Tag Archive for: Middle East

The fall of the House of Assad

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The swift collapse, after 54 years, of Syria’s al-Assad dynasty has just transformed the Middle East’s geopolitical landscape. The lightning offensive by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia took all of Syria’s neighbours—and everyone else—by surprise. The news that president Bashar al-Assad had fled to Russia confirms the one binding truth about wars: unintended consequences can extend far beyond the theatre of battle.

The October 7, 2023, attack that Hamas carried out against Israeli civilian communities bordering Gaza triggered earthquakes across the Middle East. Israel’s ruthless offensive to destroy Hamas in Gaza, and in Lebanon against Hezbollah, practically obliterated Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’, while the United States and Britain pummelled the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen in response to Houthi attacks on international shipping.

Syria’s civil war began in 2011 when the Assad regime crushed peaceful Arab Spring protests. But the fighting largely subsided after 2015, when Russia’s intervention, together with assistance from Iran and Hezbollah, turned the war in Assad’s favour. Today, with Iran’s proxies destroyed and Russia’s war-fighting capabilities drained by its Ukraine quagmire, the rebels saw their chance.

With Turkish assistance, and apparently Qatar’s as well, the rebels easily overran the regime’s surprisingly thin defences, and Assad’s army capitulated without a battle. After Assad’s Iranian and Russian patrons hastily evacuated their forces and left him to his fate, a regime built on torture and mass slaughter no longer inspired fear.

The end of Iran’s alliance with Syria, its main stronghold in the Arab world, will reshape the regional balance of power. As Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former Iranian vice president, put it two days before Assad fled, the Syrian government’s fall ‘would be one of the most significant events in the history of the Middle East. … Resistance in the region would be left without support. Israel would become the dominant force.’

The name Hayat Tahrir al-Sham stands for the liberation of the Levant, which in the early Caliphate’s political lexicon comprises Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. But Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the HTS leader, has tried to project an image of a new kind of Islamist. He seems to have drawn the necessary lessons from the failures of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS) and now sees himself as a pragmatist who aspires only to bring about the ‘liberation of Syria from its oppressive regime.’

A sign of this new pragmatism is Jolani’s instructions to his men to allow Syria’s prime minister, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, to continue to run public institutions until they are formally handed over. ISIS would have carried out mass executions of soldiers and officials.

Still, al-Jolani leads a hard-line Islamist organisation. Those who expect that Turkey may temper HTS’s extremism assume that Jolani would be an obedient soldier of Turkey.

In any case, al-Jolani faces powerful political constraints. He must reckon with myriad rival militias that united just to topple Assad, and also with the Kurdish forces who rushed to take control of more parts of eastern Syria, while under attack from Turkish forces in the north.

To Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the ambitions of Syria’s Kurds threaten to spur nationalist subversion within Turkey’s own Kurdish communities. In 2019, Erdogan sent his army to establish a 30-kilometer-wide ‘security zone’ in northern Syria and push Kurdish fighters away from the Turkish border, an area where the Kurds had seized the opportunity of the civil war to consolidate an autonomous enclave.

Jolani now must work hard to find a compromise between the Kurds’ desire to maintain their autonomy and Turkey’s ambitions to keep them away from the border area. Will Erdogan tolerate Kurdish territorial gains that he sees as a threat to Turkey’s national security? Will Jolani, who aspires to nationwide support, allow Turkey to wage war against the Kurds while he tries to form a governing coalition with them and uphold Syria’s territorial sovereignty?

Notwithstanding his chronic conflict with Syria’s Kurds, Erdogan views Assad’s fall as a grand achievement. He was ecstatic in following the rebel forces’ advance. ‘Idlib, Hama, Homs, and the target, of course, is Damascus. … Our wish is that this march in Syria continues without incident’, he said after last Friday’s prayers in Istanbul.

For years, Erdogan and his Qatari allies have been supporting Islamist groups throughout the Middle East. He saw himself in competition with the Iranians on what model of Islamic democracy should prevail in Muslim lands: the Shia fundamentalist brand or Turkey’s more moderate form. Now he believes he has won the opportunity to shape such a model close to home.

Although Syria’s rebels have much to thank Israel for in creating the conditions for their success, Israel harbours no illusions about its new neighbours. Al-Jolani was born in Syria’s Golan Heights (hence the name Jolani), which Israel captured in the 1967 war, and whose annexation and sovereignty was recognised by US President Donald Trump in 2019.

With the rebel march on Damascus, Israel lost no time in deploying combat units along the Syrian border. Israel is concerned about potential spillovers of armed groups into the Golan Heights and attempts to attack Druze villages on the Syrian side of the border, whose residents have relatives in villages on the Israeli side. With the memory of October 7 still raw everywhere in Israel, there is no complacency about weapons stockpiles in the hands of Islamists on the border.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hubris should not be underestimated. If the Syrian tyranny collapsed, why not try to topple Iran’s as well? Already, Netanyahu could not resist the temptation of going beyond mere defensive measures: arguing that the 1974 agreement that regulated the separation of forces between Israel and Syria had collapsed, he ordered Israeli troops to seize control of the Syrian part of Mount Hermon, as well as the buffer zone in Syria’s sovereign territory and the dominant positions adjacent to it.

