Imagine what the Obama administration is leaving as unfinished terror
business for the next president and further, imagine what more can
happen for the rest of 2016.
Shall we begin with HizBu’llah?
DailyBeast – BEIRUT —
Lebanese Hezbollah field commanders with troops fighting in Syria tell
The Daily Beast they are receiving heavy weapons directly from Russia
with no strings attached. The commanders say there is a relationship of
complete coordination between the Assad regime in Damascus, Iran,
Hezbollah, and Russia. At the same time they say the direct
interdependence between Russia and Hezbollah is increasing.The United
States and the European Union have both listed Hezbollah as a terrorist
organization with global reach and accuse it of serving Tehran’s
interests. But there is more to it than that. Organized, trained,
funded, and armed by Iran with Syrian help after the Israeli invasion of
Lebanon in 1982, it initially gained fame for suicide bombings hitting
Israeli, French, and American targets there, including the U.S. Marine
barracks in Beirut where 241 American servicemen were killed in 1983.
Hezbollah is directly receiving long-range tactical missiles, laser guided rockets, and anti-tank weapons from Russia.
Badran/FDD:
In response to the crisis in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran,
following the latter’s assault on the Saudi consulate and embassy in
Iran, the Obama administration has taken to the media to unleash a
furious rebuke. But the administration’s condemnation was not aimed
primarily at Tehran; instead it’s been largely directed at America’s
longstanding ally: Saudi Arabia.
Administration officials have charged that, by executing radical Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr,
the Saudis have exacerbated sectarian tensions in the region and
jeopardized U.S. policy in Syria. “This is a dangerous game they are
playing,” an unnamed U.S. official told the Washington Post.
“There are larger repercussions,” including damage to “counter-ISIL
initiatives as well as the Syrian peace process.” This is a common
thread that runs through the administration’s briefings against the
Saudis, which reveals the White House’s backing of Iran’s regional
position over and against the traditional U.S. alliance system.
The claim that the Saudis were damaging the supposed Syrian “peace
process” sounds surreal on its face. But it is quite revealing, not just
about how the White House defines success, but also about its overall
policy in Syria.
The administration believes it has achieved a critical diplomatic
feat by bringing Iran into the diplomatic talks over Syria and that this
constitutes a major breakthrough in itself. “The United States has
succeeded in leading the international effort to bring all sides
together to try to bring about a political resolution inside of Syria,”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in
a briefing after the Saudi-Iranian spat. The way the administration
sees it, for a true discussion to take place, all so-called
“stakeholders” in Syria must be gathered around the table in order to
reach a settlement.
The administration’s self-congratulation aside, it’s worth exploring
what this means in practice. By declaring Iran a legitimate
“stakeholder,” the White House is not only saying that Syria is a
recognized Iranian sphere of influence, but it also is recognizing
Iran’s “stake” as legitimate. In fact, President Obama stated explicitly
last month that the solution in Syria should be one that allows the
Iranians to ensure “that their equities are respected.”
This begs the question of what, exactly, is Iran’s “stake” or
“equities” in Syria? The answer is straightforward: Iran’s interest is
to maintain a logistical bridge to Hezbollah through which it could
supply the group with missiles and arms, thereby enabling it to continue
to threaten U.S. allies like Israel and destabilize the region. The
White House’s legitimization of Iran as a stakeholder in Syria risks licensing Iran to continue arming Hezbollah.
But this was hardly the only cost of President Obama’s policy. The
key for safeguarding Iranian interests in Syria is ensuring the
continuity of the Syrian President Bashar Assad regime. And so, in order
to obtain Iranian “buy-in,” the administration abandoned what’s
supposed to be the main objective in Syria, which is the removal of
Assad and his regime. Assad, the administration now concedes, gets to
stay on for an indefinite period as part of an indeterminate
“transitional period.” In other words, when it comes to Syria, not only
did Obama force Iran down his allies’ throat — he also fully endorsed
its position.
Now, to top it off, the administration is attacking the Saudis for
supposedly jeopardizing a process designed to safeguard Iran’s unchanged
objectives in Syria. As the White House sees it, the Saudis’ only job
is to bring the Syrian opposition to the table essentially to sign a
surrender. What’s more, as part of this process, Iran, which has
underwritten and partaken in Assad’s mass slaughter, gets a say in
determining which opposition groups are listed as terrorists.
