The Redirection
Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?
By Seymour M. Hersh
A STRATEGIC SHIFT
In
the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the
Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert
operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The
“redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new
strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation
with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening
sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To
undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration
has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle
East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s
government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended
to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The
U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and
its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering
of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and
are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One
contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the
insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni
forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s
perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of
the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of
Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last
week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state
television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front,
headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the
region.”
After the revolution of
1979 brought a religious government to power, the United States broke
with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab
states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became
more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard
to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from
extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of
Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative
ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a
pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority
had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the
intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and
Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of
the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the
Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The
new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed
publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in
January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new
strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and
“extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation,
and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that
divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran
and Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to
destabilize.”
Some of the core
tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine
operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the
execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work
around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and
former officials close to the Administration said.
A
senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had
heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had
not been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,” he said. “We
ask for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask
specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s so
frustrating.”
The key players behind
the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy
national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to
Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While
Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and
current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by
Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for
this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said,
“The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.”)
The
policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic
embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential
threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who
believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran
less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli
negotiations.
The
new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,” a
U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni
states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing
resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,” he said.
“We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it.”
“It
seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the
biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites,
Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have
been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are
the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”
Martin
Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration
who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the Middle East is
heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.” Indyk, who is the
director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings
Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear whether the
White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of its new
policy. “The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq,” he said.
“It’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very
complicated. Everything is upside down.”
The
Administration’s new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate its
strategy for winning the war in Iraq. Patrick Clawson, an expert on
Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute
for Near East Policy, argued, however, that closer ties between the
United States and moderate or even radical Sunnis could put “fear” into
the government of Prime Minister Maliki and “make him worry that the
Sunnis could actually win” the civil war there. Clawson said that this
might give Maliki an incentive to coöperate with the United States in
suppressing radical Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi
Army.
Even so, for the moment,
the U.S. remains dependent on the coöperation of Iraqi Shiite leaders.
The Mahdi Army may be openly hostile to American interests, but other
Shiite militias are counted as U.S. allies. Both Moqtada al-Sadr and the
White House back Maliki. A memorandum written late last year by Stephen
Hadley, the national-security adviser, suggested that the
Administration try to separate Maliki from his more radical Shiite
allies by building his base among moderate Sunnis and Kurds, but so far
the trends have been in the opposite direction. As the Iraqi Army
continues to founder in its confrontations with insurgents, the power of
the Shiite militias has steadily increased.
Flynt
Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council
official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about
the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to
make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the
Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the
actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the
Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all
part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on
Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then
the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”
President
George W. Bush, in a speech on January 10th, partially spelled out this
approach. “These two regimes”—Iran and Syria—“are allowing terrorists
and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq,” Bush
said. “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American
troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the
flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy
the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in
Iraq.”
In the following weeks,
there was a wave of allegations from the Administration about Iranian
involvement in the Iraq war. On February 11th, reporters were shown
sophisticated explosive devices, captured in Iraq, that the
Administration claimed had come from Iran. The Administration’s message
was, in essence, that the bleak situation in Iraq was the result not of
its own failures of planning and execution but of Iran’s interference.
The
U.S. military also has arrested and interrogated hundreds of Iranians
in Iraq. “The word went out last August for the military to snatch as
many Iranians in Iraq as they can,” a former senior intelligence
official said. “They had five hundred locked up at one time. We’re
working these guys and getting information from them. The White House
goal is to build a case that the Iranians have been fomenting the
insurgency and they’ve been doing it all along—that Iran is, in fact,
supporting the killing of Americans.” The Pentagon consultant confirmed
that hundreds of Iranians have been captured by American forces in
recent months. But he told me that that total includes many Iranian
humanitarian and aid workers who “get scooped up and released in a short
time,” after they have been interrogated.
“We
are not planning for a war with Iran,” Robert Gates, the new Defense
Secretary, announced on February 2nd, and yet the atmosphere of
confrontation has deepened. According to current and former American
intelligence and military officials, secret operations in Lebanon have
been accompanied by clandestine operations targeting Iran. American
military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in
Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on
terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed
the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.
At
Rice’s Senate appearance in January, Democratic Senator Joseph Biden,
of Delaware, pointedly asked her whether the U.S. planned to cross the
Iranian or the Syrian border in the course of a pursuit. “Obviously, the
President isn’t going to rule anything out to protect our troops, but
the plan is to take down these networks in Iraq,” Rice said, adding, “I
do think that everyone will understand that—the American people and I
assume the Congress expect the President to do what is necessary to
protect our forces.”
