Egypt’s Vietnam: Jesse Ferris, Foreign Policy, April 3, 2015— Lessons from the last time Cairo waded into war in Yemen.
Steering Children From Iran’s Deadly Grasp: Sohrab Ahmari, Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2015 — The Iranian regime on April 28 seized the Maersk Tigris as it crossed the Strait of Hormuz.
King's Absence from U.S. Summit Shows Saudi displeasure Over Iran Push: William Maclean and Angus McDowall, Reuters, May 11, 2015 — The Saudi king's absence from a regional summit to be hosted by President Barack Obama shows how Gulf states, displeased by what they see as U.S. indifference to Iranian meddling in the Arab world, may hesitate to bless any nuclear deal with Tehran.
Saudi Arabia Considers Nuclear Weapons to Offset Iran: Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2015— The nuclear deal that the U.S. and other world powers hope to reach with Iran would put a 10-year curb on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program. For some of Iran’s regional rivals, that is also becoming a deadline for developing nuclear arms of their own.
The Israel Project, Nepal Statistics: May 4 2015
Exposed: Egypt’s Institutionalized Persecution of Coptic Christians: Raymond Ibrahim, Breaking Israel News, May 6, 2015
Egyptian Court Upholds Mubarak Verdict: David. D. Kirkpatrick, New York Times, May 9, 2015
US-Arab alignment shows strains before Camp David summit: Michael Wilner, Jerusalem Post, May 11, 2015
Jesse Ferris
Foreign Policy, April 3, 2015
In the spring of 1967, Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, lamented to the U.S. ambassador in Cairo that the war in Yemen had become his “Vietnam.” He subsequently explained to an Egyptian historian how the conflict spiraled out of control: “I sent a company to Yemen and ended up reinforcing it with 70,000 troops.”
Over the course of the five-year war, from 1962 to 1967, Nasser lost more than 10,000 men, squandered billions of dollars, and painted himself into a diplomatic corner from which the only way out was through war with Israel. As Nasser himself would realize by the war’s end, Yemen was to Egypt what Vietnam was to the United States — and what Afghanistan was to the Soviet Union, what Algeria is to France, and what Lebanon is to Israel.
Not surprisingly, the predominant takeaway for Egyptians was “never again.” Never again would they send their boys to fight for a dubious cause on a remote battlefield.
Perhaps “never” is too strong a word. A half-century later, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is once again contemplating the dispatch of ground forces to Yemen, this time in support of the Saudi-led assault on the Houthis. Sisi has already committed Egypt’s navy and air force to the military campaign and has said that ground forces would be sent “if necessary.” As the Saudis, the Egyptians, and their allies hover on the brink of another military adventure in Yemen, history offers some stark lessons of the challenges that may block their road to victory.
In the fall of 1962, a perceptive battalion commander named Salah al-Din al-Mahrizi was urging his superiors in Egypt’s high command that predictions of a quick, easy war in Yemen were wildly off target. A coup d’état had just toppled the monarchy in Yemen; a republic, modeled on Egypt’s, had been established in its place. Yet the republic was weak, and the Zaidi Shiite tribes of the north, loyal to ousted Imam Muhammad al-Badr, threatened to crush it, with Saudi support.
Nasser, who was engaged in a ferocious struggle with King Saud over leadership of the Arab world, saw an opportunity to plant the seeds of revolution on the Arabian Peninsula. There was no time to lose….
Mahrizi suggested, it would be best to leave the defense of Yemen to the Yemenis. On account of these words of wisdom — later communicated in a letter to Nasser himself — Mahrizi was grounded for insubordination and proceeded to sit out the first months of a war that developed more or less as he predicted.
In the months that followed, the Egyptians poured men and materiel into Yemen over an air bridge constructed with help from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. First came a company of commandos to guard the capital, then a squadron of fighters to provide them with air support, and soon after an armored battalion to secure the surrounding countryside. Yet as Mahrizi had warned, no force seemed sufficient to secure the republic — let alone crush the rebel cause.
Three factors drove the escalation. First, the Saudis were able to send supplies to Imam al-Badr’s men over Yemen’s porous borders faster than the Egyptians could interdict them. To prevent supplies from reaching royalist supporters, the Egyptians deployed considerable air power to Yemen and launched airstrikes on Saudi territory to the north and on the British-controlled Aden Protectorate to the south.
Second, Yemen’s winding mountain roads afforded seemingly unlimited opportunities for ambush. Keeping arteries of communication open required the deployment of considerable manpower to the surrounding countryside and reliance on airdrops to supply remote outposts.
