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Here’s what coronavirus-hit Iran might do to wreak havoc in the region

Ron Kampeas — Tue, 31 Mar 2020 04:11:05 +0000

The confluence of hard-hitting sanctions on the country and Iran’s floundering theocracy frustrated an adequate response to the pandemic.

Iranian people wear protective masks to prevent contracting a coronavirus, in Tehran, Iran February 29, 2020 (photo credit: REUTERS)

Iran by its own accounting is the fifth-ranked among nations in coronavirus fatalities. Outside experts say the rate is likely much higher.

The confluence of hard-hitting sanctions on the country and Iran’s floundering theocracy frustrated an adequate response to the pandemic, according to most accounts, but the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, knows who to blame: Genies. And Americans.

Khamenei’s March 22 speech marking Nowruz, the Persian New Year, has spooked regime watchers inside and outside the country. He blamed the pandemic on the demons identified in the Quran as “Jinn,” known as genies in Western lore, and the American intelligence services working in tandem.

“We have jinn and human enemies that help each other,” he said, according to a translation by Maryam Sinaiee, a British-Iranian political analyst writing for Radio Farda, the U.S. government’s Persian language news service. “The intelligence services of many countries work together against us.”

Among these, he said, was the “most evil enemy of the Islamic Republic” — the United States.

It’s an alarming prospect: If Khamenei truly believes that the CIA is working hand in hand with demons to engage in biowarfare against Iran, he may see fit to respond in kind. And any response would likely bring in Israel, the closest American ally in the region.

It’s a manifestation of what Ali Vaez, the Iran Project director for the International Crisis Group, called “crisis therapy.” Iran historically, faced with internal upheaval, creates an external crisis as a distraction.

“The reality is that a regime under siege from all sides and that has no exit ramp might calculate that it has little to lose and a confrontation with the U.S. would be a good distraction,” Vaez told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Blaming other countries is not unique among leaders worldwide: Chinese media and officials also have insinuated that the virus is a means of U.S. warfare. President Donald Trump frequently faults how China and Europe have handled the virus when he is under fire for how he has dealt with COVID-19.

The stakes are higher with Iran, given how besieged the regime is — a number of its leaders have contracted the virus and at least one has died — and the theocracy’s history of acting on the religious dictates of its leaders.

“The Iranians as a result of the combined impact of sanctions and the coronavirus are under tremendous economic duress,” Vaez said. “If they had any cushion that could keep them afloat until the U.S. elections,” when Trump’s potential departure might ease sanctions pressure, “that has evaporated.”

Patrick Clawson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy whose expertise is Iran, said the language was alarming enough that for a number of days, government sites posting the speech omitted the passage about jinn — suggesting that even officials close to the 80-year-old Khamenei felt it was prudent to obscure the comments.

“Senior people in the IRGC,” the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, “were saying ‘this guy is our leader, is the old man losing it?’” Clawson said in an interview.

There was good reason to be spooked, Clawson said. The Nowruz speech is the equivalent of the State of the Union.

“This is the biggest speech of the year, this tells you what Iran is going to do for the next year,” he said.

Here are some takes on how Iran’s coronavirus-induced aggression might manifest, how it might not and what can be done to mitigate it.

Scenario 1: An Iranian response is happening now

Militias in Iraq aligned with Iran have attacked U.S. targets in the country in recent weeks, including a rocket attack that killed two American soldiers. U.S. officials are blaming Iran for the attacks.

“We’ve made clear that the Iraqi Shia militias are funded, trained and equipped by the Iranians,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this month. “We’ve urged the Iranians not to do that.”

An assistant secretary of state, David Schenker, tied the attacks to the coronavirus.

“This is in fact not only an effort to have an impact on domestic politics in Iraq, but also to divert attention from the coronavirus both in Iraq and in Iran, where it’s being dramatically mishandled,” Schenker told reporters at a recent briefing.

Clawson has his doubts. The militias, he said, have minds of their own and are less likely to take orders from Iran since the United States assassinated a top IRGC general, Qassem Soleimani, earlier this year.

“Iranians have after Soleimani’s death lost control of those militias,” Clawson said. The militias “are in the teenage stage, they do what they want.”

The regional chaos that predated the virus also mitigates against immediate action. Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, for instance, is dealing with protests that aim in part to remove the militia from power.

Scenario 2: It happens later

Iran has played a long game historically when it retaliates for perceived aggression.

“I read the speech as implying that Iran should consider retaliating in kind with bioweapons,” Clawson said. “It would be months down the road, not days.”

The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a weapons of mass destruction watchdog, says there have not been definitive assessments recently that Iran has biological weapons, but it likely has the capability. Getting to actual weapons, and selecting an appropriate arena to make it clear that Iran is ready to use them, would take time.

