A STRATEGIC SHIFT
In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq
has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy
and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East
strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called
the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open
confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a
widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush
Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in
the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with
Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations
that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is
backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations
aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has
been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant
vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most
of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come
from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s
perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of
the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of
Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last
week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state
television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front,
headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the
region.”
After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power,
the United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with
the leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi
Arabia. That calculation became more complex after the September 11th
attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and
many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside
Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration
officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a
Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni
extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam
Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about
the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in
exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has
forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed
publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in
January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new
strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and
“extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation,
and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that
divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran
and Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to
destabilize.”
Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however.
The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by
leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other
ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process,
current and former officials close to the Administration said.
A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he
had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues
had not been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,” he said.
“We ask for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we
ask specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s
so frustrating.”
The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick
Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the
departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations
Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi
national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in
shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the
clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the
White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not
respond to specific queries but said, “The United States is not planning
to go to war with Iran.”)
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new
strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an
existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the
Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will
give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in
Arab-Israeli negotiations.
The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea
change,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said.
The Sunni states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was
growing resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,”
he said. “We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain
it.”
“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s
the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow
at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites,
Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have
been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are
the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”
Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton
Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the
Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.” Indyk, who
is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear
whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of
its new policy. “The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq,”
he said. “It’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very
complicated. Everything is upside down.”
The Administration’s new policy for containing Iran
seems to complicate its strategy for winning the war in Iraq. Patrick
Clawson, an expert on Iran and the deputy director for research at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued, however, that closer
ties between the United States and moderate or even radical Sunnis could
put “fear” into the government of Prime Minister Maliki and “make him
worry that the Sunnis could actually win” the civil war there. Clawson
said that this might give Maliki an incentive to coöperate with the
United States in suppressing radical Shiite militias, such as Moqtada
al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
Even so, for the moment, the U.S. remains dependent on the
coöperation of Iraqi Shiite leaders. The Mahdi Army may be openly
hostile to American interests, but other Shiite militias are counted as
U.S. allies. Both Moqtada al-Sadr and the White House back Maliki. A
memorandum written late last year by Stephen Hadley, the
national-security adviser, suggested that the Administration try to
separate Maliki from his more radical Shiite allies by building his base
among moderate Sunnis and Kurds, but so far the trends have been in the
opposite direction. As the Iraqi Army continues to founder in its
confrontations with insurgents, the power of the Shiite militias has
steadily increased.
Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security
Council official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic”
about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is
trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative
than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you
look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America
by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This
is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the
pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will
respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at
them.”
President George W. Bush, in a speech on January 10th, partially
spelled out this approach. “These two regimes”—Iran and Syria—“are
allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and
out of Iraq,” Bush said. “Iran is providing material support for
attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces.
We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will
seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and
training to our enemies in Iraq.”
In the following weeks, there was a wave of allegations from the
Administration about Iranian involvement in the Iraq war. On February
11th, reporters were shown sophisticated explosive devices, captured in
Iraq, that the Administration claimed had come from Iran. The
Administration’s message was, in essence, that the bleak situation in
Iraq was the result not of its own failures of planning and execution
but of Iran’s interference.
The U.S. military also has arrested and interrogated hundreds of
Iranians in Iraq. “The word went out last August for the military to
snatch as many Iranians in Iraq as they can,” a former senior
intelligence official said. “They had five hundred locked up at one
time. We’re working these guys and getting information from them. The
White House goal is to build a case that the Iranians have been
fomenting the insurgency and they’ve been doing it all along—that Iran
is, in fact, supporting the killing of Americans.” The Pentagon
consultant confirmed that hundreds of Iranians have been captured by
American forces in recent months. But he told me that that total
includes many Iranian humanitarian and aid workers who “get scooped up
and released in a short time,” after they have been interrogated.
“We are not planning for a war with Iran,” Robert Gates, the new
Defense Secretary, announced on February 2nd, and yet the atmosphere of
confrontation has deepened. According to current and former American
intelligence and military officials, secret operations in Lebanon have
been accompanied by clandestine operations targeting Iran. American
military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in
Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on
terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed
the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.
At Rice’s Senate appearance in January, Democratic Senator Joseph
Biden, of Delaware, pointedly asked her whether the U.S. planned to
cross the Iranian or the Syrian border in the course of a pursuit.
