Iran and America: What's Next?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Pioneer Journal

Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force, a part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed in an American drone strike in Baghdad on Jan. 3, sending shockwaves through the Middle East.

What led up to this and how will it affect the situation in the Middle East?

The Islamic Republic and its proxies in Iraq and Lebanon have been, in the past two months, the target of massive demonstrations against the various Iran-backed militias, especially the Popular Mobilization Forces that virtually control Iraq. 

Iranian consulates have been burned even in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq.

To deflect popular anger away from Iran, Tehran tried to goad the United States into action, via attacks in the Persian Gulf and against Saudi Arabia, and against U.S. forces, carrying out eleven attacks on American bases since October.

On Dec. 27, Kata’ib Hezbollah, a major militia in the larger pro-Iranian conglomerate, attacked an American base and killed an American contractor. The intention of this killing was presumably to push the United States into a retaliatory strike that would defuse the anti-Iranian demonstrations in Iraq.

But they didn’t foresee the level of retaliation – this was a step too far. U.S. President Donald Trump killed Soleimani as well as Kata’ib Hezbollah commander Abu Hadi al-Muhandis, together with 13 others, as they left Baghdad airport.

Apart from his military skills as a commander, Soleimani gained Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s esteem and trust. This put him in a unique position of power and influence, far above his official post. 

He positioned himself as a symbol of the revolution who worked tirelessly to promote Iran’s status as a regional hegemon. By implementing the “axis of resistance,” he established himself as the Supreme Leader’s top confidant.

Soleimani played an important role in developing the IRGC’s non-conventional conception of war, creating an extensive infrastructure, organized in flexible frameworks that corresponded to shifting local circumstances and changes in the nature of warfare. 

He expanded existing groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and, to a lesser extent, Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad into formidable war machines possessing hundreds of thousands of missiles and rockets.

He also transformed the Houthis into a deadly organization that keeps Yemen at war and poses a danger to Saudi Arabia.

Largely thanks to Soleimani, around 200,000 militia personnel are available to Tehran between the Iraq-Iran border and the Mediterranean Sea. These forces have accurate missiles, and good intelligence coverage across the area. His death is truly a blow.

Iran probably assumed that in a presidential election year, Trump would not dare risking a major war. 

The Iranians did not believe the U.S. would decisively respond, as Secretary of Defence Mike Pompeo had threatened. 

They had seen national security adviser John Bolton and other Iran hawks come and go and had judged Trump to be an isolationist. They miscalculated and were caught by surprise.

Iran would like to see a Democrat win the 2020 presidential election and may take steps to help secure that outcome. After all, “meddling” in American contests, if one is to believe the Democratic Party, seems to have become a favourite pastime of authoritarian regimes.

Why Did the U.S. Take Out Iran's Top General?

By Henry Srebrnik, {Saint John, MB] Telegraph Journal
 

Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani was killed in an American drone strike in Baghdad on Jan. 3, sending shockwaves through the Middle East.

Why did U.S. President Donald Trump take what many see as a provocative move? The reasons go back to many years of conflict between Washington and Tehran.

Since 1998 Soleimani had been a major player in this struggle, as the head of the Quds Force, the offensive arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the ideological arm of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Quds Force is part of the 125,000-strong IRGC, a paramilitary organization that answers only to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei. It is not part of 350,000-strong regular army.

The Guard oversees Iran’s ballistic missile program, has its naval forces shadow the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, and includes an all-volunteer Basij force that thwarts dissent domestically with violence. It can potentially mobilise many hundreds of thousands of personnel.

Soleimani was key in expanding Iran’s influence through planning attacks or bolstering Tehran’s local allies.

He provided support to numerous militant groups in the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Houthis of Yemen, and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.

Soleimani helped President Bashar-al Assad of Syria turn back the forces trying to depose him in that country’s civil war, when he deployed upwards of 50,000 fighters to shore up Assad’s tottering regime.

Soleimani’s Iraqi Shia militias, which are integrated formally into the Iraqi security apparatus, have long been the real power in Baghdad. They consist of some 40 paramilitary groups capable of mobilizing 120,000 fighters.