Scenario 3: The U.S. continues to squeeze Iran

The Trump administration has not relented in pressuring Iran with sanctions, imposing new ones this week on 20 companies and officials that it says are implicated in attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq. The aim of what the Trump administration calls a “maximum pressure” policy is to get Iran to stand down from its adventurism, although it has yet to show substantial results.

Now is not the time to relieve those sanctions, according to hawkish critics of the regime, who note that Iran has rejected humanitarian assistance that is allowed under the sanctions. Iran has even expelled a mission by Doctors Without Borders, a group that was positioned to alleviate the impact of the virus, baselessly accusing the group of espionage.

“The Iranian government had the power to curtail the virus, but instead they ignored the situation, lied to their people and exacerbated the situation to weaken the resolve of the international community to robustly implement sanctions,” David Ibsen, the president of United Against a Nuclear Iran, wrote in EuroNews. “Sanctions are not the villain in this regretful story.”

Scenario 4: The pandemic eases relations

Vaez and his Crisis Group colleague, Robert Malley, wrote recently in Foreign Policy that the coronavirus crisis could create an opportunity to deflate tensions between the United States and Iran.

“Both Washington and Tehran have floated ideas” related to the pandemic “that, if acted upon, could break the current vicious cycle,” they wrote.

They cite Washington’s demand that Iran release foreign prisoners susceptible to the spread of the virus, and Iran’s bid for an International Monetary Fund loan to buy equipment to tackle the virus.

Were Iran to release the prisoners, and the United States to refrain from blocking the IMF loan, that could set in motion a dynamic that could lead to more expansive backdowns affecting sanctions and Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program, Vaez and Malley say.

Vaez in the JTA interview said he was not optimistic the sides would take that path.

“The reality is that this crisis is also a diplomatic opportunity, but all the indicators are now in the opposite direction,” he said. ”It seems Iran and the United States are on a collision course rather than using this crisis as an opportunity to reduce tensions.”

Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, said Iran’s trajectory has been for decades to accelerate and expand its malign activity outside its borders, and that a crisis was only exacerbating those tendencies.

“They’re becoming more desperate to try to strengthen and stabilize a regime that is in the throes of dissolution that looks to be entering a period of significant risk to its survival,” he said in an interview.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Heres-what-coronavirus-hit-Iran-might-do-to-create-havoc-in-the-region-623004

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Trump officials privately bracing for North Korea’s next move

Kylie Atwood and Zachary Cohen, CNN — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 03:35:42 +0000

Washington (CNN)The Trump administration is privately discussing how to respond should North Korea decide to conduct a satellite launch as talks between Washington and Pyongyang appear to be at another impasse, CNN has learned.

Rhetoric between the two countries has become more heated and provocative in recent weeks following President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un’s no-deal summit in Hanoi but a North Korean satellite launch would pose a new, high-stakes dilemma for the administration.

Such a launch by the North Koreans would force Trump to make a touch choice: Take a hard line against Pyongyang knowing it could jeopardize already fragile negotiations or implement a more nuanced approach in hopes of preserving the possibility of a diplomatic resolution.

US officials have said that the administration is constantly monitoring activity at various sites via satellites, radars and electronic intelligence.

Administration officials say there is no intelligence at this time that indicates exactly what move the North Koreans might make next but they do acknowledge that a satellite launch could be on the horizon which is why they are having these internal conversations about how the US might react.

Those warnings have taken on added urgency as satellite images picked up activity at the Sohae satellite launch facility around the time of the summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, officials said.

A tepid response to a potential North Korean satellite launch — which is being advocated by officials in the administration — is sure to draw criticisms of double standards given Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s harsh rhetoric aimed at Iran over similar activities earlier this year.

However, some officials believe that may be a risk worth taking as a harsh response could derail the diplomatic process.

A US official told CNN that the North Koreans also know how provocative any launch would be and the impact it would have on negotiations, noting that the intelligence community believes Pyongyang sees continued diplomacy with the Washington as in their best interest.

Recently observed activity at several launch sites coupled with North Korea’s rhetoric following the summit could be part of a coordinated posturing effort to gain leverage in talks with the US, the official added.

But those developments have prompted an internal debate among US officials over whether the administration should hold North Korea to the same standard as other countries when it comes to satellite launches, like Iran, or issue a more muted response.

A satellite launch could be cast by the US as less incendiary than a missile or nuclear test, because it is not a direct link to North Korea’s nuclear program.

But it is not unrelated — experts have long maintained that North Korea’s attempts to shoot satellites into space could help them develop viable long-range ballistic missiles.

Pompeo issued a stark warning to Iran over its own space launch attempts earlier this year, calling out Tehran for its “flagrant” actions that he claimed were in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

“The Iranian regime fired off a space launch vehicle today,” Pompeo said in January. “Such vehicles incorporate technologies that are virtually identical and interchangeable with those used in ballistic missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles.”

