“It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.”

—President Barack Obama, statement on the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, November 4, 2009

The assumption represented by the fresh statement by President Obama on Iran is that all people and peoples are the same: at heart, all people and peoples basically want the same things, basically understand the world in the same way, basically are prepared to come to terms in the same way as everyone else. This is particularly clear in the assertion that what the people of Iran seek is “universal rights.” Such a culture-free world as envisioned in this statement would make communication and agreement a lot easier. The reality, however, is that cultures do differ, and that people and peoples do not see life and existence the same way, and may disagree on goals. Iranian regime goals of Islamic and Shia domination are not secret; these are the explicit raison d’etre of the regime, not to be negotiated away to build “confidence” and a “more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.”

Similarly this statement appears to assume that there are not real conflicts of interest between countries, or between the regimes running those countries. In this view, disagreements are basically misunderstandings, which, with good will and open communication, can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. But power, control, and honor are gained and held only at the expense of other parties. There are winners and losers. Regimes wishing to improve their positions cannot do so by compromising with other parties. Furthermore, it is notoriously necessary in Middle Eastern despotic regimes to control the populace through confrontations with external enemies, real, imagined, or manufactured. Improving relationships with identified “enemies” is not in their interests and not on their agendas.

Finally, what good does it do to acknowledge the “powerful calls for justice” of the Iranian people when you are about to throw them under the bus by trying to make deals with the regime that is shooting them down in the street, torturing them in prisons, and executing them?

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As President Obama decides how to proceed in the Afghan war, he needs to add one more variable that is rarely mentioned: Iranian determination to acquire nuclear weapons. An ongoing Afghanistan campaign means that resort to force against Iran would be tantamount to starting a second war. The politics being what they are, that will knock the military option against Iran off the table, with negative implications for an empowered diplomacy toward Iran.

Consider the timelines of the Afghan and Iranian policy portfolios, as President Obama must. Whether or not Iran parts with some of its fissile material in coming months in accord with the recent Geneva deal, it will still have enough nuclear “stuff” for one at least bomb within 18 months. (It may have more than that if, as looks increasingly likely, the recent Qom revelation displayed the tail end of a significant and protracted effort.) It will probably have overcome its weaponization and delivery-system challenges within 36-48 months. In 36-48 months U.S. and NATO forces will probably still be fighting in Afghanistan, whether Obama decides on a minimalist, counterterrorism-plus approach or General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency-minus one.

The logic and overlapping timetables of the Afghan-Iran linkage suggest a need to choose. How should we think about that choice?

Both problems are consequential, but an Iranian nuclear breakout poses more serious long-term security dangers to the region and to the United States than any likely fallout from the Afghan war. Losing in Afghanistan could boost the morale of Islamist extremists worldwide, harm NATO and possibly exacerbate the situation in Pakistan. But acquiescing to an Iranian nuclear capability would spell the collapse of the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime and likely set off a proliferation race in and around the region that could catalyze a regional nuclear war. Unlike the Cold War deterrence relationship many of us remember, which involved just two sides with mostly secure weapons and command-and-control systems, a multifaceted nuclear Middle East without stable second-strike arsenals would be extremely crisis unstable and accident-prone, and could “leak” dangerous materiel to terrorists, as well. It is facile to assert that a deterrence relationship which worked in one context will also work in others; that assumption with respect to Iran is a textbook example of the “lesser-included case” fallacy.

If American interests require the prevention of an Iranian bomb, then major combat operations in Afghanistan must end before the moment to decide on Iran is at hand. That’s not the track we’re now on. General McChrystal’s plan is a stop-loss effort that cannot achieve a level playing field upon which to drive a new Afghan diplomacy, let alone achieve anything remotely resembling victory in three years or less.

There are only two alternatives to preserve a credible military option, and hence a credible diplomacy, with regard to Iran: accept defeat in Afghanistan, whatever we may call it, and leave; or surge militarily to reverse the perception of Taliban ascendancy, and then drive a new political arrangement there to end the war within the next 18-24 months.

