Will Obama push for Yemen cease-fire?

Yes indeed!

Smoke rises from the community hall where Saudi-led warplanes struck a funeral in Sanaa, Yemen, Oct. 9, 2016.  (photo by REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah)

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/10/war-yemen-escalation-saudi-arabia-humanitarian-crisis.html#ixzz4N5MKvPbk

Will Obama push for Yemen cease-fire? NEWS INFO BRUCE RIEDEL for Al-Monitor The United States, which fired cruise missiles at rebel radar sites in Yemen on Oct. 13 after missiles were fired at a US warship, needs to push for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Yemen before things get even more out of hand.

Bahrain, a microcosmsm of Middle East contradictions

Bahrain is torn asunder, ripped apart by "friends" in the Gulf Cooperation Council and by the United States and  Great Britain, by its own arrogant mistreatment of human beings who worship in ways distasteful to Saudi, to religious zealots who worship the way the Islamic State worships (and the way Saudi Arabia warships).

Bahrain is a majority Shiite country, and some of  its Sunni people pent many years in Iran.  None gives allegiance to the Iranian Ayatollah, yet the West's propaganda machine persists in blaming Iran for all problems of its own making.

The Royal Family  --

-- stiff, out of touch 

(though staunch football supporters) --

Bahrain itself is a tiny island in the Persian Gulf, with Saudi Arabia to the east an Qatar to the southwest:

Bahrain Map, Flag. Capital Manama

This map is accompanied by this text,

which seems accurate:

The Kingdom of Bahrain is an independent Arab nation in western Asia, part of the region known as the Middle East. It is made up of 36 islands on the western side of the Persian Gulf, between Saudi Arabia to the east and Qatar to the west. The main island, also known as Bahrain, is home to the country’s capital and largest city, Manama.
More than 60 percent of Bahrain’s population is native-born, in contrast to the populations of other Persian Gulf states such as Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, where foreign-born inhabitants outnumber the native population. Bahrain also differs from its neighbors in that the number of followers of Shia Islam in the country is more than double that of the adherents of Sunni Islam, which is the largest group of Muslims worldwide. The Sunnis control the country’s government, however.
In the 1930s Bahrain became the first Arab state in the Persian Gulf region to develop an oil-based economy, but by the early 1980s its oil fields were mostly depleted. However, the country had prepared for this change by investing in other industries, and its economy continues to prosper.

The many contradictory forces tearing at Bahrain are detailed in the nAl Monitor news article below.  The article is not easy to follow if you are not familiar with the names, and is worth the trouble of reading with care, if you would see a part of the many contradictory forces at work today in the Middle East, and understand Obama's courageous, reasonable restraint (assuming that  is, for unstated reasons, that it is good to befriend Saudi Arabia).

gulf PULSEنبض الخليج

Shiite Bahraini men sit on a wall with graffiti that reads ''People want self-determination" as they attend a rally held by the Al-Wefaq opposition party, in the village of Boori, south of Manama, Oct. 14, 2011, to mark the eight-month anniversary of the February 14 uprising.  (photo by REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed)

What Bahrain’s opposition crackdown means for country’s Brotherhood

On the heels of a Bahraini court suspending Al-Wefaq for the Shiite society’s alleged role in creating "an environment for terrorism, extremism and violence,” Bahrain’s rulers delivered a powerful message June 20 by annulling Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim’s Bahraini citizenship.

Author Giorgio CafieroPosted June 27, 2016

Following five years of stalemate, the Bahraini leadership sees no purpose in engaging the Shiite opposition and instead favors eliminating Shiites who call for the government’s dissolution from political life in the island. By excluding popular political groups from Bahrain’s political arena amid a wider crackdown, however, there are risks of militancy gaining broader power and appeal within the Shiite opposition.

Throughout the past five years, Manama has grown increasingly reliant on Gulf Arab and Western allies. The Shiite-led Arab Spring uprising unsettled Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) leaders fearful of Bahrain aligning with Tehran following a popular Shiite revolution. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were quick to deploy ground forces to the island by March 2011 to help Bahrain's rulers quash the uprising.

Manama’s participation in the US-led military campaign against the Islamic State (IS) and the kingdom’s “pricey PR push” on K Street seem to have further consolidated Bahrain’s alliance with Washington, despite some diplomatic spats over the past five years. Despite the Department of Defense’s congressionally mandated contingency plans for relocating the Navy’s 5th Fleet, Washington is unlikely to undergo the massive undertaking of moving the Persian Gulf’s most powerful naval force to another facility. The United Kingdom’s plans for a permanent base in Mina Salman, Bahrain, announced in 2014, underscore Manama’s important role in London’s strategic return “East of Suez” 40 years after the Royal Navy’s official departure from the Gulf. 

Unquestionably, allies in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Washington and London have prevented the Al Khalifa rulers from being pressured into negotiating a resolution to the kingdom’s crisis.

The king’s Sunni Islamist support networks

The ruling family’s ties with the Bahraini Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, Minbar, and the more conservative Salafi society, Asala, to counterbalance the Shiite opposition has been another pillar of the regime’s strategy for standing strong since 2011.

Formed in 1984, Minbar’s platform reflects Bahrain’s liberal (by GCC standards) social environment, particularly with respect to women’s rights, although the group has close connections with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Kuwaiti branch. Many of Minbar’s members belong to the Hawala tribe, Sunni Arabs who migrated to Persia before returning to the Arabian Peninsula’s eastern shore. The Bahraini Muslim Brothers are middle-class professionals, many of whom are teachers and police officers.

Despite pressure from other GCC states, Manama has not designated Minbar a “terrorist” organization. The Sunni Islamist society not only continues operating publicly, but Bahrain’s Royal Court and Islamic banking sector reportedly fund Minbar. In exchange, Bahrain’s Muslim Brothers have backed the government’s post-2011 crackdown. In February 2013, for example, Minbar boycotted the national dialogue to protest what the island’s Muslim Brothers saw as unacceptable Shiite “silence” on violence plaguing the uprising’s two-year anniversary. At times, Minbar has even criticized the ruling family for responding too softly to Shiite dissent.

Despite Bahrain’s politically active Sunni Islamists supporting the regime during 2011, a growing number have made their own demands since that crisis erupted. In fact, Shiite protesters shared some of these demands such as releasing political prisoners and liberalizing Bahrain politically. Concerned about the possibility of Sunni opposition materializing, the state implemented electoral reforms to redraw boundaries before the 2014 elections. Consequently, Minbar and Asala only retained a combined three seats in the National Assembly’s Council of Representatives — down from five. Additionally, although Al-Wefaq was the main target of legislation passed last month to ban mixing religion with politics, the law also bodes poorly for Minbar and Asala — Bahrain’s second- and third-largest Islamist factions, respectively, after Al-Wefaq.