The
ambiguity of Rice’s reply prompted a response from Nebraska Senator
Chuck Hagel, a Republican, who has been critical of the Administration:
Some of us remember 1970, Madam Secretary. And that was Cambodia. And when our government lied to the American people and said, “We didn’t cross the border going into Cambodia,” in fact we did.
I happen to know something about that, as do some on this committee. So, Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the President is talking about here, it’s very, very dangerous.
The
Administration’s concern about Iran’s role in Iraq is coupled with its
long-standing alarm over Iran’s nuclear program. On Fox News on January
14th, Cheney warned of the possibility, in a few years, “of a
nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect
adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations
and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others
around the world.” He also said, “If you go and talk with the Gulf
states or if you talk with the Saudis or if you talk with the Israelis
or the Jordanians, the entire region is worried. . . . The threat Iran
represents is growing.”
The
Administration is now examining a wave of new intelligence on Iran’s
weapons programs. Current and former American officials told me that the
intelligence, which came from Israeli agents operating in Iran,
includes a claim that Iran has developed a three-stage solid-fuelled
intercontinental missile capable of delivering several small
warheads—each with limited accuracy—inside Europe. The validity of this
human intelligence is still being debated.
A
similar argument about an imminent threat posed by weapons of mass
destruction—and questions about the intelligence used to make that
case—formed the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. Many in Congress have
greeted the claims about Iran with wariness; in the Senate on February
14th, Hillary Clinton said, “We have all learned lessons from the
conflict in Iraq, and we have to apply those lessons to any allegations
that are being raised about Iran. Because, Mr. President, what we are
hearing has too familiar a ring and we must be on guard that we never
again make decisions on the basis of intelligence that turns out to be
faulty.”
Still, the Pentagon is
continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a
process that began last year, at the direction of the President. In
recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special
planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that
can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four
hours.
In
the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting and the
Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has been
handed a new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be
involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. Previously, the focus
had been on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and possible
regime change.
Two carrier strike
groups—the Eisenhower and the Stennis—are now in the Arabian Sea. One
plan is for them to be relieved early in the spring, but there is worry
within the military that they may be ordered to stay in the area after
the new carriers arrive, according to several sources. (Among other
concerns, war games have shown that the carriers could be vulnerable to
swarming tactics involving large numbers of small boats, a technique
that the Iranians have practiced in the past; carriers have limited
maneuverability in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, off Iran’s southern
coast.) The former senior intelligence official said that the current
contingency plans allow for an attack order this spring. He added,
however, that senior officers on the Joint Chiefs were counting on the
White House’s not being “foolish enough to do this in the face of Iraq,
and the problems it would give the Republicans in 2008.”
PRINCE BANDAR’S GAME
The
Administration’s effort to diminish Iranian authority in the Middle
East has relied heavily on Saudi Arabia and on Prince Bandar, the Saudi
national-security adviser. Bandar served as the Ambassador to the United
States for twenty-two years, until 2005, and has maintained a
friendship with President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. In his new
post, he continues to meet privately with them. Senior White House
officials have made several visits to Saudi Arabia recently, some of
them not disclosed.
Last November, Cheney flew to Saudi Arabia for a surprise meeting with King Abdullah and Bandar. The Times
reported that the King warned Cheney that Saudi Arabia would back its
fellow-Sunnis in Iraq if the United States were to withdraw. A European
intelligence official told me that the meeting also focussed on more
general Saudi fears about “the rise of the Shiites.” In response, “The
Saudis are starting to use their leverage—money.”
In a royal family rife with competition, Bandar has, over the years,
built a power base that relies largely on his close relationship with
the U.S., which is crucial to the Saudis. Bandar was succeeded as
Ambassador by Prince Turki al-Faisal; Turki resigned after eighteen
months and was replaced by Adel A. al-Jubeir, a bureaucrat who has
worked with Bandar. A former Saudi diplomat told me that during Turki’s
tenure he became aware of private meetings involving Bandar and senior
White House officials, including Cheney and Abrams. “I assume Turki was
not happy with that,” the Saudi said. But, he added, “I don’t think that
Bandar is going off on his own.” Although Turki dislikes Bandar, the
Saudi said, he shared his goal of challenging the spread of Shiite power
in the Middle East.
