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Increased tension, instability and possible conflict, led the international community to think of establishing a collective security system in the Persian Gulf. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani proposed the Hormuz Peace Endeavor (HOPE) at the UN General Assembly in September, and just this week, he reached out to the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain urging them to participate. The main goal is to emphasize that Iran is also concerned about increased tension in the region, while at the same time trying to adjust the regional and international geopolitical interests.
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The criticisms of this regime are politically, not ecumenically-based, so the only way they can be effectively addressed is through tangible political reform. Otherwise, Cairo risks being stuck in its unsavory de-facto alliance with the European Islamophobic right. This undermines Egypt’s position as a self-proclaimed “important and influential” regional actor, and damages its reputation in Europe, the Muslim world, and, crucially, among many Egyptians themselves.
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For Lebanon’s protesters to get to where they want to be, they will need to organize a strong representative leadership, sustain their energy, design new tactics to protect the momentum of their movement, and put forth a comprehensive program for change.
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Deep reforms do not happen overnight. Let us therefore hope that the 2022 legislative elections in Lebanon will be more consistent in their results with the slogans being brandished today. And let’s hope that, in the meantime, Lebanese will not start cutting each other’s throats again in an effort to ensure that “their community is not threatened by others.”
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Terror groups are the product of deep-seated economic and political grievances as well as radical ideologies of secular or religious variety, plus the manipulative policies of key regional and international actors. As a long as these causes are not addressed, the pursuit of maximalist goals by key actors are not stopped and the solution to terrorism and terrorists is sought solely by the use of military force and the total subjugation of the enemy of the moment, we will see more terror groups coming to the fore and clones of al-Baghdadi emerging.
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If Washington and other Western capitals are interested in decreasing terrorism and increasing stability in Arab and Muslim societies, they should reach out to these governments with an eye toward a new social contract with their peoples. Can President Trump really do that if he views the Middle East as no more than “desert, sand, and blood”? Al-Baghdadi’s demise, like that of Zarqawi and Bin Ladin, does not seem enough to move the democracy needle in the region.
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The Iranian people are no longer collateral damage to the Trump administration’s economic war against Iran, but are increasingly in this administration’s crosshairs. As Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy continues to fail to pay the hoped-for dividends, hawks in the Trump administration will continue to resort to the ugliest of tactics—including targeting humanitarian trade—in order to provoke Iran into a conflict with the United States.
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In recent years, much Turkish popular sentiment has turned against the project to topple the Assad government by force; and that, along with the continuing offers from Moscow of intriguing blandishments, is almost certainly what has prompted Erdogan to sue for peace with Assad.
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The European allies see that it was the actions of the United States that led directly to this year’s heightened tensions and risk of war in the Persian Gulf. They see that it was the U.S. that began a campaign to take oil from the Persian Gulf off the market. More broadly, the NATO allies see no reason to take sides in regional quarrels and competitions such as that between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
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The conditions for a two-state vision, such as the one Bill Clinton envisioned in his late and unlamented Parameters, are now two decades in the past. We must start basing our goals on current conditions. The supporters of Israeli policies have been doing that for years while we live in the past. And that’s why they’ve been winning.
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The time has come for Lebanon to move beyond a political class that has proven incompetent and corrupt. No longer can sectarian narratives be used cynically in order to keep certain communities loyal and uncritically tolerant of their leaders, because members of all religious communities and sects have joined together to tell their leaders, “enough is enough.”
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