Courcy's Intelligence Brief

The drums of war

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The talk of war in the Middle East is omnipresent. There is talk of civil war in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. There is talk of war to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear power. And there is talk of a more general war sparked by Iran against Israel and spreading to include at least Syria and Lebanon but possibly more regional states as well. We have dealt with the possibility of a US/Israel attack on Iran in some depth in recent weeks, and we shall no doubt return to the burgeoning civil wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen in due course. Today it is the prospect of a more general war that most concerns us. The talk of a general war is coming from both the Arab and the Israeli sides, and subscribers should not underestimate the gravity of the situation.

Arab fears were put most succinctly in a commentary published by the pan-Arab al-Hayat on 11 January. It pointed to the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood in Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt, and to the strengthening of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, Syria, and the Palestinian territories, and it concluded: “The democratic transformation brought about by the Arab Spring will undermine chances for peace between Israel on the one hand and the Palestinians and Syria on the other. What this means is that the final shape of the Middle East will only become known after a new war is fought – a war widely expected to take place in 2012.”

The following day, the Editor-in-Chief of al-Hayat, Ghassan Charbel, wrote: “Wars sometimes impose themselves as a result of an unexpected deterioration in the area of tension...My reading of the features of this dark tapestry reminds me of something I heard some months ago. My interlocutor said: ‘Saving the regime in Syria is worth launching a war against Israel that would change the scene in the region. If you are threatened with a loss of this magnitude, you have to risk using all your cards’.”

Similar voices can be heard on the Israeli side. Most of the Israeli commentary, from well-informed observers and from present and former officials, concentrates on the Iranian threat and the prospects of a US and/or Israeli preventive strike, but in Israel, too, there is talk about the inevitability of a more general war sparked by Iran. What is so significant about this is the fact that Israel has an overwhelming predisposition to strike first. If war is inevitable, then Israel believes that its survival depends on pre-empting an Arab attack. But the trouble with such a presumption towards pre-emption is that it is inherently destabilizing.

In Israel it is now quite commonplace to hear senior officials comparing the atmosphere in the Middle East to the period leading up to the 1967 Six-Day War, and the hawks among them are arguing about the need to strike first.

As one example, a commentary published by the online website News First Class by former Defence Ministry official Aharon Shahar on 17 January argued: “War is inevitable, so it would be best for Israel to determine when and how it breaks out.” It called for a pre-emptive and massive missile strike against Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza, with a simultaneous warning being issued to Egypt that, if it attempts to provide support to Israel’s enemies, Israel will move to recapture the Sinai.

The main point, for Shahar and those that think like him, is that “some trivial escalation, some Iranian provocation or the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad” should not lead to a war that Israel did not initiate. It is essential, they say, that Israel strikes first. Shahar’s prescription is to “launch a simultaneous [barrage] of thousands of rockets in every direction – Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza”.

“Of course,” he adds, “we can also use artillery and fighter planes, but we should not be tied down by any one plan. We should aspire to destroy all of the enemies’ targets at the outset of hostilities, rather than maintaining a ‘bank’ of targets to be attacked at a later stage. We should ensure that the next conflict is a high-intensity war from the very first minute.”

Such talk would seem to play directly into Iran’s hands as Iran has a clear interest in dragging the Arabs into any conflict it has with the West and Israel. Yet it is by no means inevitable that it would succeed in doing so if calm heads were able to prevail - and the wisdom of the ages is to compartmentalize threats and to deal with them separately in logical sequence.

A wise policy (ie not the one advocated above) should manage to contain the contest over Iran’s nuclear ambitions to one with Iran and not with the Arab world as well. After all, Iran’s only Arab state ally, Assad’s Syria, is preoccupied with survival, while its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon must be fearful of precipitating a further crisis with Israel at a time when its Syrian sponsor is under existential threat.

As for Hamas in Gaza, it is clearly beginning to move its allegiance from Iran and Syria to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan. For Hamas, that is where the future lies, and in time that, too, will pose a threat to Israel, but the strategic consequences of the Arab Spring and the rising ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood need more time to reach maturity.