The influence of extremist ideologies in the kingdom’s Sunni communities is unsettling, particularly in light of numerous Bahraini Sunnis pledging allegiance to IS. As of January 2015, at least a dozen Bahrainis had joined Sunni militant organizations in Syria and Iraq. After King Hamad revoked Omar Bozboun’s Bahraini citizenship for joining IS, he responded by threatening to “enter Bahrain with blazing guns and behead the king.”

Turki al-Binali, a Salafi cleric hailing from a wealthy Sunni family allied with the Al Khalifas, is now IS’ leading preacher. Prior to leaving Bahrain in 2013, he held a rally in front of the US Embassy in Manama with his followers holding pictures of Osama bin Laden while waving al-Qaeda flags. Two and a half years after Binali left the kingdom, a Bahraini court tried him in absentia and nearly two dozen other Bahrainis on charges of seeking to topple the Manama regime and create an IS branch in the island. One family member, Mohamed Isa al-Binali, was an officer in the Interior Ministry overseeing Shiite inmates in Jaw Prison before defecting to IS in 2014.

There are several other reasons why Bahrain appears to be a logical destination for the group’s agenda. These include IS offshoots waging acts of terrorism in neighboring Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the presence of many Shiite Muslims and non-Muslim expatriates, the 5th Fleet being stationed in Bahrain, Manama’s role in the Washington-led military campaign against the group in Syria and the island’s reputation as the “brothel of the Gulf.”

Another threat to the nation’s stability stems from Manama granting Bahraini citizenship to Jordanian, Pakistani and Yemeni Sunnis to alter the country’s sectarian balance. Opposition voices in Bahrain maintain that these "naturalized Bahrainis" are Sunni “fundamentalists” who harbor anti-Shiite sentiments. As these non-Bahrainis earn their citizenship through service in Bahrain’s security apparatus, IS infiltration into the state’s military and police is a risk.

As underscored by the past several months of violent attacks targeting Bahrain’s security forces with improvised explosive devices and Molotov cocktails, the crackdown is failing to resolve the kingdom’s crisis. If the cancellation of Qassim’s citizenship and the court’s suspension of Al-Wefaq lead to the exacerbation of violence, the government will be forced to address an increasingly dire security crisis on top of managing social risks stemming from austerity measures amid an era of cheap oil — itself a contributing factor to the island’s sectarian issues.

As sectarian temperatures rise in the Gulf with Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah officials harshly condemning Manama’s annulment of Qassim’s citizenship and Iraqi Shiite forces retaking Fallujah from IS, the regime’s relationship with Minbar will be an important variable to observe as the Saudi-aligned monarchy seeks to maintain Sunni rule in a Shiite-majority island.

Looking ahead, will Minbar remain loyal to the Al Khalifas and continue viewing the crackdown as a safeguard against a Shiite takeover? Or will discontent over the Sunni Islamist society’s declining political influence cost the regime a key domestic ally? Will the regime continue seeing Minbar as a domestic ally against the Shiite opposition or as a gateway to IS? 

And see Bahrain: Analyzing Inequities Between Sunnis and Shiites

ahrain is again in the news this week. The country and Saudi Arabia are discussing acloser political union—with the obvious aim of safeguarding Sunni control in a Shiite majority country. Meanwhile, Shiite activists burned tires and blocked roads in a protest against detention policies.

Bahrain’s crisis has many causes: the Middle East’s wider Shiite-Sunni rivalry; the region’s longstanding Persian-Arab rivalry; ideas released during the Arab Spring; rising political aspirations from years of watching satellite television.

But the key driver is the horizontal inequities (i.e. inequalities between culturally formed groups) that exacerbate the fault line between the Shiites and Sunnis within the kingdom. Shiite demands may not all be reasonable, but their relative disadvantage in economic, social, and political spheres feed dissatisfaction, and promote instability. Reducing at least some of these inequities is crucial to reducing the instability, which otherwise is likely to fester for years to come.

Bahrain is a very tiny place—600,000 citizens (and about a million people in all) live on one archipelago of thirty-three islands. Shiites are in the majority, but no one really knows by how much. Although it is generally assumed (not least by the media) that the Shiites make up 65 to 75 percent of the population, one recent independent studyconcludes that they now make up less than 60 percent—and the share is dropping steadily. The government’s decade-long program of naturalizing Arab and non-Arab Sunnis from Yemen, Syria, Jordan and Pakistan, mostly for work in the police and military, is adding as many as 100,000 Sunnis citizens to the populace. The below map shows where each group lives.

Beneath this simple division lies a much more complex society comprised of groups and subgroups with different interests and agendas. There are Shiite Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula who have traditionally worked as farmers, pearl divers, and tradesmen; Shiites with Iranian roots who tend to be professionals and intellectuals; Sunnis from Arabia, from Iran, and “tribals” who have distant links to the region’s royal families. And then there are the more recent Sunni arrivals. Recent events, however, have polarized the country into a more rigid sectarian split.

Sunnis—especially those linked to the royal family—hold a disproportionate share of political power and have gained disproportionately from the country’s natural resource wealth. . . . 

Random images of official response to Shiite protests

NO US WAR WITH ASSAD; VIGOROUS US SUPPORT FOR SYRIAN KURDS

Some state department experts want the administration to go to war with the Syrian Government.

Vice President Biden and President Obama disagree, preferring that the United States continue to focus its ire on theIslamic State, with a provision of arms to Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) an the related Democratic Union Party [Kurdish:Partiya Yekîtiya Democrat‎, or PYD ] and its military arm, the  People's Protection Units (YPG).

Some senators and representatives and some Republican candidates for president have demanded war with Syria, but so far Republican congresspersons have refused to even hold hearings on a Declaration of War, so I discount their demand as shameful political posturing.

I can think of a number of reasons to support the president’s position:

1.  War is to be avoided if possible.

2.  United States’s war is dependent on a congressional resolution, which is lacking.

3. Salafi Jihadists, funded primarily by billionaires in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia ,and Qatar, are Wahhabi fanatics, just as the Islamic State is, religiously bound to spread Wahhabism to all non-believers, by killing them if necessary; they  are as harmful to the Syria people as the Assad regime is. See, e.g., Salafi armed groups increase attacks in Syria, Al-Monitor, April 24, 2016.  We cannot successfully fight them because of our decade-old subservience to Saudi Oil.

4.  There is no Syria civil war.  After the Arab Spring, Syrian middle-class businessmen and others in the middle class demonstrated for reforms.  Assad responded by killing many.  The Salafi Jihadists, all from outside Syria,  saw an opening to create a Wahhabi government in Syria and swarmed in.  At the same time, the Islamic State declared a caliphate in Northern Syrian  and prepared to move through Anbar Province in Iraq to conquer Mecca and Medina, the holiest of Muslim sites and a prerequisite for the caliphate claim to be realized.  The United States, to protect Saudi Arabia from the Islamic State, began bombing the Islamic State.  The Syrian Kurds saw an opportunity long longed-for , for independence and formed an autonomous region in northernSyria,  always intending to be an autonomous province of Syria.  Going to war with Syria makes no more sense than going to wear with Saudi Arabia.

