Middle East Inside Line: Hamas Division, Ahmadinejad with Syria & Hezbollah, Mitchell to Resign?

Hamas Divides over Shalit Case?: Haaretz says that negotiations over the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit have divided Hamas, with the resignation of Mahmoud A-Zahar, a senior member of the negotiating team. Despite the efforts of German negotiator Gerhard Konrad, Israeli leaders have said that they will not release some senior Palestinian leaders as demanded by Hamas. A-Zahar's argued with Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal over the handling of talks and then left his post.

Hamas' "Israel Spy" Speaks: Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hamas founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef who worked for Israel's Shin Bet security service, converted to Christianity, and moved to California, said by phone: "I wish I were in Gaza now. I would put on an army uniform and join Israel's special forces in order to liberate Gilad Shalit. If I were there, I could help. We wasted so many years with investigations and arrests to capture the very terrorists that they now want to release in return for Shalit. That must not be done."



Ahmadinejad with Assad and Nasrallah: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah met in Damascus late Thursda. According to Al-Manar, Ahmadinejad met with Palestinian officials from at least 10 political movements during his visit. During that meeting, the Iranian president and the Palestinians expressed their desire for cooperation against Israeli "threats, aggressions," and moves regarding Islamic holy sites in Israel.

Mitchell to Resign?: Hadith a-Nass, a Nazareth-based daily Arab source, reported that special US Mideast envoy George Mitchell has requested to resign. The report claims that Mitchell is disillusioned over the bias of the State Department towards Israel and his failure to advance the resumption of peace negotiations. However, it is said that the White House has turned down Mitchell's request.

Palestine Moves if No Talks with Israel: Palestinian Authority chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, in an article, "The Political Situation in Light of Developments with the U.S. Administration and Israeli Government and Hamas's Continued Coup d'etat", threatens three steps unless negotiations with Israel are resumed.

One is an end to security cooperation with Israel, including the disbanding of the Palestinian security forces which have been trained by the US officials. The second is the nullification of the Oslo Accords and even the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority. The third? Abandoning pursuit of a two-state solution with Israel, and instead working toward a binational state that would exist on all the lands of historic Palestine.

Israel Expanding Settlements?: Haaretz has learned that Israel has plans to build another 600 homes in East Jerusalem.

Iran: Mousavi, The Regime, & "The Prerequisites of Escalation"

From The Newest Deal:

In his 17th statement, Mir-Hossein Mousavi made five specific points that he deemed necessary to start the political (and national) reconciliation process. The proposal lead to a noticeable uptick in the weeks leading up to 22 Bahman in talk of the need for national "unity" and also garnered much attention from Iranian intellectuals and dissidents. Ultimately, the regime's more radical elements reemerged and silenced the chatter before the security apparatus prevented a strong opposition showing on the revolution's 31st anniversary. But Mousavi's "five points," as they have come to be called, still carry much weight. Generally, they are:

1. Government accountability for post-election violations


2. Legislation of new election laws that would safeguard reform-minded candidates from regime's current vetting process


3. Release of all political prisoners


4. Freedom of the press and political-neutrality on state-run IRIB television


5. Freedom to assemble, as guaranteed by the Islamic Republic's constitution

Were these five conditions to be met, the Green movement would arguably have the breathing space it needs to mobilize and begin the long process of transforming Iranian society. For if anything became apparent in the weeks leading up to and after the June election, it was that Iran has undergone an awakening. It has simply been the repression that the above five grievances capture that has prevented the social movement's aspirations from coming to fruition.


Therefore, perhaps an alternative frame can be adopted to view Mousavi's five points. As a recent Tehran Bureau profile wonderfully captured, the reluctant leader of Iran's opposition has matured into a rather shrewd, cautious, and patient figure. While circumstances prevent him from voicing such a sentiment in public, the leader of the Green movement likely recognizes that the regime has reached a point of no return. The tyranny, the executions, the outright fascism -- all of it is, to quote his Mousavi from an interview on the eve of 22 Bahman, an outgrowth of the "revolution's failures" and the "roots of tyranny and dictatorship" that persist in society from the reign of the Shah. These are damning (and yet still very measured) words from one of the Islamic Republic's own founding fathers.

