North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's death has strategists and policymakers asking the same question: What's next? Among some there is a strong sense that a leadership change in Pyongyang represents the best opportunity in decades for North Korea to join the international community as a normal state. Pyongyang stands at a crossroads.
The past two weeks have seen a dramatic escalation in Iran’s war of words with the West.
Last Wednesday, Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, that new economic pressure currently being contemplated by the West would come at a steep cost. According to Rahimi, “not a drop of oil” will pass through the Strait of Hormuz — a key strategic waterway that serves as a conduit for as much as a third of the world’s oil — if additional sanctions are levied against the Islamic Republic for its nuclear program. Iran’s top naval commander, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, has been even more explicit, warning publicly that his country stands ready to block the strait if necessary.
When it released its National Strategy for Counterterrorism back in June, the Obama administration had a lot to crow about. Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden had been killed a month earlier by U.S. special forces in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Persistent operations by the United States and its Coalition partners over the preceding year had succeeded in degrading the organization's capabilities in a number of key theaters (including Afghanistan and Pakistan). And counterterrorism operations then underway would net major gains in the months that followed, not least the late September death by Predator drone of influential Yemeni ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki.
The sudden death of North Korea's long-serving "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-il, has propelled the world's last remaining Stalinist state back into the international spotlight. In the process, it has refocused attention on one of the most stubborn strategic dilemmas facing the United States.
Europe's security is being threatened by a terrorist organization that many people have never heard of. Last week, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), based in north Africa and active since 2002, posted pictures of five Europeans kidnapped in November and currently being held in Mali. Formerly known as the Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat, AQIM is an al Qaeda affiliate whose principal aim is to overthrow the Algerian government and establish an Islamic state governed by Shariah law in north Africa, Spain and Portugal. The group has a presence not only in Algeria but also in Mali, Niger and Mauritania. It has not yet solidified its foothold elsewhere in the Maghreb, including Morocco, Libya and Tunisia.
Is electromagnetic pulse a real threat to American security? On the heels of recent Republican primary debates, the danger to U.S. electronics and infrastructure posed by a high-altitude nuclear blast suddenly has emerged as a campaign issue. So has concerted opposition to it, with both liberal and conservative skeptics ridiculing the idea as an overblown, even fabricated, distraction. Yet there is ample evidence that the danger is both clear and present.
As the past three years have shown, President Barack Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, don't often see eye-to-eye on foreign policy. On at least one issue, however, the two appear to be in full agreement. Both have stated clearly and repeatedly that the radical, revolutionary regime that rules Iran must not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. And yet, neither the current president nor the previous one made serious headway on this most serious of national security challenges.
Ever since the late October release of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report on Iran, the White House has been working overtime to convince the world that it is, in fact, committed to preventing the Islamic Republic from going nuclear. Last month, responding to criticism of his Iran policy from Republican challengers, President Obama argued that the sanctions levied by his Administration to date have had “enormous bite.”
The reality, however, is considerably more modest. While it has publicly pledged its commitment to a serious economic offensive aimed at derailing Iran’s nuclear drive, in practice the White House has done far less than necessary to achieve that objective.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report on Iran’s nuclear program has refocused world attention on the Iranian regime’s relentless pursuit of the bomb and on the global failure thus far to derail it. But a multilateral solution to the Islamic republic’s nuclear ambitions appears to be as elusive as ever, due in no small measure to the stances of its enablers — Russia among them. In recent days, Moscow has publicly rejected the new IAEA findings and argued for renewed diplomacy in response to Iran’s nuclear transgressions.
Some eight months after the ouster of its long-serving strongman, Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s revolution remains the most prominent byproduct of the so-called “Arab Spring.” But where, exactly, is Cairo headed? While there remains no shortage of optimism about Egypt’s future in many quarters, a close look at the economic indicators suggests that the country may not be moving toward post-revolutionary stability at all. In fact, it is rapidly heading in the opposite direction.
