Israel’s War with Iran Is Inevitable: Efraim Inbar, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 04, 2018— Iran is a formidable enemy.
Return of the Bush Doctrine?: Editorial, Weekly Standard, Oct. 1, 2018— On September 20, 2001, speaking to a joint session of Congress, President George W. Bush famously articulated the key component of what would later be called the Bush Doctrine
Iran’s Imploding Strategy: Jonathan Spyer, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 05, 2018 — The effort by the US and its allies to contain and ultimately roll back the gains made by Iran in the region over the last half decade is currently taking shape, and is set to form the central strategic process in the Middle East in the period now opening up.
Trump Hit Iran With Oil Sanctions. So Far, They’re Working.: Clifford Krauss, New York Times, Sept. 19, 2018— When President Trump announced in May that he was going to withdraw the United States from the nuclear agreement that the Obama administration and five other countries negotiated with Iran in 2015 and reimpose sanctions on the country, the decision was fraught with potential disaster.
On Topic Links
US State Dept. ‘Iran Has Spent $16 Billion to Destabilize Middle East’: JNS, Oct. 11, 2018
Iran, Russia Reach Deal to Circumvent US Oil Sanctions: Israeli Report: I24, Oct. 14, 2018
This Is How Sanctions Are Impacting Iran: Adam Lammon, National Interest, Oct. 15, 2018
Iran’s Idea of Human Rights: Persecute Christians: Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute, Oct. 07, 2018
ISRAEL’S WAR WITH IRAN IS INEVITABLE
Efraim Inbar
Jerusalem Post, Oct. 04, 2018
Iran is a formidable enemy. A large country of more than 80 million people, endowed with energy riches, it has always been a regional power. Having an imperial past and revolutionary zeal (since the 1979 Iranian Revolution), Iran nourishes ambitions to rule over the Middle East and beyond. Furthermore, theologically there is no place in Iranian thinking for a Jewish state. Iran believes that Israel will either wither away following military pressure on its population or be annihilated when it is militarily weak and vulnerable.
As Iran challenges the status quo in the Middle East, a clash between Tehran and Jerusalem is inevitable. International history teaches us that when a rising power challenged the balance of power, in most cases war ensued. Sparta challenged an Athenian-led Greek city system, ending in the Peloponnesian wars. Prussia’s quest for the unification of the German principalities under its helm ended in several European Wars. Similarly, Israel cannot tolerate a Middle East dominated by Iran and its radical ideology.
Unfortunately, much of the Arab world is in the throes of a deep socio-political crisis, particularly since the mistermed “Arab Spring,” creating dissension and a political vacuum, which the sophisticated revolutionary elite in Iran has capitalized upon. These dynamics explain the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the power grab of the Houthi Shi’ite sect in Yemen.
The revolutionary enterprise was also facilitated by the Middle East policies of the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. American military intervention destroyed Iraq, a strong rival of Iran, further undermining the regional balance of power. Subsequently, the display of weakness by Obama was replaced by a questionable Trump commitment to the security of the region.
The Sunni Arab states have been terrified by the advances in the Iranian nuclear program and by the successes of its proxies. They are weak. Saudi Arabia failed to contain Iranian influence in Syria and Iraq. Closer to home, it was not successful to change the pro-Iranian orientation of small Qatar. Egypt, an important Sunni power, survived the domestic turmoil, but it focuses on literally supplying food to its population, fighting an Islamic insurgency at home, leaving little energy to parry the Iranian challenge.
Turkey, a strong Sunni state, albeit non-Arab, has preferred to act upon its Islamic impulses and its common interest with Iran on the Kurdish issue, forfeiting its potential to balance Iran. The result was an entente between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Gulf states with Israel. In the absence of a credible American security umbrella, the Sunnis understand that only Israel can oppose the hegemonic drive of Iran. Iran reached a similar conclusion – Israel is the main barrier for achieving hegemony. Israel is a religious and strategic anathema.
