A (N) (UN)NECESSARY RISK FOR THE U.S.?

STEVE COLL, NEW YORKER


In 1974, the Ford Administration conducted nuclear talks with Iran. Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, heir to the Peacock Throne and an American ally, had asserted his country’s right to build nuclear power plants. Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft sought a deal to reduce the risk that Iran could ever make an atomic bomb. They had to manage a restive Congress. A secret White House memo summarizing the problem noted that “special safeguards [that] might be satisfactory to Congress . . . are proving unacceptable to Iran.”

Ford’s talks failed, as did negotiations undertaken by the Carter Administration. In 1979, the Shah fell to the Iranian Revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini, believing that nuclear weapons were un-Islamic, initially put Iran’s program on ice. After Khomeini’s death, in 1989, his successors bargained, smuggled, and dissembled, and by 2009 they had installed enough equipment to make a bomb within a few years. This was President Obama’s inheritance. After six years of diplomacy, capped by energetic negotiations led by Secretary of State John Kerry—who seems on some days to be the only man in Washington enjoying his job—the Administration may at last have a deal in sight, judging from recent statements made by Kerry and by his Iranian counterparts.

The precise details of Obama’s offer are unknown. Broadly, Iran would freeze its program in such a way that, if it broke the agreement, it would need at least another year to make a bomb, and it would accept special inspections. In return, the U.S., the European Union, Russia, and China would agree to the lifting of economic sanctions. Republicans positioning themselves for 2016 have denounced any deal. Their opportunism, abetted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s divisive address to Congress earlier this month, has made it hard for Obama to clarify his argument: the bargain may carry risks, but it is better than any practical alternative.

One risk of any deal is that Iran will cheat successfully, as it has before. Between 2004 and 2009, it built a huge centrifuge facility under a mountain south of Tehran before Western intelligence agencies found out about the deception. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran still hasn’t come clean about its long history of secret weapons work. Yet Republican fear-mongering is overblown. The technology for detecting secret nuclear activity through atmospheric and water sampling, among other methods, isn’t foolproof, but it is very good. Large-scale cheating of the sort necessary to finish a bomb, which would require enriching uranium isotopes, would carry a significant risk of detection. If caught, Iran would likely face harsher economic sanctions, if not war.

A greater dilemma is that, by easing economic sanctions, a deal might empower Iran at a time when collapsing oil prices could reduce its ability to fund violent militias around the Middle East. The latest chapter of the Sunni-Shiite conflict is descending into a Thirty Years’ War of grotesquery—mass abductions, sexual slavery, tweeted beheadings.

The Revolutionary Guards have trained Hezbollah’s fighters in Lebanon and Syria and provided the group with hundreds of millions of dollars. There is evidence that officers from Iran’s Quds Force, the hardcore Special Forces of the Guards, are fighting alongside the barrel-bombing military of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Iran’s proxy violence does not cut entirely against American interests. Some of its enemies are also American enemies: the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. But many more Iranian foes are American allies, including Israel. Last week, a fragmented Yemen saw its civil war deepen further as Saudi Arabian warplanes intervened to bomb Shiite rebels backed by Iran.

These days, however, Iran looks overextended. Sanctions have cut the country’s oil exports by half, and the economy is contracting. The apparent willingness of the radical wing of Tehran’s regime to consider the nuclear freeze offered by the Obama Administration—a deal similar to ones that have failed previously—might be explained by the need to replenish the Revolutionary Guards’ sectarian war chest.

How would lifting sanctions not simply revitalize Iran’s expansionism? ...Last week, in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town, American warplanes, in tacit alliance with Iranian-backed Shiite militias, bombed Islamic State positions, only to have several of the militias withdraw in protest. Obama has committed the U.S. to what looks to be a long war in Iraq, with Iran’s help; an attack on the large city of Mosul is due soon. The Islamic State has thrived because it has captured the grievances and bitter desperation of Iraq’s Sunni minority. Attacking the Sunnis with Shiite fighters is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. If Iran’s proxies in Iraq gain more access to guns and money because of a nuclear deal with the West, that may only make things worse.


