We all know her as Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old girl tortured and killed by the "religious morality police" of Iran's Islamic Republic. However, her name was Jina, a beautiful Kurdish name meaning "life."

In Iran, the Kurdish population is being discriminated against, and Kurdish names are banned. "Iran controls how its citizens name their children. Iran denies names that are not on their approved Persian and Islamic list, names that represent ethnic nationalism or regional pride are banned, with the exception of Persian names," Kurdish affairs commentator Himdad Mustafa explains. Therefore, in her official documents, she was registered as "Mahsa," a Persian name permitted by the Islamic Republic. Yet, at home, she was Jina. This is the name her family used to call her, the name her mother uttered while crying on her grave.

She Was Forced To Carry "Mahsa" As Her Official Name

Kurdish human rights activists on social media point out that Jina was not just beaten to death because she was wearing her hijab too loosely and not per the regime's standards but also because she was Kurdish. The Kurdish-Swedish activist, Dr. Kochar Walladbegi, writes: "In Iran... minorities such as the Kurds are being suppressed... For Kurds, being killed and tortured is a systematic behavior [of the Islamic Republic], they face this every day of their lives!... The Iranian morality police tortured Jina... also because she was a Kurd and a woman, which makes her a minority within a minority! I decided to call her by her Kurdish name Jina which stand for living, a name she, like many other Kurds, was not allowed to carry. Instead, she was forced to carry 'Mahsa' as her official name, for the short 22 years of her life."

The Islamic Republic Accuses Kurdish Opposition Groups Of Helping The Protesters

After Jina's death, the demonstrations against the Islamic Republic intensified all over the country, especially in the Kurdistan region. A Kurdish media outlet reported that the Iranian government told the Kurdish opposition parties based on the Kurdistan Region borders "to evacuate" their bases. Otherwise, the regime "will consider other options."

"Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) showered the skies of the Kurdistan Region's Erbil and Sulaimani provinces with ballistic missiles and suicide drones late last month, targeting bases of Kurdish opposition groups, whom they accuse of providing arms to the protesters in the country," Rudaw explained.

Furthermore, Nazim Dabbagh, the representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government office in Tehran, said: "The Iranian government has investigated and found that a number of the Iranian [Kurdish] opposition parties have interfered in the protests and accuse them of inciting chaos, therefore Iran has stressed that the parties must evacuate their headquarters."

"Jin, Jiyan, Azadi"

It is worth noting that the protests' Farsi slogan "Zan, Zendegi, Azadi [Woman, Life, Freedom]" is, in fact, a popular Kurdish one, which has been used for years in the Kurdish independence movement. Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founding member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), popularized the slogan in his writings.

Political activist Zozan Sima writes: "But the intimidation, [which the Islamic Republic of Iran] tried to bring to bear on women, Kurds, and those opposed to the system in the person of Jina, has kicked back and lit a new spark in the struggle against the system. Most significant are the crescendo of slogans [that] women and men – in Iran in general and in Iranian Kurdistan in particular – are chanting in Kurdish and in Farsi as one voice: 'jin-jiyan-azadi!' and 'zan-zendegi-azadi! [Woman, Life, Freedom!]."

Explaining the meaning of the slogan, in her book, "The Art of Freedom," Kurdish freedom movement activist Havin Guneser states: "You've probably heard of 'Jin, Jiyan, Azadi.' Because of this theory... the Kurdish freedom movement has shown the connections that make women's revolution the liberation of life itself. It is about freeing life. Therefore, men also see that they do not have any actual privileges. Similarly, we say that the colonization and oppression of Kurds prevent Turks from becoming democratic [and the same can be said of Iran!

The enslavement of women also perpetuates the enslavement of men... That's why we say women's revolution liberates life. In Kurdish, the root of the word life is 'Jin.'Jin means woman, while jîn means alive, and jiyan means life. The root word is the same. And that's why we say Jin, Jiyan, Azadi. Azadi means freedom. And given that the Sumerian word for freedom is Amargi, which means 'returning to the mother,' the three terms are interconnected and make perfect sense: women, life, liberty. As women become free, life inevitably returns to its magic and enchantment. Thus, the slogan, Jin, Jiyan, Azadi."

What Is In A Name?

It is undeniable that the protests for freedom in Iran also have a Kurdish root. The change in Iran will come from women and ethnic minorities tired of being oppressed and persecuted.

On social media, many users are writing: "Say her name." Well, her name was Jina. Let us not forget her death, and let us not cancel her Kurdish identity. The fight "for freedom" ("baraye azadi," as the popular anti-regime song goes) is in opposition to the Islamic Republic's discrimination against women, minorities, and Kurds. Jina was both a woman and a Kurd.

Her name Jina finds its source in the slogan for freedom, Jin, Jiyan; she was a woman, and she represents life. Say her name: Jina Amini.

Jalal Talabani—or Mam (Uncle) Jalal, as he was widely known—loved to tell jokes. He once recounted how, on his way back to his house in Sulaymaniyah, in Iraqi Kurdistan, he had spotted a man sitting on his own by the side of the road drinking alcohol. Talabani told his driver to stop the car, and then went over to speak to the drunk. After a brief discussion, he asked the drunk whether he recognized him. The drunk did not.

“Have you never seen my picture?” Talabani inquired. “I am Mam Jalal, the president of Iraq!”

The drunk responded: “Have another drink—soon you will tell me I am President George Bush!”

Talabani delivered the punch line with a great chortle. In all his years as a Kurdish Peshmerga fighter battling Iraqi government forces, he had never imagined that he, a Kurd, would one day become president of Iraq.

Born in 1933 in Kelkan, near Lake Dukan in Iraqi Kurdistan, Talabani joined the Kurdish Democratic Party, led by the Kurdish nationalist leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani, at age 14. When not fighting the Iraqi regime, Talabani traveled widely, representing the Kurdish resistance abroad. He admired Mao Zedong and studied Chinese. Following the collapse of the Kurdish separatist movement in 1975, when Iran ended its support, Talabani split from the tribal KDP to establish the leftist Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, inspired by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Not only was Talabani a Kurdish nationalist, he also proved himself to be an adept Iraqi president. Although the presidency in Iraq is a largely ceremonial post, Talabani used his position to bring politicians together, over dinners, to defuse tensions and build bridges. He was a pragmatist, always seeking compromise.

As the political adviser to General Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, from 2007 to 2010, I accompanied my boss to his frequent meetings with the Iraqi president. Talabani was keen to help us understand the country and would go to lengths to explain its history to us. He spoke of how the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies, had offered the Kurds the hope of independence. But it had never been ratified, and it was replaced by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne with no mention of the Kurds. He explained the tensions between Shiites in Iraq and Iran, and expounded on how the Sunnis had never had political parties in exile and were not represented effectively after the dissolution of the Baath party following the overthrow of the Hussein regime.

There was never a way to have a short meeting with Talabani. We were always taken off to a room to be plied with food. Talabani himself would spoon ever more rice and meat onto our plates. He had put on so much weight that his doctor was increasingly worried about him. A young Kurd hovered behind him at meal times, instructed to monitor the president’s food intake.

Talabani charmed us all with his chuckles and kebabs. For this reason, U.S. officials were slow to see his closeness to Tehran.

He never achieved that aspiration. Intent on staying on as president despite his age and ailing health, he was left unable to speak after a stroke in 2012. If it were not for being incapacitated, he most likely would have tried to persuade Masoud Barzani not to hold a referendum on Kurdish independence in September 2017, in the face of opposition from Baghdad, neighboring countries and the international community. Barzani gambled and lost control of Kirkuk, borders and oilfields—the very gains that the Kurds had made after 2003. Ever the master of the art of the possible, Talabani would have recognized the time was not right.

 

This article was originally published on Politico

Two of their most famous princes were Zakare and Ivane whose loyalty to Queen Tamar of Georgia enabled her to exercise independent power as ruling Queen in the male dominant world of the medieval period. In 1201, Ivane and Zakare successfully captured Armenia and parts of Kurdistan from the Seljuks and founded the Zakarid dynasty.

Tamta and the Ayyubids As the Zakarids were taking control of eastern Anatolia, another Kurdish dynasty, Ayyubids, was rising to power in a different region of the Middle East, and as Antony Eastmond the author of Tamta' World noted 'two families from the same ethnic background and from the same region rising to power in different states, using different languages and professing different religions, engaged in a bloody war in order to control Anatolia.'

In 1210, Ivane was captured outside the city of Akhlat. The consequences of Ivane’s capture would resonate for the next forty years, particularly for one person, his daughter Tamta. Tamta’s presence as a bargaining chip in the ransom negotiations for her father is the first that we meet her in the historical source. However, this was only the first in a series of defeats, marriages and rape that saw her passed between all the conquerors who eyed Anatolia in the first half of the thirteenth century.

Tamta was surrendered in marriage to al-Awhad, a nephew of Saladin. However, al-Awhad died before marriage, she was subsequently married to al-Ashraf of the Ayyubid dynasty for over 25 years, until his death in 1237, and she became the ruler of Akhlat. Tamta and the Khwarazamians Tamta was exercising power in Akhlat on behalf of her Ayyubid husband in April, 1230 when the city was finally captured by the Khwarazmian king Jalal al-Din after a long and brutal siege.

Tamta was taken prisoner by Jalal al-Din himself, who raped her and forced her into marriage – while she was still married to al-Ashraf. Although in August 1230 the Ayyubids led by al-Ashraf, managed to occupy Akhlat, Tamta was no longer there as she had been taken off to Azerbaijan by Jalal al-Din on his retreat. She was released as part of the peace negotiations that followed; her third marriage had lasted just four months.

Tamta returned to her ex-husband, but her city was again captured by the Seljuk Sultan but nothing is recorded of Tamta’s whereabouts or her position during these years. Jalal al-Din's brief and violent reign came to an equally brutal end when he was captured and killed by two Kurds in the mountains of Amed, while escaping the advancing Mongol army. Tamta and Mongols At some point during the Mongolian campaign in Anatolia Tamta was also captured and made a hostage. She was sent to Mongol prince Batu’s camp by the river Volga, she was then sent on to the court of the Great Khan, Ogodei, at Karakorum in Mongolia, an overland journey across the steppes of Asia of some 5,000 kilometers.

