A STRATEGIC SHIFT
In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush
Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has
significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some
inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United
States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region,
propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni
Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has
decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In
Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government,
which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken
Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also
taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A
by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist
groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and
sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the
insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni
forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the
most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the
empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant
pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to
pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region
show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the
principal loser in the region.”
After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the
United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders
of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation
became more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard
to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from
extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq,
in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues,
assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to
Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam
Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties
between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for
years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close
relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic
alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she
pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran,
Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide.” (Syria’s Sunni
majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, “have made
their choice and their choice is to destabilize.”
Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The
clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the
execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work
around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former
officials close to the Administration said.
A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had
heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been
adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,” he said. “We ask for
anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask specific
questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s so frustrating.”
The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the
deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to
Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince
Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been
deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials
said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and
the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not
respond to specific queries but said, “The United States is not planning to go
to war with Iran.”)
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic
embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat.
They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that
greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the
region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.
The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,” a
U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni states
“were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with
our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,” he said. “We cannot reverse the
Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it.”
“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the
biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and
Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing
that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies.
This is a victory for the Saudi line.”
Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration
who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the Middle East is heading
into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.” Indyk, who is the director of the Saban
Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, added that, in his
opinion, it was not clear whether the White House was fully aware of the
strategic implications of its new policy. “The White House is not just
doubling the bet in Iraq,” he said. “It’s doubling the bet across the region.
This could get very complicated. Everything is upside down.”
The Administration’s new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate its
strategy for winning the war in Iraq. Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran and
the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, argued, however, that closer ties between the United States and
moderate or even radical Sunnis could put “fear” into the government of Prime
Minister Maliki and “make him worry that the Sunnis could actually win” the
civil war there. Clawson said that this might give Maliki an incentive to
coöperate with the United States in suppressing radical Shiite militias, such
as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
Even so, for the moment, the U.S. remains dependent on the coöperation of
Iraqi Shiite leaders. The Mahdi Army may be openly hostile to American
interests, but other Shiite militias are counted as U.S. allies. Both Moqtada
al-Sadr and the White House back Maliki. A memorandum written late last year
by Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser, suggested that the
Administration try to separate Maliki from his more radical Shiite allies by
building his base among moderate Sunnis and Kurds, but so far the trends have
been in the opposite direction. As the Iraqi Army continues to founder in its
confrontations with insurgents, the power of the Shiite militias has steadily
increased.
Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council
official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about the new
strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a case
that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to
American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty
numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an
order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of
provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some
point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open
door to strike at them.”
President George W. Bush, in a speech on January 10th, partially spelled out
this approach. “These two regimes”—Iran and Syria—“are allowing terrorists and
insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq,” Bush said.
“Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will
disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from
Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing
advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”
In the following weeks, there was a wave of allegations from the
Administration about Iranian involvement in the Iraq war. On February 11th,
reporters were shown sophisticated explosive devices, captured in Iraq, that
the Administration claimed had come from Iran. The Administration’s message
was, in essence, that the bleak situation in Iraq was the result not of its
own failures of planning and execution but of Iran’s interference.
The U.S. military also has arrested and interrogated hundreds of Iranians in
Iraq. “The word went out last August for the military to snatch as many
Iranians in Iraq as they can,” a former senior intelligence official said.
“They had five hundred locked up at one time. We’re working these guys and
getting information from them. The White House goal is to build a case that
the Iranians have been fomenting the insurgency and they’ve been doing it all
along—that Iran is, in fact, supporting the killing of Americans.” The
Pentagon consultant confirmed that hundreds of Iranians have been captured by
American forces in recent months. But he told me that that total includes many
Iranian humanitarian and aid workers who “get scooped up and released in a
short time,” after they have been interrogated.
“We are not planning for a war with Iran,” Robert Gates, the new Defense
Secretary, announced on February 2nd, and yet the atmosphere of confrontation
has deepened. According to current and former American intelligence and
military officials, secret operations in Lebanon have been accompanied by
clandestine operations targeting Iran. American military and
special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather
intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the
former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the border in pursuit
of Iranian operatives from Iraq.
At Rice’s Senate appearance in January, Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, of
Delaware, pointedly asked her whether the U.S. planned to cross the Iranian or
the Syrian border in the course of a pursuit. “Obviously, the President isn’t
going to rule anything out to protect our troops, but the plan is to take down
these networks in Iraq,” Rice said, adding, “I do think that everyone will
understand that—the American people and I assume the Congress expect the
President to do what is necessary to protect our forces.”