As Pakistan has forced its way into America's national con sciousness over the past few years, bookshelves have grown crowded with publications devoted to deciphering the murky politics behind this nuclear-armed nation in perpetual crisis. The latest entry to this roster, "The Pakistan Cauldron: Conspiracy, Assassination and Instability," is a welcome one, and comes to us from James Farwell, a strategic communications guru and longtime adviser to U.S. Special Operations Command and Strategic Command.
TODAY, the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report on Iran’s nuclear program. It provides the most convincing evidence to date that Iran is close to producing a nuclear weapon.
But as Iran nears the nuclear threshold, the best way to stop it may be by punishing the Chinese companies that supply Tehran and enable its nuclear progress.
In recent years, the United States has imposed a punishing sanctions regime on Iran’s banking sector. To further increase Tehran’s level of financial pain, a great number of congressional and advocacy groups have repeatedly called on the White House to blacklist the Central Bank of Iran (CBI). Doing so, the thinking goes, would seriously hamper the Islamic republic’s ability to abuse international markets in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Yet unbeknownst to most lawmakers and Washington policymakers, the U.S. Treasury actually hasblacklisted the CBI, and not once, but twice in recent years. The real question is why the U.S. government has not enforced its own sanctions regime.
Tragic is the word most often used to describe the life of Syed Saleem Shahzad. A celebrated Pakistani investigative journalist, Shahzad nearly became a household name in May 2011 after his mysterious murder made international headlines. Reviled by terrorists and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) alike for his penetrating reporting, months before his murder the forty-year-old reporter repeatedly warned friends of specific threats to his life from Pakistani intelligence agents. One day after publishing a report about militant infiltration into Pakistan’s security services, Shahzad was kidnapped. His body was found, dumped in a canal and bearing obvious signs of torture, two days later. Widespread accusations leveled at the ISI inside Pakistan were privately echoed by U.S. officials, marking another grim chapter in the history of the world’s most notorious intelligence service.
It is something of a truism that in Washington, bad ideas never truly go away. Instead, they keep cropping up at the most inopportune moments. So it is with American policy toward Iran. Stymied in recent months by the resilience of Iran's increasingly mature nuclear effort and complicated by the unfolding turmoil of the “Arab Spring,” policymakers inside the Beltway are once again flirting with the idea that some sort of diplomatic rapprochement with the Islamic Republic is in fact possible.
WHEN the "Arab Spring" unexpectedly broke out late last year, Natan Sharansky waxed optimistic. Writing in the Washington Post in March, the former Soviet refusenik who ranks as Israel's best known pro-democracy activist argued that the grassroots revolts that unseated Tunisian strongman Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali and Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak marked the start of a democratic tsunami that could soon engulf the region. Regional conditions, he counseled, were ripe for just this sort of radical surgery.
These days, however, Israelis who share this hopeful outlook are exceedingly hard to find. A recent visit found policymakers and academics of all political stripes deeply apprehensive of the tectonic shifts that have taken place in their region this year. They have good reason to be. Israel's security environment, never favorable, has taken a dramatic turn for the worse.
The foiled Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, which was made public by the White House on Oct. 11, amounts to a dramatic escalation of the West's confrontation with Iran. In the wake of the disclosure, the Obama administration has talked tough, pledging new diplomatic pressure against Iran and emphasizing that "all options are on the table" as it contemplates its response.
But what can actually be done about Iran's clerical army and the radical regime that enables it? The most ready answer lies in the prominent role the IRGC now plays in the Iranian economy, which can be exploited by Washington and its allies in the service of a new economic offensive against the Islamic republic.
It's all over but the counting. Russia's presidential election may still be some six months away, but the outcome of that contest is already crystal clear: a return of Vladimir Putin to the country's top post.
