BY ALASTAIR CROOKE
October 9, 2007
In an article in Salon.com on 19 September, Steven Clemons describes a debate at a recent Washington dinner party attended by eighteen persons at which “Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft squared off across the table over whether President Bush will bomb Iran.”Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Carter, Clemons writes, said he believed Bush’s team had laid a track leading to a single course of action: a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Scowcroft, who was national security advisor to President Ford and the first President Bush, held out hope that the current President Bush would hold fire, and not make an already disastrous situation for the U.S. in the Middle East even worse.
The 18 people at the party, including former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, then voted with a show of hands for either Brzezinski’s or Scowcroft’s position. Scowcroft got only two votes, including his own. Everyone else at the table shared Brzezinski’s fear that a U.S. strike against Iran is around the corner.
Clemons, who moderated the debate, argues that the case presented in terms of a ‘binary decision’ – to bomb or not to bomb – is unlikely to lead to the decision to bomb Iran, for various reasons, resting mainly on the U.S. military’s known opposition to conflict with Iran. In his final paragraph, Clemons suggests that “we should also worry about the kind of scenario David Wurmser has floated, meaning an engineered provocation. An ‘accidental war’ would escalate quickly and ‘end run,’ as Wurmser put it, the president’s diplomatic, intelligence and military decision‐making apparatus.”
The view from those most likely to be affected by an “accidental” war, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, all share the conclusion both that war is imminent and that any one of a number of “ticking clocks” may be “engineered” as a provocation that would by‐pass the Pentagon chiefs of staff arguments against expanded conflict and trigger war. All of these actors have been preparing flat‐out for the coming conflict.
They see the circumstances of the Middle East as one of hair‐trigger instability and escalating tensions. Equally significantly, there is a heightened inter‐linkage between events that suggests that, as in 1912‐14 in Europe, some unexpected and relatively insignificant event – a Sarajevo moment – could ignite currents and dynamics over which major states and movements would have little influence.
Iran (from where I have just returned) as well as leaders such as Hassan Nasrallah and Khaled Mesha’al see the signs of preparations for conflict taking place in Israel. These are the signs they see: Israel conducting low level overflights in Lebanon to create sonic booms; Israel, whose prime minister had been volubly warning of the risks of some misunderstanding leading to war between Israel and Syria, then launching an aerial incursion into Syria. And all of this as the international community remained silent.
The Syrians saw on their radars the four fighters that penetrated into Northern Syria from the Mediterranean; but they also saw the much larger numbers of Israeli aircraft that were flying in a holding position close to Cyprus. The Syrians were not about to disclose their anti‐aircraft missile capacities to Israel; and the intruders dropped the munitions and their long‐range fuel tanks without pressing any attack, but returned to join the larger group still flying a holding pattern off Cyprus before all returned to Israel as a single formation.
The Israeli objective remains a matter of speculation, but the general conclusion is that Israel was only ready to run such a risk against unknown air defenses either as a proving run or, given the size of the numbers of aircraft off Cyprus, to destroy some target that for whatever reason they were unable to engage. Either way, the mission seems related to future conflict.
Observers here note again that others will have seen the attack on their radars (the UK has a Sovereign Base on Cyprus), even though the incursion took place at very low altitude. Yet nothing was said.
This is only one among a series of ticking clocks:
(i) Lebanon: The ticking clock in Lebanon is the need to nominate a new president in a process whose first step began on 23 September, 2007. Without a new president, the president’s authority, by default, falls to the Siniora government – an outcome which both the incumbent president and the opposition have declared to be unacceptable.
Ominously for observers, several among the March 14 forces (pro‐government supporters) seem unperturbed at the impasse, disinterested in finding a solution and unwilling to seek a compromise, leading to speculation that they are expecting broad regional changes that would significantly weaken Hezbollah and Syria.
If the impasse continues, President Lahoud may decide to nominate a parallel prime minister who, in turn, would appoint a parallel government. Two governments, both claiming legitimacy, and a division of Lebanon into spheres of control is a real possibility.
Were two governments to be established in Lebanon, especially at a time when Syria is again at the front of U.S., Israeli and European demonization, what will be the reaction of the U.S.? Will Israel see an opportunity to strike again at Hezbollah, in the context of escalating tensions with Syria? What would be Syria’s reaction to Israeli intervention? What would be the response of Iran? And finally, how will this impinge on the quarter of a million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who have become increasingly radicalized as a result of Lebanese hostility and discrimination, as well as the continuing events in Nahr El‐Bared Camp in northern Lebanon?
(ii) Syria: Syria is also analyzing events in terms of the possibility of conflict emerging in the coming months with Israel. Although Israel has made peace overtures towards Syria, from the Syrian optic, the litmus test of both Israeli and U.S. intentions towards Syria will be U.S. policy towards Lebanon.