5.  Going to war with Syria would complicate the Great Powers interests in Syria.  Iran wants a pipeline through Syria to the coast to pipe its natural gas to Europe and doesn’t want Qatar to have one, since they both draw natural gas from the Pars Field, the largest natural gas deposit in the wold; Qatar naturally wants an exclusive pipeline.  Russia doesn't want Qatar to have the pipeline because it would drive down Russia’s gas prices to Europe, a catastrophe to the Russian economy.  Russia is less concerned with Iranian gas to Europe, thinking it can work out accommodations with Iran over price.  Saudi Arabia naturally supports Qatar.  Assad supports the Iranian pipeline, but mainly doesn’t want to be killed.  Russia doesn’t give a damn about Assad;  it cares only about stopping the Qatar pipeline.  Thee is no apparent way to resolve the conflict and if the United States goes to war in Syria that would merely ad anther complication to the insolvable puzzle.

6.  Whatever else happens, the West has a moral duty to support Kurdish independence. In the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, England and France agreed with the Kurds to create an independent Kurdistan, the Kurds being one of the oldest ethnic groups in the world.  Under pressure from the Turkey, England and French instead assigned Kurds to four countries that did n’t want them, an into which they did not fit.  Assad treated  Kurds assigned to Syria badly. 

Syrian Kurds, when the had a chance, have respond with a political ideology which, according to Wikipedia includes these attributed:

Democratic socialism,

Libertarian socialism,

Kurdish nationalism,

Feminism,

Eco-socialism,

Social ecology,

Democratic Confederalism (more on this later),

Communalism 

You may not agree with all of these aims, but compare them to the surrounding theocratic despots!  Kurds are creating an island of sanity a sea of religious and dictatorial mania.  The United States and the European Union should give them full support. 

Contrary opinions are welcomed.  Syria is a long way from the middle of the Pacific Ocean an I know only what I read win various publications.  I am surely missing important matters.

The New York Times

Kerry Meets With State Dept. Dissenters Urging Action on Syria

By DAVID E. SANGERJUNE 21, 2016

Secretary of State John Kerry was careful not to differ from President Obama’s strategy at a meeting with dissenting Foreign Service officers, participants said.

WASHINGTON — The eight midlevel Foreign Service officers stepped into John Kerry’s formal outer office at the State Department on Tuesday — a room that few of them had ever entered before — to tell him that he was pursuing a path in Syria that would never bring an end to a gruesome civil war.

The argument was not new to Mr. Kerry — he, in fact, has offered versions of it himself in the Situation Room and the Oval Office. But for half an hour, according to several participants, the secretary of state and the eight officials engaged in a surprisingly cordial conversation about whether there was a way, in the last six months of the Obama presidency, to use American military force to help end a conflict that by some estimates has claimed 500,000 lives.

The eight were among 51 State Department employees who signed a “dissent channel” cable to Mr. Kerry last week, a letter that was leaked so quickly that it appeared clearly intended to send a message to President Obama that his own diplomats could not back his cautious policy.

Mr. Kerry, several participants said, was careful to never explicitly agree with their critique, or let on that he, too, has argued that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria will continue to bomb, starve and blockade his own people unless negotiations are backed by some form of military pressure.

But Mr. Kerry also gently pushed and probed, seeming to imply that many of the dissenters’ concerns had been considered many times before and rejected because they were more complicated than they appeared.

Hours before the meeting, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. seemed annoyed at a mention of the dissent cable, sounding a similar note on “CBS This Morning” that all the ideas proposed by the young diplomats had been looked at long ago.

“There is not a single, solitary recommendation that I saw that has a single, solitary answer attached to it — how to do what they’re talking about,” Mr. Biden said.

“The president’s been fastidious,” Mr. Biden told Charlie Rose. “Calls the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the intelligence community, the director of central intelligence, the C.I.A., et cetera. ‘Tell me what will work. Will this work?’ And the answer has repeatedly been, ‘No.’”

With only two of his aides in the room (and his Labrador retriever, Ben, who has attended delicate diplomatic meetings more than many assistant secretaries of state), Mr. Kerry raised a series of questions about what might happen if the dissenters won the day. What would be the legal basis for bombing Mr. Assad’s forces, in the absence of resolutions by the United Nations or even NATO? What would happen if American forces came into an accidental confrontation with the Russian Air Force, which has defended Mr. Assad? What if American pilots were shot down? How would the effort affect the American battle with the Islamic State?

The session was an unusual one. Only four or five dissent channel cables are written each year, and most stay confidential.

But the very public nature of this one has left Mr. Kerry in an awkward position. He does not want to appear to differ from the president’s strategy, and he kept his own counsel Tuesday about what he tells Mr. Obama in private. (Mr. Kerry’s aides insist that there is a common strategy, one that starts with trying to get Russia to press for enforcement of a much-violated cease-fire.)

At the same time, it is Mr. Kerry who first burst into public awareness when, as a just-returned naval officer in Vietnam, he issued his own famous dissent in 1971 by demanding before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the meeting was that five years into the Syrian civil war — after Mr. Obama declared that Mr. Assad must go, the unenforced “red lines” and a series of failed cease-fire accords — even some of the people who ran Syria diplomacy day-to-day had not heard the rationale for the administration’s caution.

The Pentagon remains cautious about entering another Middle East war when it cannot control the outcome. And the passage of time has precluded some options.

Earlier in the conflict, some of Mr. Kerry’s own diplomats have said in recent months, it would have been possible to “crater” the runways used by Mr. Assad’s air force, making it impossible for planes to take off and drop barrel bombs. The United States has used that tactic since World War II, and it is unclear why it has not been employed in Syria.

Hillary Clinton, when she held Mr. Kerry’s post, argued for arming the Syrian rebels, a position joined by the C.I.A. director at the time, David H. Petraeus. But Mr. Obama was concerned — rightly, many others in the room at the time said — that there was no assurance that those rebels would not use the weapons for other purposes.

And as Mr. Kerry implicitly noted to his visitors on Tuesday, Russia’s entry into the conflict greatly complicates any American military intervention. The chances of accidental encounters that may turn deadly are considerable.

Mr. Kerry spoke again on Tuesday to his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, to find a way to enforce the cease-fire that the two men first announced in February. Russia wants a degree of coordination with United States forces, including shared use of intelligence, that gives the Pentagon chills.

Mr. Kerry knows he is in a race against time. Not only are more Syrians dying every day, but his own leverage in the negotiations is also waning. Mr. Assad may well be betting that he can wait out the end of the Obama administration.

