( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The recent Israeli measures against the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)—including two controversial bills to ban UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory and areas under Israel’s control—are certainly a distressing development. In the early years of Israel’s statehood, after its 1948 establishment, Israel’s UN membership was held up for two years due to unresolved questions around the status of displaced Palestinians. The United Nations was still quite young when it passed Resolution 194, which recognized the rights of Palestinian refugees to return home and receive compensation for their losses—a commitment that has influenced rounds of talks over the decades.

Since then, this resolution has been a pivotal point in discussions between Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinians have continued to demand that Israel acknowledge its role in this forced displacement and provide compensation, seeing it not only as a matter of historical fact but as an overdue moral obligation. Today, Israel’s treatment of UNRWA reflects the chronic tension between its own state objectives and a humanitarian question the UN has never abandoned. Israel’s recent actions raise pricking questions about its commitment to that international consensus and the lingering need for accountability in this conflict.

The United States, in order to address the dire conditions faced by Palestinian refugees along Israel’s borders, played a major role in establishing UNRWA in 1950. This agency, originally backed by substantial American funding, became a critical lifeline for Palestinian refugees across the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, continuously serving a population that is now almost six million. Since its inception, UNRWA has remained a purely humanitarian outfit in every sense, focused solely on delivering essential services such as education, food, medical care, and fuel to a community facing immense hardship.

“UN in Gaza,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024.

However, this lifeline faced a serious setback during the Trump administration, which squeezed U.S. contributions. Biden, due to mounting pressure from pro-Israel factions in Congress, partly upheld this a stance . The funding gap has emboldened Israel’s right-wing extremist leaders to diminish the significance of the Palestinian refugee crisis in global discourse. Obviously, without UNRWA, Palestinians risk losing their most vital support system, which provides stability in an otherwise precarious situation.

Although UNRWA operates strictly within its UN mandate, its mere presence has become a focal point in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Over the years, Israel’s supporters have worked to erode the agency’s reputation, urging major contributors to withhold funding or, in some cases, presenting dubious claims about UNRWA’s operations. The accusation that UNRWA staff were somehow complicit in Hamas’ attacks on October 7 was promptly investigated by a special UN committee. The findings were unequivocal: no evidence linked UNRWA staff to any wrongdoing. The inquiry exposed and rebutted Israel’s baseless allegations.

The UN inquiry divulged that Israel hadn’t provided names or credible information to substantiate these allegations. In fact, UNRWA had been requesting such details from Israel since 2011, with no response. This episode has exposed the continued challenges faced by UNRWA in executing its mandate amidst politicized pressure from Israel.

In a stunning turn of events on October 28, Israel’s Knesset overwhelmingly voted to ban the UNRWA from operating within Israel, with 92 out of 120 members supporting the move. In a second measure, 87 Knesset members also approved a ban on Israeli state authorities interacting with UNRWA, effectively hobbling its capacity to operate in the Occupied Territories. This week, foreign ministers from Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the UK warned of the “devastating consequences” this ban could unleash across the West Bank and Gaza.

Shortly before this, in another blatant display of brutal aggression, Israeli authorities seized the land in East Jerusalem housing UNRWA’s headquarters, reportedly to construct 1,440 new settlement units. This move contravenes international law.

The timing and audacity of these actions have left the international community grappling with a troubling reality. Israel’s plans to dismantle the very mechanisms designed to support and assist vulnerable Palestinians will not only aggravate the humanitarian crisis but also deepen the operational problems for the agency. In choosing to silence the very agency tasked with aiding displaced Palestinians, Israel is seriously damaging its own legitimacy on the global stage. In so doing, Israel is actually strengthening the case of those who question that very legitimacy. Ironically, in attempting to erase the presence of Palestinian refugees from its landscape, Israel’s actions could very well enhance the visibility of that issue.

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – “Israel has the right to defend itself,” President Joseph Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and countless commentators have declared multiple times over the past year. But does Israel in fact have such a right?

Even if there were an Israeli right to self-defense, such a right would be limited by the standard of proportionality. This is not only the requirement of proportionality for any individual military operation, but of Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks taken as a whole: are the harmful effects of Israel’s military campaign outweighed by the benefits of achieving the claimed legitimate aims of the campaign?

Israel’s response certainly does not meet this standard given that it has subjected the people of Gaza to what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has deemed a “plausible” genocide. Amnesty International called the “intensity and cruelty” of the Israeli government’s bombardment “unparalleled,” with a “pace of death” The New York Times found to have “few precedents in this century.” Oxfam and Human Rights Watch characterized Israel’s military actions as “indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks,” and the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry found a “concerted policy” to destroy Gaza’s health-care system.

But does Israel have a right to self-defense at all?

Digging into the Arguments

On one level, of course it does. When confronted by someone about to commit an unjust act, such as killing a civilian, there is a right to self-defense. Consider a Soviet or American soldier in World War II preparing to unjustly slaughter a group of Japanese or German civilians. Even though the victims are citizens of evil regimes engaged in an unjust war, they still are not morally liable to being butchered. Therefore, a Japanese or German soldier, despite participating in an unjust war, would be justified in using force in defense of the endangered civilians.

Accordingly, Israeli security forces were engaged in legitimate self-defense when they acted to defend the innocent victims of October 7. Moreover, Israeli civilians who participated in “individual self-defense or defense of others” on that day did not thereby become lawful military targets. (Otherwise, as the International Committee of the Red Cross noted, “this would have the absurd consequence of legitimizing a previously unlawful attack.”) They too were engaged in legitimate self-defense.

On another level, however, Israel does not have the right of self-defense to an attack against its illegal long-standing occupation. Russian troops in occupied Ukraine cannot claim self-defense when they are attacked by Ukrainian forces. Japanese troops couldn’t claim self-defense when they were attacked by guerrillas in occupied China or the occupied Philippines during World War II. Russia’s and Japan’s occupations were illegal and their armies’ only morally legitimate recourse in the face of resistance was to end those occupations. In the same way, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal and unjust and Israel cannot claim self-defense when Palestinians struggle by legitimate means to end the occupation. The proper Israeli response to such Palestinian actions is not self-defense but full withdrawal from the occupied territories.