Soleimani also used Iraq as a forward base to target a U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia and to deploy weapons in Syria and Lebanon.

These proxy wars, orchestrated by Soleimani, have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians throughout the Middle East, especially in Syria and Yemen.

Iran and the United States have been adversaries in one way or another since the coming to power of the Islamic regime in 1979.

But in recent years the animosity between them has heightened, particularly since Trump in May 2018 withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement, signed by his predecessor Barack Obama and five other countries in 2015. It was designed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Under the accord, Iran had agreed to limit its nuclear activities and allow in international inspectors. Many, however, asserted that Iran was continuing its program clandestinely.

Trump also imposed crippling economic sanctions on Iran as part of his campaign to exert “maximum pressure” on its regime.

Tensions between Washington and Tehran intensified over the past year. Last May, Washington accused Iran of masterminding attacks against six oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. After Iran shot down a U.S. drone near the Iranian coast, Washington maintained it was over international waters, but Iran said it was over its territory.

In September, drone and missile attacks damaged two key Saudi oil facilities. Both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia linked these attacks to Iran, although Tehran denied any involvement.

Late last month, rockets struck a U.S. base in Iraq, killing an American military contractor. It was the eleventh such attack on an American base in recent years.

In response, the United States bombed bases in Iraq and Syria controlled by Kataib Hezbollah, a unit of the Popular Mobilization Forces.

Pro-Iranian Iraqi demonstrators then converged on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and broke into its compound. Iraqi security officials did not try to stop them.

U.S. Secretary of Defence Mark Esper warned that the United States would pre-emptively strike pro-Iranian forces in Iraq and Syria should there be indications of further attacks.

Following Soleimani’s death, Tehran has announced it will no longer abide by the terms of the nuclear deal. In fact, Iran had begun rolling back key commitments in July.

Khamenei called for three days of mourning after the general’s death and appointed Soleimani’s deputy, Ismail Ghaani, as Soleimani’s successor. Iran also retaliated by firing missiles at two air bases housing American forces in Iraq.

One of Ghaani’s first duties will likely be to oversee whatever revenge Iran intends to seek for Soleimani’s death.

What Kind of Democracy is Switzerland?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

 

The British philosopher John Stuart Mill in the 19th century famously argued that democracy can be achieved only in a single nation because free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities.

But the example of  Switzerland demonstrates that this isn’t always the case. Stable liberal institutions can be secured in the absence of a shared national identity, provided that citizens possess a sense of belonging to their polity, even if they are of different ethnicities. 

The Swiss, despite their ethnic and linguistic diversity, have developed a liberal nationalism by their insistence on individual liberty and on respect for diversity.

The German, French, Italian and Romansh speakers in the country share a common national identity as Swiss over and above their separate linguistic, religious and cantonal identities. So the state combines an overarching political identity with ethno-cultural diversity.

Switzerland, though culturally divided, is a country in which amicable agreements and accommodative decision-making among the political elites has prevented the rise of secessionist movements. The Swiss political system is well known for its high stability and resistance to change.

Why has this proved a successful formula? First, a sense of distinctively Swiss political identity predated the age of nationalism and the unification of the country in 1848.

It stressed the common past of the cantons and the bonds uniting them beyond the diversity of language and religion. In other words, it was already ‘‘civic’’ or multicultural rather than ‘‘ethnic’’ or monocultural.

The 1848 constitutional settlement was unquestionably the act of a single sovereign people not a compact between states or between sovereign peoples in their respective cantons.

The cantons were retained as the constitutive units of the new federal state and no attempt to redesign their boundaries to make them coincide with ethno-linguistic patterns took place, hence mitigating any attempts at ethnic forms of nationalism.

While most of the cantons are monolingual, three of them are bilingual and one is trilingual. The boundaries of the language communities are not coterminous with cantonal borders.

Moreover, the language communities are not granted any form of veto power, even on matters intimately connected to their status such as linguistic legislation. No language community has ever demanded either a veto on constitutional change or greater asymmetry within the federal system.