It was at this point that Tamta entered the most extraordinary period in her long and difficult life. This was the journey that Tamta made twice, as she travelled to and from the capital of the Great Khan. She was probably away from Akhlat between five and nine years. It involved travel far from her family and homeland, and into a world that had almost nothing in common with the cultures she had mostly moved between so far in her life. We have no information about what she did in Mongolia, or how she was treated.

While she was at the Great Khan’s court in Mongolia, Akhlat changed hands for the final time in the thirteenth century. And her brother Avag, who now dominated the Georgian court and played a leading role in politics in the first decades of the Mongol invasion, arranged a request by Rusudan , the new Queen of Georgia (r. 1223–45), for Tamta’s release from the Khan. In the mid-1240s the Mongols returned Tamta to Akhlat, and if she had first entered the city as a prize of war, a victim, she now returned to it as the city’s independent ruler and was to govern there for the last decade of her life. Never again would so many different cultures, factions, armies and religions all appear in one lifetime.

Her life linked together the Kurds, Georgians and the Armenians, Turks and Mongols. She traveled between Islam, Christianity and the Buddhist and shamanistic religions of the Mongol world, and between the cultures of the Mediterranean, the Caucasus, Eurasia and Asia. We do not normally think that all these culturally diverse and apparently separate worlds could be experienced by one person, let alone by a woman, in the thirteenth century.

Tamta lived amongst all these different groups, and remained a Christian throughout her life. Her transformation from daughter to wife to widow, and from diplomatic hostage to ruler represents one of the great transformations of a woman in the thirteenth century, although all too often masked by terrible hardship.

The first known Alchemist in history is Mary the Jewess, also called Mary the Hebrew. She lived in Egypt's port city of Alexandria, probably in the first century CE (or between the 1st and 3rd centuries). She invented processes and apparatuses that were copied centuries after that. Mary composed her work in Greek, and her books were later translated into Latin, and Arabic, among other languages. Her seminal works caught the eyes of a Kurdish Alchemist.

More than a millennium later, a Kurdish alchemist, Sayyid Husayn Akhlati (1310- 1397 CE), whowas from Akhalt in Northern Kurdistan, rose to prominence in Egypt and became the leading figure of the Islamic renaissance in the late 14th century.

Akhlati was an occultist, Sufi master, philosopher, scholar of Islamic studies, geometric, and personal physician-alchemist to Sultan Barquq of Egypt. According to the Mamluk historian al-'Ayni (d.1451), "he [Akhlati] practiced alchemy and studied astrology, geomancy, and wisdom. He also consumed a lot of alcohol and drugs.”

Some of his followers believed him to be the expected Messiah. He became a worry for anti-occultists like Ibn Khaldun and Ibn al-Qayyim, who sharpened their criticism of Ahlati, but they failed to convince Barquq since he liked to have Sufis and occultists about him.

Akhlati composed his books in Arabic and Persian. The scholar of Persianate studies DSilva remarks, "Akhlati inspired a wave of occultism through Persephone Islamdom."

The Kurdish historian Sharafkhan Bidlisi, a 16th-century historian who was the first Kurd to recount the history of Kurdistan and Kurds, mentions Huseyn of Akhlat with great respect and writes, "the most prominent among the 'ulama ("Muslim scholar") of his age in both the exoteric and esoteric sciences."

 

                    When US intelligence asserted that Iran was selling hundreds of combat drones to Russia, it was signaling more than Iranian support for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Suggesting that Russia was not capable of serial producing its own drones, the intelligence served to question further Russian military capabilities, already overshadowed by doubt because of the poor performance of Russian military personnel and equipment on the Ukrainian battlefield.

The US disclosure followed the inauguration in Tajikistan of Iran’s first overseas drone manufacturing facility. The factory produces Iran’s Ababil-2 multipurpose reconnaissance and killer drone.

The disclosure likely also drew Gulf attention to Iran’s potentially expanding role in assisting Russia, and China, in an increasingly bifurcated world at a time that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were maneuvering to put their strained relations with the Islamic republic on a more even keel.

With Russia, Iranian assistance goes far beyond the supply of drones. Iran stands to gain substantially from being a key node in a Eurasian transport corridor that would help Russia circumvent US and European sanctions.

Iran would enhance its geopolitical usefulness by offering a route into Central Asia and Afghanistan that allows India to circumvent its archenemy, Pakistan.

Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar pushed this month at a meeting in Tashkent of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to include the Indian-backed Iranian port of Chabahar in the corridor dubbed the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC).

The SCO groups alongside India, Russia, China, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Iran is set to join the organization in the next year.

Earlier this month, at a summit of Caspian Sea littoral states, Mr. Putin hailed the corridor as a “truly ambitious project” that is the centerpiece of Russia’s efforts to “improve the transport and logistics architecture of the region.”

The Ukraine crisis has given a new lease on life to the INSTC, a 7,200-kilometre patchwork of independently operated railroads, highways, and maritime routes that connect Russia and India through Iran.

If successful, the corridor that traverses Russia, Central Asia, the Caspian, Iran, and the Arabian Sea would reduce travel time from 40-60 days to 25-30 days and cut costs by 30 percent. In addition, its significance could be boosted by hook-ups with Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.

“The Islamic Republic is indispensable to Russia since transit across its territory links that Eurasian great power with their shared Indian strategic partner, which safeguards Russia’s strategic autonomy in these new international conditions,” said analyst Andrew Korybko.

Alireza Peyman Pak, the head of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization, expects the corridor to enable Iran to double its exports despite dim prospects for a revival of the 2105 international agreement that curbed the Islamic republic’s nuclear program. A revival would involve lifting at least some of the crippling US sanctions against Iran.

This month’s Russian-Ukrainian agreement to export grain from three Ukrainian Caspian Sea ports under the auspices of the United Nations and Turkey highlighted the body of water’s centrality.

A shipment in June of two and then 39 containers in July of wood laminate sheets from Russia to India's Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai served as pilot projects for the corridor.

The cargos left St Petersburg for the Russian port of Astrakhan, from where they were shipped to Iran's Anzali Caspian port. They were then taken by road across Iran to Bandar Abbas, from where the cargo moved to Mumbai. The entire journey in both cases took 24 days.

At the same time, RZD Logistics, a subsidiary of Russian Railways, the largest multimodal transport operator in the former Soviet Union and the Baltics, launched a new container train service along the INSTC. Its first train headed from Moscow to Mumbai left the Russian capital on July 8.

“These are the new routes east, and Moscow is very serious about getting these put in place, especially as EU sanctions are expected to remain — even after the conflict with Ukraine is over,” said Chris Devonshire-Ellis, a business and investment consultant.

In an illustration of the new routes, India and Uzbekistan agreed to do a pilot shipment to Mumbai through Chabahar in August.

The INSTC has gained significance with a spike in trade between Russia and India, fueled by Indian imports of Russian oil. Imports in April and May rose by a stunning 272 per cent, with a value of more than US$5 billion or the equivalent in two months of 50 per cent of average annual trade between the two countries that ranges on average between US$8 and 11 billion.

With Putin in Tehran for a meeting with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts, Ebrahim Raisi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iran and Russia signed a memorandum of understanding under which Russian oil company Gazprom would invest US$40 billion in the extraction of Iranian gas and oil.

Few analysts expect the memorandum to be more than a symbolic statement any time soon. The same is true for a Russian-Iranian agreement to create an alternative international payment system that would be unable to put a dent in SWIFT. The Brussels-based group executes financial transactions and payments between banks worldwide.

That leaves arms and transport alongside the conflict in Syria, and a common desire to up-end a US-dominated world order as the potential cornerstones of relations between two of the key powers that bookend the INSTC. Both countries have sufficient interest in these areas not to allow competition for selling oil and gas to Asia at discounted prices because of the sanctions to stymie their cooperation.

Said security analyst Ali Ahmadi: “Iran…requires…a strategy for turning trade routes into economic corridors that can benefit its own citizens. If Tehran can rise to the challenge, it will have a key role to play in the development of Asia and East-West trade moving forward.”

 

US and European acquiescence in Turkey's long-standing refusal to honor Kurdish ethnic, cultural, and political rights has come home to roost with Turkish opposition to Finnish and Swedish NATO membership.

The opposition has sparked debates about Turkey's controversial place in the North Atlantic defense alliance.

Turkey’s detractors point to its problematic military intervention in Syria, relations with Russia, refusal to sanction Moscow, and alleged fueling of tension in the eastern Mediterranean, calling the country’s NATO membership into question.

Its defenders note that Turkey, NATO’s second-largest standing military, is key to maintaining the alliance’s southern flank. Also, Turkey’s geography, population size, economy, military power, and cultural links to a Turkic world make it a critical link between Europe and Asia. In addition, Turkish drones have been vital in Ukraine's war with Russia, while Turkey has been a mediator in the conflict, albeit with limited success.

Kurdish rights hardly figure in the debates, and if they do, only as a prop for taking Turkey to task for its slide into authoritarianism.

An ethnic group spread across southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, northern Syria, and western Iran, Kurds are seen at best as assets in the fight against the Islamic State and at worst a threat to Turkish security and territorial integrity. Turkey's estimated 16 million Kurds account for up to 20 per cent of the country's population.

Turkey, or Turkiye as it wants to be known going forward, has used the security argument to make its agreement to Swedish and Finnish NATO membership dependent on the two Nordic countries effectively accepting its definition of terrorism as including any national expression of Kurdish identity.

Turkey has demanded that Sweden and Finland extradite 33 people, some of whom are Swedish or Finnish nationals, because of their alleged support for the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) or exiled preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds responsible for a failed military coup in 2016.

Turkey accuses the two Nordic countries of allowing the PKK to organize on their territory. Alongside the United States and the European Union, Turkey has designated the PKK as a terrorist organization. The PKK has waged a decades-long insurgency against Turkey in which tens of thousands have been killed.

Turkey also wants Sweden and Finland to support its military operation against the People's Protection Units (YPG), a US-backed Syrian Kurdish group that played a crucial role in defeating the Islamic State. Turkey asserts that the YPG is an extension of the PKK.

Erdogan recently announced that Turkey would launch a new military operation to extend the Turkish armed forces' areas of control in Syria to a 30-kilometer swath of land along the two countries shared border. The offensive would target the YPG in the towns of Tel Rifaat and Manbij and possibly Kobani, Ain Issa, and Tell Tamer.