The ambiguity of Rice’s reply prompted a response from Nebraska Senator Chuck
Hagel, a Republican, who has been critical of the Administration:
Some of us remember 1970, Madam
Secretary. And that was Cambodia. And when our government lied to the
American people and said, “We didn’t cross the border going into Cambodia,”
in fact we did.
I happen to know something about that, as do some on this
committee. So, Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy
that the President is talking about here, it’s very, very dangerous.
The Administration’s concern about Iran’s role in Iraq is coupled with its
long-standing alarm over Iran’s nuclear program. On Fox News on January 14th,
Cheney warned of the possibility, in a few years, “of a nuclear-armed Iran,
astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global
economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations and/or their nuclear weapons
to threaten their neighbors and others around the world.” He also said, “If
you go and talk with the Gulf states or if you talk with the Saudis or if you
talk with the Israelis or the Jordanians, the entire region is worried… . The
threat Iran represents is growing.”
The Administration is now examining a wave of new intelligence on Iran’s
weapons programs. Current and former American officials told me that the
intelligence, which came from Israeli agents operating in Iran, includes a
claim that Iran has developed a three-stage solid-fuelled intercontinental
missile capable of delivering several small warheads—each with limited
accuracy—inside Europe. The validity of this human intelligence is still being
debated.
A similar argument about an imminent threat posed by weapons of mass
destruction—and questions about the intelligence used to make that case—formed
the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. Many in Congress have greeted the claims
about Iran with wariness; in the Senate on February 14th, Hillary Clinton
said, “We have all learned lessons from the conflict in Iraq, and we have to
apply those lessons to any allegations that are being raised about Iran.
Because, Mr. President, what we are hearing has too familiar a ring and we
must be on guard that we never again make decisions on the basis of
intelligence that turns out to be faulty.”
Still, the Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing
attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the
President. In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a
special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can
be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours.
In the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting and the
Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has been handed a
new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying
or aiding militants in Iraq. Previously, the focus had been on the destruction
of Iran’s nuclear facilities and possible regime change.
Two carrier strike groups—the Eisenhower and the Stennis—are now in the
Arabian Sea. One plan is for them to be relieved early in the spring, but
there is worry within the military that they may be ordered to stay in the
area after the new carriers arrive, according to several sources. (Among other
concerns, war games have shown that the carriers could be vulnerable to
swarming tactics involving large numbers of small boats, a technique that the
Iranians have practiced in the past; carriers have limited maneuverability in
the narrow Strait of Hormuz, off Iran’s southern coast.) The former senior
intelligence official said that the current contingency plans allow for an
attack order this spring. He added, however, that senior officers on the Joint
Chiefs were counting on the White House’s not being “foolish enough to do this
in the face of Iraq, and the problems it would give the Republicans in 2008.”
PRINCE BANDAR’S GAME
The Administration’s effort to diminish Iranian authority in the Middle East
has relied heavily on Saudi Arabia and on Prince Bandar, the Saudi
national-security adviser. Bandar served as the Ambassador to the United
States for twenty-two years, until 2005, and has maintained a friendship with
President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. In his new post, he continues to
meet privately with them. Senior White House officials have made several
visits to Saudi Arabia recently, some of them not disclosed.
Last November, Cheney flew to Saudi Arabia for a surprise meeting with King
Abdullah and Bandar. The Times reported that the King warned Cheney that Saudi
Arabia would back its fellow-Sunnis in Iraq if the United States were to
withdraw. A European intelligence official told me that the meeting also
focussed on more general Saudi fears about “the rise of the Shiites.” In
response, “The Saudis are starting to use their leverage—money.”
In a royal family rife with competition, Bandar has, over the years, built a
power base that relies largely on his close relationship with the U.S., which
is crucial to the Saudis. Bandar was succeeded as Ambassador by Prince Turki
al-Faisal; Turki resigned after eighteen months and was replaced by Adel A.
al-Jubeir, a bureaucrat who has worked with Bandar. A former Saudi diplomat
told me that during Turki’s tenure he became aware of private meetings
involving Bandar and senior White House officials, including Cheney and
Abrams. “I assume Turki was not happy with that,” the Saudi said. But, he
added, “I don’t think that Bandar is going off on his own.” Although Turki
dislikes Bandar, the Saudi said, he shared his goal of challenging the spread
of Shiite power in the Middle East.