Satellite launch vs. missile test

Even with ramped down language, Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton have made it clear that a nuclear or missile test could be suicidal for US-North Korean diplomacy.

But the administration has not said what the US will do if Pyongyang launches a satellite.

“Well, the President himself said he would be very, very disappointed — his phrase — if North Korea were to resume missile testing or nuclear testing,” Bolton said on Fox Business Tuesday.

“This was a commitment that Kim Jong Un has made several times to him now. So, if in fact they decided to start testing again, it would have a real impact on the President,” he said.

North Korea’s missile program made strides in 2017, with Pyongyang saying it successfully test-fired three intercontinental ballistic missiles. Experts say the Hwasong-15, which was launched in late November, could likely hit much of the United States.

And while it has been more than three years since North Korea launched a satellite into orbit, experts have said the technologies are extremely similar.

As he left Hanoi, Pompeo said the ball was in North Korea’s court when it comes to continuing diplomatic talks. On Monday, Pompeo reiterated that the US sticking to that claim.

“There’s deep distrust. There’s distrust between both parties. We need to see Chairman Kim actually deliver,” he said Monday in response to a question about sanctions evasion.

Pompeo noted that Kim “is a leader who has made a promise” on denuclearization. He has also responded similarly to questions regarding Kim’s threat to possibly resume testing, emphasizing that Kim promised he would not do so during the Hanoi summit.

Trump, who has said the US will be happy as long as the “testing” moratorium stands, has steered clear of specifics on how he feels about a satellite launch specifically.

“I’m not in a rush. I don’t want to rush anybody,” Trump said, ahead of the Hanoi summit. “I just don’t want testing. As long as there’s no testing, we’re happy.”

But a US intelligence official told CNN that the analytical line on North Korea has not changed after the summit.

The US intelligence community still believes that North Korea maintains its nuclear weapons capability, is unlikely to dismantle its nuclear or missile programs and could very easily go back into testing despite its months-long moratorium, the official said.

A risk worth taking?

Without being told what the repercussions of a satellite launch would be mean, the North Koreans see an open door, explains David Maxwell of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. They are likely in the midst of measuring how such a test could benefit them.

“It gives them options,” Maxwell said, of the fact that Pompeo and Bolton haven’t bluntly warned against launching a satellite. “North Korea would interpret that as, OK we can do a satellite launch. But it would also depend on the conditions inside or North Korea. If Kim Jong Un feels he has to prove himself to the military and give off the appearance he is strong, it may help him. Because by Trump walking out, Kim appeared weak.”

Those who know the regime well, expect that North Korea will do something to puff its chest, given that Kim walked away from Hanoi without any tangible win.

Gen. Vincent Brooks, a recently retired US Army general who commanded United States Forces Korea, explained that North Korea will likely make a “face saving move” because Kim “didn’t come back with what he wanted” from Hanoi. Brooks, speaking at Stanford University, predicted Kim will attempt to “equalize” the situation.

Last minute decision

Gaming out a response to a potential North Korean satellite launch has been further complicated by the fact that experts say the US will not be able to assess the payload of a rocket until the last minute.

“We may not know until it’s on the stand,” according to Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at MIT, focusing on nuclear proliferation and strategy, who told CNN that it entirely depends on the type of engine and the payload it is carrying.

A US intelligence official also told CNN that any assessment related to Pyongyang’s intentions would largely depend on the payload of any potential launch.

The stakes of that potential decision are only heightened by the already delicate nature of diplomatic talks between Washington and Pyongyang.

Pompeo has made it clear that he is done chasing North Korea, given the disproportionate amount of outreach that came from the Trump administration to the Kim regime in the last year.

And while both the White House and the State Department claim that conversations are continuing, Special Representative Steve Biegun does not have another round of talks on the calendar with his North Korean counterpart.

For now, the administration appears to be taking a wait-and-see approach when it comes to North Korea, but how the US responds to a potential escalation could prove to be pivotal in determining whether a diplomatic resolution is possible.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/19/politics/trump-north-korea-satellite-launch/index.html

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US terminates pact with Iran after UN court ruling on sanctions

Kim Hjelmgaard and Deirdre Shesgreen, USA TODAY — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 08:25:48 +0000

The United States and Iran have been lobbing threats, fighting proxy wars, and imposing sanctions for decades. USA Today looks at over 60 years of this back-and-forth. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY.

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Wednesday that the United States is canceling a relatively obscure but decades-old economic treaty with Iran after a sanctions-related ruling by the United Nations’ highest court.

Before the second phase of Washington’s reimposition of sanctions on Iran next month over its nuclear program, the U.N. International Court of Justice (ICJ), based in the Hague, Netherlands, ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to lift any punitive measures that affect Tehran’s imports of humanitarian goods and products and services linked to civil aviation safety. The ruling was provisional.

