Latest news with #InternationalCrisisGroup
Yomiuri Shimbun
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Israeli Strikes on Iran Cap Dramatic Shift in Mideast Strategic Balance
JERUSALEM – While the world was bracing for President Donald Trump's decision on whether to bomb Iran and the tectonic waves that would follow, here in the Middle East, the earthquake had already struck. Israel's go-for-broke attacks on Iran launched just over a week ago – after decades of intense but largely covert conflict between the two powers – have dramatically shifted the strategic balance, according to analysts in Israel, across the region and beyond. And those fundamental changes look to prevail even after American bombers entered the fray this weekend. Israel's assault caps a string of upheavals that would have been inconceivable before the attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, including the routing of three Iranian allies: Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Now, Israeli fighter jets are operating with impunity over the Iranian capital, Tehran, and Iran – perceived for years by not only Israel but many countries in the Arab Gulf region as the primary menace – has been exposed as a far hollower military force than many in the world believed. The decades-old status quo has been shattered, with Israel now ascendant as the Middle East's unchallenged military power, Iran and its 'axis of resistance' in disarray, and these two foes – for the first time – locked in direct combat. 'The region is fundamentally different now,' said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group in Washington. 'The name of the game for decades was that Israel and Iran would engage through proxies and covert operations. That it has turned into an open conflict is something I really didn't foresee.' He and other analysts were quick to say that the outcome of this conflict is far from clear, and the reshuffling of the regional order is far from over. Iran is weakened but not defeated. Its nuclear enrichment program is damaged, but it remains unclear whether it has been destroyed. Possible endgames, Vaez said, include the collapse of the Iranian regime, which by no means would assure the end of enmity; a military quagmire sucking in Israel and Iran, which could further destabilize the region; and, perhaps most feared, a determination by Iran that its survival requires the speedy development of a nuclear weapon. While this unfolding drama has yet to be resolved, the region has already been transformed in several essential ways, according to Middle East analysts. Israel no longer faces the intense threats from just across its borders once posed by Hamas and Hezbollah, which have been reeling since their longtime leaders were killed and much of their fighting forces decimated by Israel. A much-diminished Hamas is still trying to put up a fight amid the devastation of the Gaza war, while Hezbollah is unwilling, and perhaps unable, to retaliate against Israel for its attacks on Iran. Syrian rebels have shaken off the tyranny of the Assad regime and with it, the influence of Iran and Russia, which had long dominated relations between Syria and the world. Both Syria and Lebanon, where Hezbollah's political sway has receded, have at least a chance for renewal. 'The Levant has flipped,' said Paul Salem, former president of the Middle East Institute in Beirut. 'Both Syria and Lebanon are on a new and hopefully promising trajectory.' And Israel has rebounded from the devastating Oct. 7 attacks of 20 months ago. While Israeli hostages are still held by Hamas, and Israeli troops continue to wage a calamitous military campaign in Gaza, Israel is now in its strongest strategic position in decades, operating militarily beyond its borders in Lebanon, southern Syria and now over Iran. 'We've never used the word unprecedented so often,' said Renad Mansour, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, a think tank in London. Mansour likened the recent changes in the regional order, culminating in Israel's attack on Iran, to some of the most consequential upheavals seen by the Middle East in the past half-century. These include the oil shocks of the 1970s, the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the long Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. 'This will be one of those hugely impactful moments in the history books,' he said. 'What emerges after this will not look like it was on Oct. 6. Israel's attack on Iran cements that.' Especially striking are the rapid deterioration of Iran's strategic position and the collapse of its decades-long enterprise to project power across the region via a network of allied militant armies, including in Iraq and Yemen. 'Iran was an imperial power that once boasted of controlling four Arab capitals: Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sanaa,' said Salem. 'I mean, my God have they come down in the world?' Iran spent decades organizing and funding militant groups, and developing missile and drone technologies to arm them. Israeli officials estimated, for example, that Hezbollah had more than 100,000 rockets stockpiled before Israel targeted them. Governments in the region long feared the chaos Iran could unleash, and Tehran exploited these anxieties to further expand its sway. When missiles and drones launched from Iran sent fireballs over Saudi Arabian oil fields in 2019, Trump, in his first term, declined to retaliate despite pleas from several regional powers to act. 'Nobody thought they could do anything,' said Ksenia Svetlova, director of the Israel-based Regional Organization for Peace, Economics and Security. 'We were accustomed for decades Iran trying to export Islamic revolution, overthrow governments and sponsor terror groups.' She said she had heard many people in Arab Gulf countries say they were looking for someone to take on the Iranians. 'And that someone they meant was Israel,' Svetlova said. Israel has dealt a series of blows to Iran's nuclear and military efforts in recent years, engaging in sabotage and assassinations. Then last year, for the first time, Iran and Israel began openly trading strikes, initially triggered by a fatal Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, and Israeli forces succeeded in knocking out key Iranian air defenses. Since the tensions erupted into full conflict this month, Israeli forces have killed senior military officials and nuclear scientists; targeted nuclear, military, industrial and other sites; and demonstrated an ability to carry out attacks from the air and through covert operations with little if any resistance. 