The split between Shiites and Sunnis goes back to a bitter divide, in the
seventh century, over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad. Sunnis
dominated the medieval caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, and Shiites,
traditionally, have been regarded more as outsiders. Worldwide, ninety per
cent of Muslims are Sunni, but Shiites are a majority in Iran, Iraq, and
Bahrain, and are the largest Muslim group in Lebanon. Their concentration in a
volatile, oil-rich region has led to concern in the West and among Sunnis
about the emergence of a “Shiite crescent”—especially given Iran’s increased
geopolitical weight.
“The Saudis still see the world through the days of the Ottoman Empire, when
Sunni Muslims ruled the roost and the Shiites were the lowest class,” Frederic
Hof, a retired military officer who is an expert on the Middle East, told me.
If Bandar was seen as bringing about a shift in U.S. policy in favor of the
Sunnis, he added, it would greatly enhance his standing within the royal
family.
The Saudis are driven by their fear that Iran could tilt the balance of power
not only in the region but within their own country. Saudi Arabia has a
significant Shiite minority in its Eastern Province, a region of major oil
fields; sectarian tensions are high in the province. The royal family believes
that Iranian operatives, working with local Shiites, have been behind many
terrorist attacks inside the kingdom, according to Vali Nasr. “Today, the only
army capable of containing Iran”—the Iraqi Army—“has been destroyed by the
United States. You’re now dealing with an Iran that could be nuclear-capable
and has a standing army of four hundred and fifty thousand soldiers.” (Saudi
Arabia has seventy-five thousand troops in its standing army.)
Nasr went on, “The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep
relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis”—Sunni extremists who
view Shiites as apostates. “The last time Iran was a threat, the Saudis were
able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic radicals. Once you get them out of
the box, you can’t put them back.”
The Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a target of
Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence among the
family’s myriad princes. The princes are gambling that they will not be
overthrown as long as they continue to support religious schools and charities
linked to the extremists. The Administration’s new strategy is heavily
dependent on this bargain.
Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first
emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government
offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet
Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas
of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and
recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with
Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his
associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.
This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis
have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the
religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this
movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to
throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and
at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”
The Saudi said that, in his country’s view, it was taking a political risk by
joining the U.S. in challenging Iran: Bandar is already seen in the Arab world
as being too close to the Bush Administration. “We have two nightmares,” the
former diplomat told me. “For Iran to acquire the bomb and for the United
States to attack Iran. I’d rather the Israelis bomb the Iranians, so we can
blame them. If America does it, we will be blamed.”
In the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have
developed a series of informal understandings about their new strategic
direction. At least four main elements were involved, the U.S. government
consultant told me. First, Israel would be assured that its security was
paramount and that Washington and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states shared
its concern about Iran.
Second, the Saudis would urge Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian party that has
received support from Iran, to curtail its anti-Israeli aggression and to
begin serious talks about sharing leadership with Fatah, the more secular
Palestinian group. (In February, the Saudis brokered a deal at Mecca between
the two factions. However, Israel and the U.S. have expressed dissatisfaction
with the terms.)
The third component was that the Bush Administration would work directly with
Sunni nations to counteract Shiite ascendance in the region.
Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds
and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of
Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government
will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations. Syria is a major
conduit of arms to Hezbollah. The Saudi government is also at odds with the
Syrians over the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime
Minister, in Beirut in 2005, for which it believes the Assad government was
responsible. Hariri, a billionaire Sunni, was closely associated with the
Saudi regime and with Prince Bandar. (A U.N. inquiry strongly suggested that
the Syrians were involved, but offered no direct evidence; there are plans for
another investigation, by an international tribunal.)
Patrick Clawson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, depicted
the Saudis’ coöperation with the White House as a significant breakthrough.
“The Saudis understand that if they want the Administration to make a more
generous political offer to the Palestinians they have to persuade the Arab
states to make a more generous offer to the Israelis,” Clawson told me. The
new diplomatic approach, he added, “shows a real degree of effort and
sophistication as well as a deftness of touch not always associated with this
Administration. Who’s running the greater risk—we or the Saudis? At a time
when America’s standing in the Middle East is extremely low, the Saudis are
actually embracing us. We should count our blessings.”
