Hamas and Iran

Update from AIJAC

Hamas and Iran

May 12, 2006
Number 05/06 #06

Today's Update opens with an examination of the increasingly strong alliance between Hamas and Iran, as both become the focus of major international policy controversies. The piece in question is by Anna Mahjar-Barducci, an Arab-Italian based in Tunis, who looks at the increasingly close relationship, and argues that for Hamas, at least, it is a fatal attraction. She has some other interesting things to say about the relationship. To read it all CLICK HERE.

Iran's nuclear program is of course an ongoing crisis, and some are now urging that the key to solving it is for the US to engage in comprehensive direct talks with Iran (never mind that in the past, it has always been Iran that has refused official direct talks with the US). Amir Taheri, the Iranian exile who is a noted journalist and author on Middle East affairs, answers this argument with some history. He points out that all past efforts to solve crises in a similar way with Iran have been disasters, and what is needed is a specific strategy. For his full argument that calling for negotiations is just cheap talk, CLICK HERE.

Hamas, of course, is in the news because of the ongoing debate about what to do about their refusal to recognise Israel, renounce terror or adhere to existing agreements. But there is another reason that should be highlighted more - the growing threat of a Hamas-Fatah civil war, with violence between what are essentially rival militias almost everyday. Here's an important article revealing how far things have sunk - Israel has apparently had to intervene to prevent an attempt by the Hamas military wing to assassinate PA President and Fatah Leader Mahmoud Abbas. For all the details, CLICK HERE.

Fatal attraction: the Hamas-Iran alliance

By Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Daily Star (Lebanon), Monday, May 08, 2006

The Iranian regime and Hamas are currently upgrading their alliance, which is over a decade long. It is an alliance across the great Islamic divide, between a Sunni group and a Shiite regional power. Radical religious movements do not easily form alliances; they tend to fight each other, at times over small details of doctrine. On the rare occasions they do unite, it is generally to jointly suppress other schools of thought.

The contemporary strife between Sunnis and Shiites can be traced back to the 1979 revolution in Iran, a revolution that, once it was commandeered by the clergy, aspired to embrace the entire Islamic world. The huge surge of pride in, and support for, the revolution in the Muslim world, threatened Sunni religious hegemony, led by the Saudi custodians of the two holy places in Mecca and Medina.

The Saudi and Sunni reaction was not long in coming, and it led to two great victories that restored Sunni predominance in the Islamic world: a 10-year effort, where Saudi Arabia used a great deal of its resources to support the jihad in Afghanistan, leading to the defeat of the Soviet empire; and an equally substantial effort by the kingdom to spread Sunni, albeit Wahhabi, Islam through its funding of Islamic centers and mosques worldwide, and through the formation of a network of alliances. More recently, however, the election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked the start of a second Islamic Revolution, and with it a revival of radical aspirations dating back to the days of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. During the second Intifada it was assisted by the Iranian-supported Lebanese Shiite group, Hizbullah. This evolved into significant military support and financial assistance. These ties were sponsored by the Iranian regime and strengthened the relationship between Hamas and Iran. This alliance was further reinforced by the fact that senior Hamas official Khaled Meshaal is headquartered in Syria, so that the movement effectively became part of the Iranian-Syrian-Hizbullah axis. However, Hamas has never submitted to the directives of its Shiite-supported benefactors.

Western states decided to freeze financial aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) after Hamas' victory in the January Palestinian legislative elections. PA President Mahmoud Abbas, for his part, also chose to politically confront the movement, in an attempt to force Hamas to honor prior agreements between the PA and Israel. However, for Hamas changing its strategy effectively means ceasing to exist. Survival also means securing new funding, which is why Hamas' only real option was to turn to Iran, the one government that officially and fully shares its goals. Improving the alliance was exactly what Hamas needed at that critical juncture.

Iran, for its own part, needs Hamas too - maybe even more than Hamas needs Iran. But while the Islamic Republic, in supporting the Sunni militant movement, is pursuing its own interests, Hamas, by aligning itself with Iran, is pursuing its own destruction.