The record of Washington’s interventions in the sectarian landscape of Iran and Iraq is so abysmal that the case for restraint should be obvious. The Reagan Administration carried out a effort to foster mutual destruction between the two countries during the war that they fought from 1980 to 1988. (At the war’s inconclusive end, as Saddam Hussein gassed Iranian positions, the head of the Revolutionary Guards wrote to Khomeini suggesting that, if Iran wanted to prevail, it needed nukes.) The Bush Administration invaded Iraq to topple Saddam, [and in a classic case of unintended consequences], reignited sectarian fighting and, while disenfranchising Sunnis, opened a pathway for Iran.

One aim of Kerry’s dealmaking in Switzerland is to help stabilize the region by reducing the chance that Iran’s bomb program could set off a local atomic arms race. That is an objective worthy of considerable risk-taking. For four decades, American Presidents of both parties have recognized that it is unacceptable for Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb, and that the only rational way to prevent this is to negotiate. But a deal [carries the risk of maintaining an unstable Middle East, where Shiite and Sunni fighters continue to battle; where autonomy and self-governance for Sunnis opposed to the Islamic State remains hard to achieve, and will Iran refrain from intervening in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Gaza.?]

THE U.S.-IRAN NUCLEAR TALKS: IT'S COMPLICATED.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, center left, in a face-to-face discussion with Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s atomic agency, during a break in Switzerland. Credit Brian Snyder/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

TOM FRIEDMAN, NY TIMES

 I can think of many good reasons to go ahead with the nuclear deal with Iran, and I can think of just as many reasons not to. So, if you’re confused, let me see if I can confuse you even more.

The proposed deal to lift sanctions on Iran — in return for curbs on its bomb-making capabilities so that it would take at least a year for Tehran to make a weapon — has to be judged in its own right. I will be looking closely at the quality of the verification regime and the specificity of what happens if Iran cheats. But the deal also has to be judged in terms of how it fits with wider American strategic goals in the region, because a U.S.-Iran deal would be an earthquake that touches every corner of the Middle East. Not enough attention is being paid to the regional implications — particularly what happens if we strengthen Iran at a time when large parts of the Sunni Arab world are in meltdown.

The Obama team’s best argument for doing this deal with Iran is that, in time, it could be “transformational.” That is, the ending of sanctions could open Iran to the world and bring in enough fresh air — Iran has been deliberately isolated since 1979 by its ayatollahs and Revolutionary Guard Corps — to gradually move Iran from being a revolutionary state to a normal one, and one less inclined to threaten Israel. If one assumes that Iran already has the know-how and tools to build a nuclear weapon, changing the character of its regime is the only way it becomes less threatening.

The challenge to this argument, explains Karim Sadjadpour, a Middle East specialist at the Carnegie Endowment, is that while the Obama team wants to believe this deal could be “transformational,” Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, “sees it as transactional” — Iran plugs its nose, does the deal, regains its strength and doubles-down on its longstanding revolutionary principles. But, then again, you never know. What starts out as transactional can end up being transformational in ways that no one can prevent or predict.

A second argument is that Iran is a real country and civilization, with competitive (if restricted) elections, educated women and a powerful military. Patching up the U.S.-Iran relationship could enable America to better manage and balance the Sunni Arab Taliban in Afghanistan, and counterbalance the Sunni jihadists, like those in the Islamic State, or ISIS, now controlling chunks of Iraq and Syria. The United States has relied heavily on Saudi Arabia, ever since Iran’s 1979 revolution, and while the Saudi ruling family and elites are aligned with America, there is a Saudi Wahhabi hard core that has funded the spread of the most puritanical, anti-pluralistic, anti-women form of Islam that has changed the character of Arab Islam and helped to foster mutations like ISIS. There were no Iranians involved in 9/11.

Then again, it was Iranian agents who made the most lethal improvised explosives in Iraq that killed many American troops there. And it was Iran that encouraged its Iraqi Shiite allies to ....overplay their hand in stripping power from Iraqi Sunnis, which is what helped to produce the ISIS counterreaction.

“In the fight against ISIS, Iran is both the arsonist and the fire brigade,” added Sadjadpour. To Saudi Arabia, he added, the rise of ISIS is attributable to the repression of Sunnis in Syria and Iraq by Iran and its Shiite clients. To Tehran, the rise of ISIS is attributable to the financial and ideological support of Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies.