Third, the mere declaration of a “republic” over the ruins of al-Badr’s imamate was a far cry from the establishment of a centralized modern state capable of containing Yemen’s powerful centrifugal forces. Accordingly, an army of Egyptian administrators descended on Yemen, where they succeeded mainly in replicating Egypt’s police state.
From 1964 onward, Nasser sought a way to retreat from Yemen with his reputation intact. In 1965, he swallowed his pride and went to Jeddah to make peace with King Faisal. But the peace did not hold, mainly because the “proxies” in Yemen stubbornly refused to play their part in a deal made over their heads and at their expense. Soon enough, Nasser and King Faisal were at loggerheads again, and King Faisal traveled to Tehran to offer the Shah of Iran an “Islamic pact” against the godless Egyptians.
The irony of the Saudis’ present attempt to form a “Sunni axis” — this time with Egypt as an ally, not an antagonist — against the opponent du jour, Iran, suggests that we should avoid casting the present struggle in Yemen in purely sectarian terms. Back in the 1960s, King Faisal cast about for a source of legitimacy that would aid him in his competition with the immensely popular leader of pan-Arabism, Nasser. Religion was a convenient choice: The Saudis held custody over the holy sites of Islam, Nasser’s Arab socialism left him open to charges of impiety, and King Faisal’s most likely ally in the struggle against Nasser, the Shah of Iran, shared his Muslim faith, if not his denomination. Nor did sectarian differences stand in the way of Riyadh’s alliance with the mostly Zaidi Shiite opponents of Egypt’s intervention within Yemen.
Today, of course, the Saudis are opposing many of those very same tribes — not because they are Shiite, but because they are seen as colluding with a hostile power that is threatening to upset the regional balance of power. Conversely, there is less sectarian coherence to Iranian actions than meets the eye. While supporting the Houthis, who adhere to the Zaidi version of Shiism, the Iranians are also supporting Sunni elements in Yemen who have chosen to align with the Houthis and are affiliated with ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh (himself a Shiite). It is also important to recognize that religious identity in Yemen is more malleable than in other parts of the Arab world, and the divisions between various strands of Sunnis and Shiites are less stark than they are in Iraq, for example.
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
STEERING CHILDREN FROM IRAN'S DEADLY GRASP
Sohrab Ahmari
Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2015
The Iranian regime on April 28 seized the Maersk Tigris as it crossed the Strait of Hormuz. Revolutionary Guard gunships fired across the Marshall Islands-flagged container ship’s bow, then diverted it to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, where it was held for more than a week before being released Thursday. The seizure was the mullahs’ latest aggression in a neighborhood encircled by an arc of Iranian hegemony stretching from the Arabian Peninsula to Mesopotamia and the Levant.
The question among America’s moderate Arab allies now isn’t whether a regional long war is afoot—but how to win it. The recent Saudi-led blitz against the Houthis, Iran’s Yemeni proxies, provided one answer. Yet military action in a struggle with a sectarian face will only go so far against an enemy that exerts influence wherever pockets of impoverished Shiites live among Sunni Arabs. Winning the long war also requires divorcing Arab Shiites from their Persian patrons.
To see how this might be achieved, I traveled last week to Lebanon. Iran planted its first beachhead here in 1982, when it created Hezbollah. From its base in southern Lebanon, the “Party of God” has launched some of the deadliest terror attacks against the West, including the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 U.S. servicemen. Today, Hezbollah is a state within a state in Lebanon, and its fighters are the tip of Iran’s spear in Syria.
But on any given weekend in Tannourine, a village in the snowcapped mountains north of Beirut, you will find young Lebanese defying Hezbollah. On the surface the Saving the Next Generation (SNG) outpost in Tannourine resembles any other recreational camp. About 75 boys and girls, ages 10 to 17, ride bicycles, hike, climb and practice archery. The older ones flirt innocently. The youngsters throw snowballs and play hide-and-seek.
The camp “makes us brothers and sisters,” says Yousef, a 10-year-old from Beirut. Coming to SNG allows “us to live as one,” says Liliane, a 17-year-old from Tyre. These are remarkable sentiments if you consider that only a quarter of these children are Christian or Sunni, while the rest are Shiites instructed by Hezbollah to put sectarian identity above allegiance to Lebanon. For these young people, hanging out means breaking taboos.
