As Iran loses ground in Syria, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip, expect Tehran to try to shore up its ability to influence the Middle East in the most unlikely of places:  Egypt.

Over the last few years there have been numerous signs that Cairo and Tehran were making tentative steps toward changing their previously rather frosty relations, including the transit of Iranian warships through the Suez Canal, open discussion among decision-makers in both countries about normalizing ties, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s August 2012 visit to Iran for a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement, and his Iranian counterpart’s reciprocal visit to Cairo this past February for the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.  In addition, the current cause célèbre between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis of the al Nour party concerns whether to allow Iranian tourists to visit Egypt.  The Brothers are for it, while the Salafis, fearing Shi’a proselytizing, are vehemently opposed.

These are tentative, largely symbolic steps most of which can be explained away—at least on the Egyptian end—by the domestic political need for Morsi and the Brotherhood to demonstrate that their “independent” foreign policy is more than just a talking point.  Although the Iranians are likely interested in something much bigger than symbolism, the Egyptians may, out of a combination of desperation and shrewdness, take Tehran up on whatever overtures the Iranians have forthcoming.

Egypt and Iran seem more likely to engage in strategic competition rather than strategic cooperation.  Egypt is a large, Arab, predominantly Sunni country.  Egyptians are inheritors of a great civilization and there is a prevailing sense that given this history, its powerful army, long record as a center of culture and knowledge, as well as its strategic importance to the big powers, Umm al Dunya or “Mother of the World”—as Egyptians lovingly refer to their country—is naturally endowed with the assets that make it the leader of the Middle East.  For its part, Iran is a large, predominantly Persian and Shi’a majority country.  It is also an inheritor of a great civilization and Iranian foreign policy has long maintained that Tehran’s proper role is that of the region’s leader.  Moreover, there does not seem to be much love lost between the Egyptians and Iranians.  When Morsi was in Tehran, he was critical of his hosts’ support for the Assad regime and Ahmadinejad was assaulted with a shoe when he visited Cairo.

For all these reasons, rivalry and mistrust should mark ties between Cairo and Tehran, but at present, circumstances are aligning that provide opportunity and motive to make relations less competitive and perhaps decidedly more cooperative:

1.     Both Egypt and Iran are desperate, albeit in different ways.  The Egyptians need cash and fuel from anyone who is willing to give it to them.  Despite the fact that the Obama administration and the European Union have been saying for months that sanctions on Iran have “begun to bite,” the Iranians have both. Why wouldn’t Egypt respond to overtures from Iran, offering to relieve the financial and economic pressures that are threatening the Brotherhood’s project?  Tehran’s assistance would no doubt help the Egyptians cope. Yet the Egyptians probably would not even need to take a single Iranian rial.  Just the fact that Cairo was contemplating accepting aid from the Islamic Republic might encourage the Saudis, who have heretofore been tight-fisted with the Egyptians, to provide some relief.

At the same time Tehran is facing the prospect of a major strategic setback in the Levant.  If Bashar al Assad finally succumbs to the civil war that is engulfing his country, Iran’s position in both Syria and Lebanon will become significantly more complicated.  Under these circumstances, it is plausible that Tehran might want to exploit Cairo’s interest in improving bilateral relations and its precarious economic situation as a hedge against potential losses elsewhere.

2.     Tweaking Washington, Jerusalem, and Riyadh.  The Iranians and Egyptians both have an interest in signaling to the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia that they will not be bought, intimidated, or manipulated.  It was for these reasons that August of last year President Morsi proposed to include Iran (along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia) in a regional contact group on Syria.  The Egyptian president was signaling to Washington, Jerusalem, and Riyadh that no matter what dire straights Egypt might find itself in at home, Cairo still intended on being a regional player with an independent view of how to fix the region’s most pressing problems.  Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt was never as obliging of the United States as the revolutionary mythology of his long rule suggests, but that is less important than the perception that he willingly did Washington’s bidding in the region for three decades without exception;  hence the importance the Brotherhood attaches to foreign policy independence and there is no better way for Egypt’s new leaders to prove that they will not be lackeys of the United States (and by association, Israel) than a dalliance with the Iranians.

The Iranians have never been shy about poking Americans, Israelis, and Saudis in the eye, but establishing cooperative ties with the Egyptians would be a geo-strategic trifecta.  It would go a long way toward demonstrating, especially to the Saudis, that whatever trouble Iran is having in Syria, Tehran can still be influential in the Middle East—and in Egypt’s case, in the heart of the Arab world.  There is a belief in the Persian Gulf and Turkey, not to mention influential public opinion in the United States,  that Iran without the Assad family is out of options.  The Iranians will no doubt be looking for ways to prove this notion wrong and opening up to Egypt is likely part of the plan.

3.  Revolutionaries of a Different Feather Flock Together.  Neither Egypt nor Iran is a status quo power in the region.  Cairo and Tehran may want different things, but they do share one common goal—reducing as much as possible the exercise of American power in the region.  This is why the Muslim Brotherhood talks about holding the United States “accountable” for its actions in the region and establishing a “partnership of equals.”  Given the very real asymmetries of power between Washington and Cairo, the Egyptians are likely to be frustrated in these goals, but it suggests an area of common interest with the Iranians.  Under the Shah and Hosni Mubarak, Iran and Egypt—in different eras—were leading players in a regional political order that made it relatively easier for Washington to pursue its regional goals.  And while the changes in Iran in 1979 were  far more dramatic than what has happened in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, like Iran’s clerical establishment, is not likely to accommodate themselves comfortably to American power.

The Iranians have a lot less to lose than Egypt and are thus more likely to pursue Cairo than are the Egyptians to go after upgraded and expanded relations with Tehran.  The shoe throwing incident in February and the Salafist opposition to Iranian tourism in Egypt indicates that at least among some Egyptians, Iran is not all that popular. This is not 2006 when, in the aftermath of the Israel-Hizballah war, the Iranian leader was popular in Egypt. President Morsi would have to weigh whether foreign policy independence in the form of better ties with Iran is worth the domestic political fallout—something he can ill-afford if recent polling is accurate.  In addition, it is hard to imagine how the Egyptians would go about busting sanctions on Iran without eliciting the ire of both the United States and Europe.  Then again it is not like Washington has been generous with Egypt and Morsi may reason that he can benefit from a spat with the United States given the role that America played in supporting Hosni Mubarak and the importance of national dignity and empowerment as animating factors in the January 25 uprising.

Hooking up with the Iranians does fit in with Egypt’s overall “positive neutralist” approach, which in the 1950s was Nasser’s way of playing powers off of one another in an effort to extract resources from them.  Morsi seems to be playing a similar game, but may overplay his hand when it comes to the Iranians. Other than some quick cash and subsidized energy, there is nothing that Tehran can offer Cairo that will, in the long run, be to Egypt’s benefit.

Thanassis Cambanis claims that Lebanon’s Hizballah and the clerical regime in Iran are now fully vested factions in Syria’s civil war.

Hicham Mourad discusses the uneasy relationship between Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the leaders in Saudi Arabia.

Angie Balata explores the history of rock music in Egypt.

This article was originally published on The Atlantic on Monday, May 12, 2013.

Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil announced a cabinet reshuffle recently that included a number of new ministers from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership. This development seems to have confirmed the worst fears of the Egyptian opposition, which has raised concern over the “Brotherhoodization” of the country. Although the increased representation of the Brothers in the government is cause for alarm for Egypt’s secularists and liberals, they should be concerned about a quieter, but more worrying process — the Islamization of Egypt’s political institutions — which is likely to be far more durable than the Brotherhood’s grip on political power. This phenomenon is not just underway in Egypt, however. Islamist power and the Islamization of society are what the the future holds for Egypt, Tunisia, post-Assad Syria, and likely other countries in the region.
Given that the noticeable evidence of the Islamization in the Middle East is few and far between, the idea that Islamization is the trajectory of the region might seem misplaced. Egypt’s Muslim Brothers and Tunisia’s Ennahda have not declared alcohol forbidden, forced women to don the hijab, or instituted hudud punishments (i.e., specific punishments for specific crimes set forth in the Qur’an or hadiths).

Continue reading here…

The Turkish government’s tepid response to the car bombings in Reyhanli last Friday should help bring to a merciful end the prevailing meme in Washington that Ankara is poised to lead the Middle East.  Rather than providing leadership and a source of stability in the region, Turkey is now a party to regional conflicts, especially the civil war in Syria.  It is true that Turkey did not necessarily seek the position that it now finds itself in, but the mismatch between its grand ambitions and Ankara’s capacity to provide order to the Middle East contributed mightily to its problems. Despite all the talk of models and rising to the level of U.S. traditional allies in Europe—code for the United Kingdom and France—over the last few years, Turkey, like a variety of other countries in the region, needs rescuing.

