The Obama administration has finally woken up to the fact that Iraqi parliamentary elections scheduled for January 16 are in real danger of not taking place as scheduled. The realization has been lamentably slow in coming and, with just two days to go before an Iraqi government-imposed deadline expires, may have come too late.

Just over a month ago, on September 16, during his second trip to Iraq, Vice President Biden gently urged Iraqi lawmakers to act “as quickly as possible” on the draft law that would create the legal framework to allow the elections to take place on time. Last week, perhaps beginning to sense greater urgency, President Obama reportedly urged Iraqi President Jalal Talabani “to adopt an election law soon.” Yesterday, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad along with MNF-I ratcheted up the rhetoric a notch issuing a joint statement urging the Iraqi parliament to “act expeditiously” on the draft bill which has been languishing in committee for months. The UN Special Representative in Iraq, Ad Melkert, had expressed similar views the day before.

At stake is Iraq’s nascent democracy and the prospects of a smooth American withdrawal from Iraq. If elections are postponed for any reason beyond January, Iraq will be operating in a constitutional vacuum that could very well contribute to broad-based political instability. Iraq’s Independent High Election Commission has stated that unless the bill is passed within a few days of the October 15 deadline, it will be forced for technical reasons to carry out the elections under the previous law that governed the 2005 elections. This is not a solution, however. The 2005 law was profoundly flawed as it included a blind, closed-list system that limited voters to a choice between party names. Only after the election results were known did the party leadership determine who would actually fill the seats. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has reportedly indicated that he would urge a boycott of the elections if they were held under this law.

Since Sistani’s admonition, most political party leaders, including the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq’s (ISCI) new leader Amar al-Hakim, have dutifully come out in favor of an open list. But their claim of support rings hollow. An open list system makes it much easier for broad coalitions, such as the coalition being put together by Prime Minister Maliki, to form and flourish. It also allows such coalitions to squeeze as many votes out of individual communities as possible since people are much more likely to vote for individuals they know and respect from within their communities. Deeply unpopular parties like ISCI prefer the archaic provisions of the 2005 law so that they can hide behind a popular “brand”—e.g. United Iraqi Alliance—that will hopefully allow them to retain more seats in the subsequent parliament than they could have possibly achieved if voters actually knew for whom they were voting.

The Kurds are also a challenge, however. They risk holding up the entire election process over the question of how elections are conducted in Tamim province, the capital of which is Kirkuk. In the past, the United States, Iraqi politicians and the international community as represented in the UN have all “kicked the can down the road” on Kirkuk, hoping for more propitious circumstances to settle the problem later. In January, for instance, provincial elections were not held in Kirkuk. It would be a shame not to hold parliamentary elections in Kirkuk as well, but vastly preferable to the alternative proposed by various nationalist groups that would introduce a Lebanese-like ethno-religious quota for the province.

But among some there is a sense that the Kurdish leadership may be raising the Tamim problem to take care of both Tamim province and the open list system question. For the KDP and the PUK, open lists pose a problem. Both successfully avoided having open lists during their provincial elections held this past July and do not want to be forced to include them at the national level. Open lists always weaken party leaders since people who get elected directly are less dependent on their party bosses for their individual victories. If the Kurds are hoping for such an outcome, they may well get it if Iraq is forced to revert back to the 2005 law. In 2005, Tamim was treated like any other governorate as well.

With time so short, it is difficult to envision what the Obama administration can do, except cross it collective fingers and hope for the best. Iraqis have demonstrated in the past their ability to pull rabbits out of the hat and may well do so again. Ambassador Chris Hill should have been more directly engaged on this issue much earlier, instead of seeing it as “by and large an Iraqi issue of Iraqis talking to Iraqis, rather than Americans talking to Iraqis.” He should also have moved to replace departing Ambassador Tom Krajeski ,who served as the senior advisor to Ambassador Crocker for Northern Iraq affairs, with someone of similar stature instead of leaving the critical post empty.

Still, as the rueful experience in Afghanistan teaches, it is important to get the process right. If the choice is between a constitutional crisis and taking the time necessary to establish a transparent electoral law framework so that the elections can be conducted in a manner likely to be seen as legitimate by the people, the latter is clearly preferable. The United States should lean heavily on Maliki and the Kurds to agree a compromise on Tamim and get an amended law through the parliament. If the Kurds and Maliki agree, ISCI will be isolated and the Iraqi people—and Ayatollah Sistani, it seems—will take care of the rest.

MESH Admin: There is an Arabic translation of this post.

Daniel Byman :: The Obama administration made a decision to engage Iran well before it seemed like Ahmadinejad even had a chance of being unseated as president, so it is no surprise that the doubts over the current elections are not leading the administration to change course. The brief hope was that a Mousavi victory would usher in a government that would end Iran’s nuclear program and welcome closer ties to Washington. This was always unrealistic: Mousavi himself was not a cuddly figure, the nuclear program is popular across Iran’s elite, and Khatami’s experience as president painfully showed that conservative forces could easily undercut any attempt to reach out to the United States. So we are back to dealing with a conservative regime, albeit one whose legitimacy is dented. The silver lining to the cloud of dashed democratic expectations is that the odds of engagement succeeding are probably similar if not better under the conservatives, however noxious their overall policies.

In addition to their genuine hostility to U.S. policy, conservatives feared that moderates would exploit the political benefits of improved relations with the United States, which would be widely popular in Iran. With Ahmadinejad’s victory, however, conservatives are in power across of Iran’s institutions: any benefit of improved relations would go to them. In addition, conservatives could be confident they would control the pace of any rapprochement. Moreover, Iran’s economy is also declining, and even a return of higher oil prices will not rescue it. Battered economically, and with doubts about the regime’s legitimacy after the fraud at the polls, perhaps the regime will look for ways to improve its political position—like opening up to the United States—that would take the wind out of rivals’ sails. (Okay, this is a big perhaps.)

Some of the same logic, of course, held years ago as well, and it is likely that the rivalries in Iran and pervasive hostility of the conservative elite will prevail. Predictions of a rapprochement are made constantly, and they so far have always been dashed. With Iran, the safe bet is always against improved ties to the United States.

Yet it would be a mistake not to try for fear of failing. To capitalize on the regime’s newfound legitimacy concerns, Washington will have to recognize that efforts by Tehran to reach out may be accompanied by hostile rhetoric or other actions designed to shore up the conservative base. In addition, Tehran will prove especially sensitive to calls for regime change or other challenges to its legitimacy. Separating rhetoric and reality will prove difficult, and, as we try to glean insights into the regime’s thinking, Iran’s nuclear program continues to move forward.

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J. Scott Carpenter :: Autocrats the world over rely on elections to provide them with a veneer of legitimacy. Quite why this matters to them so much is something I’ve never fully grasped. Still, when even a horrendously flawed electoral process yields results that the Supreme Leader must further manipulate, what’s left of the system’s legitimacy degrades precipitously. Moral authority—if not the state’s monopoly on force—is lost and proves difficult to recapture, especially in tough economic times.

President Obama should take advantage of this moment of regime weakness to increase pressure on Tehran. This will require him to side strongly with the Iranian people and recognize the farce that these elections were. It does not mean using the phrase “regime change.” Instead he and other democratic leaders from around the world should speak to the hopes of individual Iranians who were robbed of a better future when the Supreme Leader undercut his own sham process. The Khamenei regime promises nothing but more misery and malaise; we in the international community offer something much better: opportunity and access.

In doing this, one of Obama’s key target audiences should be European public opinion. For some reason, Europeans seize much more forcefully on images of the Basij beating old women and students than on the prospects of mushroom clouds over Warsaw. Of course, siding with the Iranian people won’t do much to sway either Moscow or Beijing, especially as the latter recently managed to sweep Tiananmen under a Chinese carpet, but stiffening European spines is a first priority to applying sanctions with any teeth.

Beyond recognizing the need to sharply change his rhetoric, the President should now realize his engagement strategy as defined so far is bound to fail. To this point, the strategy has been predicated on a direct approach to the Supreme Leader as the sole decision maker within the system. If we can get directly to the Supreme Leader, the argument goes, he can be convinced through a combination of carrots and sticks of the merits of accommodating the West’s demands on the nuclear file. Within this strategy has been the implicit belief that the nature of the regime doesn’t matter. After the past few days, however, it should be clear how preposterous such a notion is. A regime prepared to shoot its own citizens to preserve itself will not negotiate away its nuclear program to the “Great Satan” and can’t be trusted even if it did. Engagement with this regime simply will not work. So what is Plan B and when do we implement it?

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Hillel Fradkin :: There is little doubt that the Iranian regime has suffered some dents in its legitimacy, both through the election campaign and its outcome. During the campaign itself, the leading candidates—Ahmadinejad and Mousavi—flung charges against one another of such vehemence and character as to taint the regime, its history and legacy. As for the elections, the speed with which the results were announced—speed which seemed physically impossible given the number of ballots cast—called those results and the fairness of the election into question. So too did the announced landslide for Ahmadinejad, which confounded expectations of a much closer race and brought hundreds of thousands of Iranians into the streets of Tehran in protest. In the short term the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has compounded the problem of legitimacy by first blessing the announced results as a “divine assessment” and then turning—in response to the protests—to the Guardian Council to perform a legally permitted review of the conduct of the elections.

It is of course uncertain what its verdict will be, although the safest bet is that it will confirm Ahmadinejad as the winner. There can be little doubt that he will pursue a radical and revolutionary policy. But can the controversy over the elections be turned to the ends of American interests, especially the attempt to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and even the interests of the Iranian people? Perhaps.

The necessary first step is for President Obama to speak out forcefully on behalf of democracy in accord with his own well-established statements in that regard. He should express his support for the Iranian people in stronger terms than he did in his Iranian New Year’s message. This would be tantamount to denying that Ahmadinejad was the legitimate representative of the Iranian government or its people.