Either option is preferable to a protracted and inconclusive bloodletting, but the latter option—depending more on air power and avoiding the massive (and counterproductive) garrisoning of the country with foreign forces—is preferable. It would avoid the optic of defeat. A new Afghan coalition government, blessed by a Loya Jirga within and supported by high-level contact-group diplomacy from without, would have at least a chance of creating a stable environment over the longer run—something that cannot reliably be said about the current regime in Kabul.

A success in Afghanistan also would lift the admittedly modest prospects that diplomacy can persuade the Iranians to step back from the nuclear precipice, just as failure to turn the tide would likely tempt them forward. And if the Iranians do not step back, a success in Afghanistan will better undergird the diplomacy that must accompany any military operation directed toward them.

Clearly, however, no McChrystal-plus option is on the table. This suggests that, barring some major out-of-the-blue event, like the collapse of the Iranian regime, the administration will be unable to consider using force against Iran when the time comes to decide, even if it might wish to do so. And Tehran’s knowledge that all U.S. military options are off the table is not liable to be helpful.

If U.S. policy eventually founders in Afghanistan and fails to prevent an Iranian nuclear breakout, and Iraq’s relative stability begins to crumble—not a far-fetched possibility, regrettably—then we will face a trifecta of real trouble in the Muslim world and beyond. To avoid that debacle, the beginning of wisdom is to recognize that when President Obama finally decides on Afghanistan, he will be constraining or expanding his options on Iran.

One wonders whether this link is well appreciated.

As the Goldstone report on the Gaza war wends it way up the UN food chain, casting further opprobrium on Israel at each level, it is legitimate to question Israel’s handling of this challenge. Did the Israeli response lessen or aggravate the damage?

There are serious critiques that could have been levied against Goldstone’s mandate even before a single accusation was heard. UN investigations of wars, including this one, typically focus on jus in bello, on the laws of war on the battlefield, and ignore jus ad bellum, the justification for going to war in the first place. It can be argued with great cogency that it is unreasonable to judge the conduct of a war with little or no reference to its causes; echoes of this can be heard in Israeli complaints about the lack of attention to claims of self-defense.

A second critique is that international law has not kept pace with changes in warfare. Most contemporary armed conflicts involve what Rupert Smith has called “war amongst the people,” rather than classic set-piece battlefield scenarios from which laws on wartime conduct (jus in bello) were drawn. These laws seek, quite rightly, to minimize casualties among civilians, but how should they be applied when the very blurring of the military-civilian distinction is a basic strategic axiom of one party? Are insurgents entitled to more rather than less immunity if they refuse to wear uniforms (as required by conventional law)?

So Goldstone’s approach was already blinkered by the framework in which he, without audible complaint, was thrust. This was then compounded by the lack of an Israeli defense to the specific accusations that were brought. Having no “official” explanation that needed to be taken into account, as a straight-laced jurist he then not only accepted any claims of atrocities at face value but also attributed them to deliberate policy rather than the mistakes, negligence, and misconduct out of which most wartime violations are compounded.

Ruth Lapidoth, who has represented Israel in many international legal frameworks, and other leading Israeli jurists have argued that it was a mistake to leave Israel unrepresented in the presentation of evidence and argument before Goldstone. It may be that the final product would still not have been to Israel’s liking, but presenting one’s case in full force would make it more difficult to ignore the basic limitations of the framework (lack of attention to causes, unconventional warfare) and to assign to deliberate policy what could be attributed, in “the fog of war,” to deviations from the rules of engagement that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) had in fact set out.

A second effective means of damage control would be to address forthrightly the specific cases in the Goldstone report and to draw the necessary conclusions: a clear statement of the facts if the accusation is not warranted, and appropriate disciplinary action if it is. In fact, in international law, taking this step would remove the threat of prosecution abroad that now appears to hang over the head of top-level Israeli military commanders. The army that can fight a bloody conflict in an urban setting, without any cases of misconduct among its ranks, has yet to be created.