And they are both right, which is why America’s interests lie not with either the Saudis or the Iranian ideologues winning, but rather with balancing the two against each other until they get exhausted enough to stop prosecuting their ancient Shiite-Sunni, Persian-Arab feud. [But, will they ever get exhausted? We're still waiting for Israel and the Palestinians to exhaust themselves.-Esco]

Then again, if this nuclear deal with Iran is finalized, and sanctions lifted, much more Iranian oil will hit the global market, suppressing prices and benefiting global consumers. Then again, Iran would have billions of dollars more to spend on cyberwarfare, long-range ballistic missiles and projecting power across the Arab world, where its proxies already dominate four Arab capitals: Beirut, Baghdad, Damascus and Sana.

But, given the disarray in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, do we really care if Iran tries to play policeman there and is embroiled in endless struggles with Sunni militias?  For 10 years, it was America that was overstretched across Iraq and Afghanistan. Now it will be Iran’s turn. I feel terrible for the people who have to live in these places, and we certainly should use American air power to help prevent the chaos from spreading to islands of decency like Jordan, Lebanon and Kurdistan in Iraq. But managing the decline of the Arab state system is not a problem we should own. We’ve amply proved that we don’t know how.

So before you make up your mind on the Iran deal, ask how it affects Israel, the country most threatened by Iran. But also ask how it fits into a wider U.S. strategy aimed at quelling tensions in the Middle East with the least U.S. involvement necessary and the lowest oil prices possible.

Obama, at U.N., Urges Allies to Join Fight Against ISIS. Bombings Continue As ISIS Beheads French Tourist..

                                          Image CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

N.Y. TIMES

President Obama laid out a forceful new blueprint on Wednesday for deeper American engagement in the Middle East, telling the United Nations General Assembly that the Islamic State understood only “the language of force” and that the United States would “work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death...Those who have joined ISIL should leave the battlefield while they can,” Mr. Obama said in a blunt declaration of his intentions.

In a much-anticipated address two days after he expanded the American-led military campaign against the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, into Syria, Mr. Obama said, “Today, I ask the world to join in this effort,” declaring, “We will not succumb to threats, and we will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build, not those who destroy.”

 

 

Toward that end the Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday calling on all countries to adopt laws making it a serious crime for their citizens to join a militant group like the Islamic State or the Nusra Front.

Mr. Obama’s efforts to forge a strong coaltion to fight the Islamic State received another lift Wednesday from Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, who recalled Parliament to meet on Friday and vote on whether to join U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq after Baghdad requested help, the British government said. France has already taken part.

 

The military campaign against the Islamic State, Mr. Obama said, is only the most urgent of a raft of global challenges in which the United States has had no choice but to play a leadership role. These include resisting Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, coordinating a response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, from brokering a new unity government in Afghanistan, and marshaling a new push to confront climate change.

Mr. Obama delivered a searing critique of Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and promised to impose a rising cost on the government of President Vladimir V. Putin for what he called its aggression. He was particularly critical in describing the downing of a Malaysian commercial airliner over eastern Ukraine in July by what the United States and its allies have said was a Russian-made missile system, and he denounced the subsequent efforts to block recovery teams to investigate. All 298 people aboard were killed.

“This is a vision of the world in which might makes right,” he said, “a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed.”

 On the Syrian civil war and Iran — issues that Mr. Obama identified last year as two of his top priorities — he struck a markedly different tone. He mentioned Iran only in a cursory fashion, asking its leaders not to let the opportunity for a nuclear agreement slip by. American officials have privately expressed deep skepticism about the likelihood of reaching a deal with Tehran, and Mr. Obama’s remarks suggested that he shared that pessimism.

The president also did not single out the Syrian president for criticism, as he did last year, over the use of chemical weapons, though he spoke of the brutality of the civil war. Mr. Assad has voiced support for the American-led strikes in Syria, and his air force has not interfered with American war planes entering Syrian air space.

 

In Mr. Obama’s substance and tone, he conveyed a starkly different president than the one who addressed skeptical world leaders at the General Assembly last year...[instead] He spoke with the urgency of a wartime president, seeking to rally allies. Still, it remained unclear whether Mr. Obama’s speech represented a fundamental reconsideration of his policy or a reluctant response to the threat posed by the Islamic State, which took on emotional resonance for the American public after the militants posted videos of American hostages who were beheaded.