Whether this would have some substantial and long-term effect within Iran itself—for example the “color” or “velvet” revolution which Iran’s leaders have claimed to fear and oppose—is very hard to know, but this is the most propitious time to try to find out. In the event that Iran continued to be disturbed by internal opposition, the United States would have laid the groundwork to lend whatever support was practicable.

Such an approach would require some alteration of current American policy. Practically speaking, it would mean an end to the effort to establish a dialogue with the Iranian government, which was unlikely in any case, and which now lacks the grounds of having a legitimate interlocutor. This would permit the administration to move quickly to what was likely to be the next stage of its policy: the attempt to impose “crushing sanctions,” Secretary of State Clinton’s phrase. The success of this effort always depended upon our capacity to persuade others to support such a regimen. Although that may still be difficult—as it was in the past—the dubious legitimacy of the Iranian government might now make that easier. For it could now be represented as a “rogue regime” from every point of view. And even if it should fail, the United States would have laid the ground for the proposal of other options.

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Josef Joffe :: You’ve heard about the “electronic herd” as moniker for those investors and venture capitalists who buy and sell exactly what the fad du jour demands. But what about a close relative, the “mooing media,” which so often reports what it wants to see?

And so with Iranian election. Behold this immortal headline on the editorial page of the International Herald Tribune: “The Velvet Revolution, ” followed by cheery prediction that “whatever its outcome, this (dramatic) expression of the popular will carries the promise of better times.”

“Hope Breeds Hype” would have been the better headline, followed by the warning to resist the “North Tehran” syndrome. In this fanciest section of the Iranian capital, they speak English, wear Chanel dresses under their chador and believe in the imminent demise of a despised regime. (In Tel Aviv, it is the “Sheinkin Street Syndrome,” where your basic foreign correspondent talks to artists, Meretz activists and assorted lefties before he files his story on “Change, Hope and the Peace Process” or on the evils of the Netanyahu regime.)

If these good folks had dug deeper and wider, if they had gone into the slums or countryside, they would not have confused a few cute girls who show lots of ankle and hair or a university rally with a “velvet revolution.” If they had read their Hanna Arendt, Franz Neumann or Lenin, they would have been still more skeptical about the incipient decrepitude of the Ahmadinejad regime. If they had studied the history of the Iranian revolution, they would not have called Mr. Mousavi a “reformer” instead of a “disgruntled conservative,” ditto Messrs. Karrubi and Rezai. Their battle against the past and future president was a very mild remake of what happens in any revolution: a falling out among chiefs.

The electoral outcome is no “velvet revolution” at all, though—give honor where honor is due—the “Iranian street” was more vocal and courageous than at any time since the crushed student revolt of 1999. But remember the election of 2005, when Ahmadinejad garnered a mere 19.5 percent in the first round, and then beat former president Rafsanjani with almost 62 percent. This time, Ahmadinejad won right away, and by one point more.

Of course, there was systematic (and brazen) fraud. Why else had the election authorities “counted” millions of ballots right after the polls had closed? On the other hand, Iran is not Enver Hoxa’s Albania (where he came in at 97.8 percent each time), and so Ahmadinejad’s massive majority could not have been completely rigged. As went North Tehran, the country did not. But the regime did not want to take any chances, and so added to vox pop without having to falsify it. Think Richard Daley the Elder, not Enver Hoxa.

The more interesting news is the opposition to Ahmadinejad in the “Holy City” of Qom, the spiritual headquarters of the 1979 revolution. The vocal protests of many clerics lead to a fascinating speculation: The old theocratic revolution is dead, power has passed to the—let’s call them—”secularists.” They are still bearded, but they wear suits or the battle dress of the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guards. They don’t trade in fatwas, but in economic privileges. Their weapon of choice is not the Quran, but the Kalashnikov, and their badge is the Iranian flag and not the green of the prophet (the battle insignia of Mr. Mousavi).

Let’s carry speculation on step farther. On Monday, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered an investigation into what Mousavi calls outright voting fraud. Whence we might conclude: The old clerical guard has understood the true import of the electoral verdict. It was a putsch at the ballot box, masterfully executed by Ahmadinejad and his henchmen, and it was directed not so much against the students and the wealthy denizens of Niavaran and Shemiran, but against Khamenei and his religious cohorts. It is Robbespierre vs. Danton, who had led the uprising against the King in 1792.

If this assessment is correct, we will see a lot more strife in the days to come. In the end, it might lead to a Persian Napoleon and his military dictatorship. And why not a “little war” to stabilize the new autocracy? These are dark thoughts, and like all historical analogies, they may be wildly off the mark. So over to Barack Obama, who has staked his first months in office on wooing the Islamic world in order to give a boost to moderates and liberals. Round one goes to the reactionaries.

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Mark N. Katz :: The prolonged protests in Tehran against the Iranian regime’s claim that Ahmadinejad was overwhelmingly re-elected president have raised the possibility that Iran might be on the verge of a democratic revolution. The widespread belief that election results were falsified has triggered successful democratic revolutions in several countries, including the Philippines, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. Such protests, though, do not always succeed, as has been seen in Burma (Myanmar), Armenia, Azerbaijan, and elsewhere.

I have previously argued at MESH and elsewhere that a rapprochement between the United States and Iran’s authoritarian regime would be in American interests. The democratic transformation of Iran, though, would be far more beneficial for the United States (and, of course, for Iran). A democratic Iran might become an American ally or, if not that, friendlier to the United States than Tehran has been since 1979. A democratic Iran could also be expected to push Hamas and Hezbollah in a democratic direction, or perhaps even sever its ties with them. Further, while a democratic Iran could be expected to continue the atomic energy program that Tehran began under the Shah, it would presumably be more willing to accommodate the concerns of the international community than the Islamic Republic has been.

With all these possibilities at stake, the Obama administration’s restrained, “even-handed” reaction to the disputed Iranian election results may appear quite odd. This cool reaction, though, may be the best way for Washington to help the cause of Mir Hossein Mousavi—the presidential candidate who is charging electoral fraud. Greater public American support for him could be seized upon as an excuse by Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to discredit him as an American agent. Expressing support for a transparent process instead of a specific politician may avoid this problem—especially since there may be little that the United States can actually do to help Mousavi right now.

As past occasions have shown, whether or not widespread popular protest against perceived electoral fraud results in democratic revolution or not depends on whether elements of the security services defect from the regime to the democratic opposition. The defection of even a few key personnel can quickly cascade into the defection of much of the security services and the immobilization of the rest. But without these initial key defections, the democratic opposition cannot hope to prevail, and its protests will sooner or later (and more probably sooner) be crushed.

It is virtually impossible, of course, for the United States to engineer the key security service personnel defections away from the regime and to the opposition during the brief window of opportunity that may be available before the democratic opposition is crushed, if security force defections don’t take place. What the United States can do, though, is quietly signal that it is prepared to work with those security service forces that do defect and to not seek their destruction. This is because organizational survival and personal advancement are often just as or even more important motives than the desire for democracy for officers considering defection to the democratic opposition in such situations.

Even if the regime succeeds in crushing the democratic opposition, its self-confidence is likely to decline and its internal divisions to remain and even grow. In similar circumstances elsewhere, some elements inside an authoritarian regime have made common cause with democratic forces outside of it. Helping them do so may be the sort of long term project that the United States could discreetly help with—whether or not Washington goes forward with attempting to achieve détente with the Islamic Republic.

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Martin Kramer :: There are days when I’m supremely grateful that I’m not paid to make policy decisions. Those who must make them on Iran have much more information than I have, but it probably still won’t be enough, so that in the end, analogies will play as large a role as analysis. Already much of the public in the West has embraced the analogy between Iran’s protests and the “color revolutions” of Europe. The potential for error there is great: Iran’s politics are sui generis even in the Middle East. But there’s a bit of room for such an error, because the regime doesn’t have nukes. If it had them, we’d be biting our nails instead of tweeting on Twitter.

Harvard’s Stephen Walt, on his blog, made an assertion that exposes the fundamental weakness of the realist claim that the outcome doesn’t matter, at least to us: “In the end, what really matters is the content of any subsequent U.S.-Iranian rapprochement, not the precise nature of the Iranian regime. If diplomatic engagement led to a good deal, then it wouldn’t matter much who was running Iran.” Walt is right when he goes on to say that Mousavi, specifically, may not be a vast improvement over the Khamenei-A’jad duo. But in keeping up Iran’s end of any “good deal,” does it really not much matter who runs the country? In our own lives, we prefer to do business with reputable dealers, as opposed to known scam artists, thieves, and forgers. The meaning of this past week is that the ruling mob has been exposed, and that alternatives aren’t entirely unimaginable. No one should get their hopes up, but the moment Khamenei, A’jad, and even Mousavi aren’t the entire universe of options, there’s every reason to put engagement on hold.

And since it’s always better to have options, perhaps the United States should act to promote them. “The Americans do not have the experience or the psychological insight to understand Persia.” That was Ann (Nancy) Lambton, the great British Iranologist, back in 1951. (She thought Mossadegh could be readily overthrown; the Americans at first thought otherwise. She was right.) So it’s a long shot. But there may be an opportunity here, and perhaps even awkward Americans—now with an additional sixty years of experience and a president with psychological insight—can find it.

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Walter Laqueur :: Has the legitimacy of the Iranian regime been seriously dented? The regime was no doubt surprised and even shocked by the intensity of feeling against Ahmedinajad by so many in the capital, but there seems to have been much less resistance outside it. The country is split ,but the levers of power (and the weapons) seem to be firmly in the hands of the regime, and this is all that matters at the present time. Mousavi, in any case, is part of the regime, not a true reformer, at best half-hearted; his fervent supporters are bound to be disappointed. A rotten compromise to solve the present crisis seems quite likely. The decomposition and eventual breakdown of the regime are bound to happen but they will take time.

