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FOREIGN POLICY

Biden’s Withdrawal from Afghanistan Undermines His Own Global Strategy by Richard Kemp

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17322/biden-withdrawal-afghanistan

Far worse than failing to intervene is intervening to fail. The withdrawal from Afghanistan is just that.

US allies who have themselves invested huge military and economic resources in Afghanistan fear a Taliban return to power and the blood-bath that would likely accompany it. Their concerns are shared by General Kenneth McKenzie, commander of US CENTCOM, responsible for Afghanistan, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that Afghanistan’s forces might well collapse following US withdrawal.

Jihadists everywhere would be encouraged and empowered by a perceived US defeat at the hands of the Taliban, which was being trumpeted by Al Qaida within days of Biden’s announcement.

Biden justified his withdrawal with the need to counter challenges from China and Russia and strengthen democratic allies and partners against autocracy. His actions are likely to have the reverse effect.

The abandonment of Afghanistan will long be remembered by countries around the world as they weigh their choices between the US and authoritarian regimes. Already Saudi Arabia has recognised that Biden will not protect them from Iran….

Chinese President Xi Jinping says Taiwan must and will be “unified” with China, by force if necessary…. Xi will be… count[ing] the potential cost of moving against the country that he considers his own.

As Russian forces massed along the border with Ukraine last month, Xi will also have noticed that Biden cancelled a planned transit of the Black Sea by two US warships after Russia told Washington to stay away….

Like a kettle of vultures, Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia will all be circling the Afghan carcass following US withdrawal. Iran, which has long provided weapons, funding and safe haven to the Taliban, has been building its influence with them in recent months. Russia has also helped fund and arm the Taliban — sometimes in collaboration with Iran — to kill Afghan, US and NATO forces in order to challenge the US and increase its own influence in the country.

China too has been cooperating with the Taliban…. It also sees influence in Afghanistan as a means to confront New Delhi. Beijing knows that India, as a US ally and democracy, is the only regional power that could play a genuinely constructive role in a future Afghanistan. Xi is not willing to see that happen.

Pakistan, in cahoots with China, is also determined to keep India out of Afghanistan. Its Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate created the Taliban and today remains by far the greatest external backer of its campaign against Afghan and international forces. Islamabad sees the country as vital strategic depth in a future conflict with India and intends to hold sway over a future Taliban regime in Kabul.

The truth is this is a forever war only in the rhetoric of those who support surrender to the Taliban. The last US combat death there was over a year ago.

The net strategic effect of Biden’s unconditional withdrawal is shaping up to be the opposite of what his national security strategy seeks to achieve: diminished confidence among allies, increased boldness among adversaries, the vital strategic territory of Afghanistan ceded to anti-democratic autocracies, a destabilised region containing two nuclear powers with associated proliferation risks, a spiralling of the global jihadist threat and massive population displacement.

US President Joe Biden’s unconditional withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan by September this year has potentially grave and dangerous consequences far wider than that embattled country and is set to undermine the national security strategy he proudly unveiled only days before announcing his pull-out.

Biden Administration Needs to Halt Talks with Iran’s Mullahs by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17320/biden-administration-iran-talks

The Biden administration seems more determined than ever, however, to “reward” Iran’s dangerous and predatory regime by returning to a deal that has sunset clauses, as well as an expiration date after which the mullahs can enrich uranium, spin centrifuges at any level they desire, and make as many nuclear weapons as they like.

A return to the 2025 deal would help to lift all major sanctions against Iran — sanctions it took years to put in place. The deal would enable Iran’s military sites to be exempt from inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The deal would allow Iran to rejoin the global financial system with full legitimacy, so that billions of dollars could begin flowing into the treasury of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its expanding militias across the Middle East.

Finally, amid the talks to revive the “nuclear deal,” Iran’s leaders signed a 25-year strategic deal with China. In addition, the Iranian authorities are also engaged in high-level talks with Russia, “in order to help establish stability and combat American interventions.”

The Biden administration’s silence in the wake of Iran’s increasing threats and nuclear defiance will only embolden and empower this predatory regime. The Iranian regime clearly believes it can get away with its violations. Instead of “rewarding” this dangerous Islamist regime, the Biden administration needs to take a firm stance and hold the ruling mullahs accountable.

Amid talks — between the Iranian regime and France, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, plus Germany as well as indirect talks between the US and Iran — the ruling mullahs of Iran continue to ratchet up their threats and nuclear defiance.

