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Thursday, March 28, 2024

The Lost Spring: U.S. Policy in the Middle East – Part III

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The author says that President Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt was designed to tell the Muslim Brotherhood that the United States will eventually be changing its policy and that there will be a new day.
The author says that President Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt was designed to tell the Muslim Brotherhood that the United States will eventually be changing its policy and that there will be a new day.
(Continued from last week)

When the president was considering striking Syria for using chemical weapons, what did he do? He sent that decision to Congress. Since when does a president send his decisions on national security and defense to Congress? But when he cut a deal with the Iranian regime — after 31 years of the standing U.S. policy, Republican and Democrat alike, of isolating of that regime — he did not send it for review in Congress.

It seems now, however, that the reason the administration did not strike Syria is not just that it meant engaging those four regimes.

The decision had already been made, a year ago, in the discussions with the Iranian regime, that a deal would be cut with the Iranian regime. If one has a deal to be declared with the Ayatollahs, one is not going to enter a war with the allies of the Ayatollahs. That would kill the deal.

The Administration’s Two Tracks

It seems now that the administration, since 2009, had two tracks for its Middle East policy. Track number one, from Morocco to Gaza, would be to partner with the Muslim Brotherhood. On what grounds? Because the academic elite and the advisors for the administration have convinced senior decision makers that the Muslim Brotherhood is a force for “change.” This is how the administration sees the Brotherhood. The people of Egypt see the Brotherhood as Fascists, as neo Nazis, but to the elite here — the academic elite — which, by the way has been generously funded by the Brotherhood, or at least inspired by the petro dollars coming under the office of the Brotherhood — it makes sense that the Brotherhood is a force we can count on. The Brotherhood will secure all of this space, and then civilized business can be done with them, and then they will be secured as a loyal wing.

The other track would run from Beirut to Syria to Iraq to Iran — if the behavior of the Iranian leadership can be successfully changed.

That these were the current Middle East politics tracks is based on information not hard to find. It is in the papers of the academics who are advising the administration. It is simple to go to the libraries and read what the advisors have been writing for so many decades and then deduce what the current policy is.

These advisors and the pro Iranian lobby in Washington are not made only of Iranians, as some of my colleagues believe. They are made of financial interest groups who have been waiting to do business with Iran because for all these years, there has been the idea that if we cut a deal with the Iranian regime, the Iranian regime will stabilize Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Thus the grand design becomes apparent.

And where were the first indicators of that grand design? Look at the 2008 Obama campaign and read what the contributing intellectuals were saying about the Middle East. And then in June of 2009, the president went to Cairo and delivered his speech. Actually, one of the speechwriters went to Egypt and bragged that she was part of the writing of this speech — and that she has been an advisor in the White House and close to the Muslim Brotherhood. The speech was designed to tell the Muslim Brotherhood that the United States will eventually be changing its policy and that there will be a new day.

All these words were in the speech. The speech was designed not just for the Muslim world, but for the Muslim Brotherhood, whose representatives the White House invited to sit in the front row.

There was also a letter, sent in early June to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran, in which was expressed an intention to engage in dialogue. There is nothing secret about this policy. From the early stages of the administration, there was an approach to partner with the Muslim Brotherhood, even before it came to power, and to unfreeze the relationship with the Iranians.

The Arab Spring seems to have come as a surprise to the administration, although many of my colleagues are now saying the administration was behind the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring caused the administration to scramble in choosing which partners they were going to be working with in North Africa and, of course, later on, in Iran.

The administration did not predict the Arab Spring. When it happened, the U.S. corrected its own policy to meet the partners it really wanted to work and cut a deal with. Now, one of the administration’s policies, the partnership with the Muslim Brotherhood, is essentially being dismantled — not by us, but by the Egyptian people.

Egypt’s Real Revolution

On June 30th, 2013, 33 million Egyptians rose up. Many in Washington, especially in the administration, immediately called the change of regime in Egypt a “coup.” If 33 million demonstrators are a coup, we have to change political science. No, it was not a coup; it was a revolution. Egypt’s General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi or Field Marshal Tantawi or any leader without 33 million people on the streets would have never conducted any change, would never have dared tell Mr. Morsi, “stay at home.” They would have been removed immediately; the United States would have called them rebels, and they would have been taken to The Hague. Even before the revolution, there had been a petition signed by 22 million people in Egypt.

In the Middle East studies field, academics have been saying, “But Morsi was elected.” Well, Benito Mussolini was elected and Adolf Hitler was elected. Half of the voters for Morsi were simply protest voters against the other candidate, who was a relic from the previous regime. Actually, the number of voters for Morsi was about six million. But 22.5 million signed a petition. That is a recall. If I were Morsi, I would have resigned or asked my government to resign. That is what is done in liberal democracies. Think France. If there is an election in France, and the president loses the majority, what happens? The government changes.

But that is not the whole story in Egypt. Early this year there was a referendum. In international law, the last referendum is the last reflection of what people want. 22.5 million showed up for the referendum and rejected the proposed Muslim Brotherhood constitution. This referendum was what opened the path for presidential elections and parliamentary elections. This is the path Egypt is taking.

Tunisia’s Struggle

In Tunisia, the Ennahda party, the Islamist sister-party of the Muslim Brotherhood, was smarter. Its leaders understood what happened in Egypt. The opposition in Tunisia is even stronger. They are also secular. Women in the opposition are strong women. The labor unions are strong. Tunisia is a bit more advanced than Egypt.

It seems that the Ennahda government got advice from Europe and from the U.S. to make concessions, to allow changes, to have a national unity cabinet, and to go again for elections. That saved their skin. Those are smart Islamists. Ennahda did not reform. Ennahda conducted a tactical withdrawal. My recommendation in dealing with Islamists has been that the measure by which you know the Islamists have transformed themselves into something else — Muslim Conservative, Muslim Democrat, etc. — is that they declare, within their own party, that they have changed, just as when the Communist Parties declared that they were now Social Democrats. We do not usually believe them, but at least they make these declarations.

Nothing of this sort has happened in Tunisia. And in Syria, every day, it is still just going from bad to worse.

Conclusion

Today the region is still witnessing a race between the Islamist forces and the secularists, moderates and liberals.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been struggling to maintain its influence in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, as well as within the Syrian opposition in Jordan and in Iraq.

In the Levant, the Iranian Khomeinists have the upper hand in Tehran, and, through the Baghdad government, in Damascus and in Beirut. In the other camp, a diverse web of NGOs, secularists, women, and minorities are struggling to advance pluralism and democracy.

This race has been affected and will continue to be impacted by Western and U.S. policies and preferences. If Washington continues to give advantage to the Islamists, the Islamists will resist reform, and civil societies will have hard time implementing change toward progress.

But if the U.S. and its Western allies lend their support to civil societies, the culture of reform could take root in the region.

It is my projection that civil societies and secularists will eventually shift the balance of power towards their ideals, but it may be generational. As we see in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, the secularists are pushing forward. In the Iranian-dominated Middle East, opposition is also growing against the Ayatollahs. So far it has been a lost Spring, but this is only one season. Another is coming soon, and we need to be prepared for it.

(Walid Phares, born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, is a professor and lecturer in the U.S., and the author of six books, the most recent of which is: The Lost Spring: U.S. Policy in the Middle East and Catastrophes to Avoid)

A slightly different version of this article was delivered as an address to the Gatestone Institute in New York City earlier this year.

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