Perhaps there was fraud in Iran, but most outside observers were apparently not aware how easily elections can be won in authoritarian regimes without even using the grosser forms of fraud such as stuffing the ballot boxes. If part of the population is illiterate, a desirable outcome of the elections becomes even easier to achieve. As far as now known, there was no outright forgery on a massive scale in the elections in the fascist and communist regimes in Europe.

The U.S. approach? What approach? I suspect Washington has accepted, knowingly or not, an Iranian regime in possession of nuclear weapons. No substantial help to slow the process can be expected from Europe, Russia and China. Military action will not be used, and its use by Israel will not be accepted.

No thought seems to have been given to what American policy should be once this stage has been reached. Should there be a grand bargain with Iran, accepting some or all of its “legitimate demands,” including its wish to extend its influence throughout the Middle East? Or should America support the anti-Iranian forces? I suspect there will be a little bit of appeasement and a little bit of resistance, some engagement and some disengagement, all the options will be tried in an attempt to muddle through until (or unless) something wholly unforeseen will happen.

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Michael Mandelbaum :: The principal goal of American policy toward Iran is to prevent that country from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Obama administration proposes to accomplish this through direct negotiations with the Iranian regime. Success is unlikely, but it is less unlikely if greater international pressure is brought to bear on that regime. The administration should therefore use the stolen election, and the outrage it should provoke in the democratic West, to try to persuade the Europeans to agree to tougher economic sanctions on Iran.

It would be helpful to have the Russians and the Chinese join in such an effort, but the events surrounding the election are not likely to prompt either to do so. The governments in Moscow and Beijing are no doubt just as appalled as the Europeans at what has happened, but for different reasons: the Russians because of the way the regime in Tehran has botched a rigged election, the Chinese at Tehran’s decision to hold an election at all.

Ultimately, Iran will cease to be a major strategic problem for the United States only if the current regime falls and is replaced by one less resolutely opposed to Western interests and values. Here the events of the last several days count as good news. Dictatorships fall when the governing elite loses the will to rule (as in Eastern Europe in 1989) or when it is sharply divided. The candidate from whom the election appears to have been stolen must represent a segment of the governing structure, otherwise he would not have been permitted to run in the first place. The unfolding conflict in Iran therefore pits not only the society against the rulers but also one part of the ruling clique against another. The United States can probably have little or no influence over internal Iranian politics, but anything American policy can do to widen this second division (the regime itself can be counted to do everything necessary to expand the first one) is worth doing and should be done.

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Philip Carl Salzman :: Watching the Iranian elections is like watching a Model United Nations or a Mock Supreme Court The issues are real and important. The passions are deeply felt. The divisions reflect divisions among the population. But the decisions have no effect whatsoever in the real world.

The elections, to change the metaphor, are like shadow plays or puppet shows: it is the manipulators behind the scenes who make the actors move, or negate the movements of the actors. In Iran, it is the Supreme Leader, the Council of Guardians, the Expediency Council, and increasingly the Revolutionary Guard who call the shots.

We have already seen this play, starring reformist President Khatami. Whatever the president and the reformist Majlis tried to do, the real rulers denied. Elected officials are mainly a façade, giving faux-democratic respectability to the regime. Yes, to an extent, elected officials provide a face to the regime, and do have some influence over internal matters, such as economic measures. But on the greatest matters of substance, they are entirely powerless.

Why should we pin any hopes on the Iranian elections? Does it matter all that much whether the face of the regime is sweet and smiling or angry and frowning? The regime will be the same.

What if, as many suspect, the current election, allegedly won by Ahmadinejad, was itself manipulated? The supporters for other candidates, like participants in a Mock UN, are incensed that, as they believe, the rules were violated and the results unfair. In this case, with electoral cover gone, the regime stands naked, its reality exposed. Naive Iranians will be disappointed and angry.

What about hopeful foreign leaders and diplomats? What has changed for them? Nothing. If they did not know what they were dealing with before, they were not only hopeful, but naive.

What approach to Iran would be most beneficial for the United States? Again, let’s look at past experience: When did Iran last do something agreeable to the United States? Iran stopped their nuclear program when the United States invaded Iraq, fearing that Iran might be next. When the threat appeared to recede, Iran reactivated their nuclear program. It thus seems that Iran responds to a serious threat by pulling in its horns. If the United States wants Iran to stop its nuclear bomb and missile program, reduce its terrorist support throughout the Middle East, and ease the pressure on its neighbors, then Iran must feel that the cost of pursuing its current path would be too high. President Obama must show the stick, and be ready to use it.

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Raymond Tanter :: The unfolding drama on the streets of Tehran raises key issues of whether Iranian instability will threaten survival of the ruling ayatollahs and if it is possible for a diplomatic breakthrough with them on Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons status in light of growing political instability.

Two schools of thought conflict in addressing these two issues.

One approach holds that although election fraud represents something of a setback for Iran’s “illiberal democracy,” efforts at engagement should be continued. Just as such analysts were wrong in presuming the regime would be constrained from cheating to maintain power, they falsely assume that representative institutions legitimize the rule of the ayatollahs in a less-than-liberal democracy.

A second school, of which the Iran Policy Committee is a contributor, finds that Iran does not have even a “limited” or “illiberal” democracy. Rather than deriving legitimacy from the people, the ayatollahs rule by assertion that clerics should rule because they are representatives of God on earth.

Regarding the issue of whether illegitimate elections in Iran are a point of departure for a breakthrough in Western diplomacy, such an assertion overlooks the role revolutionary ideology plays in motivating the Iranian regime to pursue its nuclear weapons program. Whether Iranian elections are legitimate is irrelevant to the regime’s pursuit of the bomb.

To motivate the Iranian regime to bargain in good faith requires leverage. An unused point of leverage against Tehran is for the West to reach out to its main opposition as it reaches out to the regime.

The Iran Policy Committee performed a content analysis of leadership statements regarding all major Iranian opposition groups. The study showed that the Iranian regime pays attention to the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), the main Iranian opposition group, 350 percent more than all other opposition groups combined. In view of this surfeit of attention, it is reasonable to infer that Tehran fears the MEK as a threat to the survival of the regime.

Reaching out to the Iranian opposition, which is based in Iraq but has an extensive network in Iran, would be a common point of leverage for Washington and moderate Arab allies of President Obama to counter Iranian regime expansion in the region. Rather than a binary choice of pressure or engagement, an approach that incorporates the Iranian opposition would allow for a coherent policy of coercive diplomacy. Such a policy is likely to be more effective than either pressure or engagement alone.

If early returns hold up and the March 14 coalition emerges victorious in Lebanese parliamentary elections, sending a resounding defeat to Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, then one of the most important “unsung heroes” in the vote will have been… Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden’s surprise visit to Beirut on May 22 was not just gutsy. By reminding Lebanese voters that Washington will review financial assistance and other aspects of our relations with Lebanon depending on the outcome of the election, Biden played Middle East hardball. Lebanese voters—especially the critical swing Christian voters—seem to have gotten the message. They cast their ballots in droves for candidates opposed to the Hezbollah-backed alliance and, in so doing, appear to have turned the tide in the election. (Of course, those voters had ample reason to say “enough” to Hezbollah and its Aounist allies, but Biden may have pushed them over the top.)

Biden’s Lebanon foray is a salutary reminder for the Obama administration in its overall engagement with the Middle East. Elsewhere in the region, the administration seems to be directing a policy devoid of sticks (except toward Israel’s settlement policy, which is another story altogether). The President’s Cairo address to the world’s Muslims, for example, included not a single hint of “negative incentive”; while he eloquently made the case for religious freedom, democracy, women’s rights, and peaceful nuclear energy, there were no suggestions of negative repercussions for any country that rejects the President’s entreaties. After the polite applause is forgotten, the result is likely to be indifference on the part of most Arab and Muslim leaders (except, again, on settlement policy).

In Lebanon, Biden’s timely reminder to locals of what they might lose by cutting deals with radicals and extremists suggests that Chicago politics is alive and well in the Middle East. The Chicagoan in the White House should pay attention.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s meeting yesterday with a group of young Egyptian activists at the State Department was a welcome and long-overdue development. These young people somehow managed to elicit the words “democracy” and “human rights” in the same sentence from the Secretary, something that until yesterday she had managed only once before, on Wednesday in a response to a question from reporters when she was meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit.

Of course, in both instances the words were uttered in a rather casual way. She said yesterday, for instance: “Well, we always raise democracy and human rights. It is a core pillar of American foreign policy.” Not exactly a ringing policy defense.

In fact, over the course of the past few months there have been a number of occasions that have caused democracy and human rights activists to wince. First, there was Clinton’s confirmation testimony in which she made clear that U.S. foreign policy under an Obama administration would center on the so-called three “Ds”: diplomacy, development, defense. For many there was a fourth obvious D missing: democracy. Next, there was the conscious downplaying of human rights by the Secretary during her travels to China, Egypt and elsewhere. Then there was the State Department’s decision to move the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor out of the main State Department headquarters after 32 years. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the administration has failed, until now, to find anyone willing to head that bureau.

So, why is this? The first reason is obvious and understandable. The Obama administration wanted to distance itself from the tone and perceived baggage of the Bush administration’s “Freedom Agenda.” The rhetoric did need to be toned down perhaps, but it did not need to be thrown out altogether. A well-placed source at the State Department recently told me that in his bureau, they were no longer to use the words “freedom and democracy” in speeches. “Those are Bush words,” he was told. No. They are not. They are American words as Secretary Clinton herself makes clear.

