Does Might Truly Make Right?

Donald Trump and Mohammad bin Salman (White House)

by Gary Sick
The Middle East has reverted to a kind of primitive savagery. The states of the region had historically treated their citizens with casual brutality, in the interest of preventing dissent, but the ferocious civil wars and interstate conflicts since the so-called Arab Spring in 2011 have introduced a new level of viciousness reminiscent of the Middle Ages.
Despite the civilized terminology of modern international relations, the old rule that “might makes right” is very much alive and well in the interactions of states. Take the word siege. It has a nice medieval ring to it, with images of armored knights planting their battle flags around some fortified town, trying to starve them into submission. But there are at least three full scale sieges going on in the Middle East today. They may lack the colorful appurtenances of the distant past, and they involve entire states rather than fortified towns, but the purpose is just as grim as any knightly undertaking.


Yemen

When Mohammad bin Salman (MbS), the 29 year old son of the newly ascendant king of Saudi Arabia, was appointed Minister of Defense in 2015, one of his first major acts was to intervene in the Yemeni civil war. His primary instrument of war was the immensely expensive, high tech Saudi air force. He also assembled a coalition of forces, starting with his neighbor in the United Arab Emirates, which provided ground forces and training for foreign fighters and tribal militias.

From the beginning, the Saudi pilots came in for intense criticism since their bombs seemed to hit almost everything except military targets. Factories, markets, dairies, and farms were hit, sometimes repeatedly, in addition to wedding parties, mosques, and apartment buildings. The Saudis insisted that they were not responsible for most of these events, even though their coalition’s planes dominated the air.

Part of this, indeed, could be attributed to pilot error and collateral damage. But a pattern emerged. Saudi Arabia and its allies established selective blockades of Yemeni ports, on the grounds of preventing Iran or others from smuggling armaments into the country. This resulted in lengthy delays of imported wheat and other foodstuffs. This, together with destruction of food production and delivery within the country resulted in near famine. Inadvertently or not, two-thirds of the Yemeni population today would be near starvation without UN assistance. Destruction of water supplies and hospitals has resulted in the greatest cholera outbreak in the world.

Regardless of the cautious and neutral language of diplomacy, it is a siege.

Qatar

Two years later, in June 2017, the UAE and Saudi Arabia suddenly announced a total boycott of the energy-rich peninsular state of Qatar. They accused Qatar of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and sponsoring terrorist activities. By this time the two Mohammads (bin Salman, MbS, of Saudi Arabia and bin Zayed, MbZ, of the UAE) both dominant political figures in their two countries, had joined up with Donald Trump. Trump initially applauded their plot, even though the largest U.S. airbase in the Middle East was located just outside Doha, Qatar. Over time the United States has moved to a more neutral position, but the boycott has persisted. All air traffic into and out of Qatar has been reduced to a single narrow passage; all movement of goods across Qatar’s land borders has been blocked; and transshipment of goods via ports of the blockading states has been prohibited.

Qatar is a tiny state with vast financial resources. Saudi Arabia and the UAE made no secret of their expectation that Qatar would succumb to their pressure in a matter of weeks. Two years later, Qatar has adapted and seems to have weathered the crisis. However, the siege continues.

Iran

In May 2018, the United States announced its withdrawal from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal. At the time, Iran was in compliance with the terms of the deal, which had been negotiated by the United States together with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, and ratified unanimously by the Security Council. On Trump’s watch, the United States reimposed the sanctions that had been removed as part of the deal and then imposed a harsh additional set of sanctions, including a total ban on the Iranian oil trade and the criminalization of large parts of the Iranian government and economy.

President Trump said that the purpose of this unprecedented siege of a UN member state was to drive Iran back to the negotiating table for a more comprehensive agreement. His aides did not openly dispute the president, but they made it very clear that their objective was to remove the theocratic regime in Tehran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently summarized the purpose of the Maximum Pressure campaign as follows: “We have applied enormous pressure to enable the Iranian people to change the direction of their leadership.” The president said he was prepared to meet Iranian leaders and negotiate without preconditions; his aides set some daunting conditions and said that negotiations would take place “when circumstances are right.”

