Jihadism, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the “Frontier States”: Dr. Spyridon N. Litsas, BESA, Oct. 8, 2018— Many analysts, in their eagerness to trace the origins of the radicalization of Islam, look to the rise of the theocratic Shiite regime in Iran in 1979 as the starting point.
The Logic Behind Iranian Moves in the Middle East: Jonathan Spyer, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 5, 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.
Who is Fighting Iran’s Expansion? Who is Stopping ISIS?: Giulio Meotti, Arutz Sheva, Oct. 15, 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…
Middle Eastern Interventions in Africa: Tehran’s Extensive Soft Power: Hassan Dai, Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2018 — Since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has made enormous efforts to export its revolution around the world.
On Topic Links
Peace, Equality, Plurality – Just Not in the Middle East (Video): Jewish Press, Oct. 22, 2018
Iran Strike’s Message to Region: “Borders Don’t Matter”: Seth Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 01, 2018
The Next War in the Middle East: Vivian Bercovici, Commentary, Oct. 5, 2018
There’s a War Going on out There: Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Arutz Sheva, Sept. 6, 2018
JIHADISM, THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN,
AND THE “FRONTIER STATES” Dr. Spyridon N. Litsas
BESA, Oct. 8, 2018
Many analysts, in their eagerness to trace the origins of the radicalization of Islam, look to the rise of the theocratic Shiite regime in Iran in 1979 as the starting point. Others focus on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or the predominantly Muslim region of Bosnia Herzegovina during the Yugoslav civil war. Still others who are more theoretically inclined go back to the first decades of the 20th century to examine the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology, a blended creed that accommodates both a profound anti-colonial stance and a pronounced Salafism. Some go back to the 18th century’s austere enactments of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, or even further back to the reactionary utterances of Ibn Taymiyyah in the second half of the 13th century and the first half of the 14th.
None of these approaches is wrong, but they all disregard a basic feature of Islam that has accompanied it since its early days. Islam is a religion based on oxymorons. This can be clearly seen in the matter of violence and its relationship with religious practice. Jihad, the great issue relating to the use of violence within the context of Islamic religious practice, does not exist in a theoretical vacuum but has a direct link with all four fundamental schools of Islamic jurisprudence: the Hanafi, the Maliki, the Shafi’i, and the Hanbali. According to all four, the world is divided into two spheres: Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam), where the faith has established itself; and Dar al-Harb (the House of War), where it is incumbent on Muslims to fight non-believers in order to establish the rule of Islam. As the prophet Muhammad famously asserted in his farewell address: “I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.’”
It can be argued that Islam is not a religion of violence but rather a religion that understands its utility for the promotion of its revolutionary essence according to Martin Wight’s international theory. This conceptual utility of violence, which lies deep in the doctrinal core of Islam, is the driving force behind its continual radicalization. Islam, especially its majority Sunni branch, has never ceased to turn to radicalism every time it seems necessary.
But if radicalization is not new to Islam, what is different about today? Why do jihadist groups seem not only exceptionally powerful but also so resourceful at finding new means of spreading terror and death among their enemies?
The main difference between the past and the present regarding the radicalization process within Islam is technology – specifically, the existence of the internet. Images of terror and indirect methods of primitive psychological warfare, mainly targeting western societies, can be easily viewed in western homes. The 21st century is not the era of Islamic radicalization but the era during which jihadist Islam acquired the ability to promote and broadcast its messages of primitive hate and raw nihilism to millions.
The highly advanced technological means available to jihadist Islam offer it the opportunity to make contact with even wider audiences through the “dark web.” This further boosts the number of people who can be reached. Technology is changing everything in the War on Terror. This is the first time in human history that the global community of Muslims, the umma, has taken on a specific form and shape in the digital dimension. This represents a threat maximizer because jihadist groups now have numerous channels of communication through which they can organize actions and recruit members.
In J.J. Grygiel and A. Wess Mitchell’s latest work on US foreign policy, they show that it is necessary for Washington to form a new grand strategy that gives greater importance to its frontier state allies. Israel is on this list due to its key role in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Another pivotal state, Greece, is not included. This is an oversight, as Greece is essential to efficiently tackling jihadist Islam today. The strong ties between Athens, Jerusalem, and Nicosia go well beyond the promotion of open communication links in the field of energy. The strategic triangle, and especially the close cooperation between Athens and Jerusalem, can help the rest of the western world obstruct jihadists as they attempt to target western states.