Nor can Israel’s military operations in Gaza be deemed self-defense as a means of freeing hostages and thus ending an unjust abuse of civilians. The overwhelming majority of freed hostages were released in exchanges (105) or unilateral Hamas actions (4), while the number freed by the IDF (8) was almost certainly exceeded by the number inadvertently killed by them and far exceeded by the number of Palestinian civilians killed in the rescue efforts. Family members of the hostages charge that, in rejecting negotiations, “Netanyahu is knowingly, deliberately and protractedly abandoning the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.” A former hostage family spokesperson stated that they had learned that “Hamas had offered on October 9 or 10 to release all the civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering the [Gaza] Strip, but the [Israeli] government rejected the offer.” Israel’s assault on Gaza has not been aimed to secure the release of its hostages but to defend (and expand) its illegal occupation, which it has no right to do.

Illegal Occupation

Since the ICJ only issued its advisory opinion declaring the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories to be illegal in July 2024, one might argue that the occupation wasn’t illegal before that date. But the Court’s reasoning did not draw upon any recently occurring event that had rendered the occupation illegal. Rather it pointed to territorial acquisition and denial of self-determination — longstanding features of Israeli policy:

The Court considers that the violations by Israel of the prohibition of the acquisition of territory by force and of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination have a direct impact on the legality of the continued presence of Israel, as an occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful. (Para 261)

In any event, the illegality of the occupation was identified before this ICJ advisory opinion. In 2017, the Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Michael Lynk submitted a report endorsing the four elements of a test proposed by international law scholars for whether an occupation was legal: (a) The belligerent occupier cannot annex any of the occupied territory; (b) The belligerent occupation must be temporary and cannot be either permanent or indefinite; and the occupant must seek to end the occupation and return the territory to the sovereign as soon as reasonably possible; (c) During the occupation, the belligerent occupier is to act in the best interests of the people under occupation; and (d) The belligerent occupier must administer the occupied territory in good faith, including acting in full compliance with its duties and obligations under international law and as a member of the United Nations. Lynk found that Israel failed all four elements of this test.

And in 2022, the report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found Israel’s occupation to be illegal, focusing “on two indicators that may be used to determine the illegality of the occupation: the permanence of the Israeli occupation, … and actions amounting to annexation, including unilateral actions taken to dispose of parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory as if Israel held sovereignty over it.”

Israel argues that its occupation is legal (or even not an occupation at all) because it acquired the West Bank and Gaza as the result of a defensive war against an attack waged by neighboring Arab states. In fact, however, in 1967 it was Israel that attacked first. Those who excuse Israel’s action as justified preemption point to the Arab armies mobilizing on its borders. But whatever panic there was among the public, those who understood the military situation — policymakers in Tel Aviv and Washington — knew quite well that even if the Arabs had struck first, Israel would have easily prevailed in any war. Egypt’s leader was looking for a way out and had agreed to send his vice-president to Washington for negotiations. Before that could happen, Israel attacked. Menachem Begin, then an Israeli cabinet member, recalled that we “had a choice.” Egyptian Army concentrations did not prove that Nasser was about to attack. “We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

Yet, even if it were the case that the 1967 war was wholly defensive on Israel’s part, this could not justify Israel’s continued rule over Palestinians. A people do not lose their right to self-determination because governments that had no legal or moral right to be ruling parts of Palestine (Jordan and Egypt) went to war. Whatever penalties would have been warranted to impose on Amman and Cairo for having started the war, there was no basis for punishing the Palestinian population by forcing them to submit to foreign military occupation.

Moreover, as Michael Bothe has noted, even if Israel’s war in 1967 had been a lawful act of self-defense, “taking advantage of the situation for the purpose of annexation … would go beyond the limits of what is allowed as self-defense[:] namely[,] measures which are militarily necessary and proportionate means of self-protection.”

“Self Defense,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Crop2Comic, 2024

Israel argues that since it withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005, the territory is no longer occupied. But both legally and practically, Israel’s withdrawal did not end the occupation. As John Dugard, the U.N.’s then Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, noted in 2006, Gaza remained under Israel’s control, with Israel retaining control of Gaza’s air space, sea space, and (with Egypt) land borders. And Human Rights Watch stated in 2008 that “even though Israel withdrew its permanent military forces and settlers in 2005, it remains an occupying power in Gaza under international law because it continues to exercise effective day-to-day control over key aspects of life in Gaza.” As the Israeli human rights organization Gisha observed, if Israel had truly ended the occupation, then it could not prohibit Gaza from trading by sea or air with other nations, or prevent people from coming in and out, or declare “no go zones” within the territory.

The same conclusion follows from basic principles of morality. Regardless of the legal status of the occupation, it surely cannot be morally acceptable to maintain a people under occupation and deny them self-determination for more than 50 years. Accordingly, on moral grounds there can be no right to self-defense on behalf of maintaining that occupation.

The Invasion of Lebanon

The Biden administration has used the same “Israel has the right to defend itself” language with respect to Netanyahu’s war against Hezbollah. Does Israel have such a right in this case?

As in Gaza, Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon has placed civilians at grave risk of harm. But it’s not just Israel’s illegitimate war tactics that negate any Israeli right to self-defense here. One of the rules of customary international law is that the exercise of the right of self-defense is subject to the condition of necessity. There is a corresponding moral standard from just war theory of last resort. According to these principles, it cannot be right to go to war when there exists some other, less violent, and less costly (in terms of human lives) means of achieving a just cause.

On October 8, 2023, after Israel launched its assault on Gaza in response to Hamas’s attack the previous day, Hezbollah fired some rockets at military targets in Shebaa Farms, a small piece of land occupied by Israel. Lebanon claims Shebaa Farms; Israel says it is part of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, conquered from Syria in 1967 and annexed by Israel in 1981. Israel’s annexation was declared null and void by a unanimous Security Council resolution and recognized by no country in the world other than Israel, until the Trump administration did so in 2019. Syria claims Shebaa Farms belongs to Lebanon, but neither Syria nor Israel has responded to the UN secretary general’s 2007 proposal for the demarcation of the border.

In any event, Israel retaliated for the Hezbollah attack, and the two sides proceeded to exchange fire across the border, with a majority of the projectiles coming from Israel, and with a large majority of the casualties, both military and civilian, occurring in Lebanon. Tensions increased over the summer, when what was likely an errant Hezbollah rocket killed 12 youngsters in a Druze village in the Golan. Israel assassinated a Hezbollah commander in Beirut (along with several civilians, wounding dozens of others), air strikes and rocket fire ensued, but by the end of August, the border had quieted down. Then in mid-September, Israel unleashed its pager and walkie-talkie attacks (condemned as war crimes by most human rights groups). Israel followed with extensive air bombardment and then a ground invasion into Lebanon. Was this justified self-defense?

