WarSclerotic

In Turnabout, Syria Rebels Get Libyan Weapons – NYTimes.com.

Crates of recoilless rifle rounds in a rebel cache in Idlib, Syria, bear the triangle symbol of arms sent to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

By C. J. CHIVERS, ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI

During his more than four decades in power, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya was North Africa’s outrageously self-styled arms benefactor, a donor of weapons to guerrillas and terrorists around the world fighting governments he did not like.

Even after his death, the colonel’s gunrunning vision lives on, although in ways he probably would have loathed.

Many of the same people who chased the colonel to his grave are busy shuttling his former arms stockpiles to rebels in Syria. The flow is an important source of weapons for the uprising and a case of bloody turnabout, as the inheritors of one strongman’s arsenal use them in the fight against another.

Evidence gathered in Syria, along with flight-control data and interviews with militia members, smugglers, rebels, analysts and officials in several countries, offers a profile of a complex and active multinational effort, financed largely by Qatar, to transport arms from Libya to Syria’s opposition fighters. Libya’s own former fighters, who sympathize with Syria’s rebels, have been eager collaborators.

“It is just the enthusiasm of the Libyan people helping the Syrians,” said Fawzi Bukatef, the former leader of an alliance of Libyan brigades who was recently named ambassador to Uganda, in an interview in Tripoli.

As the United States and its Western allies move toward providing lethal aid to Syrian rebels, these secretive transfers give insight into an unregistered arms pipeline that is difficult to monitor or control. And while the system appears to succeed in moving arms across multiple borders and to select rebel groups, once inside Syria the flow branches out. Extremist fighters, some of them aligned with Al Qaeda, have the money to buy the newly arrived stock, and many rebels are willing to sell.

For Russia — which has steadfastly supplied weapons and diplomatic cover to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria — this black-market flow is a case of bitter blowback. Many of the weapons Moscow proudly sold to Libya beginning in the Soviet era are now being shipped into the hands of rebels seeking to unseat another Kremlin ally.

Those weapons, which slipped from state custody as Colonel Qaddafi’s people rose against him in 2011, are sent on ships or Qatar Emiri Air Force flights to a network of intelligence agencies and Syrian opposition leaders in Turkey. From there, Syrians distribute the arms according to their own formulas and preferences to particular fighting groups, which in turn issue them to their fighters on the ground, rebels and activists said.

Qatari C-17 cargo aircraft have made at least three stops in Libya this year — including flights from Mitiga airport in Tripoli on Jan. 15 and Feb. 1, and another that departed Benghazi on April 16, according to flight data provided by an aviation official in the region. The planes returned to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The cargo was then flown to Ankara, Turkey, along with other weapons and equipment that the Qataris had been gathering for the rebels, officials and rebels said.

Last week the Obama administration announced that it had evidence that Mr. Assad’s military had used sarin nerve agent in multiple attacks, and that the United States would begin providing military aid to the rebels, including shipments of small arms.

In doing so, the United States could soon be openly feeding the same distribution network, just as it has received weapons from other sources.

The movements from Libya complement the airlift that has variously used Saudi, Jordanian and Qatari military cargo planes to funnel military equipment and weapons, including from Croatia, to the outgunned rebels. On Friday, Syrian opposition officials said the rebels had received a new shipment of anti-tank weapons and other arms, although they give varying accounts of the sources of the recently received arms. The Central Intelligence Agency has already played at least a supporting role, the officials say.

The Libyan shipments principally appear to be the work of armed groups there, and not of the weak central state, officials said.

Mr. Bukatef, the Libyan diplomat, said Libyan militias had been shipping weapons to Syrian rebels for more than a year.

“They collect the weapons, and when they have enough they send it,” he said. “The Libyan government is not involved, but it does not really matter.”

One former senior Obama administration familiar with the transfers said the Qatari government built relationships with Libyan militias in 2011, when, according to the report of a United Nations Panel of Experts, it shipped in weapons to rebel forces there in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973.

As a result, the Qataris can draw on their influence with Libya’s militias to support their current beneficiaries in Syria. “It’s not that complicated,” the former official said. “We’re watching it. The Libyans have an amazing amount of stuff.”

Syrian activists and Western officials say that like the unregistered arms transfers organized by other Arab states, the shipments from Libya have been very large but have not kept up with the enormous rebel ammunition expenditures each day.