Tony Blinken’s Mideast Blind Spot Martin Peretz

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/tony-blinken-mideas

The U.S. secretary of state and his regional envoy Robert Malley played in the sandbox together as children in Paris but speak different languages when it comes to American foreign policy. The results may be the same.

Antony Blinken has been secretary of state for less than 100 days. On the most important strategic issue facing the United States, China, and on the most important moral issue, human rights, he has marked those days with a brand of muscular internationalism that has been absent from Foggy Bottom for too long. He has labeled China’s treatment of its Muslim Uyghur minority as genocide and taken a tough stance on trade imbalances, while committing to work with China on issues like the environment—using exact but firm language backed by coherent policy.

For the most part, Blinken’s stated policies have been strong yet moderate. On the one hand, for example, he will probably not press for international sanctions or reparations from China when it comes to its responsibility for the COVID outbreak. He will probably not use a boycott of the Beijing Olympics to respond to China’s crimes against the Uyghurs. On the other hand, he will push to sanction Chinese officials for their clear, documented, ongoing violations of human rights in Hong Kong. The Biden administration has warned Wall Street not to expect government support for corporate expansion in China—a stand with real substance, since it affects both daily investments and America’s ethical position in the world. For its part, the Treasury Department is pushing for a global minimum tax rate to constrain corporate outsourcing.

But Blinken does have blind spots when it comes to both rhetoric and policy, and these could have large consequences for him and the Biden administration in its larger project of promoting human rights abroad while confronting China. The twinned issues where Blinken has remained conspicuously reticent and indistinct are the Middle East and the elephant in the Middle East, Iran. In lieu of asserting himself, the secretary of state has approved the reopening of nuclear talks with Iran and outsourced them to Robert Malley, whom he appointed or allowed to be appointed U.S. special envoy to that country. Blinken’s reliance on Malley, and Malley’s own history of finding any opportunity to engage with groups and countries that demonstrably align themselves against American interests, point to a large lacuna, so far, in the otherwise sober vision Blinken has laid out.

It is worth noting here that Malley, besides being an architect of President Barack Obama’s Iran deal and a longtime proponent of outreach to Iran and Hamas, is a childhood friend of Blinken’s: The two grew up together in Paris, Malley as the son of a European-style Jewish communist with anti-imperialist politics and links to Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro, and Blinken as the stepson of an active and influential Zionist businessman and philanthropist who was also a public supporter of détente between the West and the Soviet Union. The divergences and convergences of their fathers’ politics are not irrelevant to understanding the sons.

The Sentimental Antisemite The CIA’s case for Palestinian statehood was based on analysis. Then the analysts turned out to be wrong. By Lee Smith

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/sentimental-antisemi

It’s not hard to see the dilemma facing John Brennan, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Decades of U.S. intelligence assessments of the Middle East, including many he composed and greenlit himself, were trashed during the past four years, as Donald Trump crossed virtually every red line previously drawn by the CIA and other U.S. spy services. Even pro-Israel organizations had assumed that it doesn’t matter what presidential candidates say on the stump—like Bill Clinton, like George W. Bush, and like Barack Obama, they all inevitably walk back their campaign promises. Sure, all presidents would like to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. But after seeing the top-secret intelligence and consulting with their well-connected spy chiefs, what president would risk the war that such a move would start?

But the so-called Arab street didn’t erupt when Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Islamists didn’t topple the regimes in Cairo and Amman when the U.S. recognized Israel’s sovereignty in the Golan Heights. Saudi Arabia, the custodian of the two holy shrines in Mecca and Medina, gave all but explicit approval when the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel.

That left Brennan with egg on his face. Now out of government, Brennan believes that despite “dealing with a dizzying array of domestic and international problems,” the Biden administration should prioritize “the Palestinian quest for statehood.” Why? To put an end to Israel’s “oppressive security practices,” Brennan wrote on Tuesday for The New York Times. But the case he makes for bumping Palestinian nationalism to the top of the White House’s to-do list is not strategic or rational. It’s sentimental, with a dollop of antisemitism on top—just like his decades of poor intelligence assessments.

“I always found it difficult to fathom how a nation of people deeply scarred by a history replete with prejudice, religious persecution, & unspeakable violence perpetrated against them would not be the empathetic champions of those whose rights & freedoms are still abridged,” Brennan tweeted Tuesday, promoting his Times op-ed.