Israel could have ended the Hezbollah rocket attacks at any point over the past year had it accepted a ceasefire in Gaza. (During the brief Gaza ceasefire in November 2023, Hezbollah had held its fire.) Of course, no country wants to be pressured to choose a policy by military threat, but morally and legally, the decision as to whether to accept a Gaza ceasefire was not optional for Israel. When one is committing massive human rights violations, it is not discretionary whether to continue doing so. As B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, stated in January, the only way to implement the ICJ order calling on Israel to prevent acts of genocide “is through an immediate ceasefire. It is impossible to protect civilian life as long as the fighting continues.” In May, the ICJ ordered Israel to end its Rafah offensive. Again, for the Israeli government this wasn’t  an option.

Israel had another opportunity to bring calm to the border, and perhaps much more, without needing to unleash a new, major war.

A few days after the pager bomb attacks, the United States and France drafted a call for a 21-day pause in fighting to allow for diplomacy aimed at reaching a longer-term truce. Washington informed the UN and Lebanon that Israel agreed. The New York Times reported that “the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, also sent word through an intermediary that his powerful militia supported the call for a cease-fire.” On September 25, the plan was publicly announced, with the backing of Australia, Canada, the European Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Qatar. Peace seemed possible. U.S. officials even  expressed hope that the peace might extend to Gaza.

According to The Times report, however:

Two days later, before diplomats could draw up a detailed cease-fire proposal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel declared at the United Nations that Israel must “defeat Hezbollah in Lebanon.” Soon after, huge bombs fell on Beirut’s southern outskirts, killing Mr. Nasrallah and extinguishing any immediate prospect of a cease-fire.… progress toward a cease-fire was further along than previously known, but it was halted abruptly when Israel killed Mr. Nasrallah.

The Times noted that the killing of Nasrallah was “the second time in 10 weeks that Israel had quashed progress toward a cease-fire by striking a militia leader; Israel’s assassination in July of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, led to the hardening of that group against any Gaza cease-fire proposal.”

Nasrallah certainly had blood on his hands. Hezbollah’s role in Syria during the civil war there was reprehensible. But his killing and the ensuing war can hardly be described as Israel exercising its right to defend itself. Rather than self-defense, these represented steps toward an unnecessary—and hence unjust— war, with all the horrible consequences that entails.

Self-defense is a basic right of individuals and countries. But it is not justified self-defense when it represents the defense of an unjust occupation. And it is not legitimate self-defense when war was neither necessary nor a last resort.

Stephen R. Shalom is emeritus professor of political science at William Paterson University in New Jersey. He is on the editorial board of New Politics and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace of Northern NJ.

Via Foreign Policy in Focus ]]> https://www.juancole.com/2024/10/between-western-netanyahu.html Mon, 28 Oct 2024 04:06:16 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=221217 By Imran Khalid | –

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – It took nearly a year for French President Emmanuel Macron to confront the uncomfortable truth: the path to peace in Gaza cannot be paved with more weapons to Israel. His recent remarks, sharp and unapologetic, reflected the urgency of shifting away from military escalation. “I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza,” Macron declared, laying bare his stance. He was unequivocal in his message, adding, “If you call for a ceasefire, it’s only consistent that you do not supply weapons of war.”

Although Macron clarified that France does not supply Israel with offensive arms, his pointed comments seemed aimed at the United States, which remains Israel’s primary arms provider. Washington and other European countries, despite acknowledging that these weapons have been used against civilians, continues to send shipments, fueling a conflict in Gaza that has already claimed more than 42,000 lives. Macron’s statement contributes to an ongoing shift in Europe’s approach that challenges the long-standing, uncritical support for Israel’s military actions.

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, visibly agitated by Macron’s remarks, fired back with a familiar rhetoric of defense, invoking Israel’s right to self-protection. “As Israel fights the forces of barbarism led by Iran, all civilized nations should stand by us,” Netanyahu declared, calling Macron’s stance “a disgrace.” In a video addressed directly to the French president, Netanyahu doubled down, stating, “Israel will win with or without their support. But their shame will linger long after this war is over.”

His remarks underscore the widening rift between Israel and some of its traditional Western allies as the conflict escalates. Yet, the undercurrent of this diplomatic quarrel suggests something far more significant than a routine policy disagreement. Macron’s hesitation to unconditionally support Israel—despite the West’s long-standing alignment with its security needs—indicates a growing recognition among European leaders that Israel’s operations have surpassed legitimate self-defense and entered the realm of excessive, unchecked aggression.

As the violence grinds on, Macron’s call for a political solution reflects an emerging European discomfort with the status quo. The question now is whether Macron’s bluntness will push other leaders, especially in the United States and Germany, to reconsider their own complicity in fueling this relentless cycle of violence. For years, European nations have trod lightly around Israel’s military actions, particularly in its volatile engagements with Palestinian territories. But more European capitals are now witnessing massive protests against Israel, indicating increasingly discomfort in Europe with Netanyahu’s expansionist approach to the conflict, which is designed to shore up his domestic political survival rather than achieve long-term security.

“J’accuse,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Netanyahu’s heated response to Macron is particularly notable for its timing: October 7. The anniversary of the devastating violence that ignited yet another round of suffering for both Israelis and Palestinians should be a day of solemn reflection, yet Netanyahu has used it to double down on his military offensives on all sides of Israeli borders. Instead of working toward a resolution, his government has opted for broader assaults, widening the conflict, and targeting civilian infrastructure in a way that has drawn mounting international condemnation.

At the heart of Netanyahu’s strategy lies a grim reality: his political survival hinges on perpetuating conflict. Under intense scrutiny for his domestic failures and facing an increasingly fractured political landscape at home, Netanyahu has leaned into a hawkish narrative to rally support from his far-right base. By stoking fear and framing Israel as under siege, Netanyahu has stifled criticism from within his own country while marginalizing voices calling for a peaceful resolution.

Netanyahu’s war is not about elections or the protection of Israeli citizens. It is about staying in power. Expanding the conflict offers him a chance to maintain his political grip, even as international sentiment shifts uneasily away from unconditional support for Israel. Netanyahu’s actions have raised serious concerns about war crimes, particularly in light of Israel’s reported strikes on civilian areas and humanitarian corridors. Although Israel claims its right to target Hamas militants, the disproportionate toll on Palestinian civilians has been impossible to ignore. Hospitals, schools, and densely populated neighborhoods have been devastated, with little regard for international law or the principles of proportionality.

