Middle East Matters

Significant Developments Syria. Israel publicly warned Syrian president Bashar Assad to stop transferring advanced weapons to Hezbollah yesterday. In an unusual move, a senior Israeli official contacted the New York Times on Wednesday and was then quoted by the paper saying that “Israel is determined to continue to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah,” arguing that such a move would destabilize the region. The Israeli official warned further: “If Syrian president Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to strike Israel through his terrorist proxies, he will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate.” Meanwhile, the United Nations General Assembly passed a nonbinding resolution yesterday condemning Syrian authorities and calling for a “political transition” to end the violence in Syria. The resolution passed by a vote of 107-12 with 59 abstentions, less than the 133 votes a similar resolution received last August. In introducing the debate, Vuk Jeremic, president of the General Assembly, raised the official UN death toll to more than eighty thousand people. Iran. European foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton met Iranian envoy and presidential candidate Saeed Jalili in Istanbul last night. Ashton called the dinner meeting “useful” but announced no plans for a new round of negotiations. Earlier in the day, a senior UN official announced that talks between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency had failed to break ground on resuming an investigation into “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program. Meanwhile two big-name candidates registered as candidates for Iran’s presidential elections just before the deadline on Saturday: former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who is close to President Ahmadinejad. Turkey-Syria. The Turkish government blamed Syria earlier in the week for two car bomb explosions that killed at least forty-six people in Reyhanli, a border town in Turkey. It was one of the deadliest terror attacks on Turkish soil. Officials in Turkey announced that they had arrested nine people on Sunday; all the detainees were Turkish citizens and a number of them confessed to links to Syrian intelligence services. U.S. Foreign Policy Talking Syria. President Barack Obama met with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House today to discuss Syria. In a joint press conference, Obama said that there is no “magic formula” for the situation in Syria. Earlier in the week, the president hosted British prime minister David Cameron who visited the White House to discuss Syria and the upcoming G8. Both leaders emphasized, in press conference remarks, the urgency of ending the fighting in Syria; Cameron noted that “Syria’s history is being written in the blood of her people, and it is happening on our watch.” Acknowledging the difficulty of finding a diplomatic solution, Obama said that “It’s going to be challenging, but it’s worth the effort.” Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry sounded cautiously optimistic about plans for an international peace conference to bring together figures from the Syrian opposition and regime. At a press conference in Stockholm on Tuesday, Kerry said that “progress is being made” and the Syrian government had given names of officials who would attend to Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. While We Were Looking Elsewhere Egypt. Gaza’s interior ministry announced a state of alert along its border with Egypt after unidentified gunmen abducted seven Egyptian security officers in the Sinai Peninsula early today. The seven security personnel were in taxis outside of the city of El Arish when masked gunmen ambushed them. Egyptian security officials said that they had been in contact with the kidnappers and that the abduction may have been related to anger over claims that an imprisoned militant had been tortured. Libya. Libyan officials claimed that a bomb blast in Benghazi that killed three people on Monday could have been an accident instead of a deliberate car bombing. Libyan interior minister Ashur Shwayel said that “all signs point to an accidental explosion.” The car was transporting explosives used to make anti-tank mines when it exploded outside of a hospital. Yemen. Three kidnapped Red Cross employees were released yesterday by Yemeni tribesmen in the southern province of Abyan. The three men were abducted on Monday. Two Egyptian technicians who had been abducted last week by the same tribe were also released. Iraq. Bombings in Baghdad and attacks in northern Iraq killed at least seventeen people today, in the latest surge of violence in the past several weeks. More than thirty-five people were killed yesterday as a result of bombings in Baghdad and Kirkuk that seemingly targeted Iraq’s Shiite population. Bahrain. A court in Bahrain sentenced six people to jail for insulting King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa on Twitter. The six were convicted for the “misuse of freedom of expression.” One of those convicted was Mahdi al-Basri, who did not send any tweets, but served as a lawyer for a community account that wrote the offending tweets. This Week in History This week marks the thirtieth anniversary of a short-lived U.S.-mediated Lebanese-Israeli peace agreement. On May 17, 1983, Lebanon and Israel signed a peace accord ending the state of war between the two countries since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The 1983 agreement, coming on the heels of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon the previous year, called for a phased Israeli withdrawal from the country and was a product of negotiations held over thirty-five sessions between December 1982 and May 1983. Israel’s withdrawal was contingent on a Syrian withdrawal; however, Syria refused to recognize the agreement and nearly forty thousand Syrian troops remained in northern Lebanon. In March 1984, under pressure from Syria, the Lebanese government cancelled the peace agreement with Israel.