Past US and European failure to stand up for Kurdish rights, as part of Turkey's need to meet the criteria for NATO membership that include "fair treatment of minority populations," has complicated the fight against the Islamic State, stymied Kurdish aspirations beyond Turkey's borders and enabled repression of Kurdish rights in Turkey.

More immediately, the failure to hold Turkey accountable for its repression of Kurdish ethnic and political rights within the framework of the Turkish state has enabled Ankara to establish Turkish policies as a condition for NATO membership even if they violate NATO membership criteria.

Those policies include defining the peaceful expression of Kurdish identity as terrorism and the rolling back of Kurdish language and cultural rights since the collapse in 2015 of peace talks with the PKK. Turkey lifted the ban on Kurdish languages and the word Kurd in 1991. Until then, Kurds were referred to as ‘mountain Turks.’

The governor of the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakir, widely seen as a hub of Kurdish cultural and political activity, forced this writer under treat of death to leave the region for using the word Kurd rather than mountain Turk in interviews in the 1980s.

Kurdish language programs in universities have dwindled in recent years amid administrative hurdles, while Kurdish parents complain of pressure not to enroll their children in elective Kurdish courses.

Most Kurdish-language services and activities created by local administrations were terminated by government-appointed trustees who replaced dozens of Kurdish mayors ousted by Ankara for alleged links to the PKK. Many of the ousted mayors and other leading Kurdish politicians remain behind bars.

The failure to take Turkey to task early on takes on added significance at a time when NATO casts the war in Ukraine as a battle of values and of democracy versus autocracy that will shape the contours of a 21st-century world order.

For his part, US President Joe Biden has sought to regain the moral high ground in the wake of the Trump presidency that broke with American liberalism by declaring “America is back” in the struggle for democratic and human rights.

Biden and Europe’s problem is that their credibility rides on cleaning up at home and ensuring that they are seen as sincere rather than hypocritical.

That’s a tall order amid assertions of structural racism on both sides of the Atlantic; controversy over gun ownership in the United States; preferential arrangements for Ukrainian refugees as opposed to non-Europeans and non-whites fleeing war, persecution, and destruction; and foreign policies that treat violations of human and political rights differently depending on who commits them.

The obvious place to start is at home. Kurds could be another starting point, with Finnish and Swedish NATO membership on the front burner. Meeting Turkish demands regarding perpetrators of political violence is one thing; acquiescing in the criminalization of legitimate Kurdish political and cultural expression is another.

That may be a tough bargain to drive home in Ankara. However, it would offer a compromise formula that could serve everyone’s interest and help Turkey solve a problem that promises to be one of the Middle East’s multiple exploding powder kegs.

 

The Iraqi Kurdistan region's ambition to heat European homes with its natural gas could promote the region from a pawn to a queen in the chess game that is international politics. Yet an Iraqi court ruling intended to deprive the autonomous region of its energy sector could eliminate the pawn altogether.

After years of weakness, Baghdad has regained its strength, and it hopes to employ this power to strip the Kurdistan region of its oil and gas. This has the potential to abolish the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), as it doesn't possess united military, intelligence and security services. The KRG pays others to keep the region's various forces in check. Baghdad has the constitution and circumstances on its side through a court ruling to push the Kurdistan region further north.

For the past eight years, Baghdad has imposed a financial embargo on Iraqi Kurdistan. The 1.3 million KRG employees, most of the working population, have insufficient wages as a result of a long fought for Kurdish policy in Iraq. In 2014, the region opted for independent oil exports through Turkey, but this did not ease its problems. The oil was sold at a significant discount, and Erbil paid a handsome fee for the transit through Turkey. It could only pay a portion of employees' salaries, though, which prompted region-wide protests and raised serious questions about the KRG's legitimacy. Some even wished for a return to the Saddam Hussain era.

After years of waiting for Baghdad to send the region its share of the federal budget, KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani has said that it no longer wants Baghdad's money. To counter the Iraqi capital, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which controls key positions in the KRG, including its oil ministry, wanted to replace Russian and possible Iranian oil exports to Europe. Iran responded by firing 12 ballistic missiles at Erbil, demolishing the villa of Kurdish oil tycoon Bin Baz who owns the Kar Oil Company, the company which could put this plan into operation.

The KDP wants to decouple from Baghdad and gain access to the rich European energy markets. Such a move would be an independence referendum in all but name, complementing the 2017 referendum, which to date remains a paper exercise.

Due to its close proximity, the Kurdistan region could be important for Europe, which has just agreed to ban Russian energy. Gas needs pipelines, so distance is a crucial factor, making it possible for the Kurds to be a natural choice for the Europeans, especially given that other suppliers are unreliable at the moment.

The income from this would give the KRG what it needs to fill its own coffers and adopt a more Kurdish-centred foreign policy independent of Baghdad. An independent Kurdistan bordering the restive Kurdish populations in Turkey, Iran and Syria would, of course, have serious geopolitical implications.

On 12 February, Iraq's oil ministry disclosed its ambitions to take over the Kurdish region's energy sector and establish a company headquartered in Erbil to stifle the KRG's plan. On 14 May, Iraq's state-run North Oil Company (NOC) announced that it was suing the KRG, deploying security forces to take control of the oil fields of Khor Mor, Khurmala, Avana and Safia that were operated by the NOC until 2008. The KRG has developed its oil and gas sector independently of Baghdad based on a 2007 law. The regional government has called the NOC's claims "baseless" and questioned the legality of the firm's operations in Khurmala in previous years.

 

Iraq's State Organisation for the Marketing of Oil (SOMO) has called the KRG's handling of the region's oil "illogical" and said that it exempts companies from taxes and gives them the right to sell "Kurdish" energy and hand the KRG a share, but the opposite is more likely. The KRG has made contracts to sell its oil and break Baghdad's financial embargo even though most energy revenues are not disclosed to the Kurdish public. Through its desperate attempt to salvage its financial ruins, the region has broken the OPEC quota allocated to Iraq, which gives Baghdad another reason to push through the court's ruling.

 

The oil ministry hired Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton, an international law firm, to talk to oil and gas companies operating in the Kurdistan region to "initiate discussions to bring their operations into line with applicable Iraqi law." The KRG enacted its energy law in 2007 and split its energy revenues by exporting crude oil through Turkey in 2014.

Khurmala and Khor Mor oil fields are the backbones of the region's energy production and its main source of income, without which the region would face domestic unrest. The fields constitute 42 per cent of its reserves and produce the finest gas and oil. Khor Mor is considered one of the most important natural gas fields globally, producing more than 7 billion cubic metres of gas per annum. It is managed by Dana Gas, a KRG-based firm whose stakeholders have extensive links to the KRG and KDP leadership. The Khor Mor field is governed exclusively by Kurds.

KRG plans to heat European homes from these two oil fields. Khor Mor is located in Sulaimani, while Khurmala is in Erbil, putting it within the KRG's jurisdiction. Iraqi militiamen besieged Khurmala last October but did not take control, as it would have resulted in an armed clash between Kurdish security forces and the militiamen. The security forces in Erbil respond to the KDP, while those in Sulaimani are allied with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Aram Haji, a constitutional expert, told me that Baghdad could manage these fields under the federal constitution, making this a possible flashpoint, something that could end in the downfall of the KRG.

 

PUK leader Bafel Talabani controls the security forces of the Sulaimani and Halabja governorates, where most of the KRG's oil and gas fields lie. He objects to exporting natural gas to Europe because it would not serve the people.

Talabani referred to the region's experience of an independent oil policy where the KDP became the richest party at the expense of the KRG forces while the population suffered as inflation, increased prices and quarter wages have made the people restive. The region's separate energy policy has increased energy prices almost three times compared with neighbouring Iraqi governorates, with both ruling parties constantly exchanging allegations of blame.

The Kurdistan region as a confederacy between the KDP and the PUK is in jeopardy due to tense disagreements between the two city states. Disputes over the office of the Iraqi presidency have brought the two Kurdish parties close to abolishing the KRG and establishing independent administrations. The Kurdish house is divided at a time when Baghdad has re-emerged with assertive policies. The tension between the PUK and the KDP is the main obstacle to forming the next Iraq government.

The timing of the court ruling coincides with this stalemate in Baghdad. The KDP, a key ally of Muqtada Sadr, has its eyes on winning the Iraqi presidency and forming a majority government, which is essentially a dagger aimed at the heart of Tehran in Baghdad. Thus, the decision could also oblige the KDP to reconsider its position because, without the KDP, Sadr could not move with the plan.

For the first time since 2005, Baghdad has regained its strength; foreign power has largely left matters in its hands. The federal government now enjoys high revenues from high energy prices, and it uses this to relocate all control to Baghdad, as in 1973 when oil prices rocketed and Saddam Hussein created a centralised state in Baghdad. Since February last year, Iraq has left Chapter VII of the UN charter, which removes Baghdad's limited sovereignty over Iraq to full sovereignty. The vacuum left by Baghdad in northern Iraq will, sooner or later, be occupied again, albeit through softer means.

Midhat Muhammed has been Iraq's supreme judge since 2005 and is a close friend of former Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and leaders who oppose independent Kurdish management of the region's energy sector. Article 110 of the 2005 Iraqi constitution, composed of nine clauses, grants Baghdad the exclusive rights to sign and ratify agreements and manage resources. Muhammed has the leeway to interpret the Article in Baghdad's favour.

Most oil states only have a single national oil company, while the Kurdistan region has some oil companies owned by the two ruling parties. As such, Baghdad would have international support to relocate control of the energy sector to the Iraqi capital.

In 2015, Turkey signed a 50-year contract with the KRG to supply 100,000 barrels towards its daily oil needs. Now Baghdad deems the contract to be illegal, but that doesn't necessarily buy President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's help for the KRG. Historically, Ankara has got along with Baghdad better. However, natural gas sent to Europe through Turkey would give Ankara a stronger hand in settling its dispute with Brussels and EU members.

High oil prices have removed another obstacle to Baghdad implementing the court ruling. The KRG has accrued a $23 billion debt since it began its independent oil export policy in 2014. If Baghdad were to take over the KRG's energy legally, it would take on that liability. However, with a large petrodollar income, Iraq would not see that as a problem. Former Prime Minister Adel Abdal Mahdi and incumbent PM Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, who have long and cordial relations with the Kurds, have up until now delayed the decision because Iraq faced a severe financial problem during the pandemic and had a large budget deficit.