Mr. Kerry publicly insists that is not the case. Asked last month in Vienna if Mr. Assad doubted that there was a “Plan B” for military action, Mr. Kerry said, “If you know that he’s come to a conclusion there’s no Plan B, then he’s come to a conclusion that is totally without any foundation whatsoever and even dangerous. Dangerous.”

Perhaps so, but Mr. Assad, by now, has most likely both read the dissent channel cable and heard Mr. Biden’s argument that the Joint Chiefs do not believe there are viable military options to force him into negotiating a peace.

As the eight dissenters left Mr. Kerry’s office, nothing seemed resolved. They all agreed to keep the details of their conversation private. But they also agreed that this was not the last word about a strategy that has left everyone — dissenters, the secretary of state and the president alike — frustrated that nothing has worked

United States, Russia, working together in Syria, so far

Here is a rational, objective view of the Russian and United States success an joint objectives in Syria.

In short, both want free, fair elections.  Agreement ends there.

Two of the United States' allies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, want the outcome to be a  repressiveWahhabist government or at least one supposed by Salafi Jihadists; another United States' ally, Qatar, supports the Muslim Brotherhood (also supported by Turkey) but Qatar's primary objective is an oil pipeline through Syria that can deliverer it's natural gas from the Pas field to Europe.

Iran wants the election of  a government favorable to it --as the Assad regime is -- and one which will allow the already-planned oil pipeline from its interest in the Pars Field to Europe.

Russia's interest is negative;  it does not want the Qatar pipeline to be built because it's natural gas to Europewould compete with its own sales to europe; and it does not want a Muslim jihadist government in Syria -- it has already too many Jihadists in Russian republics   as it is.  The Assad regime is acceptable to Russia and Russia is no weed to Assad's remaining in power.

The Kurdish objectives are straight-forward easy to state difficult to obtain.  Kurds living in Iraq, Turkey,  Syria, and Iran were promised an independent Kurdistan after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the Great Powers in World War I.  With no advance warning Kurds were arbitrarily assigned to Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria by Great Britain and France. See Kurdistan in Seven Maps:

Kurds were badly treated by host countries except Iran. Kurds want an independent Kurdistan that includes Kurds in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.  Turkey violently and unwisely objets.  And now, because of the battlefield success of Syrian Kurds in northern Syria and the Peshmerga in Iraq, where they re helped by he United State, they want the nation to include access to the Mediterranean Sea.

The United States has no stated territorial objectives and none is apparent.  It will want to assist the oil interests in the United States and Great Britain but those interests are not apparently at stake in Syria.  The United States' stated objective is to defeat  the Islamic State and other Jihadists in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, who carry out attacks on the United States and the European Union (and also in Pakistan).  I think the United States wants to keep a military presence in Afghanistan and in Iraq or Syria, but it has stated no such objective.

THE PULSE OF THE MIDDLE EAST

WEEK IN REVIEW

Men store bags of flour unloaded from a Red Crescent aid convoy in the rebel-held besieged town of 0, in the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta, March 7, 2016. The cessation in hostilities in Syria has produced the first significant flow of humanitarian assistance in several years. (photo by REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh)

Kerry notes 'beneficial reduction' in Syrian violence

United States, Russia on right course in Syria

March 27, 2016

On March 27, the cessation of hostilities in Syria will have held for one month. Yes, there have been violations, but the agreement has held. Given where we were, and where we are, we might put the present state of affairs in the category of a small miracle, a breakthrough for US-Russian leadership and cooperation and, hopefully, a turning point for the Syrian people.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Moscow on March 24, “There has been a fragile but nevertheless beneficial reduction in violence — some say as much as 85-90% — in Syria. It’s also true that the cessation in hostilities has produced the first significant flow of humanitarian assistance to people, some whom haven’t seen that assistance in several years. But we both know that more needs to be done in terms of both a reduction of violence and the flow of humanitarian aid.”

There is of course much more to be done, and if the cessation of hostilities continues to hold and expand, it will be the result of a deep and impactful partnership between Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Kerry said March 24 that the United States and Russia have agreed to press for expanded humanitarian assistance, the release of detainees and an acceleration of the political process leading to a transition government, a new constitution and elections. The same day, UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said that both the Syrian government and the opposition delegations had taken the first round of negotiations “very seriously.” Talks are expected to resume in April.

And let’s add a bit more good news: The Islamic State (IS) is losing ground in Syria and Iraq. IHS/Jane’s reported March 15 that IS has lost 22% of its territory in both countries, mostly in Syria, since January 2015, a trend that accelerated with the Russian military intervention on behalf of the Syrian government in September. US Special Operations Forces killed top IS financier Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli last week, and as this column goes to press, Syrian government forces, backed by Russian air power, are poised to retake Palmyra from the terrorist group.

As IS loses ground in Syria and Iraq, its fighters are already seeking new territories, especially in Libya, and new targets, including in Europe, as evidenced by the deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels on March 22, which claimed 31 lives.

Maxim Suchkov wrote, “Putin now holds an important position for the shaping of a political transition in Syria. Russia acquired the air base in Khmeimim [or Hmaimim], which it did not have before. Its geopolitical standing is secured as a power broker in the Middle East, while its weapons are in great demand across the region. The global outreach is incredibly important as well. Some would even argue it was central to the idea of the operation from the very beginning. In addition, Russia showcased its military might, sending signals to those who might have been tempted to put it to the test. Russia also excelled on the public relations side of the art of modern war. Detailed daily reports from the Defense Ministry, accompanied by high-definition maps and video footage, prevented opponents from manipulating its campaign results in the media. Even if Moscow doesn’t save [Bashar al-] Assad’s presidency, his departure will be a negotiated event, not forced, an important element for Putin personally and for Russia’s vision of its role in contemporary international affairs.”

Ali Hashem, speaking with official Syrian and Iranian sources, confirmed that “when Russia decided it was time to withdraw the major part of its forces from Syria, the announcement, on March 14, came as no surprise to its allies in the Syrian civil war. The Syrian government, Iran and Hezbollah had been informed in advance.”

This column appreciates the complexity and fragility of the Syrian peace process, and the long game against IS and al-Qaeda, but we admit to being cautious optimists. The Obama administration is on the right track in Syria, with admittedly a long way to go. In our very first column, in December 2012, we identified the role of Russia as one of “four trends that might signal if and when there is an endgame in Syria — and what that endgame would be.” The Russian trend is indeed shaping the Syrian endgame, and the United States is right to work with it. Russia’s interests in Syria are not a perfect match for the United States, but neither are the interests of America’s traditional allies in the region. While some may understandably second-guess Russian intentions, and rightly criticize its at times indiscriminate bombing campaign in support of Syrian government forces, as this column has done, it might also be useful to create a scorecard or tally comparing Russia’s record with those of other regional powers in both seeking a peaceful end to the conflict and undertaking direct attacks on IS and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. Our back-of-the-envelope calculation is the Russian score on these counts would probably fare well compared to US regional allies. The attacks in Brussels last week reveal the stakes in Syria are linked to a struggle against IS, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. In Syria, as in the broader international battle against terrorism, the United States and Europe are well-served by collaboration, rather than confrontation, with Russia.