According to recent report, it was Defense Minister Ehud Barak who prevailed on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to boycott the UN inquiry. If so, it is further testimony to Barak’s inability to learn from experience, and it comes as no surprise that the latest poll predicts that, if elections were held now, his Labor Party, once the dominant force in Israel, would be reduced to an abysmal seven seats.

The role of Iran in fueling insurgency in Iraq, particularly attacks against U.S. forces, has been well-documented and forms one front in Iran’s proxy war against the United States. Receiving much less attention than Iraq, is the role Iran has played in supporting anti-NATO insurgents in Afghanistan as a second front against U.S. and NATO forces.

At first blush, such support seems bizarre given the intense antagonism between radical Shiites in Tehran and the fringe Sunni Taliban movement, each of which sees the other as lying outside the bounds of true Islam. Indeed, the two were at odds throughout the 1990s, at times approaching what some considered a full-blow regional crisis. Late 1998 saw the Taliban murder of hundreds of Shiites in Mazar-e-Sharif and an Iranian buildup of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps troops along the border with Afghanistan.

By 2000, however, the Taliban had dispatched an emissary charged with reaching out to the Iranian regime, Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa. Cooperation, even with ideological enemies, fits with Tehran’s pattern of willingness to work with any ally to oppose the United States. (Iranian regime support for Al Qaeda in Iraq is part of this trend.)

During a January 2000 meeting in Iran, its representatives offered weapons assistance in light of the Taliban’s inability to procure weapons on the open market; and at a November 2001 meeting, Iranian diplomats offered anti-aircraft weaponry to the Taliban for use in impending action with the United States and NATO and offered safe passage of fighters, weapons, and money across the Iran-Afghanistan border.

Direct Iranian government assistance to the Taliban was first alleged by U.S. officials during 2007. In January of that year, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns alleged that “There’s irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this and it’s a pattern of activity.… It’s certainly coming from the government of Iran. It’s coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps command, which is a basic unit of the Iranian government.”

A 2007 Treasury Department Fact Sheet identifies the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Qods Force as Tehran’s main vehicle for providing the Taliban with financial and weapons support. Secretary Gates has argued that the quantity of materiel proffered to the Taliban from Iran requires senior Iranian government involvement. Such support, even if not directly ordered by senior political leadership in Tehran, is certainly known of and allowed to continue unabated.

The same Explosively-Formed Penetrator IEDs Iran ships to Iraq are turning up in western Afghanistan, a previously quiet area compared to the eastern border with Pakistan. There have been 15 U.S. deaths in western Afghanistan in the last five months. One Taliban commander told BBC News in mid-2008 that Iranian businessmen sell Explosively Formed Penetrators, called “Dragons,” at a premium price to select Taliban commanders. In addition to businessmen who sell the weapons, the Taliban commander added that “There are people inside the state in Iran who donate weapons.” The Afghan press is reporting in October 2009 that Afghan security forces confiscated 860 Iranian-made land mines in northern Afghanistan. Tehran is also escalating by sending shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to Afghanistan, which would greatly complicate NATO operations.

General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, alleges in his September report to the White House that in addition to supplying weapons, “The Iranian Quds Force is reportedly training fighters for certain Taliban groups.”

As U.S. forces gradually shift from Iraq to Afghanistan, Tehran likely sees the opportunity to bog down the American military in a way it was unable to do in Iraq. Such an analysis accords with American assessments that see the U.S. position in Afghanistan as tenuous at best.

The Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council (P5+1) initiative to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and use maximum leverage to do so, diminishes the ability of NATO countries to use diplomacy to discourage Iranian support for the Taliban. Success against Iranian infiltration in Afghanistan will almost definitely require changing the security environment on the Afghanistan side of the border, rather than transforming the behavior of Tehran on the Iranian side of the border.