Saving the Next Generation is the brainchild of Ahmad al-Assaad, the 52-year-old leader of Lebanese Option, the country’s only Shiite party openly opposed to Hezbollah.
“What we do is open children’s eyes to the culture of life,” Mr. Assaad says. “That life is supposed to be fun. Life is good. Enjoy it. It’s not always about crying for Imam Hussein”—the Muslim saint who is the emblem of Shiite martyrdom. Encouraging the Shiite child to be a child, Mr. Assaad says, “puts him on a path that is different from the path of the fanatic.”
Mr. Assaad’s theory of change is simple but powerful. “Hezbollah controls Lebanon,” he says. “It controls Lebanon through the Shiite community. You want to weaken Hezbollah? You have to shake its base. This is why we invest so much in the next generation.” Get enough young Shiites to care more about earthly bonds and success than about “resistance,” and Iran will gradually lose its Lebanese stronghold.
Some 1,500 children go through the SNG camp annually, with each small cohort visiting twice a year. “Like in Iran,” Mr. Assaad says, “these kids are told that ‘anyone who isn’t Shiite, these are evil people, these are people who want to kill you.’ ” At Saving the Next Generation, “they come face to face with the other, and they find out that—guess what?—he’s just a kid, just like him. He wants the same toys. He wants to laugh at the same jokes. They cry at the same things.”
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
KING's ABSENCE FROM U.S. SUMMIT SHOWS SAUDI
William Maclean and Angus McDowall
Reuters, May 11, 2015
The Saudi king's absence from a regional summit to be hosted by President Barack Obama shows how Gulf states, displeased by what they see as U.S. indifference to Iranian meddling in the Arab world, may hesitate to bless any nuclear deal with Tehran. Analysts and diplomats in the Middle East described King Salman's decision to skip the meeting at Camp David this week as a snub, despite denials from U.S. officials and some Saudi insiders. Riyadh announced the monarch's no-show on Sunday, only two days after the White House had said he would attend the summit of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – some of which have long doubted Obama's commitment to confronting Iranian backing of Shi'ite Muslim militias across the region.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who has strong ties with the U.S. political and security establishment, will represent Saudi Arabia at the May 13-14 gathering along with Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the defence minister. Since Salman took power in January, the pair have determined most aspects of Saudi policy. The leading Gulf Arab power has complained for years that Washington does not take its concerns seriously. It thinks a focus on settling the dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme has distracted the United States from more urgent problems.
"The conspiracy theorists of old have been proven right. The U.S. creates threats for us and then offers us more weapons systems. That does not bode well for us," said Sami Alfaraj, a Kuwaiti security adviser to the six-nation GCC. Riyadh believes Iranian support for militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen is the biggest cause of regional instability, aggravating sectarian tensions, undermining strong government and boosting Sunni Muslim jihadists. The Saudis fear Obama sees a settlement between world powers and Tehran as his legacy. Such a deal on the nuclear programme – which the West believes may be aimed at building weapons despite Iranian denials – could lift international sanctions without taming the country's regional ambitions, they think.
Washington has repeatedly promised to help curb Iran's activities, offering the Gulf Arabs new weapons and backing a Saudi-led coalition against Yemeni rebels allied to Tehran. Backing from the GCC – made up of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman – is important for Obama to show Congress that the Iran deal has broad regional support, despite Israeli opposition. Salman expressed guarded support for a framework nuclear agreement reached last month, but insists any accord must be robust, verifiable and no threat to Tehran's neighbours.
Saudi insiders are worried that by easing sanctions on Tehran, Iran will have more scope to back the proxies that Riyadh opposes across the Middle East. Secretary of State John Kerry has tried to reassure the Gulf states that Washington will not accept a bad nuclear deal, saying the Camp David discussions would flesh out commitments that will create "a new security understanding" with the GCC. Washington is also poised to offer new weapons under a push for a GCC shared missile defence system, senior U.S. officials said last week. Obama's support for the Yemen campaign, despite strategic and humanitarian reservations, also signalled American commitment to Riyadh's security.
However, these gestures may not have won over the Saudis. "Their experience of six years from Obama is assurances, promises, nice words. But at the end of the day they got nothing in their hands," said Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security analyst with close ties to the Saudi crown prince's Interior Ministry.
He said Riyadh regarded U.S. support for the Yemen campaign, which included intelligence sharing, logistics and expediting weapons deliveries, as a quid pro quo for Saudi blessing of an Iran deal, which both sides are aiming to complete by June. But Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political scientist in the UAE, underlined the regional doubts. "We still think deeply that Iran is a destabilising force and with the nuclear deal it is going to be even more destabilising. So I think fundamentally we – the GCC and the U.S – are not on the same page anymore," he said….
