dlink
5 maart 2007, 16:20
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070305fa_fact_hersh
In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the
Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert
operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The
“redirection,� as some inside the White House have called the new
strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation
with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening
sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration
has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East.
In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s
government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to
weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S.
has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally
Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni
extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile
to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the
insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni
forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective,
the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war
is
the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made
defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s
right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities
in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its
allies, will be the principal loser in the region.�
After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the
United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the
leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That
calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks,
especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its
operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia.
Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced
by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there
could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s
Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored
warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi
Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to
the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with
the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed
publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in
January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new
strategic alignment in the Middle East,� separating “reformers� and
“extremists�; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation,
and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that
divide.� (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran
and
Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.�
Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The
clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving
the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to
work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and
former officials close to the Administration said.
A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had
heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not
been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,� he said. “We
ask
for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask
specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s
so
frustrating.�
The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the
deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador
to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice
has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current
officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney.
(Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story;
the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, “The United
States is not planning to go to war with Iran.�)
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic
embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat.
They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that
greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in
the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.
The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,�
a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni
states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing
resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,� he said.
“We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it.�
“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the
biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,� Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and
Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been
arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the
lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.�
Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton
Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the
Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.� Indyk, who
is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear
whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of
its new policy. “The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq,�
he
said. “It’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very
complicated. Everything is upside down.�
The Administration’s new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate
its strategy for winning the war in Iraq. Patrick Clawson, an expert on
Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, argued, however, that closer ties between the United
States and moderate or even radical Sunnis could put “fear� into the
government of Prime Minister Maliki and “make him worry that the Sunnis
could actually win� the civil war there. Clawson said that this might give
Maliki an incentive to coöperate with the United States in suppressing
radical Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
Even so, for the moment, the U.S. remains dependent on the coöperation of
Iraqi Shiite leaders. The Mahdi Army may be openly hostile to American
interests, but other Shiite militias are counted as U.S. allies. Both
Moqtada al-Sadr and the White House back Maliki. A memorandum written late
last year by Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser, suggested that
the Administration try to separate Maliki from his more radical Shiite
allies by building his base among moderate Sunnis and Kurds, but so far
the trends have been in the opposite direction. As the Iraqi Army
continues to founder in its confrontations with insurgents, the power of
the Shiite militias has steadily increased.
Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council
official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic� about
the
new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a
case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni
insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual
casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is
greater by an order of magnitude,� Leverett said. “This is all part of
the
campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea
is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the
Administration will have an open door to strike at them.�
President George W. Bush, in a speech on January 10th, partially spelled
out this approach. “These two regimes�—Iran and Syria—“are allowing
terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of
Iraq,� Bush said. “Iran is providing material support for attacks on
American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll
interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out
and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our
enemies in Iraq.�
In the following weeks, there was a wave of allegations from the
Administration about Iranian involvement in the Iraq war. On February
11th, reporters were shown sophisticated explosive devices, captured in
Iraq, that the Administration claimed had come from Iran. The
Administration’s message was, in essence, that the bleak situation in Iraq
was the result not of its own failures of planning and execution but of
Iran’s interference.
The U.S. military also has arrested and interrogated hundreds of Iranians
in Iraq. “The word went out last August for the military to snatch as many
Iranians in Iraq as they can,� a former senior intelligence official said.
“They had five hundred locked up at one time. We’re working these guys
and
getting information from them. The White House goal is to build a case
that the Iranians have been fomenting the insurgency and they’ve been
doing it all along—that Iran is, in fact, supporting the killing of
Americans.� The Pentagon consultant confirmed that hundreds of Iranians
have been captured by American forces in recent months. But he told me
that that total includes many Iranian humanitarian and aid workers who
“get scooped up and released in a short time,� after they have been
interrogated.
“We are not planning for a war with Iran,� Robert Gates, the new Defense
Secretary, announced on February 2nd, and yet the atmosphere of
confrontation has deepened. According to current and former American
intelligence and military officials, secret operations in Lebanon have
been accompanied by clandestine operations targeting Iran. American
military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in
Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on
terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed
the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.
