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Sunday, March 12, 2017

Iran's strong geopolitical hand

Iran’s Surprisingly Strong Geopolitical Hand

While the short-term outlook still looks uncertain for Iran, the larger fundamentals hugely favor it.

By James M. Dorsey, March 12, 2017

Credit: Robert Hale Shutterstock.com

Takeaways

The Saudi battle with Iran is unequal because Iran brings assets to the table that Saudi Arabia lacks.
It matters to China that Iran has the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves and fourth-largest oil reserves.
Saudi Arabia might make a few friends in Beijing for now, but Iran still holds far more of the good cards.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman hopes to exploit a window of opportunity while in Beijing to loosen China’s affiliations with Iran. But he faces long odds.

The Saudi battle with Iran is fundamentally unequal because Iran brings assets to the table that Saudi Arabia lacks.
Those assets, no matter how degraded, include a large population, an industrial base, resources, a battle-hardened military, a deep-rooted culture, a history of empire and a geography that makes it a crossroads.

1. Walking a Tightrope: China Maneuvers Between Saudi Arabia and Iran
2. Why Iran has the Longterm Regional Upper Hand over the Saudis

Saudi Arabia’s traditional assets – including custodianship of the Muslim holy cities, Mecca and Medina, and money — will in the middle and long term not be able to compete.

Iran as an OBOR pivot point

Iran’s strategic advantage is nowhere more evident than in global competition to shape the future architecture of Eurasia’s energy landscape.
Energy scholar Micha’el Tanchum argues that Iran is pivotal to the success of China’s trans-continental, infrastructure-focused One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative in ways that Saudi Arabia is not.
In a study published in 2015, Mr. Tanchum suggested that it would be gas supplies from Iran and Turkmenistan, two Caspian Sea states, rather than Saudi oil that would determine which way the future Eurasian energy architecture tilts: Will it be in the direction of China, the world’s third-largest LNG importer, or in that of Europe?

Iran will choose its buyers

In that context, it matters greatly to China that Iran has the ability to capitalize on the fact that it boasts the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves and its fourth-largest oil reserves was significantly enhanced with the lifting in 2015 of international sanctions.

Enlarge Source: International Gas Union

According to Mr. Tanchum:

“Iran, within five years, will likely have 24.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas available for annual piped gas exports beyond its current supply commitments.”

“Not enough to supply all major markets, Tehran will face a crucial geopolitical choice for the destination of its piped exports.”

1. European Union (EU)/ Turkey via the Southern Gas Corridor centering on the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP)

2. India via an Iran-Oman-India pipeline, or

3. China via either Turkmenistan or Pakistan.

“The degree to which the system of energy relationships in Eurasia will be more oriented toward the European Union or China will depend on the extent to which each secures Caspian piped gas exports through pipeline infrastructure directed to its respective markets.”

In other words, Mr. Tanchum argued that to determine the balance of power in Eurasian energy and establish One Belt, One Road as the key determinant of Eurasia’s energy architecture, China would need to position itself as the main recipient of Iranian and Turkmen gas.

China as a natural partner

That, in turn, would enhance China’s growing economic influence in Central Asia, and further extend it to the Caucasus and the eastern Mediterranean.
China has already many of the building blocks needed to make that a reality:

close and long-standing relations with Iran

significant investment in Turkmen gas production and pipeline infrastructure

the construction of Pakistan’s section of the Iran-Pakistan pipeline.

Hooking the pipeline to One Belt, One Road would allow China to receive Iranian gas not only by sea on its eastern seaboard, but also in its land-locked, troubled north-western province Xinjiang.
However, Iran’s geo-political strengths are however not wholly dependent on aligning the Islamic republic with China.

Other friends keep the competition lively

With the development of Iran’s Indian-built Chabahar port and the undersea Iran-Oman-India pipeline that would potentially create an alternative Asia-to-Europe energy corridor, Iran is, according to Mr. Tanchum, well-positioned to play both ends against the middle.
In addition, it can adopt a key role in the trans-Atlantic community’s effort to strengthen relations with India as an antidote to the rise of China.

Iran’s surprisingly strong gas leverage

Iran’s geopolitical significance is further enhanced by the fact that competition for Iranian gas is very real and offers leverage.
Contrary to some assumptions, Iranian cooperation with Russia in Syria and elsewhere is opportunistic and unlikely to prove sustainable, rather than a sure thing Russia can count on for preferential economic treatment:
– Iranian-Russian competition is already visible in the Caucasus and Central Asia, which ironically mitigates in Europe’s rather than China’s favor.
– Iran is likely to deepen energy cooperation with Turkey. The intent here is two-fold: First, it is a bid to enhance its influence in that country
Second, it would help curtail Russian inroads in the Islamic republic’s northern neighbors – Azerbaijan; Turkmenistan, which is China’s principle gas supplier as well as Armenia (where Russia’s state-owned Gazprom has invested in an Iran-Armenia gas pipeline).
All of this positions Iran to be a very choosy supplier and negotiator.
In Beijing and beyond, Saudi Arabia might make a few friends for now, but in the longer run, Iran still holds far more of the good cards.
Anyone already aligned with Iran or considering such an alliance will think twice before walking away from the Islamic republic to back the kingdom.

