The explosion of a Syrian anti-aircraft missile in southern Israel on 22 April, followed by Israeli attacks around the northern city of Latakia on 5 May, were only the latest episodes of the shadow war that Israel and Iran have been fighting in war-ravaged Syria for several years. They will not be the last.
Neither side wants these occasional flareups to grow into a fully fledged confrontation. But the risk of escalation is real due to potential miscalculations or technical errors in both sides’ attempts to achieve tactical gains.
The involvement of Hezbollah, Tehran’s most important non-state ally, in the Syrian theatre carries a further risk that comparatively low-level altercations in Syria may spill over into Lebanon and trigger a destructive conflict between the heavily armed Shia group and Israel.… Seguir leyendo »
Israel's retaliatory attack on Iranian military targets inside Syria represents the biggest direct confrontation between the two countries in their history. It came after rockets were launched from Iranian bases in Syria towards the Golan Heights. This escalation has caused widespread concern that war might be imminent between Israel and Iran.
But neither wishes to engage in all-out war with the other. Iran’s Golan Heights rocket launch was the product of the growing pressure it faces in the Syrian conflict. Unless the United States steps in with a plan for Syria, Israel and Iran will continue to clash there.
Iran regards its presence in Syria as crucial for its influence in the Levant.… Seguir leyendo »
Global anxiety that the United States will take military action against Iran has increased now that President Trump has appointed John Bolton as his national security adviser. Mr. Bolton has long promoted regime change in Iran, argued for bombing Iran and a more assertive American policy against Iranian expansionism in the Middle East.
But the United States cannot effectively confront Tehran and its proxies until it appreciates Iran’s role in state building in Middle Eastern countries decimated by conflict.
Iran has increased its influence in the region since the eruption of the Syrian civil war and the rise of the Islamic State.… Seguir leyendo »
On Sept. 27, thousands of Iranians attended the funeral of Mohsen Hojaji, an Iranian soldier who was captured and beheaded by the Islamic State. He was hardly the first Iranian casualty in Syria. As the head of Iran’s Martyrs Foundation announced a few months ago, the death toll among Iranian forces in the Syrian civil war has passed 2,100. Yet despite high fatalities in 2015 and 2016, polls suggest that Iranian public support for the military involvement has remained strong. What explains this continued support?
My research suggests that religious motivations, strategic calculations and efficient use of troop deployment have convinced a majority of Iranians of the need for their nation’s involvement in the Syrian civil conflict.… Seguir leyendo »
From the end of the Cold War until 2010, Syria, led first by President Hafez al-Assad and then by his son Bashar, had a uniquely flexible geopolitical position in the Arab world: Syria was an avowed enemy of Israel but directly negotiated with it. Syria claimed to be the beating heart of Arab nationalism but joined the United Nations coalition that evicted Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. The Assad government was labeled by the United States a state sponsor of terrorism, but Syrian intelligence agencies cooperated with their American counterparts in the fight against Al Qaeda.
War and poverty have scattered Afghans across the globe like pieces of shrapnel. Millions of Afghans came of age in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran or as workers in the Persian Gulf nations. The migration continues. The past few years have added a new lethal geography to the Afghan tragedy: the battlefields of President Bashar al-Assad’s Syria.
Two years ago, Abdol Amin, 19, left his home in the Foladi Valley in Bamyan, one of Afghanistan’s poorest provinces, to find work in Iran. Two million undocumented Afghans and a million Afghans with refugee status already lived in Iran. His sister and brother-in-law lived in Isfahan.… Seguir leyendo »
Over the past few days, Syrian government forces, along with their Russian and Iranian allies, have been pounding rebel-held areas of Aleppo with the kind of destructive air power rarely seen since the bombing of Dresden. A third of the city has been held by a variety of Syrian opposition group since 2012, but they are rapidly losing ground under the onslaught, and now facing a humanitarian disaster that is shocking even by Syrian standards. On Wednesday, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting to deal with what French Ambassador François Delattre called “one of the biggest massacres of a civilian population since World War II.”… Seguir leyendo »
My friend George Osborne has one of the finest minds of anyone in public life. He brings a clarity to issues others often prefer to complicate or dodge.
