Tag Archives: Shia

The Execution of a Sheikh

03 Sun Jan 2016

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Saudi Arabia’s execution of the firebrand Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Bakr al-Nimr on January 2 does not augur well for hope that the kingdom’s relations with its neighbour across the Persian Gulf, Iran, will improve in the new year. Nimr, from al-Awamiyah in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich and largest province, ash-Sharqiyah, was among 46 others executed by the kingdom but the one who has caught the most attention due to his perceived links with Shia Iran. The execution has met with muted response from the Western powers, all involved to varying degrees in the several conflicts presently plaguing the Middle East and North Africa. However, news of the sheikh’s death resulted in an assault on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and a diplomatic severing of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran, sparking possibly the worst crisis between the two regional rivals since the Iran-Iraq War.

Despite apprehension that this spat between neighbours will escalate into something far uglier, there is little cause for concern. If anything, the execution may at most be used by either Riyadh or Tehran as a cover for actions against each other that would otherwise have seemed provocative in the unstable region. Although Nimr’s ties to Tehran are questionable, the sheikh clearly enjoyed sectarian sympathies among the Iranian people; this, in addition to his call to overthrow the Saudi state, support of Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq, sharp criticism of the repressive minority Sunni monarchy in Bahrain, and belief that Saudi Shia had a right to secede condemned him in Riyadh’s eyes. Interestingly, Nimr had cautioned his followers in Saudi Arabia in 2008 that they should not expect any sectarian sympathy from Iran for Tehran will act only in its own selfish national interests. More recently, he differed with the ayatollahs on the repressive regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Despite the immediate sharp tit-for-tat, there is little more that can go wrong between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The two countries are already engaged in a proxy war in Syria and possibly Yemen and Bahrain as well. Historically, one would be hard-pressed to remember a time when relations between the two countries was normal, let alone friendly. Saudi Arabia is a new country but sectarian and racial perceptions between Arabs and Persians go back centuries. Yet pace this historical baggage, it is naive to think that either Riyadh or Tehran are motivated by these motives; a cursory look at the lifestyle of the clerics in Tehran or the royal family in Riyadh betray very un-Islamic personal proclivities. Both countries are ruled by shrewd nationalists who are not above manipulating public emotion via the opiate of the masses.

The question, of course, is what might have caused the House of Saud to firmly cross the line by executing Nimr? It is true that the sheikh had been sentenced to death in 2014 but usually these things resulted in exchanges, concessions, and pardons. Although Riyadh had this time insisted that it would indeed carry out the sentence, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud’s predecessor had punted on the actual date. By carrying out the execution, the Saudis were certain to anger Iran and for rewards yet unclear.

The most plausible explanation for Riyadh’s actions is how the geopolitical winds have blown against it in the past year. In 2015, the West concluded a nuclear deal with Iran that did not eradicate its programme; the civil war in Syria seems to be closer to slipping out of Riyadh’s influence; the invasion of Yemen has not gone as smoothly as planned; the threat of Islamism endangers the House of Saud; and internal stability is fraying faster than Riyadh can throw riyals at public works projects. These setbacks have shaken the kingdom’s role at the helm of affairs in the region – despite a cooperative United Arab Emirates and a docile Qatar at the moment, Saudi Arabia’s leadership of the Sunni Arab community appears bleaker than ever before. The first event threatens an ascendant Shia power and a struggle for regional dominance; the second showcases the increasing reach of a regional rival; the third highlights Riyadh’s military weakness against a far less capable foe; and the fourth and fifth may undermine the ruling dynasty itself.

The execution of Nimr works at many different levels to address these threats: first, it is a symbolic snub to Iran. If it upsets Tehran enough to precipitate a rash action, Riyadh will gladly milk it as another reason the international community cannot trust Iran with a nuclear programme. Second, the execution of Nimr along with mostly convicted al-Qa’ida terrorists portrays the Shia unrest within the kingdom as equivalent to international terror. Third, the execution of a Shia cleric gives some pause to the regime’s Sunni and Islamist critics that the House of Saud is not working in sufficient earnest towards bolstering a (radical) Sunni interpretation of Islam.

What can Iran do in retaliation? Little that it is not doing already. By supporting Assad in Syria and perhaps the Houthis in Yemen – though there have been doubts – Iran is already doing far more to weaken its regional rival than any direct action ever could. Tehran could increase its assistance to its proxies in these two conflicts or perhaps encourage a third front in Bahrain where Shias already have a demographic advantage. Whatever the clerics decide, there is little that can pin any change to the execution of Nimr. The chances of a spillover into the neighbourhood are also minuscule because Saudi Arabia does not have the support it would require from its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council states; Pakistan would avoid getting involved because any deterioration of its relations with Tehran will only be to India’s benefit.

