By Prem Shankar Jha
NEW DELHI, May 10 2015 (IPS)

President Barack Obama’s Nowroz greeting to the Iranian people earlier this year was the first clear indication to the world that the United States and Iran were very close to agreement on the contents of the nuclear agreement they had been working towards for the previous 16 months.

In contrast to two earlier messages which were barely veiled exhortations to Iranians to stand up to their obscurantist leaders, Obama urged “the peoples and the leaders of Iran” to avail themselves of “the best opportunity in decades to pursue a different relationship between our countries.”

Prem Shankar Jha

This moment, he warned, “may not come again soon (for) there are people in both our countries and beyond, who oppose a diplomatic solution.”

Barely a fortnight later that deal was done. Iran had agreed to a more than two-thirds reduction in the number of centrifuges it would keep, although a question mark still hung over the timing of the lifting of sanctions against it. The agreement came in the teeth of opposition from hardliners in both Iran and the United States.

Looking back at Obama’s unprecedented overtures to Iran, his direct phone call to President Hassan Rouhani – the first of its kind in 30 years – and his letter to Ayatollah Khamenei in November last year, it is clear in retrospect that they were products of  a rare meeting of minds between him and  Rouhani and their foreign ministers John Kerry and Muhammad Jawad Zarif that may have occurred as early as  their first meetings in September 2013.

The opposition to the deal within the United States proved a far harder obstacle for Obama to surmount. The reason is the dogged and increasingly naked opposition of Israel and the immense influence of the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) on U.S. policymakers and public opinion.

Both of these were laid bare came when the Republican party created constitutional history by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address  a joint session of Congress  without informing the White House, listened raptly to his diatribe against Obama, and sent a deliberately insulting letter to Ayatollah Khamenei in a bid to scuttle the talks.

Obama has ploughed on in the teeth of this formidable, highly personalised, attack on him  because he has learnt from the bitter experience of the past four years what Harvard professors John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt had exposed in their path-breaking  book, ‘The Israel lobby and American Foreign Policy’ in 2006.“Quietly, and utterly alone, Obama decided to reverse the drift, return to diplomacy as the first weapon for increasing national security and returning force to where it had belonged in the previous three centuries, as a weapon of last resort”

This was the utter disregard for America’s national interest and security with which Israel had been manipulating American public opinion, the U.S. Congress and successive U.S. administrations, in pursuit of its own security, since the end of the Cold War.

By the end of 2012, two years into the so-called “Arab Spring”, Obama had also discovered how cynically Turkey and the Wahhabi-Sunni sheikhdoms had manipulated the United States into joining a sectarian vendetta against Syria, and created and armed a Jihadi army whose ultimate target was the West itself.

Nine months later, he found out how Israel had abused the trust the United States reposed in it, and come within a hairsbreadth of pushing it into an attack on Syria that was even less justifiable than then U.S. President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.  And then the murderous eruption of the Islamic State (ISIS) showed him that the Jihadis were out of control.

Somewhere along this trail of betrayal and disillusionment, Obama experienced the political equivalent of an epiphany.

Twelve years of a U.S. national security strategy that relied on the pre-emptive use of force had  yielded war without end, a string of strategic defeats, a  mauled and traumatised army, mounting international debt and a collapsing hegemony reflected in the impunity with which the so-called friends of the United States were using it to serve their ends.

Quietly, and utterly alone, Obama decided to reverse the drift, return to diplomacy as the first weapon for increasing national security and returning force to where it had belonged in the previous three centuries, as a weapon of last resort. His meeting and discussions with Rouhani and Iranian foreign minister Zarif gave him the opportunity to begin this epic change of direction.

Obama faced his first moment of truth on Nov. 28, 2012 when a Jabhat al Nusra unit north of Aleppo brought down a Syrian army helicopter with a Russian man-portable surface-to-air missile (SAM).

The White House tried to  pretend that that the missile was from a captured Syrian air base, but by then U.S. intelligence agencies were fed up with its suppression and distortion of their intelligence and  leaked it to the Washington Post that 40 SAM missile batteries with launchers, along with hundreds of tonnes of other heavy weapons had been bought from Libya, paid for by Qatar, and transported to the rebels in Syria  by Turkey through a ‘rat line’ that the CIA had helped it to establish, to funnel arms and mercenaries into Syria.