The
split between Shiites and Sunnis goes back to a bitter divide, in the
seventh century, over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad. Sunnis
dominated the medieval caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, and Shiites,
traditionally, have been regarded more as outsiders. Worldwide, ninety
per cent of Muslims are Sunni, but Shiites are a majority in Iran, Iraq,
and Bahrain, and are the largest Muslim group in Lebanon. Their
concentration in a volatile, oil-rich region has led to concern in the
West and among Sunnis about the emergence of a “Shiite
crescent”—especially given Iran’s increased geopolitical weight.
“The
Saudis still see the world through the days of the Ottoman Empire, when
Sunni Muslims ruled the roost and the Shiites were the lowest class,”
Frederic Hof, a retired military officer who is an expert on the Middle
East, told me. If Bandar was seen as bringing about a shift in U.S.
policy in favor of the Sunnis, he added, it would greatly enhance his
standing within the royal family.
The
Saudis are driven by their fear that Iran could tilt the balance of
power not only in the region but within their own country. Saudi Arabia
has a significant Shiite minority in its Eastern Province, a region of
major oil fields; sectarian tensions are high in the province. The royal
family believes that Iranian operatives, working with local Shiites,
have been behind many terrorist attacks inside the kingdom, according to
Vali Nasr. “Today, the only army capable of containing Iran”—the Iraqi
Army—“has been destroyed by the United States. You’re now dealing with
an Iran that could be nuclear-capable and has a standing army of four
hundred and fifty thousand soldiers.” (Saudi Arabia has seventy-five
thousand troops in its standing army.)
Nasr
went on, “The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep
relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis”—Sunni extremists
who view Shiites as apostates. “The last time Iran was a threat, the
Saudis were able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic radicals. Once
you get them out of the box, you can’t put them back.”
The
Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a target of
Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence among the
family’s myriad princes. The princes are gambling that they will not be
overthrown as long as they continue to support religious schools and
charities linked to the extremists. The Administration’s new strategy is
heavily dependent on this bargain.
Nasr
compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first
emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi
government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war
against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were
sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious
schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many
of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among
them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al
Qaeda, in 1988.
This time, the
U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured
the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious
fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement,
and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw
bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”
The
Saudi said that, in his country’s view, it was taking a political risk
by joining the U.S. in challenging Iran: Bandar is already seen in the
Arab world as being too close to the Bush Administration. “We have two
nightmares,” the former diplomat told me. “For Iran to acquire the bomb
and for the United States to attack Iran. I’d rather the Israelis bomb
the Iranians, so we can blame them. If America does it, we will be
blamed.”
In the
past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have
developed a series of informal understandings about their new strategic
direction. At least four main elements were involved, the U.S.
government consultant told me. First, Israel would be assured that its
security was paramount and that Washington and Saudi Arabia and other
Sunni states shared its concern about Iran.
Second,
the Saudis would urge Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian party that has
received support from Iran, to curtail its anti-Israeli aggression and
to begin serious talks about sharing leadership with Fatah, the more
secular Palestinian group. (In February, the Saudis brokered a deal at
Mecca between the two factions. However, Israel and the U.S. have
expressed dissatisfaction with the terms.)
The
third component was that the Bush Administration would work directly
with Sunni nations to counteract Shiite ascendance in the region.
Fourth,
the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds
and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad,
of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad
government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations.
Syria is a major conduit of arms to Hezbollah. The Saudi government is
also at odds with the Syrians over the assassination of Rafik Hariri,
the former Lebanese Prime Minister, in Beirut in 2005, for which it
believes the Assad government was responsible. Hariri, a billionaire
Sunni, was closely associated with the Saudi regime and with Prince
Bandar. (A U.N. inquiry strongly suggested that the Syrians were
involved, but offered no direct evidence; there are plans for another
investigation, by an international tribunal.)
Patrick
Clawson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, depicted the
Saudis’ coöperation with the White House as a significant breakthrough.
“The Saudis understand that if they want the Administration to make a
more generous political offer to the Palestinians they have to persuade
the Arab states to make a more generous offer to the Israelis,” Clawson
told me. The new diplomatic approach, he added, “shows a real degree of
effort and sophistication as well as a deftness of touch not always
associated with this Administration. Who’s running the greater risk—we
or the Saudis? At a time when America’s standing in the Middle East is
extremely low, the Saudis are actually embracing us. We should count our
blessings.”