On one point there is agreement. Iran’s economy is suffering. GDP is down; inflation is up; businesses that rely on imports or exports are facing collapse; and critical items, even including medicine, are in dwindling and uncertain supply. The Iranian government, however, appears to be in little danger. Demonstrations have largely ceased, and the external threat seems to have prompted some rallying around the flag. Hardliners, who take profit and vindication from external interference, are ascendant.

Who Pays the Price?

So there are three sieges presently being pursued in the Middle East. None of them appears to be accomplishing its stated purpose, and each of them could be ended tomorrow. But the siege-masters are unwilling to acknowledge any error, and they seem to believe that any sign of weakness would raise questions about their own might. 

So all three seem destined to be drawn out affairs, not unlike medieval campaigns to take a well-fortified castle. The warriors in their planes and the policymakers in their comfortable offices will make their calculations and persevere. And just like the Middle Ages, it will be the little people caught between might and right who will pay the price.

Stuck in Quagmire, Saudis Count on U.S. Rescue

- New York Times

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman accompanies
Saudi Air Force officers in Najran, a border city with Yemen,
on 29 June, 2016. 

NEW YORK (Dispatches) -- From the beginning of Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen, it was Prince Muhammad’s war.

Prince Muhammad bin Salman, then 29 and in his third month as defense minister, was shown in official photographs surrounded by generals, poring over maps, inspecting a helicopter and even wearing a pilot’s headset while riding in the back of a military transport plane.

Four years later, the war is lodged in a stalemate and Prince Muhammad’s signature fight has become a quagmire, the New York Times says, citing diplomats and analysts. A steep pullout  by his key ally, the United Arab Emirates, they say, raises questions about Saudi Arabia’s ability to lead the war on its own.

"Emboldened by the hawkish comments of Trump administration officials, Prince Muhammad is now hoping Washington will help make up the difference with new American military support,” the paper said, citing what it described as diplomats with knowledge of the conversations.

But congressional opposition to the war makes that highly unlikely, leaving the prince with some potentially humbling choices, it added.

"It hurts him because it injures his credibility as a successful leader,” said Kristin Smith Diwan, an analyst at the Washington-based AGSI institute. His personal investment, she said, could motivate him to search for some partial accommodation he could label a victory.

"Not many people in Saudi Arabia feel this is a wise investment for the future,” she added.

The Saudis launched the campaign in 2015 to try to return a former government to power. The war has killed thousands of civilians and put more than 12 million people at risk of starvation but has failed to dislodge the Houthis from control of the capital and much of the country.

While the Saudis have fought almost entirely from the air, Emirati officers, weapons and money played an equally critical role in holding together a fractious alliance of mutually hostile Yemeni militias, which have already begun jostling to fill the power vacuum left by the Emiratis.

As a result, analysts said, the Emirati exit makes the prospect of a Saudi military victory even more remote.

Since the Saudi intervention began, the Houthis have fired more than 500 missiles and sent more than 150 explosive-laden drones into the kingdom, Saudi researchers say. 

Some Western and United Nations diplomats hope that the Emirati withdrawal will push Prince Muhammad to negotiate a deal with the Houthis, potentially trading an end to the Saudi-led air campaign for some measure of security on the long border. He already faces mounting criticism in Congress and across the West for over the war’s devastating impact on the civilians population.

Yet the Emirati drawdown has also severely weakened the Saudis’ bargaining power, raising the potential cost to Prince Muhammad of any negotiations to end the Yemen war.

Boxed in, he has asked for more aid from the United States. The Americans already provide logistical support and sell weapons to the Saudis. The Saudis are hoping for at least greater sharing of American intelligence and possibly the deployment of special forces teams or military advisers, diplomats said.