A day that Obama had been dreading had finally arrived: heavy weapons that the United States and the European Union had expressly proscribed, because they could bring down civilian aircraft anywhere in the world, had finally reached Al Qaeda’s hands

But when Obama promptly banned the Jabhat Al Nusra, he got his second shock. At the next ‘Friends of Syria’ meeting in Marrakesh three weeks later, not only the   ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels that the United States had grouped under a newly-formed Syrian Military Council three months earlier, but all of its Sunni Muslim allies condemned the ban, while Britain and France remained silent.

Obama’s third, and worst, moment of truth came nine months later when a relentless campaign by  his closest ‘allies‘, Turkey and Israel, brought him to the verge of launching an all-out aerial attack  on Syria in September 2013 to punish it for “using gas on rebels and civilians in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus.”

Obama learned that Syria had done no such thing only two days before the attack was to commence, when the British informed him that soil samples collected from the site of the Ghouta attack and analysed at their CBW research laboratories at Porton Down, had shown that the sarin gas used in the attack could not possibly have been prepared by the Syrian army.

This was because the British had the complete list of suppliers from which Syria had received its precursor chemicals and these did not match the chemicals used in the sarin gas found in the Ghouta.

Had he gone through with the attack, it would have made Obama ten times worse than George Bush in history’s eyes.

Hindsight allows us to reconstruct how the conviction that Syria was using chemical weapons was implanted into policy-makers in the United States and the European Union.

On Sep. 17, 2012, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the highly-reputed German magazine Der Speigel, had learned, “quoting several eyewitnesses”, that Syria had tested delivery systems for chemical warheads   at a chemical weapons research centre near Aleppo in August, and that the tests had been overseen by Iranian experts.

Tanks and aircraft, Der Speigel reported, had fired “five or six empty shells capable of delivering poison gas.”

Since neither Der Speigel nor any other Western newspaper had, or still has, resident correspondents in Syria, it could only have obtained this report second or third-hand through a local stringer. This, and the wealth of detail in the report, suggests that the story of a test firing, while not necessarily untrue, was a plant by an intelligence agency. It therefore had to be taken with a large pinch of salt.

One person who not only chose to believe it instantly, but also to act on it was Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Dec. 3, 2012, Haaretz reported that he had sent emissaries to Amman twice, in October and November, to request Jordan’s permission to overfly its territory to bomb Syria’s chemical weapons facilities.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service.

* The second part of this two-part analysis can be accessed here.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration intends to militarily arm Syrian opposition. Credit: FreedomHouse2/CC by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 14 2013 (IPS)

Despite Thursday’s announcement that President Barack Obama has decided to provide direct military assistance to Syrian rebels, what precisely the administration has in mind remains unclear.

Analysts here are also questioning whether the decision is part of a deliberate strategy – and, if so, what that strategy is – or whether it is instead another in a series of efforts to relieve growing pressure from its allies in Europe and the Gulf and hawks at home to take stronger military measures designed to shift the 27-month-old civil war decisively in favour of the opposition.

“When Julius Caesar actually crossed the [Rubicon], he proceeded rapidly to mission accomplishment in accordance with a sound strategy,” noted retired Ambassador Frederic Hof, a Syria specialist at the Atlantic Council who has long called for stronger U.S. military intervention.

“Although the administration’s crossing [decision] is significant, welcome, and long overdue, it is far from certain whether this particular legion will move smartly toward an objective or simply mill around the river bank.”

The White House tied the decision to escalate the “scope and scale” of military aid to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Syrian Military Council (SMC) to the U.S. intelligence community’s determination that the Syrian forces had used chemical weapons – albeit “on a small scale” – against rebel forces in multiple battles over the past year.

It also cited the deepening involvement of Iran and Hezbollah militants from Lebanon in support of the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad, whose departure from office Obama has repeatedly demanded since hostilities first broke out more than two years ago."It is far from certain whether this particular legion will move smartly toward an objective."
-- Frederic Hof

The announcement, however, followed a series of intensive internal meetings over the past two weeks, as it became clear that the regime’s forces had made a series of battlefield advances – most importantly by capturing, with Hezbollah’s help, the strategic western town of Al-Qusayr close to the Lebanese border – that threatened to tip the war decisively in Assad’s favour.

With pro-government forces and Hezbollah fighters reportedly preparing a major assaults on the key city of Aleppo and other “moderate” opposition leaders appealing desperately for weapons, the administration has found itself under pressure from both its allies abroad and hawks here to “do something” that could halt, if not reverse, the regime’s momentum and restore the “strategic stalemate” that Washington considers essential to any prospect for a political settlement.