And most of the weapons have been relatively light, including rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, small arms ammunition and mortar rounds.

But the Libyan influx appears to account for at least a portion of the antitank weapons seen in the conflict this spring, including Belgian-made projectiles for M40 recoilless rifles and some of the Russian-made Konkurs-M guided missiles that have been destroying Syrian tanks in recent months.

Syrian rebels, working with Qatari backers and the Turkish government, have developed a system for acquiring and distributing Libya’s excess stock, Syrian activists and rebels said.

Orders are placed and shipments arranged through the staff of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, a Western-backed opposition committee that was formed in Turkey late last year.

Safi Asafi, a coordinator commander active on Syria’s northern borders, one of the unofficial gates for weapons shipment to the opposition, said that rebel groups seeking Libyan arms approach the council to arrange the deals.

“Any fighting group in Syria that wants weapons from Libya will go to the staff asking for the approval from the Turkish authorities involved in the transfer, then gets it, the weapons arrive in Syria, and everyone gets his due share,” he said.

By one common formula, Mr. Asafi said, the staff will take 20 percent of the weapons designated for individual groups and distribute them to others. But the ratio can fluctuate, he said, depending on the group’s stature and influence, and less powerful groups sometimes yield a larger cut.

The Supreme Military Council generally does not distribute weapons to blacklisted or extremist groups, Syrian activists said, but these groups have little trouble acquiring the weapons once the arms enter Syria, often buying them directly from groups that receive the council’s support.

Signs of munitions from the former Qaddafi stockpile are readily visible.

Late last month The New York Times found crates, storage sleeves and spent cartridge cases for antitank rounds from Libya in the possession of Ahfad al-Rasul, a prominent group fighting the government and aligned with the Supreme Military Council.

The crates were immediately identifiable because they were painted with a distinctive symbol — 412 inside a triangle — that has been used by many manufacturers, including in China, the Soviet Union, Russia, North Korea and Belgium, to mark ordnance shipments designated for Colonel Qaddafi.

Stenciling on the crates’ sides declared their original destination in 1980: the “Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahirya.”

Kerry: Russia must back transition in Syria | The Times of Israel.

US, allies agree to increase assistance to rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad

US Secretary of State John Kerry, center, walks through the airport with Ambassador Ibrahim Fakhroo, Qatari Chief of Protocol, left, after being greeted on arrival in Doha, Qatar, on Saturday, June 22, 2013. (photo credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — The US and its Arab and European allies agreed on Saturday to do more to help the embattled rebels trying to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad, US Secretary of State John Kerry said.

While he offered no specifics about stepped-up military and humanitarian aid, Kerry said the assistance would help change the balance on the battlefield of the civil war where regime forces have scored recent victories.

At a meeting of nearly a dozen of his counterparts, Kerry blamed Assad for the deteriorating situation in Syria where more than 93,000 people have died in a two-year civil war. He denounced Assad for inviting Iranian and Hezbollah fighters to battle alongside his troops and said the Syrian president risked turning the war into a regional sectarian conflict.

Kerry met with his counterparts in the Qatari capital on the first stop of a seven-nation trip through the Mideast and Asia where he is tackling difficult foreign policy issues — from finding peace between the Israelis and Palestinians to trying to gain traction on US talks with the Taliban to end the Afghanistan war. James Dobbins, US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, arrived in Doha on Saturday, but talks with the Taliban have not yet been scheduled.

Kerry seemed to put the ball in the Taliban’s court, saying the Americans and Qataris were all on board to help negotiate a political resolution to the war and it was up to the Taliban to come to the table at a new political office they opened last week in Doha. “We are waiting to find out whether the Taliban will respond, Kerry said.

“We will see if we can get back on track. I don’t know whether that’s possible or not,” Kerry said. “If there is not a decision made by the Taliban to move forward in short order, then we may have to consider whether the office has to be closed.”

Kerry has been pressing hard on Russia to back an international conference intended to end the bloodshed in Syria and allow a transitional government to move the country beyond civil war.

Russia has been the key ally of Assad’s regime throughout the two-year conflict.

Top US diplomats are ready to go to Geneva to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other officials in coming days to advance the political process, Kerry said.

