Middle East & North Africa Archive

So what would Iran actually do to respond to an Israeli military strike on its nuclear facilities? Sam Roggeveen over at The Interpreter gives the range of possible responses the once-over and comes away unimpressed. He makes a pretty compelling case. If someone had said that Israel would carry out an airstrike on Syria that not only had no regional repercussions, but were followed less than a year afterwards by backchannel peace negotiations between the two countries, most people would have thought he was crazy. So maybe Sam’s got a point.

I mentioned last week, in the aftermath of the announcement that William Burns would be attending Saturday’s Iran nuclear discussions, that the move seemed calculated to appeal to the court of public perception as much as it did to the Iranians. After all, while Burns’ presence represented a symbollic shift, his message didn’t. And it’s a message that the Iranians have consistently rejected over the years. Now that it looks like the meeting between the EU’s Javier Solana and Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili didn’t produce any breakthroughs (which isn’t so very surprising), the onus does indeed seem to be very […]

The buzz over the weekend was about a Der Spiegel interview with Nouri Maliki in which the Iraqi PM essentially embraced the 16-month timeline for withdrawal articulated by Barack Obama. While Iraqi government spokesmen have since backpedaled on the remarks, there’s little room for doubt when you actually read them. It’s a testament to how opaque and unpredictable the political context of the Iraq War now is that President Bush, Maliki and Obama are all converging on the need for some sort of “timeframe” for withdrawal, even if everyone is hedging their bets by using murky language or tying it […]

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . . — That four-page biography of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi distributed to reporters traveling with President Bush to the G-8 summit in Japan earlier this month apparently wasn’t the only White House snafu in the background material compiled for the trip. As was reported, the specially prepared press kit described Italy as “a country known for governmental corruption and vice,” and called Berlusconi an opportunist who bought his way to political power. An Italian correspondent covering the summit read it and immediately telephoned an Italian official who, in turn, took it up with […]

It isn’t shocking that, all else being equal, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would prefer to have American troops out of his country. But all else isn’t equal. After Maliki caused a stir last week by calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops, other members of his government immediately began qualifying the statement. The ambivalence is understandable; it reflects the ambivalence of Iraqis in general. Most are deeply suspicious of American motives and want U.S. troops out of their country. At the same time, in towns across Iraq and neighborhoods around Baghdad, U.S. soldiers and Marines are […]

I almost flagged a story in the Turkish press the other day about Iranian FM Manouchehr Mottaki heading to Ankara for talks with his Turkish counterpart, Ali Babacan, mainly because talking to Turkey seems to be synonymous with backchannel negotiations of late. I held off, because it seemed like a stretch. But as Laura Rozen reports in Mother Jones, the story takes on some added significance when Stephen Hadley turns up in Ankara the day before Mottaki: One wonders, is Turkey hosting some sort of pre pre-negotiations now between the US and Iran? The Turkish press certainly seems to think […]

This is about the sharpest take I’ve seen on the Union for the Mediterranean (UFM), from Nouri, aka The Moor Next Door: The Union for the Mediterranean is not in itself the construction of a new pole; it instead is an attempt to fortify the EU pole, and, inside of that, to strengthen France’s position. It seeks to put France in a headman position, so that it occupies a place of primary leadership within its region that is comparable to Brazil’s within Mercosur, South Africa’s within the SADC, and China’s within the SCO. Concerns over immigration agriculture aside, France seeks […]

So just how big a deal is the Bush administration’s decision to send third-ranking State Dept. diplomat William Burns to Geneva to sit in on EU-Iran talks on Iran’s nuclear program? In two pieces worth reading (one at Mother Jones, one for the Guardian), Laura Rozen talks to some well-informed folks and concludes that the move is a very strong symbolic signal, but unlikely to be decisive unless it’s followed by flexibility in the American position. To begin with, that means getting the actual negotiation phase started. Here’s a WaPo piece Laura linked to: The administration has also supported Solana’s […]

Last night, Iran’s less than satisfying response to the P5+1’s latest offer on the nuclear standoff was leaked to the press by a European source. Today, the Bush administration leaked the news to both the Times and the AP that William J. Burns, the third ranking State Dept. official, will attend this weekend’s meeting between the EU’s Javier Solana and Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili. It’s the highest-level contact between the two countries, but there are a number of caveats: The officials emphasized that Mr. Burns’s participation was a one-time decision, that he would not meet one-on-one with Mr. Jalili […]