'The most important change is Israel's escalation dominance,' said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East envoy under both Republican and Democratic administrations. 'It has something it's never had before, the ability to control the pace and intensity of conflicts in ways that no one can match.' Israelis are feeling bullish about their new status as the region's unchallenged hegemon. 'I don't believe Israel has been in a such a strong strategic position since I've been here,' said Natan Sharansky, a former Israeli politician who came to Israel after being imprisoned as a dissident in the Soviet Union. 'Suddenly all these challenges, especially the Iran challenge, can be faced on a different plane.' How Israel wields this unrivaled power will determine much about the future of the region. A confident Israel, for instance, could strike agreements to wind down the hostilities in Gaza, address Palestinian demands and relieve tensions elsewhere along its borders. But Miller said that the political pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces from the extremist right-wing members of his governing coalition makes it difficult for him to convert military might into ceasefires and peace treaties that could produce regional stability. Trump's decision to order U.S. forces into action will probably also roil the Middle East further, even if the American military operation proves successful. The ultimate reverberations are hard to predict. 'If we have a massive U.S. bombardment, we may have something like Libya, with Iran descending into internal chaos,' Vaez said in an interview before the U.S. airstrikes were carried out, warning of repercussions throughout the region and beyond. 'Think of the waves of refugees to Europe from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and imagine adding a country of 90 million people to the mix.'
CNN
2 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
‘The Iranian leadership has no good options,' says expert
Christiane Amanpour speaks with Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group about the options facing Iran's government after Israel's strikes.
Al Jazeera
4 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Trump 'more likely to escalate' attack on Iran than stop it
Ali Vaez, senior advisor at the International Crisis Group, says President Trump could halt Israel's attacks on Iran, but he's more likely to join the fight than stop it.
CNN
4 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Analysis: The US may be headed into another Middle East war — and no one is talking about how it ends
It might be happening again. A president is being driven – by events, fear of proliferating weapons of mass destruction and the need to back up his own words – toward a shock-and-awe entry into a Middle East conflict with no guaranteed way out. Expectations are growing in Washington that Donald Trump will soon heed Israeli calls to try to strike a decisive blow against Iran's nuclear program, using bunker-busting weapons that only the US can deliver. The president's rhetoric took a sharp turn following the apparent success of Israel's early barrage that wiped out top military leaders and nuclear scientists and severely degraded Iran's capacity to defend itself. And CNN reported Tuesday that Trump was warming to the idea of using US military assets to strike Iranian nuclear sites and was souring on his previous unsuccessful attempt to settle the issue through talks with Iran. As always with Trump, we must ask whether his tough talk is for real. Perhaps he is trying to bully Iran back to diplomacy and the 'unconditional surrender' he demanded on social media. This looks like a pipe dream. 'As long as President Trump is trying to capitalize on Israeli aggression against Iran, to get the Iranian leadership to surrender, it is just simply not going to work,' Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, told Becky Anderson on CNN International's 'Connect the World' Tuesday. 'What they see at the end of this slippery slope is basically full capitulation and regime collapse.' And since Israel's preemptive attack on Iran seems partly motivated by the desire to derail US diplomacy, who's to say a president who has recently been ignored by Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping could stop Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? But Trump may be on the brink of a huge gamble that would repudiate his own political principles. His own scathing contempt for US presidents who pushed regime change played a huge role in the former reality star's dive into politics in 2015. If he goes to war in Iran, Trump will be ignoring a loud sector of his MAGA movement. The 'America First' president would become the kind of interventionist he despised. Still, there is a loophole in Trump's isolationism. He's always insisted that Iran, given its threats to eradicate Israel and sworn enmity with the US, would never be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. Trump is deliberating whether to use 30,000-pound 'Massive Ordnance Penetrator' guided bombs to destroy Iran's nuclear plant at Fordow, which is entombed below several hundred feet of concrete in a mountain. But something important is missing: any public talk by top officials about what might happen next. This is an extraordinary omission given Washington's 21st-century misadventures, when it started wars and spent the best part of 20 years trying to get out. 'Anyone who is cheerleading the United States into a war with Iran has very quickly forgotten the disasters of the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war,' Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday. The Connecticut Democrat recalled those conflicts 'became a quagmire that ultimately got thousands of Americans killed and created new insurgencies against US interests and against our allies in the region.' The United States rolled into Iraq in 2003 and quickly toppled the tyrant Saddam Hussein. But it collapsed the Iraqi state and unleashed a vicious insurgency that ultimately ended in a US defeat. Fragile stability has only now returned to Iraq more than two decades later. In Afghanistan, President George W. Bush's post 9/11 invasion drove out Taliban leaders harboring Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. But two decades of failed nation-building led to a humiliating US withdrawal in 2021 that shattered then-President Joe Biden's claims to be a foreign affairs guru. President Barack Obama had his own debacle. He was persuaded by European allies and some of his own aides to overthrow Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to protect civilians in 2011. 