Kerry, a long-time proponent of more aggressive action in Syria, believes the international community must urgently try to stop the civil war in Syria. With Obama’s decision to send the rebels arms along with humanitarian and other nonlethal aid, it appears that Kerry and like-minded US officials have won over those who are more wary of sending weapons and ammunition into a war zone where they could fall into the hands of Islamic extremists.

It was Kerry’s first meeting with his counterparts about aid to the Syrian rebels since President Barack Obama announced that the US would send lethal aid to the opposition. That decision was partly based on a US intelligence assessment that Assad had used chemical weapons, but Kerry expressed deeper concern about Iran and Hezbollah fighters.

“That is a very, very dangerous development,” Kerry said. “Hezbollah is a proxy for Iran. … Hezbollah in addition to that is a terrorist organization.”

Kerry blamed Hezbollah and Assad with thwarting efforts to diffuse sectarian rebels and to negotiate a settlement.

“We’re looking at a very dangerous situation,” that had transformed “into a much more volatile, potentially explosive situation that could involve the entire region,” Kerry said.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

Report: China pressuring Netanyahu to drop support for US terror funding case | JPost | Israel News.

Exact price from Israel boycotters – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

( I agree.  FUCK Roger Waters ! – JW )

Op-ed: Time has come to expose true face of anti-Semites who bash Israel under guise of political correctness

Ido Daniel

Alicia Keys is a successful singer with an illustrious career of over 15 years. But since announcing her upcoming gig in Israel, Keys has “earned” another degree, courtesy of anti–Israel activists: A war criminal. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, both senior figures in the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israel, penned open letters asking Keys to join the cultural boycott of ‘unjust and unbelievably evil’ Israel. Waters, Walker and their ilk regularly deflect criticism leveled against their involvement in the cultural boycott by explaining they are not anti-Semitic, but simply anti-Zionist.

At the same time, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs held the fourth International Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem, with the participation of organizations from Israel and abroad, Muslim and Christian clerics, as well public figures and representatives from the Jewish Diaspora. This year the conference included for the first time a workshop devoted to the problematic relationship between anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and the efforts to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish-democratic state.

One by one, the delegates received the floor and shocked the participants: A woman from Sweden spoke of how local Jews fear to walk the streets of her city whenever there is a news flash about Israel; students from the UK talked about the fear of walking around with a yarmulke in campuses, and an American reported attempts to boycott kosher products in stores claiming they are manufactured beyond the Green Line, although they’re American made. And there was also a senior Jewish female lecturer who teaches at one of the prestigious universities in the United States. She tearfully told the panel about the repeated harassment of Jewish students and professors in American campuses, spray-paintings of “Jew” or “Zionist” on dormitories’ doors along with swastikas.

The conference concluded that the boycott movement’s activities have become a stage for battering Jews throughout the world, providing anti-Semitism an easy entry to the mainstream, after it was shunned for decades. “Boycott the boycotters” called some of the participants, some of who are harsh critics of Israel and its policies. It appears as though the Diaspora has realized that this issue is not just another argument between Right and Left.

Anti-Israel display at Columbia University (Photo: Gilad Shai)

Roger Waters was the first to experience the new wind blowing against the hypocrisy of boycotting Israel. A few weeks ago the 92Y Street Jewish Community Center in Manhattan canceled his planned lecture amid tremendous pressure from the local Jewish community, which was furious with the British musician for comparing Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany at a UN committee meeting six months ago.

And Alice Walker? She prohibited her Israeli publishers last year from publishing a new Hebrew edition of her famous book “The Color Purple.” The fact that the last time the Hebrew language got banned was in 1930s Germany did not bother her: “Do not publish my book in Hebrew. Israel is an apartheid state.” Walker of course still enjoys the proceeds from her other books which are still on the shelves in Israel, as are Waters’ albums.

The last lecture of the conference was given by Professor Yehuda Bauer, one of the world’s top Holocaust and anti-Semitism researchers. “The most dangerous anti-Semitism comes from of all those academics and liberals who strongly condemn any act of injustice befalling the world, but at the same time support genocide of the Jews, as they preach the elimination of Zionism.”

I believe it is time to expose the true face of anti-Semites who hide behind the guise of political correctness and other whitewashed expressions and exact an economic and personal cost from them. We must show the BDS activists that boycott and incitement have a price.

The famous Jewish philosopher Max Nordau once claimed that “The Jew learns not by way of reason, but from catastrophes. He won’t open his umbrella under a cloudy sky; he waits until he is drenched and catches pneumonia.” I hope that maybe, just maybe, this time we will learn from history and take preventive measures against the incoming anti-Semitism plague.