So when he was asked recently what was the biggest cause of sadness for him in his political career so far, he didn’t prevaricate. The failure of the House of Commons to support intervention in Syria in 2013 was, George said, “the single most depressing moment of my time to date in parliament”.
Mine too.
As George explained to his audience, our failure to intervene has been followed by the killing of hundreds of thousands, with millions more driven from their homes.… Seguir leyendo »
The partial cease-fire in Syria’s civil war is welcome news. But it must not be allowed to obscure a dangerous new development — the emergence from the war of a Russian-Iranian military axis that could upset hopes for stability in the Middle East, and for containing Russia’s global ambitions, into the future.
The extent of Russian-Iranian cooperation was signaled last month, when Russia used an Iranian air base to bomb targets in Syria. American officials dismissed the event as unsurprising and tactical, and some Iranian officials said Russia’s access was for a “one-time antiterrorism operation.” But a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry attached the words “for now” to his announcement that the access “is finished,” clearly leaving room for repetition.… Seguir leyendo »
La guerre en Syrie n’aurait pas perduré et la tragédie humaine provoqué tant de ravages sans l’implication directe du régime iranien. Le rôle néfaste de Téhéran ne se résume pas à son implication militaire et logistique pour arracher Alep et Daraya des mains des forces de la révolution. Alep, qui vient de briser victorieusement son encerclement et d’infliger une défaite significative aux forces d’Assad et de ses alliés iraniens.
En tant que principal parrain du dictateur syrien, Téhéran torpille les négociations de paix que nous avons entreprises depuis le début de l’année à Genève et à Vienne pour la mise en place d’un organe syrien de transition politique.… Seguir leyendo »
Convidar a Irán a ser parte de la próxima ronda de conversaciones sobre la crisis en Siria que se realizará en Viena, Austria (invitación que se reiteró la semana pasada) tiene consecuencias de largo alcance. De hecho, el actual gobierno iraní está intentando acabar con un equilibrio de poder que ha durado cerca de 1.400 años. Como cuna del mundo musulmán, Arabia Saudí no lo permitirá.
La brecha entre Irán y Arabia Saudí, respectivamente las potencias más prominentes del islamismo chií y suní de Oriente Próximo, tiene profundas raíces. Para comprender más allá de Siria lo que está pasando realmente hoy en la región, tenemos que considerar los orígenes del cisma entre ambas corrientes, la brecha entre los mundos árabe y persa y las luchas del pasado sobre el modo de gobernar el Islam.… Seguir leyendo »
It should come as no surprise that the Obama administration continues to wrestle with its approach to Syria. There are no good options in a war that has claimed 200,000 lives and displaced nearly 10 million people. The president is right to say that there are no magic solutions, yet he also clearly understands that avoidance is not an alternative if we are to achieve his declared objective of degrading and eventually destroying the Islamic State. Leaving the terrorist group with a haven in Syria ensures it both an ability to wreak havoc in Iraq and an operational space from which to plan, recruit and, in time, carry out attacks worldwide.… Seguir leyendo »
United States leaders have rightly said that defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and resolving Iraq's deepening civil war will require urgent political change in Baghdad. But the military assistance that Iran and Russia are speeding to Shiite groups in Iraq imperils that change.
It now appears that a majority of Iraq's political parties and Shiite religious authorities blame Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's authoritarian tendencies and exclusion of mainstream Sunni groups for the crisis, and they seek his replacement as the starting point for resolving it.
But just as this political majority has begun to form against him, Iran and Russia have extended al-Maliki material and political support that insulates him from domestic political pressure and may even embolden him to try to stay on.… Seguir leyendo »
As the terrorist group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) continues to capture and control more territory in Iraq and Syria, it is important to realize what is at stake in the region and for the American people.
The challenge that ISIS poses is not just to Iraq's stability but also to U.S. security. ISIS is a terrorist group with their own army and bank account that has a clear and growing ability to conduct terrorist attacks against the Iraqi government, Americans and U.S. interests, and even the U.S. homeland.