'We came, we saw, he died,' then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview. US hubris over Libya faded long ago. But it remains dangerous and impoverished. Trump knows all this. The moment it became clear that he'd change the hawkish Republican Party forever occurred when he slammed primary rival Jeb Bush in a 2016 debate over his brother's wars. 'The war in Iraq was a big fat mistake' Trump said. And he hasn't forgotten. He reminded the world of it just last month in a major speech in Saudi Arabia. 'The so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,' Trump said. 'They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves.' Is Trump now going to become one of his own examples? Iran is not Libya, Iraq or Afghanistan. History doesn't have to repeat itself. Maybe the hawks are right this time that a devastating, contained US military strike can destroy Iran's nuclear program and remove an existential threat to Israel and national security risk for the United States. But Iran's clerical regime would almost certainly have to respond, if only to protect its own authority. Depending on its remaining military capacity after the Israeli onslaught, it might attack US personnel and bases in the region. Trump would have to respond in a cycle of escalation with no clear endgame. It's easy to draw up nightmare scenarios. Iran might shut down the Strait of Hormuz to choke the flow of oil to trigger a global energy crisis. Or it might target oil fields of its regional rivals, such as Saudi Arabia. Only one nation could lead a response: the United States, as it got sucked deeper into a regional war. Then there's the possibility of mass Iranian cyber-attacks that could bring war to the homeland. Few Americans would mourn Iran's regime if Israel's push for regime change or encouragement for Iranians to revolt against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pays off. But political forces likely to be unleashed by the fall of the Islamic revolution, or the regime's crown jewel – its nuclear program – could cause immense upheaval. Anarchy or worse could be the result if a nation of 90 million people – which includes ethnic and sectarian fault lines among Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Baloch, Turkmen, Turk and Arab tribes – is suddenly leaderless. A failed-state meltdown could send millions of refugees into the Middle East and Europe when immigration is already straining societal cohesion and fomenting extremism. A sudden security vacuum could lead to civil wars, or a brutalist takeover from the military or elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya know how quickly terror havens can spring up. Unrest could spread throughout the region and threaten already unstable nations like Pakistan. It's also worth asking how the US and Israeli governments would secure stocks of nuclear material left exposed by raids on Iran's atomic plants to prevent them falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue states. As dire as these possibilities sound, they may be immaterial to Israel's thinking. After all, Netanyahu says the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb could lead to the eradication of his country and the Jewish people. But history, current and distant, challenges the idea a joint US and Israel effort would be short and conclusive. Israel still hasn't eradicated Hamas despite many months of bombardments in Gaza that have inflicted a terrible toll on tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Iran is likely to be a bigger challenge. And US efforts to shape Iran – including a CIA-backed coup in 1953, support for the repressive Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi that led to the Islamic revolution, and Washington's backing for Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s – almost always made the situation worse. So why has Trump apparently shed his earlier reticence over foreign wars? If he gives the go-ahead for a US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, he could end up in a spot that any president might have reached. All his recent predecessors warned that Iran could never be allowed to get the bomb – although Trump may be blamed for failing with diplomacy to stop it happening on his watch. But if Israel's warnings that Tehran was racing toward a nuclear weapon were accurate, no US president could stand by and risk a second Holocaust – especially one who in his first term trashed a nuclear deal that Iran was respecting. It probably not coincidental that Trump's thinking evolved given the apparent success of early Israeli operations. He revealed on Tuesday that 'we' now have 'complete and total control of the skies over Iran.' A potential low-risk environment for US bombers might tempt a president who worships Gen. George Patton. He might sense a quick foreign policy win to make up for his failures to be the peacemaker he promised. And he'd love to crow that he – and not Bush, Obama or Biden – eradicated the threat from Iran. Still, he's a problematic war leader, having done nothing to prepare the country for a possible new escapade in a region stained by American blood and lost treasure. And Trump's strategy of governing as a divisive strongman may deprive him of the bipartisan public trust all warrior presidents need to succeed. Suddenly, a man who took great pride in never starting new wars has landed in a familiar place. He's a president debating whether to send Americans into a new Middle East conflict based on possibly questionable intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. The fallen from the Iraq and Afghan wars lie in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. The very least they are owed is an explanation of what happens next, if the first US bombs start dropping in Iran.