But what precisely that “something” is or will be remains unclear. In a briefing for reporters Thursday evening, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes repeatedly avoided answering the question, insisting, however, that Washington will increase “the scope and scale” of direct aid to the SMC which so far has received mainly humanitarian and “non-lethal” assistance.

According to various published reports, Obama has indeed decided to provide small arms and ammunition but still pending are decisions on rebel requests for anti-tank weapons and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Washington had previously ruled out the latter, in part due to Israel’s concerns that they could be used against its aircraft, particularly if they fall into the hands of radical Islamist factions among the anti-Assad forces.

But hawks here have argued that small arms and even anti-tank weapons are at this point insufficient to redress the rapidly tilting balance of power on the ground.

“The president must rally an international coalition to take military actions to degrade Assad’s ability to use airpower and ballistic missiles and to move and resupply his forces around the battlefield by air,” declared Congress’s most visible interventionists, Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham late Thursday. “We must take more decisive actions now to turn the tide of the conflict in Syria.”

They and others have called for Washington to create “no-fly zones” along Syria’s Turkish and Jordanian borders that would both safe havens for refugees and rebels and permit the latter to be trained, armed and supplied for operations against government forces inside Syria.

Hof has urged that such a zone also be used protect a rebel government that could gain formal recognition from the United States and other allies, request heavier weapons and eventually go to peace talks as diplomatic, as well as military, equals of the Assad government.

While Rhodes told reporters that Obama has “not made any decision to pursue a military operations such as a no-fly zone”, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that a Pentagon proposal still under consideration calls for a limited “no-fighting” zone extending up to 40 kilometres inside Syria that would be enforced by U.S. and allied aircraft operating from Jordanian airspace.

In recent months, Washington has set up Patriot air-defence batteries and sent fighter jets to bases inside Jordan, where it has also been secretly training rebel and Jordanian forces on securing chemical-weapons facilities and weapons in the event the Assad regime collapses, according to some reports.

Some analysts who have opposed escalating U.S. involvement in the civil war agree that directly supplying arms to the rebels would be unlikely to turn the military tide, certainly in the short term, and could carry additional risks.

“Selective arms shipments could [spur] clashes between rival rebel groups. Extremist elements might attack more moderate rebel units receiving better arms, driven by need, resentment or both,” according to Wayne White, the former deputy director of the State Department intelligence unit on the Near East, who noted that this could actually strengthen the regime. Indeed, he added, the “rebel military vanguard” for some time has been the “radical Islamist in character – even Al-Qaeda affiliated”.

He also expressed scepticism about the effectiveness of a no-fly zone, noting that it would risk swift escalation. “The rebels would remain at the mercy of the regime’s other heavy weapons on the ground, thus tempting those establishing any sort of no-fly zone to attack regime ground targets as well.”

“The first step on the slippery slope is always easy, but it’s much harder to actually resolve a conflict or to find a way out of a quagmire,” wrote Marc Lynch, a Middle East expert at George Washington University, on the eve of the White House announcement.

For Lynch, who has long urged Obama to resist calls to escalate Washington’s intervention, the key issue is what U.S. policy ultimately aims to achieve and whether providing military aid or taking more aggressive measures will help achieve them.

“Should Syria be viewed as a front in a broad regional cold war against Iran and its allies or as a humanitarian catastrophe that must be resolved?” he asked, noting that very different strategies should be followed depending on the answer to that question.

At the moment, according to Lynch, “advocates of arming the rebels switch between making the case that it would strike a blow against the Iranians (and Hezbollah) and that it would improve the prospects for a negotiated solution.”

While the White House clearly framed its decision this week in the latter terms, it may nonetheless add momentum to those who tend to view the Syrian conflict more as part of the larger conflict against Tehran the model for which, according to Lynch, “would presumably be the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan – a long-term insurgency coordinated through neighbouring countries, fuelled by Gulf money, and popularised by Islamist and sectarian propaganda”.

The United States has said it will increase direct support to the Syrian opposition. Credit: Freedom House//CC by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 14 2013 (IPS)

With U.S. intelligence agencies’ concluding that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against rebel forces, the White House announced Thursday that it will increase “the scope and scale” of assistance it has been providing to the opposition, including direct support to its military arm.

In a late afternoon teleconference, President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, repeatedly declined to say whether support will include arms that the western-backed Supreme Military Council (SMC) has requested in light of recent setbacks it has suffered on the battlefield.

“We’ve heard their request, and our aim is to be responsive,” he said. “This is going to be different in both scope and scale in terms of what we have provided to the SMC…and will be aimed at strengthening [its] effectiveness.”