“Obviously, the President isn’t going to rule anything out to protect
our troops, but the plan is to take down these networks in Iraq,” Rice
said, adding, “I do think that everyone will understand that—the
American people and I assume the Congress expect the President to do
what is necessary to protect our forces.”
The ambiguity of Rice’s reply prompted a response from Nebraska
Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican, who has been critical of the
Administration:
Some of us remember 1970, Madam Secretary. And that
was Cambodia. And when our government lied to the American people and
said, “We didn’t cross the border going into Cambodia,” in fact we did.
I
happen to know something about that, as do some on this committee. So,
Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the
President is talking about here, it’s very, very dangerous.
The Administration’s concern about Iran’s role in Iraq is coupled
with its long-standing alarm over Iran’s nuclear program. On Fox News on
January 14th, Cheney warned of the possibility, in a few years, “of a
nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect
adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations
and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others
around the world.” He also said, “If you go and talk with the Gulf
states or if you talk with the Saudis or if you talk with the Israelis
or the Jordanians, the entire region is worried. . . . The threat Iran
represents is growing.”
The Administration is now examining a wave of new intelligence on
Iran’s weapons programs. Current and former American officials told me
that the intelligence, which came from Israeli agents operating in Iran,
includes a claim that Iran has developed a three-stage solid-fuelled
intercontinental missile capable of delivering several small
warheads—each with limited accuracy—inside Europe. The validity of this
human intelligence is still being debated.
A similar argument about an imminent threat posed by weapons of mass
destruction—and questions about the intelligence used to make that
case—formed the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. Many in Congress have
greeted the claims about Iran with wariness; in the Senate on February
14th, Hillary Clinton said, “We have all learned lessons from the
conflict in Iraq, and we have to apply those lessons to any allegations
that are being raised about Iran. Because, Mr. President, what we are
hearing has too familiar a ring and we must be on guard that we never
again make decisions on the basis of intelligence that turns out to be
faulty.”
Still, the Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible
bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction
of the President. In recent months, the former intelligence official
told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing
plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President,
within twenty-four hours.
In the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting
and the Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has
been handed a new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be
involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. Previously, the focus
had been on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and possible
regime change.
Two carrier strike groups—the Eisenhower and the Stennis—are now in
the Arabian Sea. One plan is for them to be relieved early in the
spring, but there is worry within the military that they may be ordered
to stay in the area after the new carriers arrive, according to several
sources. (Among other concerns, war games have shown that the carriers
could be vulnerable to swarming tactics involving large numbers of small
boats, a technique that the Iranians have practiced in the past;
carriers have limited maneuverability in the narrow Strait of Hormuz,
off Iran’s southern coast.) The former senior intelligence official said
that the current contingency plans allow for an attack order this
spring. He added, however, that senior officers on the Joint Chiefs were
counting on the White House’s not being “foolish enough to do this in
the face of Iraq, and the problems it would give the Republicans in
2008.”
PRINCE BANDAR’S GAME
The Administration’s effort to diminish Iranian
authority in the Middle East has relied heavily on Saudi Arabia and on
Prince Bandar, the Saudi national-security adviser. Bandar served as the
Ambassador to the United States for twenty-two years, until 2005, and
has maintained a friendship with President Bush and Vice-President
Cheney. In his new post, he continues to meet privately with them.
Senior White House officials have made several visits to Saudi Arabia
recently, some of them not disclosed.
Last November, Cheney flew to Saudi Arabia for a surprise meeting with King Abdullah and Bandar. The
Times
reported that the King warned Cheney that Saudi Arabia would back its
fellow-Sunnis in Iraq if the United States were to withdraw. A European
intelligence official told me that the meeting also focussed on more
general Saudi fears about “the rise of the Shiites.” In response, “The
Saudis are starting to use their leverage—money.”
In a royal family rife with competition, Bandar has, over the years,
built a power base that relies largely on his close relationship with
the U.S., which is crucial to the Saudis. Bandar was succeeded as
Ambassador by Prince Turki al-Faisal; Turki resigned after eighteen
months and was replaced by Adel A. al-Jubeir, a bureaucrat who has
worked with Bandar. A former Saudi diplomat told me that during Turki’s
tenure he became aware of private meetings involving Bandar and senior
White House officials, including Cheney and Abrams. “I assume Turki was
not happy with that,” the Saudi said. But, he added, “I don’t think that
Bandar is going off on his own.” Although Turki dislikes Bandar, the
Saudi said, he shared his goal of challenging the spread of Shiite power
in the Middle East.
