By George Friedman

Nuclear talks with Iran have failed to yield an agreement, but the deadline for a deal has been extended without a hitch. What would have been a significant crisis a year ago, replete with threats and anxiety, has been handled without drama or difficulty. This new response to yet another failure to reach an accord marks a shift in the relationship between the United States and Iran, a shift that can’t be understood without first considering the massive geopolitical shifts that have taken place in the Middle East, redefining the urgency of the nuclear issue.

These shifts are rooted in the emergence of the Islamic State. Ideologically, there is little difference between the Islamic State and other radical Islamic jihadist movements. But in terms of geographical presence, the Islamic State has set itself apart from the rest. While al Qaeda might have longed to take control of a significant nation-state, it primarily remained a sparse, if widespread, terrorist organization. It held no significant territory permanently; it was a movement, not a place. But the Islamic State, as its name suggests, is different. It sees itself as the kernel from which a transnational Islamic state should grow, and it has established itself in Syria and Iraq as a geographical entity. The group controls a roughly defined region in the two countries, and it has something of a conventional military, designed to defend and expand the state’s control. Thus far, whatever advances and reversals it has seen, the Islamic State has retained this character. While the group certainly funnels a substantial portion of its power into dispersed guerrilla formations and retains a significant regional terrorist apparatus, it remains something rather new for the region — an Islamist movement acting as a regional state.

It is unclear whether the Islamic State can survive. It is under attack by American aircraft, and the United States is attempting to create a coalition force that will attack and conquer it. It is also unclear whether the group can expand. The Islamic State appears to have reached its limits in Kurdistan, and the Iraqi army (which was badly defeated in the first stage of the Islamic State’s emergence) is showing some signs of being able to launch counteroffensives.

A New Territorial Threat

The Islamic State has created a vortex that has drawn in regional and global powers, redefining how they behave. The group’s presence is both novel and impossible to ignore because it is a territorial entity. Nations have been forced to readjust their policies and relations with each other as a result. We see this inside of Syria and Iraq. Damascus and Baghdad are not the only ones that need to deal with the Islamic State; other regional powers — Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia chief among them — need to recalculate their positions as well. A terrorist organization can inflict pain and cause turmoil, but it survives by remaining dispersed. The Islamic State has a terrorism element, but it is also a concentrated force that could potentially expand its territory. The group behaves geopolitically, and as long as it survives it poses a geopolitical challenge.

Within Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State represents elements of the Sunni Arab population. It has imposed itself on the Sunni Arab regions of Iraq, and although resistance to Islamic State power certainly exists among Sunnis, some resistance to any emergent state is inevitable. The Islamic State has managed to cope with this resistance so far. But the group also has pressed against the boundaries of the Kurdish and Shiite regions, and it has sought to create a geographical link with its forces in Syria, changing Iraq’s internal dynamic considerably. Where the Sunnis were once weak and dispersed, the Islamic State has now become a substantial force in the region north and west of Baghdad, posing a possible threat to Kurdish oil production and Iraqi governance. The group has had an even more complex effect in Syria, as it has weakened other groups resisting the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, thereby strengthening al Assad’s position while increasing its own power. This dynamic illustrates the geopolitical complexity of the Islamic State’s presence.

Countering with a Coalition

The United States withdrew from Iraq hoping that Baghdad, even if unable to govern its territory with a consistent level of authority, would nevertheless develop a balance of power in Iraq in which various degrees of autonomy, formal and informal, would be granted. It was an ambiguous goal, though not unattainable. But the emergence of the Islamic State upset the balance in Iraq dramatically, and initial weaknesses in Iraqi and Kurdish forces facing Islamic State fighters forced the United States to weigh the possibility of the group dominating large parts of Iraq and Syria. This situation posed a challenge that the United States could neither decline nor fully engage. Washington’s solution was to send aircraft and minimal ground forces to attack the Islamic State, while seeking to build a regional coalition that would act.