Barzani promises crackdown on corruption

Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, told Amberin Zaman in an exclusive interview for Al-Monitor that the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) are “exactly one and the same thing,” and that the United States turns a “blind eye” because of the priority to fight IS.

In regard to the referendum on independence for the Kurdistan Region, Barzani said “with utter conviction that, barring circumstances beyond our control, that yes, we are trying to do it this year. … I think it will be before October.” He said that the wording of the referendum question, or questions, are still being worked out, and that “we are talking to Baghdad, we will talk to Iran at the same time that we talk to Turkey. We want to do it [transition to independence] in a peaceful and balanced way.”

Barzani acknowledged popular discontent with a lack of transparency in Kurdistan Regional Government energy deals and promised “to fight corruption and to fight those people who exploited their government position for oil contracts, sales of agricultural land and things like that. Whoever will be responsible from the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Peshmerga, prime minister, any minister, any leader of the party, any security official — they all must be held responsible for what they have done.”

Turkey, the European Union,, Russia, the PKK, and the future of a Kurdish nation

There is another oil issue in Central Asia which is causing as much difficulty for Turkey as Syria is.

Azerbaijan is building a pipeline from its oil fields to Italy,, which would  thwart Russia's position as the dominant supplier of oil to Europe.


For information on Azerbaijan's Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline referred to in the article see Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline - Wikipedia  (TANAP).  From Wikipedia:

Russia is said to have entered the Syrian conflict to stop Qatar from exporting natural gas from the Pars Field to Europe through Syria.

(Iran wants to export natural gas from the Pars field through Pakistan to India and China, so far blacked by the United States' threat of sanctions and its threat of withholding military aid to Pakistan, important to Pakistan because it perceives India as a mortal enemy.)

TheTANAP pipeline is a serious that to Russia, though not as serious as a Qatari pipeline would be, because Azerbaijan doesn't have reserves as large as the Pars field, which is the largest in the World.  

But TANAP would cut into Russia's oil sales to Europe and Russia can ill afford the loss.  

So Russia and he PKK, which is cutting Turkey,s oil lines, become natural allies. The United States is handed an opportunity to resolve the Ukraine dispute with Russia by siding with Russia and the PKK. 

If,  then, Turkey is "left with no friends but Saudi Arabia, Qatar and arguably Israel", as the al Monitor article, below, suggests, will the United State continue to support Syrian Kurds in their valiant war against the Islamic State, or will it yield to Saudi pressure, and side with Turkey?

What is important is the Kurdish determination to have their own nation, with access to the Sea.  That determination will decide  the outcome.  The United States should continue to side with the Kurds, even after the Islamic State is defeated, and Israel should abandon the Turks or be even further isolated from the international community.

For good reporting on Turkey's problems with PKK and the European Union, see The Guardian, A bombing: Kurdish militants claim responsibility, and Erdoğan's Turkey: a disintegrating ally and imaginary friend, both important articles for understanding Turkey, Syria, Russias, and the United States in the Middle East.

Author Ufuk Sanli Posted March 16, 2016

TURKEY PULSETürkçe okuyunTÜRKİYE'NİN NABZI

The Kurdistan Workers Party released a video on its official website Aug. 29, 2015, showing an attack on the Shah Deniz pipeline that transports natural gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey.  (photo by YOUTUBE/GlobalTVz)

How the PKK is entering energy wars

The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), denounced as a terrorist group by Turkey, last month inaugurated its first representative office abroad — in Moscow. A Kurdish speaker at the ceremony hailed the event as “a historic moment for the Kurdish people” before lauding his hosts: “Russia is a big power and a prominent actor in the Middle East. In fact, it’s not only an actor, but also a scriptwriter.”

The PYD is an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which sits even higher on Turkey's blacklist. Portraits of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan adorn the walls of the PYD office in Moscow, suggesting Turkey’s accusations are not baseless. Yet Russia clearly disagrees. Turkey’s Nov. 24 downing of a Russian military jet in Syria caused a dramatic rupture in ties, and the enraged government of Russian President Vladimir Putin had no scruples about embracing “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” strategy.

In the wake of the plane crisis, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his aides moved to accelerate projects to reduce Turkey’s dependence on Russian natural gas. Russia supplies 55% of the gas Turkey consumes, and Gazprom lists Turkey as its second-largest buyer after Germany.

For Turkey, the only quick alternative lies in the rich gas fields of neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan. With 5 trillion cubic meters (176 trillion cubic feet) of gas reserves, Iraqi Kurdistan whets the appetite of international investors and is eager to put its gas on the global market. Ankara’s game plan is simple: Begin building a pipeline this year, and get the gas flowing in 2019. Officials say the pipeline will have an initial capacity of 10 billion cubic meters a year, before a twofold increase in a short period of time.

That timing would be perfect, as some of Turkey’s major gas contracts with Russia expire in 2020, including the Blue Stream deal for 16 billion cubic meters, and half of the western route contracts that cover 4 billion cubic meters. In short, if everything goes as planned, Ankara hopes to get rid of Putin’s noose in several years.

Quickly rolling up its sleeves, Turkey collected bids for the Turkish section of the pipeline Feb. 9. In an intriguing coincidence, the PYD office in Moscow opened with fanfare the following day. And a week later, the Kurdistan Communities Union, the PKK's executive council, announced it would not allow the pipeline project to proceed. To show it meant business, the PKK leadership put on a little show of force. On Feb. 17, PKK militants blew up a Turkish section of the oil pipeline that ships Iraqi and Kurdish crude to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. The conduit, which carries 600,000 barrels of oil per day, remained closed for 23 days, dealing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) a reported blow of $300 million and further shaking its already struggling economy.

This, however, was not the first attack on what is often described as the Iraqi Kurds’ “economic lifeline.” PKK militants had also bombed the pipeline on July 29, disrupting exports for 21 days — which cost the KRG $250 million.

According to Akin Unver, a scholar of international relations at Istanbul’s Kadir Has University, the PKK’s pipeline bombings are a calculated strategy. “The attacks aim to derail Turkey’s ambition of becoming an international energy hub,” he said. “An increase in these attacks would either discourage investors from projects via Turkey or push financing costs above the estimates.”

Unver’s point is indeed critical. To overcome its financial bottleneck, the KRG needs to put its natural gas on the market as soon as possible, along with its oil. So it now has two options: either make a deal with the PKK or look for other routes to export its gas and oil.

In another twist here, a new player — Iran — has stepped into the game. Last week, Tehran was reported to have offered the KRG a new pipeline via Iran to safely export its oil.