CNN
4 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Analysis: The US may be headed into another Middle East war — and no one is talking about how it ends
It might be happening again. A president is being driven – by events, fear of proliferating weapons of mass destruction and the need to back up his own words – toward a shock-and-awe entry into a Middle East conflict with no guaranteed way out. Expectations are growing in Washington that Donald Trump will soon heed Israeli calls to try to strike a decisive blow against Iran's nuclear program, using bunker-busting weapons that only the US can deliver. The president's rhetoric took a sharp turn following the apparent success of Israel's early barrage that wiped out top military leaders and nuclear scientists and severely degraded Iran's capacity to defend itself. And CNN reported Tuesday that Trump was warming to the idea of using US military assets to strike Iranian nuclear sites and was souring on his previous unsuccessful attempt to settle the issue through talks with Iran. As always with Trump, we must ask whether his tough talk is for real. Perhaps he is trying to bully Iran back to diplomacy and the 'unconditional surrender' he demanded on social media. This looks like a pipe dream. 'As long as President Trump is trying to capitalize on Israeli aggression against Iran, to get the Iranian leadership to surrender, it is just simply not going to work,' Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, told Becky Anderson on CNN International's 'Connect the World' Tuesday. 'What they see at the end of this slippery slope is basically full capitulation and regime collapse.' And since Israel's preemptive attack on Iran seems partly motivated by the desire to derail US diplomacy, who's to say a president who has recently been ignored by Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping could stop Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? But Trump may be on the brink of a huge gamble that would repudiate his own political principles. His own scathing contempt for US presidents who pushed regime change played a huge role in the former reality star's dive into politics in 2015. If he goes to war in Iran, Trump will be ignoring a loud sector of his MAGA movement. The 'America First' president would become the kind of interventionist he despised. Still, there is a loophole in Trump's isolationism. He's always insisted that Iran, given its threats to eradicate Israel and sworn enmity with the US, would never be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. Trump is deliberating whether to use 30,000-pound 'Massive Ordnance Penetrator' guided bombs to destroy Iran's nuclear plant at Fordow, which is entombed below several hundred feet of concrete in a mountain. But something important is missing: any public talk by top officials about what might happen next. This is an extraordinary omission given Washington's 21st-century misadventures, when it started wars and spent the best part of 20 years trying to get out. 'Anyone who is cheerleading the United States into a war with Iran has very quickly forgotten the disasters of the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war,' Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday. The Connecticut Democrat recalled those conflicts 'became a quagmire that ultimately got thousands of Americans killed and created new insurgencies against US interests and against our allies in the region.' The United States rolled into Iraq in 2003 and quickly toppled the tyrant Saddam Hussein. But it collapsed the Iraqi state and unleashed a vicious insurgency that ultimately ended in a US defeat. Fragile stability has only now returned to Iraq more than two decades later. In Afghanistan, President George W. Bush's post 9/11 invasion drove out Taliban leaders harboring Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. But two decades of failed nation-building led to a humiliating US withdrawal in 2021 that shattered then-President Joe Biden's claims to be a foreign affairs guru. President Barack Obama had his own debacle. He was persuaded by European allies and some of his own aides to overthrow Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to protect civilians in 2011. 'We came, we saw, he died,' then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview. US hubris over Libya faded long ago. But it remains dangerous and impoverished. Trump knows all this. The moment it became clear that he'd change the hawkish Republican Party forever occurred when he slammed primary rival Jeb Bush in a 2016 debate over his brother's wars. 'The war in Iraq was a big fat mistake' Trump said. And he hasn't forgotten. He reminded the world of it just last month in a major speech in Saudi Arabia. 'The so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,' Trump said. 