About Iran and the Gaza Crisis

The day Hamas launched long-range rockets toward Israeli population centers I had tried to post using the comment section under last week's post.  Sadly, my sketchy tech abilities weren't turned on that day I guess, because it never showed up.  OK, maybe a few days' reflection will help me sort through this ugly development.

If you've been a frequent reader, you'll know that I try very hard to maintain a neutral position.  After all, we ultimately need to get everyone together if we're going to have peace.  Sadly, I found that an even-handed approach is not always going to be the best policy.  Regarding the Sudan/South Sudan problems I ultimately got very frustrated trying to avoid criticism of Sudan's President Bashir in the face of outrageous behavior. His South Sudan counterpart, President Kir, was also unneccesarily belligerent, so the whole crisis was a demoralizing display of leadership.

Today's Gaza crisis is larger, and the cast of badly behaving characters is long, and very closely ties to the US-Iran issues that I have been writing about.  What I intend to do today, is to call out the bad policy from all sides, and establish some of my personal biases.  I have no intent of being particularly partisan to one warring faction over the other, and I will try to avoid labelling anyone, but some frank discussion is due here.

I'll take on the state of Israel, and PM Netanyahu first.  I want to be clear that Israel's existence, it's right to be free from violent threats, and it's right to engage in defensive military actions to assert it's rights and the safety of Israeli citizens is just.  From that perspective, Israel has acted justly over the past several days in response to rocket attacks from Gaza.  The air strikes to disarm Hamas and the threatened land invasion are akin to disarming a dangerous person to prevent further harm.  They have not yet reached a point of unjust retaliation.

Sadly, the story is far more complex than stating Israel's right to defend.  Israeli policy of a Gaza blockade has been unjust, and has caused terrible suffering.  Gaza has been, effectively the world's largest prison for several years.  Further, the Netanyahu administration, and the Sharon administration before it, have myopically seen the status quo, where Israel dictates the fate of Palestinians without regard for their rights, as a seemingly permanent state of affairs.

Israel needs to realize that the dignity and autonomy of the Palestinian people is the only long-range strategy that will yield peace.  I am confident that this will be the outcome  at some point in the future,but I would be very happy if Israel would gain some clarity in this regard.

Secondly, I will address Hamas.  I think it is a disservice to everyone to continue to label Hamas as a terrorist organization, and therefore beyond the reach of diplomacy.  They are the democratically elected governmnt of Gaza, regardless of their previous atrocities and their disturbing view of a future Middle East.  Israel and the US have been responsible for empowering Hamas through 'get tough' approaches, which have driven the Palestinians to them for support.

Hamas has acted reprehensively since taking over the government of Gaza.  If Israel has been myopic in their treatment of Palestinians over the past several years*, it is largely because Hamas has stolen their eyeglasses.  They have been violent and unyielding, and can take blame for the shedding of blood in Gaza today.  They need to be negotiated with because they are Gaza's government, but no concession needs to be made in bad faith.  Hamas must either acknowledge a realistic path forward to a peaceful world, or understand that continued belligerence will perpetuate misery and death.  Only they can answer the question of whether they can volve to leaders with their people's interest in mind, or an ugly by-product of poverty and injustice that will need to be resected.

Thirdly, my own country, the US, needs to be considered.  The US is well intentioned, but our self professed dual roles as defender of Israel, and brokers for peace are probably untenable.  For this reason and for internal political reasons, the world's great superpower comes to the table looking like a stumbling oaf.

The pro-Israel lobby in the US has done a great service to the cause of justice and peace, by keeping us in mind of our commitment to defending Israel's right to exist.  It is a matter of good statesmanship to keep our promises and remember our friends.  What we fail to do, however, is to maintain a reasonable sense of arm's-length separation, and advise our friend when they need to consider peace with far more assertion.  The same pro-Israel lobby screams that we are appeasers, or somehow weak if we criticizethe Israeli government, when in fact we could be helping steer them toward a more moderate approach to the Palestinian's that would ultimately be beneficial.  It is also illegal for US representatives to talk to Hamas because they are 'terrorists', leaving us no one to deal with on one side of the table, unless we prefer to pretend that Fatah represents the people of Gaza.