Meanwhile, the PKK is targeting another major energy project — the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), designed to carry Caspian gas to Europe via Turkey in a bid to reduce European reliance on Russia. The conduit is to carry 36 billion cubic meters of gas per year, of which 21 billion cubic meters will go to European countries. Construction began a year ago, and on July 30 the PKK attacked a freight train transporting construction materials for TANAP, killing a railway worker. Intriguingly, reports emerged the same day that Turkish-Russian talks on the Turkish Stream — a rival project to carry Russian gas to Europe — had been suspended.

The PKK also has targeted a pipeline that carries 6 billion cubic meters of Azeri gas to Turkey annually, via Georgia. The conduit was blown up twice in August. The 13-day interruption in the flow meant some $200 million in losses for Azerbaijan.

According to Fatih Ozbay, a scholar at Istanbul Technical University specializing in Russia, Ankara’s crisis with Moscow was a long-sought opportunity for the PKK. “The PKK leadership had long scrambled to enlist Russia’s support. The rupture between Ankara and Moscow handed them this opportunity on a silver plate,” he said.

Commenting also on Russia's thinking, he said, “For the Russians, energy means both money and power. While half of its federal budget revenues come from oil and gas sales, Russia sees energy also as an efficient diplomatic weapon and doesn’t hesitate to use it when necessary.

"The truth of the matter is that the Kremlin was already unhappy with the projects to carry gas from the Caspian and northern Iraq because they are bound to curb its influence over Turkey and the European Union. So the plane crisis came in very handy, providing the PKK with legitimacy and Russia with an opportunity of direct contact with the forces that could disrupt those projects.”

Whether Ankara can break free from Putin’s pincers depends on how the PKK problem in Turkey develops. In 2012, Erdogan managed to bring the PKK to the negotiating table, enlisting the support of the United States, Britain, the EU and Russia. Today, he is left with no friends but Saudi Arabia, Qatar and arguably Israel. He could hardly bring the PKK back to the table at a time when the Kurds — unlike him — enjoy strong Western sympathy for their fight against the Islamic State.

This stalemate has come to threaten not only Turkey’s national security but also its energy supplies. Any delay in the energy projects, meanwhile, means more money flowing to Russia’s coffers.

∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ 

Assed is biting the hand that fees him

Assad is calling for Syrian elections in spite of  a United States-Russian agreement backed a Security Council resolution which call for elections only after a new constitution is agreed upon by all contestants except "terrorist" ones.

In time we'll learn which of  the "opposition" groups oppose any elections.  Dollar to donuts they are the groups funded by Saudi.

Remember, without Russian and Iranian support Assad will fall and the Saudi Salafi Jihadists will likely succeed. With Russian support, a negotiated settlement which

     1 - prevents Qatar from building a pipeline from the Pars field to Europe; and

     2 - allows Iran to build such a pipeline (Iran and Qatar share the Pars Field, the largest in the world).

Russia does't give a damn about Assad; it cares a lot about Qatar's not having pipeline to Europe, which would undercut its own oil market to Europe and wreck its economy.  Russia cares less about an Iranian route to Europe because it believes, by reason of geography and history, that it can work out price accommodations with Iran but not with Qatar.

Assad would support an Iranian pipeline but not a Qatari one.  A negotiated settlement which had major Alawite input would favor an Iran pipeline; one which favors Saudi Arabia would not.  How the Syrian Kurds fit in has not been reported on.

Russia's assessment is correct.  Defeating the Salafi Jihadists is in Russia's vital national interest. Supporting Qatar over Iran is not in the United States' vital  national interest.  

The United States should support the Russians and Iranians, after obtaining appropriate agreements over Ukraine's territorial integrity and the destruction of the Islamic State and similar groups.

   Author Mustafa al-HajPosted March 4, 2016

Syrian men walk past a poster bearing a portrait of President Bashar al-Assad as the first major cease-fire of the five-year war takes hold, Damascus, Feb. 27, 2016, (photo by LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/Getty Images)

Assad miffs opposition, Russians with call for elections

DAMASCUS, Syria — A precarious calm descended on the Syrian capital for the first time in five years after a cease-fire agreement went into effect Feb. 27 at midnight. The cease-fire crowned a deal brokered by the United States and Russia, opening the way for political negotiations. The calm stood in stark contrast to political tensions between Syria and Russia and the opposition's anger following President Bashar al-Assad's announcement Feb. 22 for parliamentary elections to be held April 13.

Assad's call for elections, coming hours after announcement of the cease-fire agreement, contradicted the agreement's planned phases for a political settlement of the Syrian crisis. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Feb. 24 that Russia will “vigorously” insist that elections take place with the consent of both the opposition and the government after the adoption of a new constitution. “I would like to emphasize that Russia is fully committed to the agreements on the content and stages of the political process of resolving the Syrian crisis in accordance with the decisions of the International Syrian Support Group (ISSG) and Resolution 2254 of the UN Security Council,” the TASS news agency quoted Zakharova as saying.

Zakharova's statement prompted the Syrian government’s media adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban, to address the issue with the Russian media Feb. 24 during a Valdai Discussion Club meeting in Moscow. “The parliamentary elections in Syria are being held in compliance with the constitution. They are a constitutional procedure with which the government must proceed,” Shaaban said according to SANA, the official Syrian news agency. The constitution requires that elections be held every four years, the previous balloting taking place in 2012.

Among the Syrian opposition, some groups support holding elections, while many oppose it. The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces has not issued an official statement on the matter. Hassan Abdel Azim, general coordinator of the opposition National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (NCC), told Al-Watan on Feb. 24, “The election decree is a wrong step taken at the wrong time and is not in line with the US-Russian agreement and the international community’s efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis politically. The coordinating committee will not participate in these elections.”

NCC spokesman Munther Khaddam told Al-Monitor, “The parliamentary elections are nothing but a farce of no value through which the regime is trying to say that it runs a state governed by a constitution and laws, while the majority of the Syrian people know that [the regime] is primarily responsible for the destruction of this country.” Khaddam further said, “As a coordinating committee, we will not accept any election that is not in the context of the political solution as stated in UN Resolution 2254 and in other international understandings on Syria. The coordinating committee will boycott the elections and will call on all of its supporters and all Syrians to boycott them as well.”

Rima Flihan, a writer and human rights activist, said, “The announcement of the elections at this particular time — during which major efforts are being deployed to reach a political solution — represents a defiance of international resolutions. It expresses the regime’s intention of noncompliance with the political transition that aims to save the rest of the country and paves the way for all Syrians to build a home again.”

Flihan considers the call for elections an “arrogant step” designed to “raise the morale of the regime's loyalists.” She told Al-Monitor, “When the international will is ready to impose serious negotiations leading to a full cease-fire — giving way to a transitional phase and providing a real breakthrough on the humanitarian issue — there is no meaning or value for such steps [i.e., the parliamentary elections].”