European nations, including France, have historically turned a blind eye to such violations, framing them as unfortunate but necessary casualties of war. But as the conflict drags on, Macron’s diplomatic distancing could mark the beginning of a broader shift in Europe’s stance toward Israel’s military campaigns. As the death toll rises in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon and the international community grows more aware of the scale of the destruction, Netanyahu’s gamble may yet backfire. His attempt to expand the conflict for personal gain could result in the very political isolation he is desperate to avoid.

Foreign Policy in Focus

Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is disrupting the Biden attempt to prevent a regional war.

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The Biden administration’s approach to the Middle East crisis that erupted in the wake of October 7, 2023 is on the brink of collapse. Israel’s aggressive maneuvers, coupled with Iran’s growing involvement, are pushing the region toward a full-scale war, one that the Biden administration ostensibly hoped to avoid.

Initially, the administration calculated that U.S. interests could survive the Gaza conflict on its own, but the risk of being drawn into a broader war with untold consequences has loomed larger. Biden’s calculated ploy to restrain Israel, especially regarding Lebanon, by offering support for its Gaza actions, now seems like a failed effort to prevent an even larger conflict. Washington’s attempts to rein in Israel, including diplomatic missions to Egypt and Qatar, have failed to shift Israeli policy. Despite repeatedly sending key figures like the CIA director and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to broker peace, the United States has been left looking complicit, supplying weapons even as Israel continues its incursions. Biden, for all his efforts to distance America from the widening chaos, can no longer escape the charge that his administration bears responsibility for enabling Israel’s unchecked escalation.

Washington is now viewed as an accomplice in the region’s unfolding chaos. Biden’s reluctance to push for a ceasefire in Gaza became more untenable by the day. By June, the so-called Biden-backed peace plan emerged, supported by Hamas and begrudgingly accepted by Israel, only for Netanyahu to shift the goalposts, ignoring U.S. requests to steer clear of Egypt’s Rafah border. Instead, Israel occupied the Philadelphi corridor, violating the Camp David Accords. The U.S. response? More military aid to Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, seems to have secured Washington’s tacit approval to target Hezbollah in Lebanon, escalating a conflict that is spiraling out of control. The results have been devastating. Booby-trapped devices detonated in everyday locations such as homes and hospitals, killing civilians, including children and medical staff. The assault displaced thousands from their homes along the Lebanon border, yet Israel’s appetite for aggression appears far from sated.

While nominally approving only a “limited” strike on Lebanon, the United States has repeated a troubling historical pattern. In 1982, Ariel Sharon promised limited Israeli operations in southern Lebanon, only for Israeli forces to advance to Beirut, laying siege to the city. Israel remained an occupying force until it was driven out in 1989 by Hezbollah.

Despite months of diplomatic wrangling, President Biden has been unable to compel Netanyahu to honor the comprehensive ceasefire agreement it accepted back in June. That plan, a phased approach to ending the Gaza conflict, remains in limbo as the war grinds on. Biden’s inability to assert control over the situation only deepens the crisis, casting doubt on U.S. influence in the region.

“Invading Lebanon,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Ironically, the greatest threat to U.S. strategy in the Middle East hasn’t come from Iran, but from its closest ally, Israel. In the chaotic days following the October 7 attacks, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pushed for a large-scale offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. President Biden intervened, urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to shelve those plans and concentrate on Hamas. This scenario played out repeatedly, with Biden’s administration trying to restrain Israel from escalating the conflict beyond Gaza. But for Israel, Gaza was not the strategic prize it desired. Finding himself in a tricky position, Netanyahu now needs a decisive “win” to rebuild the credibility of the country’s national security apparatus, shattered by the failures of October 7. Facing potential investigations over those failures, he is desperately looking for a way to salvage his political standing.

The United States has found itself caught in the middle, struggling to manage an ally determined to shift the focus of the conflict. Netanyahu’s push for a military victory beyond Gaza threatens to drag Washington into a broader regional war, complicating Biden’s Middle East strategy and challenging America’s long-term interests in the region. Israel claims that Hezbollah is making life unbearable for its citizens, forcing many to abandon their homes for hotels. Even the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, despite his anger over Israeli attacks, had one consistent message: a ceasefire in Lebanon could only happen if there was a deal on Gaza. It’s a sentiment that even many Israelis agree with, with some finding Hezbollah’s former leader more reliable than their own prime minister.

But there’s a catch: Netanyahu is determined to separate any resolution in Lebanon from Gaza. On the surface, this latest military escalation seems focused on securing Israel’s northern border. But beneath it lies something far more calculated: Netanyahu’s long-standing ambition for a broader conflict.

This isn’t the first time he’s maneuvered global powers toward war. He convinced the Bush administration to topple Saddam Hussein on flimsy grounds and later persuaded Donald Trump to tear up the Iran nuclear deal. Now, Netanyahu wants a war with Iran, knowing that the United States would be obligated to defend Israel.

When Israel assassinated an Iranian official with whom they’d been negotiating, it crossed a dangerous line. Though Iran didn’t respond directly, Hezbollah did. Netanyahu’s gamble is clear: provoke enough conflict, and Washington will have no choice but to step in. It’s a risky game, one with global consequences. Israel appears unlikely to show restraint in the current conflict, and the Biden administration is caught in a difficult bind. Yet President Biden seems hesitant to use the leverage the United States holds to keep Israel from escalating further. His administration now hopes that Hezbollah and Iran might seek an understanding to de-escalate the tensions along Israel’s northern border. But with the Israeli government unlikely to compromise, that hope feels increasingly fragile.

Imran Khalid is a geostrategic analyst and columnist on international affairs. His work has been widely published by prestigious international news organizations and publications.

Via Foreign Policy in Focus

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Azerbaijan is making the most of its hosting of the UN climate summit (COP29) in November this year. Its president, Ilham Aliyev, has been on a whirlwind tour of the world to court major nations for a climate finance pact that will feature Baku’s initiative on a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), which originally was a pledge to provide $100 billion annually for climate action in developing countries. He also enlisted the support of his neighbor, Russia.

On August 18-19, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a two-day state visit to Azerbaijan. Aliyev invited him to attend COP29. Putin hasn’t been fond of climate summits, but this one will be hard for him to skip. If he attends, he will, for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, sit next to leaders of P5, G-7, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), G-20, and the 38-member OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) countries. Except for G-7, Russia is a key member of all these groupings.

