On Dec. 10, I hastily convened the first public forum in the area on the events in Syria, “The Fall of the House of Assad,” hosted by the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, and the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of San Diego, to discuss the dramatic demise in Damascus of Bashar Assad’s presidency. As a Catholic university, on that very stage in 2013, I asked, as a Muslim, for the audience to grant a moment of silence for Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, an Italian priest who ran the Deir Mar Musa Monastery, an interfaith Syrian site for both Muslims and Christian. Dall’Oglio mysteriously disappeared in 2013. After more than a decade his fate may finally be known.

The Kroc School had invited me in 2013 to speak about America’s plan to bomb Syrian military sites after Assad’s chemical weapons attack outside of Damascus. I argued then that the U.S. would be dragged into another forever war in the Middle East. In 2024, on that same stage, I told students that American aircrafts were bombing Islamic State of Iraq and Syria sites, indicating that there was no end in sight to this war.

Besides geopolitics, I talked about the last decade of war, of Syrians who came to and from Southern California. They included Syrian Armenian power gangs from the streets of Glendale, who travelled as foreign fighters to the frontlines of Aleppo, filming themselves on social media in front of a destroyed home, fighting for the Assad regime to retake the rebel-held city.

In the other direction, after Yusra Mardini’s family home in Syria was destroyed, they fled as refugees, saving a drowning dinghy and all its passengers in the waters of the Aegean. It turned out she came from a family of Olympic swimmers. She enrolled at USC to study visual arts, the same subject I teach at UC San Diego, where, alas, she could have studied with me about herself in my “Art and the Middle East” course, as I show the harrowing and inspiring Netflix movie about her life, “The Swimmers.”

Nonetheless, I did have a student, Mohammad, who had also witnessed his house being destroyed back in Syria. He was 7 years-old. In February 2017, as a professor, I sat on a kindergarten floor at a grade school in City Heights next to him, part of an increasing number of adults volunteering to help refugees adapt to school in the U.S., resisting Trump’s “Muslim ban” that year.

“Joy in Damascus,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

The staff told me not to speak to him in Arabic, so that he could learn English, but I ignored them. Together, we built a house from toy bricks, whereupon he said, “Let’s destroy it like my house in Syria.” I replied, “Nothing will happen to your new house.” During the cleanup, I asked the volunteer staff if we could leave his house standing until we left the classroom. I took the boy to his father, waiting at the entrance, who informed me that Mohammad would be meeting his new brother, born just an hour ago, a life made possible because the U.S. had let in a refugee family.

In 2013, the Syrians in the audience seemed despondent. This month, I recounted Mohammed’s story to a USD audience and two female students approached me, optimistic about the country’s future, as Mohammed must be, who should be 13 or 14 now.

Syria is at a critical juncture, as it forms a transitional government, either bringing stability or following the fate of Libya and Yemen, overthrowing a dictator only to witness the victorious rebels fight amongst themselves, not only preventing refugees from returning, but creating more of them. Mohammed’s story is also intended for America promising “mass deportations.”

As one tragedy hopefully comes to an end, President-elect Donald Trump should not follow the legacy of President Bashar Assad of further causing the dispersion of the desperate.

Reprinted with the author’s permission from the San Diego Union Tribune

The lawsuit, filed yesterday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, presents detailed allegations that Blinken has deliberately circumvented the Leahy Law through procedural mechanisms designed specifically to shield Israel from accountability. The Leahy Law explicitly bars US military aid to foreign security units credibly implicated in serious human rights abuses.

Blinken, who is Jewish, is accused of ignoring mounting evidence of Israeli crimes. The apartheid state stands accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and it’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The plaintiffs include Amal Gaza, a pseudonym for a mathematics teacher from Gaza who has been forcibly displaced seven times since October 2023 and lost 20 family members to Israeli attacks; Ahmed Moor, a US citizen whose relatives in Gaza face imminent threats from Israeli operations; siblings Said and Hadeel Assali, who have lost multiple family members including six cousins killed in an Israeli air strike in November; and Shawan Jabarin, executive director of the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq.

The 39-page complaint outlines how the State Department has established what it calls the “Israel Leahy Vetting Forum” (ILVF), which the plaintiffs argue creates “distinct and insurmountable processes” to avoid enforcing the Leahy Law on Israel. The lawsuit contends that this special forum imposes uniquely burdensome procedures for reviewing allegations against Israeli forces that are not applied to any other country.

A striking element of the complaint highlights that while the State Department has suspended thousands of security units from other countries under the Leahy Law since its enactment in 1997 – including units from Bangladesh, Colombia, Mexico, and Nigeria – it has not suspended a single Israeli unit, despite extensive documentation of rights violations.

“Blinken of Arabia,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

The lawsuit comes at a critical time, with the complaint noting that Israel has received approximately $17.9 billion in US military aid over the past year, effectively providing more than half of Israel’s weapons arsenal since October 2023. The plaintiffs argue this assistance has enabled Israeli forces to commit widespread human rights violations in Gaza and the West Bank.

The legal action seeks several remedies, including compelling Blinken to provide Israel with a list of units ineligible for US aid and obtain written assurances that such units will not receive assistance. It also calls for a permanent injunction prohibiting US aid to Israeli security units where credible evidence exists of human rights violations.

“This lawsuit demands one thing and one thing only: for the State Department to obey the law requiring a ban on assistance to abusive Israeli security forces,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), which is supporting the legal action. “For too long, the State Department has acted as if there’s an ‘Israel exemption’ from the Leahy Law, despite the fact that Congress required it to apply the law to every country in the world.”

The complaint particularly focuses on the State Department’s handling of credible reports of violations. It cites that while the Department’s own annual human rights reports consistently document Israeli security forces’ involvement in serious abuses, these findings have not triggered the mandatory restrictions required by the Leahy Law.

A specific example highlighted in the lawsuit involves the case of the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, which was implicated in the death of a 78-year-old American citizen of Palestinian origin, Omar Assad, yet continued to receive US assistance despite what plaintiffs argue was inadequate remediation of the incident.

The legal document alleges that the State Department’s calculated failure to apply the Leahy Law is “particularly shocking” given the unprecedented escalation of Israeli aggression since October 2023, citing findings by the ICJ regarding plausibly genocidal actions and the ICC’s arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.

Bruce Fein, counsel for the plaintiffs, filed the lawsuit under the Administrative Procedure Act arguing that Blinken’s actions and omissions constitute both procedural and substantive violations of the Leahy Law, undermining its core purpose of preventing US complicity in human rights abuses.

The case represents one of the most significant legal challenges to US military assistance to Israel and could have far-reaching implications for US foreign military aid policies if successful.

Via Middle East Monitor

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Informed Comment.

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. A sentence was altered.

Make no mistake: China truly is considered The Big One by those in Trump’s entourage responsible for devising foreign policy. While they imagine many international challenges to their “America First” strategy, only China, they believe, poses a true threat to the continued global dominance of this country.

“I feel strongly that the Chinese Communist Party has entered into a Cold War with the United States and is explicit in its aim to replace the liberal, Western-led world order that has been in place since World War II,” Representative Michael Waltz, Trump’s choice as national security adviser, declared at a 2023 event hosted by the Atlantic Council. “We’re in a global arms race with an adversary that, unlike any in American history, has the economic and the military capability to truly supplant and replace us.”

As Waltz and others around Trump see it, China poses a multi-dimensional threat to this country’s global supremacy. In the military domain, by building up its air force and navy, installing military bases on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea, and challenging Taiwan through increasingly aggressive air and naval maneuvers, it is challenging continued American dominance of the Western Pacific. Diplomatically, it’s now bolstering or repairing ties with key U.S. allies, including India, Indonesia, Japan, and the members of NATO. Meanwhile, it’s already close to replicating this country’s most advanced technologies, especially its ability to produce advanced microchips. And despite Washington’s efforts to diminish a U.S. reliance on vital Chinese goods, including critical minerals and pharmaceuticals, it remains a primary supplier of just such products to this country.

Fight or Strike Bargains?

