Hollande, Obama lack the troops and will for total war on ISIS. Mid East rulers are even more reluctant
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis November 16/15/
When French President Francois Hollande declared war on ISIS and called the attack in Paris an “act of war,” he gave the terrorist organization’s leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi an unexpected boost. He upgraded the Muslim caliphate to a fully-fledged state against which France is now at war. US President Barack Obama was more cautious, declaring at the G-20 summit in Antalya that his country and France would fight together against terror, without specifying how. Obama has problems of his own. The attempt to portray the Kurdish conquest of the city of Sinjar in northern Iraq as an important achievement in the war against ISIS dissipated quickly after Peshmerga troops were shown on TV moving into a city that was empty and lying in ruins, after it was abandoned by Islamic State forces. There was no battle there either.
Also, the US and Kurdish claims that they had severed the main road link between the ISIS capitals in Iraq and Syria, Mosul and Raqqa, proved hollow as ISIS had stopped using that route months ago after it became vulnerable to American air strikes. If that wasn’t enough, Obama ran into an obstacle in Antalya.The summit’s host, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who is consumed by an overriding aversion to an independent Kurdish state rising on his country’s border, demanded a declaration that all Kurdish forces, including the Peshmerga, the PKK and the YPG, on which the US depends heavily for fighting the war against ISIS, be classified as terrorists and targeted by the West just like ISIS. Therefore, before broaching any decisions about intensifying the war on the Islamist terrorists, Western and Muslim countries were already at odds on targets. It therefore makes no sense for President Hollande to try and invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter under which an act of war against one member of the alliance is tantamount to a war on all. Furthermore, making this a NATO operation would rule out a priori any collaboration with Russia in the campaign against ISIS, despite their common objective. Vladimir Putin was already vexed over the feeble Western response to the bombing of a Russian airliner killing 224 people, compared to the global outcry over the Paris outrage.
In their responses and commentaries on what to do after the Paris assault, Western politicians and security experts seemed to agree that putting their own boots on the ground for finally getting to grips with ISIS was not on the cards – there would just be “more of the same,’ as one American security expert put it. Others advised assigning the ground battle to the Egyptian, Jordanian, Kurdish, Iraqi, Saudi and other Gulf Arab states. Who were they kidding? None of those Arab governments or armies is capable or willing to declare full-scale war on the Islamic State. The Kurds alone have stepped into the breach and are confronting the Islamists face to face, but they have sought in vain for the weapons they need, which the US refuses to supply. Egypt, for instance, even after an ISIS network was able to breach its security system in Sharm El-Sheikh to plant a bomb on the Russian airliner on Oct. 31, has held back from a major military assault on the strongholds of the Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, otherwise known as ISIS-Sinai. Egypt’s President Fattah Al-Sisi has not uttered a word on the Islamist threat since then.
French security and intelligence services demonstrated that they were unprepared for war on ISIS, and are pretty much in the same boat as other Western powers. Since the outrage in Paris, French and Belgian security forces have conducted raid after raid to pick up Islamists, claiming to be rounding up the masterminds and confederates of the nine bombers and shooters who attacked Paris and murdered 132 people In fact, they are acting more to calm a jittery public than in the expectation of achieving meaningful results in the war on terror. Till now, neither France nor any Western government knows exactly how many people were involved in the attack on Paris, or the numbers and locations of the Islamic Caliphate’s worldwide terror networks.
Apologizing to Iran
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/November 16/15
I am not surprised that Iranian President Hassan Rowhani has demanded that the United States apologize for its past behavior before opening embassies in each others’ capitals. Washington seems desperate to gain Tehran’s friendship, and is willing to meet its demands. The only price Iran paid was accepting to freeze its nuclear program. Washington deemed this a great achievement tantamount to the rapprochement with China or destroying the Berlin Wall!
What does Rowhani want the United States to apologize for? During the past decades of tense relations, most victims have been American. The history of Iranian violence is long, starting with the detention of U.S. embassy personnel in Tehran. This was followed by the killing of 17 Americans in an attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut, where 241 Americans were also killed in an attack on the U.S. Marines’ barracks.
What does Rowhani want the United States to apologize for? During the past decades of tense relations, most victims have been American.Iran also planned the explosions in the Saudi city of Khobar, killing 19 Americans and wounding 240. This in addition to hijacking a TWA aircraft. There have been dozens of other Iranian operations against American people and interests in the Middle East, Europe and South America. There have also been attempts to carry out operations inside the United States, where authorities thwarted an assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador. Not to mention the hundreds of American soldiers who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan with support from Iran. Tehran has a lot of blood on its hands, so it owes many countries, including the United States, an apology.
Why apologize?
Tehran may be demanding an apology for U.S. support of the shah before the revolution. In that case, Washington must apologize to the Iranian people for abandoning him, forcing him to leave Tehran and refusing him cancer treatment in the United States after his exile. Then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s stance contributed to an extremist religious regime taking over in Tehran. This has caused the world chaos and war ever since. Washington is often blamed for supporting then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran. In fact, the United States was happy to see both regimes fight it out. It let Israel trade American weapons with Tehran, and Gulf states supply arms to Baghdad. Washington only guarded its oil interests in the Gulf, and protected sea routes and Kuwaiti oil tankers from Iranian attacks and mines.
Tehran may be demanding an apology for U.S. support of the shah before the revolution. In that case, Washington must apologize to the Iranian people for abandoning him. Despite all this hostility and bloodshed, Washington never attempted to topple the Iranian regime after the revolution. White House policy has been based on containment and trying to change Tehran’s behavior. After more than 30 years, when Iran realized the failure of its hostile policies and felt suffocated by the West’s commercial boycott, it decided to negotiate. Washington only sought the freezing of Iran’s nuclear program for 10 years, in exchange for lifting sanctions, unfreezing more than $100 billion of frozen assets, and ending the state of confrontation. Despite this leniency, Tehran thinks this is not enough and wants an American apology!