Thus, seeing the regime in this light gives Mousavi's five points new significance. The demands would no longer be five steps the regime must take in order to rescue the country from its current crisis, but rather, five blatant and particularly egregious shortcomings that the regime will inevitably be unwilling to address, and that will thus escalate the conflict between the Greens and the regime. For in the wake of the June coup d'etat, if one thing has become clear it is that those currently in control will never meet any such conditions, even if moderate voices within their camp plead otherwise. Political calculus has been replaced by megalomania, with the possibility of reconciliation falling victim.

And so if these five points are instead five tests that the regime must fail before confrontation with the regime escalates to the next phase, the news emerging this week from the Expediency Council and Assembly of Experts -- both bodies chaired by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani -- is indeed very telling. First, the Council began considering aproposal being pushed by Rafsanjani and Mohsen Rezaei that would take away the Guardian Council's vetting role and instead give it to a new "National Election Committee" of sorts, which would conveniently be under Rafsanjani's supervision in the Expediency Council. (Ironically, the proposal to revise the country's election laws was made to Supreme Leader two years ago, after which he ordered for a new plan to be drawn up).

Make no mistake: this would essentially be a first step in meeting the second condition laid of Mousavi's 17th statement. Were the change to the vetting process be enacted, the Guardian Council would no longer be able to disqualify candidates from running for president or parliament, as it did when it disqualified all but four candidates from running in the 2009 presidential election.

The chances of the plan coming to fruition, however, appear slim. With the regime still reeling from the aftermath of the June elections and still off-balance going forward, it would have no reason to suddenly invite more political opposition in Majlis through freer elections in 2012. Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the ultra-conservative Kayhandaily and someone who is regarded as being close to Khamenei, has already come out on the attack, stating that any propsoal to create such an electoral commission would be "against the Islamic Republic's constitution."

No sooner than the proposal was being discussed, more divisive conservative rhetoric emerged from the other body Rafsanjani chairs, the Assembly of Experts. In a statement reported by Fars News, the Assembly allegedly declared that the regime's patience with the opposition "ended in December after sedition leaders missed numerous chances to repent and return into the gown of the revolution." (Enduring America notes, however, that the statement is missing on the Assembly of Experts' official website and that several prominent members were absent from the Assembly's two-day meeting). Khamenei, for his part, has reiterated the statement's pronouncement in his own statement, saying that those who still do not accept the June presidential election result "would be disqualified from participating in the Islamic system."

The obstacles in revising the regime's election laws aside, the other four points from Mousavi's 17th statement have gone unheeded as well. Saeed Mortazavi, though implicated by Majlis [Iran's Parliament] in the Kahrizak torture-murders, remains a free man. Rather than having political prisoners freed, the country recently saw the greatest wave of arrests sweep dissidents since late June and early July. Meanwhile, state-controlled media remains entirely propagandized while any questions regarding citizens' right to freely assemble were surly answered by the enormous security presence deployed on 22 Bahman.

Not even appearing to consider the proposals, the regime seems bent on acting counter to each of Mousavi's five points. Despite the intentions of some del-soozan, (or "heartbroken" moderate conservatives), any promise for political reconciliation also appears dead. Rather, the crisis seems destined to continue indefinitely, and with neither side refusing to back down, Mousavi's five grievances may come to be prerequisites for the regime to unconditionally reject before the opposition begins to decide on how to take the uprising to the next level.

This is the New Iraq (US "Democracy"/Troops Peripheral)

Journalist Tom Ricks, author of two high-profile books on the US and the Iraq War, featured this comment on his blog from Nir Rosen, who has been notable for his reportage from Iraq. I found it illuminating for several reasons:

1. Rosen offers a pragmatic, rather than wish-driven, assessment that Iraq will not return to sectarian war. That prediction, which is being hotly debated amongst Iraq specialists, is one of the key issues behind and beyond the forthcoming Iraqi national elections on 7 March.

2. Don't confuse this, however, with "democracy", which is likely to be the superficial headline in much press coverage. Democracy promotion was never the goal of the Bush Administration when it invaded Iraq, and it is not the primary concern of the Obama Administration, either. This episode is power politics.

3. And an irony: Rosen's assessment highlights that the US military is largely a bystander in this process. There will continue to be a running argument as to whether the vaunted "surge" of 2007/8 created the space for a measure of stability and security, but those matters are now in the hands of Iraqis. Not sure, however, that Ricks will appreciate this point even as he posts Rosen's thoughts: he is one of the spokesmen for the US military's current push to delay and even break President Obama's declared date for withdrawal of American forces.