For many in the Trumpian inner circle, the only correct, patriotic response to the China challenge is to fight back hard. Both Representative Waltz, Trump’s pick as national security adviser, and Senator Marco Rubio, his choice as secretary of state, have sponsored or supported legislation to curb what they view as “malign” Chinese endeavors in the United States and abroad.

Waltz, for example, introduced the American Critical Mineral Exploration and Innovation Act of 2020, which was intended, as he explained, “to reduce America’s dependence on foreign sources of critical minerals and bring the U.S. supply chain from China back to America.” Senator Rubio has been equally combative in the legislative arena. In 2021, he authored the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which banned goods produced in forced labor encampments in Xinjiang Province from entering the United States. He also sponsored several pieces of legislation aimed at curbing Chinese access to U.S. technology. Although these, as well as similar measures introduced by Waltz, haven’t always obtained the necessary congressional approval, they have sometimes been successfully bundled into other legislation.

In short, Trump will enter office in January with a toolkit of punitive measures for fighting China ready to roll along with strong support among his appointees for making them the law of the land. But of course, we’re talking about Donald Trump, so nothing is a given. Some analysts believe that his penchant for deal-making and his professed admiration for Chinese strongman President Xi Jinping may lead him to pursue a far more transactional approach, increasing economic and military pressure on Beijing to produce concessions on, for example, curbing the export of fentanyl precursors to Mexico, but when he gets what he wants letting them lapse. Howard Lutnick, the billionaire investor from Cantor Fitzgerald whom he chose as Commerce secretary, claims that Trump actually “wants to make a deal with China,” and will use the imposition of tariffs selectively as a bargaining tool to do so.

What such a deal might look like is anyone’s guess, but it’s hard to see how Trump could win significant concessions from Beijing without abandoning some of the punitive measures advocated by the China hawks in his entourage. Count on one thing: this complicated and confusing dynamic will play out in each of the major problem areas in U.S.-China relations, forcing Trump to make critical choices between his transactional instincts and the harsh ideological bent of his advisers.

Trump, China, and Taiwan

Of all the China-related issues in his second term in office, none is likely to prove more challenging or consequential than the future status of the island of Taiwan. At issue are Taiwan’s gradual moves toward full independence and the risk that China will invade the island to prevent such an outcome, possibly triggering U.S. military intervention as well. Of all the potential crises facing Trump, this is the one that could most easily lead to a great-power conflict with nuclear undertones.

When Washington granted diplomatic recognition to China in 1979, it “acknowledged” that Taiwan and the mainland were both part of “one China” and that the two parts could eventually choose to reunite. The U.S. also agreed to cease diplomatic relations with Taiwan and terminate its military presence there. However, under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, Washington was also empowered to cooperate with a quasi-governmental Taiwanese diplomatic agency, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, and provide Taiwan with the weapons needed for its defense. Moreover, in what came to be known as “strategic ambiguity,” U.S. officials insisted that any effort by China to alter Taiwan’s status by force would constitute “a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area” and would be viewed as a matter “of grave concern to the United States,” although not necessarily one requiring a military response.

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For decades, one president after another reaffirmed the “one China” policy while also providing Taiwan with increasingly powerful weaponry. For their part, Chinese officials repeatedly declared that Taiwan was a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland, preferably by peaceful means. The Taiwanese, however, have never expressed a desire for reunification and instead have moved steadily towards a declaration of independence, which Beijing has insisted would justify armed intervention.

As such threats became more frequent and menacing, leaders in Washington continued to debate the validity of “strategic ambiguity,” with some insisting it should be replaced by a policy of “strategic clarity” involving an ironclad commitment to assist Taiwan should it be invaded by China. President Biden seemed to embrace this view, repeatedly affirming that the U.S. was obligated to defend Taiwan under such circumstances. However, each time he said so, his aides walked back his words, insisting the U.S. was under no legal obligation to do so.

The Biden administration also boosted its military support for the island while increasing American air and naval patrols in the area, which only heightened the possibility of a future U.S. intervention should China invade. Some of these moves, including expedited arms transfers to Taiwan, were adopted in response to prodding from China hawks in Congress. All, however, fit with an overarching administration strategy of encircling China with a constellation of American military installations and U.S.-armed allies and partners.

From Beijing’s perspective, then, Washington is already putting extreme military and geopolitical pressure on China. The question is: Will the Trump administration increase or decrease those pressures, especially when it comes to Taiwan?

That Trump will approve increased arms sales to and military cooperation with Taiwan essentially goes without saying (as much, at least, as anything involving him does). The Chinese have experienced upticks in U.S. aid to Taiwan before and can probably live through another round of the same. But that leaves far more volatile issues up for grabs: Will he embrace “strategic clarity,” guaranteeing Washington’s automatic intervention should China invade Taiwan, and will he approve a substantial expansion of the American military presence in the region? Both moves have been advocated by some of the China hawks in Trump’s entourage, and both are certain to provoke fierce, hard-to-predict responses from Beijing.

Many of Trump’s closest advisers have, in fact, insisted on “strategic clarity” and increased military cooperation with Taiwan. Michael Waltz, for example, has asserted that the U.S. must “be clear we’ll defend Taiwan as a deterrent measure.” He has also called for an increased military presence in the Western Pacific. Similarly, last June, Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser from 2019 to 2021, wrote that the U.S. “should make clear” its “commitment” to “help defend” Taiwan, while expanding military cooperation with the island.

Trump himself has made no such commitments, suggesting instead a more ambivalent stance. In his typical fashion, in fact, he’s called on Taiwan to spend more on its own defense and expressed anger at the concentration of advanced chip-making on the island, claiming that the Taiwanese “did take about 100% of our chip business.” But he’s also warned of harsh economic measures were China to impose a blockade of the island, telling the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, “I would say [to President Xi]: if you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you at 150% to 200%.” He wouldn’t need to threaten the use of force to prevent a blockade, he added, because President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m [expletive] crazy.”

Such comments reveal the bind Trump will inevitably find himself in when it comes to Taiwan this time around. He could, of course, try to persuade Beijing to throttle back its military pressure on the island in return for a reduction in U.S. tariffs — a move that would reduce the risk of war in the Pacific but leave China in a stronger economic position and disappoint many of his top advisers. If, however, he chooses to act “crazy” by embracing “strategic clarity” and stepping up military pressure on China, he would likely receive accolades from many of his supporters, while provoking a (potentially nuclear) war with China.

Trade War or Economic Coexistence?

The question of tariffs represents another way in which Trump will face a crucial choice between punitive action and transactional options in his second term — or, to be more precise, in deciding how severe to make those tariffs and other economic hardships he will try to impose on China.

In January 2018, the first Trump administration imposed tariffs of 30% on imported solar panels and 20%-50% on imported washing machines, many sourced from China. Two months later, the administration added tariffs on imported steel (25%) and aluminum (10%), again aimed above all at China. And despite his many criticisms of Trump’s foreign and economic policies, President Biden chose to retain those tariffs, even adding new ones, notably on electric cars and other high-tech products. The Biden administration has also banned the export of advanced computer chips and chip-making technology to China in a bid to slow that country’s technological progress.

Accordingly, when Trump reassumes office on January 20th, China will already be under stringent economic pressures from Washington. But he and his associates insist that those won’t be faintly enough to constrain China’s rise. The president-elect has said that, on day one of his new term, he will impose a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports and follow that with other harsh measures. Among such moves, the Trump team has announced plans to raise tariffs on Chinese imports to 60%, revoke China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations (also known as “most favored nation”) status, and ban the transshipment of Chinese imports through third countries.

Most of Trump’s advisers have espoused such measures strongly. “Trump Is Right: We Should Raise Tariffs on China,” Marco Rubio wrote last May. “China’s anticompetitive tactics,” he argued, “give Chinese companies an unfair cost advantage over American companies… Tariffs that respond to these tactics prevent or reverse offshoring, preserving America’s economic might and promoting domestic investment.”

But Trump will also face possible pushback from other advisers who are warning of severe economic perturbations if such measures were to be enacted. China, they suggest, has tools of its own to use in any trade war with the U.S., including tariffs on American imports and restrictions on American firms doing business in China, including Elon Musk’s Tesla, which produces half of its cars there. For these and other reasons, the U.S.-China Business Council has warned that additional tariffs and other trade restrictions could prove disastrous, inviting “retaliatory measures from China, causing additional U.S. jobs and output losses.”