The second and more important reason seems to be that this administration believes democracy and development are two entirely different things. When asked at her press availability yesterday about the democratic progress Egypt has made, Secretary Clinton avoided the question by talking instead about what the United States was doing and would do with development assistance in Egypt. Specifically she said: “We are very committed to doing what we can to promote economic opportunity inside Egypt. We consider that a key part of our providing assistance to Egypt.” She then added the following breathtaking sentence: “We’ve spent, as you know, many billions of dollars over the last years promoting NGOs, promoting democracy, good governance, rule of law. And I want to stress economic opportunity because out of economic opportunity comes confidence, comes a recognition that people can chart their own future.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, a variation of this line of argument was first advanced in print yesterday by Steven Cook for the June 1 issue of Newsweek. In his article, he argues for eliminating all democracy promotion programs in Egypt (and by extension all authoritarian regimes) and reprogramming them into agriculture, pre- and post-natal health and disease prevention programs. Doing so, he writes, would better win hearts and minds and, more importantly, “reduce tensions between Washington and Cairo.” (And Beijing, Minsk, Rangoon, Harare, etc., I suppose.) This is pretty disappointing stuff from the drafter of the Council of Foreign Relations task force report, “In Support of Arab Democracy: Why and How.”

What Secretary Clinton—and Steven—seem to be saying is, “Look, the Bush administration spent a boatload on promoting democracy and look where that got us; let’s spend more on economic development. At least we can make some folks happy.” The trouble with this is that it is both factually incorrect and kowtows to the regime-inspired idea that first you help us develop economically and then, if it suits us, we can think about developing institutions of accountability (aka democratic institutions) later.

The fact is the United States has spent many billions of dollars in Egypt on arms, commodities, and Egypt-defined “development” but not on democracy and NGOs. During my time at the State Department we had to wrestle the Egyptian government (and our own!) to the mat to squeeze out a few million dollars to support international organizations like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and Freedom House, among others. The direct grants to local non-governmental organizations were even smaller. Most were below $100,000. Although I don’t have the time now to sum up all that was spent by the Bush administration on non-Egyptian-government approved democracy programs in Egypt, I’d make an educated guess that the entire sum wouldn’t amount to more than $100 million over the seven fiscal years from 2002 to 2008. The entire budget for the Middle East Partnership Initiative during those years averaged only $70 million per year—and that was for the entire region from Morocco to Iran.

But the statement is wrong in another way as well. One of the key innovations of the Bush administration—which created a lot of friction, I can assure you—was to stop working with the Egyptian government on their self-described development programs and instead do something that would really impact the economy: the reform of the financial sector. Working with a talented group of new ministers—not a true democrat among them—we found innovative ways of using “development assistance” to incentivize reforms in the financial sector. In a negotiated Memorandum of Understanding with Egypt, the government committed to, among other things, strong and independent central bank management, developing a functioning government securities market, and implementing a comprehensive program to reform the Egyptian banking sector that included privatization. Against benchmarks in the MOU, the Bush administration committed close to $700 million with an additional $2.3 billion in loan guarantees, also tied to performance benchmarks. The results, as the IMF tells us, have been remarkable. Egypt has been growing at an average annual rate of between 5 and 7 percent per year. This is real “development.”

The main point to make here is that actually doing something important required changing the way things were done. The United States had to risk changing the way it spoke about our economic support funds to Egypt. Egypt treated these funds as theirs; they earned them. They made peace with Israel, the argument went, and deserved this annuity in perpetuity for their amazing sacrifice to the United States. The Bush administration looked at what the funds were producing for the Egyptians and for us, and concluded that they needed to be reviewed and reshaped, whatever the original intent of the funding some 30 years ago. Moving economic and political reform together at the same time was crucial in this.

To take a step backwards now is a mistake, but the Obama administration is taking it. Already they have reversed the hard-fought agreement not to allow Egypt to veto democracy programs and have agreed that from now on all programs will be negotiated with the Egyptian government as part of the bilateral agreement. This sends exactly the wrong signal, and soon other governments in the region will be demanding the same sort of agreement. Moreover, the Egypt desk officer at State calmly explains that this administration is only correcting what the Bush administration screwed up. This is Egyptian money, the explanation goes, and we have to eliminate the cause of the friction in the relationship. Some people at USAID tell me that it is all part and parcel of a broader effort to separate democracy assistance more broadly from what USAID does.

Ironically—and sadly—the program that brought in the activists to meet Secretary Clinton yesterday is an early casualty of this leap backwards. Freedom House’s “New Generation” program has seen its project de-funded since the agreement went into force. They had had a three-year agreement with USAID that was terminated only one year into the agreement after the Egyptian government objected to it. It was good the Secretary met with the young people now; she won’t be able to do so next year.

Perhaps we’ll win more hearts and minds with pre- and post-natal care—if anyone knows we’re providing it—but returning to the status quo ante, eliminating core democracy programs, toning down rhetoric to the point that it is seen as a green light to regimes to repress their people, all guarantee we’ll lose some as well. A recent publication by the Project on Middle East Democracy, “Looking Forward: An Integrated Strategy for Supporting Democracy and Human Rights in Egypt,” proposes a much more thoughtful way forward. The Obama administration would be wise to consider many of its sensible recommendations. In the meantime, as these young Egyptian men and women, bloggers, journalists and activists head for home tomorrow, they leave confused about what the United States stands for. This shouldn’t be. Let’s hope that their meeting with Secretary Clinton was for more than just show. Their young lives will depend on it.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

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On April 6, U.S. President Barack Obama gave an address to the Turkish parliament in Ankara, on the occasion of his first visit to a Middle Eastern country as president. (If you cannot see the embedded video above, click here. The text is here.) In his speech, the President touched on a range of issues related to U.S.-Turkish and U.S.-Muslim relations. The following MESH members responded to an invitation to comment on the speech: J. Scott Carpenter, Michele Dunne, Hillel Fradkin, Adam Garfinkle, Bruce Jentleson, Josef Joffe, Mark N. Katz, Michael Reynolds, Michael Rubin, Philip Carl Salzman, Harvey Sicherman, Raymond Tanter, and Michael Young. Soner Cagaptay’s assessment is added in the comments.

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J. Scott Carpenter :: There were many, including me, who were worried that President Obama’s speech before the Turkish parliament would send the wrong signal to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development (AKP) government, by embracing Erdoğan’s conceit that Turkey is somehow a leader of the “Muslim World” and a major player in the Middle East. Our worry, it turns out, was unjustified—for the most part.

In the speech, the President struck mostly high notes. Symbolically he linked Turkey strongly to Europe by traveling there as part of his European trip. He spoke of Turkey as the secular, democratic nation-state that it is, even as he challenged it to move forward on religious freedom and minority rights. His formulation that Turkey is a country where the Muslim faith is practiced was merely… accurate. When the President mentioned Turkey’s desire to play a role in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, he did so only after referencing the more proximate conflicts of Nagorno-Karabakh and still-divided Cyprus. Importantly, in a thinly-veiled reference to Hamas, the President called on the Turkish government to “reject the use of terror, and recognize that Israel’s security concerns are legitimate.”

There were a couple sour notes, however. When the President delivered the requisite reminder that the United States is not, I repeat, not at war with Islam, he once again invoked the tired bromide of the so-called “Muslim World.” When will senior U.S. policy makers stop reinforcing Al Qaeda’s narrative about a mythical Muslim world? The President also continued to avoid the “D” word (democracy). Prosperity, instead, is the word of the day. Finding ways to improve education expand healthcare, boost trade and investment without improved transparency and accountability will be a neat trick which I look forward to hearing more about. The President promised more detail in “coming months.”

Whatever the Turkish people might have thought about the speech, Erdoğan’s body language suggested he did not like it. At all. The fact that Obama tracked substantively with President Bush on Iran and the Palestinian issue was clearly painful for him to hear. More painful still probably was the President’s wise decision to skip the Khatami-inspired Alliance of Civilizations meeting in Istanbul. The AKP were desperately hoping to rope the President into this muddleheaded effort to divide “civilizations” into religious camps. Actions always speak louder than words.

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Michele Dunne :: In President Obama’s address to the Turkish parliament, he made a few basic statements—inter alia, “The United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam,” “The United States strongly supports the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security,” and “The United States strongly supports Turkey’s bid to become a member of the European union”—that were, if not revolutionary, at least useful in their clarity. I will leave the evaluation of what Obama said on internal Turkish affairs to those who specialize in that, but what he said about specific reforms inside Turkey seemed to reach a satisfying level of detail, and he made several general statements—e.g., “freedom of religion and expression lead to a strong and vibrant civil society that only strengthens the state,” and “an enduring commitment to the rule of law is the only way to achieve the security that comes from justice for all people”—that encouraged further movement on these issues.

What was peculiar about Obama’s speech, however, was his strong emphasis on democracy (mentioned at least eight times) as the tie that binds the United States and Turkey in friendship, and yet his unwillingness to apply the same principle in the latter part of the speech to U.S. relations with the Muslim world. There, the “D” word was banned. Aside from the usual platitudes about “mutual interest and mutual respect,” Obama promised to promote the welfare of people in the Muslim world only in socioeconomic terms: education, health care, trade and investment. No objections to that, Mr. President, but what’s the plan for working with countries where the state stands squarely in the way of citizens getting those things? And that would apply to quite a few states in the Muslim world.

The President and Secretary Clinton can only go around the world apologizing for the Bush administration for so long. The Obama administration needs its own foreign policy—one that is neither Clinton-warmed-over nor anything-but-Bush—and one that takes account of current conditions. Those conditions include much more political ferment and stronger demands for civil and human rights than existed in the Middle East a decade ago. So promoting democracy and human rights will need to be part of that foreign policy, including in the Muslim world. It’s getting to be about time to face that, and Turkey would have been an excellent place to start.

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Hillel Fradkin :: Towards the close of his speech to the Turkish parliament, President Obama declared “as clearly as I can” that the “United States is not at war with Islam.” He sought to reinforce that message by implying that our military actions within the Muslim world, in past and future, have only the object of “rolling back a fringe ideology” and the terrorism represented most prominently by Al Qaeda—an effort he regards as shared by Muslims themselves.