In what seems like Cold War redux, Washington and Moscow are stepping in to do what they can to prevent the Syrian conflict from engulfing the region.  Although Washington and Ankara have shared interests in Syria and other regional hotspots, the United States and Russia are likely to pursue a political solution to the Syrian civil war—Turkey’s most pressing foreign (and suddenly domestic) policy problem that is consistent with its interests.  Since the summer of 2011 after trying in vain to persuade Bashar al Assad to reform and negotiate—two things the Syrian leader was never going to do—the Turkish leadership has consistently called for Assad’s ouster and the end of the regime he leads.  It is a principled position, but not one that is likely to serve Ankara well if the United States and Russia preside over a political solution in Syria that includes regime figures, if not members of Assad’s inner circle.  Although Erdogan remains a popular figure among the Syrian opposition, leaving former regime players in place will likely complicate Ankara’s efforts to be a player in post-Assad Syria.  Some observers  have suggested that the Turks (as well as the Saudis and Qataris) would be able to “kiss and make-up” with the regime holdovers or even Assad should he prevail, but this is a profound misreading of Erdogan who does not forgive and forget easily.  Just ask Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Iraq’s leader, Nouri Kamal al Maliki.

It would be extremely difficult for Erdogan to be magnanimous toward Assad or his supporters after 80,000 Syrians have died and a staggering ten percent of Syria’s population has been displaced, including anywhere from 322,845 refugees (at the time of writing) who have found safe haven in Turkey.  In addition, before Friday’s bombing Assad has killed approximately nineteen Turks, dropped ordinance on Turkish territory, allegedly shot down a Turkish surveillance jet operating in international waters, and is believed to be behind the Reyhanli bombings with forty-six dead and at least one-hundred injured.  And yet, with the exception of the artillery barrages in October 2012, the Turks have let Assad get away with these provocations.  Turkey is in the worst of all possible positions: Unable to corral the opposition; at odds with its ostensible partners, Riyadh and Doha; it has become a party to Syria’s civil war, but is unable to respond to Bashar al Assad’s periodic taunts because Erdogan’s Syria policy is generally unpopular in Turkey.  With all of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s eloquence about history endowing Turkey with special responsibilities in the region, the caution associated with Ataturk’s “Peace at Home, Peace in the World” still makes sense to many Turks.

One could argue that much of what has befallen Turkey in Syria is not of Ankara’s own doing, which is partly true, but it still was not supposed to be this way. Turkey, with the 16^th largest economy in the world, has historical and cultural legacies in the region that were assets, a political and economic system that is attractive to Arabs, and its use of soft-power galore was going to be a regional problem solver and economic engine, making it another Turkish century in the Middle East and in the process relieving the United States of some of the burdens it has carried in the last six decades.  Yet here we are, heading to Geneva or some other anodyne place for a peace conference under the auspices of Washington and Moscow.  At best, Prime Minister Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party leadership will emerge from this episode with egg on their faces but with enough of their position intact to help implement whatever solution (if one materializes) the big powers coerce out of the players in Syria’s tragedy.  At worst, it will reveal once again the hollowness of their aspirations and dependence on great power patrons.  The saving grace for Erdogan is that he has no credible domestic political opposition capable of capitalizing on his foreign policy problems—the main opposition Republican People’s Party supports Bashar al Assad.  Consequently, Syria may have put only a small dent in Erdogan’s domestic political aura, but it should smash Washington’s incongruent belief in “Turkey’s rise as a regional power.”

Steven A. Cook probes the arguments against a No-Fly Zone over Syria.

Gary Schmitt says it is doubtful that the Pentagon really believes that Syria’s air defenses are a significant hurdle to intervening in that country’s war.

Michael Koplow argues that a No-Fly Zone over Syria would present obstacles for the United States.

Dan Trombly claims that a No-Fly Zone over Syria would have a huge cost, and would likely result in minimal returns.

In what the Turkish press is building up to be a “historic” trip, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be visiting Washington next week.  Much has changed since he was last here in December 2009.  In particular, Turkey’s position in the region has, despite its strong economic performance and rising diplomatic stature, deteriorated markedly:   Iraq is teetering on the brink of another round of civil war; Iran’s nuclear program has proceeded apace; Turkey’s ally in Libya, Muammar Qaddafi is dead; and Bashar al Assad, in whom the prime minister invested so much time, has killed somewhere between 70 and 80 thousand of his own people and has made millions of others refugees.  The only recent geo-political bright spot has been Israel’s apology for the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident.  That is not saying much given that bilateral ties between Ankara and Jerusalem are likely to remain strained.

In a region that is in turmoil and where some of Washington’s partners are gone or under political pressure, Prime Minister Erdogan stands tall as an important partner.  That is at least what the two governments would like everyone to believe, but even as American and Turkish interests align, there are significant differences about how best to achieve them.  Nowhere is this more the case than in Syria and Iraq.

In the spring of 2011, Prime Minister Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu sought to convince Bashar al Assad to negotiate with his opponents and undertake significant political reforms.  They failed, miscalculating their own ability to influence Assad’s decision-making and underestimating how much, despite their best efforts, the Syrian leader relied on Iran.  Since they were rebuffed and Syrian refugees began pouring over the Turkish border in increasing numbers, Turkish policy has moved 180 degrees.  Giving Assad time to reform morphed into “Assad must go” and, in the process, Ankara has tried to enlist a deeply reluctant Washington to play a role in helping to topple the Assad regime through stepped up support for the rebellion, the establishment of safe zones within Syria’s territory to relieve pressure on Turkey, and a No Fly Zone.  For Turkey, the Syrian civil war has all kinds of effects on its national security ranging from the challenges of playing host to anywhere between 325 and 450 thousand refugees and the complications the conflict has on the nascent peace process with the PKK and Ankara’s relations with Erbil.  There is a broader issue at play as well.  Ankara now finds itself in a proxy war with Iran in Syria and would like Washington’s help rolling back Iranian influence.  Turkish policymakers are confounded that Washington does not see Syria as a place to deal Tehran a blow.   Although it seems that some change in U.S. policy is in the offing, Washington is clearly wary of a Syrian quagmire and does not believe that the end of Assad means the end of Iran’s role in Syria.  Under these circumstances, whatever the Obama administration has to offer Prime Minister Erdogan, it is likely to fall short of what Ankara believes it needs.

If the Syrian civil war had never happened, Iraq would likely top the U.S.-Turkey agenda.  From the perspective of the Turks, Washington’s Iraq policy is, well, nuts. To Ankara, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is an authoritarian pursuing a sectarian policy in Iraq and has become increasingly aligned with Iran.  They point to the pressure on Iraqi Sunni politicians and leaders, notably the case of Tariq al Hashimi, Iraq’s Sunni vice president who is enjoying safe haven in Turkey after being charged with terrorism and sentenced to death.  More generally, Maliki is clearly favoring the Shi’a, which has only stoked frustration among the Sunnis.  This is giving al Qaeda of Iraq material with which to work, threatening to undermine a lot of the hard work—political and military—that the United States put into keeping the country together during and after the surge.  Yet from Ankara’s perspective, it cannot understand why Washington has done precious little to pressure Maliki or arrest the decline in Iraqi security.  Ankara also is not quite sure of what to make of Washington’s policy regarding Turkey’s relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government.  Everyone applauded as Turkey went from being the “most likely to invade” northern Iraq to a diplomatic and economic partner of the Kurds in the service of a unified, federal Iraq.  Yet Ankara is dismayed at the growing tension between Kurdistan Regional Government and Baghdad and lack of U.S. attention to the problem.  Of course, Ankara contributed to these strains when, over Iraqi and American objections, they signed a gas deal with Erbil.  Still, the deal itself was indicative of the fact that neither the Turks nor the Kurds had much faith in Maliki’s faith in a unified Iraq.  Add to this mix Turkey’s charge that Iraq is complicit with Iran in Tehran’s efforts to arm the Assad regime.  Ankara was stunned in early April that there were no consequences for Maliki when he rebuffed U.S. requests that Iraq inspect Iranian aircraft destined for Syria traversing its airspace and Syrian aircraft on their way back from Iran.  More recently, the Iraqis have conducted the inspections, but have generally allowed the planes to continue to their destinations, claiming that no weapons were found..

The Turks have a point: Maliki is no democrat, he is pursuing sectarian policies, and he has aligned Baghdad with Tehran on important issues.  Of course, Iraq is far more complicated than Turkish complaints suggest, but that does not mean that Ankara is wrong.  It is time for Washington to rethink its approach to Iraq.  That said, for the moment Washington is stuck with Maliki and seems to have very little in the way of leverage to influence the direction of Iraq’s politics.  Consequently, President Obama is unlikely to have much to offer Prime Minister Erdogan on Iraq other than platitudes about American commitments and engagement.