The split between Shiites and Sunnis goes back to a bitter divide, in
the seventh century, over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad.
Sunnis dominated the medieval caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, and
Shiites, traditionally, have been regarded more as outsiders. Worldwide,
ninety per cent of Muslims are Sunni, but Shiites are a majority in
Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain, and are the largest Muslim group in Lebanon.
Their concentration in a volatile, oil-rich region has led to concern in
the West and among Sunnis about the emergence of a “Shiite
crescent”—especially given Iran’s increased geopolitical weight.
“The Saudis still see the world through the days of the Ottoman
Empire, when Sunni Muslims ruled the roost and the Shiites were the
lowest class,” Frederic Hof, a retired military officer who is an expert
on the Middle East, told me. If Bandar was seen as bringing about a
shift in U.S. policy in favor of the Sunnis, he added, it would greatly
enhance his standing within the royal family.
The Saudis are driven by their fear that Iran could tilt the balance
of power not only in the region but within their own country. Saudi
Arabia has a significant Shiite minority in its Eastern Province, a
region of major oil fields; sectarian tensions are high in the province.
The royal family believes that Iranian operatives, working with local
Shiites, have been behind many terrorist attacks inside the kingdom,
according to Vali Nasr. “Today, the only army capable of containing
Iran”—the Iraqi Army—“has been destroyed by the United States. You’re
now dealing with an Iran that could be nuclear-capable and has a
standing army of four hundred and fifty thousand soldiers.” (Saudi
Arabia has seventy-five thousand troops in its standing army.)
Nasr went on, “The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have
deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis”—Sunni
extremists who view Shiites as apostates. “The last time Iran was a
threat, the Saudis were able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic
radicals. Once you get them out of the box, you can’t put them back.”
The Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a
target of Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence
among the family’s myriad princes. The princes are gambling that they
will not be overthrown as long as they continue to support religious
schools and charities linked to the extremists. The Administration’s new
strategy is heavily dependent on this bargain.
Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda
first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the
Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy
war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis
were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious
schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many
of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among
them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al
Qaeda, in 1988.
This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other
Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close
eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve
created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t
want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s
who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”
The Saudi said that, in his country’s view, it was taking a political
risk by joining the U.S. in challenging Iran: Bandar is already seen in
the Arab world as being too close to the Bush Administration. “We have
two nightmares,” the former diplomat told me. “For Iran to acquire the
bomb and for the United States to attack Iran. I’d rather the Israelis
bomb the Iranians, so we can blame them. If America does it, we will be
blamed.”
In the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the
Bush Administration have developed a series of informal understandings
about their new strategic direction. At least four main elements were
involved, the U.S. government consultant told me. First, Israel would be
assured that its security was paramount and that Washington and Saudi
Arabia and other Sunni states shared its concern about Iran.
Second, the Saudis would urge Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian party
that has received support from Iran, to curtail its anti-Israeli
aggression and to begin serious talks about sharing leadership with
Fatah, the more secular Palestinian group. (In February, the Saudis
brokered a deal at Mecca between the two factions. However, Israel and
the U.S. have expressed dissatisfaction with the terms.)
The third component was that the Bush Administration would work
directly with Sunni nations to counteract Shiite ascendance in the
region.
Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would
provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President
Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure
on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to
negotiations. Syria is a major conduit of arms to Hezbollah. The Saudi
government is also at odds with the Syrians over the assassination of
Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, in Beirut in 2005, for
which it believes the Assad government was responsible. Hariri, a
billionaire Sunni, was closely associated with the Saudi regime and with
Prince Bandar. (A U.N. inquiry strongly suggested that the Syrians were
involved, but offered no direct evidence; there are plans for another
investigation, by an international tribunal.)
Patrick Clawson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
depicted the Saudis’ coöperation with the White House as a significant
breakthrough. “The Saudis understand that if they want the
Administration to make a more generous political offer to the
Palestinians they have to persuade the Arab states to make a more
generous offer to the Israelis,” Clawson told me. The new diplomatic
approach, he added, “shows a real degree of effort and sophistication as
well as a deftness of touch not always associated with this
Administration. Who’s running the greater risk—we or the Saudis? At a
time when America’s standing in the Middle East is extremely low, the
Saudis are actually embracing us. We should count our blessings.”
