The Turkish government’s recent decision to award its high-altitude missile defense contract to China conjured images of the residents of Troy rejoicing the large, Greek-made wooden horse at the end of the Trojan Wars. That story did not have a pleasant end for the Trojans. It is not clear how this one will play out for Ankara and its NATO allies.
Barın Kayaoğlu is finishing his doctorate in history at the University of Virginia. He was recently a Smith Richardson Foundation fellow in International Security Studies at Yale University. You can follow him on Twitter (@barinkayaoglu) and Facebook (Barın Kayaoğlu).
To the casual observer, pictures of ordinary Iranians celebrating the election of Hassan Rouhani as president must have been a strange one. After all, only four years ago, the allegations of fraud in the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had caused massive protests in Iran.
Yet Iran’s impressive voter turnout (estimated at 75 percent, which is fifteen points higher than the turnout in the U.S. presidential election last year), gave the lie to much of the criticism. The celebrations further refuted the critics.
But why are Iranians so excited about Hassan Rouhani?
The answer partly lies in Rouhani’s background. The jurist-turned-foreign policy expert has the right credentials to serve Iran as president for the next four years. Before his election, Rouhani was Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei’s representative in the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s most important policy-making body on matters of national defense and foreign affairs. Rouhani also led the team that negotiated Iran’s nuclear program with Britain, France, and Germany in 2003-5. He completed a doctorate in law at Glasgow Caledonian University and speaks several foreign languages. In short, Rouhani has the experience and skills to improve Iran’s international standing.
This background probably helped him with his election. As other experts have pointed out, Rouhani’s victory is a signal that the people of Iran want the standoff with the outside world over their country’s nuclear program to be resolved peacefully. Even though the supreme leader has ultimate say in Iran’s national security affairs, it is the president who serves as the country’s main broker with the outside world. Among all candidates on the ballot, Rouhani was the best man to improve his nation’s international standing.
These are some of the obvious reasons why Hassan Rouhani’s victory is good news. But there are also intangible (yet critically important) factors that make this election bode well for Iran and the world. Rouhani is not a radical reformer but he is not a hardliner or a puppet of Khamanei either. Despite his status as an “inside man” within the Islamic Republic, the new president received substantial support from moderates and reformists during his campaign. For the next four years, Rouhani will be able to talk to both the establishment and the reformists with ease.
That frankness will come in very handy. Iran may not be a Western-style democracy but it is no North Korea either. The Iranian media frequently complains about the country’s problems and expresses popular frustrations. But many of those grievances probably don’t reach the supreme leader (a frequent problem in authoritarian systems). At the moment, Iran actually needs a president who could level with the supreme leader as well as ordinary Iranians. Rouhani strikes me as somebody who could fulfill that role.
Iran faces some very tough choices in the days ahead. When Hassan Rouhani takes charge in August, he will have some hard decisions to make. The good news is that he seems capable of making them. Right now, Iranians have reason to celebrate.
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Barın Kayaoğlu is finishing his Ph.D. in history at the University of Virginia and is a Smith Richardson Foundation fellow in International Security Studies at Yale University. He welcomes all comments, questions, and exchanges. To contact him, click here.
I remember having mixed reactions back in 2009 when President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On the one hand, just like many people in the United States and around the world, I was excited about his presidency. He looked, spoke, and acted differently than his predecessor, George W. Bush.
I was worried that the immense weight of the Nobel would raise expectations so high that – much like a child prodigy cracking under pressure and failing to reach his full potential – Mr. Obama would not be able to accomplish a great deal on the international scene.
To be sure, the American president has had impressive foreign policy accomplishments. He successfully guided the new nuclear arms reduction treaty (new START) with Russia through what could’ve been an impossible Senate ratification. His cautious approach to the Libyan Revolution in 2011 and his reluctance to go to war with Iran for its controversial nuclear program are also commendable. But the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize should earn the award by averting a major war or alleviating massive suffering, especially if he or she happens to be a current president of the United States.