As in the case of Taiwan, Trump will face some genuinely daunting decisions when it comes to economic relations with China. If, in fact, he follows the advice of the ideologues in his circle and pursues a strategy of maximum pressure on Beijing, specifically designed to hobble China’s growth and curb its geopolitical ambitions, he could precipitate nothing short of a global economic meltdown that would negatively affect the lives of so many of his supporters, while significantly diminishing America’s own geopolitical clout. He might therefore follow the inclinations of certain of his key economic advisers like transition leader Howard Lutnick, who favor a more pragmatic, businesslike relationship with China. How Trump chooses to address this issue will likely determine whether the future involves increasing economic tumult and uncertainty or relative stability. And it’s always important to remember that a decision to play hardball with China on the economic front could also increase the risk of a military confrontation leading to full-scale war, even to World War III.

And while Taiwan and trade are undoubtedly the most obvious and challenging issues Trump will face in managing (mismanaging?) U.S.-China relations in the years ahead, they are by no means the only ones. He will also have to decide how to deal with increasing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, continued Chinese economic and military-technological support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, and growing Chinese investments in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere.

In these, and other aspects of the U.S.-China rivalry, Trump will be pulled toward both increased militancy and combativeness and a more pragmatic, transactional approach. During the campaign, he backed each approach, sometimes in the very same verbal outburst. Once in power, however, he will have to choose between them — and his decisions will have a profound impact on this country, China, and everyone living on this planet.

Copyright 2024 Michael Klare

Via Tomdispatch.com

Khamenei on December 11 also implicitly blamed Turkey for the lightning push of Syrian rebels who reached Damascus from their strongholds in the northwest with little resistance.

“It should not be doubted that what happened in Syria was the product of a joint American and Zionist plot,” he said.

“Yes, a neighboring government of Syria plays, played, and is playing a clear role…but the main conspirator, mastermind, and command center are in America and the Zionist regime,” Khamenei added.

The U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies — some of whom are linked with Turkey — ousted Assad on December 8, less than two weeks after launching their offensive.

Syria under Assad served as a crucial part of a land corridor connecting Iran to the Levant, which was considered the logistical backbone of the so-called axis of resistance — Iran’s loose network of regional proxies and allies.

Iran spent billions of dollars and sent military advisers to Syria to ensure Assad remained in power when civil war broke out in 2011.

Russia — where the ousted Syrian leader has been granted political asylum — also backed Assad, while Turkey has supported rebel groups who aimed to topple the regime.

A Khamenei adviser once described Syria as the “golden ring” in the chain connecting Iran to its Lebanese partner, Hezbollah. With the ring broken and Hezbollah’s capabilities degraded after a devastating war with Israel, experts say the axis has become severely weak.

“Foiled,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Khamenei said only “ignorant and uninformed analysts” would assess that the axis has become weak and vowed that its reach “will expand across the region more than before.”

Reza Alijani, an Iranian political analyst based in France, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that Khamenei’s comments were more “trash talk” than anything else.

“The axis may not have been defeated, but it has suffered a serious blow and the Islamic republics arms in the region have been deal major hits,” he said.

Alijani argued that factions within the Islamic republic’s core support base may be starting to question Khamenei’s policies and vision after the recent setbacks, which he said is a cause for concern among the clerical establishment’s top brass.

With reporting by Hooman Askary of RFE/RL’s Radio Farda

Via RFE/ RL

Copyright (c)2024 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Gary Sick. Courtesy Columbia University.

Fariba Amini: How do you see Trump’s internal and foreign policy agenda in the coming year?  

Gary Sick: Compared to chaotic time of Trump’s last administration, he may be better prepared this time. This is a good sign, but history is not linear. It doesn’t go in one direction. In this particular case, I think it was the combination of having gone through the pandemic and the worst inflation that people remember very clearly—showed the government of the United States did not handle the right way. There was a tremendous demand for change, and that was not only true in the United States, but throughout the world. It is a grand movement following the pandemic and economic problems. So, in all of the world, we have seen changes in governments, people coming out of nowhere, and people who previously believed unelectable suddenly finding themselves supported by the populace for somebody different who will shake things up.

Trump, as an agent of change, stands for truly challenging the government, our history and background, and the kind of things we grew up with. He is prepared to challenge all of those. That’s an enormous undertaking and hugely impactful, because he actually changes the way the United States leads many other countries in the world, changes the whole security balance in the world. One can imagine that he got a second chance to decide what he wanted to do in his first administration. I hope he does not, but he may. If he does, it’s going to mean that the United States is heading into a perilous security position.

For many years, NATO has essentially become part of the institution of stability in terms of military security. If he changes that, or if he wants his generals to have personal loyalty to him, that’s not how the US government works, and it’s not how the US Constitution is written. But he seems prepared to try. He is accurately reflecting the views of the people who voted for him. They want to shake things up, challenge the status quo, and change the way things are done because they don’t believe the current system is working. They don’t think about the consequences; they just say let’s shake things up and see what happens. He has these big ideas.

My guess is that he has two years to get all of his big ideas done, and at the end of those two years, we’ll have a new bi-election, with a very real chance that the Democrats could take control of either the House or the Senate, or both, because a lot of people are not going to like him — even the people who supported him. He makes changes in Medicare, for instance, in Social Security. A lot of Americans rely on that, and they are going to take it very seriously. So, he has these two years and will bring people whose sole expertise is their love for Donald Trump and who will do what he wants to do.

The next two years are going to be absolutely chaotic, and really, we are going to see if the people who voted for Trump will be happy with the kind of program he may come up with. So, I expect a lot of crazy ideas, maybe some good ideas. I think at the end of the fourth year, he’s going to say, I need to get all the things done that I should because people want me to do this. He may try to effect a third term. I think that is going to be very much in his mind, if not already, I think that will be the case at the end of the fourth year. He will be convinced that only a part of his program is enacted, and he still has a huge amount to do. We will see.

Fariba Amini: Trump has been boasting that within 24 hours of his presidency he will end the war in Ukraine. Do you think a Trump administration can resolve the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine?

Gary Sick: It’s far from clear what he would come up with. My guess is that he is talking about what he won’t be able to do. Basically, he might agree to something that is substantially suicidal. Trump’s advice is basically to make a deal with the Russians in which Vladimir Zelensky gives up territory. That is not going to go over very well in Ukraine, so Zelensky knows that his life is on the line.

At a certain time, he was a great buddy of Netanyahu, who doesn’t want to see the war end. I don’t think he is going to solve that. It is not clear that there is a solution, because from the Palestinian point of view, there should be at least a minimum recognition of a two-state solution. But the government of Israel is simply not thinking about that. The Israeli people don’t like Netanyahu and his politics and are unhappy with the way the war is going, but there is no opposition, or the opposition is so weak that Netanyahu is able to simply keep on going. Of course, Netanyahu, among other things, tries to stay away from jail, and as long as he is prime minister, he is free from going to jail or facing charges of corruption. So, under such circumstances, it’s difficult to see how this is going to end.

Basically, Israel is still fighting in Gaza, but it really cannot get rid of all the people who are Hamas supporters. Hamas is not very popular in Palestinian circles and in Gaza these days, but basically, people like the idea of challenging the Israelis and showing that they are not invulnerable. That is the question of deterrence. Israel sees this as a case where they have to prove that attacking Israel is very costly, and they thought they had done that. But if they think they’ve solved it this time around, they are wrong. They have probably put themselves in a position where this war in Gaza, the West Bank, or Lebanon is going to be long for some time to come.

Fariba Amini: Since October 7, 2023, more than 44,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.  The numbers may be even higher with many lying under the rubble.  Many civilians have also been killed in Lebanon.   How do you see the future for Israel, for Gaza and Lebanon?

Gary Sick: The reality is that Israel thinks that the solution to its problems includes basically wiping out a lot of people. If you look at the Israeli strategy in Gaza is exactly the reverse of what the laws of war would require. The laws of war say that if you locate two Hamas members in an apartment building, you want to get them, but if there are 150 civilians in that building, you have to back off. You can get in on foot and find those two men, but you shouldn’t just bomb the building because there are civilians in the way. The Israeli strategy up to this point has been exactly the reverse.