When it comes to the case of Nimr, the radical Saudi Shiite cleric,
the administration has applied the same core premise of its Syria policy
— that Iran has legitimate “equities” in Arab countries that should be
“respected.”
Since his execution, the administration has made a point of repeatedly disclosing that
it had tried to intervene with the Saudis not to go ahead with Nimr’s
execution. The administration is now saying that the Saudis were told
that the Iranians would react negatively to Nimr’s execution. Hence, the
Saudi decision, the administration is saying, was a wanton provocation
of Iran.
The underlying premise of the administration’s position is not only
that Iran has a legitimate claim to represent Arab Shiites but also that
since it has claimed Nimr, a Saudi, as a protégé, the Saudi government
should not touch him. Therefore, the message the administration was
effectively sending the Saudis was that Iran has a say in domestic Saudi
affairs.
The truth is that the Obama administration has been aligning with
Iran’s regional position for a while now — certainly since the beginning
of the Syrian revolution. With the nuclear deal now in hand, and with a
year left in President Obama’s term, the White House is becoming
explicit about this major shift in the historic U.S. position in the
region.
The president’s position on the Saudi-Iranian row is a public
announcement that his administration is dissolving its traditional
alliance system, along with the regional order it had underwritten for
decades, and embracing Iran instead.
*** The blame actually goes deeper on the migrant crisis:
Former Obama Adviser Dennis Ross: U.S. Inaction in Syria Led to Refugee Crisis and ISIS
Amb. Ross/Tower: The
Obama administration’s failure to address the brutality of the
Iran-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria led to a “vacuum” that
allowed “a humanitarian catastrophe, a terrible refugee crisis, a
deepening proxy war and the rise of ISIL in Iraq and Syria” to occur,
Dennis Ross, a former White House adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote in Politico on Sunday.
Ross explained that the administration’s failure to act stemmed from a
reluctance to repeat the mistakes that the United States made during
the Iraq War, but added that Syria was different from Iraq, as Syria
would involve aiding “an internal uprising” against Assad rather than an
American invasion. According to Ross, Assad had turned the uprising
against him into a sectarian conflict in the hope that his Alawite sect
and other Syrian minorities would have a stake in his survival.
Soon, thereafter, it was transformed into a proxy war largely pitting
Saudi Arabia and Turkey against Iran. A vacuum was created not by our
replacing the Assad regime but by our hesitancy to do more than offer
pronouncements—by overlearning the lessons of Iraq, in effect. And, that
vacuum was filled by others: Iran, Hezbollah and Iran’s other Shia
militia proxies; Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar; Russia; and ISIL.
Unless the U.S. does more now to fill this vacuum, the situation will
spin further out of control.
Ross observed that the vacuum in Syria was part of a greater American
retreat in the Middle East, which “has helped to produce the increasing
competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia.” Without fear of American
action, he argued, Qassem Soleimani– the commander of Iran’s Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps elite Qods Force– was transformed from a
“shadowy figure” to one who was present at seemingly every major battle
in Iraq and Syria. Eventually, given Iran’s continued aggressiveness and
America’s passivity, Saudi Arabia sought to push back against Tehran on
its own.
While Ross argued that the growing Iranian-Saudi tensions were not
likely turn into a hot war, he noted that the escalation hurts efforts
to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria. In addition, without
the U.S. taking an active role in the Middle East, Russia actively
entered and further complicated the fray. Until Moscow agrees to
pressure Assad “to respect a ceasefire, stop the barrel bombs, and
permit the creation of humanitarian corridors” to deliver food and aid
to non-ISIS opposition groups, Ross wrote, there is no hope of getting
Saudi Arabia or other Sunni nations to join the fight against ISIS.
In order to address the vacuum, Ross suggested that the U.S. take a
number of steps to regain control of the situation without getting too
deeply involved. These include putting “troops on the ground, including
deploying spotters for directing air attacks, embedding forces with
local partners perhaps to the battalion level, and using special
operations elements for hit-and-run raids.”
In 2014, Ross noted
that the administration’s growing closeness to Iran was concerning
American allies in the Middle East. For “the Arabs, the fear is that the
deal with come at their expense,” he explained. His recent suggestion
that the administration must somehow restrain Iran’s client, Assad,
before it can exert any influence in Syria demonstrates that this fear
still remains intact.
business for the next president and further, imagine what more can
happen for the rest of 2016.