Today, the key to this coalition is Turkey. Ankara has become a substantial regional power. It has the largest economy and military in the region, and it is the most vulnerable to events in Syria and Iraq, which run along Turkey’s southern border. Ankara’s strategy under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been to avoid conflicts with its neighbors, which it has been able to do successfully so far. The United States now wants Turkey to provide forces — particularly ground troops — to resist the Islamic State. Ankara has an interest in doing so, since Iraqi oil would help diversify its sources of energy and because it wants to keep the conflict from spilling into Turkey. The Turkish government has worked hard to keep the Syrian conflict outside its borders and to limit its own direct involvement in the civil war. Ankara also does not want the Islamic State to create pressure on Iraqi Kurds that could eventually spread to Turkish Kurds.

Turkey is in a difficult situation. If it intervenes against the Islamic State alongside the United States, its army will be tested in a way that it has not been tested since the Korean War, and the quality of its performance is uncertain. The risks are real, and victory is far from guaranteed. Turkey would be resuming the role it played in the Arab world during the Ottoman Empire, attempting to shape Arab politics in ways that it finds satisfactory. The United States did not do this well in Iraq, and there is no guarantee that Turkey would succeed either. In fact, Ankara could be drawn into a conflict with the Arab states from which it would not be able to withdraw as neatly as Washington did.

At the same time, instability to Turkey’s south and the emergence of a new territorial power in Syria and Iraq represent fundamental threats to Ankara. There are claims that the Turks secretly support the Islamic State, but I doubt this greatly. The Turks may be favorably inclined toward other Islamist groups, but the Islamic State is both dangerous and likely to draw pressure from the United States against any of its supporters. Still, the Turks will not simply do America’s bidding; Ankara has interests in Syria that do not mesh with those of the United States.

Turkey wants to see the al Assad regime toppled, but the United States is reluctant to do so for fear of opening the door to a Sunni jihadist regime (or at the very least, jihadist anarchy) that, with the Islamic State operational, would be impossible to shape. To some extent, the Turks are floating the al Assad issue as an excuse not to engage in the conflict. But Ankara wants al Assad gone and a pro-Turkey Sunni regime in his place. If the United States refuses to cede to this demand, Turkey has a basis for refusing to intervene; if the United States agrees, Turkey gets the outcome it wants in Syria, but at greater risk to Iraq. Thus the Islamic State has become the focal point of U.S.-Turkish ties, replacing prior issues such as Turkey’s relationship with Israel.

Iran’s Changing Regional Role

The emergence of the Islamic State has similarly redefined Iran’s posture in the region. Tehran sees a pro-Iranian, Shiite-dominated regime in Baghdad as critical to its interests, just as it sees its domination of southern Iraq as crucial. Iran fought a war with a Sunni-dominated Iraq in the 1980s, with devastating casualties; avoiding another such war is fundamental to Iranian national security policy. From Tehran’s point of view, the Islamic State has the ability to cripple the government in Baghdad and potentially unravel Iran’s position in Iraq. Though this is not the most likely outcome, it is a potential threat that Iran must counter.

Small Iranian formations have already formed in eastern Kurdistan, and Iranian personnel have piloted Iraqi aircraft in attacks on Islamic State positions. The mere possibility of the Islamic State dominating even parts of Iraq is unacceptable to Tehran, which aligns its interests with those of the United States. Both countries want the Islamic State broken. Both want the government in Baghdad to function. The Americans have no problem with Iran guaranteeing security in the south, and the Iranians have no objection to a pro-American Kurdistan so long as they continue to dominate southern oil flows.

Because of the Islamic State — as well as greater long-term trends — the United States and Iran have been drawn together by their common interests. There have been numerous reports of U.S.-Iranian military cooperation against the Islamic State, while the major issue dividing them (Iran’s nuclear program) has been marginalized. Monday’s announcement that no settlement had been reached in nuclear talks was followed by a calm extension of the deadline for agreement, and neither side threatened the other or gave any indication that the failure changed the general accommodation that has been reached. In our view, as we have always said, achieving a deliverable nuclear weapon is far more difficult than enriching uranium, and Iran is not an imminent nuclear power. That appears to have become the American position. Neither Washington nor Tehran wants to strain relations over the nuclear issue, which has been put on the back burner for now because of the Islamic State’s rise.