Ido Daniel is a Political Science B.A. student at Tel Aviv University and a member of What Israel organization, which engages in public diplomacy

CIA training Syrian rebels – Israel News, Ynetnews.

CBS reports: CIA, US Special Forces training rebels in Turkey, Jordan. Meantime, Kerry arrives in Doha for talks, rebels confirm western military aid has begun to flow, in bid to turn tide against Assad

Yitzhak Benhorin

WASHINGTON – The CIA and US army’s Special Forces have been training small groups of Syrian rebels in secret bases in Jordan and Turkey since November 2012, CBS has reported Saturday. According to the report, the training focused on training rebels in the usage of anti-tank and anti-aircraft arms donated by Arab states.

However, as of yet, Syrian President Bashar Assad and his official state forces have enjoyed complete aerial superiority, which some claim has becoming the watershed for swinging the conflict back in his favor.

Rebels for their part are desperate for serious American aid which would allow them to properly respond to Assad’s aerial dominance and technological upper hand which allow the regime, for example, to gather intelligence on rebel forces with the aid of Iranian drones or fight during the night with the aid of night vision, to name a few.

Between rock, hard place, Assad or Islamist (Photo: Reuters)

US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Qatar Saturday to meet officials from nearly a dozen nations to firm up and coordinate military and humanitarian aid going to the Syrian opposition trying to oust President Bashar Assad.

Kerry flew to Doha, the capital of Qatar, Saturday and it is the first stop on his seven-nation trip through the Mideast and Asia. US officials hope the meeting will re-energize a newly expanded Syrian opposition group, which is to elect new leadership in coming days.

Despite the recent string of victories for pro-Assad forces, rebels for their part are also not so quick to give up. A senior official with the Free Syrian Army claimed that his organization had already begun to receive arms promised to them by foreign nations, “from now on you’ll see us victorious,” he promised.

During a meeting with the organization’s commanders in Ankara, Gen. Salim Idris, the Free Syrian Army’s chief commander, claimed they have begun to receive the arms promised to them, but failed to go into detail.

Idris’s claims coincided with recent reports that rebels have begun to receive serious military aid in the form of anti-tank and possibly anti-aircraft missiles from Gulf states, first and foremost Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, fears of an escalation in the Syrian conflict have led the White House to leave about 700 combat-ready troops in Jordan after the military exercise which took place this week in the Hashemite Kingdom.

US troops in Jordan (Photo: AFP)

According to a statement made by United States President Barack Obama, per the Jordanian government’s request, the troops will remain in Jordanian territory until the security situation will allow their departure. According to the White House statement, the remaining force includes Patriot Missile systems, fighter jets among others.

Last week saw the much anticipated announcement by the US that it would take a more proactive stance in the conflict and begin to arm rebels. A decision supposedly taken in wake of confirmed chemical arms usage on Assad’s forces part, finally crossing the US’s much debated ‘red-line’.

The White House’s decision also came on the same day that former US President Bill Clinton published a critical op-ed slamming the Obama administration for not acting to consolidate and support the Syrian opposition, which seemed to be loosing its footing in the wake of losses to Assad loyalists and Hezbollah fighters in Qusair.

In his column in the Washington Post, David Ignatius, considered to be well connected with the current administration, claimed that Obama does indeed want Assad deposed, but not just yet.

According to Ignatius, Obama wishes to strengthen moderate opposition forces under the command of Salim Idris and his Free Syrian Army and only then begin negotiations towards an interim government.

According to Ignatius, this position stems from fears shared by many in the West that a large portion of rebels are hardliner Islamist supportive of al-Qaeda.

The main concern is that western arms would fall into the wrong hands and that Assad’s fall would be a recreation of the situation in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In contrast to Iraq, this time, the Americans want a smooth transition that would include continuity in government and social services the day after Assad’s looming fall.

‘Netanyahu won’t ask US to exempt Israel aid from defense cuts’ | JPost | Israel News.

US troop buildup in Jordan after Turkey shuts US-NATO arms corridor to Syrian rebels.

Tayyip Erdogan’s U-turn on Syria

The US decision to upgrade Syrian rebel weaponry has run into a major setback: debkafile reveals that Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan phoned President Barack Obama in Berlin Wednesday, June 19, to report his sudden decision to shut down the Turkish corridor for the transfer of US and NATO arms to the Syrian rebels.