Much attention has and will be paid to this declaration—it is already being referred to as an “olive branch”—even if it stated the obvious. The United States is not in fact at war with Islam and never has been, as President Bush made clear by declaring Islam to be a religion of peace but a few hours after the attacks of September 11, 2001. For after all, why would we Americans be at war with a peaceful religion? Moreover, although our soldiers are presently engaged in fighting some Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, we are fighting side by side with other Muslims. A statement of these facts would have enhanced Obama’s declaration.

But perhaps the obvious must sometimes be stated, and Obama is perhaps in a better position to make it clear by virtue of a fact he mentioned in his speech: he is among those Americans “who have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country.” Perhaps this will put this issue to rest so long as such misunderstanding as exists is not willful. At all events, and as Obama implied, the future of peaceful and fruitful relations between the United States and the Muslim world may depend less on the United States than on the approach that the Muslim world takes to terrorism of all varieties—including anti-Israeli terrorism—and the ideologies which inform them.

But Obama’s speech was not primarily addressed to the Muslim world, but to the Turkish people and its government. In the long run, it is the substance of his remarks to them which is likely to be more important than his declaration—and not only for U.S.-Turkish relations but for the wider Muslim world. Here he placed less stress on Turkey’s Muslim heritage than its republican heritage as the first and so far the most successful Muslim-majority republic.

As Obama almost indicated directly, this emphasis comes against the background of recent concerns that Turkey under the present leadership of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) might be weakening in its fidelity to that heritage, turning away from its long-standing alliances with Western countries—including the United States—and even moving closer to radical Islamic actors such as Sudan and Hamas. Obama’s remarks, although gently stated, essentially urged Turkey to renew its historic commitment to republican democracy and reaffirm its role as the place where East and West “come together.”

Obama referred explicitly to the heroic statesmanship of Atatürk, George Washington and perhaps above all of Abraham Lincoln. In light of his appeal to Lincoln, one might say that Obama invited Americans, Turks and Europeans to listen to the “better angels of our nature,” and urged Turks in particular to rededicate themselves to the propositions upon which modern Turkish history and success have been built. This was an important message to deliver, and it can only be hoped that it will be well received. That hope may however embrace not only Turkey but the wider Muslim world, which might profit from the example of Turkish republican success both now and hopefully in the future. In the long run, the reception of that message will be more important to American-Muslim relations than the declaration that the United States is not at war with Islam.

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Adam Garfinkle :: President Obama’s speech to the Turkish parliament yesterday was, to my way of thinking, an anti-climactic event. For months now we have been tantalized by the promise that Obama would go to a majority-Muslim country and tell it like it is. And this is what we get? This was a box-checking speech, full of duck-billed platitudes and not a single deliverable. The only things noteworthy about it were that: a) it happened; b) there was no quid pro quo protocol equilibration to Greece; and c) the speech abjured the old language that Turkey is a “moderate Muslim nation.” Turkey, we learn, is a secular democracy, just as Atatürk and his secular fundamentalist followers have insisted ever since 1924. This comes at a time when Turkey has a government, and a fairly popular one, that makes that description less resonant politically than ever. Why go talk to a Muslim-majority society only to pretend, sort of, that you’re not?

As for the “key” line—that we are not at war with Islam—well, Obama buried his lead four-fifths the way down the text, and of course that statement is nothing Bush administration principals, including the President, did not say dozens of times. If it suits your interests not to believe that statement, it’s not going to matter much which U.S. president says it. If it suits your interests now to stop saying you don’t believe it, then any president who is not George W. will do. If some Muslims now have heard this statement for the first time, just because it was delivered in Turkey by Barack Obama, fine: better eventually than not at all. But no, that statement in and of itself is not a game-changer, not with more U.S. soldiers headed to Afghanistan, more missiles fired into Pakistan’s border areas, more violence inevitable in Iraq over the next two years. Those of the conspiratorial persuasion seeking evidence that Obama is a liar will be able to find it just as easily as those who were sure George W. was a liar.

As for the speech itself as a form of the “black arts” (as Peggy Noonan once put it about speechwriting), it’s the worst major presentation the President has given (or delivered) so far. Judging from the official transcript pulled off the White House website, I counted at least two dozen mild infelicities, bona fide clunkers and grammatical errors that never should have made it past a second draft. One of these days people will stop comparing Obama to the hopeless George W. Marblemouth and recognize how mediocre this stuff really is.

Am I saying I could have written a better speech for this occasion? Yes, I actually believe that. There were oh-so-many missed opportunities in that speech—so many ways to have better concretized U.S.-Turkish friendship, and so many ways to have recognized that tolerance, hospitality, rule of law and other virtues (not to exclude democracy) which apply to Turkey, historically and at present, do not have to be expressed in an American idiom to be real and worthy of sincere admiration.

Maybe the lack of a unifying theme and anything remotely resembling a deliverable is the good news here. Some people had been hoping that Obama would use this occasion to launch a Presidential initiative on Israel/Palestine, stating U.S. parameters for a settlement, inviting the world to sign up to them, and implying muscular suasion on all engaged sides to make it happen. That we did not hear. Though I am skeptical that such a policy is wise, I’m almost sad it didn’t happen: that, at least, would have made the speech memorable.

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Bruce Jentleson :: Good speech. Got both the music and the words right. Doesn’t solve all problems in U.S.-Turkish relations, or all issues on the U.S. agenda of which Turkey is part, but does amount to a good start on both separating from the most counterproductive parts of the Bush policy and defining the key elements of an Obama policy.

Obama struck two key notes in getting the music right. One was his emphasis on mutual respect. This is the same phrasing he used in his inaugural address and in his video message to Iran. True, the respect mantra often gets invoked in the Muslim world as cover for less defensible positions. But its genuine resonance is even truer. Meeting people where they are, rather than where one may think they should be, is more likely to lead to being able “to build on our mutual interests, and rise above our differences,” as Obama put it, than lecturing and hectoring. Those self-styled hard-headed powerites who like to deride this sense of mutuality would do well to remember how the strength of anti-Bush sentiment in the Turkish parliament blocked Turkish military cooperation with the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The other was the line about not being at war with Islam. This needed to be said. Sure, Bush made any number of disclaimers of his own. But they didn’t stick. In saying that trust was strained “in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced,” Obama was recognizing reality. That’s strategic, not self-flagellatory as some neo-cons would have it.

On the substance he also got much right. He spoke to Turkey’s multi-faceted role as an ally, not just on terrorism or any one particular issue but more broadly on a range of global, regional and bilateral issues. He gave Turkey credit for its diplomacy in the Israel-Syria talks, while stressing active U.S. re-engagement in the Arab-Israeli peace process. He supported Turkey’s accession to the European Union. He also pushed a bit on internal democratic reform and rule of law. He approached the Armenia issue with more of an eye to what the two countries need to do together than what the lobby back home expects of him.

Much remains to be done. Music and words are fine, but action must follow. But not bad for a start.

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Josef Joffe :: “The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam.” This is one of those sentences which are so right that nobody could disagree—like “I love jamocca ice cream” or “The sun sets in the west.” Of course the United States is not at war with Islam, and never will be. If you want to push it, you might say: a part of Islam is at war with America, and for that there is plenty of evidence—from 9/11 to an endless slew of statements made by Bin Laden or al-Zawahiri or a bunch of lesser imams and mullahs or by various leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, not to speak of those representatives of the “Arab street” we get to see on Al-Jazeera.

Why would the president affirm what was undeniable in the first place? To make a gesture, of course. As he did with this sentence: “I also want to be clear that America’s relationship with the Muslim community, the Muslim world, cannot, and will not, just be based upon opposition to terrorism. We seek broader engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”

Again, this is as “surprising” (or if you want to be catty: vacuous) as the “we are not at war” sentence. Whoever based America’s relationship with the umma on “opposition to terrorism?” Not Bush ‘43—not, he, the coddler of Saudi Arabia, the financier of Egypt, the ally of Jordan’s Abdullah, the guarantor of the Gulfies. How patient, to the point of self-effacement, was W. with Turkey, after Ankara betrayed him in the run-up to the Iraq war? And who saved the Muslim Bosnians from the rage of the Serbs? The U.S. Air Force in the days of Clinton.

“We will listen carefully, we will bridge misunderstandings, and we will seek common ground.” Does this mean we did not listen carefully to our Arab allies, paying over-sensitive respect to their fence-sitting and their mumbly caveats? Here Obama resorts not to belaboring the obvious, but to the oldest (liberal) tradition of American foreign policy. There are no clashes, no interests, no conflicts—just “misunderstandings.” And if we listen hard and patiently enough, these “conflicts” will just go poof.

Of course, these are not the ways of international politics, where collisions and conflicts are real, where the measure is not goodness or careful listening, but the power and the will that—sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly—backs up diplomacy.

Especially in the Hobbesian universe that is the Islamic Middle East—say, from the Levant to the Hindu Kush—homily will get you nowhere. Let’s hope the 44th president of the United States is not like Jimmy Carter who took four years to learn about the nasty ways of the world—who preached in the beginning that we should lose our “inordinate fear of communism” only to be rewarded by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and who let Khomeini come to power only to be repaid with the 444-day humiliation of the embassy hostage crisis.

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Mark N. Katz :: President Obama’s speech to the Turkish parliament was designed to appeal not just to the Turkish public, but also to the broader Muslim world. In it, Obama certainly struck many positive notes. His administration is for improved Turkish-American and Muslim-American relations. His administration also seeks peace or improved relations between Turkey and Armenia, Greek and Turkish Cypriots, Israel and the Palestinians, and Israel and Syria, among others. His administration supports Turkey’s admission to the European Union.

Indeed, Obama signaled that America is willing to work with all parties in the Muslim world except the terrorists. He called for the United States to work with Muslims and non-Muslims alike against them. The only two terrorist movements that he mentioned by name, though, were the PKK and Al Qaeda. He made no mention of the Taliban, Hamas, and Hezbollah, among others. By not describing them as terrorist, Obama has certainly opened the door—and perhaps even raised the expectation—that he is willing to work with them.