Shall we begin with HizBu’llah?
Russia Is Arming Hezbollah, Say Two of the Group’s Field Commanders
Lebanese Hezbollah field commanders with troops fighting in Syria tell
The Daily Beast they are receiving heavy weapons directly from Russia
with no strings attached. The commanders say there is a relationship of
complete coordination between the Assad regime in Damascus, Iran,
Hezbollah, and Russia. At the same time they say the direct
interdependence between Russia and Hezbollah is increasing.The United
States and the European Union have both listed Hezbollah as a terrorist
organization with global reach and accuse it of serving Tehran’s
interests. But there is more to it than that. Organized, trained,
funded, and armed by Iran with Syrian help after the Israeli invasion of
Lebanon in 1982, it initially gained fame for suicide bombings hitting
Israeli, French, and American targets there, including the U.S. Marine
barracks in Beirut where 241 American servicemen were killed in 1983.
Hezbollah is directly receiving long-range tactical missiles, laser guided rockets, and anti-tank weapons from Russia.
Badran/FDD:
In response to the crisis in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran,
following the latter’s assault on the Saudi consulate and embassy in
Iran, the Obama administration has taken to the media to unleash a
furious rebuke. But the administration’s condemnation was not aimed
primarily at Tehran; instead it’s been largely directed at America’s
longstanding ally: Saudi Arabia.
Administration officials have charged that, by executing radical Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr,
the Saudis have exacerbated sectarian tensions in the region and
jeopardized U.S. policy in Syria. “This is a dangerous game they are
playing,” an unnamed U.S. official told the Washington Post.
“There are larger repercussions,” including damage to “counter-ISIL
initiatives as well as the Syrian peace process.” This is a common
thread that runs through the administration’s briefings against the
Saudis, which reveals the White House’s backing of Iran’s regional
position over and against the traditional U.S. alliance system.
The claim that the Saudis were damaging the supposed Syrian “peace
process” sounds surreal on its face. But it is quite revealing, not just
about how the White House defines success, but also about its overall
policy in Syria.
The administration believes it has achieved a critical diplomatic
feat by bringing Iran into the diplomatic talks over Syria and that this
constitutes a major breakthrough in itself. “The United States has
succeeded in leading the international effort to bring all sides
together to try to bring about a political resolution inside of Syria,”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in
a briefing after the Saudi-Iranian spat. The way the administration
sees it, for a true discussion to take place, all so-called
“stakeholders” in Syria must be gathered around the table in order to
reach a settlement.
The administration’s self-congratulation aside, it’s worth exploring
what this means in practice. By declaring Iran a legitimate
“stakeholder,” the White House is not only saying that Syria is a
recognized Iranian sphere of influence, but it also is recognizing
Iran’s “stake” as legitimate. In fact, President Obama stated explicitly
last month that the solution in Syria should be one that allows the
Iranians to ensure “that their equities are respected.”
This begs the question of what, exactly, is Iran’s “stake” or
“equities” in Syria? The answer is straightforward: Iran’s interest is
to maintain a logistical bridge to Hezbollah through which it could
supply the group with missiles and arms, thereby enabling it to continue
to threaten U.S. allies like Israel and destabilize the region. The
White House’s legitimization of Iran as a stakeholder in Syria risks licensing Iran to continue arming Hezbollah.
But this was hardly the only cost of President Obama’s policy. The
key for safeguarding Iranian interests in Syria is ensuring the
continuity of the Syrian President Bashar Assad regime. And so, in order
to obtain Iranian “buy-in,” the administration abandoned what’s
supposed to be the main objective in Syria, which is the removal of
Assad and his regime. Assad, the administration now concedes, gets to
stay on for an indefinite period as part of an indeterminate
“transitional period.” In other words, when it comes to Syria, not only
did Obama force Iran down his allies’ throat — he also fully endorsed
its position.
Now, to top it off, the administration is attacking the Saudis for
supposedly jeopardizing a process designed to safeguard Iran’s unchanged
objectives in Syria. As the White House sees it, the Saudis’ only job
is to bring the Syrian opposition to the table essentially to sign a
surrender. What’s more, as part of this process, Iran, which has
underwritten and partaken in Assad’s mass slaughter, gets a say in
determining which opposition groups are listed as terrorists.