Europeans are the main beneficiaries of the KRG. The Kurdish entity is Europe-friendly as almost every household in the Kurdistan region has a relative living in Europe; hence, it would be an excellent choice for Brussels. However, the KRG needs significant improvements made to its energy infrastructure, and it is still too early to talk of a lucrative contract. The region's security forces cannot protect the oil fields against the much larger and better armed Iraqi army.

In retrospect, all Kurdish rights, whether achieved or violated, were made in Baghdad, depending on the circumstances of the old Abbasid Caliphate capital. The Kurdistan region's future and eventual downfall is also in Baghdad, not Europe or elsewhere.

 

For now, Ukraine is far from my bed show for most Middle Eastern nations. The question is not if but when Ukraine will arrive on their doorstep.

Two centrifugal forces threaten to push Middle Eastern nations off the tightrope: an increasingly bifurcated world populated by a multitude of civilisationalist leaders in which “you are with us or against us,” and increasingly a need for consistency in the US and Europe’s application of international law and upholding of human and political rights standards.

It wouldn’t take much to throw straddlers off balance.

The Biden administration is considering sending special forces to guard the newly populated US embassy in Kyiv. What happens if Russian forces strike the embassy much like US forces bombed the Chinese mission in Belgrade in 1999?

At the time, China did not respond militarily, but then China was not supporting any party to the wars in former Yugoslavia in ways that the United States and its allies are assisting Ukraine.

Similarly, the risk of escalation exists if the United States, NATO, or individual European countries decide to train Ukrainian forces on Ukrainian soil and are attacked by Russia.

To be sure, Russia, like NATO, does not want the war to expand into direct confrontation, but it would not take much for events to spin out of control.

By the same token, Gulf states’ options may narrow if talks in Vienna fail to revive the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear program.

US President Joe Biden and Iran have both unsuccessfully tried to use the talks to achieve goals beyond the original agreement, from which then-President Donald J. Trump withdrew in 2018.

"We do not have a deal ... and prospects for reaching one are, at best, tenuous," Robert Malley, Mr. Biden’s special envoy for Iran, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week.

Mr. Malley’s statement came as a covert war between Israel and Iran appeared to escalate, and US officials were seeking to repair relations with Saudi Arabia, possibly paving the way for a visit to the Kingdom by Mr. Biden.

Israel reportedly advised the Biden administration that it was responsible for the recent killing in Tehran of a colonel in Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). No one has officially claimed responsibility for the shooting.

Similarly, a drone strike targeted a highly sensitive military site outside Tehran, where Iran develops missile, nuclear, and drone technology. The drones exploded into a building used by the Iranian defense ministry to research drone development.

At the same time, a Saudi official noted that Saudi Arabia and Iran had not scheduled a sixth round of talks to resolve differences that have helped destabilize the Middle East because the exchanges had made “not enough” progress.

Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia have been cool since Mr. Biden called Saudi Arabia a pariah state during his presidential election campaign. He has since effectively boycotted Mr. Bin Salman because of the crown prince's alleged involvement in the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Mr. Bin Salman has denied any involvement but said he accepted responsibility for the killing as Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler.

As a result of the spat, Mr. Bin Salman has rejected US demands that the kingdom increase oil production to lower prices and inflationary pressures and help Europe reduce its dependency on Russian energy.

In doing so, Saudi Arabia is playing with the US the same game that Turkey is engaged in within NATO. Both want to capitalize on US needs for support of Ukraine while not risking US, and in Turkey’s case NATO security guarantees.

Turkey has put conditions on Swedish and Finnish NATO membership but ultimately wants the United States, NATO, and the European Union to develop a Black Sea strategy that would have Turkey at its core. Turkey is effectively left to its own devices without being embedded in a broader regional approach.

A failure to revive the Iran nuclear agreement would likely drive home countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have nowhere but the United States to go when seeking security guarantees.

China is unwilling and unable to replace the US as a security guarantor, and Russia has taken itself out of the equation.

The US and European window of opportunity to include human and political rights in a meaningful way in its discussions may be while China maintains its current posture.

If this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos was any indication, the United States and Europe are not about to avail themselves of the opportunity. Displaying confidence, Saudi Arabia, bolstered by surging oil prices, grabbed the limelight as the land of economic opportunity in a world battered by inflation, food shortages, and supply change problems.

“Biden should use positive inducements to alter the crown prince’s repressive behavior. MBS, driven by self-interest, would accommodate US requests on human rights if accompanied with incentives and devoid of humiliation,” said US-based high tech entrepreneur and cardiologist Khalid Aljabri. Two siblings of Mr. Aljabri, who was referring to Mr. Bin Salman by his initials, have been detained in the kingdom.

Following missile and drone attacks by Houthi rebels earlier this year, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have sought enhanced written bilateral defense agreements with the United States, if not a formal treaty.

Two of Mr. Biden’s senior advisers visited Saudi Arabia this week to discuss oil, Iran, and security, including finalizing the transfer of two strategic islands — Tiran and Sanafir — in the Red Sea from Egyptian to Saudi sovereignty with Israeli consent.

US officials were scheduled in the following days in Washington to brief Israeli National Security Adviser Eyal Hulata on their discussions in the kingdom.

Intriguingly, Israeli media reported recent secret meetings between Israeli and Saudi officials that focused on security issues, including Iran.

Like the Gulf states, Israel has effectively seen its hedging options narrow as a result of the Ukraine crisis but has been less out on the limb than the Gulf states.

However, in the final analysis, Middle Eastern states realize that the United States, in the words of former White House director for the Gulf, Kirsten Fontenrose, “can still easily build global coalitions when necessary. While Russia will be radioactive, more a predatory pariah than partner.”

Ms. Fontenrose warned that “it would be foolish for nations that previously enjoyed beneficial relations with Russia to invite that radioactivity onto themselves now, in the emerging world order where Russia is not the unipolar power it hoped to become, but instead a failed bet.”

That may be true for Russia and ultimately a no-brainer for Middle Eastern states once they have milked opportunities for what they are worth.

It could be altogether different if relations between the United States and China were to deteriorate to the degree they have between Washington and Moscow. That may even be more the case if the United States continues to be seen as selective and hypocritical in its adherence to human rights at home and abroad.

 

 

These are heady days for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

With King Salman home after a week in hospital during which he had a colonoscopy, rumours are rife that succession in the kingdom may not be far off.

 

Speculation is not limited to a possible succession. Media reports suggest that US President Joe Biden may visit Saudi Arabia next month for a first meeting with the crown prince.

Mr. Biden called Saudi Arabia a pariah state during his presidential election campaign. He has since effectively boycotted Mr. Bin Salman because of the crown prince's alleged involvement in the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Mr. Bin Salman has denied any involvement but said he accepted responsibility for the killing as Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler.

 

Mr. Bin Salman waited for his 86-year-old father to return from the hospital before traveling to Abu Dhabi to offer his condolences for the death of United Arab Emirates President Khaled bin Zayed and congratulations to his successor, Mohamed bin Zayed, the crown prince's one-time mentor.

 

Mr. Bin Salman used the composition of his delegation to underline his grip on Saudi Arabia's ruling family. In doing so, he was messaging the international community at large, and notably Mr. Biden, that he is in control of the kingdom no matter what happens.

 

The delegation was made up of representatives of different branches of the ruling Al Saud family, including Prince Abdulaziz bin Ahmed, the eldest son of Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, the detained brother of King Salman.

 

Even though he holds no official post, Mr. Abdulaziz's name topped the Saudi state media's list of delegates accompanying Mr. Bin Salman. His father, Mr. Ahmed, was one of three members of the Allegiance Council not to support Mr. Bin Salman's appointment as crown prince in 2017. The 34-member Council, populated by parts of the Al-Saud family, was established by King Abdullah in 2009 to determine succession to the throne in Saudi Arabia.

 

Mr. Bin Salman has detained Mr. Ahmed and Prince Mohamed Bin Nayef, the two men he considers his foremost rivals, partly because they are popular among US officials.

 

Mr. Ahmed was detained in 2020 but never charged, while Mr. Bin Nayef stands accused of corruption. Mr. Ahmed returned to the kingdom in 2018 from London, where he told protesters against the war in Yemen to address those responsible, the king and the crown prince.

 

Mr. Abdulaziz's inclusion in the Abu Dhabi delegation fits a pattern of Mr. Bin Salman appointing to office younger relatives of people detained since his rise in 2015. Many were arrested in a mass anti-corruption campaign that often seemed to camouflage a power grab that replaced consultative government among members of the ruling family with a one-man rule.

 

Mr. Bin Salman likely takes pleasure in driving the point home as Mr. Biden mulls a pilgrimage to Riyadh to persuade the crown prince to drop his opposition to increasing the kingdom's oil production and convince him that the United States remains committed to regional security.

 

The crown prince not only rejected US requests to help lower oil prices and assist Europe in reducing its dependency on Russian oil as part of the campaign to force Moscow to end its invasion of Ukraine but also refused to take a phone call from Mr. Biden.

 

Asked a month later whether Mr. Biden may have misunderstood him, Mr. Bin Salman told an interviewer: "Simply, I do not care." Striking a less belligerent tone, Mohammed Khalid Alyahya, a Hudson Institute visiting fellow and former editor-in-chief of Saudi-owned Al Arabiya English, noted this month that "Saudi Arabia laments what it sees as America's wilful dismantling of an international order that it established and led for the better part of a century."

 

Mr. Alyahya quoted a senior Saudi official saying: "A strong, dependable America is the greatest friend Saudi Arabia can have. It stands to reason, then, that US weakness and confusion is a grave threat not just to America but also to us."

 

The United States has signaled that it is shifting its focus from the Middle East to Asia even though it has not rolled back its significant military presence.

 

Nonetheless, Middle Eastern states read a reduced US commitment to their security into a US failure to respond robustly to attacks by Iran and Iranian-backed Arab militias against targets in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the Biden administration's efforts to revive a moribund 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran.

 

Several senior US officials, including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and CIA director Bill Burns, met with the crown prince during trips to the kingdom last year. Separately, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called the crown prince.