One area where Washington can deliver is on trade.  As the United States and Europe undertake free trade agreement negotiations, the Obama administration should make sure that Turkey can benefit from the massive new free trade zone of almost a billion consumers that will result.  Beyond that, the Erdogan visit will be important, but heavier on symbolism and positive rhetoric than it is on substance.

Muftah analyzes the Muslim Brotherhood’s appropriation of revolutionary symbols, such as the Ultras,  to claim popularity among the youth in Egypt.

Egypt Monocle discusses Salafyo Costa, a group seeking to restore religious tolerance in Egypt.

The Times of Israel says, “Israel is not feeling lucky.”

Since I first broached the subject of intervention in Syria sixteen months ago, I have had episodic debates with various former military officers and defense intellectuals concerning the wisdom of a more robust approach to the insurrection that began against Bashar al Assad in March 2011.  The most recent installment came last Friday in response to the following tweet:

Serious question:how come Syria’s air defenses present a problem for US aviators but not Israeli pilots?

— Steven A. Cook (@stevenacook) April 26, 2013

The tweet itself was prompted by a National Public Radio story on Syria in which the correspondent gravely intoned, “Syria’s formidable air defense system.”  I have heard this over and over again in one form or another and it has always struck me as odd.  Why does it seem that Israel’s air force can penetrate Syria’s alleged superior air defense network at will and with impunity, but whenever the idea of using American and allied air forces to help the rebellion comes up, the Syrians are 10 feet tall?

My question on Twitter was serious, but I was also attempting to draw my sometimes interlocutors Peter J. Munson (@peterjmunson) and Andrew Exum (@abumuqawama) into another discussion.  Perhaps having had enough of me they didn’t bite or didn’t see my tweet, but I did have an extended repartee with Dan Trombly (@stcolumbia) and Brian Haggerty (@brianhaggerty) over the issue.  Let me just start out by stipulating that both Exum and Munson have a perspective and gravitas on issues related to foreign interventions that is unique given their military service in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Trombly and Haggerty are civilians, but with strategic studies specialties.  I am neither a battlefield veteran nor a guns and trucks kid.  Still, just because I did not serve and someone had to tell me the difference between a Maverick missile and a Maverick does not disqualify me nor other civilian Middle East analysts from offering credible analyses of what can/should be done in Syria.

To date, the answers to my questions about Israel’s capability to penetrate Syrian airspace and American disinclination to do the same and more generally concerning intervention in Syria amount to the following:

1)  Israel’s brief incursions are different from the sustained campaign the United States—and presumably allies—would have to undertake to establish a no-fly zone (NFZ) in Syria.

2) Israel’s missions have been on the “periphery” of Syria and have never had to contend with the dense network of air defenses  in and around major population centers.

3) The Assad regime has placed air defenses within population centers, putting both Syrian civilians and American aviators at risk during any air campaign.

4) Intervention in Syria would be costly and detract from the U.S. military’s ability to conduct operations in other areas.

5) Syria is complicated and military intervention may not help the situation; in fact, it might make the situation for Syrians a good deal worse.

With the exception of the last, none of these claims is convincing either in part or whole.  It is true that enforcing a no-fly zone is an entirely different undertaking than Israel’s bombing of a Syria-based Islamic Jihad training camp in 2003, the destruction of Syria’s suspected nuclear facility in 2007, or high-speed overflights of Latakia intended—literally—to rattle Bashar al Assad in his summer palace in 2003 and 2006, but that does not mean the United States should not or cannot prevent Assad’s forces from flying.  When analysts and others first broached the idea of establishing a NFZ in Syria, they were told that, among other reasons, this was not a good idea because there was nothing to enforce.  Assad was not using aircraft to attack his own people.  That has not been true since at least the summer of 2012.

The second claim—that the Israelis have only penetrated along Syria’s “periphery”—does not ring true.  Is Latakia, where the Syrian president has a summer residence, the periphery?  It is also only 55 miles from Latakia to Tartus, where Russia maintains a naval base.  I don’t know, but I would bet that Syrians have put up air defenses in this area.  Once more, the periphery claim suggests Israeli pilots are somehow getting off easy.  Ask the Turks.  They lost the two crew members of an F4 Phantom II operating off the coast of Syria in June 2012.  Now, the Syrians may have gotten lucky or they may be pretty good at defending their airspace, but the record suggests the former.

It would be tough going for American pilots, hoping to avoid civilian casualties, if they were asked to establish and enforce a no-fly zone.  This type of operation entails destroying the Syrian air defenses.  Without being glib, complications and all it seems that Syrians are at far greater risk from the Assad regime and its supporters than from U.S. aircraft.  That said, it is a given that civilians will perish in the process of setting up a NFZ—one of the grave and unfortunate complications that Syria presents.

Then there is the claim that the United States cannot get involved in Syria because of other pressing international problems and the prospect of war in another theater.  I can understand why observers might advance this claim; it has been a long and costly decade in the Middle East. That said, the last time I checked, the U.S. armed forces were designed to fight on multiple fronts.

Before moving on, let’s get a few things clear:

• Syria’s GDP is $65 billion; The United States’  is $15 trillion.
• Syria spends $2.5 billion on defense; The United States spends $500 billion.
• Syria officially has 600 combat aircraft, though it is not known how many can actually be deployed; The United States has a lot more.
• Syria possesses five squadrons of attack helicopters; The United States has many more.

I recognize that raw numbers cannot always tell very much about capabilities.  The Israelis were outgunned in terms of the amount of planes and tanks they could bring to the battlefield in June 1967, but they nevertheless prevailed.  Still, given all the caveats one could possibly think of concerning the particularities of the Syrian “battle space,” the regime’s use of irregular soldiers, and terror, Assad is a military pipsqueak in comparison to the United States.  That is not suggesting that intervention in Syria will be a “cakewalk,” but that the United States’ capability to establish and enforce a no-fly zone in Syria should be beyond dispute.

If that is, indeed, the case (if it isn’t I want my taxpayer money back) then the real issue in Syria is both reason #5—military intervention might not attenuate the civil war or might make things worse and, I would add, the American people do not want to become involved in another Middle Eastern imbroglio.  Both are important arguments, though I would suggest that the second is the more compelling.

It is important to remember that there are no risk free policies.  If the United States is determined to stay out of Syria in any meaningful way, there are also grave moral and strategic consequences.  Many more Syrians are likely to die and leaders in the region will draw the conclusion that they can pursue malign policies with little cost.  I too am reluctant to see the United States militarily engaged in yet another Middle Eastern country, but I also do not want to live in a world where dictators can kill their own people with abandon, develop nuclear technology without fear of punishment, threaten to destabilize a region, and drive millions of their own people into the wretched conditions of refugees and displaced people.

The complete final issue of Egypt Independent, which was not allowed to go to print.

Sarah Carr takes down Al Masry Al Youm chairman and director, Abdel Monem Said Aly.

Alaa Abd El Fattah provides an “obituary” for the shutdown Egypt Independent.

The West’s overall approach to Syria since the uprising began in March 2011 has been a combination of empty sloganeering (“we strongly and unequivocally condemn this violence”), wishful thinking (“it is only a matter of time before Assad falls”), and hand wringing (“Syria is not Libya”).  Yet recently, there seems to have been a subtle, yet important shift that would augur a more active American and European role in managing the conflict.  The recent Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul gave Secretary of State John Kerry an opportunity to signal an evolution of U.S. policy and the British and the French have publicly entertained  the idea of lifting the arms embargo on the rebellion. This all seems to be good news, yet it may be more apparent than real.  This is not to suggest that Washington will renege on the pledge that Kerry made in Turkey or that the Foreign Office and Quay d’Orsay are not serious about the prospects of supplying weapons to the Free Syrian Army, but this support is far from unequivocal.

The rethinking in Europe about how best to assist the rebellion masks a continuing deep ambivalence about Syria’s civil war and the prospects for bringing it to an end.  Like American officials, Europeans tend to mouth all the right words about the “cost of doing nothing being too high” and that “Assad has to go,” but it is hard to be convinced that they believe what they are saying.  If you listen carefully and parse the Europeans’ comments about Syria, they actually contradict the more robust policy they are suggesting by lifting the embargo.  They say:

1)      There is no magic formula for resolving the conflict in Syria;

2)      While Assad has already lost, the opposition can only win at high cost;

3)      As a result of 1 and 2, plans must be made for a “political transition” central to which is “re-opening political space.”

This strikes me as European prevaricating at its best.  In essence, they are calling for that mythical “Russian solution,” which would have Bashar and Asma living out their days in the company of other discredited dictators on the outskirts of Moscow while the rebels make a deal with regime loyalists who were not part of Assad’s inner circle.