The Pentagon
consultant had a different view. He said that the Administration had
turned to Bandar as a “fallback,” because it had realized that the
failing war in Iraq could leave the Middle East “up for grabs.”
JIHADIS IN LEBANON
The
focus of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, after Iran, is Lebanon, where the
Saudis have been deeply involved in efforts by the Administration to
support the Lebanese government. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is
struggling to stay in power against a persistent opposition led by
Hezbollah, the Shiite organization, and its leader, Sheikh Hassan
Nasrallah. Hezbollah has an extensive infrastructure, an estimated two
to three thousand active fighters, and thousands of additional members.
Hezbollah
has been on the State Department’s terrorist list since 1997. The
organization has been implicated in the 1983 bombing of a Marine
barracks in Beirut that killed two hundred and forty-one military men.
It has also been accused of complicity in the kidnapping of Americans,
including the C.I.A. station chief in Lebanon, who died in captivity,
and a Marine colonel serving on a U.N. peacekeeping mission, who was
killed. (Nasrallah has denied that the group was involved in these
incidents.) Nasrallah is seen by many as a staunch terrorist, who has
said that he regards Israel as a state that has no right to exist. Many
in the Arab world, however, especially Shiites, view him as a resistance
leader who withstood Israel in last summer’s thirty-three-day war, and
Siniora as a weak politician who relies on America’s support but was
unable to persuade President Bush to call for an end to the Israeli
bombing of Lebanon. (Photographs of Siniora kissing Condoleezza Rice on
the cheek when she visited during the war were prominently displayed
during street protests in Beirut.)
The
Bush Administration has publicly pledged the Siniora government a
billion dollars in aid since last summer. A donors’ conference in Paris,
in January, which the U.S. helped organize, yielded pledges of almost
eight billion more, including a promise of more than a billion from the
Saudis. The American pledge includes more than two hundred million
dollars in military aid, and forty million dollars for internal
security.
The United States has
also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to
the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government
consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to
resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as
we can,” the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was
that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he
said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some
serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to
determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid
the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.”
American,
European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora
government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of
emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley,
and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though
small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their
ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.
During
a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of
attempting “to hijack the state,” but he also objected to the Lebanese
and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. “Salafis are sick
and hateful, and I’m very much against the idea of flirting with them,”
he said. “They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you
try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly.”
Alastair
Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence
service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut, told
me, “The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come
in. It could be very dangerous.” Crooke said that one Sunni extremist
group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group,
Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern
Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was
told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and
money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese
government’s interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah,” Crooke said.
The
largest of the groups, Asbat al-Ansar, is situated in the Ain al-Hilweh
Palestinian refugee camp. Asbat al-Ansar has received arms and supplies
from Lebanese internal-security forces and militias associated with the
Siniora government.
In 2005,
according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group, Saad
Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the
son of the slain former Prime Minister—Saad inherited more than four
billion dollars after his father’s assassination—paid forty-eight
thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic militant group
from Dinniyeh. The men had been arrested while trying to establish an
Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many
of the militants “had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”
According
to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his parliamentary
majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh Islamists, as
well as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb the Italian
and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the previous year. (He also arranged a
pardon for Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian militia leader, who had
been convicted of four political murders, including the assassination,
in 1987, of Prime Minister Rashid Karami.) Hariri described his actions
to reporters as humanitarian.
In an
interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government
acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon.
“We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a
presence here,” he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria
might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict.”
The
official said that his government was in a no-win situation. Without a
political settlement with Hezbollah, he said, Lebanon could “slide into a
conflict,” in which Hezbollah fought openly with Sunni forces, with
potentially horrific consequences. But if Hezbollah agreed to a
settlement yet still maintained a separate army, allied with Iran and
Syria, “Lebanon could become a target. In both cases, we become a
target.”
The Bush Administration has
portrayed its support of the Siniora government as an example of the
President’s belief in democracy, and his desire to prevent other powers
from interfering in Lebanon. When Hezbollah led street demonstrations in
Beirut in December, John Bolton, who was then the U.S. Ambassador to
the U.N., called them “part of the Iran-Syria-inspired coup.”
