Maybe the NIE Is Not So Good for Syria?
Posted by Joshua on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
Observer wrote (Written before Ehsani's comment):
The latest NIE is a bombshell that Bush has been sitting on since Wed. It essentially excludes the use of force in the coming year. What does this mean:
a) Annapolis is a fiasco on the Palestinian Israeli side as Olmert has already dampened expectations.
b) Olmert will lose the coalition partners if he makes too big concessions
c) the “moderate” Arabs got screwed as Bush did not share this info with them ahead of time
d) the pretext to attack Iran is gone they will have to deal with the regime
e) Ahmadinejad has clearly dominated the GCC meeting with a vision that none of the leaders had. They meet usually to discuss details and avoid big decision making such unpegging the dollar
f) concerted sanctions are out the door as China and Russia will not follow along.
g) Europeans will feel that they were being used to advance the US agenda.
h) Jumblat is eating his words in the interview of his son Timor. (A reader has objected to this linked article as a hoax.) In a way the son asking for a change of leadership in the Druze community may well save his father’s life. This last one is the most telling of the reversal of fortunes of the coalition.
Iran will surely replace the US as a guarantor of the Gulf security and would strike a bargain with the US and Europe to insure that the oil production and flow remain completely open and smooth going. They will also do it exactly in an opposite way to that of the Shah with soft rather than with hard power. I sense that Syria may have become less important to Tehran now but the alliance will remain as neither side is able or willing to part ways.
The current administration is now the “Pretzel” administration as it is contorting itself in various ways to appear as if they had any role in forcing Iran to abandon the weapons program ( if it ever existed ) while at the same time maintaining that Iran remains a threat. Now that the so called surge, the end of the ethnic cleansing locally, and the influence of Iran have resulted in some mode of stability, the urge to withdraw the troops will increase rather than decrease. The US will have not much to show for its adventure except that it is diminished in the world. The great thing about this is that it is not perceived in such a traumatic way as Vietnam did when the images of embassy evacuation were all over the screens and therefore a right wing backlash a la Reagan will not occur soon except of course if there is another terror attack on American soil.
Atassi said:
This intelligent report may possibly be hurting the Syrian regime too.
This report revealed the facts about the none existence of the Shiia N-bomb program. The Syrian regime may have started to realize the fact it was betting on the wrong “Air-full” horse for long term strategic protections shield.
I think Dr. Landis and others are giving too much unearned credit to The regime leaders with its executed and misshaped domestic, regional and international policies.
keep in mind, This current baath regime NEVER delivered any of the Syrians aspirations and we shouldn’t expect it to do so…
Was Bush Behind the Iran Report? (Thanks Alex)
By Robert Baer
Bombing Iran, it seems, is now off the table. There’s no other reasonable take on the latest National Intelligence Estimate that concludes Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
But there is also no doubt that the Bush White House was behind this NIE. While the 16 intelligence agencies that make up the “intelligence community” contribute to each National Intelligence Estimate, you can bet that an explosive, 180-degree turn on Iran like this one was greenlighted by the President.
And explode is what the hawks in and outside the Administration are about to do. They were counting on Bush being the one President prepared to take on Iran. As recently as last month, Bush warned of World War III if Iran so much as thought about building a bomb. Bush’s betrayal is not going to go down well. The neocons, clinging to a sliver of hope, will accuse the intelligence community of incompetence, pointing out that as late as 2005 it estimated “with high confidence” that Iran was building a bomb.
Bush’s National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, put the best face on the new report, claiming that it was our diplomacy and saber rattling that forced the Iranians to back down. As for the intelligence community, it explained its reversal by hinting that new intelligence had surfaced.
Neither explanation is entirely accurate. The real story behind this NIE is that the Bush Administration has finally concluded Iran is a bridge too far. With Iranian-backed Shi’a groups behaving themselves, things are looking up in Iraq. In Lebanon, the anti-Syrian coalition and pro-Syrian coalition, which includes Iran’s surrogate Hizballah, reportedly have settled on a compromise candidate, the army commander General Michel Suleiman. Bombing Iran now would upset the fragile balance in these two countries. Not to mention that Hizballah has threatened to shell Israel if we as much as touch a hair on Iran’s head.
Then there are the Gulf Arabs. For the last year and a half, ever since the Bush Administration started to hint that it might hit Iran, they have been sending emissaries to Tehran to assure the Iranians they’re not going to help the United States. But in private, the Gulf Arabs have been reminding Washington that Iran is a rabid dog: Don’t even think about kicking it, the Arabs tell us. If you have to do something, shoot it dead. Which is something the United States can’t do.
So how far is Iran from a nuke? The new NIE says 10 to 15 years, maybe. But that’s a wild guess. The truth is that Iran is a black hole, and it’s entirely conceivable Iran could build a bomb and we wouldn’t know until they tested it.
Yet for now we should at least be happy with the good news: Armageddon is postponed.
Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com’s intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down
Baer says that the NIE was greenlighted by POTUS.
many of the posters over at Syria Comment are suggesting that, as a result of the NIE, Syria stands to benefit ’spectacularly’. …
my question is this:
if the U.S. intelligence community has now effectively called Iran’s bluff, with WH blessing, what does that do to the value of ‘flipping’ Syria?
if the price of a syrian-israeli peace deal was being negotiated now, id say that the cost to syria just went up significantly. This is especially true when you consider the ‘restoration of isreali deterrance capablity’ we saw a few weeks ago.
the silliest thing that supporters of israel can do right now is to continue to trumpet the ‘iranian’ threat- this just plays into the syrian hand in that it inflates the value of a ‘flip’….
the result of the NIE is that prospects for a syria deal are much lower- barring a dramatic game-changer (for that i’d be looking at huzbullah right now). the isreali price will be too high.
Nukeless Nation ‘Not Evil Enough,’ Says Korean Madman (thanks Alex)
One day after a National Intelligence Estimate revealed that Iran halted its nuclear arms program in 2003, North Korean president Kim Jong-Il ejected Iran from the Axis of Evil, calling them “not evil enough.”
A visibly furious Kim called a press conference in Pyongyang today to excoriate the Iranians as “evildoer wannabes” and “pussies.”
“I can’t tell you how many times Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looked me in the eye, told me he was developing nuclear weapons, and cackled like a madman,” Kim said. “That man does not deserve to cackle.”
Kim added that when Iran was admitted into the Axis of Evil in 2002, “they knew the rules: no nukes, no membership.”
The National Intelligence Estimate, Kim said, showed that Iran was not holding up their end of the bargain: “They said they were enriching uranium and all the while they were going all Libya on my ass.”
As for who would take Iran’s place in the Axis of Evil, Kim said there was no shortage of candidates: “Right now we’re looking at Venezuela, Syria, and Rupert Murdoch.”
Elsewhere, natural honey is a more effective remedy for children’s coughs than over-the-counter medicines, according to a study commissioned by the National Association of Bees.
Here are a number of interesting comments on the NIE, which downgraded the Iranian threat
EHSANI2 said:
Since it was me that made the comment that “Syria stands to reap the benefits in a most spectacular fashion”, I think that I owe some of the readers a more detailed explanation.
During Bush’s press conference, he admitted that he first knew about the NIE report one week ago. We will never know of course whether he was blindsided or whether he was the architect behind the report. As many people know, The U.S. was already pushing for a third round of U.N. sanctions against Iran. Just two days earlier than the report came out, Undersecretary of State Burns met in Paris with British, French, Russian, Chinese and German counterparts to seek support for a new Security Council resolution. Now that the report is made public, diplomats seem to think that the findings may cripple U.S. attempts to win that third round of sanction. Given the above, it is more logical to assume that the White House was indeed blindsided rather than being the architect of the report.
Let us now go back to Syria.
Atassi makes a very good point when he argues that the elimination of the nuclear capability of Iran may actually harm Syria rather than help it in so far as its main patron is not the nuclear power it thought it was hiding behind. Moreover, hawks within the White House are unlikely to dramatically alter their strategy towards Iran as of yet. Indeed, Bush tried to offer a picture of nothing-has-changed during the conference.
While this is all true, it is also a fact that the political landscape in the U.S. has changed dramatically since. One only needs to watch the Democratic candidates debate the matter. Senator Clinton now finds herself facing heavy criticism for supporting a Senate resolution that her rivals said encouraged “saber-rattling rhetoric” from President Bush towards Iran.
Syria’s leadership has long felt that the hawks within the U.S. Administration want to weaken Syria to the point of pushing it to “sell out” to Israel and/or to go for a regime change altogether.
Not surprisingly, Damascus has tried to design its own master plan that would unsettle this train that it sees coming at her. Set below is a summary of what I think its plan entailed:
1- Do everything possible to slow down the Americans in Iraq.
2- Build on the existing relationship with Iran to help its weak military position
3- Design an improved alliance with powerful and Sunni Turkey.
4- Insure that Lebanon does not fall under the U.S. umbrella and that Hezbollah is not disarmed.
5- Cushion the negative impact of the sanctions by encouraging foreign investments.
I am sure that the above list is not conclusive and that one can think of other parts to the strategy.
The recent events in Lebanon, Annapolis and the NIE report cannot but leave one with the impression that Syria’s leadership has indeed passed this test in a “spectacular” fashion.
Where Syria continues to face enormous challenges, however, is to do with the performance of its economy and future energy needs.
According to the Al-Khaleej newspaper, a recently presented report shows that Syria had witnessed an average 2.9% economic growth rate in 2006. The report related this low growth to declining performance by the sectors of petroleum and agriculture.
This morning we learn that Iraq and Syria are planning to bold a pipeline before 2010 that will feed Syrian power plants with Iraqi natural gas. According to the Syrian oil minister, the country is struggling to cope with rising electricity consumption. Plans are underway to bring gas from Iran and Egypt too.
Recently, Mr. Dardari has admitted that close to $30 billion of investments are needed before the country can expand its economy at levels that keep being promised by the economic cabinet.
While Syria may have won the last political battle (not whole war), it continues to face formidable challenges from its economy and population demographics. The political tension with the west has impeded the country’s effort to attract investments in oil and gas exploration as well as many other industries. Its proven reserves of 3.2 billion barrels are expected to last about 10 years according to energy experts.
For Syria to truly feel confident about its future, not only better relations with the west and its Arab neighbors is required but a strategic rethinking of its economic policies is also needed. For the country to attract the huge investments needed, a confident and dramatic turn to capitalism and open markets is required.