Where there is suspected Hamas leaders at any point in any situation, their answer to that is a bomb, which is indiscriminate and kills a gathering of civilians in a refugee camp, around hospitals, or schools. If you have a huge group of civilians, that should mean that you don’t bomb, but in Israel’s case, they decided to kill a large group of civilians where there is one or two Hamas people in that group. The answer to that is a bomb and that’s what’s going on. So, the number of civilians, women and children, who have been killed is unbelievable and incredibly high. Whatever you want to call, you can call it, but the reality is that they have reversed the laws of war in conducting the campaign in Gaza. In Beirut, they were bombing apartment buildings where leaders of Hezbollah are located.

Israel is going to have to face the outcome of this war with a real loss of dignity and support from a lot of people. You see that in the American capital. A lot of Americans, including actually a lot of American Jews, are in awe of what Israel has been doing. There are also people who are in favor of how Israel is handling it, but it has changed a lot of people’s attitudes towards Israel in a way that was hard to imagine a year or two ago. We don’t know how he is going to deal with it. As far as I can tell, as long as Netanyahu, who wants to continue the war, is the prime minister, with people around him who want to use means that are extremely deadly for a lot of civilians, this war is just going to go on. I don’t think that until Netanyahu changes his mind, or Israel is led by somebody else, the circumstances will change. I don’t think there is any answer to this situation as long as the people who are involved remain in power.

Fariba Amini: Why does the U.S. administration continue to arm Israel while we know that thousands of civilians have been killed with the weapons we’ve sent them?  

Gary Sick: Israel of course insists that it is taking precautions, but they assert that Hamas officials and fighters are taking refuge behind civilians which means that a lot of civilians are killed. Israel asserts that the number of casualties is far smaller than the Gazan Ministry of Health numbers and that the percentage of “terrorists” killed is much higher, but they offer no details. It is my impression that the USG accepts much of the Israeli rationale, at least for purposes of arms sales. Theoretically US arms provide a bargaining leverage that can be used to pressure Israel for greater attention to civilian casualties, but that lever never seems to be used in practice. The Israeli/US position is not very convincing and is contradicted by virtually every neutral source.

Fariba Amini: Do you think a war on Iran is inevitable?

Gary Sick: Trump is the one who is to blame for this. He is the one who walked away from the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear deal] that was agreed to by the Obama administration. His argument was that it was a bad agreement and that he would now be able to put maximum pressure on Iran to keep them from expanding their nuclear facilities. Of course, exactly the reverse happened. When he walked away from the JCPOA, the Iranians waited for almost a year to see if he would change his mind. He did not.

So, they began responding, and from a situation where it would have taken Iran almost a year to get enough fissile material from enriched uranium to build a bomb, it became a matter of days or weeks. He’s going to put pressure on Iran to stop their nuclear program and reverse it. Whether he comes to admit that his policy is derailed, I don’t think so, and I think his answer is to put pressure back. That’s not going to work, but that’s his approach. It’s hard to see how anything is going to come out of it.

Iran has not made the decision to build the bomb, but it has made the decision to create enough material for a number of bombs in a very short period of time. Israel may want to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, but the facilities that Iran has built, with all the centrifuges, are deep in the ground. They are very difficult targets, and the Israelis have the capacity to hit them, but they’ve been cautious about going after very ambitious targets. So, when Trump comes in January, we’re going to face a new world.

I don’t know what that is going to look like, but from everything we know from the past, he is not going to do a deal with Iran. He’s going to impose new sanctions on Iran and put more pressure on Iran, and I think we’ve seen enough examples of that from the Bush administration onwards. But putting pressure through sanctions on Iran would not change Iran’s policies or their nuclear capability. Now, for better or worse, Iran has the capacity to decide to build a bomb and do it very quickly. We can’t do much about that. That is very much because of Trump’s policy of walking away from the JCPOA.

Fariba Amini: I always thought the decision to walk away from the nuclear deal was made in Tel Aviv and not Washington. What is your take?  

Gary Sick: Do you mean the decision to walk away from the JCPOA? I think Israel is quite happy with that, but I don’t think they are the ones who made it happen. Netanyahu was pushing Trump to walk away, so indeed they were satisfied with that. But I think he already believed that; he didn’t have to be persuaded. It’s almost as if he wanted Iran to have a bomb. This is not just true of Republican administrations; this was true of Democrat administrations, except for Obama, who worked out the JCPOA.

Fariba Amini: Turning to a different subject, now that you have retired from running Gulf 2000, after thirty years: how did you come up with the idea?  And what is its future?

Gary Sick: Let me give you a very brief description of my experience with Gulf 2000. Basically, I worked for the Ford foundation, then I quit and decided to work for myself. George Perkovich at the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Charlottesville, VA, called me in about 1992 and said that he did not believe that the Persian Gulf was getting the scholarly attention it deserved. He asked if I had any suggestions. I asked him for a small grant and spent a few months researching various possibilities.

One of the things I learned was that scholars in various Gulf countries seldom talked to each other. I proposed a series of conferences consisting almost entirely of scholars from each of the Gulf states. He agreed and gave me a grant to cover conference costs.  I called the project Gulf2000 since I thought it would probably end in a few years, and that seemed suitably forward-looking. We did hold a series of conferences, mostly in Gulf and Eastern Mediterranean countries that built a personal relationship among regional scholars and produced a series of scholarly books consisting of the papers written for the meetings.

The internet and email emerged during this same time, and the members of our group began communicating with each other via this new form of communication. I opened up the project to other regional scholars, and within a relatively short time, scholars from all over the world began to use it. At the turn of the millennium, we renamed it G2K, and it became a useful virtual meeting place for Gulf experts, with a membership of about 1,600, which was supported by a series of major foundations via grants to Columbia University, where I taught.

By the time that G2K moved from Columbia to the Sage Institute in Virginia in September of 2024, it had more than tripled my original estimate of its sell-by date and was still going strong.

Later, he taught at Columbia University and for nearly 30 years ran the website Gulf 2000 which has been a thoughtful forum for discussions regarding Middle East politics for its members- analysts and commentators alike.  

He is emeritus member of the board of directors of Human Rights Watch and serves as founding chair of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East.

He has authored three books among them, October Surprise:  America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan.

He is now retired. 

Gary Sick. Courtesy Columbia University.

Fariba Amini: There are Iranians as well as Americans who believe in conspiracy theories. They are convinced that the Iranian revolution was a byproduct of the meeting in Guadaloupe or that it was Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy that brought about the revolution in Iran.    You said in an interview that while Jimmy Carter was president, the Shah and his aides were not worried about a revolution and that they claimed they had everything under control. You were at the White House while telegrams were coming from Tehran about the deteriorating circumstances. What do you say to these people?

Gary Sick: First of all, the Guadaloupe meeting [4-7 January 1979] was the very end of the revolution, not the beginning. It was after most of the revolution had already taken place, and demonstrations were still going on, Khomeini’s presence in Paris and then in Tehran, etc… The Guadaloupe meeting was an attempt by Western leaders, Carter and a handful of others, to literally decide what happened in the revolution and where it would lead. I’ve never heard that theory that the Guadaloupe meeting was the cause of the revolution, it was the effect of revolution. The quotation you were quoting was not the quotation by me, it was by Richard Helms, who was the head of the CIA and then was the ambassador to Tehran. He went to Iran in the middle of 1978 to seek for himself what was happening and what was going on, and because of his background he had access to everybody he wanted to talk to, including the SAVAK, the military and the Shah himself.

I talked to him sometime after he had come back. He said these were not nervous men, they were not thinking about whether they should flee or what would happen with the revolution. This was in the middle of 1978 and the revolution was underway, but the people around the Shah did not really believe that was going to happen. As far as they were concerned, they stayed very much where they worked, this was their view, and it was wrong. But this was the same view that was true in the United States as well, because the CIA had briefings and white papers that were produced in July and August, which said that Iran was not in a revolutionary, or even a pre-revolutionary, agitation. That was wrong too, very wrong.