This new entente between the United States and Iran naturally alarms Saudi Arabia, the third major power in the region if only for its wealth and ability to finance political movements. Riyadh sees Tehran as a rival in the Persian Gulf that could potentially destabilize Saudi Arabia via its Shiite population. The Saudis also see the United States as the ultimate guarantor of their national security, even though they have been acting without Washington’s buy-in since the Arab Spring. Frightened by Iran’s warming relationship with the United States, Riyadh is also becoming increasingly concerned by America’s growing self-sufficiency in energy, which has dramatically reduced Saudi Arabia’s political importance to the United States.

There has been speculation that the Islamic State is being funded by Arabian powers, but it would be irrational for Riyadh to be funding the group. The stronger the Islamic State is, the firmer the ties between the United States and Iran become. Washington cannot live with a transnational caliphate that might become regionally powerful someday. The more of a threat the Islamic State becomes, the more Iran and the United States need each other, which runs completely counter to the Saudis’ security interests. Riyadh needs the tensions between the United States and Iran. Regardless of religious or ideological impulse, Tehran’s alliance with Washington forms an overwhelming force that threatens the Saudi regime’s survival. And the Islamic State has no love for the Saudi royal family. The caliphate can expand in Saudi Arabia’s direction, too, and we’ve already seen grassroots activity related to the Islamic State taking place inside the kingdom. Riyadh has been engaged in Iraq, and it must now try to strengthen Sunni forces other than the Islamic State quickly, so that the forces pushing Washington and Tehran together subside.

America’s Place at the Center of the Middle East

For Washington’s part, the Islamic State has shown that the idea of the United States simply leaving the region is unrealistic. At the same time, the United States will not engage in multidivisional warfare in Iraq. Washington failed to achieve a pro-American stability there the first time; it is unlikely to achieve it this time. U.S. air power applies significant force against the Islamic State and is a token of America’s power and presence — as well as its limits. The U.S. strategy of forming an alliance against the Islamic State is extremely complex, since the Turks do not want to be pulled into the fight without major concessions, the Iranians want reduced pressure on their nuclear programs in exchange for their help, and the Saudis are aware of the dangers posed by Iran.

What is noteworthy is the effect that the Islamic State has had on relationships in the region. The group’s emergence has once again placed the United States at the center of the regional system, and it has forced the three major Middle Eastern powers to redefine their relations with Washington in various ways. It has also revived the deepest fears of Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Ankara wants to avoid being drawn back into the late Ottoman nightmare of controlling Arabs, while Iran has been forced to realign itself with the United States to resist the rise of a Sunni Iraq and Saudi Arabia, as the Shah once had to do. Meanwhile, the Islamic State has raised Saudi fears of U.S. abandonment in favor of Iran, and the United States’ dread of re-engaging in Iraq has come to define all of its actions.

In the end, it is unlikely that the territorial Islamic State can survive. The truth is that Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia are all waiting for the United States to solve the Islamic State problem with air power and a few ground forces. These actions will not destroy the Islamic State, but they will break the group’s territorial coherence and force it to return to guerrilla tactics and terrorism. Indeed, this is already happening. But the group’s very existence, however temporary, has stunned the region into realizing that prior assumptions did not take into account current realities. Ankara will not be able to avoid increasing its involvement in the conflict; Tehran will have to live with the United States; and Riyadh will have to seriously consider its vulnerabilities. As for the United States, it can simply go home, even if the region is in chaos. But the others are already at home, and that is the point that the Islamic State has made abundantly clear.