Key US allies in the region are similarly worried. They, too, would have liked to see Assad remain in power, fearing that an Islamist-controlled Syria could become a haven for terrorism. In their view, Assad was a known quantity—and better than an Islamist rebel-led government, however moderate it claims to be.

But now Assad is gone. The Middle East is again in a state of dramatic flux that calls for everybody, winners and losers alike, to recalibrate their policies.

Lines on a 1916 map may not keep Syria together

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Hayat Tahrir, al-Sham (HTS) led by Abu Mohammed el-Golani, has just taken Damascus. The officials of the Assad regime, and the administrative authorities are apparently in caretaker mode pending a transition of power. However, the capture of Damascus will be just the beginning to a massive change in the balance of power in the Middle East and perhaps the world.

The question most observers are now asking is: what if any form of stable central government might emerge from this lightning fast upending of the power dynamics in Syria? A possible lesson from history is that insurgent armies of diverse allegiance, religion and ideology are capable of capturing cities, but their ability to administrate them, ensuring supply of essential services and rule of law, less certain. It remains to be seen as to whether HTS can hold together the disparate elements that make up the forces that overthrew the Assad regime.

There are clear losers in the form of Russia and Iran at this stage, but it is not clear what major powers will move to fill the vacuum. Turkey has an obvious interest, but even there lies risk with the involvement of the US backed Kurdish groups in the East. Nature and geopolitics abhor a vacuum, and the fall of the Assad regime will generate a vacuum. Although HTS have apparently managed to transition from freedom fighters to administrators in Aleppo, there is no guarantee that the multitude of groups that make up Syria will accept this group as the legitimate government of Syria in the longer term.

The boundaries of Syria were set following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, along with Jordan, Trans-Jordan, Lebanon and the British mandate of Palestine. The lines on the map drawn Mark Sykes and Georges Picot in a secret agreement in 1916, known as the Picot-Sykes Agreement, in anticipation of victory over the Turkish Ottoman Empire. It did not remain secret for long with Russia publicly releasing the documents to the protagonists and participants alike, laying bare British and French ambitions for the region.

Like many European borders drawn before and after the First World War, lines on maps did not match the population already present. The agreement initially saw the formation of one or more Arab states, conditional on Arab forces capturing Damascus, Homas, Hama and Aleppo.

A glimpse into the possible future, may be provided by revisiting the past. On 1 October 1918, Damascus was occupied by Sharifian militias, followed by Bedouin, Druze and the city descended into anarchy. Amongst those vying for influence and future control were wealthy Christians, the Hashemites, who would later form the Kingdom of Jordan with British support, and Prince Faisal, who would go on to become Faisal I, King of Iraq until his death in 1933. To further add to the cast was the Hejazi Arab Army of the South led by T E Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia).

Today, at least initially, there appears to be a retention of the instruments of state with public statements by state media of the need for calm and indicating a transition of power. In 1918, there was no continuity in the business of government. Anarchy descended upon the city. Prisoners were released from prisons, there was a period of looting, and Turkish soldiers remaining in the city were massacred. Unlike the current situation, the fall of Damascus was part of a British campaign through Palestine. Peace came to Damascus when General Harry Chauvel and his Desert Mounted Corps entered the city.

Currently, in addition to the withdrawal of Iranian and Russian forces, China is also calling for Chinese nationals to leave immediately. The role of China in Syria is unclear beyond an interest in oil, but as late as September 2023, The New Arab was reporting on Assad in an extended visit to China hosted by Xi Jinping. The question is, which major power will be able to engage and offer support to any transition government?

What else is different from the 1918 fall of Damascus is the existence of the nuclear state of Israel with arguably the most capable military in the region—and perhaps among the most capable in the world. It is an Israel that is both increasingly assertive and likely nervous as to the nature of a future state or states on her northern border of the Golan Heights. The US, perhaps with Israeli intelligence, assassinated Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards corps Quds Force, who had been in charge of Assad’s security. Now with Iranian forces evacuating from Syria, the ability for a national security program across the disparate groups might be unlikely. The absence of a common enemy in the form of the Assad regime, is likely to make any national, coherent program difficult, if not impossible.

The initial signs of an orderly transition of power are positive. But the likelihood is that the disparate forces that banded together to overthrow the Assad regime will struggle to maintain a coherent purpose without the intervention and support of a major power. There is no Allenby British Army on the outskirts of Damascus ready to move in and restore order.

What there is, in the absence of brutal totalitarianism (which may yet emerge), is a lack of coherent purpose. The lines that were drawn on the map a century ago by Sykes and Picot have little meaning for the northern Sunni, the eastern Shia, the Druze to the south or the Alawite on the Mediterranean coast. There simply is no great purpose in a nation called Syria within borders drawn by European diplomats at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. There may yet be a nation called Kurdistan somewhere in the Levant. It is not the fall of Damascus that we should focus on—it is what will happen next, and what Turkey and Israel will do with the troublesome lands between their borders.

The implications of Raisi’s death

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The deaths of President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, create a noticeable hole in the governing apparatus of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But the deaths are unlikely to bring substantial change in the direction of the republic’s domestic and foreign policy, which is very much shepherded by the country’s all-powerful supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei has moved fast to reassure the public that the business of running the country will remain as usual. He has appointed First Vice President Mohammad Mokhtar as acting president and endorsed presidential elections to be held on 28 June.

