The Redirection
By Seymour M. Hersh
Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in
the war on terrorism?
02/25/07 "New Yorker" -- - Issue of 2007-03-05
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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