Leslie
H. Gelb, a past president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said
that the Administration’s policy was less pro democracy than “pro
American national security. The fact is that it would be terribly
dangerous if Hezbollah ran Lebanon.” The fall of the Siniora government
would be seen, Gelb said, “as a signal in the Middle East of the decline
of the United States and the ascendancy of the terrorism threat. And so
any change in the distribution of political power in Lebanon has to be
opposed by the United States—and we’re justified in helping any
non-Shiite parties resist that change. We should say this publicly,
instead of talking about democracy.”
Martin
Indyk, of the Saban Center, said, however, that the United States “does
not have enough pull to stop the moderates in Lebanon from dealing with
the extremists.” He added, “The President sees the region as divided
between moderates and extremists, but our regional friends see it as
divided between Sunnis and Shia. The Sunnis that we view as extremists
are regarded by our Sunni allies simply as Sunnis.”
In
January, after an outburst of street violence in Beirut involving
supporters of both the Siniora government and Hezbollah, Prince Bandar
flew to Tehran to discuss the political impasse in Lebanon and to meet
with Ali Larijani, the Iranians’ negotiator on nuclear issues. According
to a Middle Eastern ambassador, Bandar’s mission—which the ambassador
said was endorsed by the White House—also aimed “to create problems
between the Iranians and Syria.” There had been tensions between the two
countries about Syrian talks with Israel, and the Saudis’ goal was to
encourage a breach. However, the ambassador said, “It did not work.
Syria and Iran are not going to betray each other. Bandar’s approach is
very unlikely to succeed.”
Walid
Jumblatt, who is the leader of the Druze minority in Lebanon and a
strong Siniora supporter, has attacked Nasrallah as an agent of Syria,
and has repeatedly told foreign journalists that Hezbollah is under the
direct control of the religious leadership in Iran. In a conversation
with me last December, he depicted Bashir Assad, the Syrian President,
as a “serial killer.” Nasrallah, he said, was “morally guilty” of the
assassination of Rafik Hariri and the murder, last November, of Pierre
Gemayel, a member of the Siniora Cabinet, because of his support for the
Syrians.
Jumblatt then told me
that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to
discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He
and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to
move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be
“the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said.
The
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement founded
in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent opposition
to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir’s father. In 1982, the Brotherhood
took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city for a week,
killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people. Membership in
the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria. The Brotherhood is also
an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel. Nevertheless, Jumblatt said,
“We told Cheney that the basic link between Iran and Lebanon is
Syria—and to weaken Iran you need to open the door to effective Syrian
opposition.”
There
is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already
benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a
coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led
by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in
2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me,
“The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The
Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American
involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting
money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In
2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the
National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White
House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front
with travel documents.
Jumblatt
said he understood that the issue was a sensitive one for the White
House. “I told Cheney that some people in the Arab world, mainly the
Egyptians”—whose moderate Sunni leadership has been fighting the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for decades—“won’t like it if the United
States helps the Brotherhood. But if you don’t take on Syria we will be
face to face in Lebanon with Hezbollah in a long fight, and one we might
not win.”
THE SHEIKH
On
a warm, clear night early last December, in a bombed-out suburb a few
miles south of downtown Beirut, I got a preview of how the
Administration’s new strategy might play out in Lebanon. Sheikh Hassan
Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, who has been in hiding, had agreed to
an interview. Security arrangements for the meeting were secretive and
elaborate. I was driven, in the back seat of a darkened car, to a
damaged underground garage somewhere in Beirut, searched with a handheld
scanner, placed in a second car to be driven to yet another
bomb-scarred underground garage, and transferred again. Last summer, it
was reported that Israel was trying to kill Nasrallah, but the
extraordinary precautions were not due only to that threat. Nasrallah’s
aides told me that they believe he is a prime target of fellow-Arabs,
primarily Jordanian intelligence operatives, as well as Sunni jihadists
who they believe are affiliated with Al Qaeda. (The government
consultant and a retired four-star general said that Jordanian
intelligence, with support from the U.S. and Israel, had been trying to
infiltrate Shiite groups, to work against Hezbollah. Jordan’s King
Abdullah II has warned that a Shiite government in Iraq that was close
to Iran would lead to the emergence of a Shiite crescent.) This is
something of an ironic turn: Nasrallah’s battle with Israel last summer
turned him—a Shiite—into the most popular and influential figure among
Sunnis and Shiites throughout the region. In recent months, however, he
has increasingly been seen by many Sunnis not as a symbol of Arab unity
but as a participant in a sectarian war.