How do Athens and Jerusalem help in this regard? By establishing a network of flow control of refugees now that Turkey seems unable and unwilling to do so. Jihadists make use of the continuous flow of refugees into Greece through the Aegean corridor in order to gain access to the West; By putting preemptive military operations into action from Greek, Israeli, and Cypriot ground against human smugglers acting in the Eastern Mediterranean. Greek military naval capacity combined with the Israeli military air force can transform the Eastern Mediterranean into a region relatively immune to external jihadist action; Israel is a tech leader while Greece has a large soft power capacity. This combination can lead to the creation of a political narrative that can counter the power formula of jihadist Islam in the Eastern Mediterranean.
For all of these to be implemented and to influence developments in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, and southeastern Europe, the US will have to maintain its open support of Israel. The decision by the White House to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem was a political gesture of great importance in this direction. So too should Washington attribute the status of frontier state to Greece.
The radicalization of Islam will continue as a new generation of Takfirism, a hybrid form of nihilism and ultra-religious fanaticism, is growing in Libya, Syria, and the Sahel. The strategic importance of Israel and Greece as the last frontiers before the stormy Muslim archipelago – considering as well the Russian and Chinese poles of influence – reveals the embryonic capabilities the two states possess as the two major western actors in the region.
The world is changing fast, with numerous state and non-state actors openly challenging the post-WWII sociopolitical and economic system. A fundamental strategic restructuring of the western world is greatly important during this period. The Eastern Mediterranean, with its upgraded geostrategic value, will be a key venue for both challenges and opportunities in the decades to come.
Greece and Israel both have important roles to play as western frontier states. The coming period will be characterized by challenges all along the periphery lines between the western and the Muslim worlds. This will not be a confirmation of the Clash of Civilizations of S.P. Huntington, because jihadist groups target Muslim states as well, but a recognition that a new era has arrived with frontier states having more responsibilities to strengthen collective security than before.
THE LOGIC BEHIND IRANIAN MOVES IN THE MIDDLE EAST Jonathan Spyer Jerusalem Post, Oct. 5, 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…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
WHO IS FIGHTING IRAN’S EXPANSION? WHO IS STOPPING ISIS? Giulio Meotti
Arutz Sheva, Oct. 15, 2018
Over the weekend, in front of 140 journalists from 40 countries, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a great speech: “Who is fighting the Iranian takeover of Syria? Israel is doing it. Who is fighting ISIS? In the last three years, Israel stopped 40 terror attacks by ISIS world wide. Israel is the vanguard of freedom in the heart of the Middle East. Without Israel, radical Islam would have overrun the Middle East. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian community thrives and grows”.
Netanyahu said the most explosive truths about Israel in its relations with the civilized world. Only Israel today is able to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, in the Middle East (twice Israel bombed and stopped an Arab-Islamic atomic bomb). Only Israel is able to combat radical Islamic ideology.
Israel belongs to a small group of countries – the United States, the UK and Canada among them – that have never suffered intervals of non-democratic regimes. Only Israel is able to promote the capitalistic economic development of the region. Only Israel is able to expand the values of the West in the region, competing with those of radical Islam. Israel is one of only two Western democracies that constantly face an adverse environment since its creation (the other one is South Korea). Israel is older than more than half of the democracies and belongs to a small group of countries – the United States, the UK and Canada among them – that have never suffered intervals of non-democratic regimes. France has been less democratic than Israel, to mention one country.
If Israel were to disappear, Iran would extend its totalitarian hegemony throughout the entire Middle East to the Mediterranean and would humiliate the West by reducing and controlling oil production. If the Islamist groups like ISIS have not yet been able to seize the power in Jordan by toppling the Hashemite Kingdom, it is only thanks to the presence of the Israeli army at the border. If Israel were to succumb, the whole world and Western civilization would fall into chaos (who will prevent the fall of Sinai to Jihadists?). A Jihadist takeover of Jerusalem would give to the Islamists a victory like the fall of Christian Constantinople in 1453. If Israel were to succumb, Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia would all fall to the Jihadists or the Iranian ayatollahs.