'They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves.' Is Trump now going to become one of his own examples? Iran is not Libya, Iraq or Afghanistan. History doesn't have to repeat itself. Maybe the hawks are right this time that a devastating, contained US military strike can destroy Iran's nuclear program and remove an existential threat to Israel and national security risk for the United States. But Iran's clerical regime would almost certainly have to respond, if only to protect its own authority. Depending on its remaining military capacity after the Israeli onslaught, it might attack US personnel and bases in the region. Trump would have to respond in a cycle of escalation with no clear endgame. It's easy to draw up nightmare scenarios. Iran might shut down the Strait of Hormuz to choke the flow of oil to trigger a global energy crisis. Or it might target oil fields of its regional rivals, such as Saudi Arabia. Only one nation could lead a response: the United States, as it got sucked deeper into a regional war. Then there's the possibility of mass Iranian cyber-attacks that could bring war to the homeland. Few Americans would mourn Iran's regime if Israel's push for regime change or encouragement for Iranians to revolt against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pays off. But political forces likely to be unleashed by the fall of the Islamic revolution, or the regime's crown jewel – its nuclear program – could cause immense upheaval. Anarchy or worse could be the result if a nation of 90 million people – which includes ethnic and sectarian fault lines among Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Baloch, Turkmen, Turk and Arab tribes – is suddenly leaderless. A failed-state meltdown could send millions of refugees into the Middle East and Europe when immigration is already straining societal cohesion and fomenting extremism. A sudden security vacuum could lead to civil wars, or a brutalist takeover from the military or elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya know how quickly terror havens can spring up. Unrest could spread throughout the region and threaten already unstable nations like Pakistan. It's also worth asking how the US and Israeli governments would secure stocks of nuclear material left exposed by raids on Iran's atomic plants to prevent them falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue states. As dire as these possibilities sound, they may be immaterial to Israel's thinking. After all, Netanyahu says the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb could lead to the eradication of his country and the Jewish people. But history, current and distant, challenges the idea a joint US and Israel effort would be short and conclusive. Israel still hasn't eradicated Hamas despite many months of bombardments in Gaza that have inflicted a terrible toll on tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Iran is likely to be a bigger challenge. And US efforts to shape Iran – including a CIA-backed coup in 1953, support for the repressive Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi that led to the Islamic revolution, and Washington's backing for Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s – almost always made the situation worse. So why has Trump apparently shed his earlier reticence over foreign wars? If he gives the go-ahead for a US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, he could end up in a spot that any president might have reached. All his recent predecessors warned that Iran could never be allowed to get the bomb – although Trump may be blamed for failing with diplomacy to stop it happening on his watch. But if Israel's warnings that Tehran was racing toward a nuclear weapon were accurate, no US president could stand by and risk a second Holocaust – especially one who in his first term trashed a nuclear deal that Iran was respecting. It probably not coincidental that Trump's thinking evolved given the apparent success of early Israeli operations. He revealed on Tuesday that 'we' now have 'complete and total control of the skies over Iran.' A potential low-risk environment for US bombers might tempt a president who worships Gen. George Patton. He might sense a quick foreign policy win to make up for his failures to be the peacemaker he promised. And he'd love to crow that he – and not Bush, Obama or Biden – eradicated the threat from Iran. Still, he's a problematic war leader, having done nothing to prepare the country for a possible new escapade in a region stained by American blood and lost treasure. And Trump's strategy of governing as a divisive strongman may deprive him of the bipartisan public trust all warrior presidents need to succeed. Suddenly, a man who took great pride in never starting new wars has landed in a familiar place. He's a president debating whether to send Americans into a new Middle East conflict based on possibly questionable intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. The fallen from the Iraq and Afghan wars lie in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. The very least they are owed is an explanation of what happens next, if the first US bombs start dropping in Iran.