Putin will be tempted to support the NCQG, since it would give him an opportunity to name and shame those who have been historically the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG). But there is an irony involved here. The Russian economy is awash in resource extraction, especially the extraction of oil and natural gas. Russia is world’s fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, after China, the United States, and India. Should Russia call out rich nations for their historical contribution to GHG emissions, it will be the pot calling the kettle black.

Besides their shared past as former Soviet republics, Azerbaijan and Russia are fellow littoral states that share the long, transnational Caspian coastline. With a surface area of 143,000 square miles, the Caspian is the world’s largest inland body of water. It is “inland” because it doesn’t feed into any larger waterway, such as the ocean. Its year-round cumulative moisture makes coastal economies hum.

As one of the five littoral states—the others being Kazakhstan, Russia, Iran, and Turkmenistan—Azerbaijan is the most dependent upon the Caspian. One-fourth of Baku’s oil reserves are located offshore in the Caspian. Azerbaijan could live without this oil, but it cannot live without the food, water, and ecological treasures that the Caspian lavishes upon it. Sturgeon is the queen fish of the Caspian, which yields the world delicacy of caviar. Up to 90 percent of the world’s caviar is sourced from the Caspian. Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan and host to COP29, is built on the shore of the Caspian. The lake is the city’s water tower and its food pantry.

But the Caspian is fast drying up. With climate-induced soaring temperatures, the lake is rapidly evaporating, leaving behind sprawling patches of dry land. On average, the Caspian has been receding by 20 centimeters per year. It is projected to drop by 18 meters by the end of the century, while the northern Caspian is already only 5-6 meters deep. It has now passed below the level at which it can support the marine ecosystem.

Aliyev showed Putin rocks that were peeking out of the lake’s fast developing shallows. The Azeri leader fears that this process will eventually turn the lake into an island, just as it did to the Aral Sea. The latter’s seabed is now land surface with miles upon miles of dirt trails. The Kazakh port city of Aqtau has already dried up, leaving the vibrant urban center and its economy in ruin.

Photo by MohammadReza Jelveh on Unsplash

At slightly over a million square miles, Kazakhstan is comparable in size to Western Europe and thus can absorb the loss of a city. Azerbaijan is, however, far more compact with a land area of just 33,436 square miles. Its surface and subsurface territorial waters in the Caspian are twice as large as its landmass. Losing so much of the country to climate change would be unthinkable for any Azeri.

Putin has promised Aliyev to save the lake. Despite his promise, there is little Putin can do. Putin’s Russia is an upstream country on the Caspian. The other four coastal nations, including Azerbaijan, want Moscow to cease impounding and diverting tributaries to the Caspian. One such tributary is the Volga River, which is the longest and the largest (in volume) body of water on the European continent. The Volga’s headwaters are located northwest of Moscow. Caspian nations argue that the Volga makes up 80 percent of the inflow to the lake. The remainder (20 per cent) comes from two downstream river systems: the Kurra and the Aras. The Volga’s uninterrupted flow is, therefore, critical to the life of the Caspian.

But Russia has built 40 dams and diversions on the Volga, and 18 more are in various stages of development, all of which have slashed flow to the Caspian to a trickle. Dams and diversions do diminish inflows, but climate change too is having an impact. If the Caspian itself is evaporating from hotter and drier conditions, the Volga is no exception to this phenomenon either. Reduced precipitation is contributing to the problem. A case in point is the transboundary Helmand River that drains both Afghanistan and Iran. Lack of rainfall has reduced the Helmand’s flow so much that it seldom makes it to Iran, inflaming tensions between Kabul and Tehran.

Ironically, all five Caspian economies – Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan — are heavily dependent on fossil fuel production, which is at the heart of climate breakdown. Despite platitudes about reaching net zero, the global capitalist economy is also hooked on fossil fuels.  As a result, carbon emissions are on the rise, and atmospheric temperatures are smashing records. Since the Paris Climate Pact in 2015, the world has gone backward on climate change.

Unless hydrocarbon resources are kept in the ground, there is little hope of saving world monuments such as the Caspian. COP 29 is a great occasion to showcase what the Caspian means to the region and the rest of the world. Azerbaijan’s initiative on climate finance couldn’t be more urgent to help preserve the Caspian and similar natural wonders. The United States will better serve the cause of climate stability by taking the lead in supporting the NCQG. President Joe Biden could further burnish his climate legacy by giving his vision at COP 29 of the “Great Transition” to a global green economy. Biden and others need to go well beyond the business as usual of climate adaptation to strike at the root of the problem: fossil capitalism.

The international community made a mistake in allowing the Taliban to exclude the voices of women and civil society in a recent meeting in Doha.

By Tarique Niazi | –

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The United Nations recently hosted a third round of talks on Afghanistan in Doha, Qatar, to weigh the prospects for the country’s return to the international system. The talks were attended by special envoys on Afghanistan from 30 world nations, including the United States. That the world’s 30 leading nations have appointed “special envoys” on Afghanistan shows how concerning Afghanistan is to the globe. The UN sponsored the earlier two rounds in May 2023 and February 2024. Doha I and Doha II were, however, focused on the international obligations of Afghanistan’s de facto rulers, i.e., the Taliban regime.

The Taliban boycotted Doha I and Doha II, dismissing the “international obligations” as interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. Also, they refused to attend Doha III until the UN dropped human and women rights from its agenda, and barred Afghan women and civil society organization leaders from attending the talks. This capitulation is a step toward accepting the Taliban as the sole and legitimate representative of Afghanistan that they are not. The Taliban further snubbed the UN and participating countries by sending a delegation led by a low-level official, a government spokesperson, instead of their minister for foreign affairs.

To be fair, cutting and pruning the agenda around the Taliban’s demands was not an easy decision for the UN or special envoys to swallow. There is every indication that the decision irked UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who earlier attended Doha I and Doha II, enough to abstain from Doha III. Many others were dismayed by the decision. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women was “deeply concerned” about the exclusion that it said “will only further silence Afghan women and girls.”

Human Rights Watch found the decision “shocking.” The Afghan Representative at the United Nations, who does not represent the de facto Taliban regime in Kabul and is a holdover from the pre-Taliban Afghan government, was “disappointed” at the decision. He urged the world to hold the Taliban to their international obligation of forming an inclusive and representative government in Afghanistan, engage with all Afghan stakeholders, not just the Taliban, and not look away from human rights violations in Afghanistan.