The audience applauded when Obama said, “The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam.” His next sentence—”In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical not just in rolling back the violent ideologies that people of all faiths reject, but also to strengthen opportunity for all its people”—appears to be more an expression of hope than a statement of fact. For unfortunately, there is widespread support in the Muslim world for non-democratic movements that engage in terrorism. Many Muslims instead see groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and even the Taliban as legitimate “national liberation” movements.

What Obama may soon find is that it is going to be extremely difficult for the United States to appeal to the broader Muslim world and to fight terrorist groups within it simultaneously. The Bush administration at least recognized that this was a dilemma and attempted to resolve it by recognizing the need for democratization (even if it did not push very hard for this in many Muslim countries). But Obama’s statement that “Turkey’s democracy is your own achievement. It was not forced upon you by any outside power,” appears to be a strong signal that his administration does not share even the Bush administration’s recognition that the United States can and should do something to promote democratization in the Middle East.

Obama’s hopes for improved relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world are laudable. But unless public opinion in the Muslim world stops supporting non-democratic political movements, or these movements undergo a democratic transformation, it is doubtful that the improved relations he hopes for can be achieved.

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Michael Reynolds :: President Obama demonstrated in Turkey the talent that has distinguished him at least since his tenure as head of Harvard’s Law Review: namely, the ability to play the role of reconciler between otherwise seemingly irreconcilable sides. The best example of this was his ability to touch on the question of the Armenian genocide in his speech to the Turkish parliament in such a way as to win applause from the parliamentarians as well as praise from one of the leading advocates of Turkish recognition of genocide.

Obama’s charisma extended beyond the parliament. Even the thousands of leftist protesters who declared Obama to be merely a new face for an old American imperialism felt compelled in interviews to concede that, yes, Obama himself comes across as intelligent, affable, and appealing. Posters showing a cartoon Uncle Sam with Obama’s face superimposed recalled the famous New Yorker magazine’s spoof of Obama dressed in a turban, albeit with precisely the opposite point: far from being a secret Al Qaeda sympathizer, Obama represents merely a new face for an old American imperialism.

Obama’s message of humility, patience, and charity thus left a generally positive impression in Turkey. Needless to say, however, articulating a vision wherein conflicts are resolved through mutual and sincere compromise is easier said than achieving that vision. Obama has not yet indicated publicly to what extent he is willing to use American power, positive as well as negative, to push the resolution of the Middle East’s multiple conflicts.

Another thing that that struck me was this statement made by Obama in support of Turkey’s EU candidacy: “Europe gains by diversity of ethnicity, tradition and faith—it is not diminished by it.” It is a quintessentially American assertion. The sentiment behind it is, indisputably, appealing on the most obvious level. But one has to wonder what citizens of the European Union, regardless of their stance on Turkey’s EU candidacy, think when the President of the United States of America makes declarations about what constitutes Europe’s fundamental interests.

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Michael Rubin :: There are certain points every U.S. official should make upon visiting Turkey. President Obama did his homework and delivered them. He is correct when he declares, “Turkey is a critical ally. Turkey is an important part of Europe. And Turkey and the United States must stand together—and work together.” Obama is right to highlight Turkey’s EU accession ambitions as well as the reforms accomplished over the past several years. And he successfully tiptoed through the political minefield of the Armenian genocide debate.

However, Obama also broke new ground, not all of it positive. For example, Obama stated, “The United States will continue to support your central role as an East-West corridor for oil and natural gas.” But how can Obama expect to pressure Iran to accede to its international obligations when Turkey’s State Minister Kürşad Tüzman seeks to raise bilateral trade with the Islamic Republic to $20 billion? (It was just $1.3 billion when the AKP took power.)

And while diplomatic nicety is the bread-and-butter of speechwriters, in the case of Obama’s reference to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, it can have cost. Here his comments were infused with moral equivalency which is especially dangerous given Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s embrace and, indeed, endorsement of Hamas. Obama could have sent a positive message, especially in a country like Turkey which has suffered so much terrorism, had he reinforced that idea explicitly that democracies must stand against terrorism and that no political agendas can legitimize terrorism. Obama drew equivalence between Al Qaeda and the PKK; he should have added Hamas to the mix. Let us hope that, before Obama embraces Erdoğan as a true partner, he becomes aware of the Turkish Prime Minister’s endorsement of Al Qaeda financier Yasin al-Qadi.

Rhetoric is easy, but can be ephemeral. It is easy to say “We will be respectful, even when we do not agree,” but the President of the United States should never sacrifice the values of free speech or expression in order to protect the sensitivity of anyone who might take insult. To compromise fundamental values is a slippery slope; we should not go down the path of Europe. Nor should Obama speak of the Islamic world. He should recognize the true diversity of Muslim peoples, and not seek to impose a unitary identity upon them.

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Philip Carl Salzman :: Will President Obama, even with his Muslim middle name, have any greater luck than President George W. Bush reassuring the Muslim world of the good will and good intentions of the United States? He goes farther, saying that “we will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over so many centuries to shape the world for the better.” Along the same line, addressing Turkey’s application to the EU, he argues that “Europe gains by diversity of ethnicity, tradition and faith.” In fact, the benefits of Islam, both in history and prospectively in the EU, are highly contested, but the Turks and Muslims more broadly probably welcomed these sentiments.

The President says that the United States is not and can never be at war against Islam, that “our partnership with the Muslim world is critical in rolling back a fringe ideology that people of all faiths reject.” Here the President asserts a division between the moderate majority of Muslims and the minority “fringe” of jihadis—oops, I mean “terrorists”—not to be specified further. This may be a distinction without as much of a difference as we, and the President, might hope. If the President says it enough, maybe his Muslim audience will come to believe it.

The President’s approbation of Turkey and its recent legal measures was clear, while he urged its leaders to continue along the line of diversity and pluralism, particularly in regard to the Kurds (but not the PKK), and the Orthodox Christians, as well as to resolve differences and improve relations with Armenians. At the same time, he stressed the secular nature of the Turkish constitution, and made no mention of the Islamist—I mean Islamic—party in government.

President Obama took a hard line on Iran, focusing not on cooperation in regard to Iraq and Af/Pak, but on Iran’s movement toward nuclear weapons. He offers a stark choice to Islamic Republic: “Iran’s leaders must choose whether they will try to build a weapon or build a better future for their people.” No hints about what may follow the manufacture of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

They say that those who ignore history are destined to repeat it, first as campaign promises, then as foreign policy. So it is with Palestine. In spite of much good advice from MESH prior to the President’s ascension, he is determined to achieve what so many, with so much effort, have failed to achieve: “In the Middle East, we share the goal of a lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors. Let me be clear: the United States strongly supports the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. That is a goal shared by Palestinians, Israelis, and people of good will around the world.” (Emphasis added.) I do not know which Palestinians the President has been speaking to, but neither Hamas nor Fatah will recognize Israel, and the preferred goal of most Palestinians appears to be a different two-state solution: Palestine and Jordan.

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Harvey Sicherman :: President Obama’s speech at the Turkish parliament gave ample evidence of his gift for allowing his audience to see themselves in him. Thus, he spoke winning words to those advocating the democratic Kemalist Turkey of the West. But those who wanted to “reorient” (literally) Turkey toward the East could also find comfort in references to Ankara’s mediation of regional conflicts and imperial Muslim past. Kemalism, of course, burns the bridge to the East. And the current Turkish government is suspected by its opponents of seeking to burn the bridge to the West. Nevermind; Obama levitated above this contradiction with the crowd-pleasing conclusion that “Turkey’s greatness lies in your ability to be at the center of things.” Gifted rhetoric to be sure.

In the wake of Presidential parades, a clean-up crew (usually the unfortunate Secretary of State) must collect the policy. Three specifics:

1. RESET: To use the blackberry-proficient President’s favorite phrase, he wants a renewal of U.S.-Turkish cooperation. On the most neuralgic item—the Kurds—Obama pledged “our support” against the PKK while restating that the new Iraq should not be a danger to its neighbors (i.e. no independent Kurdistan). He advocated Turkish entry to Europe (a poke at France and Germany) and swallowed whole in public his previous view of the Armenian genocide, which he consigned to the historians.
2. I’m coming your way: Obama notified Israel’s new government not to quarrel over the two-state solution, “the road map and Annapolis… a goal that I will actively pursue as President of the United States.”
3. I feel your pain: Ankara was another installment in a campaign to change the American image, this time for Muslims. Obama declared (as had Mr. Bush) that the United States was not “at war with Islam.” He tried manfully to lift the American-”Muslim World” relationship out of the terrorist focus through two devices: a respectful search for common ground and his personal experience of Muslims in the family. This, too, was cunningly designed to sway his audience: I am not one of you but I am close enough to know you, a near relative as it were. And, of course, “we will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith…” Although variations on the theme were also uttered by his predecessor, the President can count on amnesia, and his own striking example, to change the image. But does this really matter? And is Obama not raising expectations of impossible comity with a “Muslim World” at war with itself and gripped by the grievance culture besides?

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Raymond Tanter :: In tennis, when confronting a choice between hitting the ball cross-court or down the line, “Solve the riddle by going up the middle!” Like the tennis analogy, the visit of President Obama to Turkey is a search for a middle ground between opposing points of view.

One school of thought: Turkey’s harsh response to Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad should prompt the NATO alliance to reconsider Turkey’s commitment to the global struggle against radical Islam. Because such “Islamism” is priority number-one for NATO, and because Ankara holds an incompatible view of the threat, consider removing Turkey from the alliance.

When Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen rose as consensus candidate for NATO Secretary General, Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan raised objections. Rasmussen had been prime minister when the cartoons were published and refused to censor the newspapers in which they ran. Rasmussen was cleared for the NATO post after negotiating with Turkish President Abdullah Gül and stating: “I consider Turkey a very important ally and strategic partner, and I will cooperate with them in our endeavors to ensure the best cooperation with Muslim world.” Obama’s apt intervention to help devise language acceptable to the parties allowed for the appointment of Rasmussen and typifies the President’s approach of searching for a middle ground between opposing points of view.