The people who were closest to the situation starting with the Shah but going down to his lieutenants and the American intelligence service, all believed that the Shah was in control and that the people who were in the streets were in effect going to be defeated. Why were they so wrong? Well, they were wrong because there was an assumption in their view that the Shah oversaw what was going on and in fact would be able to end it, by taking firm action, cracking down on the demonstrators, putting people in jail, all variety of things he could do, including changes in the government itself. What took them by surprise was that the Shah was not prepared to take a firm action, and in fact actions came hesitantly and they were inconsistent. He would be up one day and relaxed the next day. So, people who were watching what was going on expected him to take a very firm action to end the demonstrations and that didn’t happen.

There was a mess probably not because of how the Shah acted but because of how the military acted. They cracked down and shot people, but there was inconsistency, because he pulled back and did not continue with the crackdown. He imposed martial law in November, but it was incomplete, because in fact the martial law that he imposed he put the chief of staff of the arm forces in charge of the military government, and he was a pussycat, he was not a tough guy. The tough guys, the army generals who could crack down in a variety of ways, they were doing any good, because the Shah was not taking their advice. He was not doing what they suggested, and the Shah had this incredible vision of himself as his almost umbilical relationship with the Iranian public. He said on many occasions that a king does not shoot his own people. Well, he was wrong. That’s not true. Kings shoot their own people all the time and in various circumstances, but the Shah was not prepared to crack down and start shooting people all the time. As a result, all those people who, in summer 1978, believed that the Shah had taken total control were wrong. They were wrong, because they were wrong about the Shah, not because they were wrong about what was going on in the streets.

Fariba Amini: Was the Shah’s decision to leave due to his illness?  Or did he not want to leave a legacy of violence vis-à-vis the people?   He wanted to leave, knowing that he would never return, in hopes that his legacy would be that of a benevolent monarch.

Gary Sick: He was ill, and I think he didn’t have any expectations. In fact, if you go back and see the timeline, when he was first diagnosed, his doctors’ assessments, and judging from the past, the survival rate was about five years. If you think about it, it was exactly five years from the time he was diagnosed until he died. I don’t know if he fully understood that, or he believed it but he was fading in a significant way. Maybe he thought he knew all well, but he kept it as one of the great state secrets. Absolutely, no one was supposed to know. He had a potentially fatal disease that affected him in an essential way he couldn’t have expected. Perhaps he realized that he had a very serious disease and that it would be fatal. He was aware of every stage that if this fact became public, it would mean that states all around the world would change their views. They would begin to think about what would happen to their relationship with the Shah and who to deal with when the Shah was gone. He did not want that to happen because it was going to weaken his ability to negotiate. So he kept that as a very tight state secret.

I can tell you that the United States government, with all its different activities, did not know with any certainty what was going on with the Shah, and the first time that it knew for sure was when the Shah was in Cuernavaca, and he looked like he was dying. They brought doctors from New York to look at him. He wouldn’t tell them what his problem was, and they thought it was a tropical disease, like malaria or something of that sort. But he wouldn’t tell them, and it was one of his doctors from France came to see him, then he met with Americans who were taking care of the Shah and told them everything about the fact that he had diagnosed with lymphoma and that he was seriously ill, that he had not wanted them to do any kind of operation on him. Keeping that secret while he was on the throne made sense.

After he left Iran keeping that secret was less and less important or useful or necessary, but he kept that anyway. I think he had just come to believe that it was not something he wanted anybody to know, anywhere in the world. And they did not until his doctors finally said what was going on, and then he needed to go to a hospital for emergency treatment, after which he came to New York and Jimmy Carter made that decision to bring him to New York. He could have gone to several other places. Probably he should have. Carter was very reluctant to do that. He had all his advisors gathered at a meeting in one room in the Whitehouse. He went around the room, and they all said they thought they should bring the Shah to the United States for treatment.

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi. Public Domain. Via Get Archive.

Fariba Amini: Why was President Carter reluctant? 

Gary Sick: He realized that if the Shah went to the United States the Iranians would react very badly to that. You remember 1953 when the coup took place. The Shah fled to Rome, stayed there for a while and then came back, and reestablish himself on the throne, after the coup taking place. So, Iranians remembered that the Shah had left Iran and used that a basis to come back and reclaim his position on the throne. Carter was absolutely correct. He knew that Iran, both elite and popular, would believe that the Shah going to the United States after a long time in Egypt, Morocco, and the Bahamas, then ending up in Mexico, and that Carter inviting him to the United States, was the first step to regaining the throne. He was right. That was exactly what the students who took the hostages all believed. When Carter was meeting with his advisors, they said, for political reasons, that the Shah was a friend of ours and keeping him out would reject that part of our background. Carter was in the middle of an election campaign and his advisors said from a political point of view let bring the Shah to the United States for treatment and Carter ended up that meeting by saying: “Ok. I hear what you say. Let the Shah come in, but what are you going to tell me when they take our people hostage in Tehran? He predicted that.

Fariba Amini: It seems that Iranians always like to blame “others” when it comes to anything that’s gone wrong in our history.   How do you see this?

Gary Sick: Basically, a lot of people were hurt badly by the Shah’s departure and the revolution. They lost money, property, their lands, their culture and history. You have a lot of very important people living in Los Angeles. Are they going to be happy about this? Of course not. When I speak to some of these groups, I say: “Did you stay there and fight for the Shah?” No. They all ran.

You can blame Jimmy Carter if you like, but the people who are really to blame are the people who were around the Shah. They are looking for an excuse. For somebody who wants to believe that Jimmy Carter invited the Ayatollahs to take over, if they really believe that you’ll never persuade them, because it’s a very convenient argument, which means that they are not to blame, but somebody else is. I don’t blame them necessarily, except to say that it’s not true. There’s nothing else to be said. Jimmy Carter did not spend all his nights and days thinking about how to get rid of the Shah; he had a lot of other things to do at that time.

Fariba Amini: Jimmy Carter was involved in the Camp David accord at that time, and so Iran was not on his priority list, right?  

Gary Sick: Camp David is absolutely an example, but he was also involved in Panama Canal Treaty, negotiations with the soviets, and a whole range of issues that were earth-shaking and very important. He didn’t know what to do. The Shah did not ask for help at all, and did not say, would you come and do this for me? He never said that. He never asked for a solution. He had plenty of solutions, however. The military had been working out every day. In fact, there were several formal presentations made to the Shah to put an end to the revolution and street riots led by revolutionaries, clerics and others. The military said, we know who these people are; let us arrest them and hold them so that they are not able to direct the revolution and get them out of the way, and the remaining people there would break up. We’ll make sure to break up demonstrations so that they never occur, and don’t have to shoot everybody to do that. But you have to be present. You must have military forces. Let us in fact break up demonstrations that are taking place.

The Shah was unwilling to do that and turned them down. SAVAK had an approach quite like this, but he turned that down. He was unwilling to take hard action. He had a very equipped army. He had money and he was well equipped, but he didn’t use them. The one exception was Zhaleh square, where the troops there opened fire. That was not on the Shah’s order, but they took it upon themselves to begin shooting, and it was a horrendous outburst in Iran. Zhaleh square event was one of the turning points in Iranian revolution. So, they did shoot people during this and reaction in Iran and elsewhere was very strong and very negative. For whatever reason, either because of the Shah’s attachment to the idea of kingship or the fact that he thought it was against his principles, he was reluctant to take that kind of action.

Andrew Cooper, in his good book The Fall of Heaven, for the first time got permission from the queen and basically interviewed all the people who were in the court at the time, gathering their views about what the Shah was saying, including people who had dinner with the Shah in the palace and what they were thinking at the time. One that came out of that is that he understood better than the people around him how serious the situation was. He was, in fact, smarter and better informed than most people believed. However, he misunderstood that you don’t need to tell everybody. But people like Rafsanjani and others, who were running the revolution on the ground, if they had been arrested and taken away from the whole thing, could have had things sorted out. He was given the opportunity and the suggestion, but he didn’t do it.