As President Obama weighs General McChrystal’s request for some 40,000 additional troops to execute a population protection counterinsurgency strategy, it is important to bear in mind that with external support from the likes of Tehran, the Taliban is unlikely to be defeated by anything less than rejection by the Afghan people themselves. To this end, the United States may be well-advised to seek support of members of Pashtun tribes that have formed alliances of convenience with the Taliban. A counterinsurgency strategy with enough U.S. forces to win the trust of locals by providing security will be essential to allow the American military to wean some of the Taliban’s tribal Pashtun allies away from the insurgency.

Walter Laqueur contributes a new paper to MESH’s Middle East Papers series, on Russia’s Muslim strategy. That strategy, barely coherent, is riddled with contradictions, as Russia vacillates between resentment of the American-led world order and fear of an ascendant Islam. For now, it’s the resentment against the West that dominates the Russian outlook, resulting in a makeshift approach to Islam at home and abroad that may prove inadequate as Russia’s own Muslim minorities and neighboring Muslim states grow stronger. Download here.

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On October 22-24, 2009, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) held its second annual conference, entitled “The Middle East and Africa: Historic Connections and Strategic Bridges.” At the welcoming reception on the first night, Vice President Peter Pham announced the creation of the new, refereed journal, The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, to be released early in 2010. The subjects for the journal—as a reflection of the unique approach of the association—will fall within a broad range of geography, encourage multi- and inter-disciplinary perspectives, and will not shy away from offering scholarship that will have policy-relevance as well as academic merit. As much as we value high quality scholarship at ASMEA, we also believe it is imperative to share such scholarship with elements of the government—and anyone else for that matter—who seek a deeper understanding of the issues in our regions.

ASMEA has made tremendous strides in just two years from its founding. For its first annual conference, it had 19 presentations, two roundtables, and a keynote speech by the association’s co-founder, Bernard Lewis. Lewis and Fouad Ajami co-founded ASMEA to defend free inquiry, expand the boundaries of scholarship, and respond to the growing need for a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach to studying the cultures, histories, and issues of the Middle East and Africa. It was therefore fitting that in his speech, Lewis examined the threat to the freedom of scholarly inquiry and the prospects for improving the discipline. As a result that conference, Praeger Security International will soon release ASMEA’s first edited book, entitled Political Islam from Muhammad to Ahmadinejad, in November 2009. The book is based on many of the presentations given at that conference, edited by ASMEA’s Treasurer, Joe Skelly.

For its second conference, ASMEA accepted over 50 presentations from over 100 submissions, with some 42 universities represented on three continents. We also had three special presentations. Ambassador John Bolton, Dr. Gerard Prunier, and Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez made up the roster for the special presentations on topics ranging from the UN in Africa, to racism in the Sudan, to evaluating the sources of interpretations of Soviet involvement in the Middle East from 1967 to 1973. We also had our first cooperative effort with Marine Corps University, in which professors from MCU held their own unique panel of presentations on teaching about this region.

Bernard Lewis gave the keynote speech for the conference. In fact, it is probably fair to say that he, again, stole the show with his lunchtime presentation on “The Iranian Difference.”

The presentations were as diverse in their subject and disciplinary perspectives as is the membership of ASMEA. Members of ASMEA are citizens from 46 different countries, have established a presence on over 350 university campuses in 38 different countries. Members with Ph.D.’s have them in 41 different academic disciplines. All the academic papers that were given at this conference are in the running for selection for ASMEA’s new journal. We welcome submissions from others, as well.

In my view, the energy, excitement, and enthusiasm for this new community of scholars was palpable at this conference. Anecdotally, many people made exceptionally favorable comments on the conference. Several members of MESH were also present, and I would appreciate their evaluation of the conference as well.

We will soon post the video of Lewis’ new talk on ASMEA’s website and list the papers that were presented. Look for announcements of our new journal’s publication. And start planning now to attend next year’s conference.