A second school: Turkey’s strategic position—the second-largest NATO-member army; borders with Syria, Iraq, and Iran; a base for U.S. operations in Afghanistan; and Europe’s sixth-largest economy—requires greater outreach and integration of Turkey into Europe.

Accordingly, Washington should take a lead role in promoting Turkish accession to the European Union to overcome French objections. Enhanced bilateral relations would include expanding the economic component of U.S.-Turkey relations and promoting more collaboration between mid-level military officers. To overcome religious tension, the United States would no longer treat Turkey as a “Muslim country” and more as a European country.

The most prudent course for the Obama administration is the middle path between these two extremes, a road the President is beginning to take. Indeed, Turkey is too important an ally to alienate with even the suggestion that the country might be removed from NATO. But enthusiastic engagement should depend on the degree to which Turkey is on the same page as the rest of NATO regarding the threat of radical Islam.

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Michael Young :: As I read President Obama’s comments to the Turkish parliament on Monday, I couldn’t help but think of Egypt.

Under the conditions prevailing during much of the past 25 to 30 years, his speech would have been one that, in its references to the Arab-Israeli conflict but also at the highly symbolic moment of Obama’s first contact with the Middle East, would have been made before the Egyptian parliament. Instead, the U.S. president chose a non-Arab state as the venue for his first major address to the region and the Islamic world.

One wonders how Egypt’s President Husni Mubarak reacted when he heard Obama say: “The United States and Turkey can help the Palestinians and Israelis make this journey. Like the United States, Turkey has been a friend and partner in Israel’s quest for security. And like the United States, you seek a future of opportunity and statehood for the Palestinians. So now, working together, we must not give into pessimism and mistrust.”

Surely, he felt that someone had gently bumped him back into the line. Wasn’t Egypt the traditional mediator between Israelis and Palestinians? If your hunch is that this gives us a sense of the thorough marginalization of the Arab countries compared to their non-Arab periphery, particularly states like Turkey and Iran, but also Israel, then your hunch comes very late. Whether it was in his passages on Iran, Iraq, or terrorism, and even in his appeal to the Muslim world, Obama not once mentioned Egypt or Saudi Arabia, though he did mention their rival, Syria, just once.

Remember, in 1990 it was Egypt and Saudi Arabia that were the cornerstones (if you could call them that) of the Arab mobilization against Iraq when Saddam Hussein ordered his soldiers into Kuwait. When the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was extended in 1995, it was Egypt that led the Arab effort to create a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East (and failed). Throughout the 1990s, Egypt was the go-to place to talk about Palestinian-Israeli issues, and when Egyptians were the victims of Islamist violence during the 1990s, it was the go-to place to hold anti-terrorism summits, for example the one at Sharm al-Sheikh in 1996.

That Obama mentioned these topics, and others, in Ankara did not mean that it is time to write Egypt’s obituary. But with Mubarak now an old man, still sitting atop a political system seemingly incapable of renewing itself in pluralistically invigorating ways, and with no end in sight to the Saudi gerontocracy, it is not surprising that Obama should have struck his highest notes in a country that is of the region but not quite in it—and therefore untainted by its irrepressible decline. The United States will continue to ally itself with Arab states to contain Iran, but as Obama made clear in his speech, and in his diplomatic initiatives in recent weeks, he relies much more on countries like Turkey and Russia to act as hooks on which to hang any international effort to deal with Iran’s nuclear program.

Obama sent a kind word to the world’s Muslims, and surely many in the Arab world applauded his lines. But what he was really telling them, intentionally or not, is that their region is changing, and it’s changing in ways that may soon turn the Arabs into secondary characters in their own narrative, because their regimes simply seem unable to change.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

I am one of more than 140 scholars and experts to sign a letter to President Obama, released today (March 10), asking him to take seriously his inaugural statement that leaders who “cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent” are “on the wrong side of history.” The question is, on which side of history will the Obama administration place itself in its policy toward the Middle East?

Early indications are for a return to traditional diplomacy and jettisoning of any serious efforts to promote democracy, freedom, and human rights. While the signatories of this letter might differ on some issues, we are joined by the belief that this early course by Obama and Secretary of State Clinton needs immediate correction. We understand that promoting Middle East peace enjoys a high priority in this administration, and we believe that it is entirely possible to cooperate with Arab governments in that endeavor while also pursuing improved human, civil, and political rights for Arab citizens. In fact, not to do so would be shortsighted and ultimately counter productive.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

This past Friday, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy released its report, “Rewriting the Narrative: An Integrated Strategy for Counterradicalization” (download here). The report offers important policy recommendations for continuing the fight against radical extremism, making a clarion call for a conceptual leap away from a primary focus on violent counterterrorism to a broader concern with confronting extremist ideology.

The importance of the report lies not only in the breadth of views represented in the bipartisan list of endorsers but also in its key recommendations, the first one in particular:

Expand focus from violent to non-violent extremism. The Obama Administration needs to view the spread of an ideology of radical extremism with urgency and seriousness comparable to its view of the spread of violent groups animated by that ideology. Obviously, the first priority for the government is to prevent and deter radical extremist groups from using violence to achieve their goals. But in addition the government needs to elevate in bureaucratic priority and public consciousness the need to prevent and deter the spread of radical extremist ideology. At the same time, the United States will need to make very clear that it does not consider Islam itself a danger, but only the distorted version of Islam perpetrated by radical extremists.

This is no small recommendation, and it will likely make many in the Washington policy community nervous. The report essentially says that an end state in which people remain extremist in mentality but are simply non-violent doesn’t go far enough. As conveyer belt groups like Hizb al-Tahrir and others demonstrate, the path to violent extremism often lies in the radicalizer’s ideology and his ability to connect perceived global grievances to local ones. Violence then is a switch that can be turned off and on if the person is not fully deradicalized.

Deradicalization also presents its problems, however. The Saudi deradicalization program, as the report points out, offers jobs, wives and homes as enticements for the violent jihadist to stop killing. Efforts are also made to teach a purer Islam but the program “works” because it relies heavily on coercive policies towards families of the radicalized, essentially making them their brothers’ keepers. When it fails—and recidivism rates are reported at 10 percent—the radicalized person reverts back to violent action.

Clearly, providing alternatives before it gets to this stage is critical, and the report offers a number of practical means for doing so. Among these is another key task force recommendation for the Obama Administration:

Rejuvenate efforts to promote prosperity, reform, and democracy in Arab countries. As a strategic response to extremism, the United States and its allies must offer a viable and attractive political alternative to the dark vision offered by radical extremist groups. Prosperous democratic societies which respect the rights of their citizens are more resilient and less susceptible to political instability and radicalization. If grievances can be peacefully expressed and mediated through democratic institutions, citizens are less apt to turn to more extreme options. Efforts to promote prosperity, democracy, and respect for human rights should, therefore, remain key aspects of this administration’s foreign policy agenda, even if the rhetoric describing it changes. The key is to do it better.

That a bipartisan group would endorse such a recommendation in the post-Bush era reveals a lot about the consensus that exists in Washington over the long-term strategic importance of systemic political and economic change in the region. In the long run, as Keynes reminds, we’re all dead, but avoiding revolution in the region and a further radicalization of European and Middle Eastern populations is clearly in America’s national security interest.

The leitmotif of the report’s analysis and recommendations is that countering extremist ideology must rely chiefly on helping mainstream Muslims provide hopeful and practical alternatives to jihadist ideology. The United States can’t do it on its own. Whether in Europe, the Middle East or Southwest Asia, mainstream Muslims within their communities are the ones on the front lines, and if we can’t find ways to support them, we are left with military force which cannot create a sustainable solution as we have learned in Iraq and are struggling with in Afghanistan.

“Rewriting the Narrative” is endorsed by a distinguished group of policy practitioners: members of Congress Jane Harman (D-CA); Sue Myrick (R-NC), and Adam Smith (D-WA); former 9/11 commissioner Timothy J. Roemer; former U.S. ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg; former deputy assistant to the president for homeland security Frank J. Cilluffo; the presidents of the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute Kenneth Wollack and Lorne W. Craner, respectively; prominent scholars Bruce Hoffman and Mohammed M. Hafez; former Kennedy School dean and Clinton administration official Joseph S. Nye, Jr.; former Bush administration officials Randa Fahmy Hudome and M. C. Andrews; president of the Henry L. Stimson Center Ellen Laipson; Freedom House executive director Jennifer Windsor; Hudson Institute vice president S. Enders Wimbush; president of the Progressive Policy Institute Will Marshall; Johns Hopkins SAIS adjunct professor Joshua Muravchik; and Washington Institute executive director Robert Satloff.

Full disclosure: I was co-convener (with Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson) of the task force and I co-wrote the report. Which perhaps explains in part my enthusiasm for it…

Following on Scott Carpenter’s excellent post on the state of the Iraqi elections, it is also worthwhile to consider the security situation in Iraq. A year ago, I asked if 2008 would be

the year when the gains in security are met by gains in stability, or will the tremendous tactical gains achieved by our troops be withered away because of a lack of political consensus and the lack of political reconciliation? (Will those) gains in security translate into gains in stability? The next phase (of the Surge) will be far more difficult as it depends more on the Iraqis themselves to show progress on key legislation, show progress in their economy and to show progress in reconciliation.

As 2008 demonstrated, there were tremendous gains in internal security, and the recent elections demonstrate that there is a flicker of hope for political consensus and reconciliation. The economy is in good shape and in many ways the envy of the region, despite the low price of oil. Regional governments, while not embracing Maliki, at least are no longer rejecting “that Iranian in Baghdad.” Overall, both the political and security situations are far better than one might have hoped in early 2007 when the “Surge” decision was announced. As a wag recently noted, the ultimate metric of success—the fact that the war in Iraq rarely merits front page news—has been achieved.