I think there are huge unanswered questions about what was going on, because the Shah had all the instruments of coercion he could have used and didn’t have to tell anybody to do this, but he refused to do it. Basically, he sat back and let the revolution take its course without taking very strong actions to stop it. I don’t have answer for that, but I do think that it is the real unanswered question about the Iranian revolution.

US Embassy Hostage Crisis in Tehran, November 4, 1979. Public Domain. Courtesy Picryl.

Fariba Amini: We are now in the aftermath of an election in this country.  Trump has won and Harris lost but not by a great margin.  What do you think went wrong?   Why did the d democrats lose the elections? 

Gary Sick: I don’t pretend to be an expert on US politics that is not my principal subject, but I follow them just like everybody else. On this subject, the Democrats are in the midst of carrying out a full scale post-mortem of the election, which I think in the end will turn a few key issues. I see two things that I think are important, one is inflation after the COVID pandemic already because of tremendous amount of spending to stop the pandemic. So, prices went up, and people saw that every time they went to the grocery store or whatever they were doing. They were trying to buy a house; they felt that they saw it, although Biden did everything pretty much according to the book. All the councils by his economic advisors and all his actions were very carefully designed to stop the inflation, which they did. The inflation quit going up, but the prices didn’t go back down.

If you want to criticize the Biden administration, you would say, I can’t abide these price increases. There was a tremendous amount of anger and disappointment that Biden should have made prices go back down. Once it goes up, it almost never comes back down. In fact, there won’t necessarily be deflation. So, that was one thing, and I think there are various explanations for how the Federal Reserve and other forces have combined to save the U.S. economy. You can still make these arguments, but people saw prices go up when they went to the grocery store. That was the fact that the Biden people didn’t succeed. Second thing was that people were looking for some kind of inspirational change and inspirational programs. Biden and Kamala Harris had a very difficult time trying to make their points.

The number of votes Trump got in this election were not that different from his performance in 2016. There is a narrow difference between the two, but it led to Trump being re-elected. That has to be seen as a failure as far as Democrats are concerned, because they didn’t really hold on to their base. They still won around 50% of the votes, but it wasn’t enough to win the election. Those two things—first, inflation, which people saw every day and was much on their minds; and second, instead of rejecting the Democrats and voting for Trump, what many of them did was simply not vote at all—really made a huge difference. I am sure there are lots of other explanations, but these are the two things that strike me as the obvious facts, as far as I’m concerned—the two principal things that led to the Democrats losing. We did discover that, essentially, the whole idea of Trump being a threat to democracy turned out to be an argument that fewer people cared about or were worried about, as compared to, for example, prices in the grocery store. One is theoretical, and the other is practical in daily life.

To be continued . . .

Actually, of course, in most wars both sides lose, and certainly the people of both sides do.

That is the outcome of the Israel-Hezbollah War of 2023-2024, in which US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron announced a ceasefire for 4 am today, Wednesday, November 27, Beirut time. The ceasefire was possible because both sides had lost.

Lebanon is a small country with perhaps 5 million citizens. They fall into about 30% Christian, 30% Sunni Muslim, and 30% Shiite Muslim, with some other small groups such as the Druze making up the rest. So that is about 1.5 million Shiites, mainly in East Beirut, Baalbak, and southern Lebanon. About half of them belong to the Amal party, and the other half are affiliated with the Hezbollah party-militia, or about 750,000 people. Jane’s said a few years ago that Hezbollah has about 20,000 full-time fighters in its paramilitary and 20,000 reservists. The organization claims over twice that, but Jane’s estimates are probably about right. The point is that Hezbollah is a small part of Lebanon and its fighters are a small force.

In contrast, before the current wars Israel had 169,000 active duty personnel and some 465,000 reservists. That is, the Israeli military is almost as big all by itself as the total Shiite population of Lebanon that supports Hezbollah.

Hezbollah had over the years since its last war with Israel in 2006 amassed a big stockpile of rockets and drones. These had some value as deterrents to Israeli aggression, as with the Israeli invasion of 1982 and its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. The Israelis made a relatively poor showing against Hezbollah in 2006, and few in Tel Aviv had an appetite for further adventurism on that front. The rockets were only useful for defense, however.

Hamas did not forewarn allies Iran and Hezbollah about its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. As a result, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s clerical leader, told Hamas that he did not intend to get involved, according to Reuters. Likewise, he pressured Hezbollah to avoid sparking an Israeli attack on Lebanon, according to the Israeli press.

Despite Iran’s caution, however, Hezbollah leader, the late Hassan Nasrallah, tried to use its rockets for offensive purposes after Israel’s total war on Gaza began in October, 2023. It forced 60,000 Israelis to leave the north near the Lebanese border, launching rocket attacks in sympathy with peoples’ resistance in Gaza.

In September, Israel launched an all-out campaign on Hezbollah. Israeli intelligence had infiltrated Hezbollah and was able to set off thousands of booby-trapped pagers, wreaking havoc on its cadres. Tel Aviv used air strikes to kill many high-level leaders, including Nasrallah. That means some high-level Hezbollah leaders were spying for Israel and providing Mossad with real-time intelligence on their whereabouts.

Israel’s war on Hezbollah depended heavily on airstrikes, but the Israeli army did also launch ground operations in the south. These operations, however, were costly in men, with at least 62 Israeli troops killed in October alone. Hundreds, perhaps a thousand, were wounded. Although these seem like small numbers to Americans, Israel is a small, tightly knit country, and the loss of dozens of troops a month affects the public deeply. If you figure most people have a close circle of friends and family of about 200 people, a thousand dead or injured Israel troops would be heartbreaking to 200,000 people, nearly 3 percent of the Israeli population. Although the Israeli army has been able occasionally to advance miles into Lebanon, it hasn’t been able to take some key hills that it could have used to dominate highways going north.

This past Sunday, Hezbollah launched 49 operations against Israeli troops inside Lebanon. It also launched 255 rockets and drones at Israel proper, mostly hitting northern military and civilian targets but reaching as far as Tel Aviv.

The long, brutal campaign in Gaza, where Israeli troops still come under concerted fire, has produced low morale in the army, exacerbated by the reckless disregard for civilian life, giving many reservists a guilty conscience (which their cheeky TikTok videos boasting of their brutality are sometimes an attempt to hide). Something like a quarter of troops appear not to show up when called, i.e., they are AWOL. The response rate of the Ultra-Orthodox to being drafted is pitiful. In October, only 49 out of 900 called up for military service reported for duty.

In other words, yes, the Israeli air force can bomb apartment buildings, schools and hospitals and kill nearly 4,000 people, mostly civilians. It can displace 800,000 Lebanese — a sixth of the population. That kind of terror from the air, however, doesn’t actually translate into clear victories against Hezbollah. As a locally-based republic of cousins in Shiite areas, Hezbollah can “honeycomb” its defenses and the loss of top leadership has not paralyzed it.

So certainly Hezbollah has suffered significant setbacks. It hasn’t come close to being destroyed. The ceasefire, which pushes its land forces beyond the Litani River, merely gives its cadres an opportunity to regroup. Since it springs from the civilian Shiite population, the equivalent of Hezbollah reservists will certainly remain in the deep south, even if the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL take over the main patrolling responsibilities. Hezbollah’s rockets can still hit Israel even if it isn’t on the border. Their usefulness for defensive deterrence remains significant.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu dreamed of reshaping the Lebanese government as a prelude to reshaping the Middle East. In that he failed miserably. Hezbollah dreamed of forcing an end to the genocidal Israeli total war on Gaza while retaining deterrence against Tel Aviv in south Lebanon. In that it failed miserably, and its leadership paid the ultimate price for their hubris.

The ceasefire is the truce of the weak on both sides.

—–

Bonus Video:

Al Jazeera English: “President Biden hails Lebanon ceasefire as ‘good news’”

( RFE/ RL ) – Iran and Saudi Arabia have been bitter rivals for decades, vying to lead competing branches of Islam and standing on opposing sides of conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

But Tehran and Riyadh have taken major steps to de-escalate tensions and boost cooperation, a move that appeared unthinkable until recently.

The rapprochement has coincided with growing fears of an all-out war in the Middle East, where U.S. ally Israel is engaged in wars against Iranian-backed groups in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

The detente process has intensified since Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the U.S. presidential election earlier this month. The president-elect has pledged to bring peace to the region.