They are not recognized as nations or as the component units of the federation either in the constitution or in ordinary law. The concept of nation and its related terminology is strictly reserved for the country as a whole and has never been applied to other bodies.

Each canton has two seats in the Council of States, the upper house of the federal parliament, regardless of population.

Although in some individual cantons identification with the unit appears to be as strong as identification with Switzerland, the former is not in opposition to the latter.

Finally, the Swiss tradition of consensual policy-making allows the political system to be highly integrated, with strong collaboration between state and non-state actors and between interest groups and political parties.

Clearly, it is a common political culture and shared historical memories that sustain the Swiss state. The country is a mono-national rather than a multinational state.

Henry

Is India Playing With Fire On Its Citizenship Bill?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

India’s Muslim and secularist parties have been in the forefront of protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over legislation that lets the country grant citizenship to religious minorities persecuted in neighboring Muslim countries.

The bill, passed in December, was first tabled in 2016 but was withdrawn due to opposition. The BJP reintroduced it after its election victory in May.

Under the Citizenship Amendment Act, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who have entered India illegally can apply for citizenship if they can prove they originate from Muslim-majority Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan. All three countries enshrine Islam as their state religion.

It is the first time that India has used religion as a legal basis for determining nationality, since it excludes Muslims seeking citizenship.

At least six opposition groups, including the Congress Party and the Indian Union Muslim League, have condemned the bill for fundamentally altering how citizenship is decided. They argue that it is unconstitutional. But the government insists it does not remove any rights of Muslim citizens.

Students at two universities, Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi and Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, demonstrated against the law. Both universities have significant Muslim student populations.

Uttar Pradesh state, India’s most populous, is home to 40 million Muslims out of some 180 million – about 15 per cent of the population -- in the country. The state is ruled by Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath of the BJP.

After images of the crackdown on students surfaced, demonstrations exploded throughout India. At least 27 people have been killed and internet and mobile data services were suspended in some places.

People in the northeastern state of Assam also launched protests, in their case claiming they will be “overrun” by migrants from Bangladesh who will threatens their ethnic and cultural identity. They don’t want any migrants, regardless of religion, to be allowed entry.

Illegal migration from Bangladesh has long been a concern there. BJP-ruled Assam is one of India’s most multi-ethnic states and includes Bengali- and Assamese-speaking Hindus and various tribespeople.

Between 1971 and 1991 the Muslim population increased by 77 per cent. A third of Assam’s 32 million citizens today are Muslims, the second-highest number after Indian-administered Kashmir, and nine of its twenty-seven districts are Muslim-majority.

Equally importantly, the 2017 census showed that people who are ethnically Assamese are now a minority in the state as a whole and as people continue to arrive their proportion will continue to drop.

The citizenship law comes amid a push for a National Register of Citizens that would require the entire country to prove their citizenship. A regional version in Assam was held last summer.

Residents were told to provide documents showing they or their ancestors had lived in India before March 24, 1971, when Bangladesh split from Pakistan. It has left two million people facing statelessness.

The Register and the Citizenship Amendment Act are closely linked as the latter will protect non-Muslims who are excluded from the register and face the threat of deportation or internment; however, Muslims would not have this recourse.

The chief ministers of nine states have said they will refuse to implement them.

It’s unfair to simply blame Modi, though. Since the partition of India in 1947 waves of people from what was then East Pakistan crossed into India to escape persecution, intolerance and economic hardship.

The number increased following the conflict with West Pakistan that created Bangladesh. Estimates put the number of people who have moved permanently from there to India in this century alone at over 15 million.

There are even some Hindu nationalists who subscribe to a conspiracy theory regarding Muslims entering India. They assert that by changing the Hindu–Muslim demographics in Indian regions bordering Bangladesh, political parties will form that will demand autonomy and eventually independence, thus creating a new Muslim homeland. There is even a name for this imagined future state: Bango Bhoomi.

After hundreds were slaughtered in an anti-immigrant pogrom in 1982, Assamese leaders signed an agreement with India’s central government in 1985. Under that deal, there would be a mass citizenship check to ferret out illegal migrants.

Under BJP rule, this has finally happened, despite the protests.