Initially, Iran has waged war against Israel primarily by proxies. It envisions military actions causing exhaustion to the civilian population. In the 1980s, Iran trained and armed the Hezbollah, a Shi’ite militia in Lebanon, directing its military efforts to oust Israel from South Lebanon. Moreover, Iran has supplied more than 120,000 missiles of various ranges to Hezbollah, which cover most of Israel. The declared goal still is “to liberate Jerusalem from Zionist rule.” In the meantime, Hezbollah has assumed control of Lebanon, turning the country into an Iranian satrapy.
Similarly, after Hamas took over Gaza in 2005, it became the recipient of large military aid from Iran, intended to enhance its capability to bleed Israel. As Sunni Hamas did not support the Iranian line in Syria, Tehran channeled its financial and military aid to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, which is subservient to Iranian wishes. By having a foothold in Gaza, Iran established an additional front against Israel in the south. The current Iranian effort in Syria aims at establishing a third front in the northeast, along Israel’s border on the Golan Heights. Moreover, it wants to acquire a land corridor to the Levant (Lebanon and Syria) via Iraq, where Iran has been successful to establish a military presence and influence, to facilitate the transfer of more advanced weapons to Hezbollah and gain access to the Mediterranean.
We can also detect Iranian efforts to destabilize the Jordanian kingdom, situated along Israel’s eastern border. This is also part of Iran’s attempt to encircle Israel with Iranian proxies. Shi’ite militias and/or the Islamic Revolutionary Guards in Iraq and Syria obviously threaten the Hashemite dynasty. The fall of Jordan would also endanger Saudi Arabia, Iran’s arch-rival in the Gulf. Neutralizing Israel’s military power, by encircling it with proxies which have at their disposal thousands of missiles directed at Israel’s strategic installations and centers of population, is an Iranian goal in its quest for hegemony in the Middle East.
In the absence of a clear American or Turkish determination to confront Iranian encroachment, only Israel has the power to stop it. Therefore, Israel has no choice but to wage war against Iranian entrenchment in Syria. It is an illusion that Iran’s nuclear ambitions can be curbed by international agreements. The bomb is the best insurance for regime survival and for achieving hegemony in the region. It is inconceivable that the mullahs will give it up. As the international community, including the US, has no appetite for a military confrontation with Iran, it is left to Israel to prevent its nuclearization. The only way to do it is by brute force, adding a new dimension to the war conducted already against Iran. This is an inevitable imperative for Jerusalem.
RETURN OF THE BUSH DOCTRINE?
Editorial Weekly Standard, Oct. 1, 2018
On September 20, 2001, speaking to a joint session of Congress, President George W. Bush famously articulated the key component of what would later be called the Bush Doctrine: “From this day forward,” the president said, “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” It was an assertion of great moral clarity.
If the Bush administration didn’t always adhere to its own doctrine in subsequent years, the Obama administration repudiated it—nowhere more so than in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal. Supporters of the 2015 agreement vehemently argued that the Trump administration should not pull the United States out of it because Iran was in compliance with its terms. We always doubted that claim—there was plenty of evidence that Tehran was flouting, for example, the agreement’s heavy-water limit—but the core problem with the Iran deal wasn’t so much Iran’s compliance or noncompliance as what the deal set aside. In short: The JCPOA allowed Iran to persist in rogue behavior—including its sponsorship of terrorism across the Middle East and beyond.
The Trump administration rightly and vocally rejected its predecessor’s insistence that Iran’s promise not to pursue nuclear weapons could be considered in isolation from its malign behavior as a terror sponsor. All week, in anticipation of President Trump’s addresses at the United Nations, top administration officials have been making that case. They’re not short on material. “Iran’s leaders sow chaos, death, and destruction,” Trump himself said in remarks at the General Assembly. “They do not respect their neighbors or borders or the sovereign rights of nations. Instead, Iran’s leaders plunder the nation’s resources to enrich themselves and to spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond.”