In the abstract there is, of course, a compelling logic to this plan.  If you want to mitigate the possibility that Syria rips itself apart in a post-Assad maelstrom of factional violence, you have to avoid the mistakes the United States made in Iraq with de-Baathification.  Fair enough, but both the regime and the rebellion have taken the Russian solution off the table and Moscow has little influence over Assad’s decision-making.  Who exactly from the opposition is willing to talk to whom within the regime?  It is clear that the fight has become existential for both sides, making compromise difficult even with the intervention of the most skilled diplomats.

There is a sense that the Europeans know they are being unrealistic, leaving one to wonder why they are even peddling the idea.  Even though they emphasize the importance of a political solution when pressed, the Europeans freely admit that the prospects for a negotiated transition “may have been overtaken by events.”  Indeed, they have.  Many months ago.  Syrians are thus left to draw the conclusion that despite some movement in Washington, London, and Paris, they remain on their own.

“Recep Tayyip Erdogan is Turkey’s first Pharaoh!” a contact in Turkey declared to me recently over breakfast in Ankara.  “Not a Sultan?,” I countered teasingly.  “No, the Sultans had some checks on their power.  Today Tayyip Erdogan’s power is absolute.”  My friend, who would fall within the category of right-of-center nationalist, assured me that his Pharaoh comment was not meant to be an insult, but rather a statement of fact.   That’s hard to believe given what the leaders of ancient (and not so ancient) Egypt stood for and the principles by which Erdogan and his associates claim to have governed Turkey for the last almost eleven years.  Indeed, when Erdogan, Abdullah Gül, and the people around them broke from Turkey’s Islamist old guard and established the Adelet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP) they offered Turks a vision of a democratic and prosperous Turkey.

Between 2002 and 2007, the Justice and Development Party, first under Abdullah Gül’s brief tenure as prime minister and then Erdogan, delivered on both.  In those five years, the Turkish economy grew an average of over 6 percent annually and the AKP-dominated Grand National Assembly passed a range of significant political reforms that resulted in the European Union’s official invitation to begin negotiations to join that exclusive club of democracies.  It seemed clear that by the time AKP won 47 percent of the vote in the July 2007 elections, the Islamists (they prefer “conservative democrats”) had actually done what the  country’s secular nationalists had only claimed to do—which was in the words of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, “raise Turkey to the level of civilization” through the modernization and democratization of Turkish political institutions. The AKP also invested in services for Turkey’s middle and lower classes, who value the advances in transportation and healthcare as much, if not more, than the successful efforts to subordinate the military to civilian leaders, for example.

Since 2007, however, AKP’s reform efforts have slowed and in some areas there have been notable reversals, especially when it comes to freedom of expression.  Moreover, the party has become a machine par excellence with its connections to media outlets, business, and government contractors,  which only bolster its monopoly on political power at the local and national levels.  A decade after assuming power, Prime Minister Erdogan is the sun around which Turkish politics revolves—a fact he both knows and seems to relish. He seldom seems to wrestle with a decision, enjoys swatting away questions from observers who clearly “do not pay close enough attention,” and brooks no criticism from an opposition that he does not take seriously.

Of these, the latter is the most salient politically, but there is very little reason for Prime Minister Erdogan to give his primary opponents—the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)—much in the way of respect.  The CHP has 135 seats in the Grand National Assembly and the MHP controls 53 mandates in the 550 seat parliament.  These may seem like a lot, but the vote totals for both parties are confined to specific regions of the country (the Aegean coast and European parts of Turkey for the CHP and mostly Iğdir province for the MHP) whereas AKP has significant cross-regional appeal and thus enjoys a parliamentary majority of 327 seats.   More importantly, while both parties have become adept at complaining about Prime Minister Erdogan and criticizing the AKP, they are unable to articulate an alternative vision for Turkey’s future.  I have a good understanding of what the CHP and MHP are against, but I have a harder time understanding precisely what they are for.  I’m willing to allow for the fact that I might be missing something in translation, but it seems that millions of Turkish voters are also confused.

The inability to offer Turks a vision goes hand in hand with what seems like a strong aversion to modernize their internal structures and political processes.  Take the CHP, for example.  As I was departing Turkey on Saturday, the papers reported that the party’s Deputy Chairman, Gülseren Onanç, was forced to resign.  Ms. Onanç is a young, well-educated, successful businesswoman who was responsible for CHP’s public relations.  Her crime?  She appeared on a television program against the expressed wishes of party chairman Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu and dared suggest that 65 percent of the CHP’s grassroots support the government’s efforts to bring the war with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (known as the PKK)—a terrorist group that has waged a campaign of violence in Turkey since 1984 that has cost 40,000 lives—to an end through negotiations.  In other words, Onanç was doing her job, but in the CHP’s patriarchal politics, nothing happens unless Kiliçdaroğlu says so.  It was not too long ago that analysts regarded Kiliçdaroğlu to be the savior of the CHP, which was reeling from a sex scandal and poor electoral performances.  There have not been any more illicit videos of CHP officials, but further loss of momentum for the party has marked Kiliçdaroğlu’s tenure.  On the substance of what Onanç said, it seems clear that the party leadership would rather censure one of its potential future leaders than take part in a process that may finally bring peace to Turkey.  Either Kiliçdaroğlu and the people around him do not want to bring the conflict to an end because of an attachment to an ethnic based nationalism (a problem also among Kurdish opponents of peace) or they see it as a wedge issue.  Either way, Onanç’s dismissal reflects a political party that has yet to come to grips with how much Turkey has changed.  The old truths and myths no longer apply in a more complex and differentiated society whose people want more than the drab political conformity that Kemalism (and the CHP) demand.  The AKP surely wants to take credit for Turkey’s transformation, but it was happening well before Erdogan and Gül defied their mentors way back in 2001.

This all brings us back to Erdogan and his alleged Pharaoh-ness.  Not to diminish either Erdogan’s achievements or his faults but the desultory state of the opposition has no doubt contributed to his mastery of the political arena.  I know Turks who don’t share AKP’s views on a variety of issues, but nevertheless vote for the party because they have no other real choice.  Others choose not to vote.  Without any viable options among the opposition an important check on Erdogan and the AKP does not exist, which does not bode well for the consolidation of democracy in Turkey.  When journalists are jailed, corporations are punished with huge tax levies because their owners are deemed unfriendly to the AKP, and the courts are used to dole out political payback, it is the fault of Erdogan and his party’s other leaders whose authoritarian tendencies are clear, but it also the  responsibility of Turkey’s other political parties who are all at once ineffective, insular, and feckless, rendering them trivial in Turkey’s fascinating transformation.

The debate in Washington about Syria has picked up a bit lately.  The Obama administration is stepping up its aid to the rebellion and the civil war will no doubt be on the President Obama’s agenda when he meets with a parade of regional leaders at the White House starting next week. Although many members of Congress—taking cues from their constituents who are weary of the Middle East—are resolutely opposed to American involvement in Syria, others have expressed frustration that the United States is not doing more to bring the crisis to an end.  Like all things related to Syria there is little agreement even among the people who would like to see a more robust policy on what form a more active approach to the conflict would take.

The state of the debate essentially revolves around two options, which have been articulated before, but they contain some new twists:

1)    Arm the rebels with the kind of weapons that can tip the battlefield advantage and establish a no fly zone.  In the process of pouring guns into Syria and denying Assad the ability to use planes and helicopters Washington will place itself on the side of morality and demonstrate to the Iranians, who are providing men and materiel for the fight, that Washington is not going to hide behind the Turks, Qataris, and Saudis.  There are, this argument goes, consequences to inaction in Syria not least of which is the continuation of the war and a likely increase in Iranian regional adventurism.

2)    A diplomatic solution to the Syrian conflict is possible, but only if Washington “engages with the Iranians.”  The logic here is fairly straight forward—Tehran is continuing to support to the Assad regime because Iran has interests at stake in Syria and thus far the only way to protect these interests is by joining the fight.  If, however, a deal can be reached with Tehran where its position in Damascus would not be fatally compromised with Assad’s ouster, the war can be brought to an end sooner rather than later.

The problem with both “solutions” is that they are likely to do the exact opposite of what they are intended.  There is no doubt that ramping up support for the rebels and eliminating the one clear advantage Assad has—airpower—can make a significant difference.  Yet almost everyone agrees that the fight will not be over when the Syrian president flees and/or is killed.  Tehran and the remaining supporters of the Assad regime will likely burn Syria down in order to deny their opponents a victory or at least, bleed the rebellion badly on its way to one.  What good will a no fly zone do then? Not much.  Then there is the thorny problem of what to do after Assad is gone.  The impulse will be to support the development of a democratic, prosperous Syria, but that is hard to do in a war zone (see, Iraq 2003-present).  Regardless of what Washington does, the Syrians, Iranians, Turks, Saudis, Qataris, and others like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are going to fight it out in Syria for a long time.