 

Mr. Obama made clear that the United States would act only if surrounded by a broad coalition. He dwelled on his success in signing up five Arab nations to take part in the airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria, casting it as a historic moment in which the Sunni Arab world was united to fight the scourge of Sunni extremism.

 

To some extent, Mr. Obama’s remarks seemed designed to get past months in which the president appeared openly conflicted about the proper use of American military force in the Middle East — an ambivalence that opened him to criticisms of being irresolute.

 

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Hervé Gourdel is seen with his captors moments before his execution in the video distributed by SITE Intelligence Group

 

In a sign of the growing influence of the extremist group known as the Islamic State, fighters aligned with the organization beheaded a French tourist in Algeria and released a video on Wednesday documenting the brutal killing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

The Frenchman — Hervé Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountaineering guide from Nice — was kidnapped over the weekend, soon after the Islamic State called on its supporters around the world to harm Europeans in retaliation for the recent airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.

The Algerian fighters swiftly responded to the Islamic State’s call by posting a video of Mr. Gourdel in captivity, appearing disoriented and still carrying his camera slung around his neck.

In addition, a militant group in the Philippines also announced that it was holding European captives: two Germans whom it threatened to kill unless Germany pays ransom or stops supporting the American-led campaign against the Islamic State.

 

Policy makers have debated for months whether the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is able to strike directly at the West. Its capacity for large-scale terrorist attacks beyond its home in the Middle East remains in dispute. But the beheading of Mr. Gourdel and the threat to kill the two Germans demonstrate that smaller groups around the world aligned with the Islamic State are capable of kidnapping Westerners and using them for grisly propaganda purposes in sympathy with the organization.

 

Small jihadist groups elsewhere in North Africa — like Libya and Tunisia — as well as in the Caucasus and in Southeast Asia have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, and many of them operate in areas where Westerners frequently travel, including tourists, journalists and aid workers.

The public oaths of allegiance indicate that the smaller groups have placed themselves under the command of the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Analysts have questioned how close these relationships are, but the sequence of events over the weekend suggested that at least the Algerian cell was directly following the larger group’s orders.

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The vast majority of airstrikes launched against Sunni militant targets in Syria have been carried out by American war planes and ship-based Tomahawk cruise missiles, military officials said Tuesday, in what they described as the successful beginning of a long campaign to degrade and destroy the Islamic State.

In disclosing the identities of the five Sunni Arab nations that joined or supported the attacks in Syria — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar — the Obama administration sought to paint a picture of an international coalition resolute in its determination to take on the Sunni militant group.

 

Turkey had been reluctant to play a prominent role in the American-led coalition while the militants held 49 Turkish hostages. But now that they have been released, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled Tuesday that Turkey would assist the effort in some way.

But Mr. Erdogan, who is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, did not provide details.

 

 

AIR ATTACKS ERUPT BETWEEN ISRAEL & HAMAS, BUT ISRAEL'S INCREDIBLE IRON DOMES KEEP THEIR CASUALTIES TO ONE DEATH

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times       

For the first time since firing began last week, caused by the horrific murders of three Israeli teens by Palestinian extremists, and the revenge torture and murder of a young Palestinian by Israeli Jewish extremists, Israel carried out its first ground operation.

According to officials, Israeli commandos hit a rocket-launching site during a raid. Four Israeli soldiers were wounded during a gun fight with Palestinian fighters. In addition, the Israeli military issued a warning to Palestinians living in northern Gaza to evacuate ahead of heavier airstrikes. As a result, thousands of Palestinians fled south or those with dual nationalities fled completely.



Palestinians who live near the northern border with Israel found shelter Sunday at a United Nations-run school in Gaza City. Credit Wissam Nassar for The New York Times

Several thousand Palestinians, defying the urging of Hamas to remain in their homes, fled areas in northern Gaza after Israel warned them through fliers and phone calls of major attacks to come.

Israel and Hamas seemed to signal little public interest in international appeals for a cease-fire as they continued their barrages....

But as the bombing and rocketing continued, there was growing international pressure on Israel to settle for a cease-fire, called for by France, Britain and a nonbinding resolution of the United Nations. Those calls were intensified by the bombing that killed some of a center’s disabled residents early Saturday, and the funeral on Sunday for the 17 relatives who died in a bombing late Saturday when Israel tried to kill Gen. Tayseer al-Batsh, the Hamas police chief. General Batsh, who was seriously wounded, was visiting his aunt’s house, which was reduced to rubble, neighbors said, by bombs that sent body parts at least 100 yards.