Even so, Raisi’s demise comes at a time when Iran is faced with many domestic and foreign policy challenges. The transitional period can turn out be quite unsettling, though not overwhelming.

Raisi was very close to Khamenei. He sang from the same hardline songbook as the supreme leader, with an unwavering commitment to the survival and continuation of the theocracy that has governed Iran for the past 45 years.

The Islamic regime, founded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, has been maintained and propped up within a very tight framework of institutional arrangements and checks and balances. It reposits enormous religious and constitutional power in an indirectly elected supreme leader. In addition to his religious and constitutional authority, Khamenei presides over a host of agencies through which the state can rule and enforce law. These including, most importantly, the formidable Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its subordinate Basij para-military organisation, and revolutionary committees and Shia Islamic networks.

Under Khamenei, the Islamic Republic has been empowered to deal harshly with any internal upheaval or external threat, especially from arch enemies the United States and Israel. It has also forged very strong strategic ties with Russia and China.

Nonetheless, the deaths of Raisi and Amir-Abdollahian, the latter having become the main diplomatic face of the regime, have occurred at a time that is much more difficult for the regime than usual.

The regime is besieged by declining domestic popularity, as evidenced by public unrest led by the ‘Women, Life and Freedom’ movement since 2022. Although the protests have been contained, the public discontent continues to bubble on with loud voices calling for regime change.

The regime also faces serious challenges in the region. It has been brought to face-to-face confrontation with Israel by the war in Gaza and by Tehran’s support of Hamas and several other anti-Israel and anti-US forces in the region, particularly Lebanese Hezbollah, the Syrian regime, the Iraqi militia and Yemenis Houthis.

Further, the presidential election may not be all that smooth. Iranian politics are factionalised. The conservative or hardline factions, swirling around Khamenei and backed by Raisi, have largely controlled just about all levers of power in the past four years, leaving reformist clusters very marginalised. Although the hardline factions have no candidate at this stage, because Raisi was expected to run for a second term, they can be expected to do whatever it takes to capture the presidency. If this happens, it must frustrate the reformists, and even more so those who want to see the overthrow of the regime.

Yet the unexpected death of Raisi provides a unique opportunity for Khamenei to inject balance into the regime’s politics. He can urge the Guardian Council —the body that vets candidates for their ideological purity and political reliability—not to disqualify highly competent reformist candidates, as it did in the 2021 elections, enabling Raisi to win in a landslide.

The next important issue facing the regime is the selection of a successor to Khamenei, who is 85 and not in great health. In the absence of Raisi, Khamenei’s son Mujtaba is viewed as the only likely candidate. But there is a constitutional procedure to be followed. The Assembly of Experts is entrusted with selecting or dismissing a supreme leader. Khamenei has a strong cohort of supporters in the assembly, but potential endorsement of Mujtaba will be seen as making the leadership hereditary. This will go against the constitution, causing more tensions within the ruling clerical stratum than has been seen before.

Raisi’s death may not seriously affect the Islamic Republic’s internal and external settings. But in the months ahead, the regime is set to be more preoccupied with internal matters rather than being engaged in major foreign policy ventures.

Tigris–Euphrates basin states must come together to address water crisis

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In a dramatic display of collective frustration, the streets of Baghdad recently became a theatre of dissent as around 300 Iraqis took to Nisour Square to protest acute water shortages. The demonstrations were held on 18 July near the Turkish embassy and marked a crucial moment in Iraq’s ongoing water crisis. They highlighted mounting tensions in the Middle East over shared water resources, the repercussions of climate change and poor governance.

The protests weren’t an isolated event. They were a manifestation of long-simmering discontent with the water crisis in Iraq. Faced with dwindling access to potable water and a significant decline in river levels, citizens took to the streets to demand accountability from a government perceived to have mishandled the nation’s most precious resource.

Iraq’s water scarcity comes back to its geography. It sits at an intricate intersection of water resources. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, originating in neighbouring Turkey and Iran, respectively, are vital lifelines for Iraq. However, unyielding demand for water upstream has led these countries to construct dams and diversions that diminish flows downstream, devastating Iraq’s water supply.

The Baghdad protests drew attention to the delicate balance needed among nations that share water and the pressing need for cooperation in water management. Turkey’s and Iran’s dams on the Tigris and Euphrates have been contentious because they significantly alter flows downstream in Iraq. Tensions have made it challenging to achieve consensus on equitable sharing agreements, but also made diplomatic efforts to foster cooperation even more urgent.

Water is pivotal in any country’s development, but with Iraq experiencing sharp population growth and rising food demand, it’s feeling the pinch hardest. In Syria and Iraq, the Tigris and Euphrates supply the vast majority of water. The Euphrates provides around 85% of Syria’s renewable water, and the two rivers combined make up nearly 100% of Iraq’s supply. Ownership of the rivers’ basins is divided among Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

The Tigris originates in Hazar Lake in Anatolia and flows out of Turkey through Syria and Iraq before its confluence with the Euphrates at the Shatt al-Arab canal in southern Iraq. The water conflict in the Euphrates–Tigris basin has been ongoing since the 1960s with Turkey, Syria and Iraq competitively constructing large-scale water-supply schemes.