If, for some unforeseeable reason, Riyadh and Tehran decide to talk peace, Nimr’s death will hardly hold them back. Nonetheless, the execution serves as a reminder to all those who thought the nuclear deal with Tehran would transform the Middle East that a lot more work is yet to be done. Perhaps, it even suggests that the problem lay not with Tehran but elsewhere all these years anyway.

A Sudden Churning

12 Thu Jun 2014

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On June 11, Middle East observers were stunned at the sudden breakthrough of militants belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) against Iraqi forces opposing them in Anbar and Nineveh. ISIS stormed through Mosul, Tikrit, and Baiji as the Iraqi army melted away so quickly that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki termed it a conspiracy. A report by the International Organization for Migration says an estimated 500,000 people, including 99% of its Christian population, have fled Mosul since hostilities began Saturday morning. The militants seized huge stores of American-supplied arms, ammunition and vehicles, including six Black Hawk helicopters and approximately $420 million in cash.

ISIS surgeAdmittedly, Mosul is not ISIS’ first scalp – they have captured and held Falluja since January 2014, put pressure on Ramadi and Samarra, and regularly target the Iraqi capital Baghdad with bombs. However, Mosul is Iraq’s third-largest city and an important hub of commercial activity; by way of comparison, Bangalore is India’s third-largest city. As such, its capture is symbolic and a huge morale boost for ISIS. It demonstrates a strong command and control and a high degree of internal coordination and cohesion within ISIS to be able to capture a city. Run by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has a doctorate in education from the University of Baghdad, ISIS is estimated to command some 6,000 fighters in Iraq and another 3,000 in Syria; the United States has placed a $10 million bounty on al-Baghdadi, surpassed only, so far, by the $25 million reward for al-Qa’ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Equally worrisome is the disintegration of the Iraqi army. In many areas, soldiers doffed their uniforms and disappeared into the civilian population; in others, they were willing to lay down their arms without offering any resistance if they were guaranteed safe passage. Immediate blame may fall upon the failure of the United States to supply Iraq with weaponry in a timely manner or raise doubts about its training of Iraqi troops but the problem goes deeper than that – al-Maliki’ and his government was not able to build a state to which the average Iraqi felt much loyalty.

ISIS started out as al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI), a militant group that opposed the US occupation of Iraq. The group was decimated but not completely eliminated by the US during the 2007 surge. However, the incompetence of the Iraqi government and the civil war in Syria led to its resurrection in 2012. For example, al-Maliki purged Sunni Muslims from government posts; he also went back on his promise to integrate Sunni militias known as Sahwa into the regular army. It was these brigades that the US had used to fight and defeat AQI earlier. The release of al-Qa’ida prisoners by the United States also provided what Michael Knights, the Lafer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, calls “an unprecedented infusion of skilled, networked terrorist manpower” into the region. The series of massive prison breaks across Iraq in 2013 also contributed to the swelling of ISIS ranks. Disturbingly, ISIS was expelled from the al-Qa’ida fraternity in February 2014 for unnecessarily killing civilians and being too vicious!

The collapse of the Iraq-Syria border will aid ISIS in its fight in Iraq as well as against Bashar al-Assad. They can take refuge from one side in the territory of the other and enjoy internal lines of communication. The civil war in Syria has improved the fighting capability of ISIS and as many US military observers are saying, this is no longer a terrorist threat but a small army on the move. ISIS is moving south against Baghdad, and the Shia holy cities of Karbala and Najaf may very well be next for the Sunni extremists. The group’s twitter account said it had taken Mosul as part of a plan “to conquer the entire state and cleanse it from the apostates.” The organisation’s goal, as it has often stated, is to re-establish the Islamic Caliphate from the Mediterranean to the Zagros under sharia law.

There have been reports that ISIS may extend its domain beyond Iraq and Syria into Jordan, but in all likelihood, the focus will be on consolidating the gains in Iraq and protecting the rear by gaining the upper hand against arch-rival Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria. Al-Nusra has pushed ISIS out of Aleppo and Idlib as well as the northern provinces in Syria and offered strong resistance in Deir Ezzor. Furthermore, Syrian forces are starting to attack ISIS strongholds in Raqqa and Hassakah.