When it comes to the case of Nimr, the radical Saudi Shiite cleric,
the administration has applied the same core premise of its Syria policy
— that Iran has legitimate “equities” in Arab countries that should be
“respected.”
Since his execution, the administration has made a point of repeatedly disclosing that
it had tried to intervene with the Saudis not to go ahead with Nimr’s
execution. The administration is now saying that the Saudis were told
that the Iranians would react negatively to Nimr’s execution. Hence, the
Saudi decision, the administration is saying, was a wanton provocation
of Iran.
The underlying premise of the administration’s position is not only
that Iran has a legitimate claim to represent Arab Shiites but also that
since it has claimed Nimr, a Saudi, as a protégé, the Saudi government
should not touch him. Therefore, the message the administration was
effectively sending the Saudis was that Iran has a say in domestic Saudi
affairs.
The truth is that the Obama administration has been aligning with
Iran’s regional position for a while now — certainly since the beginning
of the Syrian revolution. With the nuclear deal now in hand, and with a
year left in President Obama’s term, the White House is becoming
explicit about this major shift in the historic U.S. position in the
region.
The president’s position on the Saudi-Iranian row is a public
announcement that his administration is dissolving its traditional
alliance system, along with the regional order it had underwritten for
decades, and embracing Iran instead.
*** The blame actually goes deeper on the migrant crisis:
Former Obama Adviser Dennis Ross: U.S. Inaction in Syria Led to Refugee Crisis and ISIS
Amb. Ross/Tower: The
Obama administration’s failure to address the brutality of the
Iran-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria led to a “vacuum” that
allowed “a humanitarian catastrophe, a terrible refugee crisis, a
deepening proxy war and the rise of ISIL in Iraq and Syria” to occur,
Dennis Ross, a former White House adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote in Politico on Sunday.
Ross explained that the administration’s failure to act stemmed from a
reluctance to repeat the mistakes that the United States made during
the Iraq War, but added that Syria was different from Iraq, as Syria
would involve aiding “an internal uprising” against Assad rather than an
American invasion. According to Ross, Assad had turned the uprising
against him into a sectarian conflict in the hope that his Alawite sect
and other Syrian minorities would have a stake in his survival.
Soon, thereafter, it was transformed into a proxy war largely pitting
Saudi Arabia and Turkey against Iran. A vacuum was created not by our
replacing the Assad regime but by our hesitancy to do more than offer
pronouncements—by overlearning the lessons of Iraq, in effect. And, that
vacuum was filled by others: Iran, Hezbollah and Iran’s other Shia
militia proxies; Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar; Russia; and ISIL.
Unless the U.S. does more now to fill this vacuum, the situation will
spin further out of control.
Ross observed that the vacuum in Syria was part of a greater American
retreat in the Middle East, which “has helped to produce the increasing
competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia.” Without fear of American
action, he argued, Qassem Soleimani– the commander of Iran’s Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps elite Qods Force– was transformed from a
“shadowy figure” to one who was present at seemingly every major battle
in Iraq and Syria. Eventually, given Iran’s continued aggressiveness and
America’s passivity, Saudi Arabia sought to push back against Tehran on
its own.
While Ross argued that the growing Iranian-Saudi tensions were not
likely turn into a hot war, he noted that the escalation hurts efforts
to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria. In addition, without
the U.S. taking an active role in the Middle East, Russia actively
entered and further complicated the fray. Until Moscow agrees to
pressure Assad “to respect a ceasefire, stop the barrel bombs, and
permit the creation of humanitarian corridors” to deliver food and aid
to non-ISIS opposition groups, Ross wrote, there is no hope of getting
Saudi Arabia or other Sunni nations to join the fight against ISIS.
In order to address the vacuum, Ross suggested that the U.S. take a
number of steps to regain control of the situation without getting too
deeply involved. These include putting “troops on the ground, including
deploying spotters for directing air attacks, embedding forces with
local partners perhaps to the battalion level, and using special
operations elements for hit-and-run raids.”
In 2014, Ross noted
that the administration’s growing closeness to Iran was concerning
American allies in the Middle East. For “the Arabs, the fear is that the
deal with come at their expense,” he explained. His recent suggestion
that the administration must somehow restrain Iran’s client, Assad,
before it can exert any influence in Syria demonstrates that this fear
still remains intact.
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Obama Broke the Middle East Alliance and Equilibrium | Denise Simon Experience
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