Tags: China, China foreign policy, Iran, Iran foreign policy, latest, OBOR project, Saudi Arabia

About James M. Dorsey

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and an award-winning journalist.

Full bio → | View all posts by James M. Dorsey →

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Uncertainties require a new Mideast security structure

2017 Uncertainties Require a New Mideast Security Structure

by Adnan Tabatabai Published on December 23rd, 2016 | by Adnan Tabatabai

2016 certainly bore no good news for the Middle East. Wars are being waged with greater intensity, and the humanitarian catastrophes in Syria and Yemen are reaching unprecedented levels. Instability remains the key defining character of the region as it moves into the new year. But that is hardly news for the regional stakeholders who have been living with instability for decades now.

What is new, however, is the heightened level of uncertainty that plagues the region. Multiple developments in 2016 have unleashed unpredicted and unpredictable new dynamics.

For observers to make better sense of why the stakeholders in the region are adopting seemingly irreconcilable policies, it is important to acknowledge the level of uncertainty sensed in those capitals.

Key developments with unknown consequences can be seen on the national, regional, and global level as 2016 comes to an end. All bear implications for the Middle East. A quick look at some of the most pressing questions arising from these developments may explain why anxiety in the region is reaching new heights.

Turmoil All Around

We can start by looking at the national contexts of the major players. In doing so it’s clear each one faces extraordinary short- and long-term challenges.

Iran is in the run-up to its presidential election in May, a contest that may lead to a re-adjustment of President Rouhani’s Western-leaning foreign policy. Potentially more important, the issue of ‘succession’ to the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, already is emerging as a key factor in domestic politics. It underlies a multi-dimensional power struggle that is defined not only by the various factions competing for influence, but also along bigger systemic cleavages—i.e., between those who want to stress the republican nature of the Islamic Republic and those who seek to bolster its theocratic basis. While tendencies can be observed, no one can predict how this tug-of-war will play out. Whatever the outcome, however, the repercussions are sure to be felt far and wide.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, finds itself in a state of uncertain transition in virtually every respect—politically, economically, and socially. A young and well-educated youth is challenging the kingdom’s fundamental structures. An overly ambitious deputy crown prince is making every effort to position himself as the successor to the 81-year old King Salman. No one knows how far Mohammad Bin Salman can go. No one knows how implementable his Vision 2030 will be and whether it will embrace or alienate the old elites and the population alike. As Iran’s principal rival, and the de facto leader of the Arab world since the misnamed “Arab Spring” in 2011, what happens in Riyadh will no doubt have an outsized influence on the rest of the region and beyond.

Turkey has been leaving observers dumb-struck throughout the past year, and particularly since the July 15 aborted coup d’etat. There seems to be no limit to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions to create his Turkey, marginalize and criminalize any political or media opposition, and change the constitution in ways that will super-empower his office. It is impossible to profoundly assess where this is leading and what further consequences the process itself will bear. With outright armed conflict with the Kurds ongoing in Turkey’s east and deadly terrorist attacks striking the rest of the country, it is difficult to foresee how much more destabilization the country will face or be able to bear.

At the same time, Egypt is facing severe security threats, with ISIS attacks in Sinai and terrorist assaults elsewhere, including the recent fatal bombing of a Coptic Church in the heart of Cairo. Add to this the worsening socioeconomic plight of its population—with record and rising unemployment and 25% of households living below the poverty line—and the unrelenting crackdown against the country’s strongest political party, the Muslim Brotherhood. Some observers believe another uprising is imminent, while others say there is no such appetite among the people. That said, popular discontent with the repressive al-Sisi government must be regarded as a ticking time-bomb that could blow up the Arab world’s most populous country.

When looking at the Israel-Palestine conflict, meanwhile, 2016 made clear that the two-state solution has moved further away than ever before. While it is debatable whether this conflict is indeed the mother of all tensions in the region, as many officials in the region like to argue, its ongoing impasse certainly does harm beyond the plight of the Palestinian people—especially in Gaza—and the constant state of insecurity in Israel and the West Bank.