A Saudi decision in 2013 to vacate a seat on the United Nations Security Council that it had spent years seeking, followed by a leak of angry comments about Washington by then spy chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, failed to change U.S. policy. "Of course it (Salman's non-appearance) is a snub. But I don't think Obama is going to put up with this. He wants the nuclear deal. It is the number one priority," said a Western diplomat based in the region.
SAUDI ARABIA CONSIDERS NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO OFFSET IRAN
Yaroslav Trofimov
Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2015
The nuclear deal that the U.S. and other world powers hope to reach with Iran would put a 10-year curb on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program. For some of Iran’s regional rivals, that is also becoming a deadline for developing nuclear arms of their own.
In Saudi Arabia, there are widespread public calls to match Iran’s nuclear quest. The two other Middle East heavyweights, Turkey and Egypt, could also feel compelled to follow suit, senior Western and Arab officials warn.
Such an arms race would further destabilize what is already the world’s most volatile region, where the risks of a nuclear war would be compounded by the threat of radioactive material falling into the hands of terrorist groups.
While Saudi Arabia has long advocated a nuclear-free Middle East, its leaders are doubtful that the completed accord on limiting Tehran’s nuclear program will stop Iran from becoming a threshold nuclear-weapons power when proposed restrictions on is number of centrifuges and uranium stockpiles expire in 10 years. They also aren’t willing to bet that the regime in Tehran will somehow become more moderate and responsible by then, a hope entertained by many in the West.
“We prefer a region without nuclear weapons. But if Iran does it, nothing can prevent us from doing it too, not even the international community,” said Abdullah al Askar, a member and former chairman of the foreign affairs committee of Saudi Arabia’s advisory legislature.
“Our leaders will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon while we don’t,” addedIbrahim al-Marie, a retired Saudi colonel and a security analyst in Riyadh. “If Iran declares a nuclear weapon, we can’t afford to wait 30 years more for our own—we should be able to declare ours within a week.”
Part of the reason for this sense of urgency is that Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Arab allies are increasingly battling mainly Shiite Iran in proxy conflicts across the region, from Syria to Yemen.
Besides their fears of a nuclear Iran dominating the Middle East one day, they are fretting that the agreement would dramatically tilt the regional balance of power in Tehran’s favor already in the immediate future, especially once the removal of international sanctions revitalizes the Iranian economy and gives it access to more than $100 billion in frozen overseas assets. They also increasingly distrust the U.S., the traditional guarantor of Gulf security.
“Our allies aren’t listening to us, and this is what is making us extremely nervous,” said Prince Faisal bin Saud bin Abdulmohsen, a scholar at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in the Saudi capital.
“If I am basing my judgment on the track record and our experience with Iran, I will say they will do anything in their power to get a nuclear weapon. A delay of 10 years is not going to satiate anything,” Prince Faisal said.
“Should Iran gain the ability to produce weapons-grade uranium and ability to deploy such weapons,” developing a Saudi capability in response “would be considered as part of our homeland security,” he added. Iran claims it doesn’t seek nuclear weapons.
The Obama administration has long argued that the nuclear deal would make it unnecessary for countries like Saudi Arabia to embark on their own nuclear programs…. King Salman returned to this issue in a speech at this week’s Riyadh summit, warning that a nuclear deal without adequate safeguards—something the Saudis feel is the case with the current draft agreement—risks “plunging the region into an arms race.”
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
The Israel Project, Nepal Statistics: May 4 2015
Exposed: Egypt’s Institutionalized Persecution of Coptic Christians: Raymond Ibrahim, Breaking Israel News, May 6, 2015 – In a 25-minute interview on Arabic satellite with Dr. Mona Roman, Coptic Christian Bishop Agathon fully exposed the plight of his Christian flock in Minya, Egypt—a region that has a large Coptic minority that is steadily under attack.
Egyptian Court Upholds Mubarak Verdict: David. D. Kirkpatrick, New York Times, May 9, 2015 – An Egyptian court on Saturday reconfirmed a corruption conviction of former President Hosni Mubarak amid signals from the authorities that he may soon be released.
US-Arab alignment shows strains before Camp David summit: Michael Wilner, Jerusalem Post, May 11, 2015 – Most of the GCC leaders will skip summit for their security in Maryland this week.