Iran challenged the U.S. sanctions in a case filed in July on the grounds that they violate the 1955 Treaty of Amity, an agreement covering economic relations and some reciprocal consular rights.

“This is a decision that is, frankly, 39 years overdue,” Pompeo said in a news briefing in Washington. He said Iran tried to interfere with the “sovereign rights of the United States” by going to the ICJ. “Iran is abusing the ICJ for political and propaganda causes,” he said. He said Iran’s claims to the court are “absurd.”

Washington has long insisted that its sanctions do not target humanitarian goods or services, but the sanctions it imposed on Iran after Trump pulled out of a nuclear deal with Tehran and world powers in May restrict Iran’s ability to use the international banking system – that, in turn, has affected its imports of essential medicines and consumer goods. It has also pressured international companies operating in the Middle Eastern country. Many have wound down their operations in recent months.

In its judgment, the court said Washington must “remove, by means of its choosing, any impediments arising from” the reimposition of sanctions that affect exports to Iran of medicine and medical devices; food and agricultural commodities; and spare parts and equipment necessary to ensure the safety of civil aviation.

Iran has an aging civilian aircraft fleet for which it’s unable to acquire spare parts, and it has seen numerous airplane crashes in recent years.

Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based research institute, said the “U.S. sanctions already have a humanitarian exemption for food, medicine and agriculture commodities – an exemption the mullahs (Iran’s religious leaders) often use to make money on the black market while denying the Iranian people access to humanitarian goods.”

Goldberg was a senior Senate aide who helped develop the Iran sanctions returning. He strongly favored pulling out of the nuclear deal.

“As for civil aviation, perhaps the court should be better educated on how Iran misuses its civil air fleet to ship arms to terrorist organizations,” he said.

Pompeo said the United States “will continue to make sure we are providing humanitarian assistance” to the Iranian people.

“Outlaw regime,” Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter, reacting to the U.S. decision to leave the treaty.

The next installment of U.S.-sponsored sanctions on Iran is due Nov. 4. It will target Iran’s lucrative oil industry. Sanctions reinstated in August clamped down on Iran’s access to U.S. dollars, its car industry and trading in some commodities.

Neither Wednesday’s ruling nor the termination of the treaty is likely to have significant impact on the Trump administration’s implementation of the sanctions. The International Court of Justice’s rulings are legally binding, but the court has no power to enforce them.

Still, Farshad Kashani, an international law expert, wrote in an analysis in 2016 of the now-terminated treaty that it has been “vital to defusing flashpoints between the two otherwise hostile nations. … It is a great benefit that there is an agreed mechanism in place to help resolve disputes when diplomacy proves futile.”

Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, called the U.S. decision rash and ill-considered.

“Rather than take the humanitarian concerns of the international community with U.S. sanctions on Iran seriously, the U.S. impetuously withdrew from a treaty aimed at solidifying friendly relations between the American and Iranian peoples,” Abdi said.

Pompeo escalated his criticism of Iran’s role in Iraq.

He said Iran was to blame for a mortar attack near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and a rocket attack on the U.S. Consulate in Basra. The State Department announced last week it would close the Basra facility.

“Iran is the origin of the current threat to Americans in Iraq,” Pompeo said Wednesday. “Our intelligence in this regard is solid.”

Pompeo said the United States would hold Iran “directly responsible for any harm to Americans or our diplomatic facilities, whether perpetrated by Iranian forces or by associated proxies.”

Iraqi officials urged the United States on Wednesday to reconsider its decision to close the Basra consulate, and they cast doubt on Pompeo’s assertions of Iran’s influence in that region.

Pompeo argued that the attacks in Iraq were linked to the Trump administration’s reimposition of sanctions and America’s efforts to isolate Iran after the U.S. withdrawal from the multilateral 2015 nuclear agreement.

“Clearly, they see our comprehensive pressure campaign as serious and succeeding,” he said.

More: Trump’s hard line against Iran may leave U.S. more isolated, experts say

More: Iran’s Persian carpet industry fears having the rug pulled from under it by U.S. sanctions

More: USA TODAY journalist gets rare access to report from inside Iran

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/10/03/uns-top-court-says-u-s-s-iran-sanctions-must-not-stop-humanitarian-aid/1507672002/

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Trump Freezes Funds for Syrian Recovery, Signaling Pullback

Felicia Schwartz — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 06:36:31 +0000

Order to State Department to hold off on spending jibes with president’s call for an early exit.

Syrian children and youths watching a U.S. armored-vehicle convoy pass last year on a road to Raqqa, Syria. PHOTO: HUSSEIN MALLA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump froze more than $200 million in funds for recovery efforts in Syria as his administration reassesses Washington’s broader role in the protracted conflict there.

The White House ordered the State Department to put the spending on hold, U.S. officials said, a decision in line with Mr. Trump’s declaration on Thursday that America would exit Syria and “let the other people take care of it now.”