If all the above were not enough, the region is also facing key questions about the future of war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen, each of whose conflicts—and the vacuums they have created—ripple far beyond their national borders and invite the intervention of both regional and extra-regional actors. In the absence of a clear vision for containing and reducing the violence of these conflicts, key regional players, from Ankara to Riyadh, and from Tel Aviv to Tehran, will make every effort to minimize potential harm to their own security interests.

Moreover, “security interests” are not confined to territorial integrity. The above-mentioned stakeholders share economic, cultural, political and social ties with each other. If there is one thing regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia undoubtedly have in common, for example, it is that both want stability and intact borders—not only for the sake of their own territorial integrity, but also to maintain and expand their regional ties and influence. And yet, finding a formula to reconcile Iranian and Saudi regional interests seems more challenging now than ever.

President Trump and a Chaotic Europe

And this is when yet another major uncertainty comes in: the Donald Trump factor.

It is impossible at this point to tell whether Trump’s Middle East policy will be driven by his explicit rejection of interventionism or by the far too explicit belief in interventionism for which people like leading Deputy Secretary of State candidate John Bolton are very well known. It is also difficult to predict at this point whether the nomination of Russia-friendly Rex W. Tillerson as Secretary of State is good or bad news for Tehran and/or Riyadh. And how will both countries be affected by Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, for whom Islam is a political ideology and “a cancer?”

Moreover, with the current state of the European Union, amid Brexit and upcoming elections in the Netherlands, France, and Germany, it is even difficult to envisage how Europe, as a coherent political force in the world, will look one year from now. Events in 2016 have shown that anything is possible.

All of the above leave regional stakeholders in the Middle East no choice but to increasingly “nationalize” their security policies. The need for a new regional security architecture is stressed by many, but a tangible roadmap that can lead to it has yet to be charted.

Mistrust is rife. Accusations are sharpening by the day. All sides demand confidence-building measures from the other side. And yet, due to the prevalence of perceptions, as opposed to actual realities on the ground, things that are demanded as confidence-building measures are often things that the other side might actually be unable to deliver. Is Iran, for example, in a position to disarm the Houthis, as Riyadh demands? Are the Saudi and Qatari governments really capable of cutting financial support for jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq, as Tehran expects? Such demands are on the table, but it appears impossible to assess whether either side has the actual control and leverage to deliver.

Needed: More, and Better, Dialogue

At this point, however, it is of utmost importance for regional actors to take a few steps back and talk with each other about how they talk about each other. This is how misperceptions can be deconstructed. Tehran should know how it is perceived in Riyadh and vice versa.

Allegations and accusations must be replaced with insights and knowledge derived from actual dialogue. Additionally, the national security interests of every regional stakeholder must be taken seriously, by regional and extra-regional actors. But there is a need for many more platforms for such dialogue to permit the parties to better understand those security interests in order to begin developing formulas to reconcile them. Such a process may not start at the official level; indeed, Track 2 efforts involving well-connected yet independent analysts and think tankers may be better at preparing the ground for actual diplomacy. This requires, however, that pundits in this field show more discipline in keeping an eye on the bigger picture, instead of diving into the jungle of micro-level discussions.

The horrors of Aleppo, Sanaa, and Mosul certainly need profound attention. But even more so, debates on these complicated multi-layered conflicts demand sober, in-depth analysis about the logic behind the behavior of the various stakeholders (state and non-state) involved. Only then can constructive avenues toward detente be explored and developed.

In times of uncertainty, it is even more important to fully understand the motivations of actors like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or Russia, and spend time making sense of their respective security calculations. Glorifying or demonizing their actions, as some overly dogmatic, partisan or ideological pundits do, will not help in addressing the uncertainties, let alone changing their behavior. And instead of mainly focusing on the current state of play in the region, analysts from the U.S., Europe, and within the region itself should devote more attention to more long-term scenarios that offer mutually acceptable ways out of the ongoing uncertainties and the fears they generate.

In this way, key decision-makers—both in the region and from outside—can be guided towards what the Middle East desperately needs: a functional regional security architecture that all parties are committed to sustaining. That goal should be the North Star that guides the parties through these perilous and uncertain times.

About the Author

Adnan Tabatabai is co-founder and CEO of the Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO). As a Berlin-based political analyst on Iranian affairs, he is consulted by the German Federal Foreign Office, members of the German Bundestag, political foundations as well as journalists and authors. He writes analyses and commentaries on Iran for German and English media outlets. Tabatabai holds an assigned lectureship at the Heinrich Heine University of Duesseldorf and is an associated researcher for the INEF project “Peaceful Change and Violent Conflict—the Transformation of the Middle East and Western-Muslim relations.” He is a PhD candidate at the University Duisburg-Essen.