On September 24th, Mr. Putin, who currently serves as Russia's prime minister, ended months of fevered speculation about his political plans when he confirmed that he intends to stand anew for the country's presidency—and that, if elected, he will switch places with his hand-picked protégé, current president Dmitry Medvedev.
That result is all but a foregone conclusion. Over the past decade, thanks to the machinations of Mr. Putin and his coterie, Russia has crept steadily back toward Soviet-style authoritarianism. Today, the "United Russia" political faction headed by Mr. Putin dominates the country's political landscape and controls both houses of Russia's legislature, while his loyalists stack virtually all meaningful leadership positions in Moscow and the country's 83 regions. And with political power increasingly centralized in the Kremlin, divergent viewpoints are given less and less legitimate outlet. Dissidents and activists who do not accept the prevailing status quo have found themselves in legal jeopardy—or worse.
You could be forgiven for dismissing the latest diplomatic spat between the United States and Pakistan as just another hiccup in a long-estranged marriage. Trading accusations and navigating diplomatic crises has become a weekly affair for this deeply troubled alliance. But the broadside launched against Pakistan by the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in congressional testimony on September 22 represents a rupture so dramatic that its significance is difficult to overstate.
Does the Islamic Republic of Iran pose a cyber threat to the United States? On the surface, the idea seems far-fetched. Squeezed by sanctions over its nuclear ambitions, suffering from widespread social malaise and weathering unprecedented divisions among its leadership, Iran hardly seems an imminent threat to the U.S. homeland - even if it does pose a vexing challenge to American interests in the greater Middle East.
Yet mounting indicators suggest that Iran's leadership is actively contemplating cyberwarfare against America and its allies.
Ten years after the attacks of Sept. 11 and the start of the war on terror, it is fair to ask: Where do we stand in this struggle? Listening to the rhetoric of the White House, it would be easy to get the impression that Washington is just days away from declaring “Mission accomplished.” With the death in May of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. commandos, the United States “is within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda,” newly appointed Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told reporters in July. “I think we have them on the run.” More recently, John Brennan, the White House’s counterterrorism czar, said much the same, telling the Associated Press that the group that carried out the most devastating attacks on the U.S. homeland in American history is “on the ropes.”
Such triumphalism, however, is both premature and unfounded. After all, the contemporary terrorist threat confronting the United States and its allies is considerably larger than just al Qaeda. America today faces a trio of distinct - and daunting - strategic challenges.
As the United States and other NATO countries begin to withdraw their forces from Afghanistan, Afghan and US policymakers alike fear a return to the carnage that characterized the five year civil war (1996-2001) between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. In that conflict, battles over large population centres and campaigns of ethnic cleansing killed thousands. To prevent a repeat of that disaster, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Obama administration are now seeking to negotiate a truce with the Taliban. But just how likely is such a peace deal to materialize – or to hold, if it does?
With soaring inflation, chronic unemployment and rampant poverty, Iran is nobody’s picture of economic health. So when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued its latest working paper on Iran last month, the rosy assessment contained therein raised more than a few eyebrows.
That study, “Iran - The Chronicles of the Subsidy Reform,” heaped praise on the regime in Tehran for launching a raft of much-needed rollbacks of costly subsidies on everything from energy to foodstuffs. This effort, the report says approvingly, “has created a unique opportunity for Iran to reform its economy and accelerate economic growth and development.”
That rosy view has gained quite a bit of resonance of late. In June, no less prominent a publication than the Economist - using the IMF’s preliminary conclusions as a point of departure - lauded the “exemplary” steps Iran has taken in commencing structural reforms to its economic sector. All of this, of course, must be music to the ears of Iran’s ayatollahs, who in recent months have redoubled their efforts to convince the world that the country is thriving despite the West’s best efforts to ratchet up the costs associated with its nuclear program.
But there’s good reason to think the opposite.
On August 18th, after months of dithering, President Obama finally took a firm stand on the unrest roiling Syria when he announced that “the time has come for President Asad to step aside.” By doing so, the United States has belatedly brought itself in line with the growing number of nations that have abandoned the Syrian dictator as a result of the brutal five-month-old crackdown he has waged against his own people.