Turkey’s ties with its neighbors have been transformed since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power almost seven years ago in November 2002. Some analysts have described the AKP’s foreign policy as a “zero problems with neighbors” approach. Under the AKP, Ankara has indeed eliminated problems and built good ties with some neighbors, such as Syria and Iran, and signaled a thaw with Armenia, with whom Turkey shares a closed border. On the other hand, Ankara’s traditionally good ties with other neighbors such as Georgia and Azerbaijan have deteriorated under the AKP, and Turkish-Israeli ties could unravel despite diplomats’ best efforts. The AKP’s foreign policy, far from producing “zero problems with neighbors,” has resulted in significant ups with some neighbors and significant downs with others—especially those that are pro-Western.

For starters, the AKP’s foreign policy has focused heavily on the Muslim Middle East. Some analysts have referred to the party’s foreign policy as “neo-Ottomanist,” suggesting “secular” imperial ambitions or desire to achieve status as a regional power. But the AKP’s foreign policy energy has not asserted Turkey’s weight equally in all the areas that were under Ottoman rule, namely the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East. Instead, the AKP has focused its energy on the Middle East, with a slant towards Islamist and anti-Western actors, while building a finance-based relationship with Russia.

In this regard, the party’s use of diplomacy is evocative: a study of high-level visits by AKP officials to the Middle East, Balkans and Caucasus reveals that the party focuses asymmetrically on anti-Western Arab countries and Iran, while ignoring Israel, the Balkans and the Caucasus. Between November 2002 and April 2009, the Turkish foreign minister made at least eight visits to Iran and Syria, while paying only one visit to Azerbaijan (a Turkic nation once considered to be the closest country to Turkey) and one visit to Georgia (despite the fact that after Georgia’s independence, Turkey had acted as a mentor for that nation). During the same period, the Turkish prime minister made at least seven visits to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, while paying only two visits to Greece and Bulgaria, Turkey’s two immediate European and Balkan neighbors.

Much of the AKP’s energy in the Muslim Middle East has been focused on Syria. In the 1990s, Turkey viewed Syria as an enemy, because of its support of the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) terror attacks against Turkey. Yet, on October 13, Turkey and Syria opened their borders, which facilitated visa free-travel, and set up joint cabinet-level meetings which encouraged a meld in bilateral policymaking. Turkish-Syrian rapprochement began in the late 1990s when Damascus stopped supporting the PKK, but the past seven years of rapprochement under the AKP have brought about a significant strengthening of Syrian-Turkish ties. The AKP’s sympathy towards Turkey’s Arab neighbors, and its tendency to analyze the Middle East through an “us versus them” religion-based political lens, as well as to side with anti-Western causes in the region, have helped build Turkish-Syrian relations. Today, diplomats describe Turkish-Syrian relations as perfect.

Turkey’s ties with Iran have also improved under the AKP’s leadership, although not to the same extent as Turkish-Syrian ties. This is due to the fact that Tehran is a regional power which, unlike the Baath regime in Damascus, does not need patrons to survive. Still, Turkey defends Iran’s nuclearization, and as international pressure to prevent it mounts, Iran will likely launch diplomatic overtures to strengthen its bonds with Turkey. Trade links, including Turkish purchase of and investment in Iranian natural gas, will upgrade bilateral ties. Yet they will also create tensions between Ankara and the West, which will view AKP-promoted investments in Iran as undermining efforts to isolate Iran economically.

As Turkey’s ties with Iran have improved, Turkish-Israeli relations have significantly deteriorated under the AKP. The party’s critical rhetoric regarding Israel, which has eroded all Turkish public support for ties with Israel, had been dismissed for a long time in the West and in Israel as domestic politicking. However, that evaluation changed earlier this month. On October 7, the AKP dis-invited Israel to “Anatolian Eagle,” a NATO air force exercise that has been held in central Turkey with U.S., Israeli and Western states’ participation since the mid-1990s. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan justified his party’s decision by saying that Israel is a “persecutor.” Yet, the next day, the AKP announced that it had requested that Syria, whose regime persecutes its own people, participate in joint military exercises. A proverbial mountain is moving in Turkish foreign policy: the AKP’s “us versus them” mindset, which does not see nations but rather religious blocks in the Middle East, is corroding the foundations of Turkey’s 60-year-old military and political cooperation with Israel.