(iii) The Salafis: This is another ticking clock that might literally explode at any moment. The conflict with the Salafi group, Fatah al‐Islam, based in Nahr El‐Bared, north of Tripoli in Lebanon, has ended, but it is clear that there are a number of other salafi groups operating in Lebanon which are drawing on components of Lebanese popular support centered around Tripoli ‐ an overwhelming Sunni area where salafi’ism has become established amongst poorer young Muslims.
Salafi groups are equally strong in Syria and in Jordan. It seems that a number of these salafi groups that are in place are no longer combat units of the type we have seen in Nahr El‐Bared, but are smaller sabotage units of 3‐5 man cells. An unforeseen Saraejvo‐like assassination of a grand duke might unleash currents and dynamics that would be difficult to control at this time in the region.
(iv) Iraq: Iranian officials understand that the message being relayed from U.S. commanders to the administration in Washington is that to the extent they have an ability to tamp down violence, the only justification for the Surge is to provide the space for political reconciliation by Iraqi politicians. The Iranian fear is that the U.S. might toy with engineering a new political leadership in Iraq, and is aware of U.S. talks with Ba’athists and tribal leaders that are taking place in Jordan about the prospect of forming a new administration to replace Maliki’s government. The arming of the tribal leaders in Anbar, who are not the resistance – even if some of their tribal members are participants – is seen by Iran as seeding the ground for a longer‐term civil war. These tribal leaders hate the Shi’i, loathe Iran and detest the Islamists who threaten to undermine the traditional structures of power.
For the Iranians, dispossession of the Shia in Iraq by the U.S. – especially dispossession in favor of the Ba’athists is seen as a red line. To cross it would result in a very different posture by the Shi’a militia and forces in Iraq against U.S. and coalition forces there.
(v) Pakistan: President Musharaf teeters at the edge of loosing control in Pakistan. He is facing widespread popular hostility for his closeness to the U.S., and at the same time the disapprobation of the U.S. for not doing enough in the North West Frontier Province and in Waziristan against insurgents. The U.S. and NATO seem likely to take independent action in the tribal areas. This risks bringing down Musharaf’s administration.
(vi) Turkey: As the Kurdish internal insurgency continues, sentiment in Turkey is pushing for military incursions into northern Iraq. So far, these have been held at bay by U.S. military action against the PKK within Iraq. The PKK, however, are unlikely to be easily defeated in their mountainous terrain by U.S. special forces, and conflict between Turkey and this group seems likely to break out sooner or later.
(vii) Instability in the West Bank: The present situation is probably unsustainable beyond the short term; either we will see a move towards negotiations between Fatah and Hamas, or we will see growing instability in the West Bank. It is wrong to assume that Hamas are powerless in the West Bank. In the last parliamentary elections in January 2006, Hamas won 4 seats to Fatah’s 1 in Ramallah; 4 seats to 2 in Nablus; 9 seats to 0 in Hebron. Aggregating overall West Bank cities, Hamas won 30 seats to Fatah’s 12.
The West Bank clearly is different than Gaza in that Israel is deployed on the ground in the form of checkpoints and military outposts, but Hamas’ ability to raise the pressure in the West Bank should not be underestimated.
The U.S. initiative to hold a conference penciled in for Annapolis in November on the Palestinian‐Israeli conflict is largely discounted in the region. The senior Hamas leadership view this as a maneuver aimed principally at tying moderate Arab states support to Israel as part of the preparations for more aggressive action against Iran and Syria, rather than having a Palestinian state as its central purpose. Hamas has concluded that its central purpose is to provide cover for Arab states to be brought into coalition with Israel without unsettling their domestic populations too greatly. The assumption is that this conference could indicate the possible timing of conflict, which might follow soon after the sealing of a coalition.
Summary
While Washington looks at the Iranian prospects through the prism of a binary – to bomb or to acquiesce – a decision to be made by the president over the remainder of his presidency, the actors in the region see the conflict as imminent, and arriving through the backdoor, either via escalation of Western and Israeli tension with Syria, or from events in Lebanon, or a combination of both. All these key actors are convinced that conflict, should it occur, will convulse the entire region. They see the Wursmer “engineered” war that ultimately will extend to Iran as almost upon them; and they wonder at the silence from Europe and from informed observers in the U.S. Is it, they speculate, that everyone is so focused on Iraq, and so convinced that Iraq will be the arena in which the decision on Iran will be shaped, that they have forgotten to attend to the backdoor through which others already have a foot through?
* Alastair Crooke is Co-Director of Conflicts Forum based in Beirut. Before establishing Conflicts Forum, he was advisor on Middle East issues to Javier Solana, the EU Foreign Policy Chief, a staff member of Senator George Mitchell’s Fact Finding Committee that inquired into the causes of the Intifada (2000-2001), and advisor to the International Quartet.
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THE US/MEPOLICY BRIEFS REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF THEIR AUTHORS, NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE U.S./MIDDLE EAST PROJECT.