This is Hal Levine’s interesting analysis.  A worthwhile read on the ethics of the ban and how it leaves the tolerance of other Jewish customs and traditions with respect to NZ society and law in question.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hal Levine received his Ph.D from S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook in 1976 while a lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington. He did his initial fieldwork on urban ethnicity in Papua New Guinea. His PhD and the monograph Urbanisation in Papua New Guinea: A Study of Ambivalent Townsmen (co-authored with M. Levine), published by Cambridge University Press in 1979, was based on this research.

In 1981 he did a study of the fishing community of Stewart Island, New Zealand. A number of papers published in widely scattered journals were put together by the Anthropology Department and issued as Stewart Island: Anthropological Perspectives on a New Zealand Fishing Community . Hal’s next two research projects centred on Maori claims to fishing resources before the Waitangi Tribunal, and Jewish identity in New Zealand.

Being Jewish in New Zealand with Ann Beaglehole was published by Pacific Press in 1995 . It was followed by a monograph on the three ethnic identity projects entitled Constructing Collective Identity . The latter book was published by Peter Lang in 1997 with a grant from Victoria University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Hal has more recently published papers dealing with debates about the meaning of iwi, Samoan chiefly practices in Wellington, and the implications of surrogate motherhood for the anthropological study of kinship. He has taught a wide variety of introductory and advanced papers in anthropology and is currently putting together a course about the interrelationships between society, culture and internal experience.

Every two years, Aotearoa’s capital city plays host to the New Zealand Festival.  Promoted as a spectacle of culture and arts for “explorers and dreamers,” this year’s extravangaza was rather unfairly sidelined by a small political protest.

John Minto

As part of the so-called “BDS” (Boycott, Divestments and Sactions) movement agianst Israel, the country’s most prominent protestor, John Minto, once again rounded up his rent-a-mob troops to protest the involvement of Israel’s renowned Batsheva Dance Company in the festival.

Minto and his cohorts first demanded the government deny members of the dance company visas to the country.  In well publicised letters to Foreign Minister Murray McCully and Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse, the group urged that they provide “practical solidarity to the Palestinian struggle” by refusing them.

The group insisted this action was required for New Zealand to fulfil its “obligations” to the Palestinians under international law. “Such a decision will be welcomed by Palestinians as part of the international pressure to bring change to the policies of the Israeli apartheid state as well as by those countries thinking supporting New Zealand’s bid for a UN Security Council seat,” the letter said.

In a widely reported decision, McCully announced the company would not be refused visas. Noting the government pursues “a balanced and constructive approach to the Israel-Palestinian issue,” he said that “the Batsheva Dance Company is made up of dancers from around the world and is coming to New Zealand as part of a wider Australasian tour.”

Not to be denied his time in the spotlight, Minto, who last year unsuccessfully ran for the Auckland mayoralty, then organised a protest outside the Batsheva Dance Company’s Saturday night performance.

Ultimately, this resulted in about 40 anti-Israel protesters facing off against a slightly larger counter-demonstration organised by Wellington Jewish community leader David Zwartz. Extensive publicity was generated by, and afforded to, Minto’s small protest.

Local media, long in thrall to Minto’s ability to generate headlines and outrage among the general public, probably paid the anti-Batsheva campaign and eventual protest more attention than the numbers warranted.

However, to the eyes of this observer, there was something a bit different and positive about the coverage of the anti-Batsheva campaign compared to  past efforts by Minto and his pro-BDS comrades. That difference was the coverage given to the counter-demonstration in views opposed to those of the anti-Israel activists.

When McCully refused to deny visas to the dance company it was reported. When Zwartz said the allegations that Israel was an apartheid state were racist and unfounded it was reported. When the Auckland Jewish Council co-Chairs described the anti-Batsheva campaign as “a cheap publicity stunt that should be exposed for its sinister agenda” it was reported.

Apart from the less mainstream media — like Scoop and a number of blogs, all of which have always tended towards a pro-Palestinian bias, local media reported both sides of the story. The STUFF website even published a review of the Batsheva show.

Comments from Batsheva’s artistic director, Ohad Naharin, were also widely reported. Naharin said he was “disappointed to see a group of intelligent people wasting their money and their energy on something that won’t result in anything.”