Against this background, the US President informed Congress Friday, June 22, that 700 combat-equipped American military personnel would remain in Jordan at the end of a joint US-Jordanian training exercise. They would include crews of two Patriot anti-aircraft missile batteries and the logistics, command and communications personnel needed to support those units. The United States is also leaving behind from the war maneuver a squadron of 12 to 24 F-16 fighter jets at Jordan’s request. Some 300 US troops have been in Jordan since last year.
Erdogan’s decision will leave the Syrian rebels fighting in Aleppo virtually high and dry. The fall of Qusayr cut off their supplies of arms from Lebanon. Deliveries through Jordan reach only as far as southern Syria and are almost impossible to move to the north where the rebels and the Hizballah-backed Syrian army are locked in a decisive battle for Aleppo.
The Turkish prime minister told Obama he is afraid of Russian retribution if he continues to let US and NATO weapons through to the Syrian rebels.
Since the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland last week, Moscow has issued almost daily condemnations of the West for arming “terrorists.”

Rebel spokesmen in Aleppo claimed Friday that they now had weapons which they believe “will change the course of the battle on the ground.”

debkafile’s military sources are strongly skeptical of their ability – even after the new deliveries – to stand up to the onslaught on their positions in the embattled town by the combined strength of the Syrian army, Hizballah troops and armed Iraqi Shiites. The prevailing intelligence assessment is that they will be crushed in Aleppo as they were in Al Qusayr.
That battle was lost after 16 days of ferocious combat; Aleppo is expected to fall after 40-60 days of great bloodshed.

The arms the rebels received from US, NATO and European sources were purchased on international markets – not only because they were relatively cheap but because they were mostly of Russian manufacture. The rebels are thus equipped with Russian weapons for fighting the Russian arms used by the Syria army. This made Moscow angrier than ever.

Until now, the Erdogan government was fully supportive of the Syrian opposition, permitting them to establish vital command centers and rear bases on Turkish soil and send supplies across the border to fighting units. He has now pulled the rug out from under their cause and given Assad a major leg-up

This about-turn is a strategic earthquake – not just in terms of the Syrian war but also for the United States and, as time goes by, for Israel too.

Ten years ago, Erdogan pulled the same maneuver when he denied US troops passage through Turkey to Iraq for opening a second front against Saddam Hussein.
President Obama reacted by topping up the US deployment in Jordan by 700 combat-equipped troops to 1,000. Patriot missile interceptors and F-16 fighter jets are left behind from their joint war game for as long as the security situation requires. debkafile: The joint US-Jordanian maneuver was in fact abruptly curtailed after two weeks although it was planned to continue for two months until the end of August.

The widening disruptions of the surging Syrian war are on the point of tipping over into Jordan and coming closer than ever to Israel.

Syria’s sectarian war causes Hamas split, say analysts – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal left his Damascus headquarters in 2012 for Doha after refusing to support Assad’s deadly crackdown. (File photo: AFP)

Obama and the lack of deterrence – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

Observers of Middle East affairs, particularly the inter-related affairs in Syria and Iran, are busy thinking about the possible outcome of the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland.

According to reports coming out of Washington, there has been a fundamental shift in Barack Obama’s approach to the Syrian crisis after his administration became “convinced” of the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons on more than one occasion. This is something that means, according to the report, that the Assad regime has “crossed clear red lines,” prompting a move to arm the rebels.

Before the supporters of the Syrian revolution could recover from this surprising turn of events, other, more delightful reports referred to the likelihood of Washington setting up a no-fly zone in southern Syria, a move which gives the impression that Obama and his advisors have finally realized the risks of solely issuing statements. This comes, of course, while Iran’s Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continues to send troops, Vladimir Putin is providing lethal weapons, and Hassan Nasrallah is deploying fighters to “guard” Shi’ite shrines across Syria.

However, as the popular saying goes: “What is right is always right.”

Just hours after this early ecstasy, Ben Rhodes, the U.S. deputy national security adviser, clarified the White House’s real stance. In an eloquent speech, Rhodes went into detail, stressing the “difficulty” of enforcing a no-fly zone and the “high cost” of such a move. He even elaborated on the need for the weapons to reach the non-radical elements of the Syrian opposition. Following this, President Obama himself came out to reiterate Rhodes’s statement.