In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the
Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert
operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The
“redirection,� as some inside the White House have called the new
strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation
with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening
sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration
has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East.
In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s
government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to
weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S.
has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally
Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni
extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile
to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the
insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni
forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective,
the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war
is
the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made
defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s
right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities
in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its
allies, will be the principal loser in the region.�
After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the
United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the
leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That
calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks,
especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its
operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia.
Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced
by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there
could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s
Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored
warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi
Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to
the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with
the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed
publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in
January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new
strategic alignment in the Middle East,� separating “reformers� and
“extremists�; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation,
and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that
divide.� (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran
and
Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.�
Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The
clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving
the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to
work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and
former officials close to the Administration said.
A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had
heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not
been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,� he said. “We
ask
for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask
specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s
so
frustrating.�
The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the
deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador
to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice
has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current
officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney.
(Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story;
the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, “The United
States is not planning to go to war with Iran.�)
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic
embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat.
They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that
greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in
the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.
The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,�
a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni
states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing
resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,� he said.
“We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it.�
“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the
biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,� Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and
Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been
arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the
lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.�
Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton
Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the
Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.� Indyk, who
is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear
whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of
its new policy. “The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq,�
he
said. “It’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very
complicated. Everything is upside down.�
The Administration’s new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate
its strategy for winning the war in Iraq. Patrick Clawson, an expert on
Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, argued, however, that closer ties between the United
States and moderate or even radical Sunnis could put “fear� into the
government of Prime Minister Maliki and “make him worry that the Sunnis
could actually win� the civil war there. Clawson said that this might give
Maliki an incentive to coöperate with the United States in suppressing
radical Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
Even so, for the moment, the U.S. remains dependent on the coöperation of
Iraqi Shiite leaders. The Mahdi Army may be openly hostile to American
interests, but other Shiite militias are counted as U.S. allies. Both
Moqtada al-Sadr and the White House back Maliki. A memorandum written late
last year by Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser, suggested that
the Administration try to separate Maliki from his more radical Shiite
allies by building his base among moderate Sunnis and Kurds, but so far
the trends have been in the opposite direction. As the Iraqi Army
continues to founder in its confrontations with insurgents, the power of
the Shiite militias has steadily increased.
Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council
official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic� about
the
new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a
case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni
insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual
casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is
greater by an order of magnitude,� Leverett said. “This is all part of
the
campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea
is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the
Administration will have an open door to strike at them.�
President George W. Bush, in a speech on January 10th, partially spelled
out this approach. “These two regimes�—Iran and Syria—“are allowing
terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of
Iraq,� Bush said. “Iran is providing material support for attacks on
American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll
interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out
and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our
enemies in Iraq.�
In the following weeks, there was a wave of allegations from the
Administration about Iranian involvement in the Iraq war. On February
11th, reporters were shown sophisticated explosive devices, captured in
Iraq, that the Administration claimed had come from Iran. The
Administration’s message was, in essence, that the bleak situation in Iraq
was the result not of its own failures of planning and execution but of
Iran’s interference.
The U.S. military also has arrested and interrogated hundreds of Iranians
in Iraq. “The word went out last August for the military to snatch as many
Iranians in Iraq as they can,� a former senior intelligence official said.
“They had five hundred locked up at one time. We’re working these guys
and
getting information from them. The White House goal is to build a case
that the Iranians have been fomenting the insurgency and they’ve been
doing it all along—that Iran is, in fact, supporting the killing of
Americans.� The Pentagon consultant confirmed that hundreds of Iranians
have been captured by American forces in recent months. But he told me
that that total includes many Iranian humanitarian and aid workers who
“get scooped up and released in a short time,� after they have been
interrogated.
“We are not planning for a war with Iran,� Robert Gates, the new Defense
Secretary, announced on February 2nd, and yet the atmosphere of
confrontation has deepened. According to current and former American
intelligence and military officials, secret operations in Lebanon have
been accompanied by clandestine operations targeting Iran. American
military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in
Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on
terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed
the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.