Mr. Trump called for the freeze after reading a news report noting that the U.S. had recently committed an additional $200 million to support early recovery efforts in Syria, said the officials. Departing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pledged the money in Februaryin Kuwait at a meeting of the coalition to defeat Islamic State.

The shift comes as the fight against the extremist group has stalled, U.S. military officials concede. Pentagon officials have told Mr. Trump Islamic State has lost control of all but about 5% of the Syrian territory it once held, but fighting for that final swath has reached an impasse.

An accelerated exit of the U.S. from Syria would also raise concerns about ceding the hotly contested country to Iran and Russia. That would unnerve Israel and Saudi Arabia, key U.S. allies that both agitate for a tougher U.S. approach to Tehran.

Israel has warned its regional adversaries that it won’t allow Iran to cement its hold in Syria, and its military has repeatedly bombed Syria to make that point clear. Last month, Israel shot down an Iranian drone that entered Israel, stoking tensions and raising new fears of a regional war.

It isn’t clear how Mr. Trump’s eagerness to end the U.S. effort in Syria comports with his recent overhaul of his national security team. He has nominated Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo to replace Mr. Tillerson at the State Department, and John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, is set to succeed Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as national security adviser.

Messrs. Pompeo and Bolton back more confrontational strategies against Russia and against Iran, which provides Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with fighters, weapons and advisers critical to his survival.

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Kurdish and some Arab fighters from the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have abandoned fighting Islamic State in the middle Euphrates River valley and moved north toward the Syrian cities of Afrin and Manbij to fend off Turkish military advances along the border.

In the past month, U.S.-led airstrikes in support of local forces on the ground have dropped significantly. The U.S.-led coalition said it has conducted just seven strikes in Syria in the past week. Islamic State hasn’t lost any significant territory in months, U.S. military officials have said.

U.S. officials warned Friday that Islamic State is already taking advantage of the battlefield pause to regroup, raising the prospect of its reemergence as a serious threat to the U.S. and its allies.

“If we leave sooner rather than later, then there is a good chance that this could be all for naught and they could come back,” said one U.S. official.

In January Mr. Tillerson laid out a comprehensive Syria strategy in which the U.S. would stay in the country for the foreseeable future to prevent an Islamic State resurgence and contain Iran’s regional influence.

Mr. Trump now appears to be questioning that approach. The president has been increasingly frustrated with Washington’s footprint in Syria and has said he would like to see regional allies like Saudi Arabia shoulder more of the burden. His administration has asked Gulf Arab states to contribute billions of dollars to recovery efforts in Syria, including $4 billion from Riyadh.

The State Department last year spent $200 million on stabilization work in Syria, including removing unexploded weapons and restoring water, power and electricity in the past year, and an additional $225 million in funds were designated for such activities this year. The freezing of some or all of those funds, plus the additional spending pledged in February, could cause existing programs to halt, U.S. officials said.

“We continually re-evaluate appropriate assistance levels and how best they might be utilized, which we do on an ongoing basis,” a State Department official said.

As part of the stabilization, a handful of U.S. civilian experts have been deployed to Syria to help restore water and electricity, repair medical facilities, schools and basic infrastructure with a goal of encouraging displaced Syrians to return home, working with partner organizations on the ground.

Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, more than 400,000 Syrians have been killed and millions displaced.

The military, which has about 2,000 service members operating in Syria, has been strongly supportive of the State Department’s efforts to restore basic services in the country as the conflict wraps up.

Stabilizing areas formerly controlled by Islamic State “is also about removing the conditions that lead to things like insurgency, that lead to instability,” said Army Gen. Joseph Votel, commander for U.S. Central Command during a January visit to Raqqa with U.S. Agency for International Development director Mark Green. “So, from a military standpoint we’re very keen to make sure that the follow-through in our operations is completed as effectively as the military operation.”

Some current and former diplomats and military officials said they worry that abandoning the stabilization efforts could lead to a resurgence of Islamic State in Syria, particularly as the extremist group still holds parts of the Middle Euphrates River Valley.

“One of the major implications of terminating this process would be opening up the area to the Assad regime and to Iranian-led Shiite militias, and of course this will instantly set the stage for the return of extremism and terrorism,” said Frederic Hof, who was the special adviser for the transition in Syria during the Obama administration.

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank with close ties to the Trump administration, said Mr. Trump risks repeating the mistakes former President Barack Obama made by pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq, if he withdraws U.S. forces from Syria too soon. The vacuum could allow Islamic State to regain power, Iran to expand its influence, and Russia to play the dominant role in shaping the direction of the war.

“Trump cannot have a serious Iran strategy if he allows Tehran to win in Syria,” he said. “This is Obama 2.0.”