The U.S. Special Envoy on Afghanistan, speaking at the UN Security Council, lamented that “the harm caused by the Taliban’s restrictions on women and girls cannot be overstated,” noting “that it has now been over 1,000 days since it banned girls from secondary schools.” Yet he seemed more concerned with “Afghanistan’s reintegration into an international system,” and having the UN appoint a “focal point to begin producing a road map” to this effect.

The world, nonetheless, stays united refusing to recognize the Taliban government in the face of their misanthropic and misogynistic policies, which ban girls from seeking an education beyond sixth grade and women from employment even in women-only establishments and organizations. Even diverse nations such as China, India, Iran, Russia, and the United States speak with one voice. More importantly, the UN has refused to accept the Taliban regime as a de jure government that has been constituted and propped up against the will of the Afghans, and with the muscular power of a militia force, i.e., the Taliban.

DW News Video: “Outrage over women’s exclusion from UN-led talks with Taliban | DW News”

The global call on the Taliban to end their misogyny has not gone unheeded, though. There is now a growing chorus of voices, both loud and quiet, within the Taliban regime that wants the ban on female education lifted. One such voice is that of the Taliban’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Stanikzai, who initially was tipped to be the country’s prime minister but got pushed aside because of his outspokenness. He has long been challenging his government’s ban on female education, arguing that Islam makes it obligatory for both men and women to get an education. He calls the ban on women and girls’ education “oppressive and unjust.”

Quieter voices also oppose the ban, prominent among them the ministers for defense and the interior, who see the ban as inconsistent with international norms. Defense Minister Yaqoob Mujahid’s dissent carries greater weight because of his heritage. He is a son of the founder of the Taliban Movement, Mullah Omar, and is widely respected by the rank and file of the movement. So is Sirajuddin Haqqani, the minister for the interior, whose father Jalaluddin Haqqani is credited with crafting military strategies that, years later, paved the way for the Taliban’s return to power.

Who is, then, opposed to women and girls’ right to education and work? It is the Taliban’s Supreme Leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, who is a recluse, hermit, blinkered, bigoted and inveterate misogynist with zero formal education, except for a few years of undistinguished religious instruction. Unlike many world scholars of Islam, Akhundzada has never traveled outside of  his birth country of Afghanistan and the remote village in neighboring Pakistan where he was in exile. This insularity has turned him into a literalist reader of religious texts. His medieval interpretations of Islam are rejected by every single Muslim religious scholar, including the world’s largest Islamic movement of Nahdatul Ulema in Indonesia, which boasts 100 million members.

Similarly, religious scholars in Cairo, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia rebuffed Akhundzada’s orthodox reading of Islam. This universal repudiation has further turned him inward. He now refuses to meet with any visiting Islamic scholars. In parallel, he claims it is Pashtun culture, not necessarily religion, that doesn’t permit women to learn or work outside the home.

This citation of Pashtun culture did appeal to some. In 2021, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Imran Khan, whose ancestors hail from Ghazni and Kandahar in Afghanistan, echoed Akhundzada’s position and urged the world to be understanding of Pashtun culture that discourages women’s education. His ambassador at the UN defended this stance saying that the Taliban’s ban on women’s education is part of Pashtun culture, which created a huge backlash. Afghanistan’s former President Hamid Karzai admonished Imran Kahn for peddling ignorance about Afghan culture. Afghan women, however, fared best under the Afghan communist regime (1979-1989), when 60% of university students in the country were women. The second best era for them was in 2001-2021, when 25% of university students were women.

If Pashtun culture were to blame for opposing women’s education, then Pashtun women in Pakistan would not be studying in co-ed schools, colleges, and universities. The Nobel laureate Malala Yousufzai, who risked her life for education, is a Pashtun. The 50 million Pashtuns in Pakistan outnumber the entire population of Afghanistan. Pakistani Pashtuns should be the true north of Pashtun culture, not Mullah Akhundzada.

Tragically, Afghanistan has fallen into the hands of those who are impervious to rational thought. Millions of Afghans have been fleeing their irrationality. Since 2021, 700,000 Afghans have sought refuge in neighboring Pakistan alone. How to stop Afghanistan from bleeding its best and brightest? All overseas Afghan assets, including the $7 billion that the United States has frozen since 2021, should be released only to Afghan women for their education. Any Afghan woman living inside or outside the country seeking higher education should be entitled to these funds. There are around 12,000 universities in India, Indonesia and the United States alone. If each of these universities offers one spot for them, 12,000 Afghan women can graduate every year. With an investment of just $7 billion, a million Afghan women can receive university education. This should be a realistic way to counter Taliban misogyny.

Unfortunately, the international community has provided the Taliban regime with $10 billion in “international aid and civilian support” since 2021, with zero accountability or transparency. The UN must engage with the Taliban to have them be accountable, transparent, meet their international obligations, and most importantly further women’s interests, i.e., their right to education, work, and public life. If the Taliban are responsive, they should be welcomed into the world community; if not, they should be shunned until they renounce their antiquated ideas. The Doha III meeting that shut out civil society and women’s voices was a nod to Taliban misogyny. This mistake needs to be undone, and soon.

Via Foreign Policy in Focus

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died on May 19 while returning from a ceremony to inaugurate a hydropower project in a remote corner of northwestern Iran. Why would a head of state brave the hazardous conditions of unseasonal blizzards in a mountainous region to open a run-of-the-mill water and power project? Why not send his minister for energy to stand in for him? Why was the project so important as to even invite the head of state of neighboring Azerbaijan, which had only three months ago shut down its embassy in Tehran to protest a violent attack on its staff?

The answer: climate change.

As much as 97 percent of Iran suffers from a 30-year drought. Droughts are  exacerbated by two major factors: a dramatic drop in precipitation and an evaporation driven by scorching temperatures. On average, Iran receives 250 millimeters of rain a year, which is close to one-third of the global average. Yet two-thirds of Iran’s average precipitation evaporates each year. Certain spatial and temporal variations in rainfall patterns leave much of the country vulnerable to drought.

True to these variations, Iran’s Caspian Sea basin is the wettest of all with rainfall as high as 1,600 millimeters per year. Yet climate-induced water scarcity and evaporation of moisture in other parts of the country are exacting a heavy toll on Iran’s already dwindling water resources. A case in point is the agriculture sector, which now guzzles 93 percent of national freshwater supplies. Scarcity of water has become the catalyst of climate-induced drought that Raisi was combatting with the opening of dam and hydropower projects.