But, now that America is well and truly engaged, is there anything that we can actually do to speed Assad’s ouster? In point of fact, there is. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the United States has at least two means at its disposal to pressure the Syrian government—if only it possesses the political will to use them.
Make no mistake: U.N. Security Council sanctions and additional U.S. and European pressures are hurting Iran. Tehran is having a harder time importing food and other key goods, its foreign investment is drying up, financial firms and shipping companies are turning down its business, and its central bank is running short of hard currency.
What sanctions are not doing, however, is achieving their goal - to persuade Tehran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Not only is Iran making more progress in its nuclear program, it's acting more boldly in its region, threatening U.S. interests while distributing weapons that are killing U.S. troops. Because neither current nor additional sanctions alone will deter Tehran, and because a nuclear Iran would be a disaster for the United States and the world, Washington must seriously consider a military option.
Are sanctions capable of derailing Tehran's nuclear drive? Some skeptics reject such measures altogether, preferring to deal with Tehran by either accommodation or containment. Others point to the spotty historical record of sanctions in altering state behavior in arguing that they will similarly fall short of forcing the ayatollahs to rethink their long-standing nuclear ambitions. For example, sanctions were found to be successful in only a third of the 105 instances in which they were applied between World War I and the end of the Cold War.
As the past year has shown, however, Tehran may well turn out to be the exception to the rule—but only if the Obama administration (and Western governments more generally) make swift and skillful use of the economic and strategic means at their disposal.
Are Washington and Tehran headed for a showdown?
For much of the past decade, conventional wisdom has held that Iran’s dogged pursuit of a nuclear capability – carried out in spite of mounting pressure from the international community – will ultimately become a casus belli for Washington. Early on in his tenure, President George W. Bush even went so far as to declare that the U.S. “will not tolerate” Iran arming itself with nuclear weapons, and to indicate that he was prepared to use force to prevent it. Despite its more dulcet diplomatic tones toward Iran, the administration of Barack Obama has grudgingly repeated much the same thing since taking office: that all options, including the use of force, remain on the table for dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Still, some eight years into the international standoff over Iran’s atomic program, it has become clear that a military option for dealing with an Iranian bomb, if not out of the question entirely, is an exceedingly remote possibility.
That does not mean, however, that Tehran and Washington won’t soon find themselves embroiled in a war. Indeed, Iran’s escalating activity on the territory of its western neighbor, Iraq, could end up becoming the real catalyst for a U.S.-Iranian conflict.
Increasingly, the idea of being a modern Russian means to be detached from Russia itself. The problem has long, Soviet roots, and the ruling tandem acknowledges there is a problem. But are they capable of reversing the trend, wonders Wayne Merry ...
“Modernisation” is the mantra of the current Russian leadership. Both President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin, albeit in somewhat different language, stress that modernisation is critical to Russia’s future both as a post-hydrocarbon economy and as a competitive state player on the global scene. They describe modernisation as essential to make Russia receptive for investment and entrepreneurship. In recent months, this goal has taken on tones of more than policy priority, but of actual urgency.
"There is no question that talented young Russians are compatible with modernisation, but there is a basic issue whether modernisation is compatible – or even tolerable – within today’s Russia"
For this discussion, “modernisation” may be understood to mean the ability and willingness to adapt to (or even embrace) contemporary ways of doing things in a global context, with the object of adding value to any particular field of human endeavor. It need not be limited to technical or business innovation, although that is the focus of Russian policy.
Welcome to “The Hangover,” Cairo edition. The widespread grass-roots protests that broke out in Egypt this spring succeeded in accomplishing what many skeptics doubted they could: ousting long-serving strongman Hosni Mubarak and ending his 30-year authoritarian rule. But now, some four months on, Egypt’s revolution is obviously on the skids.