—Nancy A. Youssef and Dion Nissenbaum contributed to this article.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-freezes-funds-for-syrian-recovery-signaling-pullback-1522449642

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Iran, Deeply Embedded in Syria, Expands ‘Axis of Resistance’

Ben Hubbard, Isabel Kershner and Anne Barnard — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 20:03:27 +0000

Kiswah base, above: Tiyas air base Compound near Damascus Airport, above Al Shayrat airfield

BEIRUT, Lebanon — When an Iranian drone flew into Israeli airspace this month, it set off a rapid series of strikes and counterstrikes that deepened fears over whether a new, catastrophic war was brewing in the Middle East.

That flare-up ended quickly, if violently, with the drone destroyed and an Israeli jet downed after bombing sites in Syria. But the day of fighting drew new attention to how deeply Iran has embedded itself in Syria, redrawing the strategic map of the region.

Tactical advisers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps are deployed at military bases across Syria. Its commanders regularly show up at the front lines to lead battles. Iran has built and continues to back powerful militias with thousands of fighters it has trained in Syria. And it has brought in new technologies, like drones, to spy on enemies and perhaps to attack them from the sky.

Both Israeli officials and Israel’s enemies say that any new conflict between Israel and Iran, or any of its allies, could mobilize Iran’s expanding network of militant proxies in multiple countries, what Iran refers to as “the axis of resistance.”

“If there is a war, it will be regional,” said Kamel Wazne, the founder of the Center for American Strategic Studies, in Beirut, who studies the policies of the United States and Iran in the Middle East. “Any confrontation will be with the whole resistance front against Israel and its backers.”

TURKEY – Squares indicate long term positions held by Iranian forces or their allies.

Iran and its allies first intervened in Syria to defend the rule of President Bashar al-Assad against Syrian rebels after the civil war broke out in 2011, and later helped his forces against the jihadists of the Islamic State.

But as the rebels have lost ground and no clear threats to Mr. Assad’s rule remain, Iran and its allies have stayed, shifting their focus to creating an infrastructure to threaten Israel, analysts say. Iran continues to train and equip fighters while strengthening ties with allies in Iraq and Lebanon, in hopes of building a united front in the event of a new war.

“The ultimate goal is, in the case of another war, to make Syria a new front between Israel, Hezbollah and Iran,” said Amir Toumaj, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who studies Iran. “They are making that not just a goal, but a reality.”

Iranian leaders speak openly of their work to build this axis of resistance against Israeli and American influence. A key to Iran’s strategy, analysts and officials say, is to rely not on conventional military hardware or control of territory, which Israel can easily bomb, but on building ties with local forces who share its goals and benefit from its financing and expertise.

That approach has enabled Iran to amplify its power in the Arab world while decreasing the threat to its own forces and homeland. It has also created a problem for countries including the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia, who fear Iran’s growing influence but have struggled to come up with ways to stop it.

Some people in Israel have started referring to a potential “First Northern War,” meaning that Israel will have to fight across both the Lebanese and Syrian frontiers. And many Israelis say the danger is not just from the new Iranian-backed militias, but also from the Iranian efforts to give advanced, high-precision weapons capable of hitting sensitive infrastructure to Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful and experienced external force.

Pieces of an Israeli F-16 that crashed in northern Israel on Feb. 10 after coming under antiaircraft fire.Abir Sultan/European Pressphoto Agency

Israeli officials have said that Iran and its allies are seeking to establish a land corridor from Iran to the Mediterranean, via Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, to ease the transportation of such weapons and to build underground factories to manufacture them in Lebanon and Syria. Israel has been bombing convoys in Syria that are believed to be carrying advanced arms to Hezbollah, but the group’s covert nature makes it hard to determine which arms have slipped through and whether its arms factories are functioning.

Such arms, coupled with heavy barrages from the more than 100,000 rockets and missiles without high-precision targeting capability that Israel says Hezbollah already has, could overwhelm Israel’s defenses.

“Israel will face not only quantity, but the threat to vulnerable strategic sites,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser and now a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies. Referring to the combination of more precise weapons and a new front, he added: “Each one is problematic; together, they are devastating.”

Iran’s moves in the region have alarmed the United States. “What’s particularly concerning is that this network of proxies is becoming more and more capable as Iran seeds more and more” of its “destructive weapons into these networks,” Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s national security adviser, said at a security conference in Munich on Saturday. “So the time is now, we think, to act against Iran,” General McMaster added.

In expanding its influence in Syria in recent years, Iran has followed a standard template. In Lebanon in the 1980s, it helped create Hezbollah, which has since evolved into the country’s predominant military force and a regional power in its own right, joining the wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. In Iraq, Iran has sponsored a range of militias while developing deep ties to the Iraqi economy and political system.

The war in Syria gave Iran a new opportunity to advance that project by linking its allies across the Levant together.

Fighters from Hezbollah routed Syrian rebels near the Lebanese border and Iran sent advisers to help Mr. Assad’s beleaguered forces during the early years of the war.