It frustrates me that my country can intend such good, and miss the mark so widely.

Fourth, I will take up the case of Iran.  The current Iranian government may be as bad as we fear they are.  Certainly some of the current 'hard-liners' would relish posessing nuclear weapons, and if fact may be of a mind to use them in anger.  They may be actively working toward these prospects.  If they aren't the primary supporters of Hamas' outrages, and the material source for their medium range missiles, then I would be geatly surprised.  This makes Iran at least as culpable as Israel for locking the people of Gaza behind barbed wire.  Let me be clear.  I am accusing Iran of war-mongering.  I am also advocating negotiations with them.

The regime of President Ahmadinejad will be gone soon.  Engagement with Iran is not only possible, but crucial, and the likelihood of reasonable talks is greatly increased with a new presidency.  Contrary to our pervasive view in the US, fueled by the 1978 revolution, our best chance at peaceful ties with Iran may come from Ayatollah Khamenai, the religious leader in Iran.  The Islamic leaders have been distrustful of their government's prospect of using nuclear weapons, and the ethical concerns of such weapons in general.  The religious leadership might be profoundly different than the caricature we have built of them.  In short, Iran has not acted in the interests of peace recently, but I am hopeful, especially if we give them a fair hearing.

I have saved the good news for last..  When Egypt's President Morsi was elected recently, many shuddered, fearing the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Nonetheless, he strikes a good (hardly perfect but let's not complain) balance between the Egypt revered for the Camp David Accord, and the pro-Palestinian Islamic Egypt.  Moreover, he has taken his position proactively, and made Cairo the center for peace talks.  Right now, he is probably the only person in the world in a postion to offer a peace table, and to his great credit, he's done it.  In days or years to come, he may disappoint us, but today he has marked himself as a world leader and perhaps a peacemaker.

I realize I've been pretty harsh on most of the parties at play today, but I have a high regard for them as well.  The elements of peace are available, and I believe that most are willing to utilize them.  I remain skeptical of Hamas' willingness to do so, but John Lennon used to tell us all to give Peace a chance.

*I will not try to recreate a tit-for-tat countback of who can be blamed for every insult back to Britain's 'liberation' of Palestine from the Ottoman's in 1916 (but I can do a better job than many), because it's time to realize that the back story is nothing but an ugly unchangeable story.  Let's keep to the recent past.

 

Alternative to Negotiating with Iran?

The path to peace isn't going to be easy or quick with Iran.  The US and Iran share distrust and dislike in many respects.  So, a little formal analsysis of the situation is in order.  First, We should consider what the best alternative to a negotiated agreement (i.e. BATNA - for how this analysis works I recommend the book Getting to Yes, by Fisher and Ury).  As I see it, the best alternative is to continue to apply a rigid regime of sanctions on Iran to possibly compel them to cease alleged weapons grade erichment.

The sanctions regime is a good option from the perspective of being a non-violent confrontation.  It offers a potnential end to a long-standing crisis without war.  In turn, the success of sanctions could yield an atmosphere where dialogue could be conducted and relationships created, post crisis.

The negative aspects of a sanctions regime, are numerous.  First, Iran may be able to push past the sanctions and create nuclear weaponry, if we assume that is their intent.  Second, it is a continuation of a long standing face-off between Iran and the US.  For the sake of simplicity, I will ignore the many other players in this issue for now.  It allows a status quo to continue in the Middle East, which serves no one's interests.  Third, the sanctions will end sooner or later, and they merely create a holding pattern until the parties come to the point of agression, or a satisfactory conclusion.  That elusice satifactory conclusion can only come from actions taken by Iran, confirmed and accepted by the US, and allies, and concluded with a negotiated settlement.  So, sanctions are merely a deferral of a negotiated agreement, or a collapse into war.  To avoid war, we must eventually talk with the Iranians.