No Iranian president had been more proactively responding to climate-induced scarcity in the country than Raisi. His “water diplomacy” was meant to elevate relations with neighboring states—such as Azerbaijan and Armenia, which share transboundary waterways—to a “special level.” The imperative to secure water resources put Iran on the side of Christian Armenia against Muslim Azerbaijan during their 30-year violent conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In response, Azerbaijan sought help from Israel and Turkey, which provided Baku with heavy artillery, rocket launchers, and attack drones, especially for the final push in September 2023 that left Azerbaijan in control of all of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Press Service of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan: Hours before his death, President Raisi with his Azeri counterpart, inaugurating the Giz Galasi hydropower project that straddles the border between Azerbaijan and Iran.

Now that Azerbaijan controls Nagorno-Karabakh, Iran’s water diplomacy has spun to Baku. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sent his “personal emissary” to the inaugural ceremony of the hydropower plant on May 19 to meet with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. Khamenei described Azeris as “Iran’s kin,” an elevation of “special relations” to a shared genealogy. Khamenei himself is of Azeri descent, and Azeri-Iranians make up the country’s largest ethnic minority.

Why has Iran switched sides from Armenia to Azerbaijan in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh? The answer, again, lies in the hydrological wealth of the region.

Nagorno-Karabakh is home to eight major rivers, three of which feed into the Kura River, and five into Aras River (see the map below). The Kura and Aras are the largest bodies of water in all of southern Caucasus. Both rivers merge before their united stream empties into the Caspian Sea. The Aras, which rises in Turkey, supplies Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Iran with their freshwater needs. To harvest this water, the Nagorno-Karabakh region is crisscrossed with four major dams and 33 hydropower plants. Since September 2023, all of this hydrological treasure has come under the sovereign control of Azerbaijan, prompting Iran’s realignment.

Credit: Wikipedia: The Kura-Aras Basin

Giz Galasi, a hydropower project on the Aras River, took heavily sanctioned Iran 18 long years to build. The project sits astride the border between Azerbaijan and Iran, which is why Raisi had invited his Azeri counterpart on the fateful day of May 19 to the inaugural ceremony. For his part, Aliyev extended a personal invitation to Raisi to attend COP29, the climate summit that Baku will host this November. Both presidents considered the completion of the Giz Galasi project an important step toward building renewable reservoirs of energy and water.

Before the project was inaugurated, Raisi repaired his country’s ruptured relations with Azerbaijan. The violent attack on the Azeri embassy in Tehran on January 27, was agreed to be the result of a misunderstanding. Aliyev echoed this position, asserting that “no one could create misunderstanding between two neighbors.” Meanwhile, Azerbaijan announced its intention to build its embassy in the more secure location that Tehran allotted it. In the interim, Baku agreed to reopen its diplomatic mission in the old building. This rapprochement enabled the two leaders to preside over the inaugural ceremony for the Giz Galasi hydropower project.

These renewed relations will now allow Azerbaijan to have access to the Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan, which is entirely located within Armenia and is thus completely inaccessible from mainland Azerbaijan. Baku can access it either through Armenia or Iran. Damaged by the 30-year conflict, Azeri-Armenian relations will take years to mend before such access is even contemplated. That is why Azerbaijan is responsive to Iran’s friendly overtures to have uninterrupted access to its only autonomous republic, where the Giz Galasi hydropower project is located. Iran shares 27 miles of borders with Armenia and Nakhchivan.

Thanks to climate change, southeastern Iran suffers triple-digit summer temperatures and ever hotter and drier weather. Much of southeastern Iran borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan and Iran share a major transboundary waterway, the Helmand River, which rises in the Hindu Kush and traverses hundreds of miles downstream, across Afghanistan, before it drains into Lake Hamoun in Iran. The distribution of Helmand waters is governed by a bilateral water treaty that Afghanistan and Iran signed in 1973, which allows Iran 850 million cubic meters of water in “normal” years. Defining “normal,” however, has always been contentious.

Since the change of government in Kabul in 2021, Iran has been extremely unhappy with its share of the Helmand, which it says has dropped to a trickle. It blames this decline on the massive damming of the river. Raisi expressed his government’s determination “to defend Iran’s water rights” on May 18, 2023, exactly a year before his death. “Mark my words,” he warned  the incumbent rulers of Afghanistan, “we will not allow the rights of our people to be violated in any way.”

This choice of words was out of character for Raisi, who was known for mild manners and soft speech. Here his water diplomacy didn’t stop “at the water’s edge.” Kabul, nonetheless, did heed his words, and attributed the low flow in the river to climate change. Raisi refused to buy this explanation. He demanded  that “Afghanistan’s rulers should allow our experts to come and check the truth of the matter.” Eventually, Iranian experts did visit various sites on the Helmand to determine whether the downstream low flow was due to declining snowmelt and decreasing rainfall. Despite this back and forth, the conflict continues to fester.

The day Raisi died, southeastern Iran was scorching, with temperatures as high as 107 degrees. His plane, meanwhile, was fighting the snowy headwinds of the unseasonal blizzards in the northwest, which eventually brought him down. These climate realities should prompt Washington to rethink its geopolitical priorities in the region. Regional alignments and realignments, especially among Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran, are not so much driven by geopolitics as by very localized material concerns exacerbated by rapid climate change and dwindling water resources.

Yet geopolitical concerns continue to dominate policymaking. For instance, the United States and Europe are wary of the emerging alliance between Azerbaijan and Iran, especially the opening of a route to Nakhchivan through Iran. Also, the United States was quick to condemn the attack on the Azeri embassy in Tehran, reminding Iran of its responsibilities under the Vienna Convention, even as Azerbaijan was already turning the page on the incident. In the Azeri-Armenian conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Iran and the United States sided with Armenia, but it didn’t make them allies. On the other hand, Israel and Turkey supported Azerbaijan, and yet they continue to be Western allies. This shows the limits to geopolitics, especially when it comes to national interests, climate imperatives, and critical resources such as water. The Iranian president took this lesson to his grave.

 

Tarique Niazi

Tarique Niazi teaches environmental sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire and can be reached via email: niazit@uwec.edu.

Via Foreign Policy in Focus

Despite the efforts of the Council of Guardians, the race to replace Raisi will still be competitive.