But Rhodes appeared to rule out direct military action, including creating a “no-fly zone” to protect the rebels or carrying out airstrikes against facilities used by the regime’s forces, whose ranks were recently bolstered by Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon.

“We have not made any decision to pursue a military operation such as a no-fly zone,” he said, as it “would carry great and open-ended costs” and would not necessarily ensure a dramatic improvement in the rebels’ situation on the ground."We have not made any decision to pursue a military operation such as a no-fly zone."
-- Ben Rhodes

“We are prepared for all contingencies, and we will make decisions on our own timeline,” he said. “Any future action we take will be consistent with our national interest and must advance our objectives.”

The White House announcement came amidst a growing sense of urgency by the opposition and their U.S. supporters, who are worried that recent battlefield successes by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – notably their capture last week of the border town of Al-Qusayr close to the Lebanese border – has shifted the tide of the war in the regime’s favour.

While the administration initially described the opposition’s setbacks as tactical and unlikely to end a strategic stalemate, U.S. intelligence agencies and some independent analysts have reportedly painted a more pessimistic picture, suggesting that momentum in the nearly two-and-a-half-year-old war has moved decisively towards the regime.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that top SMC commander, General Salim Idris, had sent what it called a “desperate plea” to the United States, Britain and France for anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft weapons and hundreds of thousands of ammunition rounds.

Without such materiel, he warned, rebels may soon lose their hold on Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city located close to the Turkish border.

Syrian army, pro-regime militias, and Hezbollah fighters have reportedly been moving into positions around Aleppo in preparation for a major assault that could deliver a decisive blow against rebel forces in the northeastern part of the country.

The White House has come under growing pressure to escalate its involvement in the conflict from providing rebel forces with humanitarian and “non-lethal” assistance, ranging from medical supplies to night-vision goggles, to providing them with direct military support, whether by military intervention or by providing the kinds of arms requested by Idris.

That pressure has come both from the rebels’ backers in the region – notably, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have provided arms to the SMC and other rebel groups, including radical Sunni Islamist fighters, some reportedly associated with Al Qaeda – and from neo-conservative and other right-wing hawks in the media and Congress, chiefly Republican senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham.

They have been joined over the past weeks by a smattering of liberal interventionists, some of whom supported the 2003 Iraq invasion. But their biggest catch came this week when, at a private gathering with McCain, former president Bill Clinton said he agreed with the Arizona senator, calling Obama’s refusal so far to provide more support to the rebels a “big mistake”.

“Sometimes, it’s best to get caught trying, as long as you don’t over-commit,” Clinton said, echoing the off-the-record position of his wife, Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state reportedly argued last fall in favour of escalating U.S. military support for the rebels during a particularly intense internal administration debate.

As it grew clear in recent days that the opposition, in its weakened state, was adamantly opposed to participating in proposed U.S.- and Russian-backed peace talks in Geneva in the coming weeks, Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, has reportedly taken over from where she left off, urging the administration to take stronger action in order to level the playing field in advance of any negotiations.

Obama, whose concerns about deeper involvement in yet another Middle Eastern war appear to mirror those of the general public, according to recent polls, has until now resisted these pressures. But he also promised last year that he would escalate U.S. intervention if the Assad regime crossed a “red line” by using chemical weapons.

“The president has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has,” Rhodes said Thursday, noting that the U.S. intelligence community had concluded with “high confidence” that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.

Between 100 to 150 people had died in these attacks, he said, noting that the estimate was “likely incomplete…[and] a small portion of the catastrophic loss of life in Syria that now totals more than 90,000 deaths”.

The use of chemical weapons had added to the urgency of the situation, he said, suggesting, however, that the increased involvement of Hezbollah and Iran was also a major factor in the White House announcement.

Precisely what kinds of additional – and presumably lethal – assistance Washington will provide the SMC, however, remains unclear and the source of continued debate within the administration.

Rhodes’s vagueness and his statement that the administration will now consult with Congress and its allies – Obama attends a Group of Eight meeting in Northern Ireland next week – suggested that the issue was far from settled.

In the past, senior officials have said they opposed providing shoulder-held surface-to-air missiles to the rebels for fear they could be transferred to or captured by Al Qaeda-affiliated elements in their ranks.

Rhodes indicated that that those concerns have diminished somewhat as Washington has stepped up its humanitarian and non-lethal military aid to the SMC.

“General Idris and the SMC we are comfortable working with,” he said.  “It’s been important to work through them while aiming to isolate some of the more extremist elements of the opposition, such as al Nusra. We now have those relationships. We now have that pipeline flowing.”