Among other opposition members, Anas Joudeh, head of the National Building Movement, told Al-Monitor, “The importance of the elections lies in the fact that they give the impression that the Syrian state is still operating, and this is particularly important and necessary today. However, this does not mean the electoral process is perfect, nor are its circumstances good. The electoral law was supposed to be amended to hold elections based on proportional representation in the open electoral lists [system] and provide more time to prepare for the elections.”

Joudeh stressed that the call for elections is intended to send a political message to foreign actors rather than to domestic players. Thus, no one in the government took into consideration the pent-up frustrations waiting to explode.

Rima Sawah, a central committee member of the opposition Syria Homeland Party, told Al-Monitor, “We hope the elections are postponed until the situation in Syria improves to give all citizens the chance to participate ... especially since numerous areas remain outside state control and many citizens have left Syria. Elections are a right and a duty for everyone, and we believe in the necessity of effective participation. We hope to take advantage of the truce to give citizens in all areas the chance to participate in the elections.”

Sawah further said, “Holding the elections in this way is contrary to UN Security Council Resolution 2254, but [regardless] the party believes that [the decision belongs] to the Syrian people alone, not any foreign countries or UN resolutions, to determine the country's future.”

Sawah said that despite having concerns, the Syria Homeland Party has faith in the elections. “In politics, it is stupid to blindly trust others. Certainly some parties will try to manipulate the elections, but we will deploy all endeavors to expose them,” she said.

Parliamentary elections in Syria are held every four years. The 2012 elections were the first held after the Council of Ministers promulgated a law in August 2011 allowing the formation of political parties and the establishment of a proportional representation system for the legislature. Before that, all parliamentarians were affiliated with the ruling Baath Party.

As the cease-fire tenuously continues, the Syrian government is hurriedly preparing for elections. Government committees in the various provinces where the regime remains in control received candidates' registrations until the door to apply closed March 1.

∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼

This map  . . .

One map of the situation in Syria, as of January 15. (Thomas van Linge)

. . . will explain why Assad's call for elections is mad.  Has he, like MacBeth, now lost his mind?

McBeth, Act III, Scene 4

                                              I am in blood 

136    Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade       no more, 

137    Returning were as tedious as go o'er. 

138    Strange things I have in head, that             will to hand; 

139    Which must be acted ere they may be          scann'd [examined closely, by prying eyes]. 

Iran bad; Saudi Arabia worse; Turkmenistan worst of the three and the United States is helping the latter two: what gives?

The Foreign Affairs article, reprinted below,

• praises Iran's public for electing "moderates" to its governing bodies; 
• notes that the election goes a long way toward insuring the likelihood of success for President Obama's (and former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's) Iranian Nuclear Deal, which congressional Republicans continue to try to frustrate;
• notes that the European Union is lifting sanctions on Iran at a faster pace than the United States is, for reasons unspecified -- and the article notes the eagerness with which European businesses (and indeed businesses from China to Basil) are  doing striving for business with Iran;
• argues  that the United States, alone of all nations, must retain the ability to impose biting sanctions on Iran;
•  worries that the unequal lifting of sanctions may harm the United States' ability to impose biting sanctions on Iran;
• and gives these reasons for maintaining a hard position toward  Iran:

[A]s Iran’s recent activities have shown, it is still a state supporter of terrorism, routinely abuses the human rights of its citizens, and is actively seeking to destabilize the Middle East. Aggressive enforcement of a robust sanctions regime will continue to allow the United States to pressure the country to abandon such activities.

Take the three points that make Iran different from countries that hold values different from the West's, in order presented:

1.  State Supporter of Terror  There is no internationally agreed definition of a terrorist; "terrorism" is in the eye of the beholder.

From the point of view of many Syrians, Salafi Jihadists funded by rich Saudi and the United Arab Emirates are terrorists.  From the point of view of Iranians, the United States is a terrorist state because it engineered the overthrow, by force, of a democratically elected president of Iran and installed an oppressive dictator  in his place.  Many Chileans and Argentinos would agree with Iranians on this, having suffered similar disruptions at the hands of the CIA.

Pakistan and India both got atomic bombs in violation of international protocols and neither is possible to be a rogue nation as Iran is.

The preference for one out of multiple standers on which to judge a nation's behavior,  picking the one uniquely designed to continue Iran's isolation, is not explained by the authors.  The preference is, however, a standard neoconic preference that appears frequently in neoconic writing.

2.  Routine Abuse of its Citizens.  The authors would do well to review  Foreign Affairs, Time to get Tough on Saudi Arabia, which details the kingdoms historic and present human rights abuses on its own coins  The us does not escape unblemished:  many Iraqi condem the IranWar and the us treatment of prisoners in its prisons in Iranians in Afghanistan.  Many United States citizens deplore that the United States has more prisoners than any other nation.

Iran is deprives citizens who dress in  way its authorities think gay men might dress, of life.  Saudi Arabia whips them before and after it hangs hem.  The United States them them both beat on gay and women's rights issues.


3.  Actively Seeks to Destabilize the Middle East.  The authors again resort to double standards.

Saudi Arabia seeks to replace the elected, multi-ethnic government of Syria, brutal beyond belief, with a brutal Wahhabist one.  That the Saudi desire to have their own form of religion rule all of Syria is one of the main reasons no settlement of the conflict has been possible.

See

Syria and the contending interests clearly described; why the outcomes mater, and to whom 

Are Iranians really worse for the United States than the Saudi?   Can we justify Saudi Arabia's genocide in Yemen?  If we punish one, shouldn't we punish both?  Shouldt we do our best to befriend the good in each?

And why are neocons so hard on Iran while turning a blind eye to failings in "friends?"  The United States has been punishing Iran for 7 decades because it had the the temerity to nationalize oil.

Time now to call a halt; take a hint from the European Union; relax sanctions; let Pakistan have as much natural gas from Ian's Pars Field as it wants; continue the move to join the community of nations.

SNAPSHOT March 1, 2016 IranSanctions

RAHEB HOMAVANDI / REUTERS

Iranians look at a list of candidates' names during elections for the parliament and Assembly of Experts, February 26, 2016.

SNAPSHOT March 1, 2016IranSanctions

Unfreezing Iran

And Doing It the Right Way

By Omar S. Bashir and Eric Lorber

239

It makes sense that moderates’ recent electoral triumph in Iran—early results suggest that they have won a majority of seats in the parliament and in the Assembly of Experts—will improve the chances of success for the Iran nuclear deal. Iranian moderates, who generally back President Hassan Rouhani, were an important factor in concluding the deal and are likely to support its continued implementation.

As U.S. policymakers welcome the news that the Obama administration’s signal foreign policy achievement may be on sturdier ground, however, the continued successful implementation of the deal is having important and unanticipated consequences for the United States’ ability to use biting financial sanctions to achieve its foreign policy objectives.