 

In one instance, Mr. Bin Salman reportedly shouted at Mr. Sullivan after he raised Mr. Khashoggi's killing. The crown prince was said to have told the US official that he never wanted to discuss the matter again. The US could forget about its request to boost Saudi oil production.

Even so, leverage in the US-Saudi relationship goes both ways.

 

Mr. Biden may need Saudi Arabia's oil to break Russia's economic back. By the same token, Saudi Arabia, despite massive weapon acquisitions from the United States and Europe and arms from China that the United States is reluctant to sell, needs the US as its security guarantor.

 

Mr. Bin Salman knows that he has nowhere else to go. Russia has written itself out of the equation, and China is neither capable nor willing to step into the United States' shoes soon.

 

Critics of Mr. Biden's apparent willingness to bury the hatchet with Mr. Bin Salman argue that in the battle with Russia and China over a new 21st-century world order, the United States needs to talk the principled talk and walk the principled walk.

 

In an editorial, The Washington Post, for whom Mr. Khashoggi was a columnist, noted that "the contrast between professed US principles and US policy would be stark and undeniable" if Mr. Biden reengages with Saudi Arabia.

 

 

There is a growing concern about the long-term impact of information disorder (disinformation and misinformation) in the Kurdistan Region.

Manipulation of political discourse and public opinion, and declining trust in public institutions, complemented by an already fragile media landscape, lack of media literacy and absence of relevant legislation have resulted in a chaotic information ecosystem where dissemination of unverified content on Kurdish social media frequently informs the media and public debate, creates tensions, and further polarizes the society.

Information disorder is not a new phenomenon but goes all the way back to the sophists in Ancient Greece. However, what makes it one of the greatest challenges of modern times is the sheer volume and speed of dissemination via the Internet.

The complexity of information disorder demands a multidimensional solution; at the international level, altering the algorithms of search engines and social media platforms, a better cooperation between the major technology companies and local governments as well as establishment of proactive regional joint taskforces by the service providers to combat disinformation and misinformation in local languages would help minimize the flow of false information.

At the national level, media literacy campaigns in local languages to enable individual news consumers to identify disinformation and by default slowdown the spread of false information would be an effective, long-term solution, followed by regulations and enforcement. 

 

Disinformation is an effective weapon in the arsenal of autocrats around the world, whether deployed to manipulate domestic and foreign enemies or to target critics, the free press and reshape social conditions; this became abundantly clear during the global pandemic. From Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Gulf countries, and Turkey, to Africa and South America, restrictive measures, and increased censorship in the name of curbing disinformation have been introduced -- suffocating the already muted freedom of expression in their respective countries.

In the Kurdistan Region (KR), a plethora of multimedia outlets with direct links to powerful elites has emerged, exploiting the vacuum left by the mainstream media, taking full advantage of a society with little media literacy, regularly influencing public debate through metanarratives while simultaneously engaged in proxy media wars, each attacking their paymaster's opponents or toeing their party lines. This has resulted in a chaotic information ecosystem where facts are extremely difficult to determine and trust in the public institutions has eroded.

Government responses to information disorder around the globe have varied, including establishing a legal framework, media literacy campaign, task force, rapid response unit, Internet shutdowns, content filtering, heavy penalties, and law enforcement agencies. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) often resorts to the media law (2007) or the misuse of communications devices law (2008) when dealing with issues related to information disorder, often resulting in the imprisonment of journalists and civil society activists: the former is both outdated and insufficient while the latter is excessive and ineffective. 

Combating information disorder differs from one country to another; factors such as media literacy, the law, a well-established mainstream media, public trust in the political process and public institutions all impact the approach taken by governments. The KRG is currently at a crossroads: either take the autocratic or democratic approach in dealing with the challenges information disorder presents. What the KRG cannot do is remain idle while public trust in its institutions completely diminishes and its information ecosystem is poisoned. Furthermore, it is imperative that the KRG’s approach is based on the local characteristics and requirements, and not replicating other countries’ models.

The KRG’s employed method[s] to address the issues arising from information disorder cannot be decided on a whim or left at the discretion of local authorities and individual agencies to apply either a half-measured response or excessive measures that completely undermine the notion of free speech.

To restore confidence in the KR’s public institutions, protect whatever trust left in the electoral processes, ensure continued security and stability, and protect public health and wellbeing, a new policy approach is desperately needed to redefine the contours of national security -- making the information ecosystem and cybersecurity an integral part of the KR security apparatus and putting in place effective measures to ensure the integrity of our information ecosystem where citizens have access to accurate information.  

In addition to the ongoing digital transformation, the KRG requires a comprehensive legal framework, as well as the establishment of a cybersecurity directorate, tasked with monitoring and filtering the information ecosystem, combating disinformation campaigns from domestic and foreign actors, and guarding the region’s electronic systems. The cybersecurity directorate command center can establish and deploy special task forces to focus on specific domains such as elections as an extended, electronic arm of the KRG Security Council. 

Other measures available to the government might be necessary, including compelling social media users to use their government-issued documents when opening accounts, political allegiance transparency requirements for social media companies as well as advertisers, and better collaboration with social media companies to implement preventative measures including removal of inappropriate or unlawful content reported through a centralized portal.

Regardless of whichever measure the KRG takes, a continuous comprehensive media literacy campaign along with digital education is imperative to minimize the harmful impact of false information. Establishing a 24/7 hotline for victims of cyberviolence and false information with direct links to the law enforcement agencies and public prosecutor’s office as well as introducing heavy fines for media outlets that spread false information may also reduce the harmful impact of disinformation.

 

Israel's rapidly deteriorating relations with Russia contain a message for other Middle Eastern powers: attempting to remain on the sidelines of the conflict in Ukraine risks falling in between the cracks.

 

Like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey, Israel has sought to maintain good relations with the United States and Russia despite Washington and Moscow's principle of 'you are either with us or against us.'

 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has good reason to apply the same principle even if Israel and Turkey have sought to use their good offices to mediate between the Ukrainian leader and President Vladimir Putin. Instead, they used their mediation to justify their failure to join US and European sanctions against Russia.

 

Mr. Zelensky this week called out his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan after Turkey announced plans to encourage as many Russian holidaymakers as possible to visit. The announcement came as a senior Russian tourism official said that less than half the 4.7 million Russians who travelled to Turkey in 2021 were likely to visit the country this year.

 

"This is not entirely fair, and that is why I draw Turkey's attention to such processes. There is a need to choose," Mr. Zelensky said a day after meeting in Kyiv with Ibrahim Kalin, one of Mr. Erdogan's closest advisors.

 

So far, the Biden administration has been restrained in its response to a Saudi and Emirati refusal to increase oil production to reduce prices and help Europe ween itself off its dependence on Russian energy. However, there is little doubt that the administration will remember who its friends were in a time of need and who were not.

 

It's a message that may be registering in Abu Dhabi. In late April, France's TotalEnergies chartered a tanker to load Abu Dhabi crude in early May for Europe, the first such shipment in two years.

 

Despite hubristic remarks by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in an interview in March with The Atlantic, relations between the kingdom, the UAE, and the United States have steered away from acrimonious public exchanges.

 

That has not stopped former officials from trading swipes.

 

Responding to former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's suggestion that the US should use a carrot-and-stick approach to get the Saudis to boost oil output, former Saudi intelligence chief and ex-ambassador to the United States Prince Turki al-Faisal quipped: "We're not schoolchildren to be treated with a carrot and stick. When we're dealt with fairly and squarely, we respond likewise".

 

Striking a less belligerent tone, Mohammed Khalid Alyahya, a Hudson Institute visiting fellow and former editor-in-chief of Saudi-owned Al Arabiya English, noted that "Saudi Arabia laments what it sees as America's willful dismantling of an international order that it established and led for the better part of a century."

 

Mr. Alyahya quoted a senior Saudi official saying: "A strong, dependable America is the greatest friend Saudi Arabia can have. It stands to reason, then, that US weakness and confusion is a grave threat not just to America but also to us."

 

Israel has not been afforded the luxury of more layered exchanges in its increasingly harsh tit-for-tat official verbal swaps with Russia.

 

In the latest incident, Israel this week condemned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's assertion that Adolf Hitler had "Jewish blood."

 

Mr. Lavrov used that to justify describing as a "Nazi" Mr. Zelensky, who is of Jewish descent. The foreign minister went on to say that "the wise Jewish people said that the most ardent antisemites are usually Jews."

 

In response, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, whose grandfather died in the Holocaust, said in a tweet that "Lavrov's remarks are both an unforgivable and outrageous statement as well as a terrible historical error. . Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust. The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of antisemitism."

 

Subsequently, Mr. Lapid added that "we are making every effort to maintain good relations with Russia, but everything has a border, and this time it was crossed. The Russian government should apologize to us and to all the Jewish people."

 

Doubling down, the Russian foreign ministry accused Israel of supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine a day later. The ministry said Mr. Lapid's statements were "anti-historical" and "explaining to a large extent why the current Israeli government supports the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv".

 

Mr. Lavrov and the ministry's remarks were the latest salvos in the Israeli-Russian spat. A day earlier, a Russian television station disclosed the identity of ten Israeli consular officials and security guards who were on the Polish-Ukrainian border to help Israeli nationals escape from the war-torn country and described them as mercenaries.

 

"Their names + passports are compromised. It can help Israel's enemies such as Iran intel," tweeted Israeli national security reporter Yossi Melman.

 

The disclosure came a day after media reports said that Israel had foiled an attempt to assassinate an Israeli consular employee in Turkey, an American general in Germany, and a journalist in France.

 

Israel has walked a fine line in crafting its management of the Ukraine crisis.

 

It rejected Ukrainian requests for arms sales, including its acclaimed Iron Dome anti-rocket system and access to Israeli surveillance technology, while providing humanitarian assistance to the war-torn country.

 

Israel has also shared intelligence, voted for a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning the Russian invasion, and convinced the United Arab Emirates to do likewise. Furthermore, Israel voted for an Assembly resolution suspending Russian membership in the UN Human Rights Council.

 

Under pressure to get off the fence, Mr Lapid sparked the deterioration of relations when he asserted that Russia had committed war crimes in early April.

 

In a statement, the Russian foreign ministry charged that Mr. Laipd's remarks were "a poorly camouflaged attempt to take advantage of the situation in Ukraine to distract the international community's attention from one of the oldest unsettled conflicts - the Palestine-Israeli one."