The problems start with Egypt’s economy. Under Mr. Mubarak, Egypt’s economic fortunes were comparatively rosy, with the national gross domestic product growing an average of nearly 6 percent annually over the past three years. Today, by contrast, they are anything but rosy. Since Mr. Mubarak’s ouster in February, the Egyptian stock exchange has lost nearly a quarter of its value, prompting its chairman, Mohamed Abdel Salam, to embark upon a frantic tour of Gulf monarchies in an effort to drum up Arab investment. Tourism, the lifeblood of the Egyptian economy, likewise has plummeted, falling an estimated 60 percent over 2010 levels and costing the country more than a half-billion dollars in revenue to date in the process. Nor is a reprieve in sight. According to observers, it could take a decade for Egypt’s tourism industry to rebound fully - if, indeed, it rebounds at all. The prognosis is grim: As a recent analysis in the Asia Times put it, “Egypt’s economy is in free-fall.”
With the drama of the Arab Spring and the death of Osama bin Laden dominating the headlines, you might have missed the most important development in months surrounding Iran's nuclear program: Zimbabwe's emergence as a key enabler of the Islamic Republic's march toward the atomic bomb.
In recent days, officials in Harare have confirmed that the government of Robert Mugabe is finalizing a massive resources deal with Tehran, in defiance of United Nations sanctions aimed at derailing Iran's nuclear push. That agreement, in the works since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the African state in April 2010, would provide the Iranian regime with preferential access to the country's estimated 455,000 tons of raw uranium over the next five years.
The deal sheds light on what amounts to a major chink in the Islamic Republic's nuclear armor. For all of its atomic bluster, the Iranian regime lacks enough of the critical raw material necessary to independently acquire a nuclear capability. According to nonproliferation experts, Iran's known uranium ore reserves are limited and generally of poor quality. It desperately needs steady supplies of uranium ore from abroad, and without those supplies the Islamic Republic's nuclear plans would, quite simply, grind to a halt.
Is a new Cold War brewing in the Middle East? That’s the conventional wisdom surrounding the so-called “Arab Spring,” which has further corroded the already poor relations between the region’s Saudi-led bloc on the one hand, and Iran and its allies on the other. Yet the two competing sides have found common ground on at least one strategic issue: Syria. Each desperately wants the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to survive.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the recent death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of American commandos is the reaction it has elicited throughout the Middle East. That is because, while most regional governments have welcomed news of the al Qaeda chief’s demise, not everyone is embracing the post-bin Laden era.
The Taliban, for example, have been quick to lionize the terror mastermind and threaten retribution against the coalition and its allies. “Pakistani rulers, President Zardari and the army will be our first targets,” a spokesman for the movement’s Pakistani branch has warned. “America will be our second target.”
Among the lessons from the successful raid on Osama bin Laden's refuge is the value of cooperative relations with Russia.
Consider that until recently, Pakistan enjoyed a chokehold on supplies for American and other allied forces in Afghanistan. A trickle of the vast logistical requirements of the war came in from the north, by air through Kyrgyzstan. The Pakistani leadership exploited its near-monopoly to extract massive aid from Washington and to limit American operations across the porous frontier region joining Pakistan and Afghanistan.
What's next for the U.S.-Russian reset? Having already succeeded in ramming the ambitious New START arms control treaty through a reluctant Senate late last year, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is now eyeing the next step in its reboot of relations with Moscow: integrating Russia into the world economy.
The United States and Pakistan have sustained a decades-old partnership on the strength of a Cold War alliance and a set of narrow but shared vital interests. However, the relationship has undergone profound changes as a result of the Afghan War, which on one hand has forced the two countries into an awkward but necessary embrace, and on the other exposed deep and potentially irreconcilable differences.