Diplomatic resolutions are complicated by the unpredictable flow of the Tigris, but Turkey’s control of 88.7% of the Euphrates basin’s water potential is the main strain on water relations. The Euphrates’ salinity has also been increasing beyond sustainable levels on the Syria–Iraq border, hindering irrigation. Yet all three countries have initiated extensive development plans to harness yet more of this water in hopes of achieving food security for their rapidly growing populations.

During the Syrian civil war, water was frequently used as a weapon. In May 2015, for instance, Islamic State took control of the Ramadi Dam in Iraq and reduced the outflow of the Euphrates River, diverting water into Lake Habbaniya. This drained the water supply of several provinces, hurting civilian communities. Other parties to the conflict in Syria also weaponised water access to punish or gain leverage over populations and exacerbated the already dire water crisis.

The war also severely damaged water infrastructure. Plants and pipes were hit directly by fighting, but also indirectly through energy infrastructure. This worsened the humanitarian crisis, leaving many Syrians without access to clean water for drinking, sanitation and agriculture.

Longstanding tension, environmental challenges and the impact of the war have combined to push the water crisis to a critical level. Addressing it will require not only sustainable water management practices in each country on the rivers; it will also require better conflict resolution, infrastructure and humanitarian aid across the region to protect access to clean water.

Meanwhile, climate change looms ominously over the Middle East. Rising temperatures and erratic precipitation patterns have disrupted the water cycle, reduced river flows and increased evaporation rates. Scarcity of water is a common challenge in the Middle East, with downstream states suffering the most, and water often triggers conflict as states compete to control it. While conflict is rare in regions with abundant water, areas with less often fight over vital supply sources. As the climate continues to change, Iraq’s water situation will deteriorate and strain the nation’s capacity even further.

Governance challenges have also affected Iraq’s ability to effectively manage water resources. Decades of conflict have severely hampered the maintenance and development of essential infrastructure. Mismanagement, corruption and a lack of coherent policies have compounded its water crisis, exacerbating discontent among Iraq’s citizens and highlighting the need for robust and accountable governance.

There have been steps in the right direction. Iraq recently joined the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, becoming the first country in the Middle East to do so. The landmark decision makes Iraq the 49th party to the framework and reflects its commitment to cross-border cooperation on water. In addition, Iraq has chosen to participate in the United Nations Water Conference.

Iraq has also sought to better collaborate with Turkey, and in March they signed an agreement to double water releases from dams on the Tigris River for one month. During the same visit, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated their plans to establish a joint water resources research centre in Baghdad to cooperatively address water challenges and develop sustainable water management strategies.

With the region home to 12 of the most water-scarce countries on the planet, the significance of effective, collaborative water management cannot be understated. Communities in the Middle East rely on water that crosses international boundaries, and cooperation is needed to ensure its equitable access and responsible use.

The slow, tragic death of the Oslo Accords

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Peace processes tend to be riddled with uncertainties, especially when conflicts are protracted and each side’s intentions, willingness and capacity to comply with any agreement remain unclear. The significant political costs associated with making concessions to a mortal enemy often doom negotiations before any agreement is reached.

This is evident in the recently declassified protocols of the 1993 Israeli cabinet meeting that approved the first Oslo Accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The records reveal that the signs of eventual failure were apparent from the very beginning.

At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin hoped that PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat could stem the rise of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and assist in quelling the intifada that had been raging in the West Bank and Gaza since 1987. But Arafat, wary of being perceived as a ‘collaborator’, refused to become Israel’s security subcontractor. Rabin’s fatalistic foreign minister, Shimon Peres, warned that ‘the whole PLO business’ could ‘fall apart’ and that an ‘Iran-like Hamas’ could take its place. Meanwhile, Israel Defense Forces’ Chief of General Staff Ehud Barak famously remarked that the agreement had ‘more holes than Swiss cheese’.

Nevertheless, the 1993 accord represented a historical shift, symbolising the mutual recognition of two national movements that had been fighting for control over the same piece of land for more than a century. It also served as an interim agreement, establishing Palestinian autonomy in Gaza and parts of the West Bank occupied by Israel since 1967. And it provided a roadmap for addressing the conflict’s core issues, including borders, the status of Jerusalem, and the plight of Palestinian refugees who fled their homes during the 1948 war.

Alas, 30 years after its signing and 29 years after Rabin, Peres and Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Oslo process is largely remembered as a prime example of diplomatic deception. Israel’s land grabs and settlement expansion, which have increased the number of Israeli settlers from 115,000 in 1993 to roughly 700,000 today, have rendered the establishment of an independent Palestinian state unfeasible. The entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean is now effectively a single state where segregated Palestinians are systematically denied fundamental human rights.

Jerusalem, whose eastern neighbourhoods had once been envisioned as Palestine’s future capital, has expanded under Israeli control from 10,000 acres in 1967 to roughly 32,000 acres today. In this densely populated city, Jews and Arabs live under separate legal systems. While an independent Palestinian state remains the preferred solution among international stakeholders, it increasingly looks like a pipe dream.

To be sure, the Oslo Accords were not so much about realising a political vision as they were the product of despair. Rabin accepted the previously unthinkable step of shaking hands with Arafat only after failing to reach a peace agreement with Syrian ruler Hafez al-Assad. The political costs of managing two peace processes simultaneously, he realised, would be unacceptable.