In response to the ISIS surge, the Iraqi government has requested that the United States conduct air strikes against key militant positions across northern Iraq. Ironically, Washington sees the use of drones against ISIS as a step too far and has refused to act so far. In some ways, the United States is torn between supporting or standing idly by as ISIS fights Assad and acting against it in defence of its Iraqi client while incidentally helping the Syrian regime. However, events seem to have overtaken Washington and it will be forced to act. Ground troops are not an option for the US, but the fear of Iran increasing its footprint in Iraq will propel Washington to conduct airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq if not Syria.

The only group that is currently capable of fighting ISIS in the region is the Kurdish Regional Government and its brethren in Rojava. The peshmerga and the Yekineyen Parastina Gel (YPG) are also battle-hardened and fairly well-equipped after decades of fighting Iranians, Arabs, and Turks for Kurdish autonomy. Nonetheless, there is no love lost between Hewler and Baghdad. Kurdish forces have so far taken Kirkuk but made no move against ISIS yet. It remains to be seen whether they remain neutral or join the fight on the side of their nemesis, Baghdad. There is temptation in Hewler to sit on the sidelines but ISIS is unlikely to view Kurdistan favorably once it establishes its caliphate; the KRG would be making a grave mistake if it allowed ISIS to consolidate its power, or on the contrary, the militant threat is defeated and Hewler is seen as opportunistically neutral.

The march on Shia shrines and the brutal massacres of Shia in ISIS-held territory has evinced a response from Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The cleric has said that he is willing to raise the Mahdi Army he had disbanded in 2008 to provide for the security of Shia and Christians in Iraq. The obvious Shia power that has remained quiet so far is Iran. Though most officials have been silenced by a gag order from the top, Iran’s police chief Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam revealed that the Supreme National Security Council intervene in Iraq if Shia were explicitly targeted.

Iran has been troubled by rising Sunni extremism in its neighbourhood; in August 1998, the Taliban stormed Mazar-e Sharif and massacred Shia pilgrims in neighbouring Afghanistan. According to the memoirs of former diplomat Hossein Mousavian, it was only the veto of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that stopped Iran from going to war. Iran is already involved in the Syrian conflagration in favour of Assad and this new ISIS threat in Iraq could be catastrophic. Said Ghassem Suleimani, leader of the Quds Force, Iran’s rage at the destruction of religious sites it holds dear would be enormous and all options would be on the table – “battles, attacks, raids, massacre.” The Quds Force, however, is thought to have been operating in Iraq in an unofficial capacity for a while now. At the time of writing, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has just announced that he would deploy the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to Iraq to fight the terrorists.

ISIS’ rapid success has made many enemies. Turkey had so far opposed the Assad regime and had turned a lazy eye towards foreign fighters streaming into Syria to fight the Syrian regime. Recent geopolitics, however, has made Ankara change its mind on Syria and the rebels. The storming of the Turkish consulate in Mosul and the taking some 80 Turkish citizens as hostages comes at an awkward time, domestically speaking, for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Reconnaissance flights over Mosul out of Diyarbakir have already been conducted in consultation with Baghdad and Ankara has issued a stern warning to ISIS over any harm befalling the Turkish hostages. Turkey is unlikely to conduct military operations against ISIS just yet unless ISIS kills the hostages, a very unlikely event. Ankara, however, will maintain its new policy of keeping its borders closed and make it more difficult for foreign fighters to drift in as before.

It is unlikely that ISIS will take on so many foes at once. However, if the group settles into a holding pattern, it may lose support of the people in the territory it controls. The massive exodus from Mosul is an indication that people have little faith in organisation’s governance abilities. ISIS has already made a powerful negative image for itself by persecuting minorities and brutally crushing even the slightest dissent in lands it has held. If ISIS slows down now, or if a loose and reluctant coalition of Turks, Iranians, Kurds, and US-supplied Iraqis manages to slow them down, they may be the reason of their own unravelling.

The phrase, “May you live in interesting times” is usually taken to be an ancient Chinese blessing. It is, in fact, neither ancient nor Chinese nor a blessing. It appears in the opening remarks of Frederic Coudert at the Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in 1939…and was meant as a curse. These are interesting times indeed.

Incidentally, Iraq is – was – India’s second-largest oil supplier.

This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on June 13, 2014.