But by 2013, Mr. Assad’s forces were on the verge of collapse, and Iran intervened more forcefully, undertaking an extensive regional operation to train, arm and transport thousands of Shiite militiamen from abroad to Syria to fight the rebels and the jihadists of the Islamic State.

Estimates of the number of Iranian military personnel in Syria today range from the high hundreds to the low thousands. While some directly participate in combat, most are trainers, commanders or experts who advise the Syrian military and oversee militias. It is these militias, which could have as many as 20,000 fighters, that give Iran its true muscle.

Those fighters include about 6,000 from Hezbollah. Most of the rest of the militia members — who come from Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and elsewhere — have been enticed to fight in Syria with money and appeals to their Shiite faith. Indeed, most see the war in Syria in religious terms, as a jihad against enemies of their religion.

Ali Alfoneh, a researcher at the Atlantic Council who tracks reports of foreign militia fighters killed in Syria, said the number of deaths reported had decreased substantially as those fighting for Mr. Assad have gotten the upper hand in the war. But instead of leaving the country, he said, the militias appeared to be shifting their sights toward Israel.

Israeli soldiers near the village of Keshet in Golan Heights, in 2015. Uriel Sinai for The New York Times

“Iran has realized that it is actually possible to maintain a front against Israel where there is no war but also no peace,” Mr. Alfoneh said.

In his research, Mr. Alfoneh said he had identified three main Iranian bases that oversee operations in large parts of Syria — one near Aleppo in the north and two south of the capital, Damascus — as well as seven smaller tactical bases near active front lines where Iran and its proxies have a presence.

The idea of a permanent Iranian presence in Syria worries Israel, which fears that it could face a threat there similar to that posed by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Analysts close to Iran and its proxies say that is exactly the idea.

“It’s like a replication of the Hezbollah model,” said Ali Rizk, a Lebanese analyst who writes for Al Monitor, a news website focused on the Middle East. Iran is already training fighters in southern Syria, he said, so that if Hezbollah draws down its presence there, as its leaders have vowed to, it will leave behind a Syrian prototype.

In recent months, at least two Iraqi militia leaders have visited the Lebanon-Israel border with Hezbollah, and militia members say the visits have included developing plans for how they might collaborate in a future conflict.

Life has returned to normal in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights since the day of battle on Feb. 10, and the ski resort on Mount Hermon has been operating as usual. There was no immediate sense among Israelis of being on a war footing.

But Israelis and many Lebanese have long worried that another war across their border is inevitable. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ratcheted up the rhetoric on Sunday at the security conference in Munich, warning Iran’s leaders not to test Israel’s resolve and pledging that if pushed, Israel would act “not only against Iranian proxies that are attacking us, but against Iran itself.”

Both sides say they do not want war, and the fear of extensive destruction and civilian deaths has deterred new hostilities since the last war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. But the more entrenched Iran’s allies become, the greater the pressure Israeli leaders could face to launch a strike — and the greater the chances that a miscalculation or mistake by either side could provoke new hostilities.

Some analysts have expressed hopes that Russia, which also intervened in Syria on Mr. Assad’s behalf, could serve as a check on Iran’s ambitions. Russia has cooperated with Iran during the war but also seeks to maintain good relations with Israel.

Notably, Russia has not publicly complained when Israel has bombed convoys believed to be bound for Hezbollah. Others question to what degree the Syrian population will buy into Iran’s ideological project, noting that only a tiny portion of Syrians share Iran’s Shiite faith.

Much remains unclear about Iran’s intentions. Days after Israel destroyed the drone, Israeli military officials said they were still not sure whether it had been armed, had been sent on a surveillance mission or was merely a test of Israel’s defenses.

“It is very important for us to understand its mission,” Brig. Gen. Tomer Bar, the chief of staff of the Israeli Air Force, told reporters. “We have to understand it and we will investigate it till the end.”

The post Iran, Deeply Embedded in Syria, Expands ‘Axis of Resistance’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

CIA chief: North Korea ‘on cusp’ of nuclear capability

BBC — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 11:39:03 +0000

Image: Reuters

North Korea has ramped up its missile testing in recent months.

CIA director Mike Pompeo has warned that North Korea is on the cusp of being able to hit the US with a nuclear missile.

He stressed Washington still preferred diplomacy and sanctions but said military force remained an option.

North Korea claims it already has the capability to strike the US.

Mr Pompeo also said that a US-Canadian hostage couple freed last week had in fact been held in Pakistan, rather than Afghanistan as initially assumed.

He said Canadian Joshua Boyle and his US wife Caitlan Coleman had been “held for five years inside of Pakistan”.

This contradicted accounts from Pakistani officials, who said the family had been held in Afghanistan, and moved across the border into the Kurram tribal district of Pakistan on 11 October.