Iran, he argued, has used the cash it procured through the nuclear deal to bolster its terror agenda, advance its missile program, and more. He’s right. Administration officials say any new deal must address these key deficiencies. In the meantime, the United States is reimposing sanctions lifted under the agreement in an effort to deprive the regime of its capacity to fund terrorist proxies. Europe, which is sticking with the deal, wants to circumvent these sanctions. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent them a stark message on September 25: “By sustaining revenues to the regime, you are solidifying Iran’s ranking as the number one state sponsor of terror, enabling Iran’s violent export of revolution, and making the regime even richer while the Iranian people scrape by.”
Pompeo went on to note that Iran’s terror support is not confined to the Middle East, as the State Department’s yearly terrorism report, issued last week, made clear. Tehran has been caught conducting or supporting malign activities on U.S. and European soil. The State Department report cites the June 2017 arrest of suspected Hezbollah operatives in New York and Michigan. Another example offered by State’s coordinator for counterterrorism Nathan Sales last week: “On June 30th of this year, German authorities arrested an Iranian official for his role in a terrorist plot to bomb a political rally in Paris.” “Iran uses terrorism as a tool of its statecraft,” Sales added. “It has no reservations about using that tool on any continent.”
There’s also the usual support for terrorism across the Middle East, including cash, arms, and training for groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which hold as their goal the destruction of Israel. Lebanese Hezbollah also has a sweetheart deal with Tehran, which every year provides it with $700 million. And there’s Iran’s longstanding support for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who has used chemical weapons against innocent civilians.
Much of Iran’s terror activity is conducted by its Quds Force, which has long been the country’s “primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad.” Why does Iran use proxy groups to do its dirty work? According to the State Department’s report, “to shield it from the consequences of its aggressive policies.” In other words: to create plausible deniability.
Iran also harbors al Qaeda (AQ) operatives and “has refused to publicly identify the members in its custody,” the State Department noted last week in its report. It “has allowed AQ facilitators to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran since at least 2009, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria,” the report reads. Adds a separate State Department report released this week: “As AQ members have been squeezed out of other areas, all indications suggest that they are continuing to find safe haven in Iran.”
Focusing on this reality doubtless makes life more difficult for our diplomats, but that’s thanks to the Obama administration’s naïveté. Diplomacy ought to be rooted in the world as it is, not as our leaders wish it to be, and above all else it should advance America’s interests, elevate our values, and ensure our security. The Trump administration has the right approach, as President Bush did 17 years ago: States that harbor and support terrorism deserve our hostility, not our money.
IRAN’S IMPLODING STRATEGY
Jonathan Spyer
Jerusalem Post, Oct. 05, 2018
The effort by the US and its allies to contain and ultimately roll back the gains made by Iran in the region over the last half decade is currently taking shape, and is set to form the central strategic process in the Middle East in the period now opening up. New sanctions on the export of Iranian oil are due to be implemented from November 4. Israel’s campaign against Iranian entrenchment in Syria is the most important current file on the table of the defense establishment.
The US appears set now to maintain its assets and its allies in Syria as part of the emergent strategy to counter Iran. In Iraq, the contest between Iran-associated forces and those associated with the US is the core dynamic in the country, with the independent power on the ground of the Iran-associated Shia militias the central factor. In Yemen, the battle of attrition between the Iran-supported Ansar Allah (Houthis) and the Saudi and UAE-led coalition is continuing, with limited but significant gains by the latter.
Iran’s response is also becoming clear. At the present time, Tehran’s ballistic missile capabilities appear to be the preferred instrument for Tehran to express its defiance. Notably, for the moment at least, Iran appears to be erring on the side of caution in its choice of targets. This phase is unlikely to last, however, assuming the US is serious in its intentions.
In the early hours of Monday, October 1, the Fars News Agency, associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that the IRGC had fired a number of Zulfiqar and Qiyam ballistic missiles at targets east of the Euphrates River in Syria. The strike came in response to an attack on an IRGC parade in Iran’s Arab-majority Khuzestan province on September 22. According to Fars, the missiles fired were decorated with slogans including “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” and “Death to Al Saud.”