Arafat, for his part, was just as desperate as his Israeli counterparts. The Palestinian leader misjudged the geopolitical implications of the Cold War’s end. By supporting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he alienated the PLO’s wealthy supporters in the Gulf, resulting in the PLO’s bankruptcy and international isolation. Arafat’s strategic miscalculations mirrored the colossal error made by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem who sided with Nazi Germany during World War II.

Moreover, the first intifada, the most intense Palestinian uprising since the PLO’s establishment, was neither initiated nor led by the organisation. Arafat desperately needed to reassert control over the Palestinian national movement, and he was determined to establish a presence in the occupied territories at any cost. This momentary vulnerability explains why the PLO was willing to settle for minor bases in the West Bank and Gaza without assurances that the Palestinians could exercise their right to self-determination. Oslo didn’t even include an Israeli commitment to halt the expansion of settlements, let alone dismantle them.

Against this backdrop, a vicious cycle of Palestinian terrorism and harsh Israeli reprisals took root during the Oslo years. Palestinians endured collective punishment, economic decline and the expansion of Israeli settlements, a trend that persisted even under Rabin. When Rabin was assassinated in November 1995 by a Jewish extremist who viewed him as a traitor for ‘selling out Eretz Israel’, he was already politically weakened by a series of devastating suicide bombings.

The Oslo process sowed the seeds of its own demise by maintaining ‘constructive ambiguity’ regarding the nature of the final settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. The accords were complicated, were riddled with gaps, and reflected the power imbalance between the occupied and the occupiers. They raised expectations that were destined to collide with conflicting national narratives and domestic political considerations.

By the time negotiations on a final peace agreement began, no Israeli peace proposal—even the comprehensive ones made by prime ministers Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008—could meet the Palestinians’ unrealistic expectations. By pushing the boundaries of Israel’s capacity for compromise, these proposals and their subsequent rejection set the stage for the rise of Israel’s annexationist far right, epitomised by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current proto-fascist coalition.

The 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalised diplomatic relations between Israel and four Arab countries—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan—are a testament to Oslo’s failure. The prevailing wisdom during the Oslo era was that peace with the Palestinians would serve as a stepping-stone to peace between Israel and the broader Arab world. Ultimately, geopolitical considerations prevailed, and Israel and Saudi Arabia seem to be edging closer to diplomatic normalisation. Meanwhile, as the Arab–Israeli conflict increasingly seems like a relic of the past, Palestine remains occupied.

The United States, as the main architect of the Abraham Accords, must leverage this regional realignment to mitigate the mistreatment of Palestinians. Any normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia should be conditional on meaningful progress on the Palestine front. But an agreement that failed to dissolve Netanyahu’s coalition of messianic settler zealots would merely represent a cosmetic adjustment orchestrated by an astute political tactician.

How the Middle East is adapting to a polarised world

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The Middle East’s strategic equation is rapidly changing against the global backdrop of polarisation between democracies and autocracies. Its authoritarian rulers have lately taken a number of steps to safeguard their positions in this context by becoming more accommodating towards each other. Their moves entail serious implications for regional and global politics.

Of the recent developments, two stand out as highly consequential: the Iran – Saudi Arabia rapprochement and the rehabilitation of the Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad. Both, interactively, are set to influence the direction in which the Middle East is heading.

The first development, occurring under China’s good offices, signals the willingness of the de facto Chinese- and Russian-allied Islamic Republic of Iran and the traditionally pro-Western Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to smooth out their traditional sectarian and geopolitical differences. The restoration of their ties after a six-year break carries the potential for cooperation in reducing regional tensions between them in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and, most urgently, Yemen.

The second development indicates that the Arab world, despite its previous support of the popular uprising against the Assad regime and its condemnation of the regime for its bloody suppression of the opposition, with active Iranian and Russian support, wants to bring Syria back into the Arab fold. Assad’s attendance of the recent Arab League meeting in Riyadh, his call for domestic affairs of the regional states to be left to themselves, and his call for the curtailment of interference by outside powers, by which he meant specifically the United States, couldn’t have been more disconcerting to Washington and its democratic allies.

The US’s and UK’s immediate criticisms of the Arab League for inviting Assad and providing him with a forum in which to stand tall for all his atrocities and his alliance with Russia and Iran as well as his support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine essentially underlined Western frustration with the unpredictability and unreliability of Middle East actors. The episode could only cut deep in Washington as traditional security provider to Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Also, it could unsettle America’s strategic partner, Israel, which has viewed the Iranian and Syrian regimes with utmost disdain and as security threats.

Yet, it appeared fine with all of the Arab League members (except the Emirate of Qatar, which has sought to carve out a foreign policy independent of other fellow Arab states). They have shown no qualms over Assad’s unsavoury actions, involving massive human rights violations, unshakable ties with Iran, and facilitation of Vladimir Putin’s Russia in establishing a strong foothold in Syria.

Syria’s readmission into the Arab League, which has never been an effective organisation, doesn’t necessarily mean that the Assad regime’s relations will now blossom with most of the league. Each of those members has its own conditions and it may take some time before the Assad regime can claim full accommodation. The same is true in the case of Iranian–Saudi rapprochement.

However, what the two developments simply reveal is that most of the Arab states feel more comfortable in an authoritarian framework than a democratic one. While the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky was also given an opportunity to address the Arab League, most of whose members have not outrightly condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine, and while Assad decided not to listen to Zelensky’s speech, Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China cannot but be happy with the direction the Middle East is taking. The US as the traditional influencer has never been as much on the back foot in the region as it is now.

