conducted extensive research on how to build a nuclear warhead. When IAEA inspectors visited Iran recently, Iranian officials refused to allow them to visit a key research facility where some of the alleged experiments were said to have occurred.

However, while sharing concerns about Iran’s advancement towards becoming a nuclear power, the United States and Israel disagree on the urgency of the problem and the timing of any military action to counter it. They differ on the precise point when it will become too late to stop Iran from producing a nuclear bomb and whether Iran can be successfully contained even if it is not stopped in time. “We believe that there is time and space to allow for a diplomatic resolution,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said last month.

No meeting will paper over these differences as long as Obama, who has yet to visit Israel as president while managing to find time to visit Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, fails to fully appreciate the threat that Israel is confronting. He fails to understand Israel’s acute sense of vulnerability against hostile forces determined to destroy the Jewish state by any means possible and Israel’s fierce determination to protect itself at any cost. Nor does he seem to understand that the direct threat a nuclear armed Iran would pose to Israel today will become a direct threat to the United States in the not too distant future if the jihadist megalomaniacs now ruling Iran or their like-minded successors remain in charge.

In short, Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat. No wonder, considering the Iranian leaders’ repeated calls for the annihilation of the Jewish state, Iran’s proximity to Israel, and the ease with which Iran’s surrogates in the Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist organizations can be used to help carry out its plans for Israel’s destruction.

On the other hand, while the Obama administration views a nuclear-armed Iran as a very serious threat to regional peace and security, it does not view a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat to the United States itself or to the free world generally. It believes that even a successful military strike would only delay Iran’s nuclear program for a few years and would almost certainly set off a firestorm of violence in the Middle East and elsewhere with dangerously unpredictable consequences for America’s strategic interests. That is why President Obama and his top officials have been urging Israel not to take precipitous unilateral military action.

Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli intelligence and director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, discussed this difference of perspective in his op-ed article published by the New York Times on March 1st. The article is entitled “Israel’s Last Chance to Strike Iran“:

Today, Israel sees the prospect of a nuclear Iran that calls for our annihilation as an existential threat. An Israeli strike against Iran would be a last resort, if all else failed to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. That moment of decision will occur when Iran is on the verge of shielding its nuclear facilities from a successful attack — what Israel’s leaders have called the ‘zone of immunity’…

Israel doesn’t have the safety of distance, nor do we have the United States Air Force’s advanced fleet of bombers and fighters. America could carry out an extensive air campaign using stealth technology and huge amounts of ammunition, dropping enormous payloads that are capable of hitting targets and penetrating to depths far beyond what Israel’s arsenal can achieve.

This gives America more time than Israel in determining when the moment of decision has finally been reached. And as that moment draws closer, differing timetables are becoming a source of tension…

Asking Israel’s leaders to abide by America’s timetable, and hence allowing Israel’s window of opportunity to be closed, is to make Washington a de facto proxy for Israel’s security — a tremendous leap of faith for Israelis faced with a looming Iranian bomb.

Israel has a fleet of advanced F-16 fighter planes. Its military has repeatedly shown incredible ingenuity in retrofitting imported military equipment with Israeli technology to meet Israel’s own military strategies. Israel also has some bunker-busting bombs, which were supplied by the Obama administration. However, Israel obviously does not have the most advanced military capabilities that the U.S. has to reach all or most of Iran’s widely dispersed and deeply buried nuclear development facilities. Nevertheless, as Israel’s past pre-emptive actions demonstrate, such as destroying much of the Egyptian air force at the outset of the Six-Day War, the bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 and the destruction of the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, Israeli leaders will do whatever they believe they have to do to protect the Jewish nation from what they regard as existential threats.

The Obama-Netanyahu meeting next week will likely result in a communiqué indicating both leaders’ strong resolve to prevent Iran from going nuclear. Indeed, according to the Haaretz report, the White House has proposed to the Prime Minister’s Office that the two leaders release a joint statement following their meeting, the goal of which, according to the report, would be “to bridge apparent disagreements between the United States and Israel, and to present a single U.S.-Israeli front in order to leverage pressure on Iran.”

The joint statement may ratchet up the rhetoric a bit regarding the use of military force as a last resort option. But if Prime Minister Netanyahu is hoping for something much more concrete, such as Obama’s unequivocal public support for Israel if it decides it must take military action alone to defend itself or, alternatively, a public ironclad American assurance that the United States will do whatever is necessary to prevent a nuclear Iran before it is too late, I think he will be disappointed.

If history is any guide, regardless of whether Obama pledges unequivocal support for whatever Israel decides to do to defend itself or hints to Netanyahu privately that the United States will not stand in Israel’s way, Israel will most likely choose to act against Iran while it still can.

Standing with Israel.

PM to seek broad agreement with O… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

Tehran’s Ticking Nuclear Time Bomb – Peter Brookes – National Review Online.