It is noteworthy, however, that the missiles were not directed at any of the aforementioned enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rather, the IRGC targeted the Hajin pocket, a small enclave east of the Euphrates still held by Islamic State. This was in response to a claim of responsibility by ISIS for the September 22 attack. (A somewhat more credible claim was made by the Ahwaziya, or Ahvaz national resistance, an Arab separatist group in Khuzestan.) Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani later tried to frame the attack as a response to American threats, because of the close proximity of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces to the area targeted.
Similarly, on September 8, the IRGC fired seven Fateh-110 short-range missiles at a base maintained by the PDKI (Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan) in the city of Koya in eastern Iraq. The PDKI is engaged in an insurgency against the IRGC and the Iranian regime, centered on the Kurdistan Province of western Iran. Eleven people were killed in the attack. In both these cases, Tehran chose to make its demonstrations of strength against the very weakest of the forces opposed to it (in the case of Islamic State, a force indeed mainly engaged against the enemies of Iran). Shamkhani’s bluster after the fact tends to draw attention to this, rather than detract from it.
By contrast, when Iran wishes to act against or threaten the interests of any of the powerful states whose names were written on the missiles fired at ISIS in Hajin, it takes care to do so in ways that avoid attribution. Thus, the Lebanese Hezbollah organization, in military terms a direct tributary of the IRGC, is the force entrusted with the missile array facing Israel.
When ballistic missiles are fired at Riyadh from Yemen, the act is claimed by the Houthis, and the missiles are identified as “Burkan 1” and “Burkan 2” missiles, developed in Yemen. These missiles are considered by the US State Department and senior US officers to be Iranian in origin, possibly the Qiam 1 or Shihab 2 system with minor modifications. Certainly, the Houthis, a lightly armed north Yemeni tribal militia, did not acquire the knowledge required to operate ballistic missiles locally. There is evidence to suggest that Lebanese Hezbollah operatives are engaged by Iran in Yemen to carry out these launches. In Iraq, according to a Reuters report in August, the IRGC has begun to transfer ballistic missiles to its militia proxies in that country, presumably with the intention of using these against Israeli or US personnel.
So Iran acts through deniable proxies in its wars against powerful states, but acts directly only against small and marginal non-state paramilitary groups. The purpose, of course, is to enable the Iranian state to avoid retribution, while gaining benefit from the acts of the militias. This practice has proven effective in recent years, though it projects weakness as much as strength. It is of use only for as long as Iran’s enemies are willing to participate in the fiction of separation between the IRGC and its client militias.
At a certain point, if the US and its allies are serious about rolling back Iran from its regional gains, the question will arise as to whether success in this endeavor can coexist with the tacit agreement to maintain this fiction. In Israel’s case, the decision to cease adherence to this convention was taken earlier this year, when Israeli aircraft began openly targeting Iranian facilities in Syria. For the US, such a decision is likely to emerge, if it emerges, as a result of the dynamics set in motion by the decision to challenge Iran’s advances. At the moment, what is taking place is something of a “phony war”: missile strikes against peripheral targets, grandiose threats from the IRGC leadership, supplying of militias with this or that weapon system…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
TRUMP HIT IRAN WITH OIL SANCTIONS. SO FAR, THEY’RE WORKING.
Clifford Krauss
New York Times, Sept. 19, 2018
When President Trump announced in May that he was going to withdraw the United States from the nuclear agreement that the Obama administration and five other countries negotiated with Iran in 2015 and reimpose sanctions on the country, the decision was fraught with potential disaster. If Mr. Trump’s approach worked too well, oil prices would spike and hurt the American economy. If it failed, international companies would continue trading with Iran, leaving the Islamic Republic unscathed, defiant and free to restart its nuclear program. But the policy has been effective without either of those nasty consequences, at least so far.