A Long Road To Normalisation

29 Fri Nov 2013

Posted by in Iran, Middle East, Nuclear

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News of the Interim Nuclear Agreement with Iran has created a flurry of activity across the world – Boeing is digging through its stores for upgrades to Iran’s antiquated fleet of passenger planes, Renault is gearing up for potential exports to Iran, India has woken up to an opportunity to increase its strategic clout in South Asia, Turkey’s banks are raring to manage Tehran’s financial transactions, and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries has been put on alert for increased oil production from Iran. There are even murmurs about a New Silk Road. Yet on the military end, they is speculation about an Israel-Saudi alliance against Tehran.

Much of this is overly optimistic speculation and there will be little movement on most of these fronts over the first half of 2014 when the E3+3 and Iran will be busy trying to negotiate a permanent understanding on Iran’s nuclear programme. In fact, even a comprehensive solution to the Iranian nuclear question will hardly result in the tectonic shifts everyone envisions and certainly not with the speed everyone predicts. Iran’s return to the mainstream is likely to be slow and though its impact on the region could be significant, will proceed at a more moderated pace than suggested.

The most critical change, from Tehran’s perspective, must come in the oil sector. Oil will remain Iran’s bread and butter in the short term until other sectors of its economy can recover from the decades of sanctions. The Islamic Republic must be able to produce and sell as much oil as it pleases, and it must be able to conduct secure financial transactions to receive payment for its mineral resource. However, it is not so easy to ramp up oil production, and Iran’s decrepit oil machinery and infrastructure cannot handle any sudden increase. Iran desperately needs help to build new oil rigs and upgrade or repair old ones before it can sustain a high output of oil.

Tehran is not looking East

Tehran’s gas pipeline east faces other hurdles – historical differences between India and Pakistan act as a dampener on Indian enthusiasm for the project, and though the pipeline may still go ahead between Iran and Pakistan, the real prize is India’s burgeoning economy and its insatiable hunger for energy. Projections for that economic boom must wait until India and Pakistan come to an understanding or the security of the pipeline and India’s energy source is assured.

India has also refused to move quickly on developing Chabahar for fear of having its companies sanctioned by the United States and the European Union. Even if the removal of sanctions would push Delhi to finally begin moving quickly on Chabahar, the expansion of the port and connecting it by railway, road, and pipeline – at least to Afghanistan if not Central Asia – will take a few years. In addition, such plans will undoubtedly meet with resistance from several neighbours – Pakistan would view Indian influence so close to its western border with concern; if the Central Asian republics could be persuaded to participate in connecting their oil & gas reserves to Chabahar as well as to China, Russia would resent its waning influence over the former Soviet republics. Furthermore, any pipeline, road, or railway heading north from Chabahar will be in some of the most militant-rich terrain in the world.

Another factor that could slow Iran’s recovery is that a lot of Tehran’s money is trapped in rupee deposits in India, renminbis in China, and other less desirable currencies. This is because the US-EU sanctions cut Iran off from the international financial system completely – even accessing one’s US bank account online from Iran would lead to its suspension until one personally went into a US branch again. The non-convertibility of many of the currencies Iran holds forces them to buy from the specific countries, hindering Tehran’s ability to purchase necessary goods freely. As one business man complained, “How much basmati can we buy?” The sudden depreciation of the rupee has also lost Iran about 12% of its oil earnings from India. Iran’s warmth towards its eastern allies is born out of economic necessity than any ideological or other concurrence of views. As an Iranian engineer said of his Chinese partners, “I think the sanctions gave them the ability to act however they wanted with us.” Indeed, with allies like these, who needs enemies?

The United States probably hopes that the thawing of relations with Iran will help its retreat from Afghanistan. This could be achieved sooner than most other goals. It is well within Iran’s capability to make the Western extraction difficult, and most importantly for the United States, Pakistan will no longer have NATO at its mercy. However, it is hard to predict the ramifications upon Pakistan of the loss of its pivotal role in US operations in Central Asia. With anti-American sentiment strong in the population and the increasing power of Islamists, not to mention the questionable safety of its nuclear arsenal, Pakistan may even take a turn for the worse without a US presence in the region. Tehran does not favour a US presence in the neighbourhood, but an Afghanistan and Pakistan out of a Wild, Wild West scenario must keep the clerics up at night.