The Pentagon consultant had a different view. He said that the Administration
had turned to Bandar as a “fallback,” because it had realized that the failing
war in Iraq could leave the Middle East “up for grabs.”
JIHADIS IN LEBANON
The focus of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, after Iran, is Lebanon, where the
Saudis have been deeply involved in efforts by the Administration to support
the Lebanese government. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is struggling to stay in
power against a persistent opposition led by Hezbollah, the Shiite
organization, and its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah has an
extensive infrastructure, an estimated two to three thousand active fighters,
and thousands of additional members.
Hezbollah has been on the State Department’s terrorist list since 1997. The
organization has been implicated in the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in
Beirut that killed two hundred and forty-one military men. It has also been
accused of complicity in the kidnapping of Americans, including the C.I.A.
station chief in Lebanon, who died in captivity, and a Marine colonel serving
on a U.N. peacekeeping mission, who was killed. (Nasrallah has denied that the
group was involved in these incidents.) Nasrallah is seen by many as a staunch
terrorist, who has said that he regards Israel as a state that has no right to
exist. Many in the Arab world, however, especially Shiites, view him as a
resistance leader who withstood Israel in last summer’s thirty-three-day war,
and Siniora as a weak politician who relies on America’s support but was
unable to persuade President Bush to call for an end to the Israeli bombing of
Lebanon. (Photographs of Siniora kissing Condoleezza Rice on the cheek when
she visited during the war were prominently displayed during street protests
in Beirut.)
The Bush Administration has publicly pledged the Siniora government a billion
dollars in aid since last summer. A donors’ conference in Paris, in January,
which the U.S. helped organize, yielded pledges of almost eight billion more,
including a promise of more than a billion from the Saudis. The American
pledge includes more than two hundred million dollars in military aid, and
forty million dollars for internal security.
The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora
government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S.
government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to
resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we
can,” the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such
money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this
process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential
unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay
vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s
a very high-risk venture.”
American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora
government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of
emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and
around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are
seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are
with Al Qaeda.
During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of
attempting “to hijack the state,” but he also objected to the Lebanese and
Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. “Salafis are sick and
hateful, and I’m very much against the idea of flirting with them,” he said.
“They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart
them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly.”
Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British
intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in
Beirut, told me, “The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to
come in. It could be very dangerous.” Crooke said that one Sunni extremist
group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah
al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its
membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was told that within
twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people
presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s
interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah,” Crooke said.
The largest of the groups, Asbat al-Ansar, is situated in the Ain al-Hilweh
Palestinian refugee camp. Asbat al-Ansar has received arms and supplies from
Lebanese internal-security forces and militias associated with the Siniora
government.
In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group,
Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the son
of the slain former Prime Minister—Saad inherited more than four billion
dollars after his father’s assassination—paid forty-eight thousand dollars in
bail for four members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had
been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern
Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants “had trained in
al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”
According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his parliamentary
majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh Islamists, as well
as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian
embassies in Beirut, the previous year. (He also arranged a pardon for Samir
Geagea, a Maronite Christian militia leader, who had been convicted of four
political murders, including the assassination, in 1987, of Prime Minister
Rashid Karami.) Hariri described his actions to reporters as humanitarian.
In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government
acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We
have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,”
he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn
Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict.”
The official said that his government was in a no-win situation. Without a
political settlement with Hezbollah, he said, Lebanon could “slide into a
conflict,” in which Hezbollah fought openly with Sunni forces, with
potentially horrific consequences. But if Hezbollah agreed to a settlement yet
still maintained a separate army, allied with Iran and Syria, “Lebanon could
become a target. In both cases, we become a target.”
The Bush Administration has portrayed its support of the Siniora government as
an example of the President’s belief in democracy, and his desire to prevent
other powers from interfering in Lebanon. When Hezbollah led street
demonstrations in Beirut in December, John Bolton, who was then the U.S.
Ambassador to the U.N., called them “part of the Iran-Syria-inspired coup.”
Leslie H. Gelb, a past president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said
that the Administration’s policy was less pro democracy than “pro American
national security. The fact is that it would be terribly dangerous if
Hezbollah ran Lebanon.” The fall of the Siniora government would be seen, Gelb
said, “as a signal in the Middle East of the decline of the United States and
the ascendancy of the terrorism threat. And so any change in the distribution
of political power in Lebanon has to be opposed by the United States—and we’re
justified in helping any non-Shiite parties resist that change. We should say
this publicly, instead of talking about democracy.”
