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Syria Tag

Posted by David Gerstman on October 30, 2013 6 Comments
Last week as we noted, the New York Times ran a devastating article about President Obama's Syria policy. The Times reported, among other things, that the President was disinterested in planning discussions about Syria. Two other articles reported that America's Middle East allies generally and the Saudis specifically were upset by the administration's Middle East policy. I guess that the New York Times had enough serious reporting about the shortcomings of the Obama administration's Middle East policy, because over the weekend, it published Rice Offers a More Modest Strategy for Mideast by its foremost White House cheerleader, Mark Landler. (Landler contributed to the Syria report, but was not one of the bylined reporters.)
Each Saturday morning in July and August, Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s new national security adviser, gathered half a dozen aides in her corner office in the White House to plot America’s future in the Middle East. The policy review, a kind of midcourse correction, has set the United States on a new heading in the world’s most turbulent region. At the United Nations last month, Mr. Obama laid out the priorities he has adopted as a result of the review. The United States, he declared, would focus on negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, brokering peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and mitigating the strife in Syria. Everything else would take a back seat.
The article goes on to point out that even Egypt was no longer a priority. In a jab at President Obama's predecessor we learn:

Posted by David Gerstman on October 24, 2013 20 Comments
Yesterday's New York Times featured an article Obama’s Uncertain Path Amid Syria Bloodshed that is probably one of the most devastating indictments of the President's Syria policy published. I don't think that the reporters set out to critique the President and the tone of the article was always respectful. https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/393101410037821440 Still there are two description that really stuck out. The first was a general critique.
As one former senior White House official put it, “We spent so much damn time navel gazing, and that’s the tragedy of it.”
Over the past two years the article describes the various rationales the administration had for not intervening and that sentence turns out to be a very apt theme for the way the administration acted, or, more precisely, chose not to act. Then there was this:
Even as the debate about arming the rebels took on a new urgency, Mr. Obama rarely voiced strong opinions during senior staff meetings. But current and former officials said his body language was telling: he often appeared impatient or disengaged while listening to the debate, sometimes scrolling through messages on his BlackBerry or slouching and chewing gum.
One would have assumed that a Syria policy was one of the two most important foreign policy issues facing the President. (The other is the question of Iran's nuclear policy.) Being "disengaged" during such momentous discussions is worse than being engaged but making bad decisions. https://twitter.com/tobyharnden/status/393025446348349441  

Posted by David Gerstman on September 23, 2013 8 Comments
In recent weeks, the New York Times has been playing up the moderation of Iran's new government, especially that of its new president Hassan Rouhani. Yesterday's editorial, President Rouhani Comes to Town ahead of Rouhani's speech before the U.N. later this week, is one more element of that campaign.
All eyes at this week’s United Nations General Assembly will be on Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani. Since taking office in August, he has sent encouraging signals about his willingness to engage more constructively with the West than his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who insisted on proceeding with Iran’s nuclear program, denied the Holocaust and seemed unconcerned as his country slipped into deeper economic distress. Mr. Rouhani’s assembly address on Tuesday gives him a chance to provide concrete evidence that his talk of change is real.
https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/381099542533271553 Perhaps the most important article to appear last week in the media was Iranians Dial Up Presence in Syria in the Wall Street Journal (Google search terms)
The busloads of Shiite militiamen from Iraq, Syria and other Arab states have been arriving at the Iranian base in recent weeks, under cover of darkness, for instruction in urban warfare and the teachings of Iran's clerics, according to Iranian military figures and residents in the area. The fighters' mission: Fortify the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad against Sunni rebels, the U.S. and Israel. ... The fighters "are told that the war in Syria is akin to [an] epic battle for Shiite Islam, and if they die they will be martyrs of the highest rank," says an Iranian military officer briefed on the training camp, which is 15 miles outside Tehran and called Amir Al-Momenin, or Commander of the Faithful. The training of thousands of fighters is an outgrowth of Iran's decision last year to immerse itself in the Syrian civil war on behalf of its struggling ally, the Assad regime, in an effort to shift the balance of power in the Middle East. Syria's bloodshed is shaping into more than a civil war: It is now a proxy war among regional powers jockeying for influence in the wake of the Arab Spring revolutions.
https://twitter.com/UANI/status/380085805097971714

Posted by Mandy Nagy on September 20, 2013 7 Comments

Syria has reportedly turned over information outlining its weapons program to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. https://twitter.com/AP/status/381048351208513536 From the Associated Press: Syria has sent the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons an "initial declaration" outlining its weapons program, the organization said Friday. Spokesman Michael Luhan...

Posted by David Gerstman on September 17, 2013 6 Comments

“Our collective failure to prevent atrocity crimes in Syria over the past two and a half years will remain a heavy burden on the standing of the United Nations and its member states.” Ban Ki-Moon Secretary General of the United Nations, September 10, 2013 "The United States...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 16, 2013 4 Comments

A lot of attention is focused on Jihadist elements fighting in Syria, and the more "secular" Assad regime. The most underreported aspect of the civil war is that it's not just a civil war, it's a grand power-play by Iran to keep control of Syria as...