We have been close to this destabilization in recent years, with the taking of power by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and deaths and chaos in its streets, the killing of the American ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya, the rise of Isis in the Mediterranean coasts, the Syrian civil war, the birth of Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, the construction of an Islamic State over a third of the Iraqi territory. Israel is the only Western buffer against an Islamist tsunami that would overrun Europe. The West should think of Israel not only as the Jewish State or in terms of the failed “peace process” in the Middle East, but as a Western outpost under siege. If Israel falls it is as if Vienna had fallen in 1683, when the Muslims were rejected at its doors and Europe was saved. The philosopher Leo Strauss called Israel “the only outpost of the West in the East”.
Unfortunately, the West, by undermining Israel, has become more vulnerable, it has not understood that that small Jewish state is an indispensable part of the West, that the millions of Israeli Jews who persist in inhabiting this world despite the Holocaust and the wars are the personification of the best values of our civilization. Contents
MIDDLE EASTERN INTERVENTIONS IN AFRICA:
TEHRAN’S EXTENSIVE SOFT POWER
Hassan Dai
Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2018
Since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has made enormous efforts to export its revolution around the world. Iranian diplomats, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and subordinate organs have spread Shiite doctrine and engaged in direct subversion, terrorism, and organized crime such as drug smuggling.
Dai-al-Quds.jpg Iran-sponsored al-Quds Day rally in Yola, Nigeria, 2017. Iran’s Al-Mustafa International University is responsible for exporting Tehran’s revolutionary ideology. The university’s goal is to spread anti-American ideology and to “liberate Palestine” and “eradicate Israel.” Yet while Tehran’s exertions in the Middle East, Central Asia, and even Latin America have received widespread international exposure, Iranian efforts in Africa have attracted scant attention though the Islamist regime has invested substantial resources to expand its soft power and influence across the continent. So much so that it is arguable that Tehran is reshaping African Islam and the continent’s politics.
While Iran’s primary target for the export of its revolution has been the Middle East, Africa has also been seen as a strategically important region for several reasons. Nearly 45 percent of the continent’s 1.2 billion persons are Muslim, and Tehran recognizes that the lack of influence there presents a serious handicap to its quest to dominate the Islamic world. Gaining popular support within the Muslim communities could also influence the policies of African governments toward Iran. Furthermore, Africa’s Shiite communities have been a source of financial support for Tehran’s Hezbollah proxy in Lebanon. At the same time, a strong presence on the continent provides Iran with a network and routes for logistical support to radical groups in the Middle East.
To win the hearts and minds of African Muslims, the Iranian regime and its institutions organize conferences, conduct religious and political events, work with local partners, and run more than one hundred Islamic centers, schools, seminaries, and mosques in more than thirty African countries with thousands of students, clerics and missionaries. In addition, Tehran has offered financial and economic incentives to African governments and used two of its charities, the Iranian Red Crescent and the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee, to provide a wide range of free social and health services in several African countries.
The two main organizations spearheading this quest for soft power are the Islamic Culture and Relations Organization, which operates through cultural attachés at Iranian embassies, and the Al-Mustafa International University, which trains foreign clerics and missionaries around the world. These and other organizations disseminate Tehran’s fundamentalist ideology and generate grassroots support for its foreign policy, its position in the Islamic world, and its quest to dominate the Middle East. They also provide the regime with a recruiting pool for the IRGC’s Quds Force and other Iranian institutions responsible for terrorism or military activities abroad.
Indeed, over the last several years, various African governments have arrested Iranian terrorist suspects, dismantled pro-Tehran networks, and seized Iranian weapons shipments to radical groups in the Middle East. In February 2018, for instance, two Lebanese citizens were arrested in South Africa and charged with illegally buying digital components used in drones and sending them to Hezbollah…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
On Topic Links
Peace, Equality, Plurality – Just Not in the Middle East (Video): Jewish Press, Oct. 22, 2018
Iran Strike’s Message to Region: “Borders Don’t Matter”: Seth Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 01, 2018—On September 22, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired six ballistic missiles at areas in Syria “east of the Euphrates” in retaliation for an attack on them in Ahvaz.
The Next War in the Middle East: Vivian Bercovici, Commentary, Oct. 5, 2018—Everyone says they don’t want war, but the fourth armed conflict since 2006 between Hamas and Israel may be imminent.
There’s a War Going on out There: Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Arutz Sheva, Sept. 6, 2018—Wars are raging in various parts of the Middle East, although there is a tendency not to call the conflicts by that name because of the fear conjured up by the word.