The Pentagon consultant had a different view. He said that the
Administration had turned to Bandar as a “fallback,” because it had
realized that the failing war in Iraq could leave the Middle East “up
for grabs.”
JIHADIS IN LEBANON
The focus of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, after
Iran, is Lebanon, where the Saudis have been deeply involved in efforts
by the Administration to support the Lebanese government. Prime Minister
Fouad Siniora is struggling to stay in power against a persistent
opposition led by Hezbollah, the Shiite organization, and its leader,
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah has an extensive infrastructure, an
estimated two to three thousand active fighters, and thousands of
additional members.
Hezbollah has been on the State Department’s terrorist list since
1997. The organization has been implicated in the 1983 bombing of a
Marine barracks in Beirut that killed two hundred and forty-one military
men. It has also been accused of complicity in the kidnapping of
Americans, including the C.I.A. station chief in Lebanon, who died in
captivity, and a Marine colonel serving on a U.N. peacekeeping mission,
who was killed. (Nasrallah has denied that the group was involved in
these incidents.) Nasrallah is seen by many as a staunch terrorist, who
has said that he regards Israel as a state that has no right to exist.
Many in the Arab world, however, especially Shiites, view him as a
resistance leader who withstood Israel in last summer’s thirty-three-day
war, and Siniora as a weak politician who relies on America’s support
but was unable to persuade President Bush to call for an end to the
Israeli bombing of Lebanon. (Photographs of Siniora kissing Condoleezza
Rice on the cheek when she visited during the war were prominently
displayed during street protests in Beirut.)
The Bush Administration has publicly pledged the Siniora government a
billion dollars in aid since last summer. A donors’ conference in
Paris, in January, which the U.S. helped organize, yielded pledges of
almost eight billion more, including a promise of more than a billion
from the Saudis. The American pledge includes more than two hundred
million dollars in military aid, and forty million dollars for internal
security.
The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora
government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the
U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni
capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money
around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said.
The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you
think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad
guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have
the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we
like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.”
American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the
Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the
hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa
Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups,
though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time,
their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.
During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused
Nasrallah of attempting “to hijack the state,” but he also objected to
the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon.
“Salafis are sick and hateful, and I’m very much against the idea of
flirting with them,” he said. “They hate the Shiites, but they hate
Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It
will be ugly.”
Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British
intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in
Beirut, told me, “The Lebanese government is opening space for these
people to come in. It could be very dangerous.” Crooke said that one
Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its
pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee
camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two
hundred. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being
offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as
representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests—presumably to
take on Hezbollah,” Crooke said.
The largest of the groups, Asbat al-Ansar, is situated in the Ain
al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp. Asbat al-Ansar has received arms and
supplies from Lebanese internal-security forces and militias associated
with the Siniora government.
In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis
Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese
parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister—Saad inherited
more than four billion dollars after his father’s assassination—paid
forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic
militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had been arrested while trying to
establish an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon. The Crisis Group
noted that many of the militants “had trained in al-Qaeda camps in
Afghanistan.”
According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his
parliamentary majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh
Islamists, as well as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb
the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the previous year. (He
also arranged a pardon for Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian militia
leader, who had been convicted of four political murders, including the
assassination, in 1987, of Prime Minister Rashid Karami.) Hariri
described his actions to reporters as humanitarian.
In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora
government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside
Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have
a presence here,” he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or
Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict.”
The official said that his government was in a no-win situation.
Without a political settlement with Hezbollah, he said, Lebanon could
“slide into a conflict,” in which Hezbollah fought openly with Sunni
forces, with potentially horrific consequences. But if Hezbollah agreed
to a settlement yet still maintained a separate army, allied with Iran
and Syria, “Lebanon could become a target. In both cases, we become a
target.”
The Bush Administration has portrayed its support of the Siniora
government as an example of the President’s belief in democracy, and his
desire to prevent other powers from interfering in Lebanon. When
Hezbollah led street demonstrations in Beirut in December, John Bolton,
who was then the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., called them “part of the
Iran-Syria-inspired coup.”
Leslie H. Gelb, a past president of the Council on Foreign Relations,
said that the Administration’s policy was less pro democracy than “pro
American national security. The fact is that it would be terribly
dangerous if Hezbollah ran Lebanon.” The fall of the Siniora government
would be seen, Gelb said, “as a signal in the Middle East of the decline
of the United States and the ascendancy of the terrorism threat. And so
any change in the distribution of political power in Lebanon has to be
opposed by the United States—and we’re justified in helping any
non-Shiite parties resist that change. We should say this publicly,
instead of talking about democracy.”