It's been frustrating to read the latest hysteria about sectarianism returning to Iraq, the threat of a new civil war looming, or even the notion that Iraq is "unraveling." I left Iraq today after an intense mission on behalf of Refugees International. My colleague Elizabeth Campbell and I traveled comfortably and easily throughout Baghdad, Salahedin, Diyala and Babil. We were out among Iraqis until well into the night every day, often in remote villages, traveling in a normal Toyota Corolla. Our main hassle was traffic and having to go through a thousand security checkpoints a day. Stay tuned for our report next month about the humanitarian crisis in Iraq (which deserves more attention than political squabbles) and the situation of Iraqis displaced since 2003. Stay tuned for my own article about what I found politically as well. And finally stay tuned later this year for my book on the Iraqi civil war, the surge, counterinsurgency and the impact of the war in Iraq on the region.



From the beginning of the occupation the US government and media focused too much on elite level politics and on events in the Green Zone, neglecting the Iraqi people, the "street," neighborhoods, villages, mosques. They were too slow to recognize the growing resistance to the occupation, too slow to recognize that there was a civil war and now perhaps for the same reason many are worried that there is a "new" sectarianism or a new threat of civil war. The US military is not on the streets and cannot accurately perceive Iraq, and journalists are busy covering the elections and the debaathification controversy, but not reporting enough from outside Baghdad, or even inside Baghdad.

Iraqis on the street are no longer scared of rival militias so much, or of being exterminated and they no longer have as much support for the religious parties. Maliki is still perceived by many to be not very sectarian and not very religious, and more of a "nationalist." Another thing people would notice if they focused on "the street" is that the militias are finished, the Awakening Groups/SOIs are finished, so violence is limited to assassinations with silencers and sticky bombs and the occasional spectacular terrorist attack -- all manageable and not strategically important, even if tragic. Politicians might be talking the sectarian talk but Iraqis have grown very cynical.

When you talk to people they tell you that the sectarian phase is over. Of course with enough fear it could come back, but Shiites do not feel threatened by any other group, and Sunnis aren't being rounded up, the security forces provide decent enough security, and they are pervasive, there is no reason for people to cling to militias in self defense and besides militiamen are still being rounded up, I just don't see enough fuel here for a conflagration -- leaving aside the Arab/Kurdish fault line, of course. (Though if Maliki went to war with the Kurds that would only further unite Sunni and Shiite Arabs.) The Iraqi Security Forces like Maliki enough, even if they prefer Alawi. The Iraqi army will not fall apart on sectarian lines, it would attack Sunni and Shiite militias, if there were any, but these militias are emasculated. They can assassinate and dispatch car bombs but they can't hold ground, they can't engage in firefights with checkpoints. The Iraqi Security Forces might arrest a lot of innocent people, but they're also rounding up "bad guys" and getting a lot of tips from civilians. The Iraqi Security Forces might be brutal, sometimes corrupt, but they no longer act as death squads, they take their role very seriously, perhaps too seriously, but these days anything is better than the recent anarchy and sectarian massacres.

Of course Maliki is in the end still a Shiite sectarian actor and has a core constituency, as Chalabi cleverly forced him to reveal, but Maliki is not pro-Iranian (though Iran is too often demonized as well as if the dichotomy is pro-American and good or pro-Iranian and bad). It's not a dichotomy of pro-Iranian or nationalist either.

It's not about whether Iraqis are sectarian or not. They are, though the vitriol and hatred have decreased. It's that they are not afraid of the other sect anymore. Fear is what led to the militias taking power and to the political and military mobilization along sectarian lines. There are attempts by some Shiite and Sunni parties to scare people again but in my conversations I feel it is failing. The fear is gone and the Iraqi Security Forces fill the security void, even if it's not pretty.

There is concern about Sunnis being disenfranchised or getting the shaft. But they have been disenfranchised since 2003. In part they disenfranchised themselves but anyway none of them expect to get unshafted. It's already done. The government is in Shiite hands and now it's a question of whether it will remain in the relatively good Shiite hands of [Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki, who provides security and doesn't bring down an iron fist on you unless you provoke him (sort of like Saddam), or the dirty corrupt and dangerous Shiite hands of Maliki's rivals -- [Ibrahim al-] Jaafari, [Abdul Aziz al-] Hakim, etc. I think these elections mean a lot more to Americans (as usual) and maybe to Iraqi elites than they do to Iraqis.