Nasrallah,
dressed, as usual, in religious garb, was waiting for me in an
unremarkable apartment. One of his advisers said that he was not likely
to remain there overnight; he has been on the move since his decision,
last July, to order the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers in a
cross-border raid set off the thirty-three-day war. Nasrallah has since
said publicly—and repeated to me—that he misjudged the Israeli response.
“We just wanted to capture prisoners for exchange purposes,” he told
me. “We never wanted to drag the region into war.”
Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately instigate fitna,
an Arabic word that is used to mean “insurrection and fragmentation
within Islam.” “In my opinion, there is a huge campaign through the
media throughout the world to put each side up against the other,” he
said. “I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli
intelligence.” (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.) He
said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions, but
argued that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into
Lebanon. (Sunni-Shiite confrontations increased, along with violence, in
the weeks after we talked.)
Nasrallah
said he believed that President Bush’s goal was “the drawing of a new
map for the region. They want the partition of Iraq. Iraq is not on the
edge of a civil war—there is a civil war. There is ethnic and
sectarian cleansing. The daily killing and displacement which is taking
place in Iraq aims at achieving three Iraqi parts, which will be
sectarian and ethnically pure as a prelude to the partition of Iraq.
Within one or two years at the most, there will be total Sunni areas,
total Shiite areas, and total Kurdish areas. Even in Baghdad, there is a
fear that it might be divided into two areas, one Sunni and one
Shiite.”
He
went on, “I can say that President Bush is lying when he says he does
not want Iraq to be partitioned. All the facts occurring now on the
ground make you swear he is dragging Iraq to partition. And a day will
come when he will say, ‘I cannot do anything, since the Iraqis want the
partition of their country and I honor the wishes of the people of
Iraq.’ ”
Nasrallah said he
believed that America also wanted to bring about the partition of
Lebanon and of Syria. In Syria, he said, the result would be to push the
country “into chaos and internal battles like in Iraq.” In Lebanon,
“There will be a Sunni state, an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a
Druze state.” But, he said, “I do not know if there will be a Shiite
state.” Nasrallah told me that he suspected that one aim of the Israeli
bombing of Lebanon last summer was “the destruction of Shiite areas and
the displacement of Shiites from Lebanon. The idea was to have the
Shiites of Lebanon and Syria flee to southern Iraq,” which is dominated
by Shiites. “I am not sure, but I smell this,” he told me.
Partition
would leave Israel surrounded by “small tranquil states,” he said. “I
can assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided, and the
issue will reach to North African states. There will be small ethnic and
confessional states,” he said. “In other words, Israel will be the most
important and the strongest state in a region that has been partitioned
into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with each
other. This is the new Middle East.”
In
fact, the Bush Administration has adamantly resisted talk of
partitioning Iraq, and its public stances suggest that the White House
sees a future Lebanon that is intact, with a weak, disarmed Hezbollah
playing, at most, a minor political role. There is also no evidence to
support Nasrallah’s belief that the Israelis were seeking to drive the
Shiites into southern Iraq. Nevertheless, Nasrallah’s vision of a larger
sectarian conflict in which the United States is implicated suggests a
possible consequence of the White House’s new strategy.
In
the interview, Nasrallah made mollifying gestures and promises that
would likely be met with skepticism by his opponents. “If the United
States says that discussions with the likes of us can be useful and
influential in determining American policy in the region, we have no
objection to talks or meetings,” he said. “But, if their aim through
this meeting is to impose their policy on us, it will be a waste of
time.” He said that the Hezbollah militia, unless attacked, would
operate only within the borders of Lebanon, and pledged to disarm it
when the Lebanese Army was able to stand up. Nasrallah said that he had
no interest in initiating another war with Israel. However, he added
that he was anticipating, and preparing for, another Israeli attack,
later this year.
Nasrallah further
insisted that the street demonstrations in Beirut would continue until
the Siniora government fell or met his coalition’s political demands.
“Practically speaking, this government cannot rule,” he told me. “It
might issue orders, but the majority of the Lebanese people will not
abide and will not recognize the legitimacy of this government. Siniora
remains in office because of international support, but this does not
mean that Siniora can rule Lebanon.”
President
Bush’s repeated praise of the Siniora government, Nasrallah said, “is
the best service to the Lebanese opposition he can give, because it
weakens their position vis-à-vis the Lebanese people and the Arab and
Islamic populations. They are betting on us getting tired. We did not
get tired during the war, so how could we get tired in a demonstration?”