A Palestinian stone-thrower stands near a tire set ablaze during clashes with Israeli police in Shuafat, an Arab suburb of Jerusalem July 2, 2014. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

WASHINGTON POST

Aaron David Miller July 11

Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, has served as a Middle East adviser for Republican and Democratic secretaries of state. He is the author of the forthcoming “The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President.”

 

There are many downsides to spending nine months trying to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian agreement when one was never possible. Secretary of State John Kerry failed in April because Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas couldn’t or wouldn’t find common ground on the big sticking points, such as how to divide Jerusalem and how to handle Palestinian refugees. Even if Kerry had succeeded, extremists might have sought to derail the deal. In the spring of 1996, for example, Hamas conducted four suicide attacks in nine days, killing about 60 Israelis, in an effort to ensure that the Oslo peace process would not continue after an Israeli extremist assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Several of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition partners think the Israeli army should reoccupy Gaza and destroy Hamas. But most Israelis and Palestinians know that isn’t the answer; they’ve lived through two tragic prequels to this movie. For three weeks in 2008-2009 and one week in 2012, Israel and Hamas confronted each other. And each time, the aftermath was predictable: No Israel-Hamas problem can be solved through force of arms — only managed. In the first case, Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire; in the second, the Egyptians brokered one. Israel achieved a measure of deterrence that lasted until the next round; Hamas, beaten up badly, survived politically and restocked its arsenal of long-range weapons.
Israel isn’t prepared to pay the political, economic or psychological price that would come with occupying Gaza or launching a massive military intervention to destroy Hamas as an organization. Indeed, there are no solutions, only another outcome that may buy Israel a temporary quiet but won’t eliminate Hamas’s rockets.



The violence in the West Bank and Gaza clearly could escalate, particularly if civilian deaths in Gaza rise dramatically. And the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been preternaturally quiet during the past several years makes the current violence seem more severe. But that doesn’t necessarily suggest, as some commentators have, that we’re facing another intifada. Or that it would be similar to the first, from 1987 to 1991, which was a broad popular uprising organized at the grass-roots level; or to the second, from 2000 to 2004, a suicide terror campaign led by Hamas, Fatah-affiliated groups and others that culminated in a sustained military confrontation with the Israel Defense Forces.

The Palestinian public suffered immensely from the latter, which produced nothing but political and economic disaster, and it doesn’t want to go through that again. Polls in early June indicated that Palestinians were far more focused on economic concerns than on launching a massive uprising. And unlike Yasser Arafat, who never really gave up the gun and died during the second intifada, President Abbas is neither willing nor able to direct a war against Israel. A sustained confrontation would also require serious cooperation between Hamas and Fatah, and neither side — despite their so-called unity agreement — seems interested in that.

Some believe that the Israeli prime minister’s antagonism toward Palestinians provoked the current crisis .... he remains the only Likud prime minister to cede territory in the West Bank. He has struck hard at Hamas previously, but his record is one of restraint when compared with predecessors such as Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon .



Today, Netanyahu is a man stuck in the middle: His advisers on the right want a more expansive military approach. His critics on the left believe he will always opt for military strength. But, from what I hear, Netanyahu does not want an escalation, even though he wants to deal Hamas a severe blow. So far, as terrible as the Israeli strikes on Hamas have been for Gazan civilians, this remains a limited operation, not the type of large-scale military sweep seen in Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon or 2009’s Operation. Long-range Hamas missiles directed at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem might still trigger a much broader conflict, but not because Netanyahu wants one.

BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK

Israel's 'Iron Dome' defence system is activated to shoot down an incoming rocket fired by Palestinians militants, near the city of Ashdod

Israel’s astonishingly effective Iron Dome air defense has prevented Hamas from killing Israelis and spreading terror in the civilian population.
Israel hardly feels like a place under assault from close range. Bars, restaurants, and the Mediterranean beaches are still busy. Businesses are open. Although traffic is lighter than normal, the roads are hardly abandoned. Incoming rockets that would ordinarily wreak havoc are being blown up in the air, causing nothing but a boom, a puff of white smoke, and falling debris. Iron Dome’s success rate hovers around 90 percent. No other system in the world is as effective in shooting down short-range and medium-range rockets.