“I don’t view this as a warming of relations but rather as a cautious detente,” said Talal Mohammad, associate fellow at the Britain-based Royal United Services Institute.

Reassuring Iran

The first signs of a thaw came in March 2023, when Iran and Saudi Arabia restored diplomatic relations after more than seven years following a surprise Chinese-brokered agreement.

But it was Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October 2023 — soon after the U.S.- and EU-designated Palestinian terrorist group Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel — that gave real impetus to Iran-Saudi rapprochement efforts.

Since the war erupted, Iran and Israel have traded direct aerial attacks for the first time. The tit-for-tat assaults have brought the region to the brink of a full-blown conflict.

Saudi Arabia is “concerned that these escalating tensions between Israel and Iran could spiral out of control and lead to a broader regional conflict that may impact their interests,” said Hamidreza Azizi, fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Azizi adds that Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia and Shi’a-dominated Iran are still “far from friends,” despite the recent rapprochement, and they remain rivals vying for influence.

Over the past year, Saudi Arabia has stopped conducting air strikes in neighboring Yemen against the Iran-backed Huthi rebels. Riyadh has also made attempts to negotiate an end to the 10-year conflict pitting the Huthis against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government.

The Huthis have also ceased cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia. In 2019, the rebels managed to shut down half of the kingdom’s oil production.

The Trump Factor

Trump’s victory in the November 5 presidential election has injected more urgency to the Iran-Saudi rapprochement, experts say.

Saudi Arabia’s top general, Fayyad al-Ruwaili, made a rare trip to Iran on November 10 to meet Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Baqeri in what Iranian media dubbed “defense diplomacy.”

The following day, Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman accused Israel of committing “collective genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza and explicitly condemned Israel’s attack last month on Iranian military sites.

Azizi says there are fears in the region that Trump’s electoral victory will embolden Israel to intensify its attacks on Iran and Tehran’s interests.

During Trump’s first term in office from 2017 to 2021, his administration pursued a campaign of “maximum pressure” on Iran that included imposing crippling sanctions against Tehran.

At the same time, Trump struck a close relationship with Riyadh. He helped facilitate normalization between several Arab states and Israel under the so-called Abraham Accords.

Before Israel launched its devastating war in Gaza, Saudi Arabia was reportedly on the verge of a historic deal to normalize relations with Israel.

Experts say that the Huthis’ attacks in 2019 on Saudi oil facilities convinced Riyadh that Washington will not come to its aid if it is attacked.

“Given Trump’s tendency toward unpredictable shifts in policy, Saudi Arabia may seek to play an influential role by encouraging Trump to adopt a balanced approach that ensures regional stability without triggering escalation with Iran,” Mohammad said.

“By subtly guiding U.S. policy toward calibrated sanctions rather than aggressive pressure, Saudi Arabia could help maintain regional security while avoiding the risks of open confrontation,” he added.

Israeli Normalization

Normalization talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel have been indefinitely postponed. Saudi officials have recently said that a deal was off until the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Mohammad says Riyadh has significant strategic incentives to normalize relations with Israel, including security and economic cooperation as well as access to U.S. nuclear and defense technology.

But analysts say Saudi Arabia will only resume talks when the Gaza war is over, given the current public sentiment in the Muslim world toward Israel.

“Normalizing relations without achieving tangible rights for Palestinians could weaken Saudi Arabia’s normative influence within the Islamic world — a position they are keen to maintain,” Azizi argued.

The Saudis will also have to take into account Iran, which staunchly opposes Saudi normalization with Israel.

“Riyadh may consult with Tehran and seek assurances that normalization with Israel would not heighten hostilities or undermine the balance achieved through recent diplomatic outreach to Iran,” Mohammad said.

Copyright (c)2024 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English: “Iran-Saudi defence meeting: Generals discuss bilateral relations and cooperation”

RFE/ RL

To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called “a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.” Starting with the global context, he argued that, “faced with a fading superpower,” China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to “provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.” At home in the United States, domestic divisions would “widen into violent clashes and divisive debates… Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But, that historian concluded, “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

Now that a “far-right patriot,” one Donald J. Trump, has indeed captured (or rather recaptured) the presidency “with thundering rhetoric,” let’s explore the likelihood that a second Trump term in office, starting in the fateful year 2025, might actually bring a hasty end, silent or otherwise, to an “American Century” of global dominion.

Making the Original Prediction

Let’s begin by examining the reasoning underlying my original prediction. (Yes, of course, that historian was me.) Back in 2010, when I picked a specific date for a rising tide of American decline, this country looked unassailably strong both at home and abroad. The presidency of Barack Obama was producing a “post-racial” society. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. was on track for a decade of dynamic growth — the auto industry saved, oil and gas production booming, the tech sector thriving, the stock market soaring, and employment solid. Internationally, Washington was the world’s preeminent leader, with an unchallenged military, formidable diplomatic clout, unchecked economic globalization, and its democratic governance still the global norm.

Looking forward, leading historians of empire agreed that America would remain the world’s sole superpower for the foreseeable future. Writing in the Financial Times in 2002, for instance, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, author of a widely read book on imperial decline, argued that “America’s array of force is staggering,” with a mix of economic, diplomatic, and technological dominance that made it the globe’s “single superpower” without peer in the entire history of the world. Russia’s defense budget had “collapsed” and its economy was “less than that of the Netherlands.” Should China’s high growth rates continue for another 30 years, it “might be a serious challenger to U.S. predominance” — but that wouldn’t be true until 2032, if then. While America’s “unipolar moment” would surely not “continue for centuries,” its end, he predicted, “seems a long way off for now.”

Writing in a similar vein in the New York Times in February 2010, Piers Brendon, a historian of Britain’s imperial decline, dismissed the “doom mongers” who “conjure with Roman and British analogies in order to trace the decay of American hegemony.” While Rome was riven by “internecine strife” and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the U.S. was “constitutionally stable” with “an enormous industrial base.” Taking a few “relatively simple steps,” he concluded, Washington should be able to overcome current budgetary problems and perpetuate its global power indefinitely.

Buy the Book

When I made my very different prediction nine months later, I was coordinating a network of 140 historians from universities on three continents who were studying the decline of earlier empires, particularly those of Britain, France, and Spain. Beneath the surface of this country’s seeming strength, we could already see the telltale signs of decline that had led to the collapse of those earlier empires.

By 2010, economic globalization was cutting good-paying factory jobs here, income inequality was widening, and corporate bailouts were booming — all essential ingredients for rising working-class resentment and deepening domestic divisions. Foolhardy military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed by Washington elites trying to deny any sense of decline, stoked simmering anger among ordinary Americans, slowly discrediting the very idea of international commitments. And the erosion of America’s relative economic strength from half the world’s output in 1950 to a quarter in 2010 meant the wherewithal for its unipolar power was fading fast.

Only a “near-peer” competitor was needed to turn that attenuating U.S. global hegemony into accelerating imperial decline. With rapid economic growth, a vast population, and the world’s longest imperial tradition, China seemed primed to become just such a country. But back then, Washington’s foreign policy elites thought not and even admitted China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), fully confident, according to two Beltway insiders, that “U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States’ liking.”

Our group of historians, mindful of the frequent imperial wars fought when near-peer competitors finally confronted the reigning hegemon of their moment — think Germany versus Great Britain in World War I — fully expected China’s challenge would not be long in coming. Indeed, in 2012, just two years after my prediction, the U.S. National Intelligence Council warned that “China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030” and this country would no longer be “a hegemonic power.”

Just a year after that, China’s president, Xi Jinping, drawing on a massive $4 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves accumulated in the decade after joining the WTO, announced his bid for global power through what he called “the Belt and Road Initiative,” history’s largest development program. It was designed to make Beijing the center of the global economy.

In the following decade, the U.S.-China rivalry would become so intense that, last September, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall warned: “I’ve been closely watching the evolution of [China’s] military for 15 years. China is not a future threat; China is a threat today.”

The Global Rise of the Strongman

Another major setback for Washington’s world order, long legitimated by its promotion of democracy (whatever its own dominating tendencies), came from the rise of populist strongmen worldwide. Consider them part of a nationalist reaction to the West’s aggressive economic globalization.