 

Shortly after that, Russia's ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Viktorov, told an Israeli television station that Israel and Russia were "still" friends but that Moscow expected a "more balanced (Israeli) position."

 

Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, the deputy chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the Opposing Parties in Syria, to increase pressure on Israel, disclosed that a Syrian-operated, Russian-made Buk M2E air defense is a Syrian-operated, Russian-made system had recently intercepted a guided missile fired from an Israeli F-16 fighter jet in Syrian airspace. The disclosure constituted a warning that Russia may no longer tolerate future Israeli strikes against targets in Syria.

 

"Israel risks falling off its carefully construed balancing act. Others in the Middle East still have some rope left. How much is the $64,000 question," said a Western diplomat.

 

 

 

 

Slovenian politics is an affair-driven system that demands new parties and new faces to replace the old, following the old's return to fix the newcomers' mistakes.

Many people saw the elections on April 24th, 2022, as some hopeful dawn for Slovenian politics. For the 4th time in 11 years, the election's winner was a newly formed party, known as the Freedom Movement, led by Robert Golob, a former director of a national energy firm with limited political experience.

Slovenes had enough of Janša. The freedom movement got 35% of the vote, and 70% of eligible voters participated, the highest since 2004. The high voter turnout was that for the past two years, Janez Janša of the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) was the prime minister and his controversy-filled mandate. Many parties made anti-janšism a big part of their campaign leading up to the elections. Once again, Slovenia has a new party in charge.

Slovenia's political situation over the past two decades has been one of hope and eventual disappointment. In 2004, Janez Janša won his first election, and despite some controversies, he finished his mandate. After that, current president Borut Pahor won the election with the Social Democrats (SD), who he was president at the time. After a few affairs and two parties leaving the coalition, a no-confidence motion was successful. Still, the government finished current affairs till the next government was formed in 2012. Firstly, on December 4th, 2011, elections were held. Zoran Jankovič, mainly known for his many years as mayor of Ljubljana's capital city, won the election with his newly formed party, Positive Slovenia (PS).

He was unsuccessful in forming a coalition, forcing him to give up his ideas. Following controversies and significant opposition from the public, a no-confidence motion succeeded in 2013. Meaning that the mandate fell to the party who came in the second, behold the second term of Janez Janša.

The mandate to form the 11th Slovenian government was given to Alenka Bratušek from PS, who became the first woman to hold the position of prime minister in Slovenia's history. It was a volatile time for Slovenia, with protests happening frequently, and quick change of governments made it hard to do the job competently. In May 2014, Alenka Bratušek resigned from her position. The government finished current affairs till the next election.

In the 2014 elections, the newly formed party named after its leader Miro Cerar (SMC) won the election with almost 35% of the votes. The new government almost completed its missions, but following a significant debate on infrastructure, and many attempts for a no-confidence vote by the opposition, mainly SDS, Miro Cerar resigned in March 2018.

SDS won the 2018 elections, but he failed to form a government because of opposition from coalition partners, despite winning 25% of the votes. The mandate was given to the second-placed, newly formed party, with just under 13%, led by Marjan Šarec.

It was the first minority coalition in Slovenian history. After its project partner, the Left, abandoned cooperation with the alliance, it put the government in an awkward situation. Following the resignation of the finance minister, the prime minister Šarec also called for his resignation, breaking up the government in 2020.

With all this political turmoil and inconsistency leading up to 2020,  more challenging times are expected. Well into the start of the coronavirus epidemic, a new government was formed, the 13th in Slovenia's history, led by the party that won the 2018 elections, SDS, and their cult leader Janez Janša. This government was instrumental in the results of the 2022 elections. For the second time, Janša was in office, just as Slovenia held the presidency of the Council of the European Union.

During Janša's third term, new traditions started, as protests continued for over 100 Fridays. The political situation hadn't been this tense since around 2011. With all the controversies you usually expect in our governments, the coronavirus just added more opportunities for the government to serve itself.

At this point, Janša had entirely given into the Orban-type populist rhetoric in his behavior. He was using a particular method, being a constant poster of tweets. Using Twitter to attack political opponents and journalists, vulgarism and aggression came from the tweets he re-tweeted. He was putting state media in an embarrassing position, trying to limit them and defund them.

Janša's third term was unhopeful; hope was rising for Slovenians who were sick of him. He was discrediting everyone who called him out for his suspicious behavior. He even got into a predicament with the European Union, who also tried to call him out on multiple occasions. 

Until the elections of 2022 began. With many Slovenians counting down the days to election day, they were set for significant participation.

It had two consequences. Firstly, people didn't know what to expect, and no one could guess that would happen, apart from the first two polling parties to battle it out. Secondly, the threshold of 4% was harder to reach because of good participation. Tactical voting also denied good results for at least three more parties.

According to a study from Valicon, an institute studying consumers, around 46% of voters voted tactically, voting for the party that wasn't their natural first choice. As a result, only five parties ended up making the parliament.

The absolute winner of the election was the Freedom Movement, led by Robert Golob. They won almost 35% of the vote. Still, They ended up with a record-breaking 41 seats (out of 90 in the parliament), almost giving them a constitutive majority. Second place was secured by SDS, led by Janez Janša, who still ended up gaining seats (27), compared to 2018, even though they got a slightly smaller percentage of votes.

Next in the race was the Christian party New Slovenia (NSI), led by former defense minister (in the last government) Matej Tonin, who was caught in some controversy because of ill-advised purchases of military vehicles.

The party has also gained seats (8) in comparison to 2018. The last two remaining parties lost seats compared to 2018 and many votes. The Left was the most shocking, who only won 5 seats and only beat the threshold in the least percentage of votes counted.

The SD entered the assembly with seven seats. The latter parties have been in the opposition for the past two years and showed limited competence.

These elections set us up for an exciting next four years. The election is compared to the 2011 elections, where Golob's friend and, at the time, the party won the election but failed to form a coalition.

The advantage that Golob has is that he almost has a majority by himself, and the Left and SD are both interested and probable to form the coalition. Because of all these new parties, Slovenia has been filled with too many parties and a cramped, inconsistent parliament, leading to new parties being formed that cannot form consistent programs due to much of them relying on opposing the previous incompetent government.

It's like a never-ending cycle that we are trapped in, but maybe it could work out (said every Slovenian, every election). A smaller government could make it easier for successful operation, but nothing is a given in Slovenia.

Many think this was the victory for liberal democracy over populism, but that is not the case. The opposition's battle versus Janša ended up being no less populistic. Still, it can be argued that the milder political ideology makes this victory worth the pain.

One of the problems facing Slovenia is a hostile atmosphere that leads to populistic tactics from parties and little to no effort being given to consistent, lasting programs that serve the country in the long term.

Political showdowns end up more like a farce, featuring petty passive aggressiveness and no actual points being made. It's an affair-driven system that demands new parties and new faces to replace the old, following the old's return to fix the new's mistakes. Maybe there is hope this time, but recalling history, one would have doubts.

Slovenia has been independent for a little over 30 years. Our political identity has not yet been formed, and neither have strong parties that are consistent and lasting. Since Janša's affair filled term that lasted till 2008, there have been five different governments, and now Slovenians have voted for our sixth time.

Slovenian politics seem to be spinning in a circle, switching between newly formed parties shining with hope and the only consistent party, SDS. In just 30 years, Slovenians have voted in 14 general elections, with a new government every two years, on average. They have a big group of loyal voters.

Slovenia is a small country, and for it to succeed, it needs an open and consistent political sphere in which the government can cooperate. But it is not that easy. Slovenia is split into many different worldviews, from following right-wingers to following left-wingers, and an incoherent center, which is filled with too many parties who have similar programs.

This hurt the parties of two former prime ministers, Alenka Bratušek (SAB) and Marjan Šarec (LMŠ), who were part of the opposition in 2018-2020.

New faces falling off after limited success and resignation is nothing new in Slovenia, had LMŠ and SAB run as one party, they probably would have made the parliament. Still, Slovenia has too many parties who are unwilling to see their autonomy for the betterment of society, at least that's how I see it.

With students, cultural workers, and even other workers still in less than fortunate situations, there is significant hope for everyone, wishing that the new government be fair and competent. The currently proposed coalition of GS, SD, and the Left could be decent, and the opposition of SDS and NSI can be coherent and intelligent enough to keep the government in check or cause trouble.

Slovenia is clearing up from a turbulent few years, or even a few decades, so it isn't easy to have realistic expectations from the new government. Many people have wishes, but if anything, people feel more possibilities of influencing political decisions. In the past few years, a sense of empowerment has evolved that the masses have not felt in a while.

It was visible from the participation in the elections and the protests, good or bad. If not good, the times in front of us are interesting at the least, and one should look forward to what tomorrow holds.

 

 

    Middle Eastern states see their ability narrow to walk a fine line in the Ukraine conflict. Israel is a case in point as tensions with Iran in Syria and Palestinians in Jerusalem flare. Both Russia and the United States signal impatience with their attempts to straddle the fence.

The United States has cautioned that it would step up pressure on countries that fail to sanction Russia but has yet to single out Israel, home to significant Ukrainian and Russian Jewish communities that include various oligarchs.

In contrast, Russia has made its irritation with the Jewish state evident in recent days.

In doing so, Russia is playing on Israeli fears that Russia could backtrack on its tacit acquiescence to Israeli attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria, stiffen support for Iran, and back Palestinians who are clashing with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem.

Walking a fine line, Israel has rejected Ukrainian requests for arms sales and access to Israeli surveillance technology. However, it has provided humanitarian assistance to Ukraine's shared intelligence, voted for a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning the Russian invasion, and convinced the United Arab Emirates to do likewise. Israel also voted for an Assembly resolution suspending Russian membership in the UN Human Rights Council.

However, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid's assertion that Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine has tipped the balance in Moscow.

In a statement, the Russian foreign ministry charged that Mr. Laipd's remarks were "a poorly camouflaged attempt to take advantage of the situation in Ukraine to distract the international community's attention from one of the oldest unsettled conflicts - the Palestine-Israeli one."

Shortly after that, Russia's ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Viktorov, told an Israeli television station that Israel and Russia were "still" friends but that Moscow expected a "more balanced (Israeli) position."

