Top of the Agenda: Lebanon Stability Fears
Council on Foreign Relation's summary
December 6, 2007

Lebanon

• News reports suggest tomorrow’s parliamentary meetings aimed at electing a president in Lebanon might be delayed again (AFP), further heightening fears over instability. Lebanon has now been without a president since November 24, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says he is “extremely concerned” (AP) about the delays.

  Both of Lebanon’s rival parties have agreed to install a Lebanese military leader, Michel Suleiman, as president, but they are embroiled in a dispute (Daily Star) over how to amend the country’s constitution, which bars high-level officials from running. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora yesterday faulted the country’s Hezbollah-led opposition for setting new conditions (AP). French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner met with the leaders of Lebanon’s feuding parties today, to try to facilitate compromise.

  In a recent interview, CFR’s Mohamad Bazzi explains Lebanon’s political structure and says he doesn’t think violence is likely to erupt over the dispute.

Assad Discusses Lebanon with Prodi

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi on Friday discussed the situation in Lebanon where the election of a president has been postponed for a seventh time, Syria's official news agency SANA reported.

It said the telephone approach was within the framework of Syrian-European dialogue on events in Syria's neighbor. The two leaders also looked at "some ideas on the (Israeli-Arab) peace process".

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have also held talks with the Syrian leader about Lebanon, where the majority and pro-Syrian opposition are trying to agree on changes to the constitution and a consensus candidate for president.

The presidency has been vacant since November 24 following the end of the mandate of pro-Syrian head of state Emile Lahoud.

On Friday, a parliamentary session to elect a president was postponed for the seventh time, with a new date set for next Tuesday.(AFP-Naharnet)

Iran

The Costs of Containing Iran
Washington's Misguided New Middle East Policy
Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008 

(Landis comment: I have copied the important bits. This is will be an influential article. It seems to reflect the emerging consensus that led, in part, to the new NIE on Iran. Hopefully, the Democrats will embrace this strategy in their foreign policy. It jives with the policy recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report.)

Summary:  The Bush administration wants to contain Iran by rallying the support of Sunni Arab states and now sees Iran's containment as the heart of its Middle East policy: a way to stabilize Iraq, declaw Hezbollah, and restart the Arab-Israeli peace process. But the strategy is unsound and impractical, and it will probably further destabilize an already volatile region.

….A U.S. containment strategy that assumes broad Arab solidarity is unsound in theory.

For close to half a century, the Arab world saw Iraq's military as its bulwark in the Persian Gulf. Having dismantled that force in 2003, the United States is now the only power present in the Gulf that can contain Iran militarily. Shouldering that responsibility effectively would mean maintaining large numbers of troops in the region indefinitely. But given the anti-American sentiment pervading all of the Gulf today, none of the states in the region (except for Kuwait) could countenance the redeployment of a substantial number of U.S. forces in their territory. Thus, Washington would have to rely on weaker regional actors to contain a rising Iran, which is the largest country in the Persian Gulf in terms of size, population, and economy. Even major arms sales to the Gulf states could not change this reality.

Washington's reliance on reviving the Middle East peace process as the linchpin of its strategy to contain Iran is also problematic. Bush administration officials are assuming that resumed diplomacy between Israel and its neighbors will assuage the Arab street, rally Arab governments behind the United States, and lay the groundwork for a united Arab-Israeli front against Iran. But this hope disregards the fact that in their current state, Palestinian and Israeli politics will not support the types of compromises necessary for a credible breakthrough. Both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are too weak to press their constituencies toward the painful concessions that a viable peace compact would require. The expectations of Arab leaders far exceed those of Israel and the United States: while they have been openly demanding final-status negotiations, Secretary Rice has been talking only about creating momentum toward peace.

Even if the peace process can be successfully relaunched, the notion that Arabs see the rise of Iran as a bigger problem than the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict is misplaced. After years of enmity, the Arab masses and Arab opinion-makers continue to perceive Israel as a more acute threat. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad understands this well: he has been raising the heat on the Palestinian issue precisely because he wants to make headway among the Arab people and understands that they do not share the anti-Iranian sentiment of their governments. Along with his inflammatory denunciations of Israel and Tehran's assistance to Hamas and Hezbollah, Ahmadinejad's embrace of an Arab cause has garnered him ample support among the rank and file. In fact, Tehran enjoys significant soft power in the Middle East today. Washington assumes that its proposals regarding the Arab-Israeli peace process will redirect everyone's worries toward Iran; Tehran believes that current efforts will not satiate Arab demands. A careful reading of the region's mood reveals that Iran is on firmer ground than the United States.

Indeed, it is not the Palestinian issue that will decide the balance of power in the Middle East but the fate of the failing states of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon, where Iranian influence has found ample room to expand. The Palestinian issue remains important to Israel's security, stability in the Levant, and the United States' image and prestige. It is also a catalyst for regional rivalries. But the Palestinian issue is not the original cause of those regional contests, nor will it decide their outcome. For all its worrying about Iran's growing power, Washington has failed to appreciate that the center of gravity in the Middle East has indeed shifted from the Levant to the Persian Gulf. It is now more likely that peace and stability in the Persian Gulf would bring peace and stability to the Levant than the other way around….

The last time the United States rallied the Arab world to contain Iran, in the 1980s, Americans ended up with a radicalized Sunni political culture that eventually yielded al Qaeda. The results may be as bad this time around: a containment policy will only help erect Sunni extremism as an ideological barrier to Shiite Iran, much as Saudi Arabia's rivalry with Iran in the 1980s played out in South Asia and much as radical Salafis mobilized to offset Hezbollah's soaring popularity after the Israeli-Lebanese war in 2006. During the Cold War, confronting communism meant promoting capitalism and democracy. Containing Iran today would mean promoting Sunni extremism — a self-defeating proposition for Washington….

But envisioning that a grand U.S.-Arab-Israeli alliance can contain Iran will sink Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon into greater chaos; inflame Islamic radicalism; and commit the United States to a lengthy and costly presence in the Middle East.

A NEW ORDER

Instead of focusing on restoring a former balance of power, the United States would be wise to aim for regional integration and foster a new framework in which all the relevant powers would have a stake in a stable status quo. The Bush administration is correct to sense that a truculent Iran poses serious challenges to U.S. concerns, but containing Iran through military deployment and antagonistic alliances simply is not a tenable strategy. Iran is not, despite common depictions, a messianic power determined to overturn the regional order in the name of Islamic militancy; it is an unexceptionally opportunistic state seeking to assert predominance in its immediate neighborhood. Thus, the task at hand for Washington is to create a situation in which Iran will find benefit in limiting its ambitions and in abiding by international norms.

Dialogue, compromise, and commerce, as difficult as they may be, are convincing means. An acknowledgment by the U.S. government that Tehran does indeed have legitimate interests and concerns in Iraq could get the two governments finally to realize that they have similar objectives: both want to preserve the territorial integrity of Iraq and prevent the civil war there from engulfing the Middle East. Resuming diplomatic and economic relations between Iran and the United States, as well as collaborating on Iraq, could also be the precursor of an eventual arrangement subjecting Iran's nuclear program to its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. If Iran enjoyed favorable security and commercial ties with the United States and was at ease in its region, it might restrain its nuclear ambitions.