Besides, what can Sunnis do? Nothing, they're screwed and they have to accept it, and they have. The alternative is far worse for them. Sunnis in the region will not go to war alongside the Sunnis of Iraq. That moment came and went in 2006. Iraqi Sunnis don't even have a single leader who is charismatic and has real appeal, they're divided among themselves and these days your average Iraqi just isn't that into politics. I've heard it hundreds of times by now, they blame the religious parties, they say they got fooled and now they understand. Now that's not completely true, but the militias were able to mobilize people because of a security vacuum. These days it doesn't matter how remote and shitty the village I visit is, there are Iraqi Security Forces, and people have good things to say about them. Compared to the first three years of the occupation, Sunnis seem downright docile, maybe bitter or wistful, maybe angry, but their leadership is emasculated, in jail, abroad, just trying to survive, or just trying to make money.

Maliki will probably emerge the victor in the elections. His more sectarian and corrupt Shiite rivals are discredited and unpopular, but more importantly, he is an authoritarian ruler in the Middle East, he would have to be really incompetent if he couldn't stay in power. If Karzai could do it, then Maliki should be able to as well. Of course there is nothing uniquely Middle Eastern about this. In fact maybe looking at post-Soviet states is useful -- that is, the new ruler will not readily relinquish control, even if he has to bend the rules a bit, or operate outside the constitution. This has happened in Asia, Africa, and other places in transition. I hate to admit that I hope Maliki wins. He's the best of all the realistic alternatives. It's not like a more secular candidate is likely to win, so if it's not Maliki it will be Jaafari or [Ahmad] Chalabi. Frankly this is a rare case where I hope Maliki violates the constitution, acts in some kind of authoritarian way to make sure he wins the elections, because the alternative is fragmentation, or a criminal, sectarian kleptocratic Shiite elite taking over, and then Iraq might unravel. For now it's still "raveling."

Latest Iran Video: The Rigi "Confession" (25 February)

Jundullah leader Abdolmalek Rigi makes his "confession" on Iranian state television:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jPxQMBJ3uk&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Iran Analysis: Khamenei's Not-So-Big Push

No doubt this morning about the big news out of Iran. On Thursday, the Supreme Leader tried to lock down the security of his position once and for all, declaring that opposition leaders “have lost their credibility by denying the results of the elections. They did not surrender to the law and committed a great sin....[They] have stepped down from the rescue ship and have lost their credibility to remain within the framework of the Islamic establishment.”

Iran Follow-Up: Interpreting the Assembly of Experts “The Certainty of the Uncertain”
Iran Analysis: The Assembly of Experts Mystery

So that's an unambiguous warning to Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi to shut up, for example, giving up on Karroubi's latest call for a referendum on the Guardian Council and for the regime's permission for mass protest. But Khamenei has made such statements before: he did so just after the June election, before the Qods Day marches in September, and before the Ashura demonstrations in December.


What is distinctive this time is that the Supreme Leader issued his declaration in a meeting with the Assembly of Experts, which had just finished its two-day meeting. The regime blueprint was for the Assembly to add its 86-member weight to a resolution of the crisis; the problem is that, for reasons which will take some time to establish, it did not so. The "statement" published on Fars News condemning the "sedition" of the opposition (was it a draft? a "leak" from a few pro-Khamenei or pro-Ahmadinejad members of the Assembly?) was never officially confirmed.

So, in the absence of that resolution, here was the Supreme Leader's message. It was not the authorisation of the arrest of Mousavi and Karroubi (although, if either make a high-profile declaration with further demands and the prospect of a rally, this may change). Despite the insistence that the June election was settled, it was not support of President Ahmadinejad.

It was, to use the language of American football, "Protect Your Quarterback". Me.

Personal security, for the moment, equates to the security of the system of velayat-e-faqih (clerical supremacy). And, for the moment, that is accepted by all high-profile political figures. For all his ambiguities, Rafsanjani has done somersaults to be unambiguous on this point. Mousavi has never made a direct attack on Khamenei's position. And Karroubi, despite his "Mr Khamenei" statement last month, has ensured that his demands are narrowly focused on certain institutions --- the Iranian judiciary, the Guardian Council, the Presidency --- and not on velayat-e-faqih.

So, Supreme Leader/Quarterback, you're OK. And that is about all that can be settled....for the moment.