Rather than being pro-Western or neo-Ottoman in a “secular” sense, the AKP’s foreign policy is asymmetrically focused on anti-Western Middle East powers, as well as Russia. Rather than having a “zero problems with all neighbors” approach, the AKP’s foreign policy is a mixed bag, eliminating problems with some neighbors, yet souring previously good ties with other neighbors, especially pro-Western ones. The question is: how is that good for the United States?

On Saturday, October 17, at The Washington Institute’s annual Weinberg Founders Conference at Lansdowne, I was privileged to serve as master of ceremonies for the announcement of our second annual Book Prize for outstanding books on the Middle East published in the previous year. This is a major literary award, one of the most lucrative for non-fiction works in the world. And this year’s winners—chosen by a three-person panel of jurors that included Washington Post/Newsweek columnist Lally Weymouth; former State Department counselor (and SAIS professor) Eliot Cohen; and Emory University Middle East professor Ken Stein—merited every dollar in prize money… and more.

The first prize, worth $30,000, went to Ronald and Allis Radosh’s A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel; the second ($15,000) went to Ali A. Allawi’s The Crisis of Islamic Civilization; and the third ($5,000) went to Martin Indyk’s Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East. What a broad, fascinating and provocative array of books! They include a history of what was perhaps the most contrary decision an American president has ever taken on Middle East policy (Harry Truman’s decision to buck the Foggy Bottom establishment and recognize the new Jewish state of Israel); a bold and courageous account by an Iraqi intellectual cum public servant about what ails Muslim societies and how to fix it; and a wonderfully introspective retrospective on a scholar-diplomat’s time on the front lines in the Middle East (and the no-less-violent battles about the Middle East back in Washington). I have no role in these decisions—we are scrupulous about having an independent, omnipotent jury whose members don’t even know the identities of their fellow jurors—but I was thrilled with how their deliberations came out.

For more information on our Book Prize winners, click here.

The past several days have witnessed not one but two momentous, even stunning, developments in Turkish foreign policy that are reverberating through the region. Both are the work of Ahmet Davutoğlu, a former university professor who became Turkish foreign minister last year. Before that, Davutoğlu (shown on far right with his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem) served for several years as the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s chief foreign policy advisor. In a manner perhaps befitting a university professor, Davutoğlu has aspired to give Turkish foreign policy a comprehensive and consistent conceptual basis. He laid out his vision in his book Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position (Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiye’nin Uluslararası Konumu). According to this vision, whereas in the past the Turkish Republic followed a policy of quasi-isolation and self-imposed quarantine from its neighbors, today it should instead seek to take advantage of the cultural and historical links it shares with other countries in its region. As foreign minister, Davutoğlu has been working tirelessly to put his stamp on Turkish foreign policy. The past week has offered two dramatic examples of Turkey’s new foreign policy orientation.

An opening to the East. The first of took place on October 10 in Zurich where the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers signed a protocol agreeing to open their border and establish diplomatic ties between their two countries. Up until recently, observers – Armenian, Turkish, and foreign alike – generally regarded the idea of a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement as sheer fantasy. Precisely because their histories are intertwined, the rift between the Armenian and Turkish peoples is deep and multi-dimensional, going beyond already contentious geopolitics to extend into the very hearts of modern Armenian and Turkish identities and the founding myths of the Turkish and Armenian republics. Attitudes on both sides are so sensitive that despite even lengthy and meticulous preparation by the Armenian and Turkish foreign ministries, the signing of the protocol was almost consigned to remain the realm of fantasy right before it took place.

At the last minute both foreign ministers objected to the public statement planned by the other. The ceremony was saved only when, apparently at the suggestion of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, the two foreign ministers compromised by agreeing simply to refrain from making any statements at all. Such is the fragility of the rapprochement. Moreover, to come into force, the legislatures of Armenia and Turkey must first ratify the protocols. Multiple constituencies opposed to the normalization of relations exist inside (and outside) the two countries, and they may well prove skeptics and nay-sayers correct.