Martin Indyk, of the Saban Center, said, however, that the United States “does
not have enough pull to stop the moderates in Lebanon from dealing with the
extremists.” He added, “The President sees the region as divided between
moderates and extremists, but our regional friends see it as divided between
Sunnis and Shia. The Sunnis that we view as extremists are regarded by our
Sunni allies simply as Sunnis.”
In January, after an outburst of street violence in Beirut involving
supporters of both the Siniora government and Hezbollah, Prince Bandar flew to
Tehran to discuss the political impasse in Lebanon and to meet with Ali
Larijani, the Iranians’ negotiator on nuclear issues. According to a Middle
Eastern ambassador, Bandar’s mission—which the ambassador said was endorsed by
the White House—also aimed “to create problems between the Iranians and
Syria.” There had been tensions between the two countries about Syrian talks
with Israel, and the Saudis’ goal was to encourage a breach. However, the
ambassador said, “It did not work. Syria and Iran are not going to betray each
other. Bandar’s approach is very unlikely to succeed.”
Walid Jumblatt, who is the leader of the Druze minority in Lebanon and a
strong Siniora supporter, has attacked Nasrallah as an agent of Syria, and has
repeatedly told foreign journalists that Hezbollah is under the direct control
of the religious leadership in Iran. In a conversation with me last December,
he depicted Bashir Assad, the Syrian President, as a “serial killer.”
Nasrallah, he said, was “morally guilty” of the assassination of Rafik Hariri
and the murder, last November, of Pierre Gemayel, a member of the Siniora
Cabinet, because of his support for the Syrians.
Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington
last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining
Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does
try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be
“the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said.
The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement founded in
Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent opposition to the
regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir’s father. In 1982, the Brotherhood took control
of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city for a week, killing between six
thousand and twenty thousand people. Membership in the Brotherhood is
punishable by death in Syria. The Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the
U.S. and of Israel. Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, “We told Cheney that the
basic link between Iran and Lebanon is Syria—and to weaken Iran you need to
open the door to effective Syrian opposition.”
There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already
benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition
of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim
Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the
Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have
provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead
with financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that
Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the
knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members
met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press
reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided
members of the Front with travel documents.
Jumblatt said he understood that the issue was a sensitive one for the White
House. “I told Cheney that some people in the Arab world, mainly the
Egyptians”—whose moderate Sunni leadership has been fighting the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood for decades—“won’t like it if the United States helps the
Brotherhood. But if you don’t take on Syria we will be face to face in Lebanon
with Hezbollah in a long fight, and one we might not win.”
THE SHEIKH
On a warm, clear night early last December, in a bombed-out suburb a few miles
south of downtown Beirut, I got a preview of how the Administration’s new
strategy might play out in Lebanon. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah
leader, who has been in hiding, had agreed to an interview. Security
arrangements for the meeting were secretive and elaborate. I was driven, in
the back seat of a darkened car, to a damaged underground garage somewhere in
Beirut, searched with a handheld scanner, placed in a second car to be driven
to yet another bomb-scarred underground garage, and transferred again. Last
summer, it was reported that Israel was trying to kill Nasrallah, but the
extraordinary precautions were not due only to that threat. Nasrallah’s aides
told me that they believe he is a prime target of fellow-Arabs, primarily
Jordanian intelligence operatives, as well as Sunni jihadists who they believe
are affiliated with Al Qaeda. (The government consultant and a retired
four-star general said that Jordanian intelligence, with support from the U.S.
and Israel, had been trying to infiltrate Shiite groups, to work against
Hezbollah. Jordan’s King Abdullah II has warned that a Shiite government in
Iraq that was close to Iran would lead to the emergence of a Shiite crescent.)
This is something of an ironic turn: Nasrallah’s battle with Israel last
summer turned him—a Shiite—into the most popular and influential figure among
Sunnis and Shiites throughout the region. In recent months, however, he has
increasingly been seen by many Sunnis not as a symbol of Arab unity but as a
participant in a sectarian war.
Nasrallah, dressed, as usual, in religious garb, was waiting for me in an
unremarkable apartment. One of his advisers said that he was not likely to
remain there overnight; he has been on the move since his decision, last July,
to order the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid set off
the thirty-three-day war. Nasrallah has since said publicly—and repeated to
me—that he misjudged the Israeli response. “We just wanted to capture
prisoners for exchange purposes,” he told me. “We never wanted to drag the
region into war.”
Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to
deliberately instigate fitna, an Arabic word that is used to mean
“insurrection and fragmentation within Islam.” “In my opinion, there is a huge
campaign through the media throughout the world to put each side up against
the other,” he said. “I believe that all this is being run by American and
Israeli intelligence.” (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.) He
said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions, but argued
that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into Lebanon.
(Sunni-Shiite confrontations increased, along with violence, in the weeks
after we talked.)
Nasrallah said he believed that President Bush’s goal was “the drawing of a
new map for the region. They want the partition of Iraq. Iraq is not on the
edge of a civil war—there is a civil war. There is ethnic and sectarian
cleansing. The daily killing and displacement which is taking place in Iraq
aims at achieving three Iraqi parts, which will be sectarian and ethnically
pure as a prelude to the partition of Iraq. Within one or two years at the
most, there will be total Sunni areas, total Shiite areas, and total Kurdish
areas. Even in Baghdad, there is a fear that it might be divided into two
areas, one Sunni and one Shiite.”
He went on, “I can say that President Bush is lying when he says he does not
want Iraq to be partitioned. All the facts occurring now on the ground make
you swear he is dragging Iraq to partition. And a day will come when he will
say, ‘I cannot do anything, since the Iraqis want the partition of their
country and I honor the wishes of the people of Iraq.’ ”
Nasrallah said he believed that America also wanted to bring about the
partition of Lebanon and of Syria. In Syria, he said, the result would be to
push the country “into chaos and internal battles like in Iraq.” In Lebanon,
“There will be a Sunni state, an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a Druze
state.” But, he said, “I do not know if there will be a Shiite state.”
Nasrallah told me that he suspected that one aim of the Israeli bombing of
Lebanon last summer was “the destruction of Shiite areas and the displacement
of Shiites from Lebanon. The idea was to have the Shiites of Lebanon and Syria
flee to southern Iraq,” which is dominated by Shiites. “I am not sure, but I
smell this,” he told me.
Partition would leave Israel surrounded by “small tranquil states,” he said.
“I can assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided, and the issue
will reach to North African states. There will be small ethnic and
confessional states,” he said. “In other words, Israel will be the most
important and the strongest state in a region that has been partitioned into
ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with each other. This is
the new Middle East.”
In fact, the Bush Administration has adamantly resisted talk of partitioning
Iraq, and its public stances suggest that the White House sees a future
Lebanon that is intact, with a weak, disarmed Hezbollah playing, at most, a
minor political role. There is also no evidence to support Nasrallah’s belief
that the Israelis were seeking to drive the Shiites into southern Iraq.
Nevertheless, Nasrallah’s vision of a larger sectarian conflict in which the
United States is implicated suggests a possible consequence of the White
House’s new strategy.
In the interview, Nasrallah made mollifying gestures and promises that would
likely be met with skepticism by his opponents. “If the United States says
that discussions with the likes of us can be useful and influential in
determining American policy in the region, we have no objection to talks or
meetings,” he said. “But, if their aim through this meeting is to impose their
policy on us, it will be a waste of time.” He said that the Hezbollah militia,
unless attacked, would operate only within the borders of Lebanon, and pledged
to disarm it when the Lebanese Army was able to stand up. Nasrallah said that
he had no interest in initiating another war with Israel. However, he added
that he was anticipating, and preparing for, another Israeli attack, later
this year.
Nasrallah further insisted that the street demonstrations in Beirut would
continue until the Siniora government fell or met his coalition’s political
demands. “Practically speaking, this government cannot rule,” he told me. “It
might issue orders, but the majority of the Lebanese people will not abide and
will not recognize the legitimacy of this government. Siniora remains in
office because of international support, but this does not mean that Siniora
can rule Lebanon.”
President Bush’s repeated praise of the Siniora government, Nasrallah said,
“is the best service to the Lebanese opposition he can give, because it
weakens their position vis-à-vis the Lebanese people and the Arab and Islamic
populations. They are betting on us getting tired. We did not get tired during
the war, so how could we get tired in a demonstration?”