The diplomatic option is not the equivalent to the Leverettian “Grand Bargain” that never was, but it has similar problems.  Proponents of engagement always assume that the “engagee” shares the same interests or can be made to share interests through dogged diplomacy.  Yet Iranian and American interests conflict sharply in Syria.  Washington is unlikely to settle for a diplomatic solution in which a post-Assad Syria remains a place from which Iran can continue to support Hizballah and Hamas; and Tehran is not going to accept a deal where its ability to extend its influence in the region is sharply curtailed.  In addition, the engagers tend to forget that a deal with the Iranians is not going to sit well with the rebels, Turks, Saudis, and Qataris.  They will likely do everything possible to preclude or undermine such a deal, which would no doubt entail a lot more violence.  Some might argue that each of these actors can be bought off in some way that would improve the chances of an Iranian solution, but that is highly unlikely.  The rebellion wants to chase Iran out of Syria; the Saudis are deeply paranoid of all things Iran, especially an American dialogue with the Iranians; and Tehran’s gains from any agreement that protects its interests is a net loss for both Ankara and Doha.

I once thought the use of American power in Syria could make a difference.  More than a year later, I have serious doubts about getting involved in someone else’s civil war. It seems that Syria is a problem that has no answer.

Dahlia Scheindlin evaluates the pragmatism of Ghazi Hamad,  Deputy Foreign Minister of Gaza, who publicly recognized the 1967 borders last week.

Tarek Osman provides his insight on the sectarian issue in Egypt, after Muslim-Coptic violence struck Cairo once again earlier this week.

After unsuccessful talks between Iran and P5+1 in early April, Gholam R. Vatandoust assesses Iran’s options to remain confrontational or pursue a more constructive position in the international community.

When you travel in the Middle East you are bound to have multiple “Holy Moly!” moments.  My wife and I had one of those last Thursday.  Yet we weren’t touring the Temple of Karnak in Luxor, gazing upon the Khazneh in Petra in the late afternoon when the Nabatean capital seems to glow a rose red, or marveling at the ancient ruins of Ani on the Turkish-Armenian border.  We were in Turkey, in Istanbul, in Kadikoy to be exact, but it was not some Ottoman gem of a mosque or palace that caused our eyes to go wide.  Nope.  It was the Şükrü Saracoĝlo Stadyumu and the 52,000 fans of the Fenerbahce Sports Club’s football (i.e. soccer) team—it also fields basketball, boxing, table tennis, and sailing teams—who were near delirium even before their team took the field against Italy’s Lazio.

I have been a casual fan of Fenerbahce’s soccer team since my first trip to Turkey in October 1992 when a new Turkish friend told me that I “must” have the team’s jersey if I wanted to bring something authentic back to the United States.  My one-time Turkish teacher was and remains a fan of the blue and gold.  I remember one lesson during which we only worked on cheers one would hear at a Fenerbahce game.  The team actually has a rather long reach with a Fenerbahce club branch based in New York City.  A few years ago when I still lived in Gotham, my wife and I were strolling down 2^ndAvenue on a weekend afternoon.  Over her objections I was wearing my Fenerbahce jersey—by then a vintage variety—when a stranger came upon us, shouted in Turkish, hugged me, and walked away.  My wife was quite startled, but I played it cool, “Fenerbahce fan,” I informed her as I continued toward our destination.  There have been many a jet-lagged nights and early mornings when I stared at CNN International hoping for a baseball, football, or basketball score after the onslaught of cricket results, but also keeping an eye out for how Fenerbahce fared.  Just as when the New York Yankees, New York Giants, or New York Knicks won, if Fenerbahce prevailed, I gave the team a lonely, tired, “Yes!” with a fist in the air.

So when we arrived in Istanbul last Tuesday morning to an email from my tweep and friend, Okan Altıparmak, asking if we would like to go to the game, I leapt at the chance.  Surely, whatever we had planned for Thursday could not be as much fun…or as fascinating as the Fenerbahce-Lazio game turned out to be.  I always claim that I am genetically encoded to be a Yankees fan due to my late father’s devotion to the team, but I’ve got nothing on Okan. He literally has Fenerbahce in his blood, being the oldest son of Ogün Altıparmak who scored 67 goals for the team in 173 games in the 1960s and early 1970s (Ogun also played for the Washington Whips—a distant forerunner to DC United).  Over the course of a beautiful afternoon on the Asian side of Istanbul (which evokes Los Angeles or dare I say…Tel Aviv?), Okan schooled us on Fenerbahce history, game day etiquette, the perfidy of European side rival, Galatasaray; and the politics of Turkish soccer.  I cannot say that I understood the latter completely, though it is wrapped up in an apparent just-under-the-surface political rivalry between supporters of (Fenerbahce loving) Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party and the Gülen Movement over the control of the boards and management of various clubs.  Turkish soccer has long been a high stakes affair.  In 2000 there was a gangland hit on some soccer officials in the lobby of the Ankara Sheraton Hotel and Towers, which is why I never meet Turkish friends for tea or coffee in hotel lobbies.

One of the most interesting things that Okan said to us as we ambled down Bagdat Caddesi, which he called Fenerbahce’s “Citadel,” was his belief that “football is one of the few outlets where Turks can express themselves freely.”  I had not thought about it until then, but Okan was pinpointing a nagging contradiction in Turkish politics.  Despite all of the extraordinary changes in Turkey over the last decade that have led to endless declarations among Ankara’s boosters in Washington and Europe that Turkey has “made great democratic strides,” almost eleven years after the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power, there is certain conformity within the political arena.  Those who challenge the AKP do so at significant risk.  This is not to suggest that Turkey is an authoritarian police state, but there are features of Turkish politics that seem to be indistinguishable from non-democratic polities.

The numbers may have decreased since April of 2012, but there are still a fair number of journalists in Turkish jails, a greater number who have lost their jobs for criticizing the government, and still a greater number of journalists who, due to the exigencies of feeding sons, daughters, husbands, wives, or parents, compromise their professional integrity and self-censor.  The day of the Fenerbahce game, I heard a Turkish journalist, who I know to be a critic of Erdogan and the AKP, publicly extol the prime minister and his party’s stewardship of the country.  Furthermore, on Friday, a well-known journalist named Amberin Zaman was dismissed from her post at the daily Habertürk under ambiguous circumstances, though she has been rather critical of the government’s Syria policy, leading people to conclude that she was sacked for that reason.

The sad state of Turkish journalism is but one example of Turkey’s backsliding.  There are many more.  So the next time you hear a Turkish official, American foreign policy intellectual, or a particular subset of European elite declare that “Turkey is more democratic than it was a decade ago,” they are speaking the truth, but also keep in mind that the country is less open than it was seven years ago.  In the meantime, “Fenerbahçem sen çok yaşa… Canım feda olsun sana… Hiç bir şeye değişilmez… Senin sevgin bu dünyada!” (Long live my Fenerbahçe… It’s worth sacrificing my life for you… Unmatched in the world… Is the love for you!)

Al-Monitor outlines the investigation of Egypt’s beloved comedian, Bassem Youssef.

Muftah discusses how nuances of the Arabic language reflect and affect the ever turbulent politics of the region.

A new resource, Syria Video, which compiles war videos and other information related to Syria’s ongoing civil war.

April 3—Istanbul

A draft of Turkey’s new constitution was supposed to be finished on Monday, but the members of the Constitutional Reconciliation Commission say they need about another month to produce a draft.  The missed deadline prompted Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to float the idea that the Justice and Development Party would circumvent the Commission and take its own version of a new constitution to the Turkish people in a referendum.  Not surprisingly, the prime minister’s proposal was met with considerable criticism from the opposition parties in the Grand National Assembly all of which have representatives on the Commission.  In the English language daily, Today’s Zaman, the Nationalist Movement Party’s Faruk Bal said, “The prime minister is looking for excuses to break his promise that his party would not quit the negotiating table.  He is working to disperse the commission.”

The AKP denied that it was looking to make an end run on the constitution, but it would not be surprising if it did.  More than a decade of prosperity, foreign policy successes, a growing middle class, and new services (especially in health and transportation) have placed Prime Minister Erdogan and the AKP in a commanding political position.  As a result, they have very little incentive to negotiate with an opposition that is clearly determined not to hand Erdogan everything he wants.  The party’s spokesmen will claim that it is committed to the Constitutional Reconciliation Commission process in the name of building a democracy, but that’s not the way these kinds of things generally work.