However, the situation still remains tenuous and there is no reason for complacency or casual dismissal of the challenges. As I did in early 2008, let me offer a checklist of leading indicators for 2009.

1. Keep an eye on potential flashpoints: Kirkuk, the pace of integration of the Sons of Iraq into Iraqi Security Forces, and post-election violence as results are announced.
2. Keep an eye on Iran, Syria, Al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent groups. How will they see 2009? An opportunity to step into a perceived vacuum created by the departing U.S. forces? An opportunity to create mischief for the new U.S. administration? An opportunity to interfere in the wake of the recent Iraqi elections?
3. What will be the effect of a 16-month withdrawal policy for the U.S. combat brigades? As this will require the return of a brigade per month, will this lead to a security vacuum in those regions now covered?
4. Will the U.S. administration adhere to a 16-month schedule, or will there be some flexibility in this timeline?
5. Will the Iraqi government stick to the requirement for all U.S. forces to be out of the country by the end of 2011? Will there be provisions made for trainers, enablers, CT forces and the protection of U.S. facilities?
6. Are the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) ready to take over the responsibility in each of those brigade areas? While the ISF have proven willing and able to handle the direct fire engagements, they have been dependent to a great degree on U.S. intelligence, air support, logistics, fire support and communications. Is the ISF ready to fight a full-spectrum counterinsurgency on its own?
7. What will be the operational consequences of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)? Will insurgents and extremists attempt to leverage perceived restrictions on U.S. forces to increase their activities?
8. What will be the commercial consequences of the Status of Forces agreement on contractor organizations? Will contractors—which now number well over 100,000 and handle much of the logistical and commercial activities—depart en masse given the transfer of legal jurisdiction from the parent country to the Iraqi judicial system and the departure of large numbers of U.S. forces?
9. Is the Iraqi Government ready to take responsibility for the large number of detainees that the SOFA hands over to them? Will the pressures of local politics demand the release of large numbers of detainees? How will the Iraqi government treat those detainees it retains? Will they cure or create the next generation of insurgents?
10. Will the downturn in oil prices have an effect on the budgets of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Intelligence? It was hoped that the Iraqi budget would include $12 billion for the ISF, and that these funds would pay for salaries, operations and procurement. Will the procurement budgets remain sufficient to buy the equipment necessary to pick up where the U.S. forces have left?

    Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Iraq’s provincial elections took place yesterday without much fanfare and, thankfully, not much violence either. According to news reports, the complexity of the system, the size of the ballot and voter apathy drove voter turnout down. Still, these historic elections, in which 7.5 million Iraqis participated, will set the tone for Iraq’s democratic development and prepare the way for parliamentary elections later in the year. As news and results trickle out of Iraq ’s Independent High Election Commission (IHEC) over the coming days and weeks ahead, here are ten quick things to watch for:

1. Did Sistani’s injunction that everyone should vote go unheeded? If it is turns out to be true that turnout nationally was only 50 percent then the Ayatollah’s influence over electoral politics may be on the wane.
2. Did the big, established parties benefit at the expense of new lists? High turnout tends to benefit large, well organized political parties. That it seems to have been fairly low should bode well for lists like Prime Minister Maliki’s which was going head to head with al-Hakim’s ISCI.
3. Did religious parties lose out? What about the Sadrists? No party in the elections ran with the slogan “Islam is the Solution” since voters were much more interested in who could actually provide services at the local level. As the Hamas experience indicates, however, election rhetoric and policy actions are different things. The Sadrists ran as independents on two separate lists. Under this electoral system, this should kill them.
4. Will there be outright majorities elected to the provincial councils? The provincial councils vary in size based on population from 25 to 57. The electoral system should not produce many clear winners meaning even after the results are tabulated coalitions at the local level will have to form and will likely take time doing it.
5. What will the elections means to the idea of a new regional government in the south? If Hakim’s ISCI does poorly, its goal of establishing a regional government in the south analogous to the Kurdish Regional Government in the north will be seriously in question.
6. What will the results mean for the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)? The results of these elections will give a strong indication of whether the SOFA negotiated with the United States will pass in this summer’s national referendum. If the governmental parties do well, the referendum should be expected to pass easily.
7. What will be the impact of election on the level of violence in Iraq? Elections don’t always contribute to stability. Expect a large number of disputes to be lodged with the IHEC. It is unlikely but not impossible that disputes will descend into violence. Once elected, however, members of the councils will provide targets for would-be insurgents.
8. Will the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) lose out to the Son of Iraq? Turnout in the whole of Iraq is reportedly low but in the Western provinces turnout is reportedly high. Because the Sons of Iraq ran a fragmented campaign and too many candidates, the IIP could end up doing quite well.
9. How strong are governors likely to be? Governors are not elected directly in post-Saddam’s Iraq. The Provincial Council elects him (or her). They need not elect someone from within their number. Who the governor will be will likely be the first decision taken by most councils. This, combined with coalition government, will make for inefficient governance.
10. How will women do in these elections? The low turnout coupled with the complexity of the electoral system will likely mean women will do very poorly.

In a Policy Watch of The Washington Institute that ran today, I reflect on yet another Bush Administration initiative that has been left to crawl forward weakly without sustained U.S. leadership: the G-8’s Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA) Initiative. Like a man dying of thirst in a hot desert, it won’t have to crawl much farther.

Back in the distant past—four years ago—the Initiative was something the Administration just had to have: a multi-lateral framework that would work to create and support a common reform agenda for the Broader Middle East. It was novel in many ways, and a re-read of its founding documents makes interesting reading, if you’re into that sort of stuff. Its chief innovation was to involve business and civil society actors in the deliberations with governments and ask them to help inform reform priorities. For some groups, it is their only chance to meet face to face with their governments at any level.

For five years now an ever-expanding network of activists and reformers has been meeting and making recommendations to their governments on a whole slew of topics. Policy recommendations have flooded into capitals on everything from vocational training and media reform to election monitoring and women’s empowerment. Annually the groups come together at something clumsily called the Parallel Forum at the Forum for the Future, to summarize their recent meetings and to finalize a set of recommendations to make to ministers when they meet one or two days later. In 2005 in Rabat there were just five such activists, all of whom were hard-core human rights activists. Today in Dubai, there are hundreds representing hundreds more in all sectors.

Over the course of the past two days I’ve been listening in on their conversations and deliberations as an invited delegate at this year’s gathering, and have a number of quick impressions to share.

First, these folks are seriously interested in partnering with governments to stimulate change. These are not wild-eyed revolutionaries of either the secular or the Islamist sort. They are people who want to see their governments and their societies thrive. Not because the United States or anyone else wants them to but because they believe it profoundly themselves. They recognize the failings of their governments but they also fear militant Islam and believe they can help compete with it, if governments would only let them.

Second, and this should encourage Michelle Dunne, they all still want to have elections. When I walked into a discussion on how to improve election monitoring, I asked with shocked incredulity if they were still hoping for and encouraging elections. They looked at me strangely and said of course. Elections are poorly run in this part of the world but they do take place and they should be freer and fairer they said. I agree with them.

The other big take-away from this meeting is that governments—aside from bits of our own—don’t care about this process. No government officials were allowed by the UAE government to participate in this year’s sessions, a sharp break with past practice that allowed government observers. So there was no one to hear the delegates offer constructive criticisms, truly thoughtful ideas or truly bad ones. Moreover, the Emirati government is thinking of curtailing civil society participation at the ministerial altogether, a huge step backwards if it happens. Typically, elected delegations from the parallel session and various meetings that take place over the course of a year make short presentations at the Forum. Apart from Rabat where the NGOs were inadvertently kicked out of the session by the foreign minister (they were later brought back in after the FM called them on their cell phones to apologize) and in Bahrain, where a member of a local human rights organization was not allowed to participate despite having been selected, an ever-larger group of civil society activists has been allowed in the room for the entire ministerial.

So why the change? In part it has to do with the fact that in the Emirates there is no real civil society and so they are unaccustomed to having to deal with it. But in part it also has to do with Secretary Condoleezza Rice’s last minute announcement that she’s not coming to the Forum. Again. The government is clearly embarrassed that she would cancel, knowing that others will now downgrade their participation. Why should they risk being embarrassed further by activists who just might say or do anything? Or perhaps they are trying to force the activists to protest the event giving them a pre-text to cancel it altogether?Last year after Secretary Rice canceled her trip the Yemeni government canceled the Forum—without a pretext.

What is strangely encouraging about all of this is what I heard most of all from the delegates with whom I spoke. They are frustrated the G-8 is not taking the process seriously enough and upset at their own governments’ blindness to the hand that’s being offered, but they want the process to continue. As one of them put it to me, “It’s arrogant and even outrageous that the G-8 would invent this initiative and then abandon it but I hope we can continue to have this sort of meeting. Even without ministers. What do foreign ministers know about privatization or election law anyway? If we could routinely have senior officials from relevant ministries dialogue with us it would be a huge step forward.”

It’s not a whole lot to ask, frankly. But unless attitudes towards the initiative change within the G-8 and the governments of the region, even that may be a bridge too far. Fairly diversified funding for the initiative has all but dried up and most activities are supported now by the United States. With the next Administration even that slim trickle of support could dry up and then the BMENA Initiative would be yet another quickly forgotten grand scheme.

As I write in my piece today, no one will likely mourn its passing, but it truly was a missed opportunity. It occurred to me after reading Tamara Cofman Wittes’s post that this would be one way of partnering with the countries of the region and representatives of their societies to challenge the revisionists of Iran and their proxies. By seriously addressing reform issues and perhaps adding security to the mix, a broad consensus and partnership could emerge to confront the extremist narrative. But it’s late here in Dubai and I’m jet-lagged out of my mind. Perhaps I’m already dreaming.