The Muslim Brotherhood is only just beginning to establish itself in Egypt. It still has much fighting to do in Libya and Syria, while in Jordan and the Palestinian territories its prospects are not yet clear. In other words, for the moment the Muslim Brotherhood poses only a potential, not an actual threat to Israel, and it would be an unnecessary escalation to deal with the Iranian threat in a way that could accelerate the inevitable - but still some way off - confrontation with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Dealing with these two threats in sequence, that is not allowing the Iranian challenge to escalate the split with Egypt, should be possible because of a significant strategic error committed by Tehran. Iran’s mistake has been in Syria. As the rebellion escalated, it should have read the writing on the wall and moved to a more neutral stance, while assiduously courting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and praising the anti-Western virtues of the Arab Spring.

The loss of Assad, if that is what it comes to, would have been more than compensated for by attaining the goodwill of the Muslim Brotherhood and by Tehran’s growing influence in post-occupation Iraq. But for now Iran is almost friendless in the Arab world, and it would be a huge mistake for Israel to change this by conflating two separate threats and by allowing the dispute with Iran to drag in Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinians, and possibly even Egypt - if that can be avoided.

None of this is to say that Israel does not face a serious, and potentially existential threat from the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there is still some way to go before this threat reaches maturity and there would be no merit in accelerating that process. However, subscribers need to be aware that there are powerful voices in Israel that take the opposite view. JdeC.

NOTE: An anniversary to watch. We have argued above that there is still some way to go before the threat to Israel from the Muslim Brotherhood ascendancy matures. However, there is a date that subscribers could do well to keep in mind. The 100th anniversary of the 2 November 1917 Balfour Declaration, by which Britain supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, is now only five years away.

November 2, 2017 is a date around which much enflaming of Palestinian and wider Arab opinion can be expected. If, by then, Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood has become decisively anti-Israel, then any anniversary-sparked unrest among Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, or Israel proper would take on added dangers. It is a date that is already being talked about in certain circles in the Middle East, and it is a date to keep in mind.

Muslim Brotherhood dominance looks unstoppable in Egypt

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One of the reasons we do not believe that a general Arab-Israeli war is imminent (see this week’s main briefing), unless Israel blunders in the way described, is because the evolution of Egypt from reliable US ally to a return to Arab leadership, based on adherence to Islamic principles and opposition to Israel, still has some way to go. But the view that Egypt is moving in that direction has been given further support by the decision of Muhammad al-Baradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to drop out of the Egyptian presidential election race.

The decisive fact that the US and Israel now have to live with is that Egypt’s Islamists – that is the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and the more extreme Salafists – together won around 70% of the 498 seats in the People’s Assembly. It is hoped by the US and Israel that victory in the parliamentary elections for the Islamists can still be mitigated by a combination of the persuasive powers of American aid, the dissuasive power of Israel’s military might, and the hope that other elements of Egypt’s power structure – notably the presidency – can be kept in more moderate hands. Al-Baradei’s self-removal from the presidential contest suggests this latter hope is a forlorn one.

In his 14 January statement, al-Baradei implied that the reason he didn’t want to run was because of the continuing influence of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). He said that it seemed as if no revolution had taken place and “as if no regime had fallen”. He also complained that preparations for the presidential election were being made “in the light of a constitution whose articles are being cooked up in a few weeks”.

Egyptian sources, however, say that al-Baradei’s decision not to run is based on more self-serving grounds: he simply does not think he can win given the support now held by the Islamists. His relations with the Muslim Brotherhood are reasonable, if not overly warm, but his relations with the Salafists are very poor. That his withdrawal is based on a negative reassessment of his prospects is supported by the fact that his complaints about the SCAF are not a new factor. He complained about the SCAF before intending to run. The only thing that has changed is the demonstration of how deep the support for the Islamists is during the general election.

This clearly is another setback for the US and Israel in Egypt, but there is still hope that differences between the Muslim Brotherhood and the hard-line Salafists can be exploited to good effect, and there is some evidence to suggest that this is possible. Ahead of the elections, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) tried to bring the Salafist Al-Asalah and Al-Nour parties into a ‘Democratic Alliance’, but the two Salafist parties withdrew from the alliance over disputes about sharing the electoral spoils.

The Salafists have been much more hardline than the MB on matters such as sharia law, banking, and codes of dress and behaviour (including for tourists). And there was clear tension between the MB and Salafist camps in the final round of the general election.

The general feeling is that an alliance between the MB and the Salafists in the new parliament is unlikely both because of the inter-party tensions and because of the MB’s apparent desire to present itself as more moderate. The optimists say that this might move the MB to forge an alliance with liberal elements such as the Wafd Party, and indeed discussions are said to be under way. This is engendering some cautious optimism despite the withdrawal of al-Baradei from the presidential race.