How this is going to play out in the medium to long run, only time will tell. For the time being, in a zero-sum game, the US is not winning—a challenge that Joe Biden’s presidency cannot simply brush off.

The Middle East’s marriages of convenience

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As the United States focuses on its showdown with Russia in Ukraine and its escalating competition with China, the Middle East has been left to run its affairs the way it always has: with marriages of convenience between rival powers. These are not Catholic-style ‘holy matrimonies’, comprehensive and permanent, but coolly pragmatic deals to survive through short-term relationships that fit changing strategic conditions. If only Israel understood that.

Of course, one relatively constant factor—religion—does play an important role in determining whether countries in the region are rivals or allies. But the Sunni–Shia divide has been accorded excessive weight in assessments of the Middle East’s diplomatic shifts. Geopolitical interests and regime survival always prevail over religious identities. This helps to explain why conservative Arab regimes have shown such a remarkable ability to withstand both internal upheaval—exemplified by the resounding defeat of pro-democracy forces during the Arab Spring—and external pressures.

The Gulf countries exemplify this hard-headed approach. Business-oriented and living in the shadow of predator states like Iraq and Iran, they are much more concerned with commerce and discreet security understandings than with ideology. A particularly striking display of such diplomatic pragmatism came last month, when Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Sunni world and Shia Iran re-established relations.

Beyond the headlines trumpeting China’s role in mediating the rapprochement, the logic driving the shift is clear. For Iran—desperate to extricate itself from the economic and social crises that have fuelled popular uprisings in recent months—Saudi Arabia is a much-needed lifeline. For the Saudis, the failure of America’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran—thanks, not least, to its alliance with China and Russia—and Iran’s imminent emergence as a nuclear state make détente a necessity.

Saudi Arabia was most likely also motivated by the prospect of ending the war in Yemen, where it has suffered humiliating losses at the hands of the Houthis, Iran’s proxies. Peace would enable the kingdom to focus its attention on diversifying its economy away from oil and petrochemicals. As a trade-dependent economy, Saudi Arabia can thrive only in a context of peace and security.

Saudi Arabia’s opening with Iran is part of a broader regional accommodation. The United Arab Emirates re-established diplomatic relations with Iran last year, with Bahrain expected to follow suit soon. Turkey has reached out to both Syria and Israel, and the Arab states seem to be allowing Syria—with its distinctly secular and nationalist Ba’ath regime—back into the fold. Last month, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, long shunned as a pariah, visited the UAE, and a Saudi reconciliation with the ‘butcher of Damascus’ is now in the offing.

Here, too, pragmatism has been the guiding principle. Different conditions call for different policies, and at a time when the US—Assad’s main international nemesis—has become less assertive in the region, Syria has come to seem like a legitimate partner.

But no one should expect that the Arab League will welcome Syria back only if it pledges to reduce Iran’s military deployment on its territory. A key feature of Middle Eastern marriages of convenience is that they don’t entail policy changes that reflect the parties’ core interests. Iran won’t downgrade its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, whether it has embassies in Saudi Arabia or not.

Likewise, the Saudi–Iranian rapprochement won’t change the fact that the US is the ultimate guarantor of Saudi Arabia’s security. Nor does it rule out a Saudi–Israeli peace agreement. The House of Saud is always keen to diversify its strategic options.

Before a Saudi deal with Israel can happen, however, Israel will have to put its domestic political house in order, avoid escalation in the occupied territories, freeze settlement expansion and restore its relationship with the US. More fundamentally, Israelis must comprehend what the Arabs, Turks and Iranians already understand: pragmatic deal-making will do it a lot more good than an impossible quest for total victory.

The 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalised diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, were more a product of American pressure than diplomatic savoir faire on Israel’s part. And, in the eyes of its newfound Arab partners, Israel’s standing is already deteriorating, owing not only to its domestic crisis, but also to its refusal to rethink its Iran strategy.

While other Middle Eastern countries adapt to current strategic conditions, Israel remains committed to its longstanding ‘shadow war’ against Iran, with its covert attacks, including drone strikes and cyberattacks, as well as airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria. Despite the region’s recent surfeit of marriages, Israeli leaders’ lack of vision and courage implies that they are unlikely to step up to the altar any time soon.

Syria’s dictator comes in from the cold

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More than a decade after long-departed Western leaders called for his removal from office as a precondition for any resolution to the Syrian crisis, Bashar al-Assad is on the verge of reintegrating into the region. He has survived in power despite the efforts of many regional leaders who’ve financed, armed and attempted to coordinate the efforts of opposition groups seeking his overthrow.

Some Gulf states have reopened their Damascus embassies in recent years, and in the past few weeks the Egyptian foreign minister paid his first visit to Syria in over a decade and the Syrian foreign minister visited Saudi Arabia for the first time since 2011.

A possible return of Syria to the Arab league is also being discussed.

At first glance, regional relegitimisation of Assad seems to be another blow to Washington’s prestige. Coming hard on the heels of a Beijing-brokered detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran, regional political arrangements appear to be developing despite, rather than because of, American diplomatic efforts. There’s no doubt that the Middle East views Washington in a different light than it did a decade ago. Military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the on-again, off-again nuclear deal with Iran and its consequences for regional security, along with a belief that Washington is focused on Russia in Europe and China in the Indo-Pacific, mean that US administrations have little ability to focus on the Syria file. Washington opposes normalisation with Assad, but it has little interest in expending political capital to dissuade regional states from doing so.