The AKP may indeed stay within the framework of the Commission, but it will make sure that the new constitution faithfully reflects its wishes. Institutions— which, contrary to widespread misconception, are laws, rules, decrees, and regulations or, for example, a bunch of these things put together in a constitution—are always the product of heated political debate and contestation.  Yet these “frameworks for social action” are rarely neutral.  Instead they reflect the interests of the elite that is in power at the time those institutions are conceived.  And given that institutional development takes place in the context of existing institutions and previous institutional innovations, Turkey’s new constitution will set the country on a particular political trajectory potentially for generations, which is why the stakes are so high for everyone involved.  After all, if the AKP’s vision for Turkey is enshrined in the country’s constitution it will be a crowning achievement in Erdogan’s effort to transform the country.

Life is getting increasingly difficult for Egyptians.  The New York Times ran a front page story on Sunday about what anybody who has been paying attention to Egypt already knows:  the country is running out of fuel, food, and cash.  The Egyptian Central Bank announced weeks ago that its reserves of foreign currency are down to critical minimums while sources of liquidity are drying up.  Only the most intrepid tourists are visiting Egypt, Suez Canal revenues are down 7.4 percent, there is little in the way of foreign direct investment, the International Monetary Fund is holding the line on its conditions, the Qataris have turned off the spigot of riyals, the Saudis never really turned it on, and no one else has been willing to step up with assistance.

Curiously absent from the above list is the United States, the country that has invested $77 billion in Egypt since the mid-1970s. The Obama administration has offered $1 billion in debt relief and an enterprise fund of $60 million—a paltry sum intended to help build “small and medium enterprises.”  There is also the aid commitment that Secretary of State John Kerry made during his early March visit to Cairo, which represented the economic portion of the standard aid package divvied up the usual way, $1.3 billion for the military and $250 million in economic support funds, though the amount is too small to do much economic supporting. In defense of the administration, which believes the best way to influence the Egyptians is through economic assistance, it has done perhaps the best it could under the present political environment at home that has produced fiscal cliffs, debt ceiling fights, and sequestration.

It is possible that the limited assistance that the Obama administration has offered is a function of a policy that hastens President Mohammed Morsi’s failure. That would be news to the large number of Egyptian opposition activists who believe that Washington has some sort of grand bargain with the Muslim Brothers.  Needless to say, there is neither a grand bargain nor a policy intended to bring the Egyptian government down.  The President would like to do more—Kerry was hoping to announce more than the $250 million when he was in Egypt, but Congress said no.

It seems that members of the House and Senate are either preternaturally opposed to aid, especially to Egypt and especially now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power, or they are intent on changing the way the aid package has been traditionally allocated.  In the abstract, the latter would be a positive development.  Egypt has changed as have Washington’s ties with Cairo in the last four decades.  It is a good idea for the President to submit to the appropriate congressional committees a report, “describing the results of a policy review on Egypt on how to rebalance United States military and economic assistance to Egypt, analyzing the current security needs in Egypt, and summarizing all of the Foreign Military Financing contracts for the Government of Egypt carried out over the previous 10 years and describing plans for such contracts over the next 5 years,” as Senator Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) amendment to the  Consolidated Appropriations Bill (HR 933) requires. Senator McCain (R-AZ) wants the generosity of the American taxpayer to be used to compel the Egyptians to “enforce rule of law, protect basic human rights, advance economic development in Sinai, maintain Camp David Accords, encourage [the] Egyptian government to reform internal security services (police forces) and justice sector in order to maintain public order and security.”

Who would argue with any of these provisions?  No one, but the amendments to the aid package (there are six others in addition to those of McCain and Rubio mentioned above) are not appropriate for the moment.  One would think that, given the size of this investment and the fact that Egypt is an important (some say “strategic”) ally, Washington would be leading an international effort to help pull Egypt back from the brink.  I hope that David Kirkpatrick’s article in the Times helped people understand what is going on in Egypt, but it’s much worse than he relayed.  Egypt also has a crumbling physical infrastructure, a collapsing public health system—to go along with a new discovery of polio, the highest rate of hepatitis-C in the world, out-of-control avian flu, and uncontained hoof and mouth disease—and increasing challenges to food distribution.

It cannot possibly be in the interest of the United States and the international community to allow Egypt to fail.  The country of 84 million—for better and worse—continues to influence what happens around it.  If anyone wonders what failure might look like, take a gander at the Sinai with its drug runners, human traffickers, weapons flow, al-Qaeda sympathizers, takfir groups, Palestinian militants, and angry Bedouin, or look at Port Said, which, though now under the military’s control, was anarchic for the better part of a month this winter.

President Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have made a terrible hash of things.  Let’s stipulate that their political blunders have made the situation in Egypt a good deal worse.  Yet while the Brothers do not seem to be up to the task of governing Egypt (who is these days?), the United States and its partners should focus on what is important.  It may not seem right to “help Morsi or the Brothers” through new infusions of aid, but that is the wrong frame of reference.  Rather, new assistance separate from the standard aid package is a way to help Egyptians—all of them—who are becoming increasingly desperate.  If there is no relief for them forthcoming, the international community is going to come to regret that it did so little during the time of Egypt’s greatest need.

Elias Muhanna, of Qifa Nabki, gives his perspective on the recent resignation of Lebanese PM, Najib Mikati.

The Risky Shift comments on corruption in Libya, and provides steps forward to improve it.

Mohamed Daadaoui analyzes the Western Sahara-Morocco conflict and evaluates Javier Bardem’s 2012 documentary on the topic.

There has been much ink spilled in the last week over the rapprochement between Israel and Turkey.  I have been somewhat reluctant to weigh-in if only because I was fairly certain that reconciliation between the two countries was not going to happen anytime soon.  I am now eating crow.

The Turkish-Israeli make-up is certainly in the interest of both Jerusalem and Washington.  For the Israelis, resolving their dispute with Turks means reestablishing full diplomatic ties with a leading regional power and a large Muslim country, making them a little less isolated than before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayahu placed the call to his counterpart in Ankara, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  Netanyahu’s expression of regret over the Mavi Marmara incident and his commitment that Israel would pay compensation to the families of the eight Turks and one Turkish-American killed during the raid on the Turkish flagged ferry was a diplomatic achievement for the Obama administration that was three years in the making.  The Turkish-Israeli fallout was a complication for American policymakers in a region that was already difficult to navigate.  Ties will unlikely return to the strategic alignment of the 1990s, but the fact that Washington will not have to say, referee, between the Israelis and the Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean is a net positive for the United States.

Although it is clear that the Turkish-Israeli entente is in the interests of both Israel and the United States, it is a bit harder to understand what is in it for Ankara.  The Turks are obviously not solely responsible for the deterioration of their relations with the Israelis over the last three years, but it was clear that Prime Minister Erdogan used the tension to his great political benefit.  To the extent that Erdogan was tough on the Israeli government it played well in Erzurum.  It also played well in Cairo.  And the fact that it played well in Cairo reinforced how well criticism of the Israelis played in Erzurum.  It is not at all clear that Prime Minister Erdogan is the “King of the Arab Street”—he is very popular around the region—but the fact that many Turks perceived him to be a regional leader accrued to his and the AKP’s political benefit.

It seems that this kind of political gold would be hard to give up.  Perhaps the Turkish prime minister has calculated that he and his party are so popular that they no longer need the confrontation with the Israelis, but that runs counter to everything anyone knows about Erdogan who rarely leaves anything politically to chance.  Some AKP stalwarts portrayed Netanyahu’s apology as a triumph:  Having brought the Israelis to their knees, Netanyahu had no choice but to accede to the Turks.  That is one way of spinning Israel’s act of contrition. Yet Erdogan did not get everything he wanted.  He did take some heat for accepting Netanyahu’s apology without getting an Israeli commitment to lift the Gaza blockade while at the same time dropping charges against the Israeli officers whom Ankara deems responsible for the raid on the Mavi Marmara.   That’s why Erdogan almost immediately walked back the renewal of ties, stating it was too early for a full resumption of relations, that the charges might not be dropped so quickly, and warning that Israel should still alter its policy toward the Palestinians.

If Erdogan was willing to take the political hit for restoring ties with Israel, he must have gotten something out of the deal.  Other analysts have argued that the Turkish willingness to patch things up with the Israelis has to do with Syria, Iran, energy, or all three.  Of these issues, access to energy resources and the benefits of cooperating with the Israelis in the Eastern Mediterranean even if it is awkward politically far outweighs the drawbacks of continued dependence on Russia and/or Iran.  I don’t see how renewed Turkish-Israeli relations change the situation in Syria or the calculations of the Assad regime or the Obama administration.  The best that anyone can muster is that Damascus must remember how uncomfortable life was when Turkey and Israel seemed to have Syria in a pincer in the late 1990s.  No doubt people remember, but the world has changed in the almost two decades when the Israelis and Turks were sharing airspace, training together, and Israeli advisers were invited to observe the Turkish armed forces do its best imitation of the IDF’s forays into Lebanon with similar operations in Northern Iraq.  Perhaps Assad, who was an ophthalmologist back then, will wonder what the reconciliation means (like everyone else), but it certainly won’t alter the way he has pursued the rebellion in his land.  On Iran, it is true that Ankara has given up on its efforts to shape the behavior of the clerical regime, but that does not mean that Erdogan, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, or anyone else with any influence in foreign policy/national security decision-making circles concurs with the Israeli approach to Iran’s nuclear program.  The Turks have been clear that they do not look favorably on Iran’s proliferation, but they also believe that a military option to delay or stop the Iranians is unwise because it is unlikely to work.