Nonetheless, the mere fact that Davutoğlu was able to bring the two countries this close in itself represents a fundamental change in Turkish foreign policy. And whereas the likelihood of failure in these sorts of sensitive and politically charged undertakings typically deters most, Davutoğlu’s tack is to capitalize in these situations on the power of boldness combined with persistence to change first expectations and then reality. Simply by striving for seemingly unthinkable change, Davutoğlu reckons, one demonstrates that change is possible, and thereby one changes fundamental calculations of all parties. The fact that Davutoğlu was able to coordinate both American and Russian support for this Caucasian gambit reflects his exceptional diplomatic skills and the considerable momentum he has already generated for normalization. Turkey’s opening to Armenia will have an impact on everything from stability in the greater Caucasus and Caspian region through world energy supplies and the future of NATO.

An opening to the South. As momentous as Turkey’s opening to its east in the Caucasus might be, its opening to the south has the potential to change regional dynamics even more. For most of its existence, the Turkish Republic has enjoyed at best cool relations with Syria. During the 1980s and 1990s, Turkish-Syrian ties were outright confrontational as the two states sparred over such issues as Turkish control of the waters of the Euphrates and Syrian support for the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan or PKK) inside of Turkey. Relations hit a nadir in 1999 when Turkey threatened to invade Syria if it continued to provide sanctuary to the head of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan. This period of heightened Turkish-Syrian tension overlapped with the establishment of a security partnership with Israel that became one of the constituent elements of the regional balance of power.

Relations between Syria and Turkey began to improve slowly after 1999, while ties to Israel became noticeably more strained in the wake of Israel’s 2006 military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon. But this week, what remained of the old architecture of regional relations came crashing down. First, in a pointed gesture, Turkey retracted its invitation to Israel to participate in the aerial war games known as “Anatolian Eagle.” Turkey has hosted the war games annually since 2001, and it has routinely involved Israel in them. This year, however, Turkey refused to allow the Israeli air force to take part as form of protest over Israel’s policies toward Gaza and in particular Operation Cast Lead.

The United States and Italy subsequently pulled out of Anatolian Eagle in protest. If this gesture was intended to cow Turkey, it failed. Lest there be any misunderstanding about Turkey’s motives for excluding Israel, Davutoğlu clarified matters on October 13 when, in what Turkish newspapers described as a “warning” to Israel, he demanded that the “human tragedy in Gaza” end and that “respect be shown to the al-Aqsa mosque, the Noble Sanctuary, and East Jerusalem, which are sacred to Muslims.” The day before, the Turkish foreign ministry on its website described the public interpretations and commentary of Israeli officials regarding Anatolian Eagle as “unacceptable” and chided those officials to use “common sense” in their future statements and actions.

No less significant than the content of Davutoğlu’s “warning” was the place where he chose to issue it, in the Syrian city of Aleppo at the first ministers’ meeting of the newly formed Turkish-Syrian High Level Strategic Cooperation Council. Whereas a decade ago common opposition to Syria served as a glue binding Turkey to Israel, today Turkey’s foreign minister issues appeals from inside Syria to Israel to heed the sensitivities of Muslims toward their holy sites in Jerusalem.

During his visit to Syria, Davutoğlu underscored that the opening up to Syria is neither a matter of tactics nor temporary, but is constituent part of the new Turkish foreign policy. Thus, for example, when he announcing the introduction of visa-free travel for Syrian and Turkish citizens, he described the occasion as a third common holiday for Turkish and Syrian citizens alongside the two major Islamic feasts Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha. Davutoğlu brought to Syria nine cabinet members and revealed a raft of projects ranging from educating Syrian students in Turkey through the removal of mines from the Turkish-Syrian border to the transformation of Aleppo into a major logistical hub for expanded Turkish trade with the Arab Middle East. The Turks hope to use Aleppo to meet Arab demand for Turkish foodstuffs.