A meeting this week between Mohamed Morsy, leader of the MB’s Freedom and Justice Party, and US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, has provided some further grounds for optimism. The US is pressing Morsy on the MB’s commitment to human rights, Iran, and the Camp David accords with Israel, and it is said that the responses have so far been encouraging. The MB has little problem on the human-rights question, as that is an area it wishes to use to distance itself from the Salafists. Equally, on Iran, while some in the MB believe in developing a good relationship with Iran, the conflict in Syria has undermined that case. Besides, Saudi Arabia has promised Egypt $4bn, and this would be jeopardized by any move towards rapprochement with Iran.

So that leaves Camp David. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Essam el-Erian, the deputy chairman of the FJP, said that the treaty is a commitment of the Egyptian government, not a particular party, therefore the FJP feels bound by it.

However, a word of caution. If this is, indeed, the official position of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is based solely on short-term expediency, and it is very far from being universally accepted within the party.

As we reported in our 4 January edition, MB deputy chairman Rashad al-Bayumi told the Italian newspaper L’Unita on 2 January: “The Muslim Brotherhood...claim[s] the right to revise, wholly or in part, treaties such as the one with Israel. One thing is for certain: parliament will have the last say, and, if necessary there will be a popular referendum.” He added: “Our priority is to halt the Zionist policies which are against the whole Palestinian people.” He also denied that the MB had given assurances to the US about the Camp David accords. He said: “I firmly deny that...The United States knows that we are not willing to sacrifice the Palestinian cause on behalf of a ‘good neighbourly policy’ with Israel.”

It is also worth noting that one of the biggest rows between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists has been over a decision by a spokesman for the Salafist Al-Nour party (supposedly more extreme than the MB) to talk to Israeli radio. Hamdi Hasan, a senior MB figure, criticized this move as being tantamount to normalization of relations with the “Zionist enemy” and an “unforgivable political crime”.

That Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu takes the pessimistic view was made clear in his remarks to a parliamentary committee on 16 January. He said: “Israel is facing a growing security threat to its South because of the changes brought about by the Arab Spring which is not likely to disappear any time soon...The security problem which is deepening as a result of changes in the Middle East is getting worse and is expected to continue for years.”

Risk pointers

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*** Russia to ‘cut the corner’ to catch up with West on arms. Russia’s deputy prime minister, and former representative to Nato, Dmitriy Rogozin, said that Russia must stop buying foreign arms, only doing so as an exception. Speaking in Moscow on 11 January he said: “If we want to catch up with the West technologically in this business, we should not so much follow the beaten track as find an opportunity to ‘cut the corner’ and gain superiority in priority areas for us.”

Rogozin did not elaborate on what he meant by ‘cutting the corner’, but perhaps the explanation was in remarks he made a few days later, on 13 January, in Brussels. He said: “Russia is not interested in buying ready-made models of weapons but it is interested in cooperation with Western countries, particularly European countries, in terms of research into prospective common areas...”

*** Russia still opposing West on Iran. On 12 January, Russian Security Council secretary Nikolay Patrushev said that there was no proof that Tehran is trying to create nuclear weapons. He said: “We have been hearing for many years that the Iranians are going to create a nuclear bomb any day now. No-one has to this day proved the existence of a military component in Tehran’s nuclear programme.” The day before, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned that a military operation against Iran by the US and Israel would be “a very grave mistake and a severe blunder on the part of the West”. He also said that Russia is opposed to oil sanctions against Iran.

Separately, India has also said that it is opposed to new sanctions against Iran. On 17 January, Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai said: “We have accepted sanctions which are made by the United Nations. Other sanctions do not apply to individual countries. We don’t accept that position and we continue to buy oil from Iran.”

*** Israel’s nuclear doctrine “legal”. Subscribers will be familiar with our contention that Israel’s real problem with a nuclear-armed Iran is less that it might launch a nuclear first-strike against Israel but that the existence of an Iranian nuclear deterrent would prevent Israel from using its own nuclear weapons to defeat an overwhelming conventional attack.

This point is still insufficiently understood, and of course never admitted openly by Israel. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see a commentary in The Jerusalem Post on 17 January, written by US academic Louis Rene Beres, which went as far as to remind readers that an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice in 1996 “extends...lawful authority to the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in certain residual or last-resort circumstances”.

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