By Abolghasem Bayyenat | –

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Iran is set to hold extraordinary presidential elections in about two weeks following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in northwestern Iran last month. Out of a list of 80 presidential nominees, the Council of Guardians, which is in charge of vetting presidential and parliamentary nominees, has approved the credentials of six, mostly conservative, candidates. The Council has barred several prominent political figures—former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former parliament speaker Ali Larijani, and former reformist vice-president Eshaq Jahangiri—from the race. Despite disqualifying many serious presidential hopefuls, the Council of Guardians’ electoral engineering has not rendered Iran’s presidential election entirely meaningless. Although a far cry from a level playing field, the ballot allows for some level of political competition, so that many Iranian voters can find their next-to-favorite candidates in the race.

Three of the existing six candidates on the ballot can be considered serious contestants or frontrunners, representing different segments of Iran’s political landscape. The current parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is a pragmatic conservative politician with decades of mostly executive political career, such as a Revolutionary Guards commander, police chief, Tehran’s mayor, and parliamentary speaker, under his belt. Saeed Jalili is a former chief nuclear negotiator under Ahmadinejad and a current appointed member of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who can be identified as an ideological conservative politician. Being a relatively new public political figure, Jalili lacks Ghalibaf’s executive political credentials but curries favor with puritan revolutionary fringes of Iran’s conservative political camp. Finally, Masood Pezeshkian is a long-time reformist member of the Iranian parliament and a former health minister under reformist president Mohammad Khatami. Being a low-profile and non-charismatic reformist politician, Pezeshkian faces an uphill battle to mobilize his reformist bases in the upcoming election.

Given that none of the presidential candidates enjoys overwhelming public support, the election is likely to lead to a runoff between two of the three frontrunners. Ghalibaf appears to wield an edge over his other two main competitors as he enjoys backing among mainstream conservative political groups and non-ideological grassroots as his recent election as parliament speaker also testifies. Jalili, by contrast, represents a fringe segment of the conservative political camp and appears too revolutionary for traditional conservatives’ political taste.

In the absence of any broad-based mobilization of reformist and secular bases of the Iranian electorate, Pezeshkian is also unlikely to mount an effective challenge to Ghalibaf’s electoral ambitions. Although many reformist political groups and politicians, including former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, have declared their support for Pezeshkian in recent days, given the disillusionment of many reformist and secular voters with Iran’s political and electoral systems in recent years, they will not likely turn out in high numbers at the polls. The barring of key reformist and centrist politicians from the race by the Council of Guardians has further alienated many citizens from the upcoming elections. Pezeshkian’s ethnic Azeri affiliation is also not expected to translate into any significant voter mobilization since ideological and political divisions are far more salient than ethnic cleavages in Iranian national elections. This is mainly due to the fact that, as in most other Iranian provinces, ethnic and political cleavages do not reinforce each other in Azeri-speaking provinces, a fact that diminishes the political salience of ethnicity in Iranian national elections in those areas.

Al Jazeera English Video: “Iran presidential candidates discuss economy in first of five televised debates”

Although Ghalibaf enjoys better odds of winning Iran’s upcoming presidential race in a possible runoff, the election outcome is in no way predetermined, and there are real chances of electoral surprises down the road, given the changing momentum of electoral campaigns as Iran’s past elections have proven. Apart from which candidate is more likely to win the upcoming election, a more important question may be what implication the electoral victory of each of the three frontrunners entails for Iran’s foreign policy, especially its position on its contested nuclear program.

In the absence of other favorable conditions, a change in Iran’s executive chief alone does not bring drastic reorientation in Iranian foreign policy. Given the fragmentation of Iran’s political system, diffusion of political power among various power centers, the balancing role and special authority of Iran’s supreme leader, and the need for consensus-building among key national political authorities on pivotal foreign policy issues, continuity rather than revolutionary change is more the norm within Iran’s political system.

However, when other favorable conditions are present, a change in executive leadership can be a catalyst for major foreign policy change in Iran, as the electoral victory of Hassan Rouhani in 2013 and the successful conclusion of Iran’s nuclear talks with the West in 2015 suggest. As a moderate and pragmatic politician who enjoyed the political support of reformist and centrist political groups and figures, Rouhani ran on an electoral platform of settling the international dispute over Iran’s nuclear program and securing the removal of economic sanctions on the country. As such, the foreign policy preferences of an Iranian president and his supporting coalition can make all the difference when it comes to assessing the implications of a change in executive leadership for Iranian foreign policy. Among the current frontrunners, Saeed Jalili is considered least amenable to a compromise on Iran’s core foreign policy interests. This can be inferred not only from his foreign policy views and national identity conceptions but also his stewardship of Iran’s nuclear talks from 2007 to 2013.

As a reformist candidate, Pezeshkian is in principle most open to compromise on Iran’s foreign policy disputes. Much like other Iranian moderate and reformist politicians, he is expected to advocate a more prudent and less confrontational foreign policy in tune with reformist politicians’ balanced conception of the ideological, economic, and national security interests of the state.

Since he is a pragmatic conservative politician, Ghalibaf’s foreign policy preferences fall between the two extremes of ideological conservatives and moderate reformists. He does not advocate the strategic reorientation of Iranian foreign policy as a reformist politician might do. But he would also not be as uncompromising and inflexible as an ideological and revolutionary conservative politician. On a personality level, throughout his political career Ghalibaf has presented himself as more of a realistic problem-solver than a political ideologue. Given his personality and political worldview as a pragmatic conservative politician, Ghalibaf is expected to be open to tactical leniency on specific foreign policy issues without challenging the strategic orientation of Iranian foreign policy at large. These foreign policy orientations are more in harmony with the preferences of Iran’s supreme leader and the national security establishment than those of a reformist and an ideological conservative president as the history of Iran’s foreign policy making over the past several decades has demonstrated.

Overall, given that other necessary conditions for a major foreign policy shift are currently not present, whichever of the three frontrunner presidential candidates wins Iran’s upcoming election, Iranian foreign policy will remain roughly the same in the foreseeable future, though perhaps with some tactical leniency and stylistic changes. Foreign Policy in Focus

Abolghasem Bayyenat is currently a Farzaneh family postdoctoral fellow in Iranian studies at the University of Oklahoma. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow in nuclear security at Harvard University. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the dynamics of Iran’s nuclear policymaking at Syracuse University.       

National impunity is not inevitable, at least if people and governments of the world are willing to take the necessary actions.