“I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog.” –Abu Sakkar, leader of the Syrian rebel Farouq Brigade from Homs, as he bit into the heart of a regime soldier “What do I care if they destroy Tel Aviv and lose Beirut?” –Amin Hoteit, retired Lebanese colonel close to Hezbollah, on the possibility of escalating tensions between Hezbollah and Israel “Israel never bent down before anyone, but they did for him — at least, that is the perception among the Turkish public.” –Cengiz Candar, one of Turkey’s leading political commentators about Israel’s apology to Turkey for the Mavi Marmara incident “The security forces don’t ask me to make up stories, but I know informants who do because they want more money.” –Ghalib, a Baquba resident and informant for the Iraqi security forces “We could now envision selling gas to Egypt…The pipeline is there. You can simply change the direction the gas flows.” –Pinhas Avivi, Israeli Foreign Ministry official “I think the army has an important role to play in this phase — to get us out of this tragedy that the Muslim Brotherhood has put us in.” –Shadi al-Ghazali Harb, a prominent Egyptian liberal activist

Significant Developments Syria. Hassan Nasrallah announced yesterday that Syria would transfer strategic “game-changing” weapons to the Lebanese group Hezbollah. The televised speech was a response to Israel’s alleged airstrikes near Damascus last Friday and Sunday that reportedly targeted Fateh-110 missiles transiting to Hezbollah from Iran. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attacks, but a senior Israeli defense official said that the airstrikes were intended to prevent weapon transfers to Hezbollah and stressed that Israel was not taking sides in Syria’s civil war. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Israel warned the United States about an imminent Russian deal to sell advanced ground-to-air missile systems to Syria. Bashar al-Assad’s government has long been trying to buy S-300 missile batteries, which are capable of intercepting both manned aircraft and guided missiles. Western nations have repeatedly asked Russia not to make the sale, which would complicate any potential international intervention in Syria. Egypt. President Mohammed Morsi swore in nine new cabinet ministers on Tuesday following a major reshuffle that overhauled the government. Morsi replaced the ministers of finance, planning, investment and petroleum in the second reshuffle since he took office last June. Samir Radwan, a former finance minister, warned that the changes could adversely affect Egypt’s negotiation with the IMF over a $4.8 billion loan, saying “IMF officials have told me that each time they get used to a minister, he disappears…We know have our fifth finance minister since the revolution; this is a sign of instability.” U.S. Foreign Policy Syria. U.S. secretary of state John Kerry told reporters in Rome yesterday that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would not be a component of a transitional government. His comments came two days after Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov announced in Moscow that they would seek to hold an international conference within the coming month focusing on finding a political solution to the civil war in Syria. Kerry and Lavrov told reporters that they would push to have both Bashar al-Assad’s government and the Syrian opposition attend. Lavrov told reporters that Russia is not interested “in the fate of certain persons…We are interested in the fate of the Syria people.” Israel-Palestine. Secretary Kerry told reporters in Rome that he would travel to the Middle East in two weeks. Kerry made the announcement following his meeting with Israeli peace negotiator Tzipi Livni, saying he intended to meet with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. "We are working through threshold questions and we are doing it with a seriousness of purpose that I think Minister Livni would agree with me has not been present in a while," Kerry said at the U.S. ambassador to Italy’s residence before meeting with Livni in private. His trip to the region will be his fourth since becoming Secretary of State. While We Were Looking Elsewhere Turkey. Kurdish militants began to withdraw their forces from Turkey to their stronghold in Iraq on Wednesday, the latest step in a peace process meant to end a three-decade long conflict. The withdrawal process is expected to be mostly complete by the end of June. Turkey’s deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc cautiously asserted that “we feel that we are nearing the conclusion,” but would not confirm the beginning of the withdrawal. Iran. Former parliament speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, a close adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, joined the presidential race today. Haddad Adel is part of the Coalition of Three that includes two other Khamenei loyalists who have declared their candidacies: former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and Tehran mayor Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf. Iranian media has speculated that two of the three will step aside in favor of whomever appears to be in the strongest position as the race heats up. Meanwhile, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president of Iran from 1989 until 1997, told his students at Tehran University on Sunday that he would run if convinced that his presence would be beneficial to the country. Registration for candidates began on Tuesday morning and will continue until tomorrow. The election is slated for June 14. Libya. Two police stations in Benghazi were hit by bombs early this morning. It is the fourth time in the past month that police stations in the city have been attacked with explosives. Meanwhile, Libya’s General National Congress passed the Political Isolation Law on Sunday excluding former officials from the Qaddafi era from public office. The law’s passage comes after heavily armed militiamen blockaded the foreign and interior ministries from April 28 to May 5 demanding legislators back the bill. Proponents of the law have made clear their intention to specifically exclude from public office former prime minister Mahmoud Jibril. Israel. Israeli security forces detained Mohammed Ahmad Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, on Wednesday and held him for questioning on suspicion of involvement in the latest disturbance at al-Aqsa Mosque. Following six hours of questioning, the grand mufti was released without charges. His detention sparked small demonstrations against Israel in Jordan and Egypt. This Week in History This week marks the fifty-second anniversary of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi dissolution of Iran’s parliament, paving the way for his modernization agenda and the “White Revolution.” On May 5, 1961, Iranian prime minister Jafar Sharif Imami and his cabinet resigned a day after fifty thousand demonstrators clashed with security forces during a teacher’s strike. The following day, the shah appointed Ali Amini as prime minister. On May 9 he dissolved both houses of parliament, receiving a mandate to rule for six months by cabinet decree. Under Amini, the cabinet adopted a land reform law, which redistributed land from the minority to small-scale cultivators. The land reform law was a prelude to the shah’s “White Revolution,” a more ambitious package of social, political, and economic reforms that were approved by popular referendum in 1963.