The Neighbourhood

Within the Middle East, many hope that resolving the Iranian issue is a first step to ending the civil war in Syria and perhaps gaining some control over the Hezbollah in the Occupied Territories in Israel. These fantasies are also unlikely to pan out as beautifully as they are imagined. If Tehran abandoned Bashar al-Assad to the Gulf-funded Salafi jihadists and their Western patrons, not only will it undermine confidence in Iran’s support in the region but also create a hostile state on the Islamic Republic’s doorstep. Tehran’s cooperation on the Syrian bloodbath will hardly result in the ideal outcome the West desires and the issue of a future Syrian state and Assad may become yet another splinter between the United States and the Gulf states.

Next door to Iran, the Kurdish Regional Government has been developing ties with Turkey and establishing its own international credentials in matters involving the Kurds in Syria, international investment in the Kurdish autonomous province, and oil trade. An Iran that is not an international pariah will open doors to Hewlêr’s diversification of its trade and allow its energy resources access to the Persian Gulf as well as the presently planned route to the Mediterranean via Turkey. The KRG will hardly rush with the large investments needed in infrastructure for the pipelines; Hewlêr will want to be convinced of the viability of trade with Iran and that the clerics will keep their word on nuclear safeguards.

The Israeli Connection

An interesting development has been the much mentioned Israeli-Saudi alliance against Iran. If the United States achieves a rapprochement with Iran, many observers believe that it will be over Israeli and Saudi concerns and this would push the two governments into an unlikely partnership. This is an extremely simplistic, if not naïve, view of geopolitics. For one, Israel and Saudi Arabia are still are still locked in mortal combat over desired outcomes in Syria and Palestine, and there are several symbolic as well as strategic reasons Riyadh and Jerusalem will not drift too close. At best, they might temporarily walk in the same direction and, perhaps, tangle their little fingers. It will be impossible to whitewash over the rhetoric of Jewish/Zionist-Islamic divide that has been so carefully cultivated since 1948 any time soon.

Considering the Israel-Iran stand-off, Trita Parsi has convincingly argued in Treacherous Alliance that both Israel and Iran are shrewd and pragmatic political operators who have not let ideology interfere with their national interests; Israel supplied Iran with weapons during the Iran-Iraq War despite the anti-Israel tirade from the imams in Qom. In fact, many of Iran’s security and policy goals show a continuity, not a break, with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s regime. If Israel can be persuaded of the effectiveness of the nuclear safeguards on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure – without which there would be no deal in the first place – its strategists have always argued for what they called a Periphery Doctrine. Essentially, this doctrine argued that as non-Arab states – two and a half of them are even democracies – Iran, Turkey, and Israel act as natural bulwarks against their mutual rivals. Turkey’s place in that club has become murky with the failure of Ankara’s recent Zero Problem foreign policy initiative, but there is little reason for eternal enmity between Tehran and Jerusalem.

Shia Living in a Sunni World

Perhaps counter-intuitively, international normalisation of ties with Iran causes more problems for Saudi Arabia than Israel. Iran’s increased influence in the region could easily translate to Tehran emerging as a lightening rod for the disaffected Shia minority from Pakistan to Bahrain, Yemen, Lebanon, Egypt and even the Kingdom itself. The fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the increasing political presence of Iraq’s Shia population has given Iran some breathing space in its neighbourhood. If pilgrimage numbers are anything to judge potential political ties by, Najaf has seen more visitors annually since 2009 than either Mecca or Medina.

Recent media reports suggest that ties between Iran and Turkey have been getting warmer and that the two countries are even sharing intelligence on matters of mutual concern. However, though both have shared concerns about Kurdish nationalism in the past, the major question mark in the near future is Syria. Ankara has been lukewarm in its support of the rebels against Assad since any semblance of a secular opposition gave way to Salafists, but neither is it likely to be comfortable with yet another neighbour within Iran’s sphere of influence. Ankara’s failure in Egypt and Syria may make it more open to Iranian overtures, but that remains to be seen.

A Slow Normalisation on the Cards

Iran’s leaders have posited their nation to be a golden key that could open up the entire Middle East. That honour, in my opinion, will go to an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. Iran today presents a problem for the West, no doubt, and settling the nuclear issue will bring relief to both sides. Yet over three decades of demonising, scheming, and aiding hostile proxies will hardly go away in a few months. To put things in an Indian perspective, friendly Iran-US relations within the decade would be like expecting India and Pakistan to overcome their historical mistrust and hatred overnight just because Islamabad decided to extradite terrorists India has been demanding. Resentment between the United States and Iran has gone deeper than the political and seeped into public opinion as well, albeit many hope that relations will improve. A rapid turnabout of 370 million minds is no easy task, but that is why we read Lao Tzu.