As the impasse over Tehran’s nuclear program worsens, those most likely to be directly effected by an Iranian bomb are showing greater alarm. While the media fixates on Israel and its possible reaction, other regional players have no less at stake.
Despite Riyadh’s long-held advocacy of making the Middle East a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, there has been much speculation in the last two decades about the possibility of its acquiring or developing nuclear weapons should Tehran obtain the bomb.[1] In the words of King Abdullah: “If Iran developed nuclear weapons … everyone in the region would do the same,”[2] a sentiment echoed by Prince Turki al-Faisal, former head of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate.[3] Has Riyadh decided to go down the nuclear road, or is this bluster a desperate bid to stop Tehran’s nuclear program dead in its tracks?
Consider five factors that had no effect on the very warm reception given by President Barack Obama to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan:
–While the U.S. government has pressured Erdogan not to visit the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Erdogan announced in the White House Rose Garden that he would do so. An alleged U.S. ally says publicly in front of Obama while being hosted by him that he is going to defy the United States.
This is not some routine matter. With previous presidents, if an ally was going to do something like that he would say nothing at the time and then months later would subvert U.S. policy. Or better yet the foreign leader would not do so. To announce defiance in such a way is a serious sign of how little respect Middle East leaders have for Obama — and U.S. policy nowadays — and how little Obama will do about it.
Errors by the party in power can get America into trouble; real catastrophes require consensus.
Rarely have both parties been as unanimous about a development overseas as they have in their shared enthusiasm for the so-called Arab Spring during the first months of 2011. Republicans vied with the Obama Administration in their zeal for the ouster of Egypt’s dictator Hosni Mubarak and in championing the subsequent NATO intervention against Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Both parties saw themselves as having been vindicated by events. The Obama Administration saw its actions as proof that soft power in pursuit of humanitarian goals offered a new paradigm for foreign-policy success. And the Republican establishment saw a vindication of the Bush freedom agenda.
American Middle East analysts often claim that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate organization, nothing like the more radical Salafis. If true, what do we make of the fact that the most intolerant, anti-American, hate-filled Salafis and jihadis also happen to be the greatest and staunchest supporters of Morsi? Doesn’t such unequivocal support indicate shared ideologies and goals?
Consider: A few weeks ago, while discussing the ongoing protests against Egypt’s President Muhammad Morsi—himself a leader of the Brotherhood—Sheikh Abdullah Badr, an Al Azhar trained scholar and professor of Islamic exegesis, made the following assertion on live TV:
… As we look for ways to crack down on terrorism and terrorist activity, looking at UNRWA is a good start. American taxpayer dollars fund approximately one-third of UNRWA’s operating budget. UNRWA provides food, medicine, economic aid, jobs, radical education, political opportunities, and even logistical assistance to Hamas and other extremist groups. UNRWA’s budget, which exceeds $365 million, is funded by many nations, but the United States and other Western nations are the largest contributors. …
If you want to find out even more truth about UNRWA, I suggest you read this very thoughtful, well-documented treatise by three well-recognized experts on Middle East affairs: Barry Rubin, Asaf Romirowsky, and Jonathan Spyer. They eloquently showed that UNRWA:
… actually helps destroy the chance of Arab-Israeli peace, promotes terrorism, and holds Palestinians back from rebuilding their lives.
Unique in history, UNRWA’s job is to keep Palestinian refugees in suspended animation — and at low living standards — until they achieve the goal set for them by the PLO and Hamas: Israel’s extinction. In the meantime, their suffering and anger is maintained as a weapon to encourage them toward violence and intransigence. …
In January, an American Christian was sentenced to an eight-year prison sentence on charges of “endangering national security” in Iran. A 32-year-old married father of two from Boise, Idaho, Pastor Saeed Abedini traveled to his country of origin last year to visit family and help build an orphanage, only to be arrested and sent to Tehran’s brutal Evin prison.
According to Fox News, Abedini, a Muslim convert to Christianity—also known as an apostate deserving of death under Islamic Sharia law—is “facing physical and psychological torture at the hands of captors demanding he renounce his beliefs.” In a recent letter smuggled to family members, he recounted the “horrific pressures” and “death threats” he endures: “My eyes get blurry, my body does not have the strength to walk, and my steps become very weak and shaky… They are only waiting for one thing… for me to deny Christ. But they will never get this from me.”
BREAKING:NYC MAYOR BLOOMBERG WANTS TO REWRITE THE CONSTITUTION CLAIMING “that recent attacks on the Second Amendment have left him confident that such re-interpretation is possible.”
President Obama and his lackeys in government still insist that the Fort Hood massacre was a case of “‘workplace violence,’ despite mountains of evidence [that] clearly proves the Fort Hood shooting was an act of terror.” Is the Obama administration now taking the same course with the Boston bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev? How did our national security apparatus allow these brothers to slip under the radar? Two men murdered three people and injured over 175 at an international event in a great American city, and “avoid[ed] capture for three days.” The daily activities of 1 million people were paralyzed in the midst of hundreds of law enforcement personnel.