Abraham Accords Could Be Next In Biden’s Retreat By Benny Avni

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/abraham-accord-could-be-next-in-bidens-retreat/91493/

As Washington retreats from prior conditions it has set to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, Arab allies recalculate their approach to the Islamic Republic. Can reversal of the Abraham Accords be far behind?d

“We are seeking to have good relations with Iran,” Riyadh’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Saudi TV this week. Huh? Until recently the Kingdom’s de-facto ruler was considered one of the region’s top hardliners on Iran. Now his emissaries are reported to meet in Baghdad with top American and Iranian officials.

What changed? America.

Washington’s attitude toward the Islamic Republic is obviously much softer than it was under President Trump. But now it seems to have softened even in the course of President Biden’s first 100 days.

Gone is National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s vow to seek a “longer and stronger agreement.” Instead American negotiators in Vienna now toil to appease Tehran counterparts with the hope of merely returning to the original 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Yet another American condition for reinking the JCPOA is fast eroding. Washington said it would not remove sanctions before Tehran reverses all recent enrichment violations. That condition is now melting, even as Tehran is resolute, vowing to not move an inch before all sanctions are removed.

Democratic Norms Come First Shoshana Bryen

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, with regard to elections in South America, tweeted earlier this month: “I recall @POTUS saying: ‘Democracy is fragile. That it must always be defended. That we must be ever vigilant.’ Elections are the first step. We must respect results and hold leaders accountable to sustain our democracies.”

President Joe Biden is right: Democracy IS fragile. Secretary Blinken, on the other hand, is wrong.

Elections are not the “first step” in building a democracy. And where elections are fraudulent, coercive or outright anti-democratic, the United States has no general obligation to simply “respect the results.” Consider the current Middle East electoral calendar.

Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, says he’s holding an election in May with five candidates—including himself—running for president. Candidates have to be approved by 35 members of a parliament dominated by Assad’s party. They have to have lived in Syria for the past 10 years—meaning no opposition figures in exile—and be married to a citizen. This follows 10 years of Assad’s war, in which more than half a million Syrian civilians have been killed, nearly 12 million others have been displaced internally and externally, and the government has been credibly accused of using chemical weapons on its own people.

Iran has elections in June. Candidates for president, as well as for the legislature and local councils, must be vetted by the Guardian Council, an appointed panel of Islamist jurists. Candidates cannot have a criminal record, thus effectively eliminating any Iranian who has been caught protesting the fanatical regime. All must pledge to adhere to Iran’s constitution and the “guardianship of the jurist”—meaning that ultimate authority lies in the hands of Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Iranian state television announced in January that the Council disqualified more than 6,500 of 12,213 total possible candidates.

John Kerry’s anti-Israel stance speaks for itself By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/john-kerrys-anti-israel-stance-speaks-for-itself-opinion-666783

An audiotape of an “off-the-record” interview in March with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, conducted by regime-aligned journalist and economist Saeed Leylaz, has been causing a global stir.

The three-hour recording, which was leaked to London-based Persian TV channel Iran International and subsequently reported on by The New York Times, has been examined from different angles. These include questioning whether the conversation was digitally doctored, and pondering the veracity of, or motive behind, Zarif’s claims.

One ostensibly jarring revelation that Iran’s top diplomat is heard making concerns his subordinate role to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The only surprising aspect of this self-evident morsel is Zarif’s verbal acknowledgment of it. In every other respect, it’s old news. Khamenei is Tehran’s figurative puppet-master, and the IRGC calls the literal shots.

Nevertheless, Iranian theologian and former Islamic Republic vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi compared the leak of the tape to Israel’s 2018 seizure of a trove of nuclear documents from a warehouse in Tehran. While perhaps a bit overly dramatic, the analogy is apt when viewed in the context of another of Zarif’s allegations; one involving former US secretary of state John Kerry, currently the White House’s climate czar.

According to Zarif, “Kerry informed me that Israel attacked [Iranian positions] 200 times in Syria.”

Leylaz then asked, “You didn’t know?”

Zarif replied, “No, no.”

Biden Risks Casting Away Trump’s Progress in Middle East By Robert Kaufman

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/biden-risks-casting-away-trumps-progress/91492/

Samuel Johnson described a second marriage as a triumph of hope over experience. This sums up the Biden administration’s determination to revive President Obama’s Middle East doctrine that failed the first time around. Worse, this reprise of past mistakes threatens to undo the significant, though provisional, progress the Trump administration achieved in the region by doing the opposite of its predecessor.