Israeli journalist Zvi Bar'el noted,"' still' is the operative word, the one that has Israel in a complex dilemma on the Ukraine question."

To increase the pressure, Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, the deputy chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the Opposing Parties in Syria, disclosed that a Syrian-operated, Russian-made Buk M2E air defence system had recently intercepted a guided missile fired from an Israeli F-16 fighter jet in Syrian airspace. The disclosure constituted a warning that Russia may no longer tolerate future Israeli strikes against targets in Syria.

Israeli military sources suggested that Israel could step up its attacks in the belief that its window of opportunity in Syria could be closing at a time that Iranian forces may become more predominant in Syria, with Russia shifting troops and mercenaries to Ukraine.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi warned this week that his armed forces would not let Israel rest if it took action against the Islamic republic.

"You must know that if you try to take any action against the Iranian nation... our armed forces will not leave you in peace," Mr. Raisi said during a military parade to mark National Army Day, hinting that Iran could attack Israel's metropole, Tel Aviv.

In a similar shot across Israel's bow, Russian President Vladimir Putin this week condemned Israel's escalation of violence at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque in a phone call with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Mr. Putin assured Mr. Abbas that Russia would support the Palestinians in international fora.

Furthermore, Mr. Putin has demanded in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that he transfer control of Jerusalem's Church of St. Alexander Nevsky to Russia.

Located in Jerusalem's Old City, the church was supposed to be handed over to Russia as part of a deal two years ago to win the release of an Israeli-American national detained in Russia on drug charges.

Israeli justifications of its attempts to walk a middle ground on the back of efforts to mediate between Mr. Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are wearing thin as prospects evaporate for a negotiated end to the war any time soon.

Israeli officials acknowledge that when rather than if push comes to shove, Israel will have little choice but to fall in line with the United States and Europe.

"Israel's situation has become more complicated," one Israeli official admitted.

Undoubtedly, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are closely monitoring how Israel manages what amounts to a geopolitical minefield.

Like Israel, the two Gulf states have sought to chart an independent course, rejecting US demands that they increase oil production to reduce prices and venting anger at various US policies.

However, in the ultimate analysis, the Gulf states may find that they, like Israel, have fewer options than meet the eye.

The Real Impact of Iran’s Ballistic Missile Strike on Iraq

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ strikes may indicate that Iran is growing more emboldened and willing to directly retaliate with ballistic missiles against its adversaries.

On Sunday, March 13, Iran launched nearly a dozen Fateh-110 ballistic missiles at targets in Erbil, northern Iraq, close to the United States Consulate compound. The attack injured at least two people and caused significant damage to a number of cars and properties, including to the Kurdistan 24 newsroom.

It also heightened concerns about additional escalation amid the floundering efforts to revive the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

In claiming responsibility for the strike, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) declared that it had targeted “the strategic center of Zionist conspiracy and evil” in Erbil in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed two IRGC officers in Damascus, Syria, on March 7. The IRGC vowed to respond with “harsh, decisive, and destructive responses” against any “further adventuristic and malevolent measures.”

Later in the day, pro-Iranian media began claiming that the IRGC’s assault on Erbil had killed and wounded several members of Mossad, the Israeli spy agency, and that it was a response to a February 14 Israeli drone attack that “originated” in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). In comments to the media, Erbil’s governor denied that Israel was present in the KRI, but the Washington Post reported that U.S. officials believe that the IRGC targeted “houses where a Mossad cell was suspected to have operated.” 

Yet despite allegations of potential foreign interference in Iraq, Iraqi president Barham Salih described Iran’s attack was an “act of terror,” and the Iraqi Foreign Ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador in protest.

In any case, this is not the first time that Iran has claimed to have targeted Israeli intelligence assets in the KRI—similar reports were publicized in both April and September 2021. However, in contrast to mere accusations, it is apparent that the IRGC’s raid on March 13 is only the latest escalation in Iran and Israel’s ceaseless confrontation across the Middle East.

Iran has become noticeably more sensitive to Israel’s presence in recent years, especially since the United States assassinated IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani with assistance from Iraqi Kurdish special forces and Israeli intelligence in January 2020. This helps explain why, in October 2021, the IRGC initiated its largest military exercise to date on Iran’s border with Azerbaijan: Iranian concerns over Israel’s presence in the South Caucasus amplified a small border dispute with Azerbaijan into something far more contentious.

Nonetheless, Iran’s intentions to challenge an alleged Israeli presence in Iraq pose risks for the United States. Following the ballistic missile attack on March 13, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price issued a statement calling the attack an “outrageous violation of Iraq’s sovereignty,” but noted that there were “no indications the attack was directed at the United States.” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan similarly told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “no U.S. citizens were harmed … and no U.S. facilities were hit.” These statements are notable for two reasons.

First, they suggest that Iran’s missile capabilities are now so advanced that the IRGC can precisely destroy targets in close proximity to Americans without causing unwanted collateral damage or being reliably destroyed by U.S. missile defenses. Second, Iran has shown a remarkable amount of restraint in responding to perceived aggression, creating space for both retaliation and subsequent de-escalation. While senior U.S. military leaders had previously acknowledged this reality after Iran launched retaliatory missile strikes on a joint U.S.-Iraqi airbase following Soleimani’s killing in January 2020—wounding, but not killing, over 100 U.S. servicemembers—yesterday’s ballistic missile strike is further evidence of Iran’s capabilities and intentions.

Yet the IRGC’s strikes may also indicate that Iran is growing more emboldened and willing to directly retaliate with ballistic missiles against its adversaries. According to John Krzyzaniak, a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Iran has struck targets in Iraq and Syria with ballistic missiles six times since 2001, with five of those instances occurring after 2017. But with multiple asymmetric options to respond to perceived aggression, it is less clear why Iran is now relying on its ballistic missiles more often.

“Many previous issues that Iran was launching attacks in the aftermath of or retaliating for were not direct military attacks with Iranian casualties,” Alireza Ahmadi, an analyst at Gulf State Analytics and a research fellow at Vocal Europe, told me.

And although the IRGC’s March 13 attack “seems to indicate [Iran’s] growing confidence … whether Iran just found the perfect opportunity to make a bold statement or if this is to signal that retaliation will be more frequent and direct is hard to say right now.” Regardless, Ahmadi notes that “Iran has been developing the sophistication and accuracy of its missile fleet for exactly such deterrent action in lieu of being able to properly modernize its conventional military,” so Iran is likely to continue relying on ballistic missiles in deterring and countering the most egregious threats to its security.

This is not good news for the United States, which has long sought to avoid being dragged into the Iranian-Israeli conflict even as it has thrown its weight behind Israel and occasionally struck Iranian military assets. For example, the Trump administration offered such extensive support for Israel’s air war against Iranian military entrenchment in Syria that, according to The Jerusalem Post, then-U.S. secretary of defense James Mattis was “concerned” that Israeli actions would blowback against the United States.

Though President Joe Biden has also ordered airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias, most recently in Syria in February 2021, it is less clear whether his administration has sustained his predecessors’ stalwart support for Israeli military operations. Will Iranian military planners be so discerning? In November 2021, the New York Times revealed that after Israeli airstrikes destroyed Iranian military targets in Syria the previous month, Iran launched drone strikes against a U.S. military base in southern Syria, “the first time Iran has directed a military strike against the United States in response to an attack by Israel.” Additional attacks, with consequences far beyond the Middle East, could follow.

Certainly, trilateral tensions between the United States, Iran, and Israel have routinely complicated Washington and Tehran’s tortuous efforts to revive the JCPOA. The Israeli government remains firmly opposed to reinstating the agreement, sustaining its hostility even as a new government has taken the reins in Jerusalem’s Knesset and despite an outpouring of cathartic revelations by former Israeli security officials that the deal remains in Israel’s national interest.

Just last month, Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennet disparaged the impending nuclear deal for being “weaker” than it previously was, while his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, pointed to Iran’s March 13 assault on Erbil as another reason why Iran, and its potential commitment to the JCPOA, cannot be trusted.

Fortunately for Netanyahu, the decision to revive the JCPOA is no longer solely dependent on U.S. and Iranian proclivities. As scholars Hamidreza Azizi and Nicole Grajewski recently wrote for The National Interest, Russia’s demand for

“Written guarantees” that Western sanctions over Ukraine “will by no means affect our right to free and full-fledged trading, economic, investment, military and technical cooperation with Iran” … has stoked concerns that Moscow may try to take the JCPOA talks hostage in order to reap benefits for “sanctions-busting,” or to leverage the JCPOA as a bargaining chip to reach a deal with the West over Ukraine.

But regardless of Moscow’s motives, negotiations have been halted and Iran and the United States alike are apoplectic. As a matter of fact, despite Iran being careful not to imperil its close relations with Russia, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian proclaimed that “We won’t allow any foreign factors to impact our national interests” and sought “clarification” from Russia on its position. The reaction in Washington has been bolder. U.S. officials have firmly rejected Russia’s “irrelevant” demands and threatened to exclude Moscow by exploring alternative solutions if the Russians do not back down.

But arranging such an option is easier said than done: Iran and the United States had not yet resolved the final sticking points to reentering the JCPOA—potentially including prisoner swaps and formal guarantees that the United States won’t abruptly leave the deal a second time—before Russia sabotaged the proceedings. And now Iran’s March 13 missile strike on Erbil may have complicated negotiations further.

While not explicitly linked to the JCPOA talks, the timing of the IRGC’s missile attack is certainly suspect. The West is well aware that Iran can disrupt its interests in the Middle East and beyond without nuclear weapons, and this demonstration of Iranian missile capabilities is driving the necessity of a nuclear deal home harder.

 With negotiations at such a tenuous stage, any additional surprises or escalation could kill months of effort, and Biden’s Republican opponents and detractors are not letting this opportunity go to waste. “The desperate rush to sign this flawed nuclear agreement with Iran is not only absurd, it’s downright dangerous,” Netanyahu stated. “It would relieve sanctions and give them hundreds of billions of dollars in order to continue the terror that they waged yesterday and wage every day throughout the Middle East and the world … Have we learned nothing?”

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ strikes may indicate that Iran is growing more emboldened and willing to directly retaliate with ballistic missiles against its adversaries.

This article was first published in The National Interest.