Ample evidence already exists supporting the theory that the Tsarnaev brothers’ atrocity was motivated by Islamist ideology. Even CNN admitted:
The Egyptian publication Al-Masry Al-Youm reports that the U.S. government has supplied five containers carrying 140,000 teargas canisters to Egypt’s Interior Ministry. It further reports that this shipment left Wilmington, Delaware, on Mar. 14 aboard the SS Jamestown and that it has just arrived the port of Suez. They cost the Egyptian government just under US$2.5 million. According to ministry spokesperson Hani Abdel Latif, the ministry imported the grenades in order to protect state facilities.
Secretary of State John Kerry has in his head every what-should-be-discredited cliché about the Middle East firmly ensconced in his head. Of course, he is not alone. I just briefed a European diplomat who came up with the exact formulation I’m going to deal with in a moment. What is disconcerting — though long familiar — is that Western policy makers hold so many ideas that are totally out of touch with reality.
They do not allow these assumptions to be questioned. On the contrary, it is astonishing to find how often individuals in elite positions have never heard counter-arguments to these beliefs. It is easy to prove that many of these ideas simply don’t make sense, but it is nearly impossible to get elite intellectuals, officials, and politicians to open their minds to these explanations.
The bad news is clear. Israel’s right to exist is questioned by many, and its ancient and present capital, Jerusalem, is unrecognized by all but a few states. Israeli leaders are sometimes compared to leaders of Nazi Germany, and Israeli actions against the Palestinians are described as Nazi-like policies. Moreover, the Israelis are accused of engaging in South African apartheid policies toward the Palestinians and the country’s Arab minority. Opponents and critics portray the Jewish state as the world’s worst violator of human rights, United Nations resolutions, and international law.[1]
This is the speech that Obama ought to make to Israelis during his visit to their country:
Prime Minister Netanyahu, Knesset members, the people of Israel and the Jewish people worldwide: It is an honor and privilege to be here today in Jerusalem, Israel, the undivided capital of Israel and the land of the Jewish people from the time before the establishment of the first temple of Solomon, destroyed by the Babylonians, followed by the second temple which Antiochus desecrated, Pompey looted and the Romans destroyed during the Siege of Jerusalem. Throughout history invaders and superpowers have attempted to extinguish the Jewish people and their symbols. Today is no different as we have an empire of Islamists using whatever means they can to wipe out all traces of Israel and Judaism. They too will not succeed.
Why exactly is President Obama going to Israel? A variety of theories have been advanced as to why he is making the trip now and what might be accomplished.
Some have suggested that Obama needs to reassure Israel, to hold their hands and tell them that the US-Israeli relationship is special. This suggests that Obama cares about Israeli feelings, at least in the sense that positive sentiments advance policy goals, and that Israelis might be thus comforted by his presence. But the record of bad relations between Obama and Netanyahu is too long, and the fact that Obama is on record saying that Israelis don’t know what is best for them, whereas he does, has mitigated whatever good vibrations he might spread now.
On the basis of easily obtainable evidence, it is possible to ask the following questions:
Why has there never been any government investigation that yielded changed policies into Pakistani complicity in protecting Usama bin Ladin and the Taliban at a time that these forces were killing hundreds of Americans in Afghanistan and elsewhere?
How has large-scale U.S. aid to Pakistan continued without change and without this question being answered?
Lee Smith, senior editor with the Weekly Standard, Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and author of the 2010 critically-acclaimed book, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations, briefed the Middle East Forum via conference call on February 6, 2013.
Mr. Smith characterized the Obama administration’s Middle East policy as one of “extrication” from the region. The major problem with this policy, he argued, is that “vacuums are filled by other people, and not always filled by friendly powers.”
Nor has the administration explained why it no longer deems the Middle East a region of vital interest. If, for example, the U.S. becomes a net exporter of energy in the near future and is less reliant on Middle Eastern oil, the administration has yet to make this case with the public. Instead, its policy of “leading from behind,” adopted during the Libyan intervention, is a prime example of the vacuum left since the toppling of Qaddafi as the decision to leave the newly elected Libyan government to fend for itself has led to instability.
Under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), Turkey’s foreign policy has been associated with the prescriptions and efforts of three men: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President Abdullah Gül, and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Davutoğlu, a former international relations professor, has been the most articulate exponent of the troika’s ideas, penning perhaps the most authoritative summary of its worldview in his 2001 Stratejik Derinlik (Strategic Depth)[1] and coining its foremost article of faith: a “zero-problems policy” with Turkey’s neighbors because Ankara “wants to eliminate all the problems from her relations with neighbors or at least to minimize them as much as possible.”[2]
This might all be well and good if such words were supported by actions. But Davutoğlu has also described Turkey as a “heavyweight wrestler,” hinting that it may use “the maximum of its abilities” when dealing with its neighboring “middleweight wrestlers.”[3] A survey of Ankara’s relations with these “middleweight wrestlers” reveals its “zero problems policy” to be little more than a cover for the AKP’s reasserted “neo-Ottoman” ambitions.
, briefed the Middle East Forum via conference call on February 6, 2013.
Articles/Entries