There is sharp division inside and outside the Bush Administration about how
best to deal with Nasrallah, and whether he could, in fact, be a partner in a
political settlement. The outgoing director of National Intelligence, John
Negroponte, in a farewell briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in
January, said that Hezbollah “lies at the center of Iran’s terrorist strategy…
. It could decide to conduct attacks against U.S. interests in the event it
feels its survival or that of Iran is threatened… . Lebanese Hezbollah sees
itself as Tehran’s partner.”
In 2002, Richard Armitage, then the Deputy Secretary of State, called
Hezbollah “the A-team” of terrorists. In a recent interview, however, Armitage
acknowledged that the issue has become somewhat more complicated. Nasrallah,
Armitage told me, has emerged as “a political force of some note, with a
political role to play inside Lebanon if he chooses to do so.” In terms of
public relations and political gamesmanship, Armitage said, Nasrallah “is the
smartest man in the Middle East.” But, he added, Nasrallah “has got to make it
clear that he wants to play an appropriate role as the loyal opposition. For
me, there’s still a blood debt to pay”—a reference to the murdered colonel and
the Marine barracks bombing.
Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe
critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored
terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for
cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in
Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and
now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites.
“The most important story in the Middle East is the growth of Nasrallah from a
street guy to a leader—from a terrorist to a statesman,” Baer added. “The dog
that didn’t bark this summer”—during the war with Israel—“is Shiite
terrorism.” Baer was referring to fears that Nasrallah, in addition to firing
rockets into Israel and kidnapping its soldiers, might set in motion a wave of
terror attacks on Israeli and American targets around the world. “He could
have pulled the trigger, but he did not,” Baer said.
Most members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities acknowledge
Hezbollah’s ongoing ties to Iran. But there is disagreement about the extent
to which Nasrallah would put aside Hezbollah’s interests in favor of Iran’s. A
former C.I.A. officer who also served in Lebanon called Nasrallah “a Lebanese
phenomenon,” adding, “Yes, he’s aided by Iran and Syria, but Hezbollah’s gone
beyond that.” He told me that there was a period in the late eighties and
early nineties when the C.I.A. station in Beirut was able to clandestinely
monitor Nasrallah’s conversations. He described Nasrallah as “a gang leader
who was able to make deals with the other gangs. He had contacts with
everybody.”
TELLING CONGRESS
The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not
been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with
questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an earlier chapter
in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the
Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran.
Saudi money was involved in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and
a few of the players back then—notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are
involved in today’s dealings.
Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two
years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One
conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had
been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the
experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants
found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be
totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four,
it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s
role, the former senior intelligence official said.
I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former
senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in
Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship
and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte
declined to comment.)
The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did not
want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served
as Ambassador to Honduras. “Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m not going down that
road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the books, with no
finding.’ ” (In the case of covert C.I.A. operations, the President must issue
a written finding and inform Congress.) Negroponte stayed on as Deputy
Secretary of State, he added, because “he believes he can influence the
government in a positive way.”
The government consultant said that Negroponte shared the White House’s policy
goals but “wanted to do it by the book.” The Pentagon consultant also told me
that “there was a sense at the senior-ranks level that he wasn’t fully on
board with the more adventurous clandestine initiatives.” It was also true, he
said, that Negroponte “had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption
for fixing the Middle East.”
The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight, was
accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black money,
scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of
missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are
unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the
former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.
“This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told
me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.” He said
that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi
operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re
concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”
The issue of oversight is beginning to get more attention from Congress. Last
November, the Congressional Research Service issued a report for Congress on
what it depicted as the Administration’s blurring of the line between C.I.A.
activities and strictly military ones, which do not have the same reporting
requirements. And the Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by Senator Jay
Rockefeller, has scheduled a hearing for March 8th on Defense Department
intelligence activities.
Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, a Democrat who is a member of the Intelligence
Committee, told me, “The Bush Administration has frequently failed to meet its
legal obligation to keep the Intelligence Committee fully and currently
informed. Time and again, the answer has been ‘Trust us.’ ” Wyden said, “It is
hard for me to trust the Administration.”
Article Source:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh
* Seymour (Sy) Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937 Chicago) is
an American Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and author based
in Washington, DC. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on
military and security matters. His work first gained worldwide recognition in
1969 for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War,
for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His
2004 reports on the US military's mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib
prison gained much attention. Hersh received five times (between 1969 and
2004) the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting given annually by Long
Island University to honor contributions to journalistic integrity and
investigative reporting.
