Iran Comes to the Israeli Border

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from Foreign Policy March 25, 2015 by Sara Elizabeth Williams 

NOTE: A truly scary analysis. Read this is if you want to understand the Middle East Today. 
As the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah try to drive back rebel fighters in southern Syria, they threaten to spur a larger conflict in one of the Middle East's most volatile regions.

MAN — In Jordan, Syria’s war is everywhere. Over 600,000 refugees have fled to the country: Cities like Irbid and Zarqa teem with new Syrian inhabitants, and Zaatari camp, which houses 85,000 exiled Syrian Sunnis, is home to at least four donkeys named Bashar. Above it all, coalition cargo planes and screaming F-16s slice through the spring sky toward northern Syria and Iraq, daily reminders of Jordan’s role in the coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State.

But the most potent force in the battle unfolding just across Jordan’s northern border is still invisible: Iranian power.

Over the past six weeks, soldiers belonging to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah have played a major role in the Syrian regime’s long-awaited offensive on the southern province of Daraa.

The southern province is the moderate opposition’s last stronghold, and the site of steady rebel gains since early summer 2014. With no Islamic State presence to contend with, Free Syrian Army-affiliated groups and the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front have found ways to work together, tightening their hold on the region. Their reach covers most of the Jordan-Syria border, providing them with valuable supply lines leading to Amman. On March 25, reportedly supported by an influx of arms from their international backers, a coalition of rebel groups were able to seize the Daraa town of Bosra al-Sham from the Syrian regime and its allies.

Yet while the opposition fighters vying for control in this part of the country are mostly locals, their adversaries are not. Sunni rebels, activists, and researchers say the well-trained Iranian-backed Shiite fighters on the ground are more numerous and more powerful than the Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces (NDF), a government-funded paramilitary force they are fighting alongside.

If anything, the Iranian militias seem to be leading the fight, said Issam el-Rayyes, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army’s Southern Front.

“We are costing them a lot of losses, but they don’t stop. It’s clear this isn’t the [Syrian army],” he said. “They are fighting for beliefs.”

According to Rayyes, the U.S.-backed Southern Front has about 2,500 men in the battle, compared to the regime’s 5,000. He estimates that just one of every five of the men on the opposite side are Syrian — a number with which several independent experts agreed. The other 4,000 are Iranian-backed Shiite fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Afghanistan.

Phillip Smyth, a researcher of Hezbollah and other Shiite militias, said that Iran and its allies have attracted foreign fighters by painting the fight as a battle to the death with Sunni extremists, in which Shiites are obliged to defend the Sayyida Zainab Mosque in Damascus, one of the holiest shrines for Shiites.  

(MUCH more in this vital article. Click HERE to keep reading)

For even more in depth analysis see this Guardian Article Click HERE

Dual Crises May Intensify Obama-Netanyahu Tensions

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from the Washington Institute David Makovsy March 23, 2015

NOTE: Terrific, thoughtful article. 

To avoid a full-blown diplomatic collision, Obama will have to urgently address concerns about the Iranian nuclear deal, while Netanyahu will need to publicly declare a two-state-minded policy on Israeli settlements.

Binyamin Netanyahu's electoral victory last week was greeted by an immediate crisis with the Obama administration, when some of his comments aimed at wooing right-wing voters in the campaign's final days angered the White House. The administration perceived Netanyahu's statement that there would not be a Palestinian state on his watch as a repudiation of his commitment to a two-state outcome. Immediately after the election, the prime minister insisted that he remained committed to two states, but President Obama chose to believe that his election remarks were more authentic than his clarification, in keeping with his well-known doubts about Netanyahu's support for that goal. While pledging not to touch U.S.-Israeli military or intelligence cooperation, Obama told the Huffington Post on Friday that he took Netanyahu "at his word" that a Palestinian state will not happen during his tenure, and that Washington needed to evaluate all other options to avoid chaos.

Beyond this latest grievance, bilateral relations are almost certain to hit greater turbulence in the coming months, over both the Palestinian issue and the more urgent matter of whether the United States and its negotiating partners strike a nuclear deal with Iran. In principle, the two issues are completely separate, but both are trending toward crises that will only exacerbate the iciness between Obama and Netanyahu.

DIFFERENCES OVER IRAN

Netanyahu's speech to Congress earlier this month highlighted Israel's disagreements with the White House over how to proceed on Iran, even though he implied for the first time that he was not insisting on zero uranium enrichment. The tension surrounding the speech stemmed from a variety of incidents -- most recently, an Obama administration spokesman confirmed media reports that Washington has not been sharing information with Israel lately due to sensitivity in the Iran talks, but the problems date back to when Washington first opened a secret channel with Tehran without telling Israel.

Apart from the specifics of an Iran agreement, the United States and Israel need to reach a set of understandings about the wider context of any deal. This means that in addition to defining quantifiable methods for enforcing Iranian compliance and outlining precise mechanisms for penalizing consequential violations, Washington will need to provide assurances that the accord is not political shorthand for a change in the balance of regional power toward Iran at the expense of Sunni Arab countries and Israel. If Tehran emerges from the negotiations believing it has a free hand to act regionally -- and with additional cash due to the easing of sanctions -- Israel will feel nervous even if it is not directly threatened. The question remains whether Iran is entitled to an industrial-size nuclear capability after an agreement expires, irrespective of whether the regime acts in a destabilizing manner. Given all of these issues, Washington and Israel will find it difficult to adequately address their differences before the July 1 deadline for reaching a final agreement with Iran.

If that timetable was not enough of a constraint, two other factors have entered the mix. First, Netanyahu will be quite busy building his coalition of right-of-center parties, which he has made clear he wants to complete within three weeks. Second, Speaker of the House John Boehner announced that he will visit Israel at the end of this month, a move that is bound to revive speculation about Netanyahu seeking further coordination with him on Iran, since Boehner was the one who invited him to address Congress.

Presumably, Netanyahu would prefer to coordinate first with the Obama administration on key Iran issues, and he should make that preference abundantly clear even amid the current tensions. If spurned, however, he will most likely intensify consultations with Boehner. Although going that route and focusing on congressional oversight of an Iran deal would open Netanyahu up to U.S. accusations of partisanship, he would likely claim that he had no choice since he is disregarded by the White House, and since the stakes for Israel are existential. The upshot is greater Israeli tension with the Obama administration in the months ahead as the congressional debate over Iran is likely to intensify.

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