I would not totally dismiss these factors in contributing to the change in Turkey-Israel ties, but just maybe it had more to do with one leader who needed to give President Obama something and another whom the American president  put in a position where he could not say no.  Clearly, Netanyahu had to deliver on something.  Here was the President of the United States who has, despite erroneous allegations that he had it in for the Israelis, funded Israel’s missile defense, done more than any other President to ensure the country’s qualitative military edge, worked with Israel to damage Iran’s nuclear program, and turned the other cheek after the Israeli prime minister worked to get Mitt Romney elected.  Netanyahu could not stiff President Obama given his reluctance to move on the Palestinian front.  As a result, apologizing to Erdogan became the Israelis’ “deliverable.”

When it came to the Turks, the White House—along with Secretary of State John Kerry—put the squeeze on  Erdogan.  Until now, the Obama administration has preferred to handle disagreements between Washington and Ankara quietly and behind closed doors.  In the summer of 2010, there was a general sentiment among the Turkey watchers in Washington that President Obama should not meet Prime Minister Erdogan at that year’s G-20 summit in Toronto over Turkey’s vote against  UNSC sanctions on Iran, the Tehran Research Reactor deal that the Foreign Minister Davutoglu negotiated with the Brazilians, and the extraordinarily caustic rhetoric the Turkish leadership used after the Mavi Marmara incident.  (Davutoglu, for example, likened it to the attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001.)  Instead, the President chose to meet Erdogan and express his dissatisfaction with the Turks directly.  The strategy worked, laying the ground for almost three years of close cooperation.  More recently, the administration chose a different tactic.  After Erdogan called Zionism a “crime against humanity” during a speech on February 28 in Vienna, Secretary Kerry criticized the prime minister twice publicly—one of which was at a press conference with the Turkish foreign minister.  Then Obama went to Israel—a trip that was closely watched and scrutinized in Turkey—and gave what amounted to a ringing endorsement of Zionism in his Jerusalem Convention Center speech followed with a visit to Theodore Herzl’s grave.  Clearly, the President of the United States with whom Prime Minister Erdogan has developed a very good relationship does not consider Zionism on the same level as fascism and Islamophobia.  Consequently, when the phone rang and the Turkish leader learned it was the Israeli prime minister along with the president of the United States, he likely calculated that he could not turn down Netanyahu’s apology.  Had he done so, it would have undermined the trust Obama and Erdogan have worked to develop.

The Jordanian perspective on Jordan’s current political situation and King Abdullah’s recent commentary in the Atlantic.

Farhang Jahanpour gives his take on President Obama’s message to the leaders and people of Iran on their annual celebration of Nowruz, the Persian new year that dates back several thousand years.

Syria Deeply interviews Syrian activists to understand better the secularist-Islamist dynamic among Syria’s rebels.

Lost in all the commentary in President Obama’s visit to Israel is the fact that he will also visit Jordan.  The country is often derisively referred to as the “Hashemite Kingdom of Boredom,” but it has been anything but lately.  To be sure, Jeffrey Goldberg’s extraordinary interview with King Abdullah II has caused quite a stir, but that is not the only reason why Jordan is interesting.  In January the Jordanians held elections, there have been a spate of protests over food prices, strong criticism of the King from some of the monarchy’s heretofore strong tribal supporters, and Jordan is now host to more than half a million Syrian refugees.  The fact that Syria is in chaos, sectarian gangs rule Iraq, Egypt is in turmoil, and predictions of a 3^rd Palestinian intifada abound places King Abdullah and his Kingdom in a more uncomfortable position than usual.  That said, I have been assured by people who know far more about Jordan than I that expectations of instability and threats to Hashemite rule are overblown—a function of a few boisterous activists and impressionable Western journalists.

I’m willing to take assurances of Jordan’s stability at face value.  I haven’t been there in some time and the country has never been much more than a passing interest of mine.   The parliamentary elections and the protests are not new developments—elections have become the norm and Jordan has hardly been immune to demonstrations in the past— but they do come in the context of the regional uprisings that began in late 2010.  I have also been told that while Jordanians may not be satisfied with the political system or their economic prospects they have drawn the conclusion that rapid change is too risky after looking at Syria and Egypt.  If there was ever a Jordanian uprising, it is pretty well accepted that the United States and Israel would back the King’s efforts to quell unrest however he chooses to do so.

This all seems like sound reasoning, but if the arguments about stability in the region have proven to be incorrect, why should observers put tremendous faith in similar arguments when it comes to Jordan?  I’m not saying Jordan will go the way of its neighbors, but there are lingering questions about its politics:

1.       King Abdullah has been on the throne for fourteen years, yet he still seems to have had some trouble eliciting the loyalty of Jordanians.  Jordanians obviously have not been in open revolt during this period, but the King has yet to hit on an appealing vision of the future that captures the imagination of his subjects.  It is not for lack of trying.  In the early years, King Abdullah positioned himself as a reformer, slipping out of the palace incognito to experience life like an average Jordanian.  It was pretty cool.  (Can anyone imagine the entitled Gamal Mubarak hopping into a service taxi?  Not a chance.)  Still,  this kind of quality of life crusading had its limits.  Next came “Jordan First,” which despite good intentions, it was hard to determine what it was all about.  Here is the official description:

Jordan First is an attempt to define a new social accord between Jordanians, as it emphasizes the pre-eminence of Jordan’s interests above all other considerations, and reformulates the state-individual relationship. Moreover, it goes beyond being a mere concept, as it will be translated into an investment in the Jordanian people, in their education, training, health and well-being to prepare them for a future that promises prosperity, knowledge and accomplishment. Jordan First is a constructive appeal and an approach that seeks to open new doors for policies and programs in development, education, culture, communication and information. Moreover, Jordan First represents an invitation to civil society institutions and the private sector to raise their contribution in building a modern state through focusing on achieving economic, social, and political development, creating productive opportunities, fighting poverty and unemployment, and improving the standards of living of all citizens. In summary, Jordan First is a philosophy of governance. It is based on the premise of placing Jordan’s national interest at the forefront of all considerations of civil society.

Assuming one can make sense of the preceding paragraph, the question remained: Wasn’t it always Jordan first?  If not Jordan first, who?  To be fair, the official description includes some jargon about civil society, reform, and a modern state all of which broke some new ground, but mostly this stuff warmed the hearts of the folks over at the National Endowment for Democracy, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute and the entire alphabet soup of Beltway civil society builders, election monitors, and democracy promoters without directly addressing the everyday challenges that Jordanians confronted.  Next came democratic reform, which according to contemporaneous and historical accounts, amounted to very little.  That’s where things stood until recently with a new push on democratic reform.  The King and his people sound earnest and serious, but it remains entirely unclear whether Jordanians are buying this vision.  It will depend, of course, on how small or wide the gap is between the principles that King Abdullah espouses and the practices of the people who have been selected to run the government.  The recent elections, however, with what Curtis Ryan describes as the “extremely unequal balance of seats combined with major opposition boycotts” does not track with the King’s rhetorical commitment to democratic political change.

2.       Jordan’s economy is, in a word, suffering.  With instability all around, Petra, Wadi Rum, Jerash, and other places highlited in the Lonely Planet are wanting for tourists.  Jordan never had much to offer foreign investors who, with few exceptions, are spooked by the region’s sudden dynamism.  In addition, the Jordanians are now dealing with about one half million Syrian refugees (on top of Iraqi and Palestinian refugees).  In recent months, the government has lifted subsidies on energy and is more generally, according to the International Monetary Fund, “implementing sound macroeconomic policies aimed at reducing fiscal and external imbalances in a socially acceptable way.” The Fund’s praise for the Jordanian government should be cold comfort.  Despite the phrase “socially acceptable,” in order to be on the right side of the international financial institutions, the King has to be on the wrong side—at least in the short run—of his citizens.  That is not a great place to be in the present political environment that pervades the region.  The fact that there are rumors of palace corruption while Jordanians are suffering makes administering IMF prescriptions all the more precarious.