There is sharp
division inside and outside the Bush Administration about how best to
deal with Nasrallah, and whether he could, in fact, be a partner in a
political settlement. The outgoing director of National Intelligence,
John Negroponte, in a farewell briefing to the Senate Intelligence
Committee, in January, said that Hezbollah “lies at the center of Iran’s
terrorist strategy. . . . It could decide to conduct attacks against
U.S. interests in the event it feels its survival or that of Iran is
threatened. . . . Lebanese Hezbollah sees itself as Tehran’s partner.”
In
2002, Richard Armitage, then the Deputy Secretary of State, called
Hezbollah “the A-team” of terrorists. In a recent interview, however,
Armitage acknowledged that the issue has become somewhat more
complicated. Nasrallah, Armitage told me, has emerged as “a political
force of some note, with a political role to play inside Lebanon if he
chooses to do so.” In terms of public relations and political
gamesmanship, Armitage said, Nasrallah “is the smartest man in the
Middle East.” But, he added, Nasrallah “has got to make it clear that he
wants to play an appropriate role as the loyal opposition. For me,
there’s still a blood debt to pay”—a reference to the murdered colonel
and the Marine barracks bombing.
Robert
Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe
critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored
terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for
cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the
Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States
who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites.
“The
most important story in the Middle East is the growth of Nasrallah from
a street guy to a leader—from a terrorist to a statesman,” Baer added.
“The dog that didn’t bark this summer”—during the war with Israel—“is
Shiite terrorism.” Baer was referring to fears that Nasrallah, in
addition to firing rockets into Israel and kidnapping its soldiers,
might set in motion a wave of terror attacks on Israeli and American
targets around the world. “He could have pulled the trigger, but he did
not,” Baer said.
Most members of
the intelligence and diplomatic communities acknowledge Hezbollah’s
ongoing ties to Iran. But there is disagreement about the extent to
which Nasrallah would put aside Hezbollah’s interests in favor of
Iran’s. A former C.I.A. officer who also served in Lebanon called
Nasrallah “a Lebanese phenomenon,” adding, “Yes, he’s aided by Iran and
Syria, but Hezbollah’s gone beyond that.” He told me that there was a
period in the late eighties and early nineties when the C.I.A. station
in Beirut was able to clandestinely monitor Nasrallah’s conversations.
He described Nasrallah as “a gang leader who was able to make deals with
the other gangs. He had contacts with everybody.”
TELLING CONGRESS
The
Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not
been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with
questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an earlier
chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted
to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms
sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became known as the
Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then—notably Prince
Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are involved in today’s dealings.
Iran-Contra
was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years
ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One
conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it
had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the
experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the
participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A.
has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed
military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s
office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence
official said.
I
was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former
senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a
factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence
directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of
State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)
The
former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did
not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when
he served as Ambassador to Honduras. “Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m not
going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the
books, with no finding.’ ” (In the case of covert C.I.A. operations, the
President must issue a written finding and inform Congress.) Negroponte
stayed on as Deputy Secretary of State, he added, because “he believes
he can influence the government in a positive way.”
The
government consultant said that Negroponte shared the White House’s
policy goals but “wanted to do it by the book.” The Pentagon consultant
also told me that “there was a sense at the senior-ranks level that he
wasn’t fully on board with the more adventurous clandestine
initiatives.” It was also true, he said, that Negroponte “had problems
with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East.”
The
Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight,
was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black
money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety
of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of
dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such
transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and
the retired four-star general.
“This
goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told
me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.”
He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the
U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s
going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”
The
issue of oversight is beginning to get more attention from Congress.
Last November, the Congressional Research Service issued a report for
Congress on what it depicted as the Administration’s blurring of the
line between C.I.A. activities and strictly military ones, which do not
have the same reporting requirements. And the Senate Intelligence
Committee, headed by Senator Jay Rockefeller, has scheduled a hearing
for March 8th on Defense Department intelligence activities.
Senator
Ron Wyden, of Oregon, a Democrat who is a member of the Intelligence
Committee, told me, “The Bush Administration has frequently failed to
meet its legal obligation to keep the Intelligence Committee fully and
currently informed. Time and again, the answer has been ‘Trust us.’ ”
Wyden said, “It is hard for me to trust the Administration.” ♦
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