Iron Dome: A missile is launched by an 'Iron Dome' battery, a missile defence system designed to intercept and destroy incoming short-range rockets and artillery shells, in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2697019/

The health ministry in Gaza on Friday reported that Israeli airstrikes against targets in Gaza had killed more than 100 Palestinians, with more than 500 injured. By contrast, as the Jewish Sabbath was about to begin on Friday evening, just one Israeli had died from Hamas’s rocket attacks—an elderly woman in Haifa who had a heart attack while seeking shelter. (Eight others were injured, one seriously, when a rocket hit a gas station in Ashdod on Friday morning.)

As is usually the case in this asymmetrical war, the death toll is much higher in Gaza, where innocent women and children have died alongside Hamas operatives. The difference is that while Hamas is trying to kill civilians, Israel is trying to avoid harming them while it goes after combatants. Because Hamas hides its launchers, rocket factories, and stockpiles in densely populated areas, it’s impossible for Israel to avoid killing innocents.

The success of Iron Dome to date also creates painfully high expectations for continued success. The burden is felt most intensely by the operators of the seven (soon to be eight) batteries of Iron Dome interceptors, who are like overworked goalkeepers in the World Cup. The Iron Dome can be configured to operate automatically, but the Israeli air force has chosen to have human beings push the firing buttons. I spoke today with Lieutenant Colonel Assaf Librati, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, who told me that the people who push the buttons are low-ranking officers, typically from 19 to 23 years old. The officers are authorized to fire extra interceptors if they feel an extra margin of safety is required or to overrule the Iron Dome targeting software if they think it might be mistakenly perceiving a harmless airplane as an incoming rocket. “They’re making sometimes very hard choices,” Librati said.

It will get harder for Iron Dome to live up to the high expectations for it. Hamas is constantly upgrading its arsenal with faster and longer-range rockets. The nightmare scenario for Israel would be a Hamas or other foe equipped with cruise missiles that can twist and turn in flight to evade interceptors. Or, perhaps sooner, a simultaneous launch of so many rockets that Iron Dome can’t shoot them all down. In a conference call with reporters this evening, Yair Ramati, the director of the Homa Administration within Israel’s defense ministry, said that Iron Dome has improved significantly since its first use in 2011, staying “one step ahead of the enemy.” But he said that Hamas is constantly probing the system for weaknesses.
For now, though, Iron Dome is more popular in Israel than hummus and falafel. And Hamas is still hunting for a way to damage its enemy.

U.N. Recognizes Palestine as Nonmember State

The United Nations General Assembly voted to recognize Palestine as a nonmember state Thursday, in a move that strengthens the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. More than 130 countries voted to recognize Palestine as a nonmember observer state, a stinging defeat for Israel and the United States. Palestinians could use their enhanced status to fuel renewed peace talks or to confront Israel in new ways.

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It’s time for Palestinians to unite, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday. People crammed in at a rally in Ramallah, where Abbas spoke after returning from a successful trip to the United Nations, which gave “nonmember observer state” status to the authority. The change puts the Palestinians on the same footing as the Vatican in the eyes of the international organization. The most important divide facing Abbas lies between his own Fatah party, based in the West Bank, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Abbas said Sunday that he thinks the two factions can “achieve reconciliation.”

Read it at CNN

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FRESH AIR   

Writing for the New York Review of Books at the beginning of November, Robert Malley, the program director for the Middle East and North Africa with the International Crisis Group, and Hussein Agha described the current situation in the Middle East:

Alliances are topsy-turvy, defy logic, are unfamiliar and shifting. Theocratic regimes back secularists; tyrannies promote democracy; the U.S. forms partnerships with Islamists; Islamists support Western military intervention. Arab nationalists side with regimes they have long combated; liberals side with Islamists with whom they then come to blows. Saudi Arabia backs secularists against the Muslim Brothers and Salafis against secularists. The U.S. is allied with Iraq, which is allied with Iran, which supports the Syrian regime, which the U.S. hopes to help topple. The U.S. is also allied with Qatar, which subsidizes Hamas, and with Saudi Arabia, which funds Salafis who inspire jihadists who kill Americans whenever they can.