 

Russia's invasion of Ukraine spotlights seemingly widening differences between the United States and its closest Middle Eastern allies, sparking eulogies for an era of bygone American regional dominance.

 

"America's Middle East Friendships are Dying a Natural Death," predicted foreign policy analyst Steven A. Cook this week after countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, to varying degrees, rebuffed US requests to help reduce energy prices and join sanctions against Russia.

 

A Saudi television satire that could not have been broadcasted without at least tacit government approval mocked US President Joe Biden as a leader who had lost his memory and needed Vice President Kamel Harris as a prop. The reference to Mr. Biden's memory was an apparent reference to Saudi and Emirati assertions that Mr. Biden has forgotten who America's longstanding regional allies are.

 

In a further sign of strained US-Saudi relations, Saudi Arabia this week pushed the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its partners, including Russia, to stop using oil data from the International Energy Agency's (IEA) numbers when assessing the state of the oil market because of the United States' alleged sway over the organization.

 

Swansongs for US regional partnerships may be premature, despite the daylight in attitudes towards the Ukraine crisis, a divergence in perceived national interests, Saudi and Emirati frustration with current American policies towards Iran, and uncertainty about Washington's continued commitment to regional security.

 

Analysis of the impact and political significance of the US military presence in the Middle East suggests a degree of interdependence between the United States and its regional partners that makes their partnerships both indispensable and irreplaceable for Middle Eastern autocratic rulers.

 

The analysis also suggests that neither China nor Russia have the capability or a military strategy predicated on the ability to project force in any part of the world or the wherewithal to replace the United States as the guarantor of the Middle East's autocratic rule.

 

Moreover, the Russian military performance in Ukraine laid bare logistical and maintenance problems that, coupled with the sanctions, make Russia a less attractive alternative arms supplier.

Saudi and Emirati crown princes Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed may be testing the limits of the leverage they derive from their interdependence with the United States by refusing to increase oil production to reduce oil prices and condemn Russia.

 

They may also be venting their anger at a US refusal to respond more robustly to Iranian and Iranian-backed Houthi rebel attacks on their oil facilities and critical infrastructure.

 

THIS WEEK, the US Navy said that it would initiate a new task force with allied countries to patrol the Red Sea in response to Houthi attacks on shipping in the strategic waterway without identifying the rebels by name.

 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly apologized to Mr. Bin Zayed last month for the slow US response to the attacks. Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to Washington, said a meeting between the two men had helped "move the relationship between the UAE and the US back on the right track."

 

The announcement and Mr. Biden's apology reaffirmed that the US military presence in the Gulf remains one pillar of the Gulf states' multi-faceted regime survival strategy. 

 

A study by political scientists and international affairs scholars Andrew Stravers and Dana El Kurd argues that, despite paying lip service to democratic values, the US commitment to autocratic rule in the Gulf is as much a function of US military strategy as it is of the Middle East's strategic geography that straddles some of the world's most important maritime chokepoints.

 

"American forces have an autocratising effect on host nations in strategically valuable regions. American and host interests align…in supporting regime survival where the location is critical to the United States and its global system of trade and military pre-eminence. This alignment produces increasing autocracy rather than simple regime stability,' Mr. Stravers and Ms. El Kurd wrote.

 

The authors argue that an American military presence can increase autocracy in strategic regions "where American planners are uncertain of the (national) military's ability to withstand regime change."

 

Some leaders in the Gulf have at times shared that uncertainty. Mr. Bin Zayed, for example, contracted Erik Prince, founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater, more than a decade ago to help ensure regime security.

 

Mr. Stravers and Ms. El Kurd go on to reason that the US military presence "produces a need for the host regime to suppress opposition, in order to maintain perceived stability and entrench its domestic position. This increases the level of authoritarianism over time."

 

This phenomenon is particularly true for the Gulf, where the loss of a military base would have far more far-reaching consequences for the US global position than the need to close or move a facility in, for example, Japan.

 

The authors' emphasis on the significance of strategic geography in support of autocracy or democratization is borne out in a comparison of US policy regarding the 2011 popular uprising in Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet, and protests six years earlier in Uzbekistan, where the US had a significant military presence at the height of the Afghan war.

 

The US stood aside when Saudi-led Gulf troops quashed the revolt in Bahrain. In Uzbekistan, Washington had no problem losing its military facilities after taking the government to task for repressing protests and violating human rights.

 

"An American military presence has an autocratising effect in particular regions of strategic importance. In areas of less strategic importance, American presence has relatively little effect on regimes," the authors concluded.

 

Mr. Stravers and Ms. El Kurd's analysis raises the question of whether recent Gulf moves related to Ukraine and Emirati efforts to return Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the Arab and international fold signal a watershed in relations with the United States or a step by Gulf leaders to flex their muscles at a time that the US may need them most.

 

The tendency of the US military presence to encourage increased autocracy may be something Messrs. Bin Salman and Bin Zayed don't want to lose, particularly not without an immediate replacement.

 

That is all the truer, given that it is not clear that either man has complete confidence in the ability of his security forces to fend off a concerted effort at regime change or an assault by Iran.

 

Messrs. Bin Salman and Bin Zayed's problem is that the decision about the future of the US presence in the Gulf is beyond their grasp.

Washington is lowering its valuation of the strategic importance of the Gulf's geography as its interest in the free flow of the region's energy diminishes.

 

Messrs. Bin Salman and Bin Zayed may be placing a risky bet: put the relationship with the US on edge in the hope that the need to replace Russian energy will return Washington to its senses.

 

That may be a long shot. But, just like Saudis and Emiratis remember that the US did not respond robustly to attacks on their critical facilities even if it took steps to reassure them, US policy and opinionmakers are likely to recall absent friends when they needed help most.

 

Russia's suspension from the United Nations Human Rights Council was long overdue, even without the mass killing of innocent civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.

 

A country that poisons or otherwise does away with its critics at home and abroad and stifles freedom of the press, expression, and association should not qualify for a seat on the Council.

 

A quick look at current and past membership in the Council explains why the UN General Assembly vote to suspend Russia, like multiple aspects of the Ukraine war, raises the specter of double standards.

 

Current members China and the United Arab Emirates rank alongside Russia among the world's worst human rights violators.

 

China has brutally repressed its Turkic Muslim population in the north-western province of Xinjiang to Sinicize its ethnic and religious identity. China has also built a surveillance state in which free access to information and basic human rights are denied.

 

So has the UAE, whose opposition to political Islam persuaded it to help topple Egypt's first and only democratically elected government and support devastating civil wars in Libya and Yemen.

 

Saudi Arabia was a Council member for the first five years of the kingdom's military intervention in Yemen, which has sparked one of the world's worst humanitarian crises in the Arab world's poorest nation.

 

Saudi Arabia lost the vote in 2020 for another term, less because of the Yemen war and more due to the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

 

"The protracted conflict in Yemen has killed almost a quarter of a million people directly or indirectly due to inadequate food, health care, and infrastructure. It has included unlawful attack after unlawful attack, with homes, hospitals, schools, and bridges among the civilian objects that the warring parties have targeted," said Human Rights Watch's Yemen researcher Afrah Nasser.

 

Ms. Nasser blamed both protagonists in the war, the Saudi-led coalition and the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

 

Raising hopes for ending the eight-year-long war, the warring partners agreed to a two-month ceasefire this week. However, those hopes were dampened by a Houthi refusal to engage with a newly created presidential council empowered by Yemen's internationally recognized president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

 

None of this excuses or diminishes Russia's actions.

 

However, the double standards exposed by Russia's suspension in the Human Rights Council go beyond the question of whether the Council should have a fit-and-proper test analog to Britain's assessment of candidate directors of the National Health Service Trust or prospective owners of clubs in its various football leagues.

 

The double standards also raise issues that go further than the difference between the reception granted by Europe and the United States to Ukrainian refugees as opposed to those fleeing wars in Syria, Libya, and Yemen or the Western country's willingness to counter foreign occupation, as in the case of Morocco and Western Sahara or Israel and Palestine.

 

The problem for the United States and Europe is that Ukraine has put its failure to address seemingly hypocritical double standards in the spotlight in ways that other conflicts have not.

 

The failure is likely to influence the broader battle for a new bi- or multipolar world order between the United States and China now that Russia has effectively removed itself from the equation.

 

The impact was already visible in a comparison of voting patterns in last month's condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine by the UN General Assembly and this month's suspension of Russian membership in the Human Rights Council.

 

The assembly condemned the invasion, with 141 countries voting in favor, five against, and 35 abstaining. However, those numbers dropped to 93 in favor, 24 against, and 58 abstaining in the vote on the Council.

 

Underlying the contrast are both question marks about the process of suspending Russian membership as more fundamental differences over what constitutes a human right that has come to the fore with the rise of multiple civilisationalist world leaders.

 

Singapore, the only Southeast Asian nation to join the US and European sanctioning of Russia, abstained in the Council vote pending an international commission of inquiry looking into human rights violations in Ukraine. Singapore said earlier that it had joined the sanctions to uphold the rule of law.

 

"We cannot accept the Russian government's violation of another sovereign state's sovereignty and territorial integrity. For a small state like Singapore, this is not a theoretical principle. Still, a dangerous precedent," the Singapore foreign ministry said at the beginning of the Russian invasion.

 

Civilizationalist leaders, including the presidents of Russia and China, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and Indian and Hungarian prime ministers Narendra Modi and Victor Orban, think in terms of collective rather than individual rights; authoritarian if not autocratic rule; and civilizational rather than nationally defined external and/or internal boundaries.

 

The divide was evident with countries like China and Russia voting against the suspension of Russia's Human Rights Council membership and India abstaining. But, interestingly, widely viewed as Mr. Putin's closest friend in Europe, Hungary voted in favor.

 

The spotlighting of the differences between democrats and civilizationalists puts a higher premium on consistency, integrity, and adherence to principle and raises the

 cost of maintaining double standards.

 

The battle between democrats and civilizationalists, or what New York Times

columnist David Brooks calls autocrats, "is not just a political or an economic conflict. It's a conflict about politics, economics, culture, status, psychology, morality, and religion all at once.

 

 To define this conflict most generously, I'd say it's the difference between the West's emphasis on personal dignity and much of the rest of the world's emphasis on communal cohesion," Mr. Brooks said.