Monday, March 14, 2016

How the Syrian conflict has changed the world

A look at how the Syrian conflict has changed the world

AP - Mar 14, 2016

BEIRUT – The Syrian conflict has had outsized impact on global politics. Five ways the world has changed:

Rise of the Islamic State

It was in the vacuum of the deteriorating Syrian conflict that a little-known and horrifically violent branch of al-Qaida grew into the foremost terror group on the planet.
In 2014, the Islamic State group completed its takeover of the eastern Syria city of Raqqa and went on to conquer Iraq’s Mosul. It eventually took over an area straddling the countries’ border the size of Britain — absorbing weapons, wealth, and personnel along the way. The expansion went largely unchecked by the Syrian government, busy fighting opponents in its more populated regions closer to the Mediterranean coast.
IS has sparked deep anxieties in the region and around the world by slaughtering minorities, institutionalizing sex slavery, vanquishing state armies, and killing opponents in gruesome spectacles of violence. It destroyed heritage sites, such as temples in the ancient city of Palmyra, and fueled the global antiquities trade.
The group has waged terror attacks from France to Yemen and has established a beachhead in northern Libya that could outlast its so-called “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq. Perhaps most confounding, thousands of young men and women from Europe — not all of Muslim origin — have flocked to join it.

Resurgent Russia

“There is one man on this planet who can end the civil war in Syria by making a phone call, and that’s Mr. Putin,” British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said recently.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has established a renewed Middle East foothold after watching for years as the United States called shots in the region. Last September, after showering arms, advisers, and economic assistance on President Bashar Assad to insufficient effect, Putin sent his air force to pound the Syrian government’s opponents. The recent ebb in violence is largely because Russia dictated it. Russia’s designs for Syria are still veiled, but whoever leads Syria next will largely owe their chair to Putin.
Before Syria, there was Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, precursors to the current intervention, where Putin was unafraid to show the lengths he would go to protect perceived Russian interests. Now, Russia is positioned as a major broker in the region with significant oil and gas wealth. Expect political movements of all stripes to ask how Russia can serve their interests.

Europe destabilized

When Europe fashioned its open border agreements late last century, it did not anticipate over a million migrants — mostly refugees from Syria — in one year alone, as happened in 2015. Thousands have died trying to cross by sea, posing a moral challenge for the continent. The stream, which continues unabated, has brought on both generosity and xenophobia, ultimately shaking the open-border arrangement to the core.
Europeans are now erecting barriers along the migrants’ Balkan route from Greece to Germany, after initially allowing entry to hundreds of thousands. Multitudes fester in squalid conditions in southeastern Europe. Many face legal limbo around the continent, waiting for asylum applications to be processed or residing without permits.
The Islamic State attack on Paris in November, though largely perpetrated by French and Belgian nationals, sparked security recriminations across Europe and boosted nationalist politicians. Echoes could be heard as far away as the United States, where Republican front-runner Donald Trump shocked many by proposing a ban on Muslims entering the country.
Europe is now exploring a deal to send all migrants arriving in Greece back to Turkey, in exchange for admitting pre-selected refugees from Syria. On top of its currency crisis, the mass migration has strained Europe’s unity to the limit.

Neighbors subverted

Europe’s migrant crisis is dwarfed by the wave of displacement that has washed into Syria’s neighbors. Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan alone host around 4.4 million refugees from Syria; in Lebanon, they make up more than one-fifth of the population.
Syrian refugees have brought capital and labor and produced mixed economic outcomes in their host societies, depending on what figures are consulted.
The Syria conflict has also ensnared militias and state actors across the region, destabilizing fragile neighbors like Lebanon and reawakening ethnic tensions in Turkey, where the Syria conflict has provoked concerns of a civil war with the Kurds.

Iran ascendant

The Syria conflict has rebalanced regional axes of power. Predominantly Shiite Iran’s sphere of influence now extends from Beirut to Tehran, with dependent governments in Baghdad and Damascus. The commander of the elite Quds Force of the vaunted Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, has visited Russia and is often seen directing deployments in Syria and Iraq. Iran has militias in both countries said to operate outside sovereign command structures.
In Lebanon, Iran is powerfully represented by Hezbollah, the party-militia hybrid that expelled Israel from the south of the country in 2000. It has sent thousands of fighters to prop up Assad in Syria. Israel glumly watches its nemesis training with modern artillery alongside Russian and Iranian contingents, and fortifying its position along the Jewish state’s northern border. Hezbollah steadily marginalizes Saudi-backed opponents in Lebanon’s government.
Saudi Arabia, the regional Sunni powerhouse, is struggling to maintain support for the mainly Sunni rebels it backs in Syria while also fighting Iran-supported Shiite rebels in Yemen.