So, is the real 'best alternative' to negotiation war?  Perhaps. And perhaps it affords us the opportunity to conduct limited warfare.
If a full scale infntry-led war with Iran sounds like a nightmare, perhaps we can engage in tactice we used against Iraq between the Gulf War and the 2003 'shock-and-awe' invasion.  We supressed their military capabilities by force by placing a no-fly zone in place, and tightening a sanctions noose around them.  It was ultimately a failure, when the US 'confirmed' WMD's in Iraq, while at the same time sanctions collapsed.  The US invoked "The Bush Doctrine" and launched a preemtive attack to prevent deployment of the WMD's.  Limited war failed.

Since we have already started a punishing sanctions regime on Iran, it seems unwise to stop those sanctions until we receive some sort of response from Iran.  Nonetheless, we MUST be willing to listen to Iran, and sieze the opportunity to talk.  A surgical strike of a supposed nuclear weapons deveopment site will not in any way I can forsee, stop at a surgical strike, nor is it likely to satisfy skeptics that Iran is no longer capable of nuclear deployment.  Such a move is a prelude to a nightmare war.

In the end, there is no acceptable substitute for negotiated agreement with Iran.

Now it gets quite tricky.  First, what are the parameters to be negotiated, Second, who is present to conduct negotiations, and third, what are the conditions under which negotations are started, and continued.  I'll save the negotiation parameters until the next time.  Meanwhile, I hope you find personal peace, and continue to commit to being a peacemaker.

Why we Must Avoid War with Iran

What do the Vietnam War, the Iraq War and the current Afghan War have in common from the American perspective?  In each case it seemed important to commit troops, wage war against a much smaller nation, and ‘fix’ a foreign policy problem.  The cause could have seemed important; the communist dominoes, the weapons of mass destruction, or the elimination of terrorist havens were all deemed important enough to send Americans to die for.  In all cases, out troops were well trained and possessed weaponry that would presumably defeat all enemies.

War doesn’t work the way we have presumed.  In our most recent adventures we have been quick to gain key military objectives, and drive the enemy into a guerrilla, or ‘asymmetric’ fighting position, where they proceed to fight back ad infinum.  We are left with young men and women in harm’s way, without an outcome that could be deemed victory.

Our exit strategy in all three cases I have mentioned has been to leave a trained native army in place to hold up the government we had helped to create.  This led to a disaster in Vietnam, an emerging situation in Iraq that will probably give us ambiguous results at best, and we worry about our Afghan legacy, with hawkish lawmakers saying we need to devote more time and energy to help the Kharzei regime stand on its own.

Now, we contemplate war with Iran.  The cause seems just; a nuclear Iran is a bona fide threat to Israel.  There is pressure to ‘draw a bright red line’ beyond which, Iran will be subject to our military wrath.  Sadly we should know that making ultimatums will simply lead us into another pointless war.  I specifically mean pointless, because a war in Iran will do nothing to secure Israel from attack.  It will delay Iran’s deployment of nuclear weaponry, but it will make worse the visceral hatred that poisons the Middle East, and we will soon fear the same threat from Pakistan or Sudan, or a radicalized Egypt, or any number of other scenarios.

Once in Iran, what would we do?  It is a large country filled with daunting terrain and an enormous populace, and the cost to wage a war there, in blood and dollars, would dwarf the adventures of the past dozen years.  It would most likely require a much larger military, likely from the re-emergence of a draft.  Still, if it would bring peace, shouldn’t we undertake it?  The prospects of peace through war with Iran are purely rhetorical.  There is only one way to avoid catastrophe, and that is via dialogue.

When I resume this discussion (i.e. post back with your thoughts), I want to tie up a few loose ends on the prospects of war in Iran, such as surgical strike, and ‘no-fly’ strategies, and then talk about the basis for a dialogue, cutting through the clutter, and getting toward some understanding that will benefit not only Iran and the US, but Israel, the Palestinians, and Syria.  It’s good to be writing again!