Martin Indyk, of the Saban Center, said, however, that the United
States “does not have enough pull to stop the moderates in Lebanon from
dealing with the extremists.” He added, “The President sees the region
as divided between moderates and extremists, but our regional friends
see it as divided between Sunnis and Shia. The Sunnis that we view as
extremists are regarded by our Sunni allies simply as Sunnis.”
In January, after an outburst of street violence in
Beirut involving supporters of both the Siniora government and
Hezbollah, Prince Bandar flew to Tehran to discuss the political impasse
in Lebanon and to meet with Ali Larijani, the Iranians’ negotiator on
nuclear issues. According to a Middle Eastern ambassador, Bandar’s
mission—which the ambassador said was endorsed by the White House—also
aimed “to create problems between the Iranians and Syria.” There had
been tensions between the two countries about Syrian talks with Israel,
and the Saudis’ goal was to encourage a breach. However, the ambassador
said, “It did not work. Syria and Iran are not going to betray each
other. Bandar’s approach is very unlikely to succeed.”
Walid Jumblatt, who is the leader of the Druze minority in Lebanon
and a strong Siniora supporter, has attacked Nasrallah as an agent of
Syria, and has repeatedly told foreign journalists that Hezbollah is
under the direct control of the religious leadership in Iran. In a
conversation with me last December, he depicted Bashir Assad, the Syrian
President, as a “serial killer.” Nasrallah, he said, was “morally
guilty” of the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the murder, last
November, of Pierre Gemayel, a member of the Siniora Cabinet, because of
his support for the Syrians.
Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in
Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of
undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the
United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian
Muslim Brotherhood would be “the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said.
The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement
founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent
opposition to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir’s father. In 1982, the
Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city
for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people.
Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria. The
Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel.
Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, “We told Cheney that the basic link between
Iran and Lebanon is Syria—and to weaken Iran you need to open the door
to effective Syrian opposition.”
There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has
already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front
is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a
faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who
defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A.
officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and
financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial
support, but there is American involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who
now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the
knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s
members met with officials from the National Security Council, according
to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the
Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.
Jumblatt said he understood that the issue was a sensitive one for
the White House. “I told Cheney that some people in the Arab world,
mainly the Egyptians”—whose moderate Sunni leadership has been fighting
the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for decades—“won’t like it if the United
States helps the Brotherhood. But if you don’t take on Syria we will be
face to face in Lebanon with Hezbollah in a long fight, and one we
might not win.”
THE SHEIKH
On a warm, clear night early last December, in a
bombed-out suburb a few miles south of downtown Beirut, I got a preview
of how the Administration’s new strategy might play out in Lebanon.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, who has been in hiding,
had agreed to an interview. Security arrangements for the meeting were
secretive and elaborate. I was driven, in the back seat of a darkened
car, to a damaged underground garage somewhere in Beirut, searched with a
handheld scanner, placed in a second car to be driven to yet another
bomb-scarred underground garage, and transferred again. Last summer, it
was reported that Israel was trying to kill Nasrallah, but the
extraordinary precautions were not due only to that threat. Nasrallah’s
aides told me that they believe he is a prime target of fellow-Arabs,
primarily Jordanian intelligence operatives, as well as Sunni jihadists
who they believe are affiliated with Al Qaeda. (The government
consultant and a retired four-star general said that Jordanian
intelligence, with support from the U.S. and Israel, had been trying to
infiltrate Shiite groups, to work against Hezbollah. Jordan’s King
Abdullah II has warned that a Shiite government in Iraq that was close
to Iran would lead to the emergence of a Shiite crescent.) This is
something of an ironic turn: Nasrallah’s battle with Israel last summer
turned him—a Shiite—into the most popular and influential figure among
Sunnis and Shiites throughout the region. In recent months, however, he
has increasingly been seen by many Sunnis not as a symbol of Arab unity
but as a participant in a sectarian war.
Nasrallah, dressed, as usual, in religious garb, was waiting for me
in an unremarkable apartment. One of his advisers said that he was not
likely to remain there overnight; he has been on the move since his
decision, last July, to order the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers in a
cross-border raid set off the thirty-three-day war. Nasrallah has since
said publicly—and repeated to me—that he misjudged the Israeli
response. “We just wanted to capture prisoners for exchange purposes,”
he told me. “We never wanted to drag the region into war.”
Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately instigate
fitna,
an Arabic word that is used to mean “insurrection and fragmentation
within Islam.” “In my opinion, there is a huge campaign through the
media throughout the world to put each side up against the other,” he
said. “I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli
intelligence.” (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.) He
said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions, but
argued that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into
Lebanon. (Sunni-Shiite confrontations increased, along with violence, in
the weeks after we talked.)
Nasrallah said he believed that President Bush’s goal was “the
drawing of a new map for the region. They want the partition of Iraq.
Iraq is not on the edge of a civil war—there
is a civil war.
There is ethnic and sectarian cleansing. The daily killing and
displacement which is taking place in Iraq aims at achieving three Iraqi
parts, which will be sectarian and ethnically pure as a prelude to the
partition of Iraq. Within one or two years at the most, there will be
total Sunni areas, total Shiite areas, and total Kurdish areas. Even in
Baghdad, there is a fear that it might be divided into two areas, one
Sunni and one Shiite.”
He went on, “I can say that President Bush is lying when he says he
does not want Iraq to be partitioned. All the facts occurring now on the
ground make you swear he is dragging Iraq to partition. And a day will
come when he will say, ‘I cannot do anything, since the Iraqis want the
partition of their country and I honor the wishes of the people of
Iraq.’ ”
Nasrallah said he believed that America also wanted to bring about
the partition of Lebanon and of Syria. In Syria, he said, the result
would be to push the country “into chaos and internal battles like in
Iraq.” In Lebanon, “There will be a Sunni state, an Alawi state, a
Christian state, and a Druze state.” But, he said, “I do not know if
there will be a Shiite state.” Nasrallah told me that he suspected that
one aim of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon last summer was “the
destruction of Shiite areas and the displacement of Shiites from
Lebanon. The idea was to have the Shiites of Lebanon and Syria flee to
southern Iraq,” which is dominated by Shiites. “I am not sure, but I
smell this,” he told me.
Partition would leave Israel surrounded by “small tranquil states,”
he said. “I can assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided,
and the issue will reach to North African states. There will be small
ethnic and confessional states,” he said. “In other words, Israel will
be the most important and the strongest state in a region that has been
partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement
with each other. This is the new Middle East.”
In fact, the Bush Administration has adamantly resisted talk of
partitioning Iraq, and its public stances suggest that the White House
sees a future Lebanon that is intact, with a weak, disarmed Hezbollah
playing, at most, a minor political role. There is also no evidence to
support Nasrallah’s belief that the Israelis were seeking to drive the
Shiites into southern Iraq. Nevertheless, Nasrallah’s vision of a larger
sectarian conflict in which the United States is implicated suggests a
possible consequence of the White House’s new strategy.
In the interview, Nasrallah made mollifying gestures and promises
that would likely be met with skepticism by his opponents. “If the
United States says that discussions with the likes of us can be useful
and influential in determining American policy in the region, we have no
objection to talks or meetings,” he said. “But, if their aim through
this meeting is to impose their policy on us, it will be a waste of
time.” He said that the Hezbollah militia, unless attacked, would
operate only within the borders of Lebanon, and pledged to disarm it
when the Lebanese Army was able to stand up. Nasrallah said that he had
no interest in initiating another war with Israel. However, he added
that he was anticipating, and preparing for, another Israeli attack,
later this year.
Nasrallah further insisted that the street demonstrations in Beirut
would continue until the Siniora government fell or met his coalition’s
political demands. “Practically speaking, this government cannot rule,”
he told me. “It might issue orders, but the majority of the Lebanese
people will not abide and will not recognize the legitimacy of this
government. Siniora remains in office because of international support,
but this does not mean that Siniora can rule Lebanon.”
President Bush’s repeated praise of the Siniora government, Nasrallah
said, “is the best service to the Lebanese opposition he can give,
because it weakens their position vis-à-vis the Lebanese people and the
Arab and Islamic populations. They are betting on us getting tired. We
did not get tired during the war, so how could we get tired in a
demonstration?”