In particular, the nature of the sanctions relief provided as part of the Iran nuclear agreement—which seems less likely to unravel after the election—may actually undermine U.S. sanctions in the future, in part by encouraging foreign companies to re-enter Iranian markets and decrease their reliance on the U.S. financial system. It is worth taking that risk into consideration as some policymakers cheer the outcome of the election and what it may mean for Iranian politics and the future of the nuclear agreement.

TARGET PRACTICE

Observers have focused on the role that economic sanctions played in bringing Iran to the negotiating table and ultimately signing the nuclear agreement. But the use of powerful financial sanctions has a longer history.

The United States introduced targeted measures after 9/11 to stem the flow of funding to terrorist groups. These were soon adapted for use against weapons proliferators such as North Koreaand Iran. The Treasury Department, building off the framework established in the early 2000s, continued sharpening these tools and—under significant pressure from Congress, which wanted to increase the coercive pressure on Iran—began to rely more heavily on so-called secondary sanctions, that is, prohibitions on non-U.S. businesses or individuals that continue doing business with a sanctioned entity. In other words, foreign firms were given a choice between dealing with rogue regimes such as Iran and having access to the U.S. financial system.

In recent years, sanctions far removed from the economy-wide prohibitions of the 1990s have targeted human rights abusers and leaders who violate the territorial integrity of their neighbors. Some of these sanctions include creative new restrictions, such as prohibitions on issuing new debt and equity for certain targeted financial institutions and limits on cooperation for developing energy resources.

Policymakers have recognized the potential for such new sanctions to combat unconventional challenges as well. For example, U.S. President Barack Obama recently granted the secretary of the treasury the authority to impose economic sanctions on foreign countries and companies that engage in malicious cyber activity, namely launching cyberattacks on critical infrastructure or stealing commercially valuable information. Likewise, the United States has developed sanctions that target corruption in countries such as Venezuela andBelarus. In short, coercive economic measures have become the tool du jour. Today, U.S. officials are bullish about using more sophisticated and targeted sanctions when diplomacy alone is insufficient but force is not a feasible option.

UNSANCTIONED

Yet, as policymakers have become enamored with these tools, they have paid much less attention to how they can be unwound effectively—and what the specifics of the unwinding will mean for the United States’ ability to successfully use sanctions in the future. The implications are easy to see in the case of the sanctions relief provided to Iran on implementation day.

Whereas the EU and other states have largely relaxed their Iran sanctions programs, the United States has only discarded some of its restrictions. The different paces at which the United States and EU are unwinding their sanctions programs pushes European and Asian companies to avoid conducting transactions in U.S. dollars and in U.S. markets and so could diminish the United States’ ability to impose biting financial sanctions in the future.

Following implementation day, most EU sanctions and U.S. secondary sanctions—which applied to non-U.S. entities—were removed. European companies interested in doing business in Iran’s financial and banking industry (and its energy sector) are no longer prohibited from engaging in a wide range of activities. At the same time, extensive prohibitions remain on U.S. companies and individuals thinking about doing business in Iran, and European companies cannot use the American financial system for Iran-related transactions without running afoul of those sanctions.

The inability to access the U.S. financial system is a major impediment to foreign firms wishing to do business in Iran: transactions in U.S. dollars have long been the norm in most international markets and sectors, accounting for approximately 85 percent of global trade transactions, even when the parties involved are based outside the United States. By prohibiting firms from relying on the dollar to do business in Iran, the United States is giving those companies incentive to conduct transactions in other currencies, with potentially significant consequences for the preeminence of the U.S. financial system and the United States’ ability to impose financial sanctions.

For example, the State Bank of Pakistan has been asked by the Government of Pakistan to draw up an “interim credible payment mechanism” so that Pakistani businesses can enter Iran without worrying about dollars. South Korea is looking to encourage dealings with Iran in its own currency or else euros. Further, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi recently announced that it wouldhandle payments by Japanese oil refiners to Iran in both yen and euros. Likewise, two other Japanese banks are reportedly looking to restart non-dollar wiring services to Iran as well. And Brazil’s trade minister recently announced that his government will look to enable payments in euros and other currencies to and from Iran because “everyone is racing after Iran now…the trade potential is very big.”

In short, governments and private actors around the world are experimenting with avoiding the dollar because of an unbalanced unwinding of the Iran sanctions.

These moves only continue a recent, larger trend of companies and countries avoiding the U.S. financial system. In the past few years, countries worried about being targeted by U.S. sanctions have begun developing alternative currency and payment systems. For example, many analysts believe that the recent Chinese push to make the renminbi a reserve currency was partly the result of a Chinese desire to ensure that the United States would not be able to bring significant coercive economic leverage to bear on China in the future. Similarly, China’s establishment of the China International Payment System (CHIPS)—a system designed to mimic SWIFT, which is an entity that helps coordinate the transfer of trillions of dollars in financial messages every day, and facilitate the processing of renminbi transactions—could insulate the country from the sanctions that proved so powerful against Iran.

The trend may also threaten U.S. economic competitiveness over the longer term. To the extent that international companies actively avoid the U.S. financial system, U.S. markets will no longer benefit from their business. While the extent of such potential damage is unclear, senior Treasury Department officials have expressed concern about these consequences.

And now, by giving foreign companies even more reason to use alternative currencies and financial markets the United States threatens to accelerate this trend. And that, in turn, could undercut the country’s ability to impose powerful financial sanctions in the future, since the United States often relies on the use of the dollar in cross-border transactions to create the jurisdictional hook necessary to impose biting sanctions. Without that hook, the United States will be less able to penalize companies that conduct business with rogue nations or terror groups.

FUTURE SANCTIONS

This is not to say that the United States should remove all of its sanctions on Iran just to match Europe. The United States has maintained those restrictions for good reason: as Iran’s recent activities have shown, it is still a state supporter of terrorism, routinely abuses the human rights of its citizens, and is actively seeking to destabilize the Middle East. Aggressive enforcement of a robust sanctions regime will continue to allow the United States to pressure the country to abandon such activities.

Policymakers and regulators tasked with protecting the U.S. financial system from exposure to illicit activity know that financial crimes, including bribery, other corruption, and money laundering, remain pervasive in the Islamic Republic. Iran ranked 130 of 167 countries in Transparency International’s 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index. U.S. officials know that allowing Iranian business to be conducted through the U.S. banking system might enable more such crimes.

But at the very least, policymakers need to recognize that they face a difficult choice. In their attempts to unwind certain sanctions on Iran while maintaining some economic pressure on the country, they may be hurting their ability to employ financial sanctions against Iran or other targets in the future. Given that policymakers have increasingly turned to these economic tools in recent years, they should understand the tradeoff and develop ways to maintain the United States’ ability to impose biting financial measures. Only then will it be able to preserve these powerful tools into the foreseeable future.