Ultimately, the King does not seem to be in trouble, though he does have multiple problems.  The good news is that while the Jordanians have a robust capacity to use coercion and force to try to maintain control, King Abdullah has used it relatively judiciously.  At least publicly and to western audiences he has portrayed himself as wanting to get ahead of the curve, yet if he is sincere, he seems profoundly unsure about how to do it exactly.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, there is very little reason to believe that this is a propitious moment for resolving the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. My critics have gently pushed back along three fronts: 1) They argued that a new Israeli coalition government that includes the centrist Yesh Atid party may very well be more flexible than its immediate predecessor; 2) peace processing is “better than doing nothing,” and 3) Mahmoud Abbas needs help otherwise Hamas will gain ground on the West Bank. All three arguments are specious, however. Yesh Atid’s leader, Yair Lapid, may be a centrist on domestic issues but his views on the peace process align pretty closely with those of Prime Minister Netanyahu. It also is true that the prime minister has repeatedly called for negotiations, but that is a political layup. Netanyahu accrues the political benefit of calling for talks knowing Abbas will not accept because the Israelis have made it clear they are unable/unwilling to meet the Palestinians’ minimum requirements for a deal. It is hard to take the “better than doing nothing” argument seriously because it is unclear to me how all the investment of American time and resources have made things much better.  Throughout the 1990s, the United States tried mightily to bring the conflict to an end and still there are more settlers in the West Bank, the second intifada was far more violent than the first, and Gaza remains under Israeli lock and key while its rockets are ever more threatening to Israelis. As for the third reason, engaging in meaningless talks with Israelis at the Lansdowne Resort and Conference Center in Leesburg, Virginia will only further weaken Abbas, given Hamas’s narrative that U.S.-sponsored negotiations are a ruse to deny Palestinians their legitimate rights.

So to Yossi Bellin who demands a plan from President Obama and others who see possibilities for negotiations where others see none: what plan, what bridging proposal, what sets of understandings, principles for negotiation, or road map can possibly help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as long as the Palestinians require more than a token presence in Jerusalem and the Israelis remain intent on making sure that does not happen?

Brent Sasley compares former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to the newcomer in the position, Moshe Ya’alon.

The Saudi Twittersphere is stirring in reaction to the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) Trial.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s statement regarding the UN’s attempt to ratify an “End Violence Against Women” declaration.

Hizballah has been in the news recently.  The group that a senior U.S. government official once described as the “ ‘A-team’ of terrorism,” took a back seat to al-Qaeda over the last decade.  Prior to the attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001, Hizballah was responsible for more American deaths than any other organization on the State Department’s list of terrorists.  The most spectacular of Hizabllah’s operations since the organization’s founding in 1982 was the destruction of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in the spring of 1983.  More recently, the Bulgarian government fingered Hizballah for the July 2012 bus bombing that killed five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver in the resort town of Burgas.  Also, the New York Times reported last week that the Lebanese newspaper, al Akhbar—a pro-Hizballah daily—has been engaged in an effort to intimidate prosecution witnesses set to appear before the International Criminal Court, which is trying four members of Hizballah for the murder of former Prime Rafik Harriri.  Then there are the thousands of Hizballah fighters in Syria supporting the Assad regime in that country’s civil war.

By far the most interesting Hizballah-related development is the trial of one of the organization’s operatives, Hossam Taleb Yacoub, in a Cyprus court.  The trial, which ended a week ago, shed light on Hizballah’s efforts to track Israelis and locate Israeli targets not just on Cyprus, but throughout Europe.  Yet neither the revelations in the Limassol courtroom nor the Bulgaria bombing has yet moved EU officials to designate Hizballah a “terrorist organization.”  That’s right, despite its long and bloody history, Hizballah is not, according to EU-acrats, a terrorist group.  Yes, the organization has engaged in violence, but it is more complicated than that.  One might surmise that officials in Brussels have embraced ideas about Hizballah, mostly associated with Western academics with the help of local “informants,” that because the organization is deeply-rooted in Lebanese society, has military and political wings, is part of the government, and is engaged in “resistance,” it cannot simply be qualified as a terrorist organization.

I am all for many shades of gray, but these claims about Hizballah, which are at base an effort to explain away its violent history, are both debatable and highly unlikely to be the reason for the EU’s approach to the organization.  Instead, the EU’s reluctance to designate Hizballah a terrorists organizations fits into a broad European pattern in which principle is set aside in favor of expediency  to prevent terrorists  from bringing their violence to European streets.  This is nothing new.  Italy’s prime minister in the mid-1980s, Bettino Craxi, perhaps best exemplifies this kind of cynicism. In the fall of 1985, Craxi did everything possible including ordering a larger Italian police force to prevent U.S. Special Forces operators from capturing the perpetrators of the Achille Lauro hijacking.  The Italians claimed sovereignty over the NATO airbase where American warplanes had forced the EgyptAir flight that carried the terrorists to land.  Although Craxi ordered the arrest of the four terrorists who took the ship and who subsequently spent years in Italian prison,  the leader of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), Abu Abbas, who had masterminded the plot, was quickly released. It is possible that Craxi, who led the Italian socialists, felt some sort of vague ideological connection with Abu Abbas and his Marxist PLF or that he was taking a stand against the United States, but it is more likely that the Italian government did not want to invite any trouble onto themselves. Abu Abbas was convicted in absentia in 1986 (how convenient for Abbas and Craxi), but it was not until 2003 and the invasion of Iraq when the American forces captured him outside Baghdad.  The Italians are not the only ones guilty of accommodating terrorists and extremists. The Germans harbored members of the Front Islamique du Salut during Algeria’s lost decade much to the dismay of the French.  Until September 11 and then the London bus bombings in 2005, the Brits were generally laissez-faire when it came to those who were suspected of engaging in violence or at the very least encouraging violence.  Europe is also a bastion of Kurdistan Worker’s Party (known as the PKK) fundraising.

The problem with the “let’s not make trouble by arousing the ire of terrorists by calling them what they are” is that it does not work.  According to the evidence gathered in Cyprus after the arrest of Yacoub, who is a Swedish citizen, Hizballah has vast and sophisticated intelligence and operations networks in Europe. If the resistance to identifying Hizballah as a terrorist organization is because Europeans fears blood on their soil, the Burgas bombing indicates it is too late and the Yacoub trial suggests there is more to come.

The lawlessness and seemingly senseless violence that has descended upon Egypt in recent weeks has led some Egyptians to wonder whether March 2013 is the modern analogue to January 1952.  Black Sunday, as it came to be known, was a spasm of violence that engulfed Cairo after British forces killed a group of Egyptian policeman in the city of Ismailia.  That day of rage—January 25—culminated in a fire in downtown Cairo that destroyed movie theaters, restaurants, and clubs.  Debate continues over who started the fires with some contending it was the Muslim Brotherhood and other arguing that it was provocateurs associated with the Free Officers.  Regardless, Black Sunday set in motion a chain of events that led to the Free Officers coup of July 1952.

It could happen again.  Egypt is hanging by a thread.  The military, which is already in the streets in Port Said—a city that has been in open revolt for more than a month—may find it has no other choice as if the situation deteriorates further.  My friend, Issandr el Amrani, offers a compelling explanation of the violence in a recent column in The National.  He focuses the build of his attention on the so-called “Ultras,” who were the shock troops of the revolution and heroes to many, but who are little more than anarchists engaged in violence for the sake of violence. Issandr also touches on the problems associated with the Ministry of Interior, which is notorious for its brutality.  And while everyone agrees that the Ministry is badly in need of reform, neither the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces during its eighteen-month tenure holding executive power nor President Mohammed Morsi has been willing to move against this redoubt of the old regime.  Why?  Given the profound way Egyptians loathe the Ministry of Interior, it seems that the potential political payoff of sacking the police generals who run the place would be too hard to resist.

As much as bulldozing the Ministry of Interior would likely reverse President Morsi’s declining fortunes, he—like Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi before him—will never do it because he both needs and fears the police.  Who would control the streets if the president thoroughly purged the ministry and started over again? The answer is no one and the inevitable result would be chaos, which is a point the police are currently driving home rather effectively as they walk off the job in as many as ten of twenty-nine governorates.  The police say they will no longer do Morsi’s bidding, but they are really signaling to the president that he cannot trifle with the cops.  In a counterintuitive way, lawlessness is the Ministry of Interior’s insurance policy against the two “p’s”: purge and prosecution.  It is hard to be sympathetic to Morsi, but he is in a tough spot.  If he does little more than whatever cosmetic changes he has made to the ministry, he pays politically with Egyptians who regard the police as a symbol of brutality and oppression.  If he takes on the ministry, he pays politically because he is blamed for the parlous state of security in what were once Egypt’s safe streets.  As with so much else in Egypt these days, Morsi has chosen the middle path, meaning he has chosen to fiddle as Cairo burns…again.