Even though Syria has long been the most wicked of wicked problems—and always in Moscow’s rather than Washington’s sphere of influence—the failure to ensure the fall of Assad meant that Iran, through its military support for the Syrian regime, took on an importance much greater than it had before the Syrian uprising. Some argue that a regional rapprochement will allow Arab states to supplant Tehran’s influence, though there’s little evidence for that.

The US does retain some leverage over Syria, with its continued troop presence in the country ostensibly to fight Islamic State but really to have a say in Syria’s political outcome, as well as the sanctions regime imposed under the Caesar Act. While Washington may be powerless to stop Assad’s diplomatic reintegration, it can exact a significant cost, if it chooses, on anyone seeking to rebuild and reintegrate Syria economically.

Millions of Syrian citizens are still refugees in neighbouring countries, Turkish and American troops and their armed supporters occupy parts of the territory, Israeli regularly conducts airstrikes on Syrian and Iranian targets inside the country and a range of longstanding international sanctions remains in place. Exactly what practical benefits regional normalisation will bring in the short term is debatable. We do know that whatever benefits there are will go first and foremost to the regime and its closest supporters.

At a time when US diplomatic influence in the region is waning, however, the Syrian regime knows that time is on its side, and in the long term, regional recognition and engagement are the first steps in fracturing international unity. It worked on the military front and Assad has cause to believe that it will work on the diplomatic and economic fronts, too.

Prospects for Israeli–Palestinian peace more remote than ever

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A massive double crisis is emerging between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority are confronting internal challenges that have cast shadows over their futures, and fast-rising tensions between the two sides are approaching a breaking point.

In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has returned to power by allying himself with extreme ultra-Orthodox and right-wing parties that are determined to change the very nature of Israel’s constitutional order. Among other things, the government is pursuing reforms that will politicise the judiciary and strip it of its most important powers, as well as threatening to eliminate any remaining possibility of achieving a sustainable two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian question.

Meanwhile, Israelis have taken to the streets en masse to protest the government’s proposals. In a recent speech unveiling his own ‘people’s directive’ to end the crisis, Israeli President Isaac Herzog warned that the risk of a civil war cannot be dismissed. Within minutes of the proposal being released, Netanyahu’s government had already rejected it. Barring some miracle, Israel will continue to descend into the deepest domestic political crisis since its founding. The nature of the Israeli state that will emerge from this crucible is now an open question.

Gone are the days of the Oslo Accords, which offered hope of a resolution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by establishing structures and pathways for achieving a two-state solution. Fundamentalist forces on both sides have challenged this process from the very start, but never before have these forces been so powerful. The gradual downward slide that has been underway for many years is accelerating, erasing what was left of the legacy of Oslo. What remains today is little more than the rapidly crumbling ruins of what the accords once set up. Most Israelis no longer seem to care much about what’s happening in the occupied Palestinian territories, as long as their own security is assured.

On the other side of Israel’s high separation barrier walling off the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is also spiralling into a crisis of legitimacy—albeit one that is perhaps less immediate than on the Israeli side. Recent polls show that a large majority of Palestinians have lost faith in the PA and favour abolishing it. PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s government has delivered neither peace nor prosperity. As Palestinians watch Israeli illegal settlements encroach on their lands while they suffer the daily humiliations of the occupation regime, they seem increasingly ready to give their support to those who want to take up arms.

These trends on both sides threaten to create a vicious cycle of violence and conflict that will be far worse than the occasional, explosive flare-ups over Gaza (which, sadly, have become more or less routine).

Making matters worse, at the level of international diplomacy, there’s a palpable fatigue about the so-called Middle East peace process. Many Arab countries have understandably moved on, even developing their own political and economic relations with Israel. With Russia bombarding Ukrainian civilians, the European Union is otherwise occupied—and even if it didn’t have a war on its borders, it is less internally united on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict than in the past.

Likewise, even though US President Joe Biden’s administration still voices support for a two-state solution, it hasn’t reversed any of the dangerous and illegal steps that Donald Trump’s administration took when it was cosying up to Netanyahu and further unravelling the conditions for making a two-state solution possible. It’s not difficult to understand why more Palestinians have succumbed to despair.

As we enter the season of Ramadan (March 22 – April 20) and Passover (April 5–13), passions are bound to rise even further. At least 100 people have already been killed in various West Bank clashes so far this year, and civilians on both sides have fallen victim to terrorist attacks. Pretty much everyone expects the situation to go from bad to worse in the weeks and months ahead.

The days of Oslo are long gone. The prospects for peace will not be revived without a fundamental reordering of the issues in one direction or the other. The big question, then, is whether international diplomacy, dormant for years, can be revived. If not, the most likely outcome will be another eruption of major violence and possibly a prolonged war.

Is Iran’s regime making concessions as it tries to crush protests?

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As the protests in Iran enter pass the three-month mark, their number and intensity are beginning to decrease due to brutal government suppression. The policy of the ruling theocracy has been clear from the outset: they aim to crush the protests, which they will most likely succeed in doing, to ensure public dissention doesn’t gain sufficient traction nationally to threaten the regime’s existence.