President Obama's announcement last night that al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. special operations forces outside the Pakistani capital of Islamabad is welcome news indeed. The death of the man responsible for the worst attack on the U.S. in history represents a major counterterrorism victory, and long overdue justice for the victims of 9/11. But it's hardly the "end of the War on Terror," as some observers have been quick to suggest.
The effects of this game of brinksmanship being played by China, and to a lesser degree India, have so far been constrained by prudent and cautious political leaders in both capitals. However, the longer the aura of confrontation perpetuates, the more it generates a momentum of its own. Hawkish comments by officials and newspaper editors are easily dismissed; shifts in military doctrines and public opinion are much harder to reverse.
Call it belated full disclosure. Ever since the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak earlier this year, the Muslim Brotherhood has reemerged as a major force in Egyptian politics. For most of that time, however, it has played coy about its political aspirations and ideological agenda. These days, though, the Islamist movement has become a great deal more frank about its plans for Egypt.
"At this period, we would like to lead the society to achieve its Islamic identity in preparation for the Islamic rule," Saad Husseini, a member of the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau, proclaimed at a recent rally in Cairo. These ideas have been echoed by other Brotherhood officials, who have outlined sweeping social changes once “Islam enters the lives, ethics, and dealings of the people.”
It should come as little surprise, but U.S. headlines are again dominated by dour news out of Pakistan. The U.S.-Pakistan relationship is today under severe strain, rattled by heated disputes over CIA drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas; clandestine U.S. intelligence operations inside Pakistan; and Islamabad's persistent refusal to crack down on the Taliban and their radical allies. Intelligence cooperation is at an all-time low.
These are trying times in Morocco. Over the past three months, the small North African kingdom has seen regime change roil two of its neighbors, Tunisia and Egypt, and a third—Libya—descend into civil war. The Moroccan street itself has seen its fair share of ferment; large-scale rallies calling for new social reforms and sweeping governmental changes have taken place throughout the country in recent weeks. In response, the country’s monarch, Mohammed VI, outlined a series of far-reaching constitutional reforms in early March, even going so far as to propose a diminution of royal power in favor of the country’s government and parliament. But, at least for now, the protesters do not appear to be entirely mollified.
Is President Obama finally learning to love the idea of freedom in Iran? If the Administration’s Persian New Year message is any indication, it is certainly starting to seem that way.
That video greeting, issued on March 20th to mark Nowruz, took a serious stand in support of Iran’s opposition forces—and against its repressive regime. The Iranian government’s heavy-handed response to the grassroots protests that have taken place throughout the country since the fraudulent reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the summer of 2009, Mr. Obama declared, demonstrate
that it cares far more about preserving its own power than respecting the rights of the Iranian people.
With regimes collapsing throughout the Middle East, many Washington experts wonder if two U.S.-aligned monarchies, Bahrain and Jordan, might be the next possible candidates for the type of regime change seen of late in Tunisia and Egypt. In recent weeks, thousands have demonstrated in Bahrain in favor of overthrowing the monarchy after security forces killed several protesters calling for constitutional reforms and investigations into government corruption and human rights abuses. In Jordan, meanwhile, demonstrations against rising food prices and rampant unemployment quickly transformed into pro-democracy rallies, rocking the Hashemite Kingdom to its core.
The stakes for the U.S. are enormous. The overthrow of either regime would threaten American interests and further destabilize the already-volatile region. Bahrain's strategic position in the Persian Gulf, through which approximately a fifth of the world's oil exports pass, as well as its role as host to the U.S. Fifth Fleet (which helps protect that oil), makes its continued alliance with the U.S. crucial to American energy security. As for Jordan, its long border with Iraq, which will likely host American troops for many more years, and its peace treaty with Israel, makes the country an important strategic partner for America.
In the wake of grass-roots protests that swept Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak from power, more than a few commentators have cautioned that the current political turmoil could end up bearing more than a passing resemblance to the events that led up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Even that bleak outcome, however, might end up being wishful thinking. Ominously, the present situation in Egypt closely resembles the events leading up to Algeria‘s bloody 11-year civil war, which stretched from 1991 to 2002.