ISIS, although loosely affiliated with al Qaeda, is in many respects even more extreme in its methods and its brutality than the terrorists who plotted and carried out 9/11.… Seguir leyendo »
To save Iraq from Sunni extremists, Iran is mobilizing its allies in Iraq and promoting collaboration between Iraq’s government and Syria. Washington, meanwhile, has dispatched military advisers to Baghdad. On their own, these efforts are valiant. But without coordination, they won’t be fruitful.
Iraq was until recently a battleground between Iran and the United States. A string of American military commanders battled Gen. Qassim Suleimani, head of foreign operations for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards, for influence. At the height of the American occupation, Iran’s handful of men in Iraq wielded more power than the 150,000 American forces stationed there.
Despite their largely adversarial past, the two countries can now save Iraq if they act together.… Seguir leyendo »
El reciente avance del Estado Islámico de Irak y del Levante (EIIL, ISIS por sus siglas en inglés) constata que, más de 10 años después de la guerra de Irak, la región mantiene su inestabilidad crónica. Oriente Próximo es uno de los principales focos geopolíticos de conflicto del mundo y es necesario cambiar el marco de actuación para responder adecuadamente a los retos. Dichos retos se presentan de manera simultánea e interrelacionados. La propia naturaleza del EIIL lo demuestra: su ámbito de actuación es transnacional, su patria —un califato regido por la sharía—abarca un vasto territorio que hoy ocupan Estados como Siria e Irak.… Seguir leyendo »
For almost three years, America’s approach to Syria has revolved around pushing Russia to use its influence on President Bashar al-Assad to drive a political transition in the country. Even before the crisis in Crimea put Washington’s diplomatic relationship with Moscow on ice, this was a failed strategy.
President Obama needs to do everything he can to put Syria on a path to peace quickly. That requires rethinking his approach to the region and reaching out to a country that he has so far kept at a guarded distance from the negotiating table: Iran.
The problem with Russia is that it is a bad-faith partner on Syria: Its president, Vladimir V.… Seguir leyendo »
La ofensiva carismática del presidente iraní, Hassan Rouhani, quedó interrumpida. Funcionó bien en la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas el pasado mes de septiembre, cuando tenía algo concreto para ofrecer -un acuerdo sobre el programa nuclear de su país-, lo que hizo crecer las esperanzas de que la postura de línea dura de Irán en materia de política exterior finalmente se suavizaría. Pero el retiro de la invitación a Irán a la conferencia Ginebra II sobre Siria por parte del secretario general de la ONU, Ban Ki-moon, sugiere que Rouhani necesitará más que carisma -o inclusive una visita del primer ministro turco, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a Teherán- para poner fin al aislamiento de su país.… Seguir leyendo »
There are eight common elements in the two big breakthrough stories on Iran and Syria from New York on Sept. 26.
First, both crises are in the Middle East, a region racked by turmoil and upheaval since the outbreak of the Arab Spring two years ago. The regional fault lines, and the ways in which they connect to global major power fault lines, have been deeply unsettled and the contours of the new Middle East are anything but clear.
Second, both crises have been about weapons of mass destruction, nuclear (Iran) and chemical (Syria). Iran is party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but has long been suspected of using its technology-accessing benefits as a cover to acquire and develop components, material, facilities and skills to be just one screwdriver away from the bomb if and when it chooses to cross the threshold.… Seguir leyendo »
If you want to know the prime reason President Barack Obama didn't want to bomb Syria and why the Syrian deal on chemical weapons may actually work out, however imperfectly, think one word: Iran.
Sure the limited military option against Syria was always imperfect; it would neither have ended Syria's chemical weapons capacity nor removed its president, Bashar al-Assad. There was almost no public or congressional support for a military strike either. And one of the strategic objectives of the Obama presidency was getting America out of profitless wars, not into new ones.
But motivating the president too was the challenge and opportunity of Iran.… Seguir leyendo »
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