Posted by David Gerstman on September 16, 2013 34 Comments

Mideast Media Sampler 09/16/2013: Never really intended, Putin gave him a way out....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 15, 2013 25 Comments

Jeffrey Goldberg makes several points similar to the points I made in my post last night, The Deal: In order to remove the threat of Bashar Assad, we have to save Bashar Assad. Goldberg writes, New Syria Agreement Is a Big Victory. For Assad: A couple of...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on September 14, 2013 16 Comments

The US and Russia reached an agreement on a plan for Syria to turn over its chemical weapons. https://twitter.com/AP/status/378824698844688384 From the State Department's Framework for Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons: Taking into account the decision of the Syrian Arab Republic to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention and...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 13, 2013 23 Comments

Now Bashar Assad is showing the price for him to declare his chemical weapons and talk about -- just words -- maybe, possibly, removing them to somewhere, somehow, some time in the future. https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/378509356183986176 That price is guaranteeing his regime stays in power and the rebels are...

Posted by David Gerstman on September 12, 2013 23 Comments

When aliens said "We come in peace," they almost invariably had their sights set on world domination. So beware Vladimir Putin when he comes bearing peace....

Posted by New Neo on September 11, 2013 29 Comments

Obama's remarks last night on Syria, summarized: "Chemical weapons are bad. So I'm going to attack Syria, but maybe not. And I trust Putin, except maybe I don't. So perhaps let's have a diplomatic solution instead. And suddenly I believe in American exceptionalism---that is, regarding...

Posted by David Gerstman on September 11, 2013 18 Comments
Yesterday the New York Times reported With the World Watching, Syria Amassed Nerve Gas. The article documents how, despite international efforts to prevent it, Syria built up its supply of chemical weapons.
Proliferation experts said President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and his father before him, former President Hafez al-Assad, were greatly helped in their chemical weapons ambitions by a basic underlying fact: often innocuous, legally exportable materials are also the precursors to manufacturing deadly chemical weapons. ... The growth of Syria’s ability was the subject of a sharply worded secret cable transmitted by the State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name in the fall of 2009. It instructed diplomats to “emphasize that failure to halt the flow” of chemicals and equipment into Syria, Iran and North Korea could render irrelevant a group of antiproliferation countries that organized to stop that flow. ... Another leaked State Department cable on the Syrians asserted that “part of their modus operandi is to hide procurement under the guise of legitimate pharmaceutical or other transactions.”
The article describes how hard it was to stop a determined villain from improving his lethal capabilities. An evil person, or regime, intent on killing people will find a way to do it. Also, there are people, corporations and nations who will rationalize giving these evil people the means they need to reach their goals. The article is frustrating. Clearly, a serious, sustained effort to prevent the Assads from acquiring chemical weapons was needed. But it wasn't to be. Among other things the fall of the Soviet Union made it impossible to control the import of the necessary ingredients to create the gas. Executives at an American company were prosecuted for sending materials that Syria could use to manufacture chemical weapons. Of course, once those components were shipped, it was too late. But if there any lessons for preventing other villains from obtaining deadly weapons in the future to be drawn from this article, they are absent.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 11, 2013 27 Comments
Something very curious has happened on the heels of the discussions between the U.S. and Russia regarding Syria "giving up" chemical weapons. Russia almost immediately began shipping large quantities of additional conventional weapons to Syria to bolster the regime, as reported by Israeli television (via Times of Israel):
Russia is stepping up weapons supplies to Syria’s President Bashar Assad, to help him prevail in the civil war, as part of the arrangements under which the Assad regime has agreed in principle to have its chemical weapons stockpiles placed under international supervision, Israel television reported on Tuesday night. Negotiations between Russia and Syria on the supervision arrangement, which seem to have drastically reduced the likelihood of US-led military intervention in Syria, have been ongoing for two full weeks, and have also involved Iran, the Israeli Channel 2 report said. Russian President Vladimir Putin, determined to ensure that his ally Assad not face a punitive US-led strike following Damascus’s alleged use of chemical weapons in an August 21 attack that the US says killed over 1,400 Syrians, essentially ordered Assad to submit to international oversight of his chemical weapons stocks, the report said. In return, Putin promised bolstered conventional weapons shipments, “some of which are already on their way” to Syria from the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
While certainly Russia has been shipping weapons previously, this would indicate a more intensified effort. At the same time, the Obama administration seems to be backing away from the rebels. The next time John Kerry testifies before Congress -- or holds a press conference -- he should be pressed as to any undisclosed understandings. Even if Assad doesn't use chemical weapons again, he has a long history of large-scale massacres without chemical weapons:
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