There is sharp division inside and outside the Bush
Administration about how best to deal with Nasrallah, and whether he
could, in fact, be a partner in a political settlement. The outgoing
director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, in a farewell
briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in January, said that
Hezbollah “lies at the center of Iran’s terrorist strategy. . . . It
could decide to conduct attacks against U.S. interests in the event it
feels its survival or that of Iran is threatened. . . . Lebanese
Hezbollah sees itself as Tehran’s partner.”
In 2002, Richard Armitage, then the Deputy Secretary of State, called
Hezbollah “the A-team” of terrorists. In a recent interview, however,
Armitage acknowledged that the issue has become somewhat more
complicated. Nasrallah, Armitage told me, has emerged as “a political
force of some note, with a political role to play inside Lebanon if he
chooses to do so.” In terms of public relations and political
gamesmanship, Armitage said, Nasrallah “is the smartest man in the
Middle East.” But, he added, Nasrallah “has got to make it clear that he
wants to play an appropriate role as the loyal opposition. For me,
there’s still a blood debt to pay”—a reference to the murdered colonel
and the Marine barracks bombing.
Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a
severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to
Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs
preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to
protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the
United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and
the Shiites.
“The most important story in the Middle East is the growth of
Nasrallah from a street guy to a leader—from a terrorist to a
statesman,” Baer added. “The dog that didn’t bark this summer”—during
the war with Israel—“is Shiite terrorism.” Baer was referring to fears
that Nasrallah, in addition to firing rockets into Israel and kidnapping
its soldiers, might set in motion a wave of terror attacks on Israeli
and American targets around the world. “He could have pulled the
trigger, but he did not,” Baer said.
Most members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities
acknowledge Hezbollah’s ongoing ties to Iran. But there is disagreement
about the extent to which Nasrallah would put aside Hezbollah’s
interests in favor of Iran’s. A former C.I.A. officer who also served in
Lebanon called Nasrallah “a Lebanese phenomenon,” adding, “Yes, he’s
aided by Iran and Syria, but Hezbollah’s gone beyond that.” He told me
that there was a period in the late eighties and early nineties when the
C.I.A. station in Beirut was able to clandestinely monitor Nasrallah’s
conversations. He described Nasrallah as “a gang leader who was able to
make deals with the other gangs. He had contacts with everybody.”
TELLING CONGRESS
The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine
operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with
intermediaries with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in
Washington, an earlier chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan
Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with
the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what
became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back
then—notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are involved in today’s
dealings.
Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned”
discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the
discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was
eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling
Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future
covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our
friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you
can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of
the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former
senior intelligence official said.
I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the
former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a
factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National
Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy
Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)
The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte
did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration,
when he served as Ambassador to Honduras. “Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m
not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off
the books, with no finding.’ ” (In the case of covert C.I.A. operations,
the President must issue a written finding and inform Congress.)
Negroponte stayed on as Deputy Secretary of State, he added, because “he
believes he can influence the government in a positive way.”
The government consultant said that Negroponte shared the White
House’s policy goals but “wanted to do it by the book.” The Pentagon
consultant also told me that “there was a sense at the senior-ranks
level that he wasn’t fully on board with the more adventurous
clandestine initiatives.” It was also true, he said, that Negroponte
“had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the
Middle East.”
The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of
oversight, was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots
of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a
variety of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where
billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such
transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and
the retired four-star general.
“This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council
aide told me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out
of it.” He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent
of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking,
‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur
hour.”
The issue of oversight is beginning to get more attention from
Congress. Last November, the Congressional Research Service issued a
report for Congress on what it depicted as the Administration’s blurring
of the line between C.I.A. activities and strictly military ones, which
do not have the same reporting requirements. And the Senate
Intelligence Committee, headed by Senator Jay Rockefeller, has scheduled
a hearing for March 8th on Defense Department intelligence activities.
Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, a Democrat who is a member of the
Intelligence Committee, told me, “The Bush Administration has frequently
failed to meet its legal obligation to keep the Intelligence Committee
fully and currently informed. Time and again, the answer has been ‘Trust
us.’ ” Wyden said, “It is hard for me to trust the Administration.”
♦
![[Mamdouh Hamza. Image from youm7.com]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_unGVgsymtY9KqhW-Qksy-vk6tcbFMg9xELAKrSrZGSAl9vcfisqXtlI9XJIAb7J5H_Dy2pan_Ci70GYeHETF_bp4AfQCGIO5_o_pginS8KIq-evYBECTg6EIr2ib0=s0-d "[Mamdouh Hamza. Image from youm7.com]")