Obama’s Allies and Adversaries in Syria
I was hoping that Syria would give Mr. Obama that opportunity but I don’t think that’s going to happen. The last time I wrote about Syria fifteen months ago, I had ended on a pessimistic (and somewhat banal) note: “Half-hearted political talk will certainly not solve Syria’s tragedy. But determined action may not be the answer either.” 70,000 dead Syrians later, I’m sorry to see that I have yet to be corrected.
The problem facing the President is that two of America’s Middle Eastern allies which are most involved in the Syrian crisis – namely, Turkey and Qatar – are pursuing policies that undermine U.S. interests. While Washington hopes to end the conflict on a negotiated settlement – the guns fall silent, an interim government takes over, and the Syrian people decide their future in free and fair elections – Ankara and Doha arm Sunni extremists, most notably Al-Nusra Front, which recently announced its allegiance to Al-Qaeda, the group that carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001. Al-Nusra is busy replacing the Free Syrian Army as the main insurgent group in Syria.
Although last week’s agreement between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to convene a conference with the representatives of the Syrian opposition and the government of President Bashar Assad is a step in the right direction, unfortunately, it may be too little too late. While Turkey and Qatar support the likes of al-Nusra, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are also supplying Syrian insurgents. With Russian and Iranian backing, however, the Assad regime is holding fast and creating a deadlock: the Syrian president cannot crush the insurgents nor can they overthrow him. To paraphrase Churchill’s maxim about Russia, Syria is now a revolution wrapped in a civil war inside a Middle East-wide power struggle.
Not even Mr. Obama’s good relations with the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, can help the United States to break the Syrian knot. The two leaders are scheduled to meet in Washington on 16 May. Even if the American president makes a convincing case that Turkish support for Sunni insurgents is making the war in Syria bloodier, longer, and harder to end, it may not have an effect. In the aftermath of the car bombings in the Turkish town of Reyhanlı on the Syrian border two days ago, Mr. Erdoğan maintained his combative and defiant tone; he is not the type to admit mistakes and change course.
It would have been great for the United States if Mr. Erdoğan had the power to topple the Assad regime singlehandedly. The problem is that neither Turkey nor any of Washington’s regional allies – except perhaps Israel – would be able to pull off a military operation against Assad without U.S. support. After the Syrian military shot down a Turkish jetfighter last year, civilian and military leaders in Ankara realized the immense costs of the fight for Syria. The allegations of the use of chemical weapons sobered them once again. The Jordanians, Saudis, or Qataris would also be very hesitant to engage Assad head-on for similar reasons. As for the Israelis, despite their capabilities, it would be foolish of them to hand a golden opportunity to Damascus and Tehran to make the case that the uprisings in Syria are part of a “Zionist plot.”
The American president is wise to be pensive.
“Birds in the Sky” without “Boots on the Ground”?
Mr. Obama has signaled his refusal to commit “boots on the ground” in Syria repeatedly. But he is coming under immense pressure to change course. In late 2012, the Obama administration had threatened the Assad regime that, the use of chemical weapons against the insurgents constituted a “red line.” Crossing that line, Washington said, would result in U.S. military action. Now, Senator John McCain, the president’s opponent in the 2008 election and an adamant advocate of U.S. humanitarian interventions, is taking the president to task after reports that chemical weapons were indeed used in Syria. Mr. McCain wonders if the Obama “red line” was written on “disappearing ink.”
Indeed, American “birds in the sky” may prevent the need for “boots on the ground.” Or, American birds could very well be combined with Turkish, Saudi, Qatari, and Jordanian boots on the ground. Unfortunately, even then a resolution to the Syrian conflict may not come, especially if Iranian and Lebanese Shia boots respond in kind.
The irony with the current deadlock in Syria is that, if Mr. Obama wants to resolve it on America’s terms, he would have to act like his maligned predecessor and go it alone (or preferably with “a coalition of the willing”). In fact, unlike Mr. Bush in Iraq in 2002-03, Mr. Obama may actually find many eager regional partners to topple Bashar Assad. Yet, it’s highly unlikely that the American people and their president will walk down that road – unless, of course, Mr. Obama decides to return his Nobel Prize.