It took a day longer than expected, but the Egyptian opposition has gotten its way. Less than twenty-four hours after issuing a defiant address to the nation in which he pledged to serve out the remainder of his term, Hosni Mubarak has formally resigned the Egyptian presidency.
Mubarak's departure was by and large predictable. Beset by widening domestic disapproval and bereft of his traditional support from the West, it was clear that Egypt's long-serving strongman would eventually be forced to make an exit. What comes next, however, is far less clear. Indeed, since the start of the unrest some three weeks ago, the depths of the political and economic challenges confronting those seeking a new future for Egypt have become apparent.
What does Iran think about the Middle East’s democracy wave? On the surface, officials in Tehran have taken an optimistic view of the anti-regime sentiment now sweeping the region, depicting it as an outgrowth of Ayatollah Khomeini’s successful revolution 32 years ago—and the start of an ‘Islamic awakening’ in which the Islamic Republic will inevitably play a leading role.
Privately, however, Iran’s ayatollahs must be quaking in their boots. Why? Because the current anti-regime sentiment being expressed in Tunis, Cairo, and beyond could end up breathing new life into their country’s own beleaguered pro-democracy movement.
Prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have not been rising. The central issues of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements and Palestinian refugees seem no closer to resolution, and turmoil in Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and elsewhere in the region further complicates efforts to reach long-term solutions to vexing challenges.
Now, Hezbollah's de facto takeover of Lebanon's government puts a final nail in the coffin of Israeli-Palestinian peace, giving the terrorist group and its backers in Tehran and Damascus still more leverage to doom any serious peace initiative.
As the wave of grass-roots unrest sweeping across the Middle East envelops Egypt, all eyes are on the next move of embattled President Hosni Mubarak and his increasingly rickety regime. The telltale signs, however, are already becoming apparent; even as he has offered political concessions to his opposition, Egypt's aging autocrat is steering his country toward military control.
Since it began late last month, the turmoil taking place in Egypt has spawned no shortage of expert commentary here in the United States. Some observers have argued that, despite the current ferment in Cairo, strongman Hosni Mubarak will stubbornly cling to power and ride out the storm. Others, however, have come to question the utility of America's historic backing for the Mubarak regime—and counseled unequivocal support for its overthrow. Still others have taken the long view, seeing the Egyptian tumult as a belated vindication of the "Bush doctrine" of democracy promotion.
Precious few, however, have bothered to ask exactly what it is that ordinary Egyptians are after. They should, because—beyond the general dissatisfaction with the Mubarak regime now visible on the Egyptian "street"—the values and beliefs of the protestors are likely to have a profound influence on the nature of the political order that will eventually emerge there.
On that score, it turns out, there's ample reason for pessimism.
When the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad was engulfed by the “Arab Spring” last March, many waxed optimistic that regime change in Syria wouldn’t be long in coming. But ten months into the ensuing civil war, Assad’s regime shows no signs of fading away quietly. To the contrary, it has doubled down on repression, waging an extended campaign of official brutality against its own people in its bid to remain in power. As of mid-January, the death toll from Syria’s uprising had topped 6,000, with no let-up in sight.
Call it the Great Game, round three. The first such contest, famously chronicled by Rudyard Kipling, involved the 19th century struggle for dominance between the British and Russian empires over access to India and its lucrative trading routes. The second centered on the post-Soviet scramble for resources and influence in energy-rich Central Asia. Today, a third such round of geopolitical competition is emerging in South Asia, spurred by the vast energy potential of the post-Soviet space and the uncertain political disposition of Afghanistan.
Last month, this competition took a giant step forward when Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with the presidents of Turkmenistan and Pakistan, as well as with India's oil and gas minister, in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat. The meeting netted an agreement to begin construction of a new natural gas route known as the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline in two years' time.