Pyongyang’s ‘final step’
North Korea is “close enough now in their capabilities that from a US policy perspective we ought to behave as if we are on the cusp of them achieving that objective,” Mr Pompeo said at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative Washington think tank, on Thursday.

“They are so far along in that, it’s now a matter of thinking about how do you stop the final step.”

GETTY IMAGES

Mr Pompeo said military force had to remain an option.

He warned Pyongyang’s missile expertise was now advancing so quickly that it was hard for US intelligence to be sure when it would succeed.

“When you’re now talking about months our capacity to understand that at a detailed level is in some sense irrelevant,” he said.

Last weekend, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had also insisted President Donald Trump wanted to resolve the confrontation with North Korea through diplomacy.

His statement had come after Mr Trump had publicly told him not to waste time seeking talks with Kim Jong-un.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41690253

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The post CIA chief: North Korea ‘on cusp’ of nuclear capability first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

If the U.S. Reimposes Sanctions on Iran, Allies Will Follow

Richard Goldberg — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 06:12:15 +0000

“We will not be able to coerce Europe, Russia, and China into shunning Iran’s economy over policy interests that they do not share.” — Adam Szubin, former director of the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control

“The United States would have to threaten all customers who buy Iranian crude. The response would be global outrage and resistance, especially from our allies.” — Matthew Reed, vice president at Foreign Reports

In November 2011, Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk — with help from then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — took the Obama White House by surprise, filing an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that imposed crippling sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran. Days later, Kirk and New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez forged a bipartisan compromise and a vote was scheduled.

The Obama administration was livid. In a closed-door meeting, then-Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, and Deputy Secretary of Treasury Neal Wolin begged and pleaded with the Senators to withdraw their amendment. The United States would not be able to force its allies to go along with the plan, they said — the sanctions regime would fall apart, there would be global outrage and resistance, and gas prices will skyrocket.

Their pleas fell on deaf ears, as did a last-ditch letter of opposition from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, which argued that the amendment threatened to “undermine the effective, carefully phased, and sustainable approach we have taken to build strong international pressure against Iran.” After a historic, 100-to-zero Senate vote, the Menendez-Kirk sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran changed the course of history.

Every European and Asian ally that had come to Capitol Hill to lobby against the amendment fully complied with it after it came into force. The measure was such a success that President Barack Obama claimed credit for it in his 2012 reelection campaign.

This wasn’t the first time that economic consultants, U.S. businesses, and both European and Asian allies opposed a unilateral congressional sanctions measure — and it wasn’t the last either. But every time, history proved them wrong.

Within days of the president signing the Central Bank sanctions into law, I was already hard at work on something new — figuring out how to force Europe to cut Iran off from the global financial network called SWIFT. Working with Mark Dubowitz at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, we recognized that U.S. leverage over the Belgium-based organization resided in its cooperative governance structure — that is, the people who run SWIFT are all global financial institutions that do business in U.S. dollars.

When I asked SWIFT’s lawyers if they would voluntarily cut off Iran from their network, they arrogantly refused. When the White House found out that I was drafting an amendment for an upcoming Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs markup, Szubin put on a full-court press to stop it. But once again, thanks to some bipartisan negotiating, the amendment was adopted by the committee and within hours SWIFT was working with the European Union to find a way to comply.

This story played out again and again — after passage of the Iran Threat Reduction Act, and of the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act, which blacklisted whole sectors of Iran’s economy and cut off the flow of precious metals to the regime.

Today, we are seeing the same old opponents of tough sanctions on Iran come out of the woodwork to warn President Donald Trump against threatening to reimpose a global financial embargo on Iran. Despite Iran’s refusal to allow inspections at military sites, continued testing of advanced ballistic missiles, expansion of its terrorist proxy armies into Syria and Lebanon, and holding of American hostages, former Obama administration officials argue that the United States has no choice but to keep its most powerful sanctions options in a lockbox for fear of European and Asian noncompliance.

Their arguments ring as hollow today as they did in the past. European and Asian businesses will oppose the reimposition of sanctions on Iran right up until the point they are reimposed. And then their lawyers will force them to comply — choosing continued access to the $19 trillion American financial system over Iran’s $400 billion.

The left has all but conceded that Iran is not complying with the letter and spirit of the nuclear agreement. Many have finally conceded that the agreement was a bad deal for America. But the one argument they’re hanging onto is that the United States has no alternatives — that the threat of reimposing sanctions would not be effective and Iran would therefore win a race to the bomb.

History shows how wrong they are. Trump should decertify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement and hold a sanctions Sword of Damocles over the Iranian economy: change your behavior or risk total economic collapse before you could ever reach the point of a nuclear weapon. Cry as they might along the way, no European or Asian corporation is going to choose a terrorist regime over access to the U.S. dollar.

Photo credit: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

Source: http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/02/if-the-u-s-reimposes-sanctions-on-iran-allies-will-get-in-line/

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