He told local media he had experienced this kind of “impotent activity” for years. “The situation in the West Bank is tragic and indeed every effort must be made to change it. If I believe that boycotting our performances could bring any progress in ending the occupation, I would join the boycott myself.”

In an article in the National Business Review journalist John Daly-Peoples went even further. He compared the anti-Batsheva campaign to the “spirit of Nazi Germany” and said the pro-Palestinian activists would be “using the same harassment techniques used by the Nazis to close down Jewish and liberal performances in the 1980s.”

The boycotting of cultural event is misguided, Daly-Peoples seed. “As it is cultural activities, such as Darren Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which have promoted active dialogue and been one of the significant ways in which the Israelis and the Palestinians have made some reconciliation.”

He also pointed out that the “myopic approach to boycotting lets the Russians off the hook… despite them funding the play A Midsummer’s Nights Dream, also on during the festival, and despite the country’s stand on gay rights and their support of the Assad regime which is undermining the Palestinian cause.”

While Minto in his acolytes claim success — on the somewhat spurious grounds that five people bailed up by his protest said they decided not to attend the performance — this seems closer to wishful thinking than to reality.

It is hard to know what the reasonably measured response of the media and the general public to this particular campaign might mean in the broader scheme of things.

However, it seems that the views of the Festival’s Executive Director, Sue Paterson, that festival shows should be selected solely on the basis of artistic merit was the primary winner in this saga.

Source:  Miriam Bell, Australian-Israeli Review, April 2014.

There is the criminal failure of the international community, as both accomplice and accessory before the fact, to make any meaningful effort to prevent endless salvoes of terrorist rocket attacks against Israeli civilians for over nine years.

As we saw with the Iranian arms shipment aboard the Klos-C last month, Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism continues unabated — even as the international community is rehabilitating its extremist regime.

Three hundred and thirty two drone attacks against Al Qaida and Taliban targets on Pakistani territory since 2005 demonstrate U.S. President Barack Obama’s strong resolve against terrorists that threaten the United States. Only last week, the latest wave of air strikes launched or enabled by his government against Al Qaida networks in Yemen killed 55 suspected extremists, possibly including master bomb-maker Ibrahim al-Asiri.

Of course no one expects the U.S. to send drones in reply to the news that the Palestinian Authority [PA], upon which he has lavished billions of dollars and thousands of hours of diplomacy, was going into business with Hamas, which the United States has branded a terrorist organization.

But one could hope for something more forceful from Washington than State Department spokesman Jen Psaki’s weak and vacillating response in which she attempted to take the heat off Hamas and the PA by taking a gratuitous dig at Israel. “There have been unhelpful steps from both sides throughout this process,” she said.

If the US response was feeble, the EU’s was treacherous.

Like America and several other countries, the EU designates Hamas as a terrorist organization. Yet the spokesman for Catherine Ashton, EU foreign affairs head, actually welcomed the proposal to bring Hamas into the PA.

Though shameful, this is far from surprising. It is part of a lengthy pattern of witting or unwitting EU encouragement of Middle Eastern terrorism.

The EU has contributed its taxpayers’ money to paying the salaries of convicted Palestinian terrorists via unconditional donations to the PA amounting to billions of dollars since 1994. Some of this money has also been spent on school textbooks, television programs and other PA propaganda that incite hatred and terrorism against Israel.

Ashton and the EU have called repeatedly for an end to the Israeli-Egyptian security operation on land and sea around Gaza. The operation is designed to prevent predominantly Iranian-supplied munitions and materiel for terrorism from entering the Gaza Strip, and to stop Gaza terrorists and weapons moving to attack Israeli or Egyptian targets.

At the same time, the EU, like the UN, has usually remained mute in the face of volley after volley of Iranian-supported rocket attacks from Gaza directed against the civilian population of Israel. These rockets are fired mainly by Hamas and their terrorist bedfellows, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Silence and inaction by such significant international bodies as the UN and the EU must, in these circumstances, add up to at least a degree of culpability.

Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Peace Process, seems to have swallowed Abbas’s suggestion to him that reconciliation with Hamas will be on the basis of “recognition of Israel, non-violence and adherence to previous agreements.” On that “understanding,” the UN, like the EU, apparently welcomes and even supports the prospect of a terrorist group’s incorporation into the PA.

Were Hamas indeed to commit — plausibly — to such undertakings, then Israel could of course continue peace negotiations and cooperation with the PA on current terms. But other than Abbas’s words to Serry, there is no indication of this and, in the real world, Hamas is not likely even to consider such conditions.

Prime Minister Netanyahu therefore had no choice other than to suspend the peace process. This was his obligation to the Israeli people and to the international community. How could he possibly continue to negotiate with an entity that is itself negotiating with a vicious, murderous and unrelenting terrorist group hell-bent on the destruction of Israel and outlawed around the world?

Of course Abbas knew full well when he agreed to unity with Hamas that this would end the peace negotiations. But this is only the latest in a series of steps that Abbas has taken to sabotage the peace process. He rejected U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s framework principles last month; he has repeatedly refused to discuss PA recognition of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people; and at the end of March he initiated a move to join 15 international organizations, contravening an agreement to make no unilateral moves in the international arena during the period of the peace negotiations.

One of the greatest challenges in the peace process, should it be resumed at some point, is resolving Israel’s security concerns in the West Bank. Since the Israel Defense Forces left Gaza in 2005, Palestinians have fired into Israel over 8,000 rockets, killing 44 Israelis and injuring more than 1,600.

A damaged apartment building in Ashdod, following a direct hit by a rocket fired from Gaza, in November 2012. (Image source: IDF)

In addition, Gaza terrorists have seized every available opportunity for other forms of attack against Israeli soldiers and civilians including kidnappings, shootings, suicide bombs, anti-tank missiles and Improvised Explosive Devices [IEDs].

Iran, sworn to Israel’s destruction, as are its Gaza-based proxies, has funded, armed, energized and directed both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. As we saw with the Israeli interdiction of the Iranian arms shipment aboard the Klos-C only last month, Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism continues unabated — even as the international community is rehabilitating its extremist regime.

Especially in a region and among neighbours that are becoming even more unstable, violent and unpredictable, Israel must ensure that in the event a Palestinian state should ever reach fruition, the West Bank does not become a second Gaza. The bloody consequences of that for the Israeli people would be far greater than from anything Hamas could hurl out of the Strip.

Kerry has proposed international troops to provide security against attacks on Israel from the West Bank. Few Israelis believe that they could rely on such a force to protect them. There are the historical precedents for the failure of peacekeeping forces in the region and beyond, especially when the going gets tough. And in the West Bank, the going would get very tough very soon and very often.

There is the criminal failure of the international community, as both accomplice and accessory before the fact, to make any meaningful effort to prevent endless salvoes of lethal terrorist rocket attacks against Israeli civilians for over nine years.

Worse still, when Israel has been forced to respond to protect its citizens, it has been stabbed in the back by the international community, who have accused it of war crimes.

The UN’s ill-conceived and deeply flawed 2009 Goldstone Report, for example, amounted to nothing less than incitement to terrorism.

And then there is the spectacle that we have witnessed over the past few days, of the pusillanimous and equivocating international response to plans for an active and violent terrorist group to join the PA.

Confronted by world leaders who lack the moral courage to face down terrorists whom even they themselves have designated as such, Israel is entirely right in its assumption that when it comes to security it can rely only on its own moral strength and its own armed forces.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Colonel Richard Kemp spent most of his 30-year career in the British Army fighting terrorism and insurgency, including in Iraq, the Balkans, South Asia, and Northern Ireland. He was Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan in 2003. He was also involved in the direction of national policy at the highest level, working at the Joint Intelligence Committee and as a member of COBRA, the UK national crisis committee. He writes regularly for The Times and speaks worldwide on terrorism, international security and other issues.

SOURCE:  Gatestone Institute.