At the close of the Cold War in 1991, Washington became the planet’s sole superpower, using its hegemony to forcefully promote a wide-open global economy — forming the World Trade Organization in 1995, pressing open-market “reforms” on developing economies, and knocking down tariff barriers worldwide. It also built a global communications grid by laying 700,000 miles of fiber-optic submarine cables and then launching 1,300 satellites (now 4,700).

By exploiting that very globalized economy, however, China’s industrial output soared to $3.2 trillion by 2016, surpassing both the U.S. and Japan, while simultaneously eliminating 2.4 million American jobs between 1999 and 2011, ensuring the closure of factories in countless towns across the South and Midwest. By fraying social safety nets while eroding protection for labor unions and local businesses in both the U.S. and Europe, globalization reduced the quality of life for many, while creating inequality on a staggering scale and stoking a working-class reaction that would crest in a global wave of angry populism.

Riding that wave, right-wing populists have been winning a steady succession of elections — in Russia (2000), Israel (2009), Hungary (2010), China (2012), Turkey (2014), the Philippines (2016), the U.S. (2016), Brazil (2018), Italy (2022), the Netherlands (2023), Indonesia (2024), and the U.S. again (2024).

Set aside their incendiary us-versus-them rhetoric, however, and look at their actual achievements and those right-wing demagogues turn out to have a record that can only be described as dismal. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro ravaged the vast Amazon rainforest and left office amid an abortive coup. In Russia, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, sacrificing his country’s economy to capture some more land (which it hardly lacked). In Turkey, Recep Erdogan caused a crippling debt crisis, while jailing 50,000 suspected opponents. In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte murdered 30,000 suspected drug users and courted China by giving up his country’s claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has wreaked havoc on Gaza and neighboring lands, in part to stay in office and stay out of prison.

Prospects for Donald Trump’s Second Term

After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, America is no longer the — or perhaps even an — “exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries. And as it has become more of an ordinary country, it has also felt the full force of the worldwide move toward strongman rule. Not only does that global trend help explain Trump’s election and his recent reelection, but it provides some clues as to what he’s likely to do with that office the second time around.

In the globalized world America made, there is now an intimate interaction between domestic and international policy. That will soon be apparent in a second Trump administration whose policies are likely to simultaneously damage the country’s economy and further degrade Washington’s world leadership.

Let’s start with the clearest of his commitments: environmental policy. During the recent election campaign, Trump called climate change “a scam” and his transition team has already drawn up executive orders to exit from the Paris climate accords. By quitting that agreement, the U.S. will abdicate any leadership role when it comes to the most consequential issue facing the international community while reducing pressure on China to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. Since these two countries now account for nearly half (45%) of global carbon emissions, such a move will ensure that the world blows past the target of keeping this planet’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Centigrade until the end of the century. Instead, on a planet that’s already had 12 recent months of just such a temperature rise, that mark is expected to be permanently reached by perhaps 2029, the year Trump finishes his second term.

On the domestic side of climate policy, Trump promised last September that he would “terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam, and rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.” On the day after his election, he committed himself to increasing the country’s oil and gas production, telling a celebratory crowd, “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world.” He will undoubtedly also block wind farm leases on Federal lands and cancel the $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electrical vehicle.

As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the American economy. In 2023, the International Renewable Energy Agency reported that, amid continuing price decreases, wind and solar power now generate electricity for less than half the cost of fossil fuels. Any attempt to slow the conversion of this country’s utilities to the most cost-effective form of energy runs a serious risk of ensuring that American-made products will be ever less competitive.

To put it bluntly, he seems to be proposing that electricity users here should pay twice as much for their power as those in other advanced nations. Similarly, as relentless engineering innovation makes electric vehicles cheaper and more reliable than petrol-powered ones, attempting to slow such an energy transition is likely to make the U.S. auto industry uncompetitive, at home and abroad.

Calling tariffs “the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump has proposed slapping a 20% duty on all foreign goods and 60% on those from China. In another instance of domestic-foreign synergy, such duties will undoubtedly end up crippling American farm exports, thanks to retaliatory overseas tariffs, while dramatically raising the cost of consumer goods for Americans, stoking inflation, and slowing consumer spending.

Reflecting his aversion to alliances and military commitments, Trump’s first foreign policy initiative will likely be an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. During a CNN town hall in May 2023, he claimed he could stop the fighting “in 24 hours.” Last July, he added: “I would tell [Ukraine’s president] Zelenskyy, no more. You got to make a deal.”

Just two days after the November election, according to the Washington Post, Trump reputedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a telephone call, “not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe.” Drawing on sources inside the Trump transition team, the Wall Street Journal reported that the new administration is considering “cementing Russia’s seizure of 20% of Ukraine” and forcing Kyiv to forego its bid to join NATO, perhaps for as long as 20 years.

With Russia drained of manpower and its economy pummeled by three years of bloody warfare, a competent negotiator (should Trump actually appoint one) might indeed be able to bring a tenuous peace to a ravaged Ukraine. Since it has been Europe’s frontline of defense against a revanchist Russia, the continent’s major powers would be expected to play a significant role. But Germany’s coalition government has just collapsed; French president Emmanuel Macron is crippled by recent electoral reverses; and the NATO alliance, after three years of a shared commitment to Ukraine, faces real uncertainty with the advent of a Trump presidency.

America’s Allies

Those impending negotiations over Ukraine highlight the paramount importance of alliances for U.S. global power. For 80 years, from World War II through the Cold War and beyond, Washington relied on bilateral and multilateral alliances as a critical force multiplier. With China and Russia both rearmed and increasingly closely aligned, reliable allies have become even more important to maintaining Washington’s global presence. With 32 member nations representing a billion people and a commitment to mutual defense that has lasted 75 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is arguably the most powerful military alliance in all of modern history.

Yet Trump has long been sharply critical of it. As a candidate in 2016, he called the alliance “obsolete.” As president, he mocked the treaty’s mutual-defense clause, claiming even “tiny” Montenegro could drag the U.S. into war. While campaigning last February, he announced that he would tell Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO ally that didn’t pay what he considered its fair share.

Right after Trump’s election, caught between what one analyst called “an aggressively advancing Russia and an aggressively withdrawing America,” French President Macron insisted that the continent needed to be a “more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context.” Even if the new administration doesn’t formally withdraw from NATO, Trump’s repeated hostility, particularly toward its crucial mutual-defense clause, may yet serve to eviscerate the alliance.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the American presence rests on three sets of overlapping alliances: the AUKUS entente with Australia and Britain, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (with Australia, India, and Japan), and a chain of bilateral defense pacts stretching along the Pacific littoral from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Via careful diplomacy, the Biden administration strengthened those alliances, bringing two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines that had drifted Beijing-wards, back into the Western fold. Trump’s penchant for abusing allies and, as in his first term, withdrawing from multilateral pacts is likely to weaken such ties and so American power in the region.

Although his first administration famously waged a trade war with Beijing, Trump’s attitude toward the island of Taiwan is bluntly transactional. “I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he said last June, adding: “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.” In October, he told the Wall Street Journal that he would not have to use military force to defend Taiwan because China’s President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m f—— crazy.” Bluster aside, Trump, unlike his predecessor Joe Biden, has never committed himself to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack.

Should Beijing indeed attack Taiwan outright or, as appears more likely, impose a crippling economic blockade on the island, Trump seems unlikely to risk a war with China. The loss of Taiwan would break the U.S. position along the Pacific littoral, for 80 years the fulcrum of its global imperial posture, pushing its naval forces back to a “second island chain” running from Japan to Guam. Such a retreat would represent a major blow to America’s imperial role in the Pacific, potentially making it no longer a significant player in the security of its Asia-Pacific allies.

A Silent U.S. Recessional

Adding up the likely impact of Donald Trump’s policies in this country, Asia, Europe, and the international community generally, his second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos, and a further loss of global leadership. As “respect for American authority” fades, Trump may yet resort to “threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But as I predicted back in 2010, it seems quite likely that “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

Copyright 2024 Alfred W. McCoy

Via Tomdispatch.com