further criticism of the US withdrawal is that it unnecessarily hands a victory to Vladimir Putin and Assad. But here again, Trump’s manoeuvre is more of a recognition of the fact that both men are already winners in the Syrian war. Nor is it entirely clear that Russia and Iran will have greater influence in Syria and the region after the US withdrawal. True they have come out on the winning side, but as the Syrian state becomes more powerful, it will have less need for foreign allies. The close cooperation between Russia and Turkey was glued together by US cooperation with the Kurds and once that ends, then Turkey may shift—though not all the way—back towards the US.
By denouncing Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria, his opponents are once again making the mistake of underestimating his instinctive political skills.
13 May 2019
Saudi Arabia’s claim that two of its oil tankers have been sabotaged off the coast of the UAE is vague in detail—but could create a crisis that spins out of control and into military action. Any attack on shipping in or close to the Strait of Hormuz, the thirty-mile wide channel at the entrance to the Gulf, is always serious because it is the most important choke point for the international oil trade.
A significant armed action by the US or its allies against Iran would likely provoke Iranian retaliation in the Gulf and elsewhere in the region. Although the US is militarily superior to Iran by a wide margin, the Iranians as a last resort could fire rockets or otherwise attack Saudi and UAE oil facilities. Such apocalyptic events are unlikely—but powerful figures in Washington, such as the National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, appear prepared to take the risk of a war breaking out. Bolton has long publicly demanded the overthrow of the Iranian government. “The declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran,” he said last year before taking office. “The behaviour and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself.”
Bolton and Pompeo are reported to have used some mortar rounds landing near the US embassy in Baghdad in February as an excuse to get a reluctant Pentagon to prepare a list of military options against Iran. These would include missile and air strikes, but it is unclear what these would achieve from the US point of view. Paradoxically, the US and Saudi Arabia have been talking up war against Iran just as economic sanctions are seriously biting. Iranian oil exports have dropped from 2.8 to 1.3 million barrels a day over the last year and are likely to fall further. Inflation in Iran is at 40 percent and promises by the EU, UK, France, and Germany to enable the Islamic republic to avoid sanctions on its oil trade and banking have not been fulfilled. Commercial enterprises are too frightened of being targeted by the US Treasury to risk breaching sanctions.
Iran is becoming economically—though not politically—isolated. This is in contrast to previous rounds of sanctions on Iran under President Obama prior to the nuclear deal when the reverse was true. One reason why it is unlikely that Iran would carry out sabotage attacks on Saudi oil tankers is that its strategy has been to play a long game and out-wait the Trump administration. Though the Iranian economy may be badly battered, it will probably be able to sustain the pressure. Much tighter sanctions against Saddam Hussein after his invasion of Kuwait in 1990 did not lead to the fall of his regime.
The circumstance of the alleged sabotage at 6 a.m. on Sunday remain mysterious. Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih says the attack “didn’t lead to any casualties or oil-spill” but did cause damage to the structure of the vessels. The incident has the potential to lead to conflict in the context of an escalating confrontation between the US and Iran. The rise in temperature reached particularly menacing levels this month as the US sent an aircraft carrier to the Gulf and Iran suspended in part its compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal after President Trump withdrew last year. However, Iran has made serious efforts to show moderation and cultivate support from the EU, Russia, and China. For this reason, it appears unlikely that it has had a hand in attacking the Saudi oil tankers. Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Abbas Mousavi asked for more information about what had really happened to the tankers. He warned against any “conspiracy orchestrated by ill-wishers” and “adventurism” by foreigners.
In this febrile atmosphere, almost any incident, true or false—such as the unconfirmed sabotage of tankers or a few mortar rounds fired towards the US embassy in Baghdad—might provide the spark to ignite a wider conflict.
17 May 2019
In its escalating confrontation with Iran, the US is making the same mistake it has made again and again since the fall of the Shah forty years ago: it is ignoring the danger of plugging into what is in large part a religious conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
I have spent much of my career as a correspondent in the Middle East, since the Iranian revolution in 1979, reporting crises and wars in which the US and its allies fatally underestimated the religious motivation of their adversaries. This has meant they have come out the loser, or simply failed to win, in conflicts in which the balance of forces appeared to them to be very much in their favour. It has happened at least four times. Now the same process is underway yet again, and likely to fail for the same reasons as before: the US, along with its local allies, will be fighting not only Iran but whole Shia communities in different countries, mostly in the northern tier of the Middle East between Afghanistan and the Mediterranean. Trump looks to sanctions to squeeze Iran while National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promote war as a desirable option. But all three denounce Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Popular Mobilisation Units in Iraq as Iranian proxies, though they are primarily the military and political arm of the indigenous Shia, which are a plurality in Lebanon, a majority in Iraq, and a controlling minority in Syria. The Iranians may be able to strongly influence these groups, but they are not Iranian puppets, which would wither and disappear once Iranian backing is removed.
Allegiance to nation-states in the Middle East is generally weaker than loyalty to communities defined by religion, such as the Alawites, the two-million-strong ruling Shia sect in Syria to which Bashar al-Assad and his closest lieutenants belong. This is not what Trump’s allies in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel want Washington to believe; for them, the Shia are all Iranian stooges. For the Saudis, every rocket fired by the Houthis in Yemen into Saudi Arabia—though minimal in destructive power compared to the four-year Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen—can only have happened because of a direct instruction from Tehran. On Thursday, for instance, Prince Khalid Bin Salman, the vice minister for defence and the brother of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, claimed on Twitter that drone attacks on Saudi oil pumping stations were “ordered” by Iran. He said that “the terrorist acts, ordered by the regime in Tehran, and carried out by the Houthis, are tightening the noose around the ongoing political efforts.” He added: “These militias are merely a tool that Iran’s regime uses to implement its expansionist agenda in the region.” There is nothing new in this paranoid reaction by Sunni rulers to actions by distinct Shia communities (in this case the Houthis) attributing everything without exception to the guiding hand of Iran. I was in Bahrain in 2011, where the minority Sunni monarchy had just brutally crushed protests by the Shia majority with Saudi military support. Among those tortured were Shia doctors in a hospital who had treated injured demonstrators. Part of the evidence against them was a piece of technologically advanced medical equipment—I cannot remember if it was used for monitoring the heart or the brain or some other condition—which the doctors were accused of using to receive instructions from Iran about how to promote a revolution.
This type of absurd conspiracy theory used not to get much of hearing in Washington, but Trump and his acolytes are on record as saying that nearly all acts of “terrorism” can be traced to Iran. This conviction risks sparking a war between the US and Iran because there are plenty of angry Shia in the Middle East who might well attack some US facility on their own accord.
It might also