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Barın Kayaoğlu is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Virginia and a predoctoral fellow in International Security Studies at Yale University. He welcomes all comments, questions, and exchanges. To contact him, click here.
His domestic woes are numerous as well: He faces a bloodied but nevertheless powerful reformist camp that demands economic, social, and political liberalization. The hardliners, on the other hand, struggle to keep things exactly as they are in the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, according to a leading expert, the prospects of Iranian economy look “bleak.”
In this context, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to be recasting himself as the “third way” in Iranian politics; a pragmatist. In fact, since his disputed re-election in June 2009, Mr. Ahmadinejad has done much to underscore his pragmatic side.
Also a testament to his pragmatism, Mr. Ahmadinejad still negotiates with the international community over his country’s controversial nuclear program.
But the evidence for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s pragmatism is becoming too great to ignore – especially if we look at his closest political partner, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. In July 2009, Mr. Ahmadinejad appointed Mr. Mashaei, a former political advisor and his son’s father-in-law, to the post of first vice president. This was a very important move because Mr. Mashaei, also a pragmatist, is pretty much hated by the hardliners – the folks deemed close to Mr. Ahmadinejad.
Many reasons exist for Mr. Mashaei’s hard time with the hardliners: In 2007, he attended a ceremony in Turkey, where women performed a traditional dance (public female dancing and singing is still forbidden in Iran). Then, in a shocking episode in 2009, Mr. Mashaei pointed out that Iran’s problems were with the Israeli government and not the people of Israel, whom he considered “Iran’s friend.” In the Iranian context, that comment has extremely pro-Israel overtones but Mr. Ahmadinejad never chastised his subordinate.
That was hardly the end of it: In August 2010, Mr. Mashaei made extremely nationalistic remarks to a group of Iranian expatriates: Iranian culture, according to Mr. Mashaei, had saved Islam from “Arab parochialism” after the Islamic conquest of Persia in the late 7th century. Mr. Mashaei’s words were so out of line with the hardliners that even Ayatollah Mohammed-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s “spiritual mentor,” condemned them. Another hardline cleric berated Mr. Mashaei for his “pagan nationalism.”
(Ahmadinejad and Mashaei: Can the Dynamic Duo Prevail Over Both the Hardliners and the Reformists? – Photo courtesy of Corbis)
To be sure, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is hardly the radical reformer that Iran badly needs or the bold bridge-builder that the West desperately wants. If anything, his boldness on Israel and the nuclear standoff has worked against Iran as well as the West. More important, profound tensions exist between the Iranian people’s desires and their country’s political and economic realities. Down the road, those tensions may become too insurmountable for a pragmatist to resolve.
Nevertheless, it would not be too foolish to expect a few more surprises – pleasant as well as unpleasant – from Iran’s controversial president before the end of his term in 2013.
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Barın Kayaoğlu is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Virginia and a predoctoral fellow in International Security Studies at Yale University. He welcomes all comments, questions, and exchanges. To contact him, click here.
And never mind that, just like Iraq, the sanctions against Iran were meant to prevent another war in the Middle East.
But who knows, maybe a war between the United States and Iran won’t be such a bad thing. Here’s why:
– Crude oil prices will not skyrocket. The world economy will not collapse.
– There won’t be any nonsense about “rallying around the flag” in Iran. Iranians won’t support their unpopular government just because their country’s being bombed.
– In fact, it is very likely that the reformists in Iran will gain new ground because the government won’t be able to respond to domestic and international pressure at the same time.
– The war might even help to start another revolution in Iran.
– With regime change and their country looking more peaceful than ever (just like Iraq!), Iranians will be grateful to the United States and the international community so much so that they will award lucrative oil and natural gas contracts to American and European companies.
– There won’t be new insurgent groups springing up in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world because Muslims won’t be angry over another Western war against a Muslim nation.
And if you agree with any of the above, you should read about the world a little more.
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Barın Kayaoğlu is a Ph.D. candidate in history at The University of Virginia. He welcomes all comments, questions, and exchanges. To contact him, click here.