But Washington, the Saudis complain, has sent mixed messages about its support for the war. To the surprise of the Saudi leaders, outrage over the Saudi killing and dismemberment last fall of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who lived in Virginia and wrote for The Washington Post, prompted American lawmakers to look more skeptically at the war in Yemen.

Congress passed legislation this year demanding an end to United States military support for the war, including arms sales to Saudi Arabia. 

"Pentagon officials, meanwhile, have concluded on their own that the war has degenerated into an unwinnable quagmire and have urged the Saudis for months to try to negotiate an end to the fighting,” the New York Times wrote.

Mustafa Alani, a scholar at the Saudi-backed Persian Gulf Research Center who is close to the royal court, recommended that the Saudis take a blunter approach to convincing Washington that the Houthis were an American problem: withdraw completely and let the United States deal with the anti-Western forces he says would overrun Yemen.

Asked about Saudi plans to fill the void left by the Emirati drawdown, an official of the Saudi Embassy in Washington said last week that the kingdom would rely more on Yemeni allies.

But the Yemeni militias have already started disagreeing about who will take charge in the Emiratis’ absence, underscoring the fragility of the alliance.

Some of them are the sworn enemies of the former Yemeni president sponsored by the Saudis, Abd Rabbuh Monsour Hadi.

"The problem for the Saudis today is that in contrast to the Emiratis, their main client is quite weak and ineffective,” said Emile Hokayem, a scholar at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, referring to Hadi.

Whatever happens now, Hokayem added, "whether they like it or not, the Saudis own that.” 

MBS’s bloody present for Pakistan

By Mohammad Ghaderi 

TEHRAN - The two neighboring states India and Pakistan, both with nuclear bombs, are at loggerheads again. The intensification of the clashes between the two sides can turn the Indian subcontinent into a military battle ground for a very long time.

The crisis between the two states seem pretty complex. The terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir and the retaliation of Islamabad against Delhi triggered a new stage of the confrontation between the two nuclear-armed countries. Then India carried out an air strike in Pakistan, and in return, Islamabad shot down two Indian fighter jets. 

There are a few points in these conflicts to pay heed to:

First, the initial terrorist attack in Indian-controlled part of Kashmir resembled the kinds Saudis intelligence services would normally execute. 

The ties between terrorist, and Takfiri groups in Pakistan with the House of Saud, and Wahabis is quite clear. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman who recently traveled to Islamabad is in dire need to cause security crisis to the Indian subcontinent. The Saudis believe under intense security climate, they can practice more political maneuvers in Pakistan. 
Second, the tension steered and pushed by the Saudis in the Indian subcontinent, not only has been welcomed by the White House and the U.S. intelligence services but has made Washington more determined to get the “chronic crisis” going in that geographical zone. 

In a more comprehensive glance, MBS, under influence of the Trump administration, is executing a bloody mission that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and other U.S. politicians have defined for him. 
For the Saudis authorities who have been the initiator of crime, violence, and terror in the Muslim community, the life of Muslims in the subcontinent is worth nothing. 
Third, the Pakistanis will have to spend billions of dollars to regain the security of their country when Islamabad accepted $20 billion of so-called “aid” from MBS. 
Thus, Pakistani politicians who are aware of the foul play and role of Riyadh and Washington between New Delhi and Pakistan should take heed to neutralize the deception of the actors in the region. 

The main prerequisite for Islamabad to realize such a goal can be to break ties with Riyadh. Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan and other Pakistani officials should realize that the ongoing tension between Islamabad and New Delhi won’t be the last bloody fire exchange in the region but the beginning of the end of a conflict, if they don’t stand up against the House of Saud. 

 Therefore, there is only one way to prevent the escalation of the security crisis in the Indian subcontinent i.e. to ban the name of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. in Pakistan’s foreign policy and security relations.