Nearly two months before American oil sanctions go into effect, Iran’s crude exports are plummeting. International oil companies, including those from countries that are still committed to the nuclear agreement, are bailing out of deals with Tehran. And remarkably, the price of oil in the United States has risen only modestly while gasoline prices have essentially remained flat. The current global oil price hovers around $80 a barrel, $60 below the highs of a decade ago.
“The president is doing the opposite of what the experts said, and it seems to be working out,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, a research and consulting firm. Initial signs of a foreign-policy success could benefit Mr. Trump politically as Republicans try to hold on to control of Congress. The president and lawmakers allied with him could point to the administration’s aggressive stand toward Iran as evidence that his unconventional approach to diplomacy has been much more fruitful and far less costly than Democrats have been willing to acknowledge.
The administration’s tactical advantage could be fleeting, of course, if Iran retaliates with cyberattacks or militarily, incites more militia violence in Iraq, or revives its nuclear program. The most important reason that predictions of higher oil prices have been wrong is that there is plenty of oil sloshing around the world. The United States has become a huge exporter of oil in the last several years and is now shipping roughly the same amount — more than two million barrels a day — that Iran did earlier this year. Trade tensions and economic problems in developing countries like Turkey and Argentina might also be slowing the growth of energy demand.
Another thing in Mr. Trump’s favor is that while governments in Europe and Asia have publicly opposed his decision to withdraw from the nuclear agreement, many businesses in those places have made a different calculation. They have concluded that it makes little financial sense to risk investments in and trade with the United States by doing business with Iran. Until Mr. Trump’s May announcement, Western allies considered the nuclear deal with Iran a success. In exchange for agreeing to strict limits on its nuclear program and international monitoring, Iran was allowed to re-enter the global oil market. The deal lifted restrictions on foreign companies doing business in Iran and gave the country access to frozen assets overseas.
After Nov. 4, companies that buy, ship or insure shipments of Iranian oil can be excluded from the American market and banking system unless they obtain waivers from the administration. Trump administration officials say its sanctions are designed to punish Iran for its interventions in Syria, Yemen and other countries. For Iran, the timing could not be worse. The country has lost influence over oil prices as other producers have eclipsed its energy industry, which has not kept up with technological advances…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
On Topic Links
US State Dept. ‘Iran Has Spent $16 Billion to Destabilize Middle East’: JNS, Oct. 11, 2018—The U.S. State Department recently published an unprecedented report detailing the financial resources Iran invests in destabilizing the Middle East. The report estimated that over the past six years, the Islamic republic has spent some $16 billion to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and fund Iranian-backed militias across the Arab world.
Iran, Russia Reach Deal to Circumvent US Oil Sanctions: Israeli Report: I24, Oct. 14, 2018—An Israeli foreign ministry document reportedly reveals that Russia and Iran have reached a deal to circumvent the last round of US sanctions scheduled to go into effect in the beginning of November. The agreement contemplates Iran supplying its crude oil to Russia through the Caspian Sea to be thereafter exported worldwide, Israeli television news station Hadashot reported Sunday. It is not yet clear what form of compensation Russia will pay to Iran for the oil supply, but it will likely be through trade and service benefits.
This Is How Sanctions Are Impacting Iran: Adam Lammon, National Interest, Oct. 15, 2018—When dealing with Iran, the “resiliency of the regime should never be underestimated,” Geneive Abdo, resident scholar at the Arabia Foundation, said at an event on U.S.-Iranian relations organized by the Center for the National Interest on October 2, 2018.
Iran’s Idea of Human Rights: Persecute Christians: Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute, Oct. 07, 2018—In a speech before the United Nations on September 20, 2017, presumably as a way to support his claim that Israel is “a rogue and racist regime [that] trample[s] upon the most basic rights of the Palestinians,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani repeatedly portrayed his government as dedicated to “moderation and respect for human rights,” adding: “We in Iran strive to build peace and promote the human rights of peoples and nations. We never condone tyranny and we always defend the voiceless. We never threaten anyone…”