Instead of courting Iranian regime, President Trump deemed Iran enemy number one in the Middle East. Mr. Trump abrogated President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran because it would facilitate Iran crossing the nuclear threshold even were the Iranians to abide by it. It depended for verification on Iranian goodwill that didn’t exist It subsidized Iranian aggression by lifting sanctions, and relied on the UN Security Council to re-impose sanctions in the event that we detected Iranian violations.

Mr. Obama’s Iran deal also failed to tame either Iran’s threats toward Israel or Iran’s campaign to incite sectarian violence across the Middle East through its surrogates in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Nor did Mr. Obama’s nuclear deal constrain Iran’s burgeoning ballistic missile program from menacing America’s allies in both the Middle East and Europe..

President Trump’s re-imposition of primary sanctions and the threat of secondary sanctions crippled the Iranian economy, diminishing the regime’s capacity to foment mayhem beyond Iranian borders. Mr. Trump’s — and, let it not be forgotten, Congress’s — decision to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem, emblematic of broader policy to embrace rather than distance America from Israel, bolstered our credibility globally.

Contrary to predictions of Middle East regional experts, Mr. Trump’s repudiation of moral equivalence between Israel and its enemies was met with the emergence of a regional coalition, with Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia as the linchpins, to contain Iran.

A Fitting Coda to John Kerry’s Career Editors

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/a-fitting-coda-to-john-kerrys-career/91489/

The claim by Iran’s foreign minister that Secretary of State Kerry squealed to him about Israeli covert operations in Syria is not, considering the source, necessarily credible. Mohammad Javad Zarif is too oleaginous and wily — and hostile. Then again, too, Mr. Zarif’s allegation is susceptible to such a shocking interpretation that Mr. Kerry and President Biden at least owe their countrymen a full explanation.

The story comes from what the New York Times calls a “leaked audiotape.” It is, the Times reports, of a conversation last month between Mr. Zarif and an economist and ally, Saeed Leylaz. The tape, the Times says, was leaked to a London-based news channel, Iran International, which shared it with the Times. The Times reckons the tape was not meant for publication — or, at least, Mr. Zarif says as much on the audio.

The Times focuses on the glimpse the tape provides into the “behind-the-scenes power struggles of Iranian leaders.” Mr. Zarif complains that the Revolutionary Guards Corps “call the shots,” as the Times summarizes his remarks, “overruling many government decisions and ignoring advice.” The Times notes that in “one extraordinary moment” Mr. Zarif “departed from the reverential official line” on Qassim Suleimani.

Suleimani was the Iranian general whom America, in January 2020, slew with a drone. The Trump administration had caught Suleimani traveling in violation of U.N. sanctions. His vast operations had claimed hundreds of American lives. The Iranians are apparently flabbergasted or infuriated at Mr. Zarif’s remarks about the general. The Times reports that Iran’s foreign ministry isn’t disputing the authenticity of the recording.

Instead, it says the foreign ministry in Tehran is questioning the motive for the leak. The Times quotes a spokesman for the ministry as calling it “unethical politics” and says, as the Times put it, “the portion of the audio released did not represent the full scope of Mr. Zarif’s comments about his respect and love for General Suleimani.” Then again, too, Mr. Zarif’s remarks about the military undermine the entire Iran deal.

John Kerry, Enemy of Israel By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/john-kerry-enemy-of-israel/

Let’s pause to reflect on how monumentally stunning it is that the former U.S. secretary of state allegedly tattled on Israel to Iran.

W e know now that former secretary of state John Kerry isn’t merely a critic of Israel; he is an adversary. In leaked audiotapes obtained by the U.K.-based Iran International, as reported by the New York Times, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a supporter that the former secretary of state had informed him about “at least” 200 covert Israeli actions against Iranian interests in Syria. Zarif listened to this information in “astonishment.”

It’s predictable, perhaps, that the Times glides over this remarkable exchange in a single-sentence paragraph that is submerged near the bottom of the piece. (I guess it’s better than the Washington Post, which doesn’t even mention the interaction.)

A high-ranking American official feels comfortable sharing this information with an autocratic adversary — a government that’s murdered hundreds of Americans, regularly kidnapped them, interfered with our elections, and propped up a regime that gasses its people — about the covert actions of a long-time American ally. What else did he tell Zarif? The Times doesn’t say.