An accurate picture of developments in Iran is clouded by the misinformation and disinformation being disseminated by various groups. What is known is that the protests were triggered by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, an ethnic Kurd, detained by the religious morality police for wearing her headscarf, or hijab, ‘inappropriately’.

Amini’s death triggered nationwide protests, initiated and led by young women, many university students and graduates, using the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’. However, the protests quickly spread beyond these issues, attracting wider public and mixed-gender support for pursuing broad social and other issues including economic hardship, high-level corruption and the theocratic nature of the regime itself.

How many protesters have taken to the streets, and the gender mix, are not known. As of early December, the non-profit organisation Iran Human Rights estimated that more than a thousand separate demonstrations had occurred nationwide, involving some 155 cities and nearly half the nation’s universities.

At least 458 protesters have been killed, including 29 women and 63 minors. More than 50 members of the security forces have also been killed. Besides Tehran, most killings occurred in the Baloch, Azeri and Kurd ethnically dominant provinces in the southwest, north and northeast. More than 18,000 protesters have been detained and 11 have been officially sentenced to death by Iranian court. Two have been executed so far. An Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps general acknowledged on 28 November that more than 300 protesters had been killed, the only number of deaths admitted to date by the government.

Earlier national protests—for example in 2009 about electoral fraud and in 2019 over fuel prices—had a political and economic focus, and were primarily initiated and driven by men. That women have led the current protests, based principally on social issues, is a first, posing new challenges to the theocracy.

Women have long faced cultural discrimination in Iran. Despite women comprising a majority of the country’s university graduates, Iran ranked 144th out of 146 for gender inequality by ‘economic participation and opportunity’ in Human Rights Watch’s 2022 report. Only 15% of Iranians in the job market were women and unemployment was estimated at 36% versus 21% for men. Women’s prospects for promotion to higher management positions in government, in the multitude of government-owned enterprises and major charitable trusts, and in the private sector were significantly lower than men’s. And while all women over the age of 18 have the right to vote and contest elections for the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Iran’s parliament), of its 290 elected members, just 16 are women. Only one woman is serving in the current 35-member cabinet, Ensieh Khazali, the vice president for women and family affairs.

Religious strictures, more generally than just dress code, are also a major issue for many women. Iran’s constitution, introduced in 1979 by the revolutionary clerics, states that ‘both men and women equally enjoy the protection of the law and enjoy all human, political, economic, social and cultural rights’. It also provides freedom of the press, expression and public gatherings. However, these rights are subject to the qualification that their exercise must be ‘in conformity with’, ‘not violate’ and not be ‘detrimental to the fundamental principles of’ the ‘criteria of Islam’. Iran has adopted the unique Velayat e Faqih system of Islam, under which all civil rules, regulations and state functions are subject and subordinate to Islamic law. But as with laws anywhere, they are subject to interpretation, and the final authority rests with the supreme leader, the ‘national guardian’, who has the constitutional powers of ‘supervision’ over all state and religious matters. The current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a conservative.

One of the strong demands of the protesters is more social freedoms, including a more liberal dress code for women. While some freedoms were allowed during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani (2013–2021), a moderate, an increasingly strict version of the Islamic code has been enforced since the election of his successor, Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative. Enforcing and resisting the ‘correct’ wearing of hijabs has become a symbolic contest.

This contest has also taken on another dimension: while the majority of protesters are seeking liberal change within the existing theocratic system, a minority have been pushing for structural change, a secular system with the separation of religion and state. Both have been seen by the ruling regime as seriously challenging the system, but the latter are more threatening because they challenge the very structure underpinning the ruling regime.

The Iranian government has predictably blamed ‘foreign enemies’ for the unrest. Protesters have indeed received foreign support, especially across the internet and social media. The most likely overseas sources of support are the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and members of the anti-regime diaspora, particularly in the US and Europe. Other reports indicate attempts to exploit the protests to cause ethnic unrest, notably among the Kurds in western Iran and the Baloch in the southeast. While ‘foreign interference’ has contributed in part to the protests and unrest generally, the primary cause is unquestionably domestic policies.

But is the regime listening at all? Media reports claimed earlier this month that the morality police had been ‘shut down’. In the absence of official confirmation, it’s more likely that the government has adopted its predecessor’s interim non-enforcement policy to take some of the heat out of the protests.

Some prominent Iranians have called on the government to listen to the protestor’s demands and back off their crackdown. These include Mohammad Khatami, the reformist president from 1997 to 2005; Badri Hosseini Khameini, sister of the supreme leader, who has described her brother’s ‘despotic caliphate’ as having brought nothing but suffering; and the Iranian soccer team, who demonstrated their support for the protesters by refusing to sing the national anthem in their first match at the World Cup in Qatar.

The theocracy’s brutal response to the protesters has also generated strong condemnation by the leaders of Western and other nations, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong. The UN Economic and Social Council has just adopted a US-drafted resolution to ‘remove with immediate effect the Islamic Republic of Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women … for the remainder of its 2022–2026 term’.

There is considerable scope for Iran’s ruling conservative government to compromise in ways that could lessen discrimination and advance women’s rights, but without threatening the theocratic structure of the regime. Non-enforcement of the hijab rule is a start.