There is a certain poetic irony to the Turkish dream of exporting food throughout the Middle East via Syria. Damascus’ Ottoman-era fame for its sweets gave rise to a Turkish saying that aptly summarized official Turkish attitudes from the 1920s through the end of the century toward all things Arab: Ne Şam’ın şekeri, ne Arabın yüzü, literally “Neither sweets from Damascus nor an Arab’s face,” which can be roughly translated as, I don’t want to have anything to do with the Arabs, even if they do have tasty sweets.

Instead, while in Aleppo Davutoğlu uttered an entirely different phrase to describe Turkish-Syrian relations: “A common fate, a common history, a common future.”

Israeli Anxieties. Needless to say, the developments of the past several days have thrown Israeli politicians and policymakers into confusion and no small bit of anxiety, with some urging caution and others hinting at forms of retaliation against Turkey ranging from ending Israeli arms sales to withdrawing support for Turkish lobbyists in America. At this point, however, it would seem that there is little to be gained from responding quickly in the hopes of either assuaging Ankara or deterring it from similar demarches. The Turkish-Israeli strategic partnership is no longer in crisis, but has essentially ended. Indeed, unconfirmed reports in the Syrian and Turkish media promise the conclusion of a formal Turkish-Syrian strategic partnership in the near future.

Not surprisingly, Davutoğlu’s criticisms of Israel and expressions of solidarity have met with great enthusiasm inside Syria. Without a doubt, the sound of cheering crowds in a country long known to the Turks as an obstinate and troublesome neighbor must deeply gratify Davutoğlu. That gratification will certainly only increase as others in the Arab world and beyond join in to hail the change in Turkey’s regional orientation away from Israel to the Arabs. Turkey’s expanded engagement with the Arab world may well turn out to be a boon for all involved, as Davutoğlu surely hopes. Turkey has a great deal to offer by way of its relative political openness and economic dynamism to the Arab world. If done correctly, Turkey’s engagement could help point the way for the Arabs to transform their societies into more open, competitive, and democratic ones.

But that will be no easy task, nor will it be a short one. Initiatives such as student exchanges and increased business contacts can help change societies, but they require decades to yield fruit and provide little gratification after their inception.

Turkey’s engagement also carries real risks if the course of influence runs in the opposite direction, i.e. from the Arab countries to Turkey. This was the reasoning behind the traditional Kemalist desire to keep all things Middle Eastern at arms length and under control. Turkish officials saw the Middle East as a cultural swamp from which Turkey must escape, not a realm of common culture in which it could thrive.

As Davutoğlu must recognize, the problems of the Arab world, and the sources of its misery, are greater and deeper than the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Arab countries are politically dysfunctional and most are economically moribund. There is little that they can offer the Turks aside from perhaps oil and gas and markets for Turkish consumer goods. In earlier eras, others such as Nasser and Saddam Hussein sought to expand their influence throughout the region by appealing to Arab sympathies against Israel, but their efforts did nothing but bring their own societies to ruin and leave the Arabs as whole worse off. Today, Ahmadinejad is attempting something similar with his backing for Hezbollah and routine denunciations of Israel. Yet, one need only look at Iran’s recent elections to answer the question of whether Ahmadinejad’s version of statecraft is serving anyone but himself and those close to him.

Israel’s policies are not above criticism, but if Davutoğlu truly aspires to have Turkey play the role of an effective regional leader, he will have to direct some of his criticism toward those entities, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, that celebrate violent confrontation with Israel over the development of their own societies. And he will have to do so soon. With Iran in determined pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, an enigmatic Obama administration sending mixed signals to the Middle East, and Hamas and Hezbollah mantaining their romantic commitments to violence, the sight and sound of Turkey closing ranks with Syria will not spur Israelis to step back and announce a “kindler, gentler” Israel to soothe its neighbors. Instead, it will only magnify existing fears among Israelis that their country does indeed face an unprecedented existential threat that only desperate action can solve. Better than most people, Davutoğlu should understand that precisely what Israel lacks is the sort of strategic depth Turkey possesses, and this has consequences for Israeli policymaking.

But does Davutoğlu understand this? Right now, the indications are that he does not, or at least does not care.

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.