Incidentally, Rhodes is the man responsible for drafting Obama’s famous “A New Beginning” speech, which the president delivered in Cairo in 2009. He is also one of Obama’s top advisors and had a direct influence on Washington’s decision regarding Hosni Mubarak stepping down, as well as Obama’s political stances on the “Arab Spring.”

Putin is not to blame

So nothing has changed in Washington. Has the Russian stance changed?

Absolutely not! During a press conference between the Russian president and British prime minister, Putin responded to Cameron’s accusations that Assad is responsible for the Syrian crisis by warning against arming those “who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies [and] eat their intestines, in front of the public and cameras”. He then added that Russia’s arming of the Syrian regime complies with international law because it is a legitimate power.

The Russian president finds nothing wrong with the “legitimacy” of a violent regime which has killed more than 120,000 of its own people—only 93,000 of which have been officially documented by the U.N. In fact, Putin, from all the tragic footage of killings and houses being destroyed in Syria, is able to recall only one disgusting incident which was roundly condemned by the revolutionaries. Unfortunately, all civil wars are awash with such incidents.

The Russian president, who has long experience in terms of “legitimately” dealing with the Chechnyans, seems to be oblivious to the fact that the Syrian revolution remained peaceful for over a year and a half despite the regime’s troops and “Shabiha” militia firing live bullets at demonstrations. This is not to mention the detentions and killings, and even the mutilation of Syrian citizen’s bodies, such as that of Syrian boy Hamza Al-Khateeb or the singer Ibrahim Kashoush.

Frankly, Putin—a KGB officer who grew up on violence—is not to blame. The blame lies with the U.S. administration claiming to operate within the political standards of morality. If I am not mistaken, respecting human rights, and particularly the right to live in a free and safe society, is one of the first moral standards of politics.

The statements by both Rhodes and Obama, which purposefully highlighted the “difficulties” of the situation in a bid to justify Washington’s policy of abandoning the Syrian people and turning a blind eye to the conspiracy to abort their revolution, fails to abide by one of the fundamental principles of a superpower’s foreign policy: deterrence. By this, I mean that the U.S. should seriously threaten to use force to facilitate a peaceful settlement.

The Theodor Roosevelt administration—in office between 1901 and 1909—adopted a successful foreign policy approach which can be summed up as “speak softly, and carry a big stick.” A prominent U.S. statesman, Henry Clay (1777–1852), who served as secretary of state, speaker of Congress, and unsuccessfully ran for the presidency three times, is known to have said, “I’d rather be right than president.” This saying continues to live on in the American memory.

In reality, President Obama, who is serving his second term in office, has been doing nothing but making statements and expressing optimism of a change happening somehow somewhere, brushing off prospects of the U.S. being drawn into a confrontation. However, time does not stop and wait for anyone and nature abhors a political vacuum.

This can be seen in Turkey, where a hotchpotch of protesters in Taksim Square have damaged the prestige of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. On the other hand, the Iranian security apparatus has “allowed” a relatively moderate candidate, Hassan Rouhani, to win the presidential elections, in a smart PR move that will benefit Iran in terms of polishing its image and confusing its international opponents.

Accordingly, if Obama expects his opponents to make free gestures of goodwill, he will risk much of his credibility as well as present his Republican opponents with a valuable opportunity to emerge victorious at the next elections. Obama needs to recall the outcome of the moderation of Jimmy Carter’s administration which was exploited by both his foreign and domestic opponents, and ended up being viewed as a prime example of weakness and lack of leadership.

I do not mean to offer advice to the U.S. administration, which has dozens of advisers and “agendas.” Rather, I am trying to draw attention to a dangerous regional situation which is about to be lost amid the misleading statements and fake claims of animosity and resistance.

This article was first published in Asharq al-Awsat on June 20, 2013.
_________
Eyad Abu Shakra (also written as Ayad Abou-Chakra) began his media career in 1973 with An-Nahar newspaper in Lebanon. Joned Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper in the UK in 1979, occupying several positions including: Senior Editor, Managing Editor, and Head of Research Unit, as well as being a regular columnist. He has several published works, including books, chapters in edited books, and specialized articles, in addition to frequent regular TV and radio appearances.

Iranian-Syrian alliance: Robust military moves – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.