INTERNATIONAL BAR REPORT ON SINGAPORE — Singapore has achieved phenomenal economic development but still fails to meet international standards on freedom of assembly and expression, and an independent judiciary, the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute said in a report released July 8. “As one of the world’s most successful economies, Singapore should be a leader in human rights and the rule of law, and should now have the confidence and maturity to recognize that this would be complementary, not contradictory, to its future prosperity,” institute Executive Director Mark Ellis said at its release. Singaporean authorities continue to restrict media […]

Via Nouvel Obs’ Vincent Jauvert (via Reuters, via TPM) comes this .pdf link to a facsimile of Iran’s formal response to the P5+1’s last offer for negotiating a settlement to the nuclear standoff, delivered in Brussels on the 4th of July. (Who said the Iranians had no sense of irony?) Reuters is highlighting the introductory passages which are basically a diatribe against “. . .the duplicitous behavior of certain big powers. . .who interpret and apply human rights laws and rules on the basis of their self-serving interests. . .” Hmmm. I wonder who that might be. . . A […]

To follow up on Petra’s post, the Syria-Iran relationship is based on interests, not values. In many ways, it’s against nature for both regimes. Given a secure border with Israel and lucrative commercial ties with the EU, Syria might feel less of a need for the Iran-Hezbollah insurance policy, or at least, as Petra says, more of a need to try to ratchet down their destabilizing influence. Those are the two angles Sarkozy is working. Is it a long shot? Sure. Is it easy to dismiss his efforts? Like shooting fish in a barrel, which is one reason he’s been […]

“Syria and Lebanon are one country” — that is what a Syrian security officer said when a reporter of the Israeli daily Haaretz wondered why Lebanese journalists were attending a press conference with President Bashar al-Assad in Paris that was supposedly open “only for Syrian journalists.” It is this kind of thinking that made many diplomats and politicians question if French President Nicolas Sarkozy was right to invite his Syrian counterpart to Paris to attend the inauguration of a “Union for the Mediterranean” and to stay on to join the festivities for Bastille Day. But Haaretz analyst Zvi Bar’el seems […]

While Sunday’s launch summit of the Union for the Mediterranean produced little in the way of real results (see Frida Ghitis’ WPR rundown here), it was notable for producing such a large group of political winners in a region so often characterized by zero sum rivalries. That the summit even came off at all is already a symbolic victory for Nicolas Sarkozy, and the image it gave of an active, dynamic French diplomacy is political gold. Getting all the Arab Mediterranean nations (besides Libya) and Israel to the same table reinforces France’s role as a trusted intermediary, as does the […]

Thinking out loud a bit about the news out of Iraq, what’s interesting is how the Iraqi government, by preempting the call for American troop withdrawals, has essentially appropriated what was originally formulated as an American leverage point (conditional disengagement) and used it against us. The political calculation in Baghdad is that we now need Iraq more than Iraq needs us. But what makes it impossible to really assess the significance of the development, besides the fact that it has yet to be put into ink, is that the political calculation will ultimately depend on the domestic security calculation, and […]

American voters are not the only ones who experience U.S. political theater. Nearly every major newspaper in the world covers developments in the 2008 presidential election pitting Republican Sen. John McCain against Democratic Sen. Barack Obama. Perhaps no other story is covered as frequently around the globe. A close second, however, may be the story of Iran, and international efforts to prevent the Iranian regime from developing nuclear weapons. In fact, both of these story lines regularly overlap, as both U.S. presidential candidates pronounce on policy toward Iran. On domestic policy matters, the policy pronouncements of candidates do not themselves […]

It looks like Nicolas Sarkozy will have a full house on Sunday for the launch summit of the Union for the Meditaerranean. After weeks of uncertainty about Turkey’s participation, President Abdullah Gul just announced he’d be arriving in Paris tomorrow. His visit coincides with what Turkish FM Ali Babacan called “positive signals” from the EU regarding the opening of new negotiation chapters for Turkey’s EU accession. Turkey is increasingly tying its participation in the UM — which seems more and more crucial as Turkey’s regional influence (see this and thi on PM Erdogan’s visit to Baghdad) grows — to its […]