The alliance with Iran will increase Hamas' isolation from the West. But Hamas does not want to transform itself from a resistance movement into a political party. The extent of the financial aid it will receive from Tehran is also unclear: Reports range from $50 million to $100 million. But even the higher sum is hardly enough to sustain the PA, considering its yawning deficit. Hamas still hasn't realized the difference between governing a country and supporting poor Palestinian refugees. Moreover, the alliance with Iran will cost Hamas the support of its Sunni hinterland: Saudi Arabia has already delayed the $92 million it promised the PA, releasing only $20 million at the personal request of Abbas. Thus, Hamas' only gain from its alliance with Iran will be support for its resistance against Israel.

The Hamas-Iran alliance is a fatal attraction. Hamas and Ahmadinejad are true "holy" warriors. As the Arabic saying goes, they are the type who fight in the khanadiq (trenches), not the fanadiq (hotels). The Hamas leadership identifies more with Ahmadinejad, the popular leader who wears second-hand jackets like they do, than with the Muslim Brotherhood sheikhs who wear expensive robes and own shares in American chain-stores, like Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradhawi. Hamas and the Iranian president share not only religious ideals and positions on Israel, but also, and especially, their social outlook. Both came to power on the basis of platforms in which they vowed, among other things, to fight corruption and respond to the needs of the poor.

At the Al-Quds conference in Tehran in mid-April, Meshaal publicly thanked the Iranian regime for its help, confirming the tighter alliance with Iran. The summit took place a few days after Ahmadinejad's speech about progress in the Iranian nuclear program. Tehran needed the conference to demonstrate that it was not alone, and to show its deterrence capabilities. By saying that Iran was building an army of suicide bombers, Ahmadinejad wanted to make clear to the United States and Israel that it they decided to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, Hizbullah and Hamas were ready to retaliate.

As in the Persian "Shahnameh" epic, Ahmadinejad is leading the battle of the forces of good against the forces of evil - the West and Israel. In joining this battle, Hamas is entering a long dark tunnel with no way out. Now, with Fatah split and virtually dying, maybe it's time for the Palestinian people to think about building a new national movement.

Anna Mahjar-Barducci is a Tunis-based Moroccan-Italian journalist. She was correspondent in the Occupied Territories during the second Intifada. Her commentaries are regularly published in the Italian daily Il Foglio. She wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.

The Perils of Engagement

Calling for talks with Iran is just cheap talk.

BY AMIR TAHERI

Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, May 9, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Something interesting is happening with regard to the crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Slowly the blame is shifting from the mullahs to the Bush administration as the debate is redirected to tackle the hypothetical question of U.S. military action rather than the Islamic Republic's real misdeeds. "No War on Iran" placards are already appearing where "No Nukes for Iran" would make more sense.

The attempt at fabricating another "cause" with which to bash America is backed by the claim that the mullahs are behaving badly because Washington refuses to talk to them. Some of this buzz is coming from those who for years told the U.S. to let them persuade Iran to mend its ways. They include German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his British and French colleagues in the European Union trio that negotiated with Iran for years. Preparing to throw in the towel, they now say the U.S. should "directly engage" Iran. That would enable them to hide their failures and find a pretext for blaming future setbacks on the U.S.

The "engage Iran" coalition also has advocates in the U.S. Over the past few weeks they have hammered the "engagement" theme with op-eds, TV soundbites and speeches. Some have recommended John Kennedy's "sophisticated leadership" during the Cuban missile crisis as a model for George W. Bush. The incident has entered American folklore as an example of "brilliant diplomacy," but few bother to examine the small print. The crisis, as you might recall, started when the Soviets installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, something they were committed not to do in a number of accords with the U.S. Kennedy reacted by threatening to quarantine Cuba until the missiles were removed. The Soviets ended up "flinching" and agreed to removal.

In exchange they got two things. First, the U.S. agreed never to take or assist hostile action against Castro, offering his regime life insurance. The second was to remove the Jupiter missiles installed in Turkey as part of NATO's defenses. Instead of being punished, Castro and his Soviet masters were doubly rewarded for undoing what they shouldn't have done in the first place. And Castro was free to do mischief not only in Latin America but also in Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf, often on behalf of Moscow, right up to the fall of the U.S.S.R. Applied to Iran, the "Kennedy model" would provide the mullahs, now facing mounting discontent at home, with a guarantee of safety from external pressure, allowing them to suppress their domestic opponents and intensify mischief-making abroad.

Believe it or not, the second model for engaging Iran is actually Jimmy Carter's policy towards the mullahs. Mr. Carter has called for a "diplomatic solution," and Zbigniew Brzezinski, his national security adviser, has published an op-ed blaming the Bush administration for the crisis. He writes: "Artificial deadlines, propounded most often by those who do not wish the U.S. to negotiate in earnest, are counterproductive. Name-calling and saber rattling, as well as a refusal to even consider the other side's security concerns, can be useful tactics only if the goal is to derail the negotiating process."

Let's forget that the "artificial deadlines" have been set by the IAEA and the U.N. Security Council, and that most of the "name-calling and saber rattling" has come from Tehran. But let us recall one fact that Mr. Brzezinski does not mention--that the Carter administration did "engage" with the mullahs without artificial deadlines, saber rattling and name-calling. The results for the U.S. were disastrous.

In 1979, soon after the mullahs seized power, Mr. Carter sent Ayatollah Khomeini a warm congratulatory letter. Mr. Carter's man at the U.N., a certain Andrew Young, praised Khomeini as "a 20th-century saint." Mr. Carter also tapped his closest legal advisor, the late Lloyd Cutler, as U.S. ambassador to the mullarchy.

A more dramatic show of U.S. support for the mullahs came when Mr. Brzezinski flew to Algiers to meet Khomeini's prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan. This was love at first sight--to the point where Mr. Carter approved the resumption of military supplies to Iran, even as the mullahs were executing Iranians by the thousands, including many whose only "crime" was friendship with the U.S. The Carter administration's behavior convinced the mullahs that the U.S. was a paper tiger and that it was time for the Islamic Revolution to highlight hatred of America. Mr. Carter reaped what he had sown when the mullahs sent "student" fanatics to seize the U.S. embassy compound, a clear act of war, and hold its diplomats hostage for 444 days. "The Carter administration's weakness was a direct encouragement to [anti-American] hard-liners," wrote Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, one of the hostage-takers, years later.

Mr. Brzezinski's op-ed took the title "Been There, Done That," meant as a sneering nod to events that led to the liberation of Iraq. A more apt title, however, is: "Been There, Done That, Learned Nothing"--a nod to Mr. Brzezinski's failure to learn the lessons of Iran even three decades later.

The third model for engaging Iran is the Clinton model. Beating his own drum, Bill Clinton has rejected the threat of force and called for "engaging" Iran. This is how he put it in a recent speech: "Anytime somebody said in my presidency, 'If you don't do this, people will think you're weak,' I always asked the same question for eight years: 'Can we kill 'em tomorrow?' If we can kill 'em tomorrow, then we're not weak." Mr. Clinton's pseudo-Socratic method of either/or-ing issues out of existence is too well-known to merit an exposé. This time, however, Mr. Clinton did not ask enough questions. For example, he might have asked: What if by refusing to kill some of them today we are forced to kill many more tomorrow? Also: What if, once assured that we are not going to kill them today, they regroup and come to kill us in larger numbers? We all know the answers.

Mr. Clinton did not reveal that in 1999 he offered the mullahs "a grand bargain" under which the Islamic Republic would be recognized as the "regional power" in exchange for lip service to U.S. "interests in the Middle East." As advance payment for the "bargain" Mr. Clinton apologized for "all the wrongs that my country and culture have done" to Iran, whatever that was supposed to mean. The "bargain," had it not been vetoed by the "Supreme Guide" in Tehran, might have secured Mr. Clinton the Nobel Peace Prize he coveted, but it would have sharpened the mullahs' appetite for "exporting" revolution.

President Bush can learn from the Kennedy, Carter and Clinton models by not repeating their mistakes. What the U.S. needs is an open, honest and exhaustive debate on what to do with a regime that claims a mission to drive the U.S. out of the Middle East, wipe Israel off the map, create an Islamic superpower, and conquer the world for "The Only True Faith." The options are clear: retreat and let the Islamic Republic advance its goals; resist and risk confrontation, including military conflict; or engage the Islamic Republic in a mini-version of Cold War until, worn out, it self-destructs.

With the options clear, Messrs. Carter, Brzezinski and Clinton along with other "engagers" would have to tell us which they favor and, if they like none, what alternative they offer. Calling for talks is just cheap talk. It is important to say what the proposed talks should be about. In the meantime, talk of "constructive engagement" is sure to encourage President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's intransigence. Why should he slow down, let alone stop, when there are no bumps on the road?

Mr. Taheri is author of "L'Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes" (Editions Complexe, 2002).

Israel foils plot to kill Palestinian president

Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv

Sunday Times, (London), May 7

A HAMAS plot to assassinate Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been thwarted after he was tipped off by Israeli intelligence.

Hamas’s military wing, the Izza Din Al-Qassem, had planned to kill Abbas at his office in Gaza, intelligence sources said.

Abbas, who became president of the Palestinian Authority last year after the death of Yasser Arafat, was formally warned of the danger by the Israelis and cancelled a planned visit to the territory.

The murder plan is the clearest sign yet of the tensions inside the Palestinian Authority between Hamas, which swept to power after elections in January, and Abbas’s Fatah movement.

Hamas leaders, who refuse to recognise the state of Israel, suspect Abbas of obstructing their attempts to govern, which have been hampered by a financial boycott from donor nations. “Hamas considers Abbas to be a barrier to its complete control over Palestine and decided to kill him,” said a Palestinian source who was an adviser to Arafat and is a close acquaintance of Abbas.

It is understood that the attack would also have targeted Mohammed Dahlan, Abbas’s strongman in Gaza.

The sources were unable to say who in Hamas’s secretive leadership had given the order to kill Abbas. But an indication of its hostility towards Abbas came last week.

In a statement to Al-Jazeera, the Arab television news network, Mohammed Nazzal, one of its leaders, accused the president of being party to “besieging and isolating the Hamas-led government”.

Abbas, who is guarded by his own security men, divides his time between his Gaza and Ramallah offices. While in the West Bank he is relatively safe, but Gaza — stronghold of Hamas and numerous rogue terrorist organisations — is a dangerous place. Shortly after his election to the presidency Abbas narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in the Gaza Strip.

A recent request to the Israeli government to let him bring in new weapons for his presidential guard was rejected by Shaul Mofaz, the outgoing Israeli defence minister.

However, the Israelis could not ignore intelligence information regarding the imminent threat to Abbas’s life. “We monitor every movement of Hamas in Gaza,” said an Israeli intelligence source. “So when we learnt that Abbas’s life was in danger, we made sure to inform him without delay.”

Matti Steinberg, a former adviser to the head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, said he would be surprised if any decision to kill Abbas had been taken by Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian prime minister, or Khaled Mashaal, the Damascus-based Hamas leader. “However, such an action by the military wing of Hamas is very plausible,” he added.

While Hamas is struggling to maintain power, and Abbas to remain relevant, economic chaos is spreading in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. For the second month in a row 160,000 employees of the Palestinian Authority have not received their salaries.

Violent clashes erupted in the West Bank town of Hebron early this morning when Israeli police backed by hundreds of security troops tried to evict a group of squatters occupying an